A Study Into the Stalemate on the Western Front and the Factors Responsible for It’s End

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A Study into the Stalemate on the Western Front and the Factors Responsible for it’s End In this essay I shall explain how far I agree with this statement: The following were equally important reasons why the stalemate on the Western Front was finally broken: • New technology like the tank • The American entry into the war • The German offensive in March 1918 • The blockading of the German ports. The first significant advance in technology was the tank, first introduced into the war by the allies at the Somme July 1916. The tank held many advantages; it was very well armoured and most German fire could not penetrate the tanks armour, it provided constant machine gun fire, could easily move over barbed wire, the tank could protect soldiers and reduced the loss of soldiers and it provided a great boost to the morale of the Allies. However the tank equally had a number of disadvantages; it moved very slowly with a maximum speed of four miles per hour, it was very loud and the Germans were given lots of warning when a tank was coming, they were an easy target and were very difficult to manouvere, they had no gun turret so in order to aim and fire soldiers had to expose themselves, the infantry ended up advancing too fast for the tanks too keep up and eventually the Germans found that they could easily be immobilised by destroying the large steering rotor on the back of the tank and managed to penetrate the heavy armour with armour piercing machine gun rounds. Despite all these liabilities the tank did prove to be important in breaking the stalemate. As the war went on the tank was improved so that it became faster and more held more destructive power, with gun turrets added to the top. The first major success with the tanks was at Cambia in November 1917, where 350 tanks were used with great results. In the final

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