Jason Pontin, Editor in Chief and Publisher. Credit: Mark Ostow

On November 20, 1917, at the Battle of Cambrai, a new technology was used successfully for the first time. In a plan conceived by a young British staff officer named J. F. C. Fuller, hundreds of tanks advanced on astonished German trenches. The gains of the British Army were soon lost, but within the year Fuller had planned the tank operations at the Battle of Amiens. There, British tanks broke through the German lines and were followed by Allied infantry, who held the ground thus taken. The Battle of Amiens ended the stalemate of trench warfare and led to the end of the First World War.

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