The Battle of the Somme
Over 17 million people were killed in the First World War, the impact it had on the old empires and the politics of the world was enormous. The immediate cause of World War 1 was the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his pregnant wife Sophie. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was the nephew of Emperor Franz Josef and heir to the throne of Austria and Hungary. The assassination was planned by a Serbian terrorist group, called The Black Hand and the man who shot Franz Ferdinand and his wife was a Bosnian revolutionary named Gavrilo Princip.
However, there were many other causes for the start of World War 1. Before WW1 was triggered, a number of defence alliances existed between the major European countries. What this meant was that if one country declared war on another, the other countries would also have to enter the conflict because it was in the treaty they agreed.
Britain, France, Ireland and Russia were part of an alliance called the Triple Entente, while Germany aligned itself with Austria-Hungary, known as the Central Powers. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28th June 1914, triggered a chain of events that resulted in World War 1.
After the assassination, Austria-Hungary threatened war on Serbia. They set out some very harsh demands that Serbia must meet. Germany sided with Austria-Hungary, while Russia sided with the Serbians. At this point, Europe was on the brink of going to war.
One month after the Archduke’s assassination, on July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia with the backing of Germany. Germany then declared war on Russia on August 1, and on France on August 3.
On August 4, 1914, German troops marched on France and the route they took went through Belgium. Since Britain had agreed to maintain the neutrality of Belgium, they immediately declared war on Germany. British and Germany's forces first fought at the Battle of Mons in Belgium. This was the first of many battles between Britain and Germany on the Western Front and is when World War 1 started for Britain.
In 1914, France, Britain, and Russia (the Allies) formed an alliance against Germany and Austria-Hungary (the Central Powers). Other countries decided to join one side or the other, depending on which they thought would benefit them the most. Germany was joined by Turkey and Bulgaria. The Allies were joined by Italy, Japan, Greece, Portugal, and Romania. Later on, in 1917, America entered the war on the side of the Allies.
Fought between July and November 1916, the Battle of the Somme was one of the defining events of the First World War and the largest battle on the western front. It saw over one million wounded, killed or missing on both sides of the battlefield, affecting the lives of millions more back home.
The first day of the 141-day campaign, July 1, 1916, was and still is the deadliest day in the history of the British Army. Almost 20,000 British Empire soldiers lost their lives in just 24 hours. As well as being the deadliest battle of the 1914-1918 conflict, it was also one of the bloodiest battles in human history. Only the German clashes with Russia during the Second World War caused more deaths.
The battle was between Allied forces of France and Britain against the German Empire. It took place near the River Somme in northern France, equidistant from Paris, Calais and the Belgian border. This was part of the Western front, the fault-line where German soldiers were being held back from their attempts to invade France.
The British Army, led by the controversial Field Marshal Douglas Haig, was assisted by thousands of soldiers from elsewhere in the Empire, including Australia, India, New Zealand and Canada. The battle was planned to end months of deadlock on the Western Front, breakthrough Germany lines and also relieve pressure on the French forces at Verdun, a nearby town that had been under siege.
Laden with heavy kit, the British infantry began their laborious advance at 7:30 am on July 1 following a week of intense artillery bombardment of German positions from the village of Serre to Maricourt which had intended to annihilate enemy forces. There was a belief that following this bombardment, troops would take a safe stroll across no-man's land to trenches the Allies thought would be empty, but German defences were far better than they had anticipated.
German troops had hidden safely in deep dugouts during shelling the previous week and emerged quickly, catching the Allies by surprise and shooting them down in vast numbers. In the first 24 hours, there were 57,470 casualties (including 19,240 men killed), just under half the total engaged. Most men were killed in the first few minutes.
The Battle of the Somme continued for another 140 days as Britain's attempts to consolidate its gains quickly degenerated into a series of bloody piecemeal fights for scraps of wood and village.
After the opening assault, the next major set-piece attack was at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette in September, known as the debut of the tank in modern warfare. The last major battle was at the Ancre in October. On both sides ill-prepared and poorly-equipped units were thrown into the fight, causing terrible casualties, including an average British casualty rate of 3,000 a day.
