Western Front

Western Front, line of fighting in World War I extending south-east from the Belgian coast down through northern France to the Vosges Mountains. In British usage the phrase has always possessed strategic and political overtones to distinguish the nation's greatest ever military contribution to Continental land warfare from the competing claims on resources of a loosely defined “Eastern Front” involving the Dardanelles (1915), Salonica (1915-1918), Palestine and Mesopotamia (1914-1918), and even Italy (1917-1918).

Between its outbreak in August and mid-November 1914 the war in the west remained fluid. The huge German offensive mounted between central Belgium and Verdun turned south before reaching Paris and was stopped early in September on the River Marne. Meanwhile, the French had launched large-scale and extremely costly offensives into Lorraine in the region of Nancy. Between September 13 and 28 the French counter-attacked vigorously across the River Aisne, but by the end of the month both sides were exhausted and a stalemate developed. As the rival armies manoeuvred to find an open flank, a “race to the sea” took place which resulted in the first battle of Ypres (mid-October to mid-November) in which the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) commanded by Sir John French fought heriocally to prevent a German breakthrough along the Channel coast, but in doing so suffered virtual annihilation (some 60,000 casualties). Both sides reached the sea at Nieuport and, in appalling weather, strengthened their defences for the winter.

Thus by the end of the year continuous trench lines had been established over some 400 miles between the Channel coast and the border of neutral Switzerland near Belfort. The area between the opposing lines (“No Man's Land”) varied considerably from a few yards to half a mile or more, and the defences themselves became ever deeper and more formidable as the war dragged on. By 1916 it is more appropriate to refer to defence zones consisting of three or more trench systems, reinforced by bastions or redoubts, and fortress towns like Verdun. Initially the Belgians held the line from the sea to Ypres, the British from that city to La Bassée, and the French the remaining nine-tenths of the line, but this French preponderance steadily declined. The line ran roughly north-south from the coast to Compiègne on the Oise and then almost due east to Verdun (France) before snaking away south-east to the Swiss border. The Germans had, in effect, driven a huge wedge into northern France with its head between Albert and Soissons. The existence of this German salient into the Allied-held territory largely determined the strategy of both sides, the former being in striking distance of such potentially decisive objectives as the remaining channel ports, Amiens, and, above all, Paris. For her part, France made costly efforts to expel the enemy from her territory, exhausting herself in the process.

Conflict did not rage along all sectors of the Western Front for the whole war; some areas, particularly in the mountainous south abutting on Switzerland remained “all quiet” for most of the time while others, including the Somme, in 1915 and 1917, had long peaceful interludes. The core of the British sector around Ypres and the industrial area to the south including Neuve-Chapelle, La Bassée, and Lens was unusual in witnessing almost incessant fighting, thus earning its doleful place of eminence in the history of folk memory of the Western Front.

Between the end of 1914 and the spring of 1918 the Western Front remained largely static. France, Britain, and their allies did most of the attacking in these years, since the Germans were concentrating on knocking out Russia, but none of their offensives, such as that on the Somme in 1916, advanced their lines by more than about six miles. The exceptional German Western Front offensive in that year at Verdun was not intended to gain ground but rather to force the French to “bleed themselves white” in defending the fortified zone which possessed symbolic as well as strategic significance.

The last desperate German offensive in the West in March 1918 completely ruptured the Allied lines between Albert and Noyon, achieving a maximum penetration of about 30 miles before being checked a few miles west of the crucial communications centre of Amiens. In May, in what proved to be their final offensive in the West, the German Army once again crossed the Aisne from the Chemin des Dames and reached the Marne at Château-Thierry.

Thereafter the tide slowly turned in the Allies' favour and from the victorious battle east of Amiens on August 8 their armies, given new drive by the expanding Imperial and American contingents, advanced steadily, averaging about one mile per day, until they had liberated most of the French and Belgian territory lost in 1914. When the armistice on November 11 effectively ended hostilities, the great salient had been flattened out to a line running from Ghent, through Mons and Sedan, to the Moselle above Metz. Thus the war ended in anticlimax before the Allies could fight their way into Germany, a fact which would later contribute to the myth that Germany had not been defeated, and to endless controversy among the Allies about the contribution of the Western Front to the victorious outcome of the war.