Why was there stalemate on the Western Front?

Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 · Paper 1 Section B, Depth Study A Syllabus: 2027 and 2028 Depth study A: The First World War, 1914 to 1918 Key Question 1 of four

This is the first of the four Key Questions in Depth Study A, and it asks a single thing: why did a war that everybody expected to be short and mobile turn into a line of trenches that barely moved for four years. It starts with the German army already marching and it ends with the two great attritional battles of 1916. Everything in this file is about the Western Front and about why the deadlock formed and then held.

If you came here for why the war broke out, you are one page away. The July Crisis, the alliance system, the arms race and the assassination of Franz Ferdinand are Core Content Option A Key Question 6, and they live in the What caused the First World War? notes. That is a different section of the paper as well as a different topic, and section 2 below says exactly where each neighbouring subject lives.

The whole file is built around Cambridge's five focus points, because each of them is a ready made 10 mark essay title and because the mark schemes set them in very unequal proportions. Section 3 shows which.

1. What the syllabus actually asks

This is the wording printed in the Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 syllabus for 2027 and 2028. Learn the Key Question itself. Examiners build the 10 mark part directly out of it, series after series.

Key Question 1

Why was there stalemate on the Western Front?

Focus points

• Why did the Schlieffen Plan fail?
• Why did a defensive war emerge by the end of 1914?
• What was living and fighting in the trenches like?
• How important were new methods of warfare?
• What was the significance of the Battles of Verdun and the Somme?

Specified content

Cambridge prints one specified content list for the whole of Depth study A rather than one per Key Question, so most of that list belongs to your three siblings. These are the items that belong here, exactly as the syllabus prints them:

• The Schlieffen Plan and how it worked in practice:
• the German advance through Belgium and the impact of the British Expeditionary Force
• the effect on the western front of Russian mobilisation
• The battles of Mons and the Marne, the race to the sea and the First Battle of Ypres:
• the reaction to the stalemate: trenches and the development of a war of attrition
• The nature and problems of trench warfare
• The use and impact of developments such as tanks, machine guns, aircraft and gas
• The impact of the battles of Verdun and the Somme:
• the leadership and tactics of Haig at the Battle of the Somme

Cambridge writes the date ranges and the compound titles with dashes. The wording is otherwise exactly as above, and nothing has been added to it or left out. Note the lower case "western front" in the second sub-item: that is Cambridge's own typography, not a slip here.

Read the focus points as arguments, not as a list

Cambridge defines its own three layers, and it prints the definitions:

Key questions define the over-arching issues.

Focus points identify the issues that enable candidates to gain an understanding of the key question.

Specified content provides guidance on what needs to be studied for each key question.

So the five focus points are not five chunks of content to memorise in turn. They are five arguments, each of which has two sides, and every single one of them has been set as a real question in the corpus.

Notice how many of these Cambridge phrases openly. "How important" and "what was the significance" are invitations to argue that the answer is "less important than you think", and the mark schemes credit that argument as readily as the other one. An answer that only knows one side of any of these five is a one-sided answer before it starts, which the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 notes show is capped at 6 out of 10.

The word "stalemate" is the question, not the background

A trap that shows up in the examiner reports more than once. The Key Question does not ask you to describe the stalemate. It asks why there was one. Describing mud, rats and barbed wire for a page answers a different question, and it is the single commonest way candidates lose marks on this content. Section 9 has the reports in Cambridge's own words.

2. Where this Key Question starts and stops

Depth Study A is a different component of the syllabus from the Core Content and a different section of the paper, and its boundaries are tighter than they look.

The boundary that costs the most marks is the first one. Do not re-argue the July Crisis here. A part (b) asking why the Schlieffen Plan failed is not asking why Germany had a plan, and the March 2020 Principal Examiner report records candidates "going into too much detail about the origins of the Schlieffen Plan" instead of answering the question set.

The boundary that costs the second most is the last date. This Key Question's natural end is 1916. Where a mark scheme reaches into 1917 or 1918, it does so for a specific reason that stays inside the focus points: tanks at Cambrai and Amiens, and the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line as a consequence of the Somme. Those are legitimate. A general account of how the war ended is not.

