page_title: Western Front (World War I)
section_title: 1915
hierarchical_section_title: Western Front (World War I) / 1915
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the Western Front (World War I), 1915-1916
context_page_description: The Western Front was the main theatre of war during the First World War. Following the outbreak of war in August 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne. Following the Race to the Sea, both sides dug in along a meandering line of fortified trenches, stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier with France, which changed little except during early 1917 and in 1918.
  Between 1915 and 1917 there were several offensives along this front. The attacks employed massive artillery bombardments and massed infantry advances. Entrenchments, machine gun emplacements, barbed wire and artillery repeatedly inflicted severe casualties during attacks and counter-attacks and no significant advances were made. Among the most costly of these offensives were the Battle of Verdun, in 1916, with a combined 700,000 casualties, the Battle of the Somme, also in 1916, with more than a million casualties, and the Battle of Passchendaele, in 1917, with 487,000 casualties.
context_section_description: Between the coast and the Vosges was a westward bulge in the trench line, named the Noyon salient for the captured French town at the maximum point of advance near Compiègne. Joffre's plan for 1915 was to attack the salient on both flanks to cut it off. The Fourth Army had attacked in Champagne from 20 December 1914 – 17 March 1915 but the French were not able to attack in Artois at the same time. The Tenth Army formed the northern attack force and was to attack eastwards into the Douai plain across a 16-kilometre (9.9 mi) front between Loos and Arras. On 10 March, as part of the larger offensive in the Artois region, the British Army fought the Battle of Neuve Chapelle to capture Aubers Ridge. The assault was made by four divisions along a 2 mi (3.2 km) front. Preceded by a surprise bombardment lasting only 35 minutes, the initial assault made rapid progress and the village was captured within four hours. The advance then slowed because of supply and communication difficulties. The Germans brought up reserves and counter-attacked, forestalling the attempt to capture the ridge. Since the British had used about one-third of their supply of artillery ammunition, General Sir John French blamed the failure on the shortage of ammunition, despite the early success.
caption: Map of the Western Front, 1915–16
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