What happened at the end of trenches?

[Marscaleb]

Hello all, I have some questions that have been on my mind about how trench warfare worked, and I haven't been able to find satisfactory answers.  I'm hoping someone here could shed some light on these matters.

But just for today, I want to ask about what happened at the end of trench lines.  I mean, eventually you reach the edge of the trenches, and it otherwise would be most practical to just, well, go around the enemy trench and hit them from the flank.

Now, I know that the trenches went for hundreds of miles, basically across the whole breadth of France, but even so they have to stop SOMEWHERE.  What happens when the trenches reach all the way to the ocean?  What's keeping soldiers from just mounting an assault at low tide and going around like that?  You can't cut a trench into the water; Moses didn't fight in this war.

And what happened at the southern end, when they got to the borders of Switzerland?  How could you be firing artillery right next to another nation?  I mean, at some point you risk shelling someone you don't want declaring war, or you risk leaving an open spot to be attacked.

Or how could you have trench lines cut into the mountains?  Just where exactly did the trenches stop?

[Dai Bach y Sowldiwr]

Google images for "Great War trenches Swiss Border" .

You'll see exactly that.

[Keith_history_buff]

Hope this is of interest

https://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/battles/battles-of-the-western-front-in-france-and-flanders/operation-hush-including-the-battle-of-the-dunes/

[WhiteStarLine]

@Marscaleb welcome to the forum and what an interesting question you have posed.  There's a website from a former British officer turned mountain guide, giving an answer to what it was like fighting in the Alps.  She writes of the difficulty of mounting offensives and quotes a storm where an estimated 9,000 to 10,000 soldiers perished in avalanches across the Italian front.  So no chance of outflanking the enemy, just a battle for personal survival.

Great War barbed war is still visible in this photo.

Quote

The rocky ridge where the refuge is sited was taken by the Italians on 12 April 1916, but the second phase of their offensive on 29 April 1916 which aimed to take well-equipped Austrian lines on the Eastern edge of the glacier encountered fierce resistance. Italian troops in their khaki uniforms attacking on skis across the immaculate whiteness of the glacier were clear targets in their khaki uniforms and the result was carnage.

[Matlock1418]

12 hours ago, Marscaleb said:

What's keeping soldiers from just mounting an assault at low tide and going around like that? 

I've no specialist knowledge of this aspect of the GW ... but a little bit more generally about coastal geormorphology and tides.

On the matter of the beaches at the North Sea end of the Western Front [anywhere similar really - then and now]:

Defensive trenches approaching the coast could be geographically re-orientated to also be dug parallel to the coast - so increasing the depth of attack before a flank was actually 'turned' '/ forces 'out-flanked'. [I think defences were so prepared by both sides and on the Belgian side all the way to the Dutch border - And remember that in Belgium there was also extensive defensive flooding of low-lying land behind the dunes]

Barbed wire and other defensive structures could be placed across the non-tidal beach and into/across the intertidal zones - and remain there throughout tides so as to impede an assault [I think they were].

You only had a few hours to attack in before the tide turned and there was no intertidal zone left [approx. 12 hours from high-water through low-water back to high-water] - so only a short time widow for both parties to concentrate your attacking [harder] and defensive [easier] efforts upon.

You only had the narrow width, possibly only a few hundred metres or less, of non-tidal beach and the intertidal zone for your assault [width varying between spring tides (greater tidal range and thus wider intertidal zone) and neap tides (lesser tidal range and thus narrower intertidal zone)] - so passive and active defensive measures can be very concentrated. [As opposed to the long miles of lateral width/length of the Normandy beaches of WW2's D-Day assault]

There is practically no topographical cover for attacking forces - barely no holes to conceal an attack or to take cover in on a sand beach or a mud flat [which might alternatively bring its own problems of soft mud and deep waterfilled creeks]. And digging approach and assault trenches in a soft intertidal zone would be a pretty futile exercise [in the way digging defensive trenches there would also be]

Defensive machineguns, mortars, artillery & ships [in direct and indirect fire modes] and aircraft would extremely likely consequentially have caused a very heavy toll on attacking forces [unless there was really intensive preparatory and on-going suppressive/counter-battery fire etc.].

I believe simply attacking at the coast along the beach and around the flank of the trenches would not have been considered/practically as easy as one might perhaps first think.

The Battle of the Dunes has been mentioned above and although a cross-beach amphibious attack might have been preferable it would have taken huge resources to do so effectively and drawn away resources from the real threat of a Western Front breakthough inland [again narrow fronts are problematic - think Zeebrugge, 1918 (although admittedly a slightly different mission) and dare I mention Dieppe in 1942 (but enough said about that period)]

M

Edit: I do not think it would have been to the Allied advantage [due to resource issues - even if not siding with the Germans, the Dutch would have rather likely objected/resisted!] nor to German advantage to have gone into/through the Netherlands militarily.  In fact for the Germans it would have likely been counter-productive since I believe the Dutch benignly allowed a lot of German river/coastal shipping down the Rhine, complete with construction materials sush as sand, gravel, cement, timber, steel etc [which was used for building concreted defences - thus leaving German railways for more directly military purposes inland] - Now that is a subject to discuss elsewhere!

Edited 11 February by Matlock1418
edit

[Matlock1418]

Again not my specialist subject ...

As for the southern end of the WF - Switzerland.  The Swiss would have objected/resisted too, against both main combatant sides.

