The Western Front in WW1 is defined in
historical memory by trench warfare, where the front lines barely moved for nearly
3 years and millions of men struggled in the muddy and bloody network of trenches and wire
that stretched for hundreds of kilometers. But in August 1914, the war didn’t start in
the trenches, as armies clashed in the open and tried to outmaneuver each other in mobile
warfare. So why exactly did trench warfare begin? When the First World War began in summer
1914, both Germany and France envisioned sweeping offensives that would see their
massive armies surround and crush their enemies in the field. But after just weeks
of fighting and maneuvering in the open, mobile warfare all but disappeared until 1918, replaced by a grinding positional war based on
dense and deep networks of trenches and dugouts. Now, trenches were not unknown before 1914 –
in fact they’d been used since antiquity and even more in more recent conflicts
like the Crimean War, US Civil War, Boer War, and Russo-Japanese War. But
the network of trenches that the French, British and German armies dug in 1914 was
unprecedented in its scale, complexity, and resistance to attacking forces. So why
exactly did trench warfare begin in 1914? Both France and Germany had ambitious plans for
mobile war in 1914, and part of the reason trench warfare began is because these plans failed. The
German Schlieffen Plan envisioned a quick German victory over France in the west, before moving
east to deal with a slow-mobilizing Russia. Most of the German army was to move through
Belgium, into France and pass west of Paris, enveloping French forces and crushing them
against the Franco-German border. But at first, the French didn’t realise this. Instead,
they tried to act on their own war plan, Plan XVII. This offensive would see most of
the French army smash straight through the Franco-German border and into Germany, sweeping
the enemy before it. Both of these war plans were about mobile warfare and decisive battles – and
both of them failed in August and September 1914. in Alsace and Lorraine stopped French attacks
and inflicted extremely heavy losses – on August 22 alone, more than 20,000 Frenchmen were
killed. As Plan XVII was failing spectacularly in the Battle of the Frontiers, French commanders
also realized the massive threat to the north. The German army had numerical superiority on
its right wing, and pushed French and British troops out of Belgium before closing on
Paris. The French though, were able to shift their forces to face the new danger, and
defeated the Germans at the Battle of the Marne. Once the initial war plans failed, both sides
tried to outflank the other in what became misleadingly known as the Race to the Sea. Even
as the armies were sending forces further north, the front lines began to harden. By October
1914, a network of trenches stretched nearly unbroken from the Swiss border to the
Channel, a front line that would only deepen over the next three years. Mobile
warfare lasted just three months in 1914, to be replaced by trench warf are once the grand
offensives failed. Why those offensives failed, and why new offensives had little chance to break
the deadlock, explain why trench warfare began. The arms industry developed deadly new
technologies in the years leading up to 1914, and when these new weapons were used
on a mass scale for the first time, the results were devastating. So devastating
that they helped force entire armies to take shelter in trenches. The weapons of
1914 made the open battlefield far more deadly than the last European
great power wars in 1870 or 1866. The deadliest weapon of all was artillery.
The French 75mm was considered the best field gun in the world, and rightly so:
thanks to its hydraulic brake system, it could fire in bursts of 15-30 rounds per
minute for a limited time, as opposed to about 5 rounds per minute for the Prussian C64 field
gun of 1870. 1914 field guns had ranges of 7 to 11,000m – far beyond the 3500m of 1870. And
the Germans especially had heavy artillery that could fire even heavier shells even farther.
The shells these modern guns fired were also more powerful than in previous wars, thanks to
advances in chemical explosives like melinite. Small arms had also become more deadly. British
Lee-Enfield, German Mauser and French Lebel rifles all had superior ranges and rates of fire
thanks to smokeless powder multi-round clips – up to 15 rounds a minute per rifle. Modern machine
guns like the Maxim, Vickers, St Etienne could fire 500 bullets every minute, 5 times as many
as the multi-barrelled mitrailleuse of 1870. Military experts knew of these developments before
the war. They observed it on a smaller scale, like in the Russo-Japanese War, and
noted it in their field manuals: “Bullets can still kill a man
at 2000m. At ordinary ranges, they go through several men.”
