This is John Batcher, conversation with British historian Nick Lloyd, his book The Western Front, describes the trench warfare that we think of today as dominating the battlefield, 1914 to 1918 as a fallback from the original concept of breaking through.

He never intended to bog down in years of no movement on the battlefield, intended a victory,

both sides, a breakthrough sweeping to the capital heroes marching in celebration similar to the

expectation in Ukraine these last years that has turned into trench warfare on a much smaller scale but the same

origin the expectation of a breakthrough the same result, static battlefield.

Tragedy, frozen.

Here's Nick Lloyd on the origin of trench warfare.

More of this tonight. I think it's a realization that they can't break through in the way that they imagine that they would.

And I think all of the commanders on all of the sides are trying to work out, you know, how you can fight, how you can win.

And most of them see Trenton warfare is essentially a kind of anomaly, a strange situation that will be, that will

only be temporary and what you need to do is you need to mass combat power in certain key sectors

and essentially drive it home as hard as you can to break

that front line, that front series of trenches and then push reinforcements in and

through and then that will essentially shatter trench warfare and then

maneuver movement will reoccur and then once movement reoccurs you can have a decisive battle.

So, you know, the early part of the war, they try and do this.

And ultimately throughout 1915, the Allies try to do this.

And they can gain certain, they can have local breakthroughs,

they can gain little bits of ground here and there,

but they're not able to do that grand shattering breakthrough.

And the September, October,

1915 battle is where they put everything in.

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