3. How Paper 1 sets this Key Question

The level ladders, the assessment objective split, the (a) 4, (b) 6 and (c) 10 structure and the two rules Cambridge changed for the 2024 series are the same for every question on Paper 1, Section B included, and they are set out in the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 notes. Read that page once. Nothing below repeats it. What follows is only what is true of this Key Question.

Section B is Questions 9 onwards, and Depth Study A is always Questions 9 and 10

Cambridge does not print this anywhere in the syllabus. It comes from the mark schemes, which head the second half of the paper SECTION B: DEPTH STUDIES and open it at Question 9 with Depth Study A: The First World War, 1914 to 1918 first in the list, in every one of the 48 Paper 1 mark schemes from 2018 to 2024. The Principal Examiner reports use the same numbering, printing "Section B: Depth Studies" and then "Question 9".

Three depth studies were removed for 2024, which is why the paper got shorter. Depth Study A did not move. It has been Questions 9 and 10 in every series read.

Your Key Question is nearly always Question 9

Across the 48 Paper 1 mark schemes from 2018 to 2024, this Key Question's content was set:

• at Question 9 in 38 of the 48 papers
• at Question 10 as well in 3 of those 38, all of them March papers
• not at all in the other 10 papers

That is by a wide margin the most heavily set Key Question in the whole depth study. If you revise this one, you have a question on roughly four papers in five, and it is almost always the first one you reach after the Core Content.

Two cautions before you rely on it. First, the papers before 2024 were written against an older version of this syllabus, which split this material differently, and the 2027 syllabus has merged it into a single Key Question. That is why three March papers set Questions 9 and 10 both inside your scope. Do not assume a modern paper will do the same. Second, the 2024 series added Key Question 2, the world war material, and it took Question 9 four times in seven 2024 papers. Question 9 is where your Key Question usually is, but it is no longer only yours.

What each part tends to ask

Sorting all the Question 9 and Question 10 stems that fall inside this Key Question gives a very clear pattern.

The 10 mark part on this content is a weighing question far more often than a narrative one. Three of the five focus points are already phrased as comparisons, and the mark schemes turn them into head-to-head titles: Verdun against the Somme, tanks against aircraft, gas against everything else, Mons against the Marne, the Marne against Ypres, Belgian resistance against Russian mobilisation. Revise this topic in pairs and you will nearly always have both sides ready.

4. Focus point: why did the Schlieffen Plan fail?

This is the most frequently set of the five, and Cambridge's own mark schemes credit four separate causes. A top band answer names at least two and argues between them.

What the plan was, in the four marks Cambridge gives for it

Every fact here is printed in a 0470 mark scheme, and together they are more than enough for a part (a).

• It was Germany's plan to win the war, proposed in 1905 by the Chief of the German General Staff.
• It was designed to let Germany wage a successful two-front war, by not fighting both fronts at once.
• The original plan sent 90 per cent of German forces against France, and aimed to defeat France in six weeks.
• It assumed Russia would take six weeks to mobilise, so that Germany could turn east afterwards.
• It required an invasion of Belgium, which was neutral, and gambled that Britain would not honour its treaty with Belgium.
• Von Moltke modified it, reducing the size of the attacking army, and dropping the advance through the Netherlands so that the whole force went through Belgium alone.

That last change matters more than it sounds. One mark scheme spells out the mechanism: avoiding the Netherlands cost Germany the use of a vital rail link at Maastricht and forced the whole army through a narrower corridor.

The four causes Cambridge credits

Belgian resistance. The plan needed speed and Belgium refused to give it. Cambridge's schemes credit the refusal of free passage, the fighting at Liège, the siege of Antwerp, demolished bridges and railway lines, passive and underground resistance, and civilians fleeing. Two schemes put the total delay at about a month.

Russian mobilisation. Russia was ready far sooner than the six weeks the plan assumed. Germany had to move troops east while still short of Paris. One mark scheme puts the transfer at 100 000 troops pulled out of the advance. Cambridge also prints the counter-argument, and prints it in a Level 5 exemplar: the Russian army was so badly prepared that it lost heavily in its first battles, so the mobilisation hurt the plan mainly through the timetable rather than through Russian fighting power.

The British Expeditionary Force. Cambridge credits the BEF at Mons, at Le Cateau and at the Marne. The November 2021 examiner report records that the best answers knew the BEF was Britain's standing army of around 90 000 men, sent quickly to France in 1914. One mark scheme gives the losses at Mons as about 1 600 British against an estimated 6 000 to 10 000 German, which is the kind of specific fact that turns a 4 mark part (b) explanation into a 5 mark one.

