The Battle of the Somme

PART ONE - A Military Tragedy?

Tragedy: ‘a sad, lamentable event; one causing or involving death and unhappiness’ (Webster’s Universal Dictionary).

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

Accounts:

Straightforward account   

First Day of the Somme - map with accounts of engagements. 

Account of the first day, and a day-by-day diary of the rest of the battle

BBC Animated map - helpful!

The Somme after 1 July - an account by Peter Simkins

Philip Gibbs account - the effect of the battle on the Germans

A death at the Somme

Pupils' essays:

Gemma Cheetham (9J)

Lucy Pollock (9J)

Special Studies:

Accrington Pals

Newfoundland Regiment

South Africans

Swavesey (inc map)

Irish Soldier 

Source Documents

The Somme

Film and Youtube

Watch clips of the film

Another video

Powerpoints

Mr Huggins' presentation on humour - ppt.

Planning the Battle

On 1st July 1916, Haig and Joffre planned a joint attack on the German lines near Bapaume (although Haig would have preferred to fight further north).  The action was designed to relieve some of the strain on the French at Verdun.  Haig was quite hopeful that it would break through the German lines and bring the Allies victory.   

This 1916 cartoon from the Daily Mirror – entitled ‘The Somme Punch’ – shows the Somme as the Kaiser’s nose.   

This map shows Haig’s plan – the army would break through the enemy lines, then the infantry and cavalry would sweep on past Bapaume. 

Artillery Bombardment

The attack was preceded by an eight-day artillery bombardment, in which 1537 British guns fired 1,723,873 rounds.  The sound of the bombardment could be heard in England. 

The aim of the bombardment was two-fold: firstly to kill the German soldiers and reduce them to shell-shocked chaos, secondly to destroy the German barbed wire. 

But the artillery failed.  The shells were not powerful enough to break down into the German dug-outs (which were up to 9 metres deep), and the shrapnel shells, which consisted merely of cases filled with ball-bearings, did not destroy any of the wire, but simply made it more tangled and impassable.   

The historian JM Bourne writes: ‘Rarely can so much effort have been expended to such little effect… Once the artillery failed, the infantry was doomed.’

1st July

Mines (tunnels) had been dug under the German trenches and packed with explosives.  At 7.28 am these were detonated just before the British attack, giving the Germans 2 minutes warning. 

Then, at 7.30 am, whistles were blown and the men went ‘over the top’.  Each man carried a gas mask, groundsheet, field dressings, trench spade, 150 rounds of ammunition and such extras as sandbags or a roll of barbed wire – up to 80 pounds of equipment.

Thinking that the Germans had been destroyed by the bombardment, and fearing that their inexperienced soldiers would become disorganised in a rush attack, the generals had ordered that the men should walk, in straight lines, across No Man’s Land.

They were slaughtered.  ‘They went down in their hundreds. You didn’t have to aim, we just fired into them,’ wrote one German machine-gunner.  One British battalion was unable to advance because it could not climb over the bodies of the dead and wounded blocking the way.  The British officers, ordered to carry only a pistol, and leading their troops by example, were easily marked out and shot – the result was chaos.  Even seasoned soldiers were shocked. 

At this point a British commander decided to detonate a mine which had failed to explode, burying his own men under a hail of rock and soil. 

Some British units captured enemy positions, but in the afternoon the Germans counter-attacked and recaptured most of the land they had lost.

Blackadder Goes Forth: Goodbyee gives a vivid impression of the slaughter involved in going ‘over the top’. The phrase is still used today to describe something excessively stupid. 

Casualties

British casualties on the first day were 20,000 dead and more than 35,000 wounded – ‘probably more than any army in any war on a single day’.  The British soldiers at the Somme were not conscripts – they were volunteers, who had flocked to join up in response to Kitchener’s ‘Your country needs you’ poster.  In the First World War, men from the same town served together in the same regiment; now they were killed together.  Friends and brothers died side by side, and towns lost all their young men in the same battle. 

Despite the setback of the first day, Haig – in his HQ in the château at Valvion, 50 miles behind the lines – was still confident.  He continued the attacks for 4 more months.  He made a major attack, following the same plan, and with the same results, in September. 

