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Author: kjnoren

Dec 20th 2013 at 9:08:24 AM

^^ Thing is, it's not only military tactics and military technology that matters here. There's a whole slew of societal, organisational, and logistical factors that play a part.

The generals knew at the start of WorldWarOne knew that casualties would be high, but their experience from the Franco-Prussion war (1870-71) and the recent reports from the Russo-Japanese war (1904-05) both had shown the success of tactical offensives against fortified or entrenched enemies. But the factors that had driven the large casualties of those earlier wars had increased even further.

That said, both the French and the Germans had ideas on how to fight in this environment (eg, the French had a borderline practical light machinegun ready, which could enter mass production in 1915). What they failed to factor in was the sheer scale of the war, that France, Britain, Germany, and the other nations on the western front would manage to build a continuous front line from the English channel to Switzerland.

On the eastern front, distances were larger and troop densities not as high, so there the pre-war theories and ideas worked better. But it wasn't the weapons in and of itself that led to the trench war, but the sheer strength of the socities and their industries in building these immense armies.