The Trenches

World War One was not a war of movement.  Machine guns and barbed wire stopped even the most herculien effort to attack the enemy.  Charging machine guns was suicidal in the best circumstances, and as countless battles proved, completely ineffective.  Troops could no longer stand and fight on open ground.

With no way to move forward without being shredded by the enemy, and obviously unwilling to retreat, troops began to dig foxholes. These were lengthened and deepened, and eventually developed into a ditch that numerous men could lay in.  As the war dragged on, eventually they became so deep and permanent that they were called trenches, and soldiers spent almost all there time in one.

So how was this war going to be fought?  If soldiers spent all there time in a trench, how did they fight?  The answer lies in the 100 or so yards between trenches.  This area was known as No-Mans land, because no man could survive there.  It was pitted with craters from high-explosives, and laced with barbed wire. 

(This Photograph shows a fairly normal system of trenches.  The trenches in the top left are British, and the trenches to the right are German.  The space in-between is No-Mans Land.)

Soldiers were ordered "over the top" into No-Mans land to attempt to take over enemy trenches.  Going over the top meant that you were directly exposed to the other trench, and it's here that the terrible power of modern technology made itself felt.  

Machine guns, Poison gas, and barbed wire were all lethal weapons.  These weapons had never been used in war before, and their effects were unknown.  So to the Generals sitting many miles away from the front, who had been trained in methods that were written before these weapons existed, it seemed only logical to order frontal assaults on trenches. 

What were they trying to accomplish?  The Germans were trying to keep control of the large parts of France they had taken.  The British and French were trying to re-take their land.  For these reasons, the German trenches were built to be more permanent, and geared towards defense.  The Allied trenches tended to be simply dug out of the mud, and were not intended to be permanent.  

(A German trench on the Eastern Front.  Notice how much more coordination and planning went into it's construction, compared to the Allied trench above.)

So, to recap!  The Trenches were a product of the massive firepower of the machine gun.  No amount of soldiers could survive charging machine guns, so digging in was the only option for survival.  Because no side had developed any sort of ability to break through these defenses, the war stagnated.