The changes Moltke made. The plan that failed was not the plan Schlieffen wrote. Cambridge's own exemplar answers argue that the reduced right wing, the narrower corridor and the eastward transfers made the resistance effective in the first place.

1. Moltke thins the right wing and drops the Dutch corridor
2. the same army now advances through Belgium alone, without the Maastricht railway
3. Belgian resistance and the BEF at Mons cost days the six week timetable cannot absorb
4. Russia mobilises early and 100 000 men leave for the east
5. the Germans are halted at the Marne and fall back to the Aisne
6. the two-front war the plan existed to prevent is now the war Germany has to fight

The judgement Cambridge itself offers

The most useful thing in the whole corpus on this focus point is the November 2024 Level 5 exemplar, because it shows the examiner's own reasoning. It argues that Belgian resistance was the more important cause because the plan relied on speed, concedes that Russian mobilisation made things worse but that the Russian army was badly prepared, and then turns on both by suggesting Moltke's alterations "could be blamed" for making the resistance possible.

That is a three-step judgement, and it is worth copying as a shape: the stated factor, the rival factor, then a third factor that explains the first two. Nothing about it requires more facts than the ones above.

The Marne is the moment, but it may not be the reason

Cambridge sets "the first Battle of the Marne was the most important reason why the Schlieffen Plan failed" as a 10 mark title, and then prints the counter-argument in its own exemplar: by the time of the Marne the plan was already failing, the timetable was already impossible, and the German troops were already exhausted from fighting their way through Belgium. The Marne confirmed the failure rather than caused it.

Use that. It is the difference between narrating the Marne and arguing about it.

5. Focus point: why did a defensive war emerge by the end of 1914?

This focus point covers the syllabus item on Mons, the Marne, the race to the sea and the First Battle of Ypres, and the sub-item that names the outcome directly: the reaction to the stalemate: trenches and the development of a war of attrition.

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Read that sub-item carefully, because it settles an argument students get backwards. Cambridge calls the trenches the reaction to the stalemate. The deadlock came first and the digging answered it. An answer that says trench warfare caused the stalemate has the causation the wrong way round, and the November 2021 examiner report shows Cambridge setting exactly that comparison as a 10 mark question: trench warfare against the failure of the Schlieffen Plan as the reason the war was not over by Christmas 1914.

The four battles, in Cambridge's own terms

Mons. The first battle involving British troops. Outnumbered, the BEF held up the German advance, inflicted heavy casualties, and stopped the French from being outflanked, before retreating. Cambridge's schemes credit both readings: a moral victory against overwhelming odds, and a defeat followed by a retreat of 250 miles over two weeks that ended just outside Paris.

The Marne. The Germans reached the Marne by 5 September and came within 30 miles of Paris. The BEF and the French counter-attacked, split the German armies and forced a retreat to the River Aisne. Cambridge's schemes say plainly that this saved Paris, ended the Schlieffen Plan, made a quick German victory impossible, and led to Moltke being replaced. They also say that the Allies could not push the Germans out of France, and that is the sentence that carries the stalemate: neither side could make progress, so both dug in.

The race to the sea. September and October 1914, after the Marne. Each side tried to outflank the other's northern wing and reach the coast first. Germany wanted the Channel ports to cut British supplies and reinforcements; the Allies wanted to protect them. Cambridge's schemes say it was a war of movement using rail, that neither side won it, and that troops dug in as they went to avoid being killed while racing.

First Ypres. Cambridge credits it with holding the ground that protected Calais, Boulogne and Dunkirk, so that reinforcements and supplies could keep crossing the Channel. Its other credited effect is the one that matters here: it showed the two armies were evenly matched, and the onset of winter weather at the end of it made both sides dig in for good.

1. the Marne halts the German advance but cannot expel the German army from France
2. both sides try to outflank each other northwards in the race to the sea and both fail
3. the line reaches the coast and there is no flank left to turn
4. First Ypres proves neither army can break the other head on
5. winter closes in and the digging becomes permanent, from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier

What "stalemate" actually means here

Cambridge's own phrasing is that the war of movement became a war of attrition. The continuous trench line ran from the North Sea to the border between France and Switzerland, and the mark schemes note it hardly changed at all for the rest of the war. Once the line was continuous there was no open flank anywhere, so every attack had to be frontal, and section 6 explains why frontal attacks did not work.

