Stalemate developed along the Western Front because they tactics of offensive warfare had not developed while the technology of defensive warfare had.
The invention of the machine gun, especially, had made it so that headlong charges of masses of soldiers were suicidal. But the heads of the armies had not figured out any ways to attack that did not involve frontal assaults.
Because of this, they got bogged down in the trenches with no way to maneuver around the enemy and no way to break through the enemy.
You could also argue that the stalemate happened because the Germans did not put enough faith in the Schlieffen Plan. But I think it is more an issue of not having enough offensive tactics and mobility to avoid the stalemate.
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