Poison Gas: Most of people assume that poison gas was used first by the German. It’s not really accurate. It was used by the French to stop the seemingly unstoppable German army advancing throughout Belgium and North-Eastern France. In one sense, it was an act of desperation but went against the 'rules' of war. However, while the French were the first to use a gas against an enemy, the Germans had been giving a great deal of thought to the use of poison gas as a way of defeating enemy.
The Beginnings of Trench Warfare Trench warfare was first started by the Germans. They were using the Schlieffen plan which was to attack France whilst leaving a smaller force on the Eastern Front. They succeeded at first but then had some failures, especially at the Battle of the Marne which stopped them going forward as quickly as they wanted to. On September 10th 1914 general Moltke ordered the Germans to retreat. He wanted them to go back to the river Aisne which they did, forming a 250-mile stretch along the river.
The Germans and allies adopted significantly different approaches to trench warfare. The Germans tried to make the best of their situation of fighting a long two front war. Their aim was to bid their time and hang on, and took a more defensive approach then the allies. The French and allies took a offensive approach, mainly because they wanted to regain the regions of France the Germans had captured. Because the Germans took the defensive approach they tended to have the superior trenches both in their position, on a hill or even in a small village, and their build quality creating an better environment in the trenches for the Germans then for the allies.
Although conceived by many as one of Britain’s worst military outings in their history, which it was, as source H says “it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Somme was an essential precondition to success in the last two years of the war”. The casualty list of the British army in Somme was some 400,000 men (over 2/3 of the total allied toll) and the tactics used at the start of Somme were somewhat ridiculous, these facts alone leave a stale taste in the mouth and any comprehension of a British victory can been seen as absurd, however when looking at the Somme from a distance it has to be seen that the British and French forces did triumph over the Germans (who alone had suffered roughly the same casualty list as Britain and France combined) as in February and March 1917 the Germans abandoned their positions on the old Somme battlefield. Source H agrees with this statement stating that the battle of Somme weakened the German army while the BEF force gained experience and improved its tactics which would help in the last year of the war and thus save lives. As well as saying this source H also states that “commanders at all levels could certainly have conducted the battle more effectively and thus saved lives”, this is backed by source G which states that “whatever harm kitchener’s volunteers wished the Germans, it is he harm they thereby suffered that remains in the British memory”. The morale boost which is stated in source I also could have helped the BEF with the source stating that the German prisoners often asked the satisfied question “don’t you think we have done very well?”, however this can be debated as they would not have known the huge loss of troops on ground.
The objective of the raid was unclear, and has largely been attributed to the personal ambition of Vice-Admiral Louis, Lord Mountbatten, then Chief of Combined Operations. Mountbatten apparently acted without specific authorisation and therefore without access to the necessary resources and intelligence. [1][page needed] Possible objectives included seizing and holding a major port for a short period, both to prove it was possible and to gather intelligence from prisoners and captured materials, while assessing the German responses. The Allies also wanted to destroy coastal defences, port structures and all strategic buildings. The raid could have given a morale boost to the troops, Resistance, and general public, while assuring the Soviet Union of the commitment of the United Kingdom and the United States.
Also this source is unreliable because of what Haig was writing and who he was informing. This source was written to inform the British government, the Prime Minister, so consequently, Haig would put more optimism in the letters to avoid the blame for the failure of the war. Finally, he mention how the barbed wires were cut well, and how the battle was going like clockwork, when 60,000 were injured or dead and 20,000 plus were definitely dead. The statement of the barbwire being cut well is a lie as I know from my own contextual knowledge that the barbed wire was not penetrated due to its thickness and vastness. Source C is an interview with Private George Coppard, already making it more reliable than source B because Private George Coppard was present at the frontline, therefore, his information is firsthand.
These advances allowed for impressive defence systems, which out-of-date military tactics could not break through for most of the war. Barbed wire was a significant hindrance to massed infantry advances. Artillery, vastly more lethal than in the 1870s, coupled with machine guns, made crossing open ground extremely difficult. [45] Commanders on both sides failed to develop tactics for breaching entrenched positions without heavy casualties. In time, however, technology began to produce new offensive weapons, such as gas warfare and the tank.
100 Days Offensive The Hundred Days (18 July-11 November 1918) was the final Allied offensive of the First World War on the Western Front. The stalemate on the Western Front had been broken by the great German offensives of the spring and summer of 1918, which had pushed the Allies back up to forty miles and created a series of huge salients in the Allied line. They had failed to achieve their main objective, which had been to separate the British from the French and capture the channel ports, and had drained much of the strength out of the German army. One result of the crisis caused by the first of the German offensive (second battle of the Somme), had been the appointment of Marshal Foch as commander-in-chief of all Allied armies on the Western Front. As the German offensives began to run out of power, Foch began to plan the Allied counterattack.
Three reasons that led up to this turning point was the failure of Operation Barbarossa, the first major victory of World War Two for the Russians, and how weak the German Army had become. These three events in order show what led to this significant turning point of World War Two. In June 1941, Hitler embarked on Operation Barbarossa which was the conquest of the Soviet Union. During this operation Hitler released a new Blitzkrieg with three million Germans soldiers flooding into the Soviet Union. This Blitzkrieg caught Stalin by surprise because he was still recovering from the purges that had wiped out a great amount of his top officers.
On 1st July 1916 England attacked the German trenches in a big bombardment to finally push the Germans back and win the war. However, despite the preparations and an unbelievable amount of 1,732,873 shells raining down on the German trench, Britain did not succeed in defeating Germany. Instead it was a disaster and the British army suffered some of the worst casualties in its entire history. But was this down to Haig’s poor leadership, failing technology or the things that Britain could not control? Haig, Britain’s leader was an experienced cavalry officer but he sometimes underestimated the power of the German Army.