Warmatrix

British soldiers advancing at the Battle of the Somme

The (First) Battle of the Somme, fought in 1916 CE during World War I, was one of the bloodiest battles in history. It was not a single battle but a series of offensives that lasted nearly four months. Tanks made their first appearance on the battlefield at the Somme, though played a minor role.
After initial success, the German advance of 1914 CE had halted and the war in the west had settled down into a trench warfare stalemate. In the next year France and Britain had recruited many new soldiers and tried to regain lost ground, without success. In 1916 CE another new load of recruits, combined with extra weapons and ammunition from a war industry that had gotten under full steam, and diversionary attacks on the eastern and southern fronts, made the generals confident that they could win. In February they agreed on a combined French-British offensive at the river Somme. However the Germans struck first, a week after the agreement, at the Battle of Verdun, binding most of the French strength. The allied commanders decided to proceed with their offensive, not as a decisive breakthrough, but as a counterattack to relieve the French at Verdun.
Verdun ensured that the bulk of the attack had to be carried out by British troops. The quality of the British army was less than at the start of the war. Many regular soldiers had been killed and replaced by inexperienced volunteers. The Germans neither had their best troops at the Somme, because the area of the offensive had seen little fighting since the start of the war. Instead they relied on static defenses. They had dug formidable trenches and bunkers in the limy soil, with thick lines of barbed wire, machine gun nests and shelters 10 meters underground.
The allied artillery bombarded the German lines for eight days, but the dugout shelters survived easily. Because no explosive shells were used, the barbed wire defenses remained intact also. After the bombardment, starting on 1 July, infantry attacked various points along the 30 kilometers wide frontline. The generals were afraid that the soldiers, like before, would advance too far behind the preceding artillery barrage, giving the defenders time to recover. So they ordered them to march in waves of straight lines. Everybody was optimistic; some battalions kicked footballs ahead of them in a display of confidence. But the artillery failed to seriously dent the defenses, was unable to coordinate its attacks properly with the infantry and the latter were too inexperienced to make the best of the situation.
On the first day the British lost 20% of their 100,000 men deployed; the Germans lost only 2% of the forces present. Over the course of the next weeks the odds were somewhat evened. The Germans reacted with a defense in depth. Thinly manned frontlines slowed attackers down and caused casualties by machine gun fire; lost terrain was recovered later by counterattacks against the worn out original attackers.
The offensive soon became a long series of smaller sub-battles. The western armies gradually advanced. After one month they had gained 5 kilometers, at the cost of more than 200,000 men against 160,000 Germans. The attack was bolstered by the appearance of 32 British Mark I tanks in the Battle of Morval, the first appearance of tanks in the war. Despite all being disabled at the end of the day's fighting, they helped achieve one of the least costly victories at the Somme. Yet there were not enough tanks to sustain the momentum. Slowly the attacks petered out. The last offensive ended on 18 November, when the weather turned foul.
The Somme offensive weakened the German western army, but this was offset by the British and French losses. In total the British and Commonwealth troops lost 420,000 men, the French around 200,000 and the Germans 435,000. The front had been pushed only 10 kilometers eastward. The only real achievement was its original objective: relief for the French at Verdun. German high command was dissatisfied with the war in the west and replaced general Falkenhayn by Hindenburg and Ludendorff in August, during the battle. In the next year they had the German army slowly retreat to the Hindenburg line.