I feel that the British politicians just wanted to show the world that they had not only the best Navy (already undisputed) but also the best Army in the whole world. In the years before The Great War there was a lot of rivalry between the British and German nations, both nations thought that theirs was the strongest.
If the British had entered the war at a later date then they would have been able to have a landing like the one in D-Day 1944 and smash through Western Europe. This would have been possible because once capturing France the Germans would have moved most of their forces into the Eastern Front thus leaving France not as well defended. The British could then attack them and could have made a quick advance to Germany. The British would have had another advantage, because the French and Russians would have given the Germans heavy casualties. The British army would also have been extremely well prepared with all the modern tactics, weapons and training and (in theory) they would have been unstoppable.
The British Generals had nothing like this advantage and were always going to face an uphill challenge against the Germans. The British always had to attack because of all the pressure that the politicians were piling onto them. Whereas the Germans were content with the ground that they had and, as they didn’t necessarily need to attack, they were able to make excellent defences. The German trenches were so advanced that some even had electricity, piped water, and beds in the tunnels that sometimes reached fifty metres deep. This meant that when the British generals ordered the huge artillery bombardment in The Somme, the Germans took little casualties. This meant that on the morning of July 1st 1916 when the British forces “went over the top”, walking slowly, expecting there to be none if any German opposition, they were simply mowed down by the German machine guns that came out from their tunnels. The Germans were amazed by the thousands of British men who literally were walking to their deaths.
After the battle the British public found out for the first time the real, horrific details of the war. The politicians were in a tight spot so they shifted all the blame onto the generals and censored the fact that some divisions actually achieved their objectives.
The worst part of the politicians scapegoating was the fact that even eighty years after the battle, the British public still blame the generals and call them names like “The Butchers of The Somme”.
In my opinion this isn’t fair as the British Generals were put into their predicament by the politicians who got them into the war anyway. Is it worth all those millions of lives just to show that you are better than someone else ?
