WWI characteristics made this global armed conflict unique and completely different from previous wars. Yes, World War I saw new and innovative tactical and fighting strategies, with the dynamic and mobility of the 18th and 19th-century armed struggles being lost. Thus, there was a stagnation of military maneuvers, with any attempt to gain territory being futile and at great loss.
In the First World War, there was an absence of the cavalry as a fighting force as the Infantry became the most important branch of armies. Infantry troops were crowded and cramped in deep trenches, which they dug to protect themselves from the murderous artillery and machine gun fire. Between the opposing forces, there was a strip of no-man's land, which bristled with barbed wire, spikes and other obstacles. The troops' living conditions were unhealthy, with the infantry soldier having to deal with rats and body lice infestation. They also suffer from trench foot (infection by fungi) and gangrene.
How the dynamics of military offensives ground to a halt.
The initial Imperial German Army westward offensive, established in the Schlieffen Plan, had been stopped in northern France by the Allied armies at the First Battle of the Marne and, from then on, World War I became a stationary yet savage armed conflict. But what made it static and why there was no cavalry? The new weapons, which were the byproducts of the Second Industrial Revolution and were designed to stop the massive cavalry charge.
The machine gun, which was massively and widely used, and modern, breech-loading howitzers fitted with hydro-pneumatic recoil systems that gave them accuracy, wiped out the cavalry from the battlefield and forced the infantry to dig deep trenches to protect themselves from artillery barrage and lethal machine gun fire. On the Western Front, this network of trenches ran in long winding lines for about 420 miles, from northeastern France to Belgium, ending up on the North Sea coast. They were reinforced with pillboxes and fortifications, in which machine guns and field artillery pieces were emplaced. Heavy howitzers were fired from save positions behind the lines. The field lying between the opposing lines of trenches was called no-man's land, which was strewn with barbed wire, posts, and even spikes.
To add to the viciousness of the Great War, both the French and German forces used chemical weapons in the form of mustard gas hurled over across the battlefield in artillery shells, while the infantry used the flamethrower for the first time in military history. This gas was very corrosive to the skin, damaging the respiratory mucous membranes and the cornea. Anxious to break the stalemate and gain enemy-held territory, generals launched massive infantry attacks on the enemy positions. As they ran across no-man's land, heading towards the enemy trenches to take them, thousands of infantrymen were mowed down by machine guns that raked across the field only to gain several hundred yards or a couple of miles, or to be thrown back with heavy losses. Bomber aircraft were small and flimsy flying machines unable to carry enough bombload to destroy fortifications and heavy artillery positions hidden in the forest.
If modern machine guns and howitzers forced the advancing armies into the stalemate of trench warfare, another new weapon was needed to overcome the barbed wire and enemy trenches and protect soldiers from the withering machine gun fire; the tank. The first WWI tanks were lumbering and faulty, but, by mid 1918, English and French tanks had been improved and became effective war machines, with which the Allied armies overcame the German trenches, punching holes in their lines as they went.
Other features that characterized WW1 are nationalism and the geopolitical rivalry between United Kingdom and the German Empire.
Below, a Canadian unit getting ready to get up out of their trench for another short-lived assault on the enemy positions. Machine guns and modern artillery turned this conflict into a static war
German troops in a trench of the Somme, taking a break in the combat
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