Finally, winter weather brought it all to a sodden halt and the Battle of the Somme officially ended on November 18. The net gain was a strip of land 20 miles wide and six miles deep. The Battle of the Somme is seen by many as a failure because of the huge number of casualties compared to the small advance made in German-held areas.
The leadership of General Haig has also been criticised, with some historians calling him a "butcher", although he was seen by many as a hero at the end of the war. Other historians believe the battle was a strategic victory and an important step towards Allied victory in 1918. It achieved its narrow objective of relieving pressure on the French at Verdun.
It also led the exhausted and demoralised Germans to abandon any hope of a land breakthrough and resort instead to unrestricted submarine warfare, a fateful decision which soon brought the USA into the war.
There are a number of reasons why the battle was so devastating, including leadership, strategy, poor conditions in the trenches and the attritional nature of warfare as it was during the First World War. A lot of people died on both sides whatever generals did.
One of the central problems was the depth and quality of the German defences. British artillery was of low quality, among the millions of shells fired only a tiny proportion were capable of penetrating deep bunkers, and many did not even manage to cut the barbed wire which protected the German trenches.
Moreover, the intricate Somme battle plan involved rigid, detailed schedules for the artillery, each barrage precisely timed to move ahead of the infantry's anticipated advance. Without effective radio communication, these plans were not adjusted, leaving soldiers to fend for themselves while the artillery moved on without them. Such problems were endemic many infantry units did actually capture German trenches but were surrounded, killed or forced to retreat because they were not reinforced.
British officers were criticised for being distant and disconnected during the conflict, and the Somme was a tragic example of this. Many soldiers resented the "staff" officers who worked from behind the lines.
But there were also thousands of line officers who led their men from the front, often carrying only a revolver or even just a swagger stick. In the course of the war, Britain lost 12 percent of its ordinary soldiers, but 17 percent of its officers. A small dominion, Newfoundland, now part of Canada, suffered 90 percent losses to their 2,000 strong force on the opening day of the battle.
This was equivalent to one in ten people from the entire dominion, or one in five men. Several British "pals battalions", units made up of people all from the same local areas, suffered losses that were devastating for their communities at home, including the Lancashire town of Accrington which lost 303 men on the first day of the offensive.
The Battle of the Somme ended any slim hope that one "Big Push" could break the deadlock of trench warfare. And over the next five decades, it became, rightly or wrongly, the defining symbol of the First World War, a symbol of horror, stupidity, and futility.
That meaning began to crystalise as soon as the guns stopped. Soldier after soldier later wrote or testified that this was the day their faith in their cause and in the competence of their superiors disintegrated. Many said they had no other word for it but "murder". The "Big Push" became known as the "Great F*** Up."
Initially, the public saw the Somme as a hard-fought victory and General Haig as a hero. But slowly a more pessimistic narrative bubbled up through the memoirs of old soldiers and the provocations of modernist writers and artists.
In 1928, the war poet Edmund Blunden wrote, "By the end of the day both sides had seen, in a sad scrawl of broken earth and murdered men, the answer to the question. No road, no Thoroughfare. Neither race had won, nor could win, the War. The War had won, and would go on winning." A German officer, Friedrich Steinbrecher, put it more succinctly, "Somme. The whole history of the world cannot contain a more ghastly word."
Today, rightly or wrongly, the Somme provides the pattern for how we remember the whole war. Its key moments, the charge "over the top", the waves of men cut down, the stupid optimism and the shattering disillusion, are the central images of the conflict.
Made by the War Office as a public information film for the home front, "The Battle of the Somme" featured real footage from the war. The film broke box office records and in autumn 1916 nearly half the population of the UK watched it at the cinema. The most powerful scene, depicting British soldiers going over the top to face the Germans, was reconstructed behind the lines. The film had a huge impact on British audiences. Seeing the horror of industrial warfare for the first time imbued the British public with a determination to see the conflict through to the end.
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