The Importance Of Trench Warfare

The Great War was largely determined by the technological progress that was pressed upon each country in order to subsist. The most notable advancement, displayed in the photograph above, is the infamous machine gun. It was “capable of sustained rates of extremely rapid fire; it could fire 600 bullets per minute with a range of more than 1,000 yards” (World War I, Britannica). Unlike its ancestors, the machine gun is able to stay in position after fire and doesn’t require readjustments after each shot. Another development was barbed wire, which protected the trenches from infiltrating soldiers charging across no man 's land. Machine guns, “when used in combination with trenches and barbed-wire emplacements, gave a decided advantage to the …show more content…
Trenches ensure protection from the opposite faction, while also “wearing down or destroying” the enemy (Trench Warfare, International Military and Defense Encyclopedia). The Battle of the Marne, which took place September 6-10 1914, “brought an end to the war of movement on the Western Front” and “changed the nature of the war from something that Germany’s military planners had hoped to predict and plan in detail to something unpredictable and previously unknown” (Mombauer). The significance of trench warfare is that “classic mobile warfare carried out by infantry and cavalry operating in open terrain was soon replaced by more static fighting from trenches” (Trench Warfare, International Military and Defense Encyclopedia), causing unrest between countries, need for improved warfare, and the most brutal combat conditions that had been experienced in Europe to …show more content…
This concept involves commitment from the soldiers, female engagement, technological advancements, and more. “While soldiers fought on battlefronts, all civilians were said to be fighting on a front of their own- the ‘home front’” (The Home Front: Fighting a Total War). This is vastly different from previous wars, which involved exclusively soldiers and rarely touched noncombatants. It rearranged economies and forced civilians into new jobs to help the war effort. While this drive for innovation caused technological industrialization and modernization in war (via the arms race), it also caused a decline in production and trade between European countries. WWI caused a shift in the evolution of war; “every member of society was mobilized in the single goal of defeating the enemy” (The Home Front: Fighting a Total