Main Battle

What were the main aims of a typical battle during World War I?

What were the main aims of a typical battle during World War I? I need to know!

It really depended on the phase of the war and the theater of operations. For simplicity, I will address only the Western Front.

For example, in the beginning phase, the Germans attempted to take Paris by means of a sweeping through Belgium, only to fail at the battle of the Marne.

This failure resulted in trench warfare from the English Channel to the Swiss border. Due to the strength of defensive weapons, such as machine guns and heavy artillery neither side could advance more than a few hundred meters at a time, and even that at the cost of huge casualties.

The Allies kept searching for the big "breakthrough" to penetrate enemy trench lines and go to mobile war. The battle of the Somme (July-Nov 1916) is an example. The Brits lost something like 60,000 men the first day for an advance of a few hundred yards.

The Germans' objective at Verdun (1916) - another huge battle - was not so much to take territory but to inflict unbearable losses on the French, the strategy of attrition. They nearly suceeded.

Generally, whatever plans the Generals may have had at the time, a battle devolved to taking tactical objectives at or immediately behind the front. A trench line, a set of hills, a crossroads village, or if really ambitious, a supply or rail head.
This was typical of the 1915-1917 period.

It wasn't until late in the war that new innovations such as early tanks (on the Allied side) at Cambrai or infantry "shock" tactics (on the German side) Second Battle of the Marne even began to loosen things up. Eventually the Allies won through American intervention and the collapse of the German war economy.

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