In the early stages of world war 1 there was a stalemate because Germanys Schlieffen plan had not

gone to plan. Instead of Germany going through Belgium to get to France and avoid strong defences.
Belgium decided to fight back against Germany. Germany did not expect Belgium to fight back, this
meant they had to fight the war on to fronts. Germany outnumbered Belgium 10 to 1 so it did not
take long to fight them, but this slowed them down and gave Russia and France to get their troops
ready. Germany ended up at the river of Marne were the battle of Marne happened. Something else
Germany did not expect was that Britain would get involved since they had an old alliance with
Belgium. Germanys plan failed and instead of taking over Paris they ended up in a stalemate with
400 miles of trenches. This was called the western front as well as the race to the sea as it stretched
all the way to the English Channel.