(Legrand-Girarde and Plessis 21) What the generals were not sure
of was how this would influence fighting – would it help attackers or
defenders? A few theorists thought it might lead to a defensive stalemate,
while others, especially in France, felt that a vigorous attacking spirit would
prevail as it had for the Japanese in some battles in 1904-05. French Captain Billard was
a supporter of the attacking spirit in 1913: “War is not so much about capability as it
is about courage; science will always yield to devotion and firmness. Above all else,
every trooper must be inculcated with this spirit of ultimate sacrifice which will later
reveal itself in the offensive.” (Loez 95) However, events in August and September
showed the new weapons made attacking in the open a deadly business, as French officer
Charles de Gaulle experienced first-hand: “Suddenly the enemy’s fire became precise and
concentrated. Second by second the hail of bullets and the thunder of the shells grew stronger.
Those who survived lay flat on the ground, amid the screaming wounded and the humble
corpses. In an instant it had become clear that not all the courage in the world
could withstand this fire.” (Hart 50) While the armies fought in the open, men
died in droves. After just 5 months of fighting in the West, France had lost
265,000 dead, Germany about 85,000, and Britain about 30,000 from its much
smaller army – and most of these were lost in August and September, before
trench warfare began. (Stevenson 92-93) These losses were proportionally heavier than any
other year of the war, and unsustainable. The only escape was the relative safety of the trenches,
as French officer Pierre Dupouey observed: “The fire of the [German] heavy guns is admirably
precise and well regulated. The other day I saw six shell craters in a 30m diameter circle; and
these shells came from more than 7000m away. But however accurate their fire, a trench gives
shelter untouchable by artillery. Well dug-in infantry can only be dislodged by infantry,
and properly by enemy bayonets.” (Hart 77) Another problem that ended mobile warfare
and ensured trench warfare would be around for the long haul was how to fight. Given
the superiority of defensive firepower and the early trench systems, armies
struggled to sustain any kind of success, with infantry or artillery, and
especially coordinating the two. Gunners struggled to fight in unfamiliar
situations. In mobile war, they often fired against visible targets, but in set-piece
battles and when faced with trench systems, crews found themselves attempting to hit targets
at ranges greater than they had trained for, and with indirect fire. This required much more
information which in 1914, was difficult given the problems in command and control. Aerial
reconnaissance helped, but aircraft were still rare and crews could move, camouflage, and
dig in to hide their guns from prying eyes. As for the infantry, assaulting an entrenched
enemy was risky business and mistakes often occurred. Regulations did foresee tactics
that took into account enemy firepower, like moving forward in shorter
bursts with smaller groups, but officers often had difficulty coordinating
their troops and assaults often took place in denser formations, which then withered
under defensive firepower. The Germans made this mistake at Ypres in October, as
British Captain Henry Dillon witnessed: “A great grey mass of humanity was charging,
running for all God would let them, straight on to us not 50 yards off. […] I
have never shot so much in such a short time, and could not have been more than a few
seconds and they were down.” (Hart 73) But perhaps the main challenge was coordinating
the two main combat arms in a way that would ensure artillery support arrived in the right
place at the right time to help the infantry attack through enemy trenches. There weren’t
enough liaison officers to communicate the needs of the infantry to the nearest
batteries, and overly-eager infantry officers didn’t always wait for support
before launching an attack. French Captain Alphonse Grasset recalled the suffering of
his men in the absence of artillery support: “My Company was sustaining heavy
losses. Evidently its action was hampering the enemy who concentrated
the combined fire of his infantry, artillery and machine guns on us. […]
among the men lying on the ground one could no longer distinguish the living
from the dead. […] we had no support from our artillery! And yet there were guns in our
division and in the army corps, besides those destroyed on the road. Where were they? Why
didn’t they arrive? We were alone!” (Hart 43) French commander-in-chief Joseph
Joffre even put out an explicit warning to his infantry officers not
to attack without artillery support, after he’d received reports of units doing just
that. He chalked it up to a misunderstanding of the doctrine of the offensive, though
lack of training played a key role too. Another factor that enabled trench
warfare was the problem of command and control. The armies that took the field
were larger than ever before: once mobilized, the German army numbered about 2.3 million
men, and the French 2.9 million. How such vast armies would receive and act on orders
in a timely manner, and whether the commanders could manage such masses of men, had caused many
doubts among military thinkers before the war. And indeed, commanders did struggle to direct
their armies – in particular the Germans, who needed to move the farthest and the fastest.