That is the whole answer in two sentences, and it is the answer the November 2019 report says candidates missed while "describing what stalemate actually was".

6. Focus point: what was living and fighting in the trenches like?

The syllabus item is the nature and problems of trench warfare, and Cambridge splits it in two on the paper. Part (a) questions want the living. Part (b) and (c) questions want the fighting. Answering the first when you were asked the second is the classic loss of marks on this focus point.

Living: the part (a) material

Every one of these appears in a mark scheme, and four of them is full marks.

• Trenches were dug into the ground, with a parapet facing the enemy, a fire-step to stand on when firing, sandbags to stop collapse, duckboards on a wet floor, dugouts for resting and barbed wire in front.
• Soldiers rotated between the front line, support trenches and the rear. Much of the time was spent repairing the trenches, and much of it was simply boring.
• Trench foot from mud and standing water; frostbite in winter; lice; rats, drawn by the dead; disease including trench fever; limited washing; a smell of sewage and rotting bodies.
• Shell shock, which Cambridge defines as a psychological condition, a mental breakdown brought on by the strain of constant shelling, producing panic and an inability to sleep or speak, and lasting long after the war.

Cambridge is unusually generous on this material. Two examiner reports say it was "rare to read a poor answer" to a part (a) on trench conditions. That is exactly why you must not spend the time you saved writing more of it: the marks are gone after four points.

Fighting: why the line did not move

This is the material that earns the 6 and 10 mark parts, and Cambridge's mark schemes explain the mechanism in detail.

• No Man's Land was covered in barbed wire and shell holes, so it could not be crossed quickly. Soldiers carried full kit weighing 66 lb.
• Attacking soldiers were visible the moment they left their own trench, and enemy machine gun teams had time to come up out of their dugouts and man their guns before the attackers had crossed.
• German dugouts were deep underground and reinforced with concrete, so bombardments did not destroy them.
• Bombardments warned the enemy that an attack was coming, and often tangled the barbed wire into a denser mass instead of cutting it.
• Artillery was frequently inaccurate, and many shells were shrapnel rather than high explosive, or failed to explode at all.
• Where attackers did reach the enemy trench, they were often not supported by reinforcements and could not hold what they had taken.
• Both sides were, in Cambridge's words, evenly matched.

1. a continuous line removes every flank
2. the only attack left is frontal, across open ground under machine guns
3. the preliminary bombardment announces the attack and fails to cut the wire or reach the concrete dugouts
4. attackers are caught in the open and any ground taken cannot be reinforced
5. both sides return to their trenches and the line holds, so the next attempt is bigger rather than different

That chain is the answer to "why did trench warfare last so long", "why did both sides dig trenches", "why was it difficult to launch an attack from a trench" and "why were there so many casualties on the first day of the Somme". They are four wordings of one mechanism.

7. Focus point: how important were new methods of warfare?

The syllabus names four: tanks, machine guns, aircraft and gas, and it prefaces them with "developments such as", so the list is a floor and not a ceiling. Cambridge's own schemes routinely add artillery.

The question is never what these weapons were. It is whether they broke the stalemate or deepened it, and Cambridge's answer, argued through the mark schemes, is that the defensive weapon arrived first and worked, and the offensive weapons arrived late and worked badly until 1917 and 1918.

Machine guns

The weapon that made the stalemate. Cambridge credits: it fired between 400 and 600 bullets a minute, had the effect of over 100 rifles, was devastating against troops crossing open ground, was excellent in defence of a trench, and directly produced trench warfare and a war of high casualties and attrition. Against that, mark schemes credit that machine guns could jam and were heavy.

The November 2022 examiner report goes further than any mark scheme and states that defenders relied on machine guns, "which accounted for ninety per cent of deaths". Treat that as an examiner report claim rather than a settled number, and see section 12.

Gas

Cambridge's material on gas is the clearest example in the whole topic of a weapon whose reputation exceeds its effect, and the mark schemes argue both sides deliberately.

