A new medical condition surfaced which became known as ‘shell shock’, where soldiers suffered severe psychological trauma that manifested itself in physical symptoms. Over 290 000 Australians fought on this front and over 45 000 were killed or died of their wounds on the Western Front during the war.Ī soldier of the Western Front became familiar with the dangers of being shot by machine gun or sniper or of being shelled both by high explosives and poisonous gas. The Allies could not go around this line so they had to go through it in order to liberate neutral Belgium which was already occupied by Germany.īattles developed which resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides but with little territorial gain the Germans were largely able to maintain the position of these lines until 1918. The area became known as the Western Front because it was Germany’s western front line in the war. These lines would eventually stretch from the English Channel to the border of neutral Switzerland. When the German advance on Paris was halted early in World War I the Germans simply established trench lines on occupied Belgian and French soil. This changing balance meant that, in places where an army could not go around entrenched enemy soldiers, they had to dig in opposite them and then try surging attacks to break the position. Tanks were not invented until 1916 and even then they were unreliable and subject to breakdown. Armour also could not be used to smash such a line until later in the war. The technology of flight was still in its infancy so though still dangerous, unlike in World War II, the power of aerial attack was not devastating to a static defensive line. If you dug in you could mow down any attackers with machine guns and high explosives, though this was not fully understood at the time. Share the following background information with students prior to completing learning activity:Īdvances in military technology before World War I meant that all the advantages were with a defensive force.
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