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Introduction
World War One, which has become a symbol of waste and slaughter above that of other conflicts, began on August 4, 1914. This local disturbance in Southern Europe eventually spread into a worldwide struggle, triggering two of the three greatest bloodlettings of history, the battles of the Somme and Verdun, which occurred within months of each other at the height of the war. The western portion of the conflict, which took place in Belgium and France, started off as a war of "grand maneuvers" as had been theorized. But as more troops were poured into an increasingly cramped area, there eventually came a time when the antagonists could no longer maneuver against their enemies in any operational sense. When this occurred, the forces involved began entrenching in the face of more and more lethal concentrations of firepower.

These conditions triggered a complex and difficult to trace series of evolutions in both battlefield tactics and technology. The Germans responded by creating what amounted to modern combined arms squad tactics, something their French and British opponents brushed off as "infiltration tactics." The British increasingly mechanized their forces, ultimately using a new invention called the tank, which also changed the nature of warfare. The French moved away from linear trench-line defenses and toward strong-point defenses, which were less susceptible to bombardment. The first American offensive saw the greatest use of airpower the world had seen, employing over a thousand aircraft. It was however, Germany which finally succumbed to the drain of economic warfare, and by October of 1918, German field commanders officially declared that a truce must be sought, that the war was militarily lost. From that point on, it was only a matter of time, and the end came on November 11, 1918. The great war ended, having caused millions of deaths on the Western Front alone. Europe and the world would never be the same.

"What these asses do not take into consideration [is] that we shall have 500,000 American volunteer sportsmen, excellently equipped, come up against our tired troops..." Max Weber, regarding the upcoming unlimited submarine campaign.

The Start of War
On August 4, 1914, German troops from seven Armies swept into Luxembourg and Belgium as part of their "Schleiffen plan," which ultimately involved a sweeping move through Belgium and down to Paris from the North. Unfortunately for the Germans, the plan did not work as expected. The result was a partial success which failed in its ultimate goal of knocking the French army out of the war early. The German Armies were finally stopped at the Marne river when Kluck, moving to pursue the French Fifth Army recently beaten by Bulow, tried to sweep behind the French Corps, exposing his own right flank in the process. French General Gallieni quickly assembled an ad-hoc force and, coordinating with Joffre, assaulted Kluck's exposed flank. In the process of defending himself, Kluck redirected his corps westward, allowing yet another dangerous gap to open between him and Bulow. These blunders cost the Germans any further progress and they withdrew back across the Marne River, where they resisted attempts by the French to dislodge them. The fault lay not only with Kluck, but with the German Commander-in-Chief, Count Helmut von Molkte and probably with several modifications made to the Schleiffen plan itself.

For months after the failure of the German offensive, both sides made various local attempts at achieving breakthroughs. Most of these attempts failed miserably in the face of the unexpected effects of modern weapons. In November of 1914, the Kaiser personally ordered the commitment of the Imperial Foot Guards in order to guarantee a breakthrough. They attacked at Ypres and conducted a close-order frontal assault on prepared British trenches, losing hundreds of men and officers without having secured an inch of ground. The failure of the Guards at the First Battle of Ypres marked the beginning of a major reassessment of battlefield tactics by the Germans. Despite this however, they began another series of offensives in February of 1915 in the Soissons region north of Paris (marked 1) which secured little ground. The British then attacked in the Artois region (marked 2) and broke through at Neuve Chapelle, but were unable to exploit the advantage. The Germans quickly closed the gap and in April, successfully used gas for the first time on the Western Front at Ypres (marked 3). This gas attack was not accompanied by any major breakthrough attempt, so its element of surprise was partially wasted. It did however, disrupt the plans for the second series of assaults at Artois, which were a joint British/French operation (marked 4). These assaults also failed at a cost of 300,000 Allied casualties. The French then attempted another campaign against the German lines in the Champagne region (marked 5). These series of attacks were preceded by a lengthy artillery bombardment and a simultaneous British attack yet again at Artois. After 250,000 casualties, the French commander Joffre called off the assaults. In one year of fighting, the lines changed very little, and neither side was yet learning how to fight in this new, dangerous environment.

