The Great War: Stalemate on the Western Front

The First World War, known in its own time as the Great War, destroyed the first global order that the world had known, one based on a balance of power among the European great powers, the gold standard, free trade, and imperialism imposed upon Africans and Asians. The key to the war was the stalemate on the so-called Western Front in northern France. There, millions of British and French soldiers could not dislodge their German opponents, so long as they remained dug into trenches and backed by artillery. The defensive side had the advantage because the killing capacity of weapons had increased enormously while mobility and communications on the battlefield had not. The Western Front determined the outcome of the War. As industrialized economies, the leading Allies, Britain and France, and Germany, the leader of the Central Powers, were the only countries who could fight a modern, industrialized war. The stalemate made the Great War into a total war, with governments exercising immense new powers over their societies, and a global war, where Europe alone did not determine the outcome.