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Though the term "Race to the Sea" is something of a misnomer, as the combatants were not actually striving to be the first to reach the coast, this phase of the fighting was still significant, as it marked the last attempt to quickly win the war in the West through rapid movements and decisive battles. Following the termination of the race, the front line was so extensive that only frontal assaults against fortified positions were still a tactical option. This marked the beginning of the famous [[trench warfare]] that would characterize the Western Front until 1918.
Though the term "Race to the Sea" is something of a misnomer, as the combatants were not actually striving to be the first to reach the coast, this phase of the fighting was still significant, as it marked the last attempt to quickly win the war in the West through rapid movements and decisive battles. Following the termination of the race, the front line was so extensive that only frontal assaults against fortified positions were still a tactical option. This marked the beginning of the famous [[trench warfare]] that would characterize the Western Front until 1918.
==Background==
With the outbreak of hostilities at the beginning of August, 1914, most of the combatants planned on a quick, decisive victory. The German military mobilized in adherence to the [[Schlieffen Plan]] formed some years previously, by which the bulk of their armies would invade France via neutral [[Belgium]], capturing [[Paris]] and encircling the French armies within six weeks; France's capacity to carry on the war would immediately be destroyed. For their part, the French armed forces planned on an eastward offensive into [[Alsace-Lorraine]], recapturing the German-occupied province and gaining a strong natural position from which to defeat the Germans in battle.
As the fighting on the [[Western Front]] unfolded, though, both of these plans miscarried. The French armies, under the overall command of General Joseph Joffre, did indeed attack eastward into Alsace-Lorraine, but were held in check by the German Sixth and Seventh Armies around Metz and Nancy, while being outflanked further north by the German offensive. At the same time, the Schlieffen Plan gradually went awry during August and early September, as the unexpectedly stiff resistance of the Belgian army, and the early arrival of the British Expeditionary Force under Sir John French, endangered its progress. By late August, Joffre had realized his forces were in a strategically dangerous position, and shifted most of them to a new front northeast of Paris in order to meet the German flanking maneuver head-on. Indeed, this realignment of forces provided the Franco-British alliance an opportunity to carry out their own flank attack on the Germans, and on September 4 Joffre decided to go over to the offensive against the First Army of Alexander von Kluck, holding the Germans' right flank along the Marne River.
The result of this decision was the [[First Battle of the Marne]], which opened on September 6 and carried on for the next several days, featuring bitter but often inconclusive fighting along the Marne and its tributaries, on a front of more than 80 miles. By September 9, though the Allies were in danger of having their left (western) flank broken once again, they had made some progress in the center, but not enough to achieve a total breakthrough.
[[Category:World War I Battles]]
[[Category:World War I Battles]]