| Battle histories > Western Front | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
What
was the Western Front? |
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The
Western Front was the name applied to the fighting zone in France
and Flanders, where the British, French, Belgian and later American
Armies faced that of Germany. There was an Eastern Front too,
in Poland, Galicia and down to Serbia, where Russian Armies
faced those of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Western Front
was not the only theatre that saw the British Army in action
during the Great War but it was by far the most important. After
the battles of 1914 both sides held an entrenched line that
stretched from Nieuport on the Belgian coast, through the flat
lands of industrial Artois, continuing through the wide expanses
of the Somme and Champagne, into the high Vosges and on to the
Swiss border. The British held a small portion of this 400-mile
long line, varying from some 20 miles in 1914 to over 120 early
in 1918. |
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Summary |
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From
the moment the German Army moved quietly into Luxemburg on 2
August 1914 to the Armistice on 11 November 1918, the fighting
on the Western Front in France and Flanders never stopped. There
were quiet periods, just as there were the most intense, savage,
huge-scale battles. Until mid-1917 when the French Army was seriously
affected by mutiny, the British Expeditionary Force was the junior
partner. From then until ultimate victory, the British Army played
the central role. Weakened by casualties and government action
that made the army a low priority for the national manpower,
with an ever-lengthening line to hold, the BEF fought a magnificent
defence in spring 1918. Breakthrough came August 1918 and in
the last 100 days of the war the BEF spearheaded the defeat of
the main body of the main enemy. |
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| Sir Douglas Haig's Final Despatch is an excellent summary of the war on the Western Front. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Why
here? |
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Decades
before the Great War, Germans knew they would one day fight a major
war in Europe. They faced the possibility of encirclement, a threat
which became real when France allied with Russia. The staff of the
Army under von Schlieffen proposed a breathtaking plan (compiled
in the early years of the century) that would defeat both of these
long-term enemies. It was considered that Russia would be slow to
mobilise it's armies, giving time for Germany to attack France.
France would need to be quickly defeated, allowing Germany to turn
it's attentions to the Russian Bear. The
von Schlieffen plan therefore provided for a rapid advance, with
German troops sweeping through neutral Belgium, swinging along the
French coast and then to the West of Paris. (Schlieffen also planned
to strike into the Netherlands to capture Antwerp from the North;
his successor von Moltke cancelled this only because of a lack of
artillery). French plans played into German hands, as they proposed
to launch attacks into Alsace and Lorraine.
The
German plan was quite well known by the French, who began entering
secret planning with their new allies, the British. In
the years before the war, Germany quietly surveyed the coming battlefields
of Northern France and Flanders, and built immense railway systems
to be able to deploy millions of men to the borders. When war broke
out, the plan began to be executed. Luxemburg and then Belgium was
invaded, and the great move west began. The French army suffered huge losses in the first weeks of the war. The German army moved relentlessly forward. Lying at Mons, in the coalfield of southern Belgium, on the path of the northernmost of the advancing Germans were the units of the British Expeditionary Force. |
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What
happened? |
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The
first phase: preconceptions destroyed:
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 Second
phase: French in control of strategy: wasteful British attacks : From a strategic viewpoint, the continuous trench lines of the Western Front presented army commanders with a dilemma. The proven way to win battles was to 'turn the flank' of the enemy (that is, to go around his position). There was no flank on the Western Front, for either side. At one end was the North Sea, at the other end 400 miles away, the Alps. The front settled into a period of trench warfare. The British Army was still very much the junior partner on land, and took part in many attacks - of increasing scale as the army grew in size. Casualties were very high for little gained in terms of territory. It is often argued, however, that the searing experience of these battles forced the army to develop into the modern age of technological warfare. Under the command of Sir John French up to October 1915, the BEF lost the core of the pre-war regular army while greatly outmanned and outgunned. It became clear that the enemy positions could be broken into, but not broken through, without the deployment of much larger forces. Under Sir Douglas Haig, the New Armies fought their first major engagement on the Somme. This was a time of great and rapid technological and tactical development: gas, flame-throwers, and grenades (in 1915), tanks and ground support from aircraft (in 1916), predicted artillery and machine gun barrages (developed from mid-1916). Equally, sophisticated defence was developed, including extensive use of underground works, concrete shelters and emplacements, counter-battery artillery fire, and mining (which was also used offensively). |
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 Third
phase: British Army takes the brunt:
The experience of the Somme caused the Germans to reconsider their strategy on the Western Front. They constructed an immensely strong position many miles in the rear, and withdrew to it in early 1917. A large French offensive, supported by a British attack at Arras, withered against the new German defence and many French units had had enough. Many of them mutinied. From this moment in May 1917 the British Army had no choice but to take the lead role while the French stood on the defensive. |
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| The Western Front today | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| There's a selection of photo-tours of the Western Front on this site: Sacred Ground | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Maps of the Western Front | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| There's a selection of campaign maps of the Western Front on this site, too: Maps | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Final
phase: the return of a war of movement: