Kalon Cooper LP4 Professor Lee Lecture: WWI Stalemate Summary At the beginning of the first world war, the Triple Alliance, formerly consisting of the German Empire, Austro Hungarian Empire, and Italy, formed into what was known as the Central Powers. Italy however did not join this new alliance. The opposite side of the war were the Allied powers of Great Britain, Russia and France. When the war started in 1914, everyone involved thought it would be a fairly short war since most of the wars fought during the Napoleonic era were short. During that time, European forces also fought imperial wars outside of Europe where there was a very apparent difference in weaponry technology. These new technologies included machine guns and heavy long range artillery. This made traditional warfare almost impossible. There was one main question with the war and how was it going to be won with the modern tech. Germany had the Schlieffen Plan which was their plan to achieve a quick victory in France in a case of a two front war. France had Plan 17 which was its plan to get AlsaceLorraine back. Germany got driven back during the battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes from August-September in 1914. Germany wasn’t very successful at first on the eastern front against Russia. They highly miscalculated how fast Russia would mobilize. The course of the war largely included stalemates. This started in the first battle of the Marne from September 6-9 in 1914. This was when the French allied forces pushed the Germans back to the front line. Trench warfare also was a factor in the stalemates. They would dig trenches and wouldn’t move forward for fear of machine gun fire and heavy artillery. Life in the trenches in the first world war was abysmal. Trenches were damp and muddy, soldiers got trench foot from having to have their feet wet for long periods of time. There were decaying bodies which rats would feast on and spread diseases. The western front in 1914 was a stalemate because neither side could break it and no one was interested in sitting down and negotiating because there was no clear advantage. Additional Insights From the end of the battle of Ypres to the German pushes in offense of the spring and summer of 1918, the war mainly took place in trenches on the Western Front. These dugouts made makeshift fortresses that made it difficult and almost impossible to penetrate from the opposite side. This would give the defending army a huge advantage over the attacking one. Attackers had to leap out of their trenches into “No Mans Land”, this was also where many people died because there was no place to take cover.
