Somme: Battle of the Somme

“The Battle of the Somme (French: Bataille de la Somme, German: Schlacht an der Somme), also known as the Somme Offensive, was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on both sides of the upper reaches of the River Somme in France. The battle was intended to hasten a victory for the Allies and was the largest battle of the First World War on the Western Front.  More than one million men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history.

The French and British had committed themselves to an offensive on the Somme during Allied discussions at Chantilly, Oise, in December 1915. The Allies agreed upon a strategy of combined offensives against the Central Powers in 1916, by the French, Russian, British and Italian armies, with the Somme offensive as the Franco-British contribution. Initial plans called for the French army to undertake the main part of the Somme offensive, supported on the northern flank by the Fourth Army of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). When the Imperial German Army began the Battle of Verdun on the Meuseon 21 February 1916, French commanders diverted many of the divisions intended for the Somme and the “supporting” attack by the British became the principal effort.

The first day on the Somme (1 July) saw a serious defeat for the German Second Army, which was forced out of its first position by the French Sixth Army, from Foucaucourt-en-Santerre south of the Somme to Maricourt on the north bank and by the Fourth Army from Maricourt to the vicinity of the Albert–Bapaume road. The first day on the Somme was, in terms of casualties, also the worst day in the history of the British army, which suffered 57,470 casualties. These occurred mainly on the front between the Albert–Bapaume road and Gommecourt, where the attack was defeated and few British troops reached the German front line. The British troops on the Somme comprised a mixture of the remains of the pre-war regular army; the Territorial Force; and Kitchener’s Army, a force of volunteer recruits including many Pals’ Battalions, recruited from the same places and occupations.

The battle is notable for the importance of air power and the first use of the tank. At the end of the battle, British and French forces had penetrated 10 km (6 mi) into German-occupied territory, taking more ground than in any of their offensives since the Battle of the Marne in 1914. The Anglo-French armies failed to capture Péronne and halted 5 km (3 mi) from Bapaume, where the German armies maintained their positions over the winter. British attacks in the Ancre valley resumed in January 1917 and forced the Germans into local withdrawals to reserve lines in February, before the scheduled retirement to the Siegfriedstellung (Hindenburg Line) began in March. Debate continues over the necessity, significance and effect of the battle.”

[Source: Wikipedia]

Battle of Verdun Feb 21 – Dec 18, 1916

Brusilov Offensive June 4 – September 20, 1916

First day on the Somme July 1, 1916

Battle of Albert July 1 – 13, 1916

Battle of Bazentin Bridge July 14 – 17, 1916

Battle of Fromelles July 19 – 20, 1916

Battle of Melville Wood July 14 – September 15

Battle of Pozieres Ridge July 23 – August 7, 1916

Battle of Guillemont September 3 – 6, 1916

Battle of Ginchy September 9, 1916

Battle of Flers-Courcelette September 15 – 22, 1916

Battle of Morval September 25 – 28, 1916

Battle of the Transloy Ridges October 1 – November 11, 1916

Battle of Thiepval Ridge September 26 – 28, 1916

Battle of the Ancre Heights October 1 – November 11, 1916

Battle of the Ancre November 13 – 18, 1916

Analysis

“At the start of 1916, most of the British Army had been an inexperienced and patchily trained mass of volunteers. The Somme was the debut of the Kitchener Army created by Lord Kitchener’s call for recruits at the start of the war. The British volunteers were often the fittest, most enthusiastic and best educated citizens but British casualties were also inexperienced soldiers and it has been claimed that their loss was of lesser military significance than the losses of the remaining peace-trained officers and men of the German army. British casualties on the first day were the worst in the history of the British army, with 57,470 British casualties, 19,240 of whom were killed.

British survivors of the battle had gained experience and the BEF learned how to conduct the mass industrial warfare, which the continental armies had been fighting since 1914. The continental powers had begun the war with trained armies of regulars and reservists, which were wasting assets. Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria wrote, “What remained of the old first-class peace-trained German infantry had been expended on the battlefield”. A war of attrition was a logical strategy for Britain against Germany, which was also at war with France and Russia. A school of thought holds that the Battle of the Somme placed unprecedented strain on the German army and that after the battle it was unable to replace casualties like-for-like, which reduced it to a militia.

The destruction of German units in battle was made worse by lack of rest. British and French aircraft and long-range guns reached well behind the front-line, where trench-digging and other work meant that troops returned to the line exhausted. Despite the strategic predicament of the German army, it survived the battle, withstood the pressure of the Brusilov Offensive, and conducted an invasion of Romania. In 1917, the German army in the west survived the large British and French offensives of the Nivelle Offensive and the Third Battle of Ypres, though at great cost.

