AHC/WI: WWI without trench warfare?

How will WWI turn out if the belligerents manage to adapt to the changing nature of war fast enough so that they can avoid trench warfare on a large scale?

Or is it somehow inevitable?
 
Trench warfare is inevitable after the firepower revolution in the late 1800s I'm afraid. It occurred many times before WW1 such as the Boer War and Russo Japanese War and has been constant ever since. Digging trenches or pits is a highly effective way of protecting troops from modern weapons.
 
Trench warfare is inevitable after the firepower revolution in the late 1800s I'm afraid. It occurred many times before WW1 such as the Boer War and Russo Japanese War and has been constant ever since.
Heck just look at the battles of the last couple of years of the American Civil War, especially the siege of Petersburg. And that was done without rapid fire machine guns, bolt-action rifles, and breech-loading artillery.
 
The trick is not to prevent trench warfare (that genie is already out of the bottle, as mentioned above) but to move beyond it before WWI begins. So, you'll have to restore some power to the offensive-and that means develop and widely deploy tanks, and adopt suitable (blitz) tactics. How you come up with that kind of revolution before WWI, I don't know. At the very least, you'll have to push the start back a few years to give time for all major belligerents to get on board. The only way I can see that happening is a Balkan war (or two or three) that points clearly to the bloody stalemate that was OTL's Western Front and gives early armor and its tactics time to develop.
 
Trench warfare was a peculiarity of the Western Front (and the Italian Front, but in a very special way). The Eastern Front knew trenches and field positions, but hardly any trench warfare. (And the Ottoman fronts also saw more movement than trench warfare, except where the British and French became involved, at Gelibolu and Gazze.)

So, to say that trench warfare characterises the First World War certainly is an exaggeration. It dominates French and British memory, but that is hardly the case in German, Austrian, Turkish, Russian, US, Romanian, and Serb lore. Even the Italians will remember a lot of movement...
 
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And even on the Western front, the thing did not start with trenches from the get go. During the first month or so, both sides wanted a maneuvered war, quick conquests, daring advances, and spent tens of thousands of young men in order to get that all.

So, while for a long-term non-trench-warfare war you do need stuff like lots of tanks, anti-barbed-wire devices, engineering vehicles (anti-trench, you see), air support and whatnot, you can also get by if you somehow manage to make the war end in the first one-three months. And preferably the first one.

A big POD, obviously. It also means that this freakish one-off experience will condition further developments of military art, and the shock of the trenches is only postponed to the next war - unless by then, you do get all the tech mentioned above.


Edit: I think it's worth adding that the possibility I mentioned in the last line, above, is pretty unlikely. If you had a 6-week war in 1914 with, presumably, the Germans overrunning in maneuvered battle the French, to then finish off the Russians... well, civilian trucks and postal aircraft get developed anyway. But tanks, Bangalore torpedoes, automatic weapons so light that you could fire them on the move, bombers, gases etc. were a solution to a problem, trench warfare, that has not happened. So they might exist as prototypes, but anything more is rather unlikely.
 
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The only real way to avoid trench warfare is to have one side win before the other can mobilise too many men, once you have millions on either side, with that sized front and the tech available in the 'teens, trench warfare is kind of inevitable.
 
Perhaps another alternative is the idea of breakthrough not being so pervasive amongst Allied Generals from the very start. If the trenches were thought of like a siege and operations were laid on to make the siege more effective then we would have seen a fair bit more movement in the trenches. Far less men would have been killed and far less materiel wasted trying to achieve a breakthrough after an initial success in breaking into the enemy trench lines. These resources could then be used elsewhere to break into a trench line and gain local success.
 
And even on the Western front, the thing did not start with trenches from the get go. During the first month or so, both sides wanted a maneuvered war, quick conquests, daring advances, and spent tens of thousands of young men in order to get that all.

So, while for a long-term non-trench-warfare war you do need stuff like lots of tanks, anti-barbed-wire devices, engineering vehicles (anti-trench, you see), air support and whatnot, you can also get by if you somehow manage to make the war end in the first one-three months. And preferably the first one.
The board has done threads before on how Germany could have made better decisions leading up to what OTL became the Battle of the Marne, that arguably could have led to the fall of Paris, and possibly even to French surrender before trench warfare really gets a chance to settle in. YMMV on how well this works.
 

TinyTartar

Banned
Trench warfare is inevitable at this time period; the only way to make it go away is to simply innovate the weapons that ended up breaking it later on a lot earlier, with Armored Divisions and both tactical and strategic bombing, as well as widespread motorization.

I just don't see trenches being avoided. The only way that it is possible is simply a massively decisive victory for one side that negates the need for trenches because they have already ended the war.

Now, say WW1 is fought on non-European battlefields, like say, Britain and Germany end up going to war with France neutral and the Ottomans on the German Side. You will see more fighting in Africa and more naval warfare, as well as more fighting in the Middle East. In this scenario, unit action was often more fluid and less static.
 
How will WWI turn out if the belligerents manage to adapt to the changing nature of war fast enough so that they can avoid trench warfare on a large scale?

Or is it somehow inevitable?

Only if big armored tanks are available before the start of WW1. That might lead to a more mobile WW1, as trenches could be overrun.
 
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