When most people are asked what they think of when they visualize a battlefield on the Western Front during World War 1, they’ll usually talk to you of the static trench-warfare, or the several-year long stalemate, which resulted in millions of casualties for mere miles of ground. What few actually know, though, is that at least initially, the Western Front was a mobile war. It wasn’t until late October and mid-November of 1914, that the German and Allied armies developed their notorious defensive trench systems, for which the war would immortalize. The reasons for the development of trench-warfare were due both to the massive casualties sustained in frontal assaults, and the relative inability to counter such modern inventions as the machine-gun and improved rifled artillery. To have a better understanding of how and why the Western front devolved into the trench-dwelling war of attrition that it’s become famous for, we must first explore the tactics used in the years previous, and in the first few months of the First World War.

The leading military leaders of the Allied and Central powers in the years prior to 1914, and even years afterward, were heavily influenced by the tactical genius of the early 19th century General, Napoleon. They believed that if war were to come to Europe again, though it would be a costly affair, it would be won through flanking maneuvers and supported and screened by horse-cavalry, as had been the case in the Napoleonic Wars and the later Franco-Prussian War. What the leadership of both sides failed to take into account though, were the astronomical leaps in technology, that had taken place since the end of the last century. It wasn’t until several months following the start of the war and the German invasion of Belgium and France, that the resulting blood-bath impressed upon the combatants that a war of mobility just wasn’t viable;