“New Tech made Very Little difference when it came to breaking the stalemate on the western front of WW1.” Do you agree
“New Technology made Little difference when it came to break the stalemate on the western front.” I agree with this statement as I believe that even though there is a substantial amount of evidence of why new technology did break the stalemate, there is, in my opinion, a lot more evidence for why new technology did not break the stalemate.
My first piece of evidence for why the New technology made little difference is the maxim gun, the maxim gun was a weapon designed by Hiram Stevens Maxim in 1884. The French said that it was a disappointing weapon in the Franco Prussian as it let them vulnerable to German artillery. There were many problems with the maxim gun firstly it being quite heavy, bulky and awkward, then it also needed 4 to 6 soldiers to operate it at one time, finally it was water cooled which means that you needed a constant supply of water into the system of the maxim gun. Overall the maxim gun was quite disappointing for what was speculated about it as it was quite hard to operate. Compared to other weapons that were invented during the war the transportation time was also very slow as it was heavy and was also multiple parts that you had to assemble which would be quite difficult during a military war. All in all, the maxim gun was very good in stopping enemies from crossing over no man’s land, it was very difficult to manage as a weapon which means that its maxim gun did indeed make little difference in WW1.
My second piece of evidence is Aviation such as: planes and zeppelins. WW1 was the first time that planes and zeppelins were used. They were used for artillery spotting and for bombings over the Eastern front and over Britain. The plane was invented by the Wright brothers in 1903, just 11 years before the start of the war. Soon mounted machine guns were added to them as pilots were finding so called “dogfights” quite difficult as they had only one way of shooting the enemy plane before that (shooting a pistol outside the planes window in the sky). Though like many things there were some flaws about the plane, firstly the fact that it took approximately 4,000 hours to construct, which is quite hard to do during a world war with over 50,000 different parts which all costed about $7,000 to build. Another flaw with the plane in WW1 is the fact that when the cloud drop, or the planes go higher, clouds get in the way and what quite regularly happened was that the planes would by accident bomb their side mistaking them for the opposition. During the war overall amount of deaths due to a plane or in a plane amounted to 116,286. Overall the plane did indeed make little difference in breaking the stalemate of WW1.
Some people many disagree with this as they thought that there where weapons that did make a difference in the war, for example gas. Tear and mustard gas were both first used in 1917 and it was used on both fronts. The way that this type of gas was spread was by using shells, these shells were thrown by soldiers and killed 30,000 people injuring 500,000 during the war. Mustard gas was the most used chemical weapon in ww1. It was an odourless gas and it took 12 hours to affect a person. Once in the soil mustard gas remains active for several weeks. Symptoms of mustard gas include blistering, sore eyes and vomiting. It also caused internal bleeding and attacked the bronchial tubes and it stripped of mucus membranes which was painful for soldiers. Tear gas was first used by the French army. Tear gas contains a chemical agent called chlorobenzyl malononitrile, which causes burning sensations in the eyes if you come in contact with it. Overall, gas was a pretty efficient weapon during trench warfare and can easily give someone the jump on their opponent after a heavy shelling of tear gas or mustard gas. All in all, I believe that Gas did make a huge difference in breaking the stalemate.
My final point of evidence for why some people will disagree with my opinion is artillery. Artillery is a class of heavy military ranged weapons. Early modern-day artillery weapons were initially made just to breach defensive walls of the opponent during sieges. As time progressed the artillery got lighter and more fit for battlefield usage with more mobile artillery cannons. By the early 20th century, artillery weapons became more powerful and were moved further back and off the front line. Cannons were arguably one of the most effective weapons in WW1 as it inflicted 75% of the casualties. An example of one of the cannons that was used during WW1 is the “Howitzer”, this was the longest-ranged gun ever fired, it could hit targets from as far away as 112 km. another example of artillery is the Mortar. The mortar was designed by Sir Wilfred Stokes. In WW1 it could fire as many as 25 bombs per minute and a maximum firing range if 800 yards firing the original cylindrical un-stabilized projectile. All in all, artillery was very effective in both destroying enemy trenches and killing enemy soldiers and which goes to show that artillery did make a huge difference in breaking the stalemate.
In conclusion, although the weapons used in WW1 that did make a difference to the war, like artillery and Gas, were very good and did make a huge difference to how the war shaped out and breaking the stalemate, though the barrage of unsuccessful and failed weapons disadvantages, like planes and the maxim gun, had outweighed the couple of useful weapons advantages by a huge margin and overall concluding that new technology did make little difference in breaking the stalemate of WW1.
