The year 1915 had developed very badly for the war effort of the ANTATE forces. All their attacks on the Western Front had been repulsed with heavy losses and the Dardanelles campaign had also failed miserably. Even worse, in February 1916, the Germans had launched a large-scale offensive at Verdun and were suffocating the French.
It is within this context that the great British offensive on the Somme front on July 1, 1916. Plans for the offensive had begun to be drawn up in late 1915. According to them, a joint British and French attack was foreseen on the front north (the British) and south (the French) of the Somme river bed.
Design
The Battle of Verdun, however, disrupted the Allied planning. French forces rushed to reinforce the threatened Verdun sector. Fate, then, the burden fell on the British. In April 1916 British Commander-in-Chief Marshal Haig received his government's approval to launch the attack on Somme.
After the final decision was made, the military began to make plans for the upcoming battle. The British were to attack with their reinforced 4th Army – 21 infantry divisions. Another three infantry and five cavalry divisions would be kept at the disposal of the commander-in-chief and would be thrown into battle in the event of a breakup of the enemy front, as a force to exploit the success. The attack would be reinforced by eight French infantry divisions, at the southern end of the attack front.
Auxiliary to the main attack would also act the British 3rd Army on the northern edge of the attack front. The British were to attack the deployment of about 20 km sector of the front from the village of Gomekurt in the North, to the village of Marikurt in the South. Based on the British commander-in-chief's planning, the British troops were able to achieve a complete breakdown of the German front. As soon as this was achieved the British cavalry would rush to take advantage of the breach!
Contrary to Haig, the commander of the 4th Army, General Rawlinson, considered his commander's expectations too optimistic. He knew that the Germans had organized three lines of defense in the area, each of which consisted of overlapping rows of trenches and concrete machine guns.
The German infantry units were installed in specially designed shelters, dug to a depth of 10 meters in the ground. So even the strongest artillery preparation, which Haig promised, would not cause the Germans enough casualties for the British infantry to carry out a "walk".
At Rawlinson's suggestion, the British artillery would bombard the German positions for five consecutive days and nights so as to:"give the enemy no opportunity to sleep or easily transport food and ammunition." According to the British artillery fire plan at X hour – the time of the infantry attack – fire on the German first line of defense would cease and the second line would begin to be attacked.
As soon as the infantry dominated the second, the third would be attacked. In this way, Haig calculated to completely split the enemy front. After this, his cavalry would attack on either side of the lips of the breach achieved, with Arras and Bapom as their final objectives. Throughout April and May the British were feverishly preparing for the attack.
Preparation
Roads to the front were opened to facilitate the transport of men and supplies to the forward zone, shelters and shelters were built for the troops, rails for the ammunition trains to the artillery positions, 12,000 km of telephone lines were installed and 200 km of aqueducts to supply water to the front line troops and finally 1,537 cannons and howitzers were collected which would bombard the enemy positions.
Each gun had a stock of shells of around 3,000 rounds . To protect from prying eyes all these enormous preparations, the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) was enlisted, which managed to dislodge the German aircraft from the skies above the Somme . Nevertheless the Germans saw the British preparations from their static observation balloons and prepared as best they could.
Haig's original plan called for the bombardment of German positions from 24 to 28 June. Shortly before the infantry assault, on June 29, the final barrage would be launched. The start of the attack, however, was postponed to July 1st, and with it the time of the artillery's preparatory fire was extended. The British guns would fire for seven consecutive nights.
The description of a German fighter is indicative:“The enemy fire does not stop at all. It hits our front line day and night, annihilating the defenders. Hits all routes to the frontline. It's hell". The German divisions in their deep shadows were essentially safe from the effects of the bombardment.
But the psychological impact was incalculable. Locked in the sunless shadows, feeling the ground shake from the explosions, sleepless and fasting for seven days, the German soldiers had turned into human ghosts. It is estimated that British artillery fired more than 750,000 rounds during the preparatory bombardment.
Rawlinson, stunned by the intensity of the bombardment, declared to his corps commanders that nothing alive was left. The infantry only had to march to the enemy positions to capture them.
Attack
On July 1, 1916 , after the final bombardment of the German positions with another 250,000 shells , the British infantry left their trenches and began to cross the dead zone between their own and enemy positions.
In perfect formation, heavily laden with ammunition, food and tools – it is estimated that each British soldier carried at least 30kg of equipment – the British marched leisurely, often to the sound of bugles, against enemy positions that everyone believed to be abandoned or destroyed. .
Suddenly, however, the German machine guns began to engage and mow down entire lines of British. Pandemonium ensued . Men because of the weight could not move quickly, nor maneuver. With the exception of the sector of the 13th British Army Corps, where the British gained ground with tolerable losses, on the remaining 18 km of the front they faced stiff resistance from the desperate Germans, who were finally able, after seven days and nights, to face the enemy.
On the first day of the attack the British suffered losses in the order of 60,000 men, without substantial territorial or even strategic gain . It was an unprecedented massacre. Particularly in the northern sector and despite the blasting of enemy positions with underground explosives ("mines" in the terminology of the time) an entire British army corps was virtually massacred – 14,000 casualties, almost 50% of its original strength.
Continuous attacks
The next day the Germans counterattacked against the British divisions of the southern sector, the only ones who had gained some ground, only to suffer appalling losses in turn. In the meantime, the British command, which considered the number of losses reasonable, decided to continue the attack in the southern sector, where it had to present even a small success.
The attacks continued in the first two weeks of July, despite the severe weather that hit the area, making life even more miserable for the men. Each British attack that resulted in the loss of a few square meters of land was followed by a German counter-attack to recapture those few square meters. Essentially, the large-scale attack to break up the enemy front that Haig dreamed of had degenerated into a bloody struggle for the possession of a forest, a village or even a few meters of trenches.
On 14 July, after a three-day bombardment, the British forces, who had meanwhile managed to push the Germans back about 2 km from their original positions, attacked the central sector of the German second line of defence. Under the protection, for the first time, of a rolling artillery barrage, the British infantry attacked and broke through the German defenses along a 6 km front.
The villages of Mikro Bazentin and Megalo Bazentin were captured. Instead the Germans held out in the forest of Delville – it was a few hundred meters east of the villages. As long as the Germans held the forest there could be no exploitation of the initial success. Against the defenders in the forest the British generals decided to send their cavalry. however, this one, stationed at a distance of 16 km in the rear, did not reach the assembly site until the evening.
In the meantime the Germans had strengthened their defenses. For the next five days and nights the two armies fought fiercely for the possession of the forest, but all the trees had been uprooted by the artillery shells. Eventually the forest was captured by the South African Brigade at a cost of 75% of its original strength! All the rest of July and August were spent with small attacