Constant shelling and the ever-present threat of a gas attack caused great psychological hardship amongst soldiers. Every day the soldiers spent on the front line was a battle to stay alive - although they were not only concerned about their own welfare; the knowledge that their friends and colleagues stood the same chance of being killed as they did added to the psychological pressure. The introduction of Pals’ Battalions often led to the numbers of men in a workplace or neighbourhood being vastly reduced due to mass death during battle. Often, the intense psychological trauma manifested itself as ‘shellshock’, symptoms of which included twitching, deafness and/or dumbness, and severe reactions to the sound of an explosion, such as shrieking, shuddering, and moaning. It has been argued that some of the three-hundred soldiers shot at dawn for desertion were suffering from the effects of shellshock and were deemed simply to be cowardly.
Why did General Haig decide to fight the Battle of the Somme in 1916?
By 1916, trench warfare had reduced the war to a virtual standstill. Neither the Allies nor the Germans were making any significant progress. The battle of Verdun was wearing the French down, and pressure was mounting on the British to relieve them.
The French had been fighting at Verdun for almost six months before the Somme began, and the British were under increasing pressure to relieve them. Prior to 1916, the numbers of the BEF were simply too small to make any major difference to the French situation at Verdun. However, Lord Kitchener’s campaign to recruit volunteer troops was slowly increasing the population of British forces. By July, Britain had gathered enough forces to fight a battle that would force a significant number of German troops to be moved from Verdun.
There was also a lot of pressure from the public, Parliament, and the Royal Court on the British army to obtain a victory, after their disastrous failure at Gallipoli (Haig, after all, had been appointed because he believed he would be a more appropriate leader of the BEF than John French – he once referred to French as “a source of great weakness to the army”). Haig’s connections with both Parliament and royalty – he was known to be in contact with both George V and the Prime Minister – further encouraged him to begin progression. Haig was obliged to provide a victory for Britain.
Haig, and his subordinate Henry Rawlinson, had a strong conviction that an artillery barrage followed by advancing troops was one of the most effective ways of attacking the enemy. They believed that a strong barrage would knock out front line posts, enabling troops to advance relatively unharmed.
The British army in the spring of 1916 was armed with an adequate number of munitions to fight a large battle, and, with the aid of Lord Kitchener’s volunteer army, was also large enough to fight. This, coupled with the absolute confidence in the supremacy of the artillery barrage of both Haig and Rawlinson, enabled Haig to plan a battle that, in theory, would grant the English the victory they wanted and would also confirm Haig as a superior military leader to his predecessor, French.
Examine why the Battle of the Somme failed to achieve British objectives.
Although it is often argued that the Battle of the Somme was a disaster because of the massive loss of life involved, the battle was not fought completely in vain. During the course of this question, I will attempt to ascertain how successful Haig was in achieving the objectives of the Battle of the Somme.
One of the objectives that was certainly achieved during the battle was to relieve pressure on the French troops at Verdun, which may have gone some way to save Haig’s reputation in the eyes of some historians. As the battle of the Somme got underway, the Germans were forced to send in troops that had previously been stationed at Verdun to aid those at the Somme. Furthermore, the battle also proved to deal a heavy blow to the Germans. By the end of the battle, the Germans had suffered well over half a million casualties. A German captain commented that ‘the Somme was the muddy grave of the German field army’. In these respects, at least, Haig had successfully achieved what he had set out to do.
However, in many other respects, Haig failed to fulfil expectations. The effort to take ground from the Germans, however, was significantly hindered by a combination of mishaps and Haig’s actions. Haig’s gross underestimation of the depth of the German trenches led to his seven-day artillery barrage being largely ineffective – the German trenches were expected to be the same depth as those of the Allies; they were, in fact, at least twice as deep. This, coupled with the fact that thirty percent of the shells fired during the course of the barrage were faulty and failed to explode caused the barrage to fail to disorientate and weaken the enemy, and destroy their machine-gun posts before the troops advanced. Of course, until the troops did advance, the Allies had not realised that the barrage had been ineffective, and resulted in the deaths of over twenty thousand men on the first day alone.
Haig also failed to realise the power of the machine-gun, both in the hands of the Allies and the Germans. He described the machine-gun as ‘a much overrated weapon’ and also that ‘the way to capture machine guns is by grit and determination’. This was, perhaps, as a result of his lack of experience in modern warfare. Many generals during WWI lacked this experience, and this gave rise to the use of the phrase ‘lions led by donkeys’ to describe the British troops during the Battle of the Somme. As a result of the faulty shells during the barrage, the barbed wire was only destroyed in certain places. Naturally, the British forces were forced to walk through these gaps as they advanced – which led the Germans to simply train their machine-guns on the gaps and gun down any soldier that attempted to pass. The Germans ‘did not have to aim, [but] just fired into [the British troops]’, according to one description given by a German machine-gunner. This was, arguably, the largest contributor to British deaths on the first day of the Somme. Haig also deemed that two machine-guns per battalion was adequate for the battle – however, the minister of munitions insisted this number be increased eightfold.
Haig, along with his subordinate Henry Rawlinson, have also fallen under criticism for giving the order for troops to advance slowly across No Man’s Land, rather than ‘rushing’, that is to say, having small parties of troops dash out, using shell holes as protection. Haig and Rawlinson were of the opinion that because many of their troops were volunteers, they would not be experienced enough in ‘rushing’ for it to be beneficial to the attack. However, Haig had intended his artillery barrage to have knocked out much of the German forces, and walking across No Man’s Land would therefore not have been nearly as deadly as it proved to be – so it may not be correct to blame Haig entirely for this mistake. However, his tactics were largely inflexible, and this inflexibility forced Haig to continue with the attack although he knew it had failed. Many historians argue, however, that Haig ignored many viable, more adaptable alternatives to his plan of attack.
I do believe it is fair to say that the Battle of the Somme was largely a failure, although it was certainly not a complete one – although the British failed to take significant ground from the Germans, Haig succeeded in removing German forces from Verdun, and led to a large reduction in the number of German troops. Whether achieving these objectives was worth the massive loss of life, however, remains a controversial issue.
