Maps, Background And The Course Of The Battle

The First Battle of the Marne was the first major battle of World War I. Fought in September of 1914, the battle marked the end of the German advance toward Paris and the beginning of trench warfare. The battle exhibited a number of firsts in the history of warfare, motorized movement of troops and interception of radio communications. It indicated that the war would not be a quick victory for Germany (Klein, 2014). Joseph Joffre, the French Commander in Chief, exhibited ingenuity and leadership to yield a significant victory while the Helmuth von Moltke the younger, the German chief of staff, demonstrated a failure of mission command resulting in defeat.

World War 1 is perhaps best known for being a war fought in trenches, ditches dug out of the ground to give troops protection from enemy artillery and machine-gun fire. The trenches spread from the East to the West. By the end of 1914, trenches stretched all along the 475 miles front between the Swiss border and the Channel coast.

Many of the deadliest battles in history occurred during the First World War. Such battles include Ypres, Vimy Ridge, Marne, Cambria, Somme, Verdun, and Gallipoli. The combination of machine guns and barbed wire was responsible for the largest number of casualties during the First World War.

The Battle of Fromelles was a British Military operation to stop the strong Germany 6th division from travelling south to where the British had a strong 4th division . The plan was a feint to send the British 61st division and the Australian 5th division to try weaken the German army.

“The battle [is also] known by different names. The Germans [called it] ‘Operation Watch on the Rhine’, while the French [called] it ‘Battle of the Ardennes’. [American and Britain] called it the Ardennes Counteroffensive.” The main goal for the Germans for this offensive was to split the British and American forces in half and capture the port city of Antwerp. This would “cause an encirclement of four allied armies and [force] a peace negotiation” (Cirillo). The Germans almost had complete surprise when the offensive was launched on “December 16th, 1944, at 05:30” and the offensive start with “an artillery barrage of over 1,600 artillery pieces.” The assault took place across an “80 mile front [that] the 6th Panzer Army had to cover” (Quarrie 1). “The attack was led by one of the best equipped German divisions on the western front, the 1st SS Panzer Division.” This was the lead unit for the 6th Panzer Army and was the lead division for the assault. The 26th Infantry was covering the part of the front where the push started. They were caught completely by surprise. “Equipped with only 32 M4 tanks, 57 anti-tank guns and thousands of battle-weary men” (MacDonald 1). The initial assault went well for the Germans and they break through the thinly defended American lines. Just “20 hours in [from the start of the assault] German forces are just 55 miles out from their objective”. By this time the casualty rate is below from what the

The main theatre of fighting in World War One was on the Western Front. The

The Western Front was the main location of war during World War 1. The outcome of the battles resulted in the formation of a battle front, which saw three years of warfare in 1915, 1916 and 1917, with only a few months of mobile warfare at the start and at the end of four years of fighting.

The Battle of Passchendaele, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, was a war between the Allies and Germany from July 31 1917 to November 6 1917. The Allied powers in this battle included France, Great Britain and Canada. The purpose of this battle was to get Germany’s attention off of France, to avoid a collapse of the western front in Belgium, undertaken by Britain. At the same time of helping France, this battle would gain the ridges South and East of Ypres for the allies. This battle was fought at Passchendaele, a town along the Western Front, 5 miles from Ypres. The location of this battle, chosen by Sir Douglas Haig, a British field marshall. This was a horrible location because of the fact that it was marshy and low lying, surrounded by hills with trees, which made a battlefield with poor drainage and hills where German artillery could watch the battlefield

The Battle of the Somme epitomizes the harsh realities of trench warfare for the Allies and represents the negligent battle planning and technological advancements that are associated with the stalemate of World War One. Trench warfare was common across the Western Front, with similar strategies being employed by both opposing sides. Sir Douglas Haig, one of the British coordinators for the Somme offensive is blamed with an offensive strategy destined for failure. The British offensive, an utter failure, resulted in a stalemate, which was common throughout World War One. The British development of the tank, while it eventually ended the horrendous stalemate, was ineffectively used during the Somme.

In March 1918, with nearly 50 additional divisions freed by the Russian surrender on the Eastern Front, the German Army launched a series of attacks on the Western Front, hoping to defeat the Allies before U.S. forces could be fully deployed. In the north, the British 5th Army was virtually destroyed by two major offensive operations, Michael and Georgette around the Somme. A third offensive launched in May against the French between Soissons and Reims, known as the Third Battle of the Aisne, saw the Germans reach the north bank of the Marne river at Château-Thierry, 95 kilometres (59 mi) from Paris, on 27 May. Two U.S. Army divisions, the 2nd and the 3rd, were thrown into the Allied effort to stop the Germans. On 31 May, the 3rd Division

On 22 April 1915 the second Battle of Ypres established the reputation of the Canadians’ being a fighting force. This was created through the Ypres Salient, which is where the British and allied line pushed into the German line in a concave bend. The Germans held the higher ground and were able to fire into the allied trenches from the north, the south and the east, but the Allies prearranged defense strategies: On the Canadian right was the British Expeditionary Force, and on their left was the 48th Algerian and 87th Territoral French, which were militia regiment enlisted into service a French division.3

The Second Battle of Ypres was the first time a former colonial force defeated a European power on European soil. It was the most gruesome battle fought in World War I because of the chemical warfare and Germany’s use of advanced technology. After a torturous month of fighting the German army, however, the Canadian soldiers emerged victorious.

Up to this point the Canadians were not regarded as fighting soldiers and were thus given the assignment of occupying this relatively quite sector of the front. The importance of Ypres would soon be realized when on April 22, 1915 the German line used the first poisonous gas attack in war against the Canadians and Algerians troops to gain access to the important roads that intersected in Ypres. The Algerian troops fled leaving a gap of six kilometers along the trench system. Now the German side had the ability to take control of the area. Somehow the gap was filled with the Canadians who even managed to counterattack, a strategy that came as a complete surprise to the Germans. John McCrae’s post was near a particularly dangerous section of the road. The Germans had it covered with artillery fire for seventeen days of battle. McCrae would later

Prior to the invasion of France there had been 7 months of “Phoney war”; However the French had anticipated the attack and established “The Maginot line” which was a line of defence designed to hold the German army back. Despite this the Battle of France began on the 10th May 1940 when German Army group B subdued Holland and advanced rapidly westwards through

at German lines which scattered the very land that the allies needed to storm with