A wounded man is rushed to the Forward Dressing Post.  Half an hour later, he was dead. 

Consequences

By August, questions were beginning to be asked – Lloyd George lost confidence in Haig.  At home, there was grief and horror.  A propaganda film – designed to encourage support for the war by showing the public what the men were going through – was well-received by many people as a 'glimpse of what our soldiers are doing and daring and suffering in Picardy'(The Times).  But not everyone welcomed it; one wounded soldier had to be led hysterical from the cinema, and one woman, after a stunned silence, shrieked out: ‘They’re dying!’  Nevertheless, the film was seen by 20 million people in Britain, as well as world-wide. 

At the front, also, morale began to fall.   Soldiers were shot for ‘cowardice’, but bravery was pointless.  The British troops reached the limit of their endurance. 

Only on 18 November, as winter set in, did the battle grind to a halt.  Bapaume had not been captured.  Only 6 miles of ground had been taken.  Estimates of casualties vary widely: most historians put British casualties at about 420,000, French somewhere between 154,000 and 204,000, and Germans' anywhere from 270,000 (Winston Churchill) to 600,000 (the British official history, which had added 27% to the calculated figure for 'woundings').  15 divisions of the 52 engaged in the battle lost their entire infantry strength.  At the end of the battle, British and French forces had advanced 10 km at the cost of 42 British casualties per metre.

Lloyd George called the battle of the Somme: ‘The most gigantic, tenacious, grim, futile and bloody fight ever waged in the history or war’.   

PART TWO - Was the Somme a Victory for the British Army?

Victory: 'the overcoming of an enemy or antagonist; achievement of mastery or success in a struggle against odds or difficulties’
Success: 'favorable or desired outcome’ (Webster’s Universal Dictionary).

Source C

This poster shows a caricature of Haig, with the words: ‘Your Country Needs Me… like a hole in the head – which is what most of you are going to get’.
(Although it appeared ina GCSE exam paper, and was said to be taken from a book: General Haig’s Private War, nobody has been able to track down the image or book ever since!  If this is a modern fake, does that destroy its validity?)

Source E

British soldiers with two German prisoners at the Somme.  Does this picture prove Haig’s claim that ‘the German soldiers are now practically beaten men’?

Source F

Tanks were used for the first time at the battle of the Somme.  However, they had serious problems, and did not bring the hoped-for breakthrough.

What did Haig think?

Haig was unperturbed by the losses on the Somme, even though he lost the support of Lloyd George.  He had the confidence of the king, and there was no-one to replace him.  Even so, he felt the need to defend himself.  In December he reported to the Cabinet what he claimed the battle had achieved:

To a degree, Haig was correct. There is evidence that the Germans were disheartened by the Battle of the Somme:   

1. Captain von Hentig, a member of the German general staff is said to have called the Somme "the muddy grave of the German field army and of the faith in the infallibility of German leadership" (though no one can actually find where he said it);

2. General Ludendorff admitted that "we were completely exhausted";

3. In December 1916 the German and Austro-Hungarians proposed beginning peace negotiations (the Allies rejected this);

4. After February 1917 the Germans withdrew to the more easily defensible 'Hindenburg Line' of trenches.

So it can be argued that, although they did not give ground during the battle, the Germans from that moment on knew they could not win the war.

15 ideas to help you consider the question

1. “Students need to move away from the disastrous first day and see the battle in its wider context.”  (AQA lesson advice)

2. Australian historians Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson (2005) found that the colossal rate of infantry casualties in fact resulted from inadequate fire support and tactical mistakes: “Hundreds of thousands of soldiers died for a cause that lacked both a coherent military plan and responsible political leadership”.

3.  “Losses were huge, yet the battle started the process that led to an historic victory for the British.”  (Robert Fry, Deputy Commanding General during the warin Iraq, 2016)

4. “Allied success was limited; the British ‘Kitchener’ Army had developed as a fighting force, Commonwealth forces had distinguished themselves, the front line had advanced some six miles on a twelve mile front, and the Germans had been forced to divert troops away from Verdun.  But no breakthrough had been achieved, the German fighting spirit had not been broken, and they too had learnt lessons.”  (The British Government website, ‘Reflections on the Somme’)

5. British historian William Philpott (2009) argued that we need to see the battle in its wider context, as a complete three-empire encounter: “The Somme, rather than the sacrificial and wasteful bloodbath, in fact constituted an Allied victory.  The French Army waged the Somme battle successfully, and under the tutelage of French General Ferdinand Foch, the British Army, bloodied but unbowed, developed into a capable fighting force.  The mobilization of their empires assured them of the ability to continue this war of attrition.  The German Army, by contrast, suffered irreplaceable casualties and a blow to its morale from which it never recovered”.

6. “The romance of chivalric warfare died at the Somme, which was what the Germans called Materialschlact, a battle of materials more than men. Land seized mattered less than the slow exhaustion of a nation’s material and human resources, civilians as well as soldiers.  (American historian George Will, 2021)

7. AJ Coates (1997), former Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Reading, found the concept of an attritional war morally revolting: “Here is a method of warfare that has as its deliberate aim the mass expenditure of men and material.  It is a dehumanized view of war according to which war is seen as an industrial and mechanical process in which the distinction between the human and the material element is systematically suppressed….  The policy of attrition serves as a blank cheque...  What the policy of attrition does is to throw the weight of the moral argument on the ends rather than means”.

8. “The battle provided a tough lesson in how to fight a large-scale war.  A more professional and effective army emerged from the battle.  And the tactics developed there, including the use of tanks and creeping barrages, laid some of the foundations of the Allies’ successes in 1918.”  (National Army Museum website)

9. “The offensive did have the effect of significantly draining Germany's manpower reserves, and combined with the failure at Verdun and the results of the Brusilov Offensive, it led to the adoption of the Hindenburg Armaments Programme that ultimately exhausted Germany's coal and steel production, in addition to placing greater strain on civilian morale due to the adoption of conscription on the home front for vital war industries...  So at the strategic level, the Somme was a key moment in shifting the initiative towards the Allied Powers in 1916-17…  It wasn't a suicide mission or a defeat, but it did come at a high human cost, and the early hopes that it might produce a breakthrough were certainly unfounded.  (‘Dux Belisarius’ on Reddit, 2019)

10.  “Any gains in military efficiency were a consequence of the battle and not the reason for fighting it…  The Battle of the Somme had to be fought, but to attempt to justify it on the grounds that the British army was all the better for it and that that somehow makes the cost in blood and treasure a price worth paying, is to stretch a point.”  (Retired soldier/ military attaché Jack Sheldon, 2005)

11. In his book Into the Breach (2016) the military historian Hugh Sebag-Montefiore argued that “turning our focus to stories of the front line – to acts of heroism and moments of both terror and triumph … reveals the Somme campaign in all its glory as well as its misery, helping us to realize that there are many meaningful ways to define a battle”.

12. Nigel Biggar, Professor of Moral Theology at Oxford University, argued (2018) that “a very large number of casualties is not in itself disproportionate” if the battle is just and necessary, and the tactics are not “inefficient in the spending of lives”, and concluded: “attrition can sometimes be the most efficient way of fighting”.

13. British military historian Gary Sheffield (2003): “For the Allies, the Somme was not a ‘victory’ in the traditional sense, but it was a success.  Moreover it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Battle of the Somme was an essential precondition to the Allied victory of 1918… the Battle of the Somme was not a victory in itself but without it the Entente would not have emerged victorious in 1918.”

14. American historian Jay Winter (2006) noticed how war museums often focus on national memory, and ignore the contributions of other countries: “The challenge for the future is to rectify these omissions, and to extend our gaze not only spatially but also in time, to the way the shadow of war has fallen on later conflicts and later generations.”

15. In 1991 British historian David Stevenson pointed out that: “Without the war it is unlikely that either Lenin, or Mussolini, or even Hitler, would have come to office”.   So was the outcome of the war of attrition a disaster long-term – a strategy of fighting Germany to destruction that was in the end to create Nazism and a Second World War?   Should/could the Allies have made peace in December 1916, instead?