@ABWorsham:
Had the Germans been able to finish off the Belgian, French and British units in western Belgium and capture the Channel Ports of Nieuport, Dunkirk and Calais would the war have played out different?
“The Race to the Sea” is a bit of a misnomer because the opposing forces weren’t actually trying to get to the sea; they were trying to outflank each other. This kept failing because, each time one side tried to make a flanking move to the north, it collided against an enemy force trying to do the same thing. Had one side actually succeeded in outflanking the other, the flanked force could potentially have been destroyed or compelled to pull back its line (as happened at the First Battle of the Marne). Instead, they simply ran out of ground when they got to the English Channel, where no further flanking was possible.
