Field

The Western Front, 1914–18

The theatre where an unbroken trench line from the North Sea to Switzerland stopped moving. Every attempt at a breakthrough cost the attacker more than the defender, so commanders began looking for a definition of winning that did not require one.

1 casePeriod: 1916

On this front every attempt at a breakthrough killed more attackers than defenders. So commanders went looking for a different definition of winning. The case in this field shows what that rewriting does when nobody writes down the condition for stopping.

Patterns found in this field

13
A design of attrition

Make consuming the other side the objective — but write down first how it stops.
Verdun: what was contested was not ground but the exchange rate →

A pattern is not a template to apply but a tool for checking conditions. The conditions under which each one fails are set out on the patterns page. The thirteen patterns

Verdun: what was contested was not ground but the exchange rate

Make consuming the other side the objective and you go into the same machine. A design with no written way to stop eats its designer first.

Pattern: a design of attrition

The German offensive failed of its purpose; France retook most of the lost ground Read →

Other fields

Napoleonic Wars Second Punic War The Pacific War The Eastern Front The Hundred Years War The American Civil War Japan's Warring States period The Western Front, 1940–45 The Vietnam War