No stalemate on Western Front in WWI

[acgoldis]

Hi!

I'm not sure if this is ASB, but here goes.

From what I recall about World War I, the opening stages of the war had a fluid western front with both sides racing up the content trying to outflank each other. Eventually, they hit the water with neither side able to outflank the other and set up the trenches.

Now consider the following POD: a naval battle up off the northern coasts of France won convincingly by one of the two sides. This leaves the Allied or Central navy firmly in control of a certain part of France's north coast (you can have different POD's for the two sides).

News of this takeover reaches the fleet's ally on the still-fluid Western front. He races his army up towards the supporting fleet. The enemy forces follow suit. When the two forces reach the ocean, the fleet decimates the enemy forces long enough for the friendly forces to cut off the enemy forces from the sea. The enemy is outflanked and is pushed back from the coast.

Presto: no stalemate on the western front. No trenches. Fewer horrible casualties.

Is this plausible? What would be the ramifications of this?

Thanks in advance,

ACG

 

[bm79]

It's not ASB, just impossible. The UK Home Fleet alone has enough strength to battle the HSF to a stalemate at least, if not a defeat, long before the KM has any chance of affecting the ground war. After that, British and French naval reinforcements from the Mediterranean will within a fortnight totally tip the scales in the Allies favour. Besides, naval artillery, however impressive, can't reach but 10-15 miles inland at the most, and has a much lower rate of fire than land-based guns. Even if every German battlewagon at the time were parked off the Pas-de-Calais, lobbing down 14" shells, it wouldn't significantly change the results of the Race to the Sea.

All the military innovations of the second half of the 19th century gave the advantage to the defense. The fact that the Germans manage to implant themselves as far into French territory is as much a testament to how poorly the French command grasped this as to German military prowess. Had the French realised that defense was the key and not frittered away their strategic reserves in Alsace trying to counter-attack, then we might today talk about the Battle of Charleroi as we do today of the Battle of the Marne, and the Germans might well have been stopped at the Meuse.

The Race to the Sea was the result of strategic failures on both sides, so I don't see some last-chance, stop-gap measure creating a victory for either side...