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Apr 19, 2024 · Learn about trench warfare, a type of warfare where opposing forces fight from dug-in systems of trenches. Explore its origins, development, and examples in World War I and other conflicts.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- What is trench warfare?Trench warfare is a type of combat in which the opposing sides attack, counterattack, and defend from relatively permanent systems of trenches dug...
- How was trench warfare used in World War I?The widespread use of machine guns and rapid-firing artillery pieces on the Western Front meant that any exposed soldier was vulnerable. Protection...
- Was trench warfare effective?Trenches provided protection from bullets and shells, but they did carry their own risks. Trench foot, trench fever, dysentery, and cholera could i...
- Is trench warfare still used today?Tanks and aircraft largely negated the defensive advantages offered by trenches, but, when those technologies are absent from a battlefield, trench...
Trench warfare is a type of land warfare using occupied lines largely comprising military trenches, in which combatants are well-protected from the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery.
Learn how the armies on the Western Front dug trenches to protect themselves from artillery and machine guns, and how they launched attacks across the deadly no-man's land. See photos and artifacts of life in the trenches, and the horrific casualties of WWI.
An Allied soldier at rest in a Western Front trench. Trench warfare is perhaps the most iconic feature of World War I. By late 1916 the Western Front contained more than 1,000 kilometres of frontline and reserve trenches. Enemy attacks on trenches or advancing soldiers could come from artillery shells, mortars, grenades, underground mines ...
- WATCH: World War I: The First Modern War on HISTORY Vault.
- Trenches were common throughout the Western Front. Trench warfare in World War I was employed primarily on the Western Front, an area of northern France and Belgium that saw combat between German troops and Allied forces from France, Great Britain and, later, the United States.
- Trench warfare caused enormous numbers of casualties. At least initially in World War I, forces mounted attacks from the trenches, with bayonets fixed to their rifles, by climbing over the top edge into what was known as “no man’s land,” the area between opposing forces, usually in a single, straight line and under a barrage of gunfire.
- READ MORE: Why Was the Battle of the Somme So Deadly? German soldiers lying dead in a trench after the Battle of Cambrai, 1917. (Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Learn about the history and features of trench warfare, a type of warfare where soldiers fight from dug-in positions. Find out how it developed, when it was used, and why it declined with the advent of tanks.
Learn about trench warfare, a type of combat where armies fight from dug-in positions. Find out how trench warfare was used in WWI and WWII, and what challenges and diseases soldiers faced in the trenches.
