Western Front Characteristics

Au contraire, in the West, the war was fought in France and Belgium where a feckless stalemate cost both sides heavily. Trench warfare quickly came to represent the Western front as both armies constructed elaborate trench networks, thus causing the deadlock for most of the duration of the war. The most common cause of battle casualties when in trenches was enemy artillery fire and to make matters worse; troops were not entirely safe from their artillery fire. The constant bombardment of artillery produced not only physical effects but also psychological torture. Although artillery caused a massive number of casualties throughout the war, machine guns were more deadly adversaries of man. For example, in March 1915 at Neuve Chapelle, the Second
The geography in the east was very different compared to the west and rather than a compressed front line, armies were fighting over a territory of a thousand miles. The spread of the fighting placed a much more substantial burden on military supply chains than in the west, making transportation problems an even more significant issue. Therefore, railroad movement and horses were paramount to move troops and supplies to the front as quickly as possible. Typically, massive, decisive battles were fought on the Eastern front with the fighting being much more traditional than the Western front; while remaining just as deadly, due to advance technology. Specifically, the Carpathian Winter Wars of 1915 was the most significant with more than one million men on both sides engaged in a war under the worst conditions. Three separate campaigns were launched over the Carpathian mountain range that provided the settings for the most massive confrontation in the world to date. Fortress Przemysl, was the central scene of conflict on the Austro-Hungarian front, because the Fort guarded the entrance to the most accessible route through the Carpathian Mountains into Hungary and if the Russians were to invaded Hungary; Hapsburg monarchy would fall. A major reoccurring theme of the Carpathian campaigns was that the Habsburg Command failed to consider the weather conditions of the Carpathian Mountains and the extremely well-prepared Russian held positions within their offensive strategies. For example, during the campaigns, the Habsburg Supreme Command failed to adequately consider inherent terrain limitations that restricted the movement of its armies and the logistics of supporting large troop formations. Consequently, too few of soldiers were deployed over too broad of a front during the campaign and