1st and 2nd Armies lost touch on the right wing, and Von Moltke ended up accepting 1st
Army’s swing to the east after the fact, rather than approving or countermanding the order
quickly. Joffre admitted that many generals simply couldn’t handle the troops well enough, and
relieved scores of generals in fall 1914. Part of the problem was that the technology to
quickly communicate orders over long distances to massive moving formations wasn’t equal
to the task. There weren’t enough telephone lines or telephones, and what equipment
was available was often cut by shelling. French General Gascouin was among
those frustrated by shortages: “A few km more of telephone wire would have been
worth more to me than the all the blathering on about combined arms and the unity of hearts
between infantrymen and gunners.” (Linnenkohl 176) Wireless telegraphy was still primitive, and
voice radio was not effective until after the war. French intelligence was able to intercept
German messages sent by wireless en clair, without code, by German units desperate for
orders, ammunition, reinforcements, or to find out where their neighbors were.g The Allies
also suffered from difficulties communicating, as liaison officers were few and far between.
British General Horace Smith-Dorrien was left completely in the dark about the whereabouts of
neighbouring French forces near Mons in August: “I had been given no information of the
somewhat serious happenings in the French army on our right, which I learned years
later, namely, that it had been forced back, and was already some 9 miles south
of Mons with a gap of at least 9 miles between the right of our II Corps
and the left of the French XVIII corps, thus leaving us in a very vulnerable,
indefensible, and salient position.” (Hart 53) Communication was often reduced to
mounted messengers relaying notes to headquarters or the nearest working
telegraph or telephone station – not an effective enough system to
implement complex war plans. Historian Larry Addington summed up the dilemma: “Like the fictional Dr. Frankenstein, the general
staffs of Europe had created monsters that they could scarcely control and whose movements at a
distance were difficult to gauge.” (Addington 105) Mobility and logistics were another
issue. The only way for the infantry to move forward was on foot, and the
artillery could only move with horses, which could only be worked so hard
and were extremely vulnerable to enemy fire. Simultaneously, the defender,
who was operating within his own lines, was able to reinforce the threatened area much
more quickly by taking advantage of the roads and rail networks in his own rear. The essence of
the problem was that the attacker’s poor tactical mobility could not overcome the defender’s
greater operational and strategic mobility. Another reason why mobile warfare was replaced
by trench warfare in 1914 were supply problems: attacking armies struggled to
supply themselves with food, fodder, ammunition and reinforcements, while
defending armies could do so much easier. The key aspect here is the railway. As soon as a
formation moved forward into enemy-held territory, it began to move farther from its own
railheads. Since armies were not yet motorized, that meant the main body of the
attackers moved only as fast as a marching infantryman , and their supplies only as
fast as a horse-drawn wagon. The defender, though, could shift his forces
and supplies much faster by rail. This problem helped cripple the German Schlieffen
plan, since the plan demanded more than was humanly possible of under-supplied troops. German
soldier Wilhelm Heigl described the hardships: “Day after day we have to march and there is not a
lot of time to rest. In the last couple of days we have marched nearly 80 kilometres! We heard that
a comrade in 6th company has shot himself because he could not bear it anymore. You can’t imagine
what we have to go through." (Schaefer and Doyle) German troops marched 30-40km a day with 26kg
packs, and received inadequate resupply and reinforcement, forcing them to scavenge
for vegetables in French fields. The vital heavy artillery also fell behind
the infantry it was meant to support. The issue was made worse by delays in taking
over captured French and Belgian railway lines. Meanwhile, French defenders used their shorter
interior lines to quickly shift troops around, most notably at Marne in September
1914. When the race to the sea began, the same transport issues prevented the
Germans from getting enough troops around the Allied flanks and the fighting hardened
into positional warfare there as well. Another logistical issue was shell production.
