Page 280 - (DK) Smithsinian - Military History: The Definitive Visual Guide to the Objects of Warfare

278 KEY DEVELOPMENT

1914–1945 KEY BATTLE TRENCH WARFARE
BATTLE OF VERDUN
1916
In February 1916, the Germans
attacked the French trenches at
World War I (1914–18) was industrialized conflict on a massive scale, with
in their preliminary bombardment.
ARS Verdun, firing over a million shells factories supplying weapons and munitions for armies totaling millions.
A battle of attrition followed, in
Trench warfare, born out of this new, large-scale firepower, favored the
which more than 500,000 men
died, with little gain to either side.
defenders, especially if they were protected behind barbed wire.
ORLD W By 1915, a double line of trenches stretched guns and rapid-fire rifles. Even when enemy
front-line trenches were captured, assaults
across France and Belgium, with troops facing one
another across no-man’s-land. This new kind of field floundered as the attackers pushed farther
THE W fortification was a response to increasing artillery forward over ground that had been churned
and infantry firepower, as was the adoption of steel
up by shells. The advancing troops could no
longer communicate with their own lines by
helmets by all armies. Trenches developed into
elaborate defense systems: the Germans in particular field telephone, with the result that the defenders
constructed complexes of concrete bunkers and were often able to move reserves to a danger
concealed machine-gun nests that extended for spot quicker than the attackers could reinforce
▲ French soldiers advance across miles behind the front line (see pp.286–87). their offensive. Cavalry units, the only forces
no-man’s-land, in a 1928 film recreating capable of rapid movement, were highly
the infantry assault at Verdun.
ATTACK AND DEFENSE vulnerable to infantry and artillery fire, and
Offensives in the initial stages of trench warfare hampered by barbed wire and shell craters.
▼ PASSCHENDAELE involved a sustained preliminary artillery
Australian soldiers advance across
duckboards during the Battle of bombardment—designed to destroy enemy BREAKING THE DEADLOCK
Passchendaele, on the Western defenses by sheer quantity of high-explosive Commanders began to seek technological solutions
Front, in 1917. Artillery shells and shells—followed by a frontal infantry assault. to address or overcome the stalemate of trench
wet weather combined to create Often, however, the defenders survived the warfare. The Germans introduced poison gas,
nightmarish fighting conditions,
with movement hampered by thick bombardment, and slaughtered the attackers as which was first pumped from cylinders and later
mud and deep, water-filled craters. they tried to cross no-man’s-land, using machine- delivered by artillery shells. Used by both sides,