Western Front - World War I

World War I

Main article Western Front (World War I)

From the end of the First Battle of Ypres, at the end of the Race to the Sea, until late 1918, the Western Front consisted of a relatively static line of trench systems which stretched from the coast of the North Sea southwards to the Swiss border. In their efforts to break through the opposing lines of trenches and barbed wire entanglements, the opposing forces employed huge artillery bombardments followed by attacks of tens of thousands of soldiers. Battles typically lasted for months and lead to casualties measured in the hundreds of thousands for attacker and defender alike, such as the Battle of the Somme, where 20,000 men died on the first day. Battles on this front were also typified by poor planning and the application of 19th century warfare tactics, such as direct frontal assaults on enemy positions, that were doomed to failure in the face of modern technology. The general result of these huge expenditures of effort was only a small shift, measured in a few kilometres, in a short section of the front.

The principal adversaries on the Western Front, who fielded armies of millions of men, were Germany to the east against France and the United Kingdom to the west, with sizable contingents from the Allied empires, especially the British Dominions. The United States entered the war on the side of the Entente Powers in 1917 and by mid-1918 had an army of around half a million men, this rising to a million by the time the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.

The Alpine Front between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was a member of the Central Powers, is usually considered to be a separate front.