Western Front (World War I)

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The Western Front was one of the main theatres of war during World War I. Following the outbreak of war in August 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The German advance was halted with the Battle of the Marne. Following the Race to the Sea, both sides dug in along a meandering line of fortified trenches, stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier with France, the position of which changed little except during early 1917 and again in 1918. Between 1915 and 1917 there were several offensives along this front. The attacks employed massive artillery bombardments and massed infantry advances. Entrenchments, machine gun emplacements, barbed wire, and artillery repeatedly inflicted severe casualties during attacks and counter-attacks and no significant advances were made. Among the most costly of these offensives were the Battle of Verdun, in 1916, with a combined 700...

Read on Wikipedia · Image At_close_grips2.jpg: H.D. Gridwood The Battle of the Somme film image2.jpg: Geoffrey Malins Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-R05148, Westfront, deutscher Soldat.jpg: Unknown authorUnknown author File:American t…, CC BY-SA 3.0