Why Was Germany's Failure On The Western Front?

In the decade prior to World War One, Germany experienced massive growth in both their population and their economy which created needs outside of Germany's immediate capacity. They met the demand by increasing their imports substantially; from 1899-1913, Germany nearly doubled its imports. Trade is a prominent element in every political situation that impacts the outcome significantly. Trade governs our resources and therefore, our quality of life and style of living. The Allies employed a blockade that sought to restrict the resources of the Germany and Austria-Hungary, starving them into submission and depriving them of necessary resources.

This effort was pursued largely by Britain and directed mostly at Germany. The best place to begin analysis of the blockade is with the early planning that occurred before the war began. In 1904, Britain saw Germany as their biggest naval threat. Prime Minister Sir Arthur Balfour acknowledged

One reason behind this was that the 1914 harvest had been planted before the war started. Also as noted before, during the first four months of the war, Britain did not confiscate imports that were not related to the military. Thus during this period, Germany could obtain more food from foreign traders.

One of the reasons that the Schlieffen plan required such swift success was that they knew that they couldn't sustain themselves for very long if Britain blockaded them. The blockade had a slow start but it really started to take effect in the spring of 1915. The shortages her occurred for several reasons. Firstly, they had to allocate a large amount of food to feed the military. Second, the blockade had been functioning for over half a year and many of the problems that the British encountered had been solved. And lastly, the blockade restricted chemicals and raw materials needed to make