'Why was the battle of the Somme regarded as such a military tragedy?'

History Coursework

Haig

By Adam Marriott

Question 1

‘Why was the battle of the Somme regarded as such a military tragedy?’

Verdun was a fortified French garrison town on the River Meuse 200km east of Paris. In December 1915, General Erich von Falkenhayn, Chief of Staff of the German Army, decided to attack Verdun. Although he admitted he would be unable to break through at these points on the Western Front, he argued that in defending Verdun, the Germans would "bleed the French army white". The German attack on Verdun started on 21st February 1916. A million troops, led by Prince Wilhelm, faced about 200,000 French defenders. The following day the French was forced to retreat to their second line of trenches. By 24th February the French had moved back to the third line and were only 8km from Verdun. On 24th February, General Henri Philippe Petain was appointed commander Verdun. He gave orders that no more withdrawals would take place. He arranged for every spare French soldier to Verdun. Of the 330 infantry regiments of the French Army, 259 fought at Verdun. The German advance was stopped at the end of February. On the 6th March, the German Fifth Army launched a new attack at Verdun. The Germans advanced 2m before they were stopped at Mort Homme Hill. The French held this point until the Germans finally invaded it on 29th May. Further attacks continued throughout the summer and early autumn. However, the scale of the German attacks was reduced by the need to transfer troops to defend their front-line at the Somme. Verdun ended on the 18th December. The French Army lost 550,000 men at Verdun. It is estimated that the German Army suffered 434,000 casualties.

After the disastrous battle of Verdun led by the French commander in chief Joseph Joffre a new battle was to be devised to divert the German attack to the river Somme. The battle of the Somme was one of the most famous battles in World War 1 because of the human tragedies and shear disaster of the battle. Joseph Joffre who led many other attacks to break the Western Front originally devised the battle of the Somme to divert the German attack. He asked General, Sir Douglas Haig to lead the British troops in battle. General Haig was the commander ...

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So why was the Somme regarded as such a military tragedy? We can start this by going straight to the core of the problem the field marshal. Field Marshal Haig was the commander of the battle of the Somme many historians believe that it was his tactics that led to so many deaths and casualties. What were his tactics? He believed in wearing the Germans down at all costs, his primary tactic was to take enemy trenches and push the German army back. However, this was no to be the case. The battle of the Somme was regarded as a Trench warfare battle, Haig used hundreds of men at a time to go over the top of trenches and run across no mans land to capture German trenches. This was not as easy as it sounds, while the Allied Soldiers ran across no mans land aiming towards capturing the German trenches they were being bombarded by hundreds of machine guns and being obliterated by hundreds of explosive shells from the German artillery. This cost the British army to lose hundreds of thousands of men.

Another problem was our firepower; we had more artillery power over the Germans however, we did not have the equipment the Germans had. We fired thousands of artillery shells with great accuracy. However, the actual shells that we were firing did not explode on impact, in fact only one third of all shells fired exploded on impact. We also didn’t have the power to destroy heavily fortified bunkers that contained ammo and other resources that the Germans needed. We even used tanks that outnumbered the Germans, but our tanks were extremely unreliable and were not suited for trench warfare. What often happened with our tanks was they would breakdown and get blown up by German Artillery or get stuck in the mud of trenches. Our firepower contributed to our weaknesses that the Germans exploited considerably.

Our soldiers also contributed to the tragedy of the Somme. Most of our experienced troops were blasted by Haig’s tactics of mass amounts of troops begin sent to capture German trenches. This led to many reinforcements of new inexperienced soldiers, this led to more casualties and the overall professionalism became very low and the advance began to die. The morale of the soldiers became lower and lower as each day went on, more and more soldiers were trying to get a ‘blighty one’ which meant an injury to prevent them from fighting therefore them going home. More and more soldiers were being shot for not obeying orders and more soldiers were committing to prevent themselves from being killed by the Germans. Soldiers were losing friends and people that they knew by the day and many soldiers lost the will to fight. This was one of the main factors that contributed to the tragedy of the Somme.

As you cant see by looking at this diagram that we only gained an average of five miles from where the battle had started. A three month campaign that gained five miles this seriously damaged the morale of the soldiers and the Generals trust in Haig. When other generals saw this they began to question Haig’s tactics and the way he was treating the soldiers. Haig’s tactics were regarded as the tragedy of the battle of the Somme.

Why didn’t we capture more land? Well we would have captured far more land if the communication was better when we captured German trenches we may have been able to gain more trenches. However, this was not the case, we captured loads of German trenches at one point but we didn’t have the manpower to send more troops to defend the trenches that we had captured. We didn’t have the communication to request reinforcements for captured trenches and we didn’t have the resources to defend the trenches that we captured. This resulted in a yo-yo effect; while we were pushing and capturing German trenches the Germans were bombarding the newly captured trenches and capturing them back.

Through all the gloom and doom of the battle of the Somme there were some plus points at the end of the battle we had sorely weakened the German army and we had worn down the German morale. Historians believe that the German army was never the same.

To conclude even though the battle of the Somme was a military success the lead up to the success endured many tragedies. With 60,000 British casualties and 20,000 dead on the first day and 420,000 dead with 190,000 French dead people could say it was the most costly battles in history. However, with 650,000 Germans dead people may also say it wasn’t such a tragedy after all.