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NOW: Ukraine and Russia are locked in a bloody, frustrating trench war, stalemated for years after the attempt to blitz through to Kyiv during Russia’s initial invasion was thrown back by the sacrifice of thousands of Ukrainian troops.

THEN: On this day 110 years ago, French and British forces along the Marne River were suffering through arguably the most important battle of World War I – an early clash that saved Paris and broke the German war plan but also ushered in the horrors of trench warfare.

The Great Retreat: The war began with disaster for the Anglo-French Entente. The aggressive French pre-war plan to strike into the heavily fortified German positions along their frontier had shattered against the macabre realities of industrialized warfare. Nearly 330,000 French soldiers were killed or wounded between Aug. 6 and Sept. 5 as the Germans rebuffed the strike and swept across Belgium and Luxembourg (the infamous Schlieffen Plan). They bottled up the tiny Belgian army before slamming into the small British Expeditionary Force at Mons, who fought hard but were forced to retreat because the French collapse left their flank unguarded.

The 1st and 2nd German armies then marched headlong toward Paris, and the French government departed for Bordeaux, expecting a prolonged siege. But the ferocity of the German advance concealed serious vulnerabilities: they were outpacing their supplies and their lines of communication were breaking just as generals were shifting plans on the ground. So severe was the dysfunction that Germany's top general, the infamously neurotic Helmuth von Moltke, issued no orders to the fighting armies during the six days of battle that began on Sept. 6.