Western Front (World War I)

Western Front
Part of World War I
For most of World War I, Allied and German Forces were stalled in trench warfare along the Western Front. This picture shows a sentry of A Company, 11th Battalion, The Cheshire Regiment in a trench during the Battle of the Somme.
Date 1914 – 1918 Location Belgium and northeastern France Result Allied victory
Belligerents
Belgium  British Empire  United Kingdom  Australia[1]  Canada[2] British India[3]  Newfoundland[4]  New Zealand[5] South Africa[6]  France and French Overseas Empire  Portugal[7]  Russia  United States  Italy  Siam	German Empire Austria Hungary[8]
Commanders and leaders
No unified command until 1918, then Ferdinand Foch [en]	Moltke → Falkenhayn → Hindenburg and Ludendorff → Hindenburg and Groener
Casualties and losses
~4,800,000	Unknown

The Western Front was started by the German Army invading Luxembourg and Belgium at the beginning of World War I in 1914 and gaining military control of many important industrial regions in France. Its quick advance was stopped by the Battle of the Marne. Both sides then dug defensive trenches, which eventually reached from the North Sea to the Swiss border with France.

From 1915 to 1917, many offensives were started from the trenches. Both sides used large numbers of artillery and thousands of infantry in the offensives. However, a combination of entrenchments, machine gun nests, barbed wire, and artillery stopped the advances. No major breakthroughs happened.

New military technology, like poison gas, aircraft, and tanks were developed to try and get through the lines of trenches.

The deadlock was caused mostly by both sides not allowing any piece of land to give some kind of advantage to the enemy, even if there was little advantage. As the war continued, and more blood was lost on both sides, the soldiers grew tired of war and had begun to make large threats to the government.

To keep the war effort going, the governments began to say that they would kill soldiers who did not attack and that the soldiers betrayed the army if they did not fight.

1. ↑ "First World War 1914 – 1918". Australian War Memorial. Archived from the original on 2008-05-16. Retrieved 2006-12-05.
2. ↑ "Canada in the First World War and the Road to Vimy Ridge". Veteran Affairs Canada. 1992. Archived from the original on 2007-11-09. Retrieved 2006-12-05.
3. ↑ Corrigan, Gordon (1999). Sepoys in the Trenches: The Indian Corps on the Western Front 1914–15. Spellmount Ltd. ISBN 1-86227-354-5.
4. ↑ See The Royal Newfoundland Regiment
5. ↑ "New Zealand and the First World War - Overview". New Zealand's History Online. Retrieved 2007-01-26.
6. ↑ Uys, I.S. "The South Africans at Delville Wood". The South African Military History Society. Retrieved 2007-01-26.
7. ↑ Rodrigues, Hugo. "Portugal in World War I". The First World War. Archived from the original on 2007-10-17. Retrieved 2007-01-26.
8. ↑ Herwig (1997):423,442—The Austro-Hungarian 1st and 35th divisions arrived at the front in September 1918. They returned home at the end of October.