For: horrifying effects, great fear among soldiers, delivered easily in shells, destroyed breathing systems, and mustard gas raised blisters inside and outside the body. First used at Ypres in 1915, with chlorine damaging the lungs.

Against: it was responsible for about 4 per cent of deaths in the war, and over half of the men affected were ready to return to fighting after six weeks. The wind in France generally blew towards the German lines and was unpredictable in any case; both sides developed gas masks and early warning systems; Germany ran short of chemicals; and after Ypres the element of surprise was gone.

Tanks

Cambridge's line is consistent across the corpus: tanks did very little when introduced and a great deal by 1918. First used at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, they were slow, broke down frequently, shed their caterpillar tracks and stalled. They caused panic among German troops and boosted British morale. At Cambrai in 1917 they broke through the German lines but the infantry could not keep up and the tanks had to withdraw. At Amiens in 1918, used as a battering ram with the infantry keeping pace, they broke the German front line. The Germans developed armour-piercing bullets and adapted field guns against them.

The transferable point, and Cambridge prints it as an exemplar, is that the tank's real contribution at the Somme was that commanders learned from using it badly, and applied the lesson at Amiens along with the creeping barrage.

Aircraft

Almost entirely a support weapon in Cambridge's account. Credited uses: reconnaissance, observing troop movements and enemy positions, photographing positions, helping to place artillery, limited bombing raids, bombing airfields, and dogfights between fighters. Credited limitations: it was not possible to communicate with the pilot from the ground, and their offensive capability was small. The June 2022 report quotes an exemplar that puts the case for importance in one line: knowing where the enemy was and whether they were moving was essential, and aircraft were the only way to find out.

1. the machine gun makes the defence overwhelming in 1914
2. every offensive weapon is then a search for an answer to it
3. gas frightens more than it kills and is neutralised by masks and the wind
4. tanks arrive in 1916 too slow and too few to exploit a breakthrough
5. aircraft can see the enemy but cannot break him
6. the new methods deepen the deadlock for two years before they end it

The comparison Cambridge keeps setting

Because three of the four are offensive weapons and one is defensive, the 10 mark part is nearly always a head-to-head: tanks against aircraft, gas against everything, or new weapons against the trench system itself. The examiner reports say the same thing about all of them, that candidates described both weapons well and never compared them. Decide the criterion before you write. Effect on the course of the war is the criterion Cambridge's own exemplars use, and it is what lets you argue that the most feared weapon was not the most important one.

8. Focus point: what was the significance of the Battles of Verdun and the Somme?

The syllabus adds a named sub-item here: the leadership and tactics of Haig at the Battle of the Somme. Haig is the only individual named anywhere in Depth Study A's specified content, which tells you how often he is examined.

Verdun

Cambridge's account: the Germans launched a massive attack on the French fortress of Verdun in 1916. The intention was not simply to take it but to force France to feed its whole army into defending it and bleed the French army dry. Verdun was a symbol of French military strength and a French salient into German territory, and its loss would have exposed the route to Paris.

The French held. Cambridge credits: it was the longest battle of the war; German casualties were nearly as heavy as French; the salient remained; French morale was enormously helped; the German chief of staff Falkenhayn was sacked over the failure; and the Germans launched no further major attack until 1918. It also credits the wider lesson, in the mark scheme's own words: it showed that as long as the defending side could sustain casualties, trench warfare made attacking almost impossible.

The Somme

Cambridge's account: a British offensive on the River Somme, from July to November 1916, launched partly to relieve the French at Verdun by forcing Germany to move troops, and partly in hope of a decisive breakthrough. Haig planned seven days of heavy shelling to destroy the German defences and cut the wire before the infantry advanced.

It did not work, and the mark schemes are unusually detailed about why: German dugouts were deep and concrete; many shells were poor quality or failed to explode; many were shrapnel rather than high explosive; the wire was tangled rather than cleared; the bombardment warned the Germans an attack was coming; German machine gunners concentrated on the gaps in the wire; British intelligence had not discovered how deep the German dugouts were; heavy cloud stopped reconnaissance aircraft assessing the damage; the troops were ordered to walk across; and when the first wave failed the attacks continued anyway. Haig did not use tanks on the first day.

Cambridge's figures for the outcome: over one million casualties in all, and a gain of seven miles by the end. On the first day, the machine gun produced most of what one mark scheme calls the 60 000 British casualties. The number killed on that day is given inconsistently across the corpus, and section 12 says what to do about it.

Cambridge also credits real achievements: the Somme relieved Verdun; it inflicted enormous German casualties, especially among officers, from which the mark scheme says the German army never recovered; it led the Germans to withdraw to the Hindenburg Line in 1917; it turned an inexperienced volunteer army into a professional one; and it was where the tank and the creeping barrage were first tried, badly, so that they could be used well in 1918.

Haig, and the two cases Cambridge prints

This is set repeatedly and Cambridge is scrupulously two-sided about it.

Against Haig: he made easy assumptions about the bombardment; he over-estimated what shells would do to concrete dugouts; he kept using the same tactics after they had visibly failed; he continued the offensive into November when there was little chance of advancing; he never went near the front and had no idea of conditions; he seemed to think the death toll was worth it if the German army was weakened too.

For Haig: he was commanding an inexperienced army on a scale never seen before, on a front 15 miles long, with communications so poor that he was often acting on out-of-date information. He had to plan the battle very quickly after the German attack on Verdun. The June 2022 report records that he believed he needed double the troops he was given. He attacked at the Somme rather than in Belgium because that was where the French wanted to attack, and refusing would have lost Verdun and broken co-operation with France. He was a product of his training in a form of warfare nobody yet understood, and he was willing to use new methods. Staying away from the front is credited as a way of keeping an overall picture of a vast battle.

1. Germany attacks Verdun to bleed the French army white
2. France commits everything to holding a fortress it cannot lose
3. Britain attacks on the Somme to force Germany to move troops away from Verdun
4. the Somme bombardment fails to cut the wire or reach the dugouts and the first day costs 60 000 British casualties
5. both battles end roughly where they started, and 1916 proves that attrition, not manoeuvre, is now the whole war

The comparison, and how to settle it

"Which was more important for the Allies: Verdun or the Somme?" is set repeatedly. Cambridge's own exemplars give you both sides cleanly. Verdun mattered because losing it would have cost France the war. The Somme mattered because it saved Verdun and because it was where the Allies learned to fight this kind of war.

The examiner reports say, in three separate series, that candidates knew a great deal about both battles and could not compare them. The fix is to pick a criterion in your first sentence. Which battle changed what happened next? is a criterion that lets you argue either way and gives you a judgement instead of a summary.

9. What examiner reports say candidates get wrong on this content

The faults that apply to every question on the paper, overwriting part (a), listing instead of explaining, one-sided part (c) answers and finishing without a judgement, are in the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 notes. These are the ones Cambridge names on this content specifically, in its own words.

• Describing the trenches instead of explaining the stalemate. June 2019: most responses to a question on why fighting was based around trench warfare "focused on describing in great detail the conditions in the trenches, rather than explaining why". This is the report the whole file is built to prevent.
• Describing what stalemate was instead of what caused it. November 2019: many responses "concentrated on describing what stalemate actually was, rather than addressing the issue in the question".
• Narrating the Schlieffen Plan instead of explaining it. November 2019: some responses "described the details of the Schlieffen Plan at some length, rather than explaining its importance to Germany". March 2020, on the same content, records candidates "going into too much detail about the origins of the Schlieffen Plan".
• Comparing without comparing. The single most repeated fault on this content. June 2021 on Verdun and the Somme: "reflected many details about the battles ... but were less clear about their comparative importance". November 2020 on tanks and aircraft: "less clear about their comparative effectiveness". November 2022 on the same pair: "the comparison of effectiveness was missing". June 2022 on Haig: "many details about the Battle of the Somme but were less clear about criticisms of Haig".
• Writing about Haig the man instead of Haig at the Somme. June 2023: weaker answers "would have been improved by a focus on the Somme, rather than making general points about Haig's role as an army commander".
• Confusing the race to the sea with the war at sea. November 2023 records exactly this, alongside answers that "described the start of the war generally, without focussing on the 'race to the sea'". They are unrelated. One is an outflanking movement on land in 1914; the other is Depth Study A Key Question 3.
• Answering with the wrong battle. November 2020, on a question about 1 July 1916: "Some responses described the Battle of the Marne or the race to the sea in error".
• Straying past the date in the question. March 2020, on a question limited to 1914: "A few responses strayed outside of the parameters of the question and examined post-1914 material such as the Battle of the Somme or even later".
• Importing other fronts. November 2023: weaker responses gave general accounts of warfare "often information such as details from the War at Sea and the Eastern Front, which lacked relevance here".
• Knowing tanks without knowing where they were used. June 2023: "It was rare to read specific answers about military engagements at Cambrai or Amiens". Those two names are the difference between a general claim and an explanation with contextual support.

