[Enchante]

"The generals had learned a few lessons from the 1916 Battle of the Somme. Chief among them was the fact that frontal assaults on well-defended enemy trenches and artillery were mass suicide."

Uh, that "lesson" should have been well-established by the time of the US Civil War and the Crimean War many decades earlier. Pickett's Charge ring any bells? Charge of the Light Brigade?

[sinanju]

Quite a lot of this stuff was invented in the Civil War.

The Siege of Petersburg saw the establishment of the later all-to-familiar trench warfare and No Man’s Lands.

Also the practice of digging a tunnel under the enemy lines and blowing them up (the Battle of the Crater as depicted in the movie “Cold Mountain”).

[TexanToTheCore]

I have never understood the use of trenches in WWI after the experience of the US Civil War in which mobility was the key to victory. It may have been an accomodation of a stalemated situation, but it never made any sense to me.