The phyical and climatic problems associated with fighting in the Alps have already been mentioned above and I suspect the French trenches didn't just simply stop at the Swiss border [but also ran alongside it for quite a distance - just in case it was possible to make an out-flanking attack]

Such mountainous terrain really does favour the defender [and I think the Swiss would have been an impediment and defended their country] - both for building defensive positions and using defensive tactics [especially after the advent of projectile weapons - particularly if involving propellants and explosives - Think the British on the NW Frontier of India in the 19th C, the Russians in Afghanistan in the 20th C and the US in Afghanistan in the 21st C (enough said!)]. 

And of course, returning to the GW, the Alpine war on the Austo-Hungarian/Italian Alpine border was largely an exercise in much similar stagnantion and futility with considerable hardship and loss on both sides [that really didn't meet any really positive strategic result at the time - for either side during the war].

Switzerland was best kept out of by both the Allies and Germans.

M

Edited 11 February by Matlock1418
typo

[Dai Bach y Sowldiwr]

 A very intersting series of photographs on this blog:

https://thebignote.com/2022/08/05/kilometre-zero-where-the-western-front-began/

[Matlock1418]

10 minutes ago, Dai Bach y Sowldiwr said:

A very intersting series of photographs on this blog:

https://thebignote.com/2022/08/05/kilometre-zero-where-the-western-front-began/

"Kilometre Zero" [It all depends on where you start as zero] = Very interesting for the Swiss end/side

[The lashed timber look-out posts really reminded me of my scouting days - especially this one, image taken from that website:

]

M

Edited 12 February by Matlock1418
typo

[Marscaleb]

On 12/02/2024 at 10:58, Dai Bach y Sowldiwr said:

 A very intersting series of photographs on this blog:

https://thebignote.com/2022/08/05/kilometre-zero-where-the-western-front-began/

This is hands down the best article I've read in at least two years.  Thank you so much for sharing this!  It answers a LOT of my questions, although, it does prompt a few more.

I love these photos of guards shaking hands across the border.  It really has me wondering about the particulars of the mentality and interaction these soldiers had.  The article mentions that belligerent troops were interred if they crossed the border, but I kind-of get the feeling that this wasn't a strict thing, if they are all posing for photos and whatnot.

In my mind's eye I can image merchants in border towns trying to sell goods to soldiers across the borders, or a little further back from the front, I could imagine some of the troops in the reserve trying to make an excursion to spend some time in a swiss bar.  Officially, they would be "interred" but unofficially I'd imagine them opening their doors to those who open their wallets.  Just "inter" them at the pub for a couple hours before deciding to release them back into their country.  But again, I'm only imagining this, and I don't know what really happened.  That said, I really want to see German and French troops drinking together in a bar in Bonfol.

Of course on the same notion, I could also imagine that being an easy avenue for soldiers to go AWOL.  With soldiers making desperate attempts to get themselves injured just to escape that nightmare, I can't imagine soldiers crossing the border to visit a pub without having some try to escape into Switzerland permanently.  Or perhaps someone starting a brawl just to get thrown in jail, hoping to escape that way.  Though again, this is all just my imagination.

 

Another thing that I was very curious about is what happens with artillery in the area.  It's easy enough to imagine trenches with machine guns getting close to the border without hitting swiss guards, but WW1 was a war of artillery more than anything else.  I see in the article that they had a few shells land on the Swiss side, and logically I can imagine their attitude being a bit "forgiving" (in the sense that they don't openly declare war) but I still wonder if the warfare in that region was generally subdued compared to elsewhere.

Did the people in charge deliberately reduce the artillery activity in that area to reduce the risk of hitting the Swiss?  What about other battle tactics?  Air warfare?  Overall, they face a risk-versus-reward scenario, where they don't want to engage the Swiss, but avoiding that engagement makes for lighter forces there, and lighter forces there means its easier to break through with your forces.  So they should WANT to present a strong arm in the region, if nothing else to keep the enemy from trying to take advantage of your weakness.  So overall, how do they balance that?  How do they make that spot defended well enough without risking Swiss aggression?

 

Also, seeing that there was just this 300 yard stretch of Swiss land blocking an attack on the flank just really bugs me.  I just keep wanting to think "Isn't SOMEONE going to just say 'to hell with it' and run a division through there to outflank the enemy?"  With all the forces they constantly lost in this horrendous battle of attrition, what is *really* going to stop someone from deciding that it would be more economical to P.O. the Swiss than to waste another 20,000 men in Verdun?

Granted, I know the reason why not.  Even if it would be easy to overrun the Swiss in the duckbill, they would still be a formidable force anywhere else, and such an invasion would invite the Swiss to side with your enemy, which if it happened would give them reason to freely allow enemy troops through Switzerland (which would be SUPER bad for France, and still pretty bad for Germany.)  And all of this out-flanking would only gain them a tiny window to try to run all your forces through.  And sure, in this era you could sneakily move a lot of troops into position without the enemy knowing about it, but not enough to be able to truly overrun the enemy before they can manage to counter.  So it would secure a new enemy while still being stuck in the same stalemate as before.

So I get it; it wasn't going to happen.  But it looks so possible and so close, that I know it would make all the commanders drooling at the thought of it.

At the very least, why didn't the Germans place a bunch of artillery on the south side, shoot across Switzerland, and obliterate the French line that way?