Deadlock+-+Causes+of+the+Deadlock

= **WHY WAS THERE DEADLOCK?** =  The deadlock started because there were no new strategies, so both sides decided to dig what they thought would be temporary trenches and wait until after Christmas before they resumed the war and made a breakthrough. However, neither side made a breakthrough and there was a deadlock for 3 years. At first there was just one line of trenches, but overtime they became more sophisticated and there were up to 4 lines of trenches. The leaders on both sides thought that in open country, they would have the ability to move, and they also thought that they could only defeat the enemy with heavy artillery attacks followed by large infantry attacks.  **WHY WAS THE DEADLOCK HARD TO BREAK?**  **1.** There were no new strategies used for battle so neither side ever won - The main battles that were fought during trench warfare were battles of attrition. Basically, one side would try to wear down the other with artillery bombardment, until there numbers were depleted. Then they would follow that up with infantry assault. - Also, sometimes one side wouldn’t bomb the other before hand, they would just send men over the top and they would have to dodge the bullets from the machine guns before cutting through the barbed wire to get to the other side. Then they would have to defeat the opposition in the trenches while learning how to navigate the trenches. - However, battles of attrition didn’t work because both sides had equal forces so neither side could defeat the other. This was known as the tragic equilibrium. After each attack, both sides tried to improve for the next attack by adding more men to the attack and more artillery shells to the bombardment. One of the reasons they didn’t change their tactics was because they felt that they had to make a breakthrough with attrition to justify the lives that had been lost. Another reason they didn’t change their tactics was because no alternative strategy seemed to exist. **2.** New weapons such as machine guns made both sides almost impossible to beat  - Only 1 out of 10 men got past the machine guns. **3.** Barbed wire and machine guns made it hard for either side to get to the other sides trenches

The Somme and Passchendaele were two battles launched by the British in an attempt to breakthrough the stalemate, but neither achieved a breakthrough. The Somme and Passchendaele were also launched for other reasons than to breakthrough the stalemate. In both battles there was a huge loss of life.

Even though there was no breakthrough in the trenches and men were dying every time they went over the top. Men were still signing up for the war effort because they didn’t realise how bad it was in the trenches. The government didn’t tell the public anything about what was happening on the western front because they wanted to keep the morale of the public high. Letters written from soldiers on the front line were intercepted and checked. If they told anything bad about the war, they were prevented from reaching the person they were sent to. As more and more people were killed and there was no breakthrough, the morale of the men in the trenches got lower. The soldiers lost their original enthusiasm for the war effort and by 1917 there was a growing sense of despair and lack of purpose in the French and Russian armies.