By early 1916, German units in the field had accumulated enough experience with position warfare to allow a few aggressive young officers to begin asserting their new ideas. This was accomplished because of the German policy of "directive control," by which officers were given broad instructions which they then executed according to their own discretion. While this freedom of action resulted in a lack of standardized training, it also allowed men in the field to experiment with tactics in ways not allowed by their allied counterparts. By the time that the German offensive at Verdun was begun, many units in the field had spontaneously formed assault units who specialized in squad-level operations. The early proponents of these nascent combined arms tactics eventually ran a series of training centers immediately behind the lines. These centers assured that draftees arriving from Germany were trained in the methods of real war instead of the methods still being taught by people in Germany who had no idea of the changes occurring at the front.

The German Commander-in-Chief, Erich von Falkenhayn, now put into action his idea for "bleeding white" the French Army. His plan was to isolate a section of the front-line which the French would not allow to fall, and then assure that this point was ringed by the heaviest artillery available. His target was the ancient French fortress of Verdun, which his troops first assaulted on February 21 after the most concentrated bombardment of the war (marked 1). Falkenhayn however, correctly divined that his subordinates would not likely agree with such a "bleeding white" plan, and so he did not share with them his intent to purposefully avoid capturing Verdun itself. He thought that he could control the pace of the German advance, and hence the advance on Verdun itself, by withholding the vital reserves upon which his subordinates relied. Because of this appalling policy of calculated ignorance, attacking German field commanders launched wave upon wave of stop-at-nothing assaults against the Verdun fortresses without knowing that their attacks would not be followed up. The campaign carried on for five terrible months, during which 300,000 Germans and 460,000 French became casualties. This series of battles, one of the greatest slaughters in history until this time, did not achieve Falkenhayn's goals, because his men, who had been trained to attack, continued attacking against all odds in the mistaken belief that their efforts would be followed up. The French were indeed "bled white," but not as severely as hoped, and the Germans ultimately lost their best and most irreplaceable troops.

On July 1, 1916, The British and French launched the Somme Offensive (marked 2). This offensive, which put an end to any German thoughts of continuing the Verdun Offensive, was launched against some of the heaviest German fortifications on the entire Western Front. British General Haig protested the idea, but the French Commander Joffre won the debate and the Campaign was begun. This campaign saw the first use of tanks, and was preceded by the war's greatest artillery barrage. Despite these advantages, the general slaughter of allied troops which occurred is famous, with the British suffering 65,000 casualties on the first day alone. When the October rains finally put an end to the prolonged carnage, 400,000 British, 200,000 French and 450,000 Germans had become casualties! The Allies only captured a few miles of ground (shaded dark yellow), but the Germans responded by withdrawing to their new Hindenburg Line (surrendered ground shaded light yellow) in early 1917.

The general retreat which the Germans carried out between February and April of 1917 did not prevent the Allies from renewing a series of attacks that summer. The British commander Haig thought he had the formula for achieving a breakthrough: more artillery! The ensuing attack at Arras on April 9 (marked 1), cost 84,000 casualties and achieved no breakthrough. Before this battle had ended, the new French Commander, Marshal Robert-George Nivelle, launched his own ill-advised offensive (marked 2) from Soissons to Rheims. This attack ground to a halt on its first day, and by the time the assault was called off one month later, 220,000 more casualties had been added to the already overlong list of French losses for the war.

This last failure helped to finally trigger long brewing discontent into open mutinies. This was not the first time during the war that such things had occurred. As the failure at Verdun became apparent, whole German units had also surrendered or mutinied. Nivelle was dismissed and the hero of Verdun, Marshal Petain, assumed command of the French Army. Slowly control was restored, but resentment continued to run high among combat units headed for the front lines. Some units had developed the macabre habit of "baahhing" like sheep when senior officers drove by. This, and other equally disturbing behavior continued to put commanders on notice that the tolerance for their lavish expenditure of human life was running extremely thin.

