Scenes of War - Crater Landscape

For years, both the Central Powers and the Allies tried to break the stalemated fronts by an ever-increasing use of artillery and the corresponding consumption of ammunition. As a result, gigantic battles of materiel shaped conditions especially on the Western Front, while on the Eastern Front certain elements of maneuver warfare persisted.

The enormous use of materiel, for example by the Germans at Verdun (from February 1916) or the British at the Somme (from June 1916), was not justified by the respective territorial results; however, the guns dominated the battlefield and the barrage turned the fronts into eerie cratered landscapes.

It took many years (and enormous losses), for example, before the German military leadership realized that this method of fighting usually cost the attacker more than the defender. After the replacement of Lieutenant General v. Falkenhayn, the Germans therefore took new paths under Field Marshal von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorf in the last major offensive (Operation Michael) from March 1918 in Flanders; however, by then it was too late given the Allies' clear material superiority.