One more thing worth knowing. Almost every Depth Study A comment in the reports is about Question 9. Question 10 is very often marked "there were too few responses to this question for meaningful comments to be made". That is more evidence for section 3: candidates who take this depth study overwhelmingly take the question your Key Question usually occupies.

10. Judgement sentences for this Key Question

The tenth mark is a separate act, and the general shapes are in the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 notes. These are the versions that fit this content. Each states a position and attaches a reason, which is all Level 5 asks for.

• "Belgian resistance mattered more than Russian mobilisation, because the plan could absorb an early Russian move but it could not absorb the loss of a month."
• "The Marne was where the Schlieffen Plan visibly failed, but not why it failed, because the timetable had already been broken before the German army reached the river."
• "The trenches were the consequence of the stalemate and not its cause, because both sides only dug once they had already discovered that neither could advance."
• "Gas was the most feared new weapon but not the most important one, because fear that can be answered with a mask is not the same as a change in the course of the war."
• "The machine gun mattered more than the tank, because it decided how the war was fought for four years and the tank only decided how it ended."
• "Verdun mattered more than the Somme in 1916, because the Somme could be survived and Verdun could not."
• "The Somme mattered more than Verdun in the long run, because it was the battle in which the Allies learned to fight the war they were actually in."
• "Haig's failure was one of assumption rather than of intention, because the tactics were wrong for reasons nobody on either side had yet understood."
• "The stalemate held because the defence was cheaper than the attack, and it broke only when the attack finally became affordable."

Note what these have in common. Every one of them concedes something to the other side inside the same sentence, which is what stops a judgement reading as a restatement of the question.

11. Quick revision

• Where it sits: Paper 1 Section B, Depth Study A, Question 9 or 10. Your Key Question was set at Question 9 in 38 of 48 papers from 2018 to 2024.
• Schlieffen Plan: 1905, 90 per cent of forces west, France in six weeks, Russia assumed to need six weeks, through Belgium. Moltke cut the right wing and dropped the Dutch route, losing the Maastricht rail link.
• Four causes of its failure: Belgian resistance, about a month; Russian mobilisation, 100 000 men sent east; the BEF at Mons, Le Cateau and the Marne; Moltke's own changes.
• 1914 sequence: Mons, the Marne, the race to the sea, First Ypres. Germans within 30 miles of Paris, pushed back to the Aisne, Moltke replaced.
• Race to the sea: September and October 1914, nobody won it, and the line reached the coast. First Ypres protected Calais, Boulogne and Dunkirk and proved the armies evenly matched.
• Stalemate: the war of movement became a war of attrition, on a continuous line from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier that hardly moved again. Cambridge calls trenches the reaction to the stalemate.
• Living: parapet, fire-step, sandbags, duckboards, dugouts, wire; trench foot, frostbite, lice, rats, trench fever, shell shock, boredom.
• Fighting: wire and shell holes across No Man's Land, 66 lb of kit, concrete dugouts that survived bombardment, bombardments that warned the enemy and tangled the wire, no reinforcement for ground taken.
• Weapons: machine gun 400 to 600 rounds a minute, effect of over 100 rifles. Gas about 4 per cent of deaths, over half back in six weeks. Tanks at the Somme 1916 badly, Cambrai 1917 partly, Amiens 1918 well. Aircraft for reconnaissance, with no ground-to-pilot communication.
• Verdun 1916: German attack on a French fortress to bleed the French army; longest battle of the war; France held; Falkenhayn sacked; no further German major attack until 1918.
• Somme, July to November 1916: seven day bombardment; 60 000 British casualties on the first day; over one million casualties in all; seven miles gained; relieved Verdun; Germans withdrew to the Hindenburg Line in 1917.
• Haig: attack him for the bombardment assumption and for repeating a failed tactic; defend him on the 15 mile front, the out-of-date information, the half-strength force and the fact that he was asked to attack where the French needed it.
• Never re-argue the July Crisis, and never confuse the race to the sea with the war at sea.

