Why is The Battle of the Somme regarded as such a great military tragedy?

Authors Avatar

Q1. Why is The Battle of the Somme regarded as such a great military tragedy?

The first battle of the Somme was a planned, British offensive against German positions, lead by Field Marshell Sir Douglas Haig. The military objective for the conflict was to relieve pressure on the beleaguered French forces, caught up in a war of attrition with the Germans, which were close to breaking point at Verdun. In attacking German forces along the river Somme and divert their attention away from the French, Haig believed he could break the enemy by punching a hole through their line, using massive force and large numbers of troops.

Haig’s strategy was two fold, start by heavily bombarding German positions with artillery, then send in the infantry to clear out the enemy’s positions and secure the territory. He started the offensive on 23rd June 1916 with an eight day artillery barrage on the German lines. The intention was to ‘soften up’ the enemy’s front line and kill as many Germans as possible. However Haig underestimated how well the enemy had dug in and the strength of the German defensive position, an oversight which had dire consequences once the initial barrage was over.

The tragedy truly started to unfold in the second phase of Haig’s offensive. Once the preliminary bombardment was over, he ordered his men to go ‘over the top’, leaving their dugout and advance toward the enemy line. The Germans who had survived deep in their bunkers were ready for them and massacred the advancing forces with machine guns and rifle fire. In the first day alone 60,000 British troops lay dead because they followed orthodox but outdated orders from a general who had failed to realize that the rules and tactics of war were changing.

The battle raged on until November with British casualties eventually numbering 420,000. Public opinion for the war began to waver as people became war weary and the loss to the country took its toll. Britain eventually won the battle but the cost to the country was enormous, in some towns there were no young men left, all having died in pal’s battalions. The tactics of warfare had begun to change during the Somme with a shift towards strong defensive positions not offensive might. Haig’s style of strategic leadership was a throwback to an earlier time and as a consequence many thousands of men needlessly lost their life.

Join now!

The battle of the Somme did achieve militarily what it set out to do. It took the pressure off the French forces embattled near Verdun, the longest and bloodiest battle of the whole war. Had the Germans won their war of attrition with the French at Verdun, then Somme would truly have become terrible waste of human life. For all the mistakes made and the horror that the Somme invoked, it was a battle we needed to win. Haig using foolhardy, outmoded tactics won the battle and ultimately influenced the outcome of the war as a whole. The tragedy ...

This is a preview of the whole essay