Military in Combat

In the beginning of World War I, many countries tried to use traditional methods of war to combat each other. They did not realize that this was not possible due to all the new technologies and firearms. These caused massive deaths and destruction throughout Europe, and continued until leaders realized those methods were no longer working. Machine guns cause a great deal of massive death due to their capacity to shoot many times in a short period of time without the need to necessarily move. In order to survive these combats, each side began to dig, creating trenches. This was beginning of trench warfare. Troops would dig their trenches, extending them for miles and miles. The area between the enemies was known as “no man’s-land” and was filled with barb wire and obstacle courses to get across. Troops would attempt to invade and overthrow each other’s trenches to gain an upper hand.

Trenches were often filthy and were filled with dead bodies and rats that carried diseases with them. This caused the troops to not only loose men in combat, but to also lose them to fatal diseases. At this point, it seemed like neither side was winning nor losing, they called this a stalemate, because almost equal losses of men were seen on each side. When Americans arrived with their allies, Germans spoke of having lost the war due to the fact that the new troops were fresh and eager to fight, whereas Germany had used up all it had by then. At the 11^th hour on the 11^th day of the 11^th month in 1918, the war was declared over.