12. Where these facts come from

Taken from Cambridge's own published 0470 materials, meaning the syllabus for 2027 and 2028, the 48 Paper 1 mark schemes from 2018 to 2024, and the Principal Examiner reports from 2018 to 2024:

the Key Question, focus point and specified content wording, and the definitions of the three layers in section 1; the Section B question range and the placement of Depth Study A at Questions 9 and 10; every detail of the Schlieffen Plan in section 4, including 1905, the Chief of the General Staff, 90 per cent, six weeks, the two-front purpose, the Belgian invasion, Moltke's reduction of the attacking army, the dropped Dutch corridor and the Maastricht rail link; Belgian resistance at Liège and Antwerp, the demolished bridges and railway lines, the passive and underground resistance, and the delay of about a month; the 100 000 troops transferred east; the BEF at Mons, Le Cateau and the Marne, the figure of around 90 000 men, and the Mons losses of about 1 600 British against 6 000 to 10 000 German; the 250 mile retreat from Mons; the German arrival at the Marne on 5 September, the 30 miles from Paris, the retreat to the Aisne and the replacement of Moltke; the race to the sea in September and October 1914 and its purposes on both sides; First Ypres and the protection of Calais, Boulogne and Dunkirk; the trench line from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier; every trench feature and condition named in section 6, including trench foot, frostbite, lice, rats, trench fever and Cambridge's definition of shell shock; the 66 lb kit; the concrete dugouts, the tangled wire, the warning given by the bombardment, the shrapnel shells and the unsupported attackers; the machine gun rate of 400 to 600 rounds a minute and the comparison with over 100 rifles; gas first used at Ypres in 1915, chlorine and mustard gas effects, the 4 per cent figure, the six week return to fighting, the gas masks, the wind and the chemical shortage; the tanks at the Somme, Cambrai and Amiens, the breakdowns, the German armour-piercing bullets and adapted field guns; the aircraft roles and the absence of ground-to-pilot communication; Verdun as the longest battle of the war, the bleeding-white intention, the symbolic and strategic value of the fortress, the survival of the salient and the sacking of Falkenhayn; the Somme dates, the seven day bombardment, the 60 000 British casualties on the first day, the over one million total casualties, the seven miles gained, the relief of Verdun, the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line and the professionalisation of the British army; every point in both Haig lists including the 15 mile front, the out-of-date information and his belief that he needed double the troops; and every examiner report fault quoted in section 9.

Where Cambridge's own materials disagree, and you should not try to reconcile them:

• How long Liège held. One mark scheme says the Germans took a week to capture it. Another says the fighting to take Liège lasted eleven days. A third says Liège resisted for two weeks. These cannot all be right. Cambridge is consistent that the overall Belgian delay was about a month, which is the figure two separate schemes give, so use that and explain the effect rather than gambling on a number for one fortress. The mark is for the effect.
• How many died on the first day of the Somme. One mark scheme says 19 000 British troops were killed. Another says 20 000. A third gives 60 000 British casualties, which is a different measure and does not contradict either. If you need a figure inside an explanation, use 60 000 casualties, because it is the one Cambridge states without a rival, and say "casualties" rather than "killed".
• The proportion of deaths caused by machine guns. The November 2022 examiner report says ninety per cent. No mark scheme in the corpus gives a figure at all, and several say only that the machine gun "produced most casualties". Prefer Cambridge's own hedged wording. An explanation of why the machine gun dominated the defence earns the mark; the percentage does not.
• When tanks first went into battle. One mark scheme says tanks were not introduced until July 1916 and, a few lines away, that they were first used "two years into the war at the Battle of the Somme". Say at the Somme in 1916 and avoid the month.

Not verified against the corpus, and therefore deliberately left out above: total casualty figures for Verdun, total casualty figures for the war, the number of men or divisions in the German right wing, the tonnage or number of shells fired in the Somme bombardment, the names of individual British or French commanders other than Haig, the length of the trench line in miles, and any date within the Somme or Verdun beyond the months Cambridge itself prints. This topic has a very large popular literature and the figures in it vary enormously. None of the omitted numbers is needed for a top band answer to any question in the corpus, and inventing one is a faster way to lose credibility with an examiner than leaving it out.

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