Why was there relatively little use of land mines in WW1?

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The main issue is that industrial production of mines was not enough developed, while one big other issue had to be addressed by the industry: producing enough shells. This was far more important than the mines since the defensive side during WW1 was already greatly equipped with:

  • Machine guns killed infantry in the open
  • Infantry men fought in the trenches, which were specific paths where no mines could be installed

On the other hand, artillery was used in defense and attack, so it was very important to keep it supplied with shells.

Upvote:12

In military doctrine, antipersonnel mines and barbed wire are very closely related. Both deny the enemy the ability to move quickly. (Neither side on the Western Front moved quickly, that was the whole problem...)

Either mines or barbed wire needs to be laid down first. Here we get the first real snag: Barbed wire can be brought into position very quickly. Mines are required to be armed. Doing this (which involves standing still for at least a couple of seconds) in closely contested no-man's land is a suicide mission.[1]

Either mines or barbed wire works both ways. If you mine no-man's land so much that no-one can cross it anymore, that includes you. With the tides of battle swinging as much as they did on the Western Front, mining no-man's land to the point were no-one could cross it would free enemy troops just as much as it would free yours. Your own barbed wire is obvious to your troops. On the attack, they can circumnavigate those obstacles, and if they trip up, it's their own fault, and they won't think much of it and continue. Mines are not easily visible; if your troops suffer a handful of casualties in the beginning of an attack due to your own mines, their morale will be much more affected.

But the real issue is this:

Mines react very poorly to artillery, much more so than barbed wire. Actually, using explosives is a common way to clear a minefield in combat conditions.

Given the intensity and concentration of artillery fire on the Western Front, a minefield would not have lasted long.

Fast forward to WWII. Troops were mobile, front lines fluent. Both the Eastern Front and North Africa were wide-open theaters, with troop movements taking on characteristics of naval warfare of area denial and navigation. Troop density seldom reached the kind of levels that were seen on WWI's Western Front.

Both Kursk and El-Alamein (and e.g. Hurtgenwald, another prominent mine-strewn battlefield) were telegraphed long in advance, so minefields could be laid, friendly troops provided with maps so they could move through mine-free corridors as long as the enemy was not yet upon them. There was also little doubt of who would be the defender and who the attacker.

And neither attacking side could concentrate artillery firepower to plow no-man's land in advance of an attack for days at the scale seen in WWI.

So mines became much more effective than they would have been at the Somme in 1916.

[1]: Speaking in WWI terms. Today there are mine-laying vehicles as well as artillery-delivered and air-dropped mines, either of which was not available -- to my knowledge -- in WWI.

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