Why was there a Stalemate?

Why was there a Stalemate?

The Trench System

• Infantry were sent against the enemy trench in mass attacks to try and overwhelm and capture the trench.

• This was incredibly difficult to achieve due to the complex and well defended trenches.

• By design trenches were nearly impossible to capture, so the war dragged into stalemate as both sides dug in.

• They were defended by barbed wire, machine guns and mines.

Poll

Which do you think was the most important reason for why the trenches were so hard to capture?

• Machine guns

• Barded wire

• Mines

• The complex layout of the trenches.

The Machine Gun

• Machine guns were relatively new and deadly technologies.

• They were ideal defensive weapons. They could fire up to 600 rounds a minute and were able to cut down lines of attackers, causing huge casualties

• Trenches defended by these devastating weapons were impossible to capture.

• The German Maxim Gun accounted for 90% of Allied victims in the Battle of the Somme 1916

Multiple Choice

How many rounds a minute could a WWI machine gun fire?

• 600

• 20

• 1000

• 100

The Failure of New Weapons

• Several new weapons were developed but none was successful in helping to achieve a breakthrough

• The invention of the gas mask reduced the effectiveness of poisonous gas

• The early tanks were slow and cumbersome, and many broke down. They were not used effectively until 1918

Open Ended

What was the point of poison gas?

Failure of New Weapons cont.

• Heavy guns could cause considerable damage to enemy trenches but could not destroy the barbed wire or achieve a breakthrough. If anything, they made the task of the attacking side even more difficult, since No Man’s Land became badly churned up by the bombardment, thus slowing the advancing troops.

• The flame-thrower was unreliable and quite likely to explode and kill the soldier using it.

The Commanders

• Trench warfare was a new kind of fighting. No one really knew how to win a war like this. So the generals fell back on the ideas they had used successfully in past wars, such as mass cavalry or infantry attacks

• The French commander, Marshal Joffre, believed that the ‘spirit’ of the French soldiers would see them across No Man’s Land

• The commanders on both sides persisted for three years with the belief that using large numbers of troops in an attack would achieve a breakthrough against machine guns and barbed wire

Poll

You're a British soldier about to go 'over the top' to attack the German trenches. What do you think your chances of survival are?

• 50%

• 75%

• Less than 50%

• I'm basically dead.