Although the German army bypassed Antwerp, it remained a threat to their flank. Following the fall of Liège, most of the Belgian field army retreated to Antwerp, leaving the garrison of Namur isolated, with the Belgian capital, Brussels, falling to the Germans on 20 August.

German heavy artillery was able to demolish the main forts within a few days. Liège was well fortified and surprised the German Army under Bülow with its level of resistance. The first battle in Belgium was the Battle of Liège, a siege that lasted from 5–16 August.

Luxembourg had been occupied without opposition on 2 August. Armies under German generals Alexander von Kluck and Karl von Bülow attacked Belgium on 4 August 1914. Belgian neutrality had been guaranteed by Britain under the Treaty of London, 1839 this caused Britain to join the war at the expiration of its ultimatum at midnight on 4 August. At the outbreak of the war, the German Army, with seven field armies in the west and one in the east, executed a modified version of the Schlieffen Plan, bypassing French defenses along the common border by moving quickly through neutral Belgium, and then turning southwards to attack France and attempt to encircle the French Army and trap it on the German border. The Western Front was the place where the most powerful military forces in Europe, the German and French armies, met and where the First World War was decided. German infantry on the battlefield, 7 August 1914 The German government surrendered in the Armistice of 11 November 1918, and the terms of peace were settled by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.ġ914 War plans – Battle of the Frontiers The unstoppable advance of the Allied armies during the Hundred Days Offensive of 1918 caused a sudden collapse of the German armies and persuaded the German commanders that defeat was inevitable. Using short, intense 'hurricane' bombardments and infiltration tactics, the German armies moved nearly 100 kilometres (60 miles) to the west, the deepest advance by either side since 1914, but the result was indecisive. The German spring offensive of 1918 was made possible by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that ended the war of the Central Powers against Russia and Romania on the Eastern Front. The adoption of better tactics and the cumulative weakening of the armies in the west led to the return of mobility in 1918. To break the deadlock of the trench warfare on the Western Front, both sides tried new military technology, including poison gas, aircraft, and tanks. 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. Entrenchments, machine gun emplacements, barbed wire and artillery repeatedly inflicted severe casualties during attacks and counter-attacks and no significant advances were made. The attacks employed massive artillery bombardments and massed infantry advances.

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.īetween 19 there were several offensives along this front. The German advance was halted with the Battle of the Marne. 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 Western Front was one of the main theatres of war during the First World War.

Verdun battle nickname