The general staffs had not anticipated such a heavy rate of fire for the artillery in pre-war
planning, and the guns fired much of the existing shell stocks by September. This contributed to the
start of trench warfare because the armies simply didn’t have enough shells to attack early trench
networks with the necessary weight of fire. French state factories, for example, could only produce
10,000 shells a day in 1914 – far too little for their 3500 guns in the field. The situation was
so critical that Joffre demanded daily reports of shells fired, and placed strict limits on
shells per gun per day. German pre-war stocks had also been used up within the first 6 weeks,
when they had been expected to last 6 months. CONCLUSION So, by fall 1914 trench warfare dominated
on the Western Front. The initial plans for decisive mobile war failed, and attempts to
break through the very first trenches also failed because armies faced insurmountable problems:
lethal firepower that favoured the defender, inadequate infantry, artillery, and combined arms
tactics, deficiencies in command and control, and logistical shortcomings. The result
was that from August to October 1914, that now famous network of trenches crept
from around Nancy to Verdun, along the Aisne, and finally through Belgium to the sea. These
defences defeated every attempt to break them, whether by the Allies on the Aisne and
in Champagne or by the Germans at Ypres. German soldier Paul Hub complained about the impossibility of breaching
British trenches in Belgium: “The terrible digging continues. Every day
brings new horrors. […] It’s impossible to get rid of those Englishmen. They’ve dug
one trench behind another.” (Palmer 32) Ironically, the trenches were not meant
to be permanent. Commanders hoped that entrenching would buy time and free up
forces to launch new offensives that would return to mobile war. A British officer
in Belgium expressed this desire in November: “I am getting awfully bored by the trenches
and am feeling fearfully tired. I hope we won’t be in them much longer. I wish they
would order the advance.” (Strachan 279) Millions of men would share
that officer’s frustration, boredom and disgust with trench warfare.
The deadly orders to advance though, would keep coming for another three years before
the riddle of trench warfare could be solved. When I travel from my home in Vienna to
the Real Time History studio in Berlin, the night train passes through multiple
countries and that is a headache. Suddenly, every website assumes I speak Czech or Polish or
I can't even access it because it's blocked in the EU outright because they don't want to comply
with privacy laws. With a VPN like NordVPN, this is a thing of the past and I can still
access geoblocked content and business files. And NordVPN is fast enough that you can easily
and safely stream movies or previews of our upcoming videos too. Once I am at my destination
and need to access a public WiFi, NordVPN protects my traffic from others snooping around on the same
network. And all that works both on my laptop AND on my smartphone. It's super easy to setup and
to use in your daily online life. If you go to https://nordvpn.com/thegreatwar, you can get
a 2-year plan plus 4 additional months with a HUGE discount. It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day
money-back guarantee and it supports our channel. That’s https://nordvpn.com/thegreatwar - we like
to thank NordVPN for sponsoring this episode. We want to thank Evan Chaisson for his help
with this episode. As usual you can find all the sources for this episode in the video description.
If you are watching this on Nebula or Patreon, thank you so much for the support. I am Jesse
Alexander and this is a production of Real Time History, the only history channel that can
in fact overcome trenches with enough élan.