The British, who enjoyed more freedom of action after Nivelle's dismissal, opened yet another assault at Ypres with a series of great mine explosions which totally disrupted the German lines . For once, the British inflicted more casualties than they received and pushed forward (marked 3). But Haig's previous bloody commitments had made others wary of him and he was no longer given the great numbers of troops he had enjoyed previously. By the time he convinced his superiors that a breakthrough really had occurred, the Germans had patched up the lines and so yet another round of bloody fighting resumed. By the time Haig received his extra troops, the time for exploiting the breakthrough was long past, but the third battle of Ypres was launched anyway, causing one of the greatest slaughters of the war. The Germans used a new chemical called mustard gas to hold off the British, whose losses approached 400,000.

Finally, in November, a new method was used against the German lines. The British launched an attack toward Cambrai (marked 4) using hundreds of "tanks," new machines of war which held great promise. All three German lines were broken, yet even this success did not last. The conservative high command was not yet convinced of the tank's possibilities and reserves had not been allocated for the attack. Within days, German counterattacks drove the British back to their starting positions.

So 1917 ended with no change in the bloody stalemate. The Allies had spent the year bludgeoning themselves on the German defenses to no avail. The Germans spent the winter of 1917/1918 retraining their Army in what was now widely accepted (in German circles) as the best new way to conduct positional warfare. The small assault groups needed early in the war ultimately caused a complete rethinking of unit behavior. The basic battlefield unit was no longer the Company or Battalion, but the Squad. Each Squad was no longer a group of riflemen, but a combined arms formation of machine gunners, grenadiers and flamethrower troops supported by a few riflemen. This new way of thinking was not recognized by the Allies, who vaguely labeled the new methods as "infiltration tactics." The Allied failure to see the real change behind these actions was to dog them for the rest of this first great war and part of the next war, fought 20 years later.

The last great German offensive was launched on March 21, 1918, with a 6,000 gun barrage and a heavy gas attack (marked 1). At one point, the Germans advanced 14 miles in one day, more than at any other time during the fighting in the west. In the first six weeks, the Allies lost 350,000 casualties, but more troops were rushed in from across the channel, and American troops began arriving for the first time. Then the German Commander, Ludendorf, started a second offensive (marked 2) which drove south toward Paris, occupying Soissons and nearly cutting off Rheims. At their deepest point, the Germans penetrated as far as Chateau-Theirry, only 56 miles from Paris. Unfortunately, this operation suffered from the same flaw as many which had preceded it. Ludendorf had not planned on this offensive achieving any success! It had been intended as a feint in order to draw French troops away from the main offensive to the north, and so the astounding achievements were not exploited because inadequate reserves were available. Still, the Allied situation was very grim, and when the third German offensive was finally launched (marked 3), the Allies were forced to issue a "backs to the wall" order.

However, the German troops were quickly tiring from the prolonged effort, as well as giving in to increasing periods of looting. The economic blockade of Germany had cut off many vital supplies and back home, many people were literally starving. German troops were chronically undernourished, and whenever they encountered large Allied depots, much time was lost as these desperately famished troops gorged themselves. So the last German offensive, an attempted pincer operation around Rheims, was finally stopped with concentrated artillery and aircraft attacks. By late June, German strength on the Western Front fell below that of the Allies, and the final Allied assault was not long in coming.

The first attacks were, amazingly, made in July by the French west of Rheims (marked 1). This was followed by a British offensive at the Amiens Bulge (marked 2) and a general offensive toward the Hindenburg Line (marked 3). The Americans attacked the St. Mihiel Salient south of Verdun (marked 4) and also attacked through the Argonne west of Verdun as part of a general advance. The Germans were now steadily pulling back, and even though the Allies continued to suffer tremendous losses (The Americans lost 100,000 casualties just fighting through the Argonne region), they were now inspired by the continued German retreat. The fine yellow line shows the front at the time of the armistice. The only German to keep fighting after the armistice was Field Marshal Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck in East Africa, who was beginning his tiny invasion of Rhodesia. He surrendered on November 23, immediately upon hearing of the armistice.

Instead of supplying a list of losses, which are difficult to fathom, we thought it appropriate to mention the percentage of a country's population directly afflicted. During the course of World War One, eleven percent (11%) of France's entire population were killed or wounded! Eight percent (8%) of Great Britain's population were killed or wounded, and nine percent (9%) of Germany's pre-war population were killed or wounded! The United States, which did not enter the land war in strength until 1918, suffered one-third of one percent (0.37%) of its population killed or wounded.