Germans on the Western Front generally considered themselves there to stay: they were sitting on captured French territory and didn't need to go anywhere. Add to this that the Russians were now deep in German territory.Īnd in many cases the Germans did. This would be the same basic plan, just reversed: hold off France on French territory, knock out Russia, then send troops west to defeat France. Meanwhile they'd spend their offensive energy fighting the Russians. If they wanted, the Germans could have defended their captured French territory until they could negotiate beneficial terms with France. When the Russians attacked East Prussia and Galicia Germany still had the bulk of its armies fully engaged deep in French territory.Īt this point the Germans were sitting pretty on the Western Front. The Schlieffen Plan failed at First Marne and all hope of outflanking the Allied lines was lost in the Race To The Sea. Then they'd rush their forces from France to meet the Russians. Their initial plan, the Schlieffen Plan, was to knock France out of the war before Russia could fully mobilize and threaten Germany mobilization in those days took weeks or months. At the beginning of the war they faced the nightmare scenario of being pulled into a two-front war with France on one side and Russia on the other, something which previous German leaders had sought to avoid. If you're the Germans it's a bit more complicated. But the continuous line of trenches in the Great War made this tactical mobility impossible. This avoids fighting the enemy where they're strong and forces them to come out to attack you. In any other situation you'd bypass a strong enemy position and cut off their supply. The Germans aren't just going to just go away. If you're France and their allies, it's because you want the Germans out of France. If multiple positions are overrun, the defenders fall back to another line. If an attacker overruns any one position, they will take fire from multiple supporting positions.
DAY OF DEFEAT SOURCE TRENCHES MAP SERIES
For example, Finland's Mannerheim Line was really a series of mutually supporting bunkers, dugouts, and trenches.
DAY OF DEFEAT SOURCE TRENCHES MAP HOW TO
The Great War taught the armies of the world how to assault a line, and it also taught defenders how to be flexible rather than be rigid lest they be outflanked and bypassed. A single, continuous, fully manned line is too costly and too brittle for the pace of modern warfare. They lacked the training and tactics to deal with it.Īnd we've never seen its like since. The army leadership was not ready for a continent-spanning trench line bristling with machine guns and high explosives. Waiting for your enemy to attack you gave them the initiative which would mean defeat. Victory came from taking the initiative, and crushing the enemy's morale. Warfare was still mostly a matter of keeping your forces acting as a unit, answering commands, and not running away. The largest battle of the war at Gravelotte lasted just one day. Battles would last a day or two and be sharp, decisive conflicts with one side holding the field and the other retreating. The prior Franco-Prussian War of 1871 was fought with 500,000 men on each side compared to the tens of millions in the Great War.
Prior to the Great War, warfare was about small, professionally trained armies marching around the countryside in an attempt to trick the other side from accepting battle at a place of your choosing. Nor had the lethality of heavy machine guns, heavy artillery, and breech-loading magazine-fed rifles been accounted for. While trenches were used in individual battles prior, nothing like a deadlock on this scale had been seen nor even seriously considered before. It's something that happened to prevent being strategically outflanked. First thing is to realize that strategic trench warfare in the Great War was not planned.
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