Question

Why did fighting on the Western Front of World War I become a stalemate with high casualties but little progress?

Answer 1

Because it was trench warfare. The armies faced eachother in lines of trenches so they were protected from eachother's line of fire.

Answer 2

On the Western Front, the trenches became the center of military operations. Because of them, the First War lived years of impasse, as neither side had enough strength to overcome the lines of defense excavated by the enemy.

"For more than two years both sides in combat have advanced less than 15 kilometers in either direction," says US historian John Guilmartin Jr. of Ohio University. The battlefields where the trenches were were a constant gully and an extremely dangerous place. Studies indicate that nearly 35 percent of all casualties suffered on the Western Front were of soldiers killed or wounded while in a trench!