Falkenhayn was sacked and replaced by Hindenburg and Ludendorff at the end of August 1916. At a conference at Cambrai on 5 September, a decision was taken to build a new defensive line well behind the Somme front. The Siegfriedstellung was to be built from Arras to St. Quentin, La Fère and Condé, with another new line between Verdun and Pont-à-Mousson. These lines were intended to limit any Allied breakthrough and to allow the German army to withdraw if attacked; work began on the Siegfriedstellung (Hindenburg Line) at the end of September. Withdrawing to the new line was not an easy decision and the German high command struggled over it during the winter of 1916–1917. Some members wanted to take a shorter step back, to a line between Arras and Sailly, while the First and Second army commanders wanted to stay on the Somme. Generalleutnant von Fuchs on 20 January 1917 said that,

Enemy superiority is so great that we are not in a position either to fix their forces in position or to prevent them from launching an offensive elsewhere. We just do not have the troops…. We cannot prevail in a second battle of the Somme with our men; they cannot achieve that any more. (20 January 1917)

— Hermann von Kuhl

and that half measures were futile, retreating to the Siegfriedstellung was unavoidable. After the loss of a considerable amount of ground around the Ancre valley to the British Fifth Army in February 1917, the German armies on the Somme were ordered on 14 February, to withdraw to reserve lines closer to Bapaume. A further retirement to the Hindenburg Line (Siegfriedstellung) in Operation Alberich began on 16 March 1917, despite the new line being unfinished and poorly sited in some places.

The British and French had advanced about 6 mi (9.7 km) on the Somme, on a front of 16 mi (26 km) at a cost of 419,654 to 432,000 British and about 200,000 French casualties, against 465,181 to 500,000 or perhaps even 600,000German casualties. Until the 1930s the dominant view of the battle in English-language writing was that the battle was a hard-fought victory against a brave, experienced and well-led opponent. Winston Churchill had objected to the way the battle was being fought in August 1916, Lloyd George when Prime Minister criticised attrition warfare frequently and condemned the battle in his post-war memoirs. In the 1930s a new orthodoxy of “mud, blood and futility” emerged and gained more emphasis in the 1960s when the 50th anniversaries of the Great War battles were commemorated.

Casualties

The Battle of the Somme was one of the costliest battles of World War I. The original Allied estimate of casualties on the Somme, made at the Chantilly Conference on 15 November 1916, was 485,000 British and French casualties and 630,000 German. A German officer wrote,

Somme. The whole history of the world cannot contain a more ghastly word.

— Friedrich Steinbrecher

In 1931, Wendt published a comparison of German and British-French casualties which showed an average of 30% more Allied casualties to German losses on the Somme.In the first 1916 volume of the British Official History (1932), J. E. Edmonds wrote that comparisons of casualties were inexact, because of different methods of calculation by the belligerents but that British casualties were 419,654, from total British casualties in France in the period of 498,054, French Somme casualties were 194,451 and German casualties were c. 445,322, to which should be added 27% for woundings, which would have been counted as casualties using British criteria; Anglo-French casualties on the Somme were over 600,000 and German casualties were under 600,000.

The addition by Edmonds of c. 30 percent to German figures, to make them comparable to British criteria, was criticised as “spurious” by M. J. Williams in 1964. McRandle and Quirk in 2006 cast doubt on the Edmonds calculations, but counted 729,000 German casualties on the Western Front from July to December against 631,000 by Churchill, concluding that German losses were fewer than Anglo-French casualties, but the ability of the German army to inflict disproportionate losses had been eroded by attrition. Sheffield wrote that the calculation by Edmonds of Anglo-French casualties was correct but the one for German casualties was discredited, quoting the official German figure of 500,000 casualties. In the second 1916 volume of the British Official History (1938), Miles wrote that total German casualties in the battle were 660,000–680,000. against Anglo-French casualties of fewer than 630,000, using “fresh data” from the French and German official accounts.

In 1938, Churchill wrote that the Germans had suffered 270,000 casualties against the French, between February and June 1916 and 390,000 between July and the end of the year (see statistical tables in Appendix J of Churchill’s World Crisis) with 278,000 casualties at Verdun. Some losses must have been in quieter sectors but many must have been inflicted by the French at the Somme. Churchill wrote that Franco-German losses at the Somme, were “much less unequal” than the Anglo-German ratio. During the Battle of the Somme German forces suffered 537,919 casualties, of which 338,011 losses were inflicted by the French and 199,908 losses by the British. In turn German forces inflicted 794,238 casualties on the Entente.Doughty wrote that French losses on the Somme were “surprisingly high” at 202,567 men, 54% of the 377,231 casualties at Verdun. Prior and Wilson used Churchill’s research and wrote that the British lost 432,000 soldiers from 1 July – mid-November (c. 3,600 per day) in inflicting c. 230,000 German casualties and offer no figures for French casualties or the losses they inflicted on the Germans. Sheldon wrote that the British lost “over 400,000″ casualties. Harris wrote that total British losses were c. 420,000, French casualties were over 200,000 men and German losses were c. 500,000, according to the “best” German sources. Sheffield wrote that the losses were “appalling”, with 419,000 British casualties, c. 204,000 French and perhaps 600,000 German casualties.

In a commentary on the debate about Somme casualties, Philpott used Miles’s figures of 419,654 British casualties and the French official figures of 154,446 Sixth Army losses and 48,131 Tenth Army casualties. German losses were described as “disputed”, ranging from 400,000–680,000. Churchill’s claims were a “snapshot” of July 1916 and not representative of the rest of the battle. Philpott called the “blood test” a crude measure compared to manpower reserves, industrial capacity, farm productivity and financial resources and that intangible factors were more influential on the course of the war. The German army was exhausted by the end of 1916, with loss of morale and the cumulative effects of attrition and frequent defeats causing it to collapse in 1918, a process which began on the Somme, echoing Churchill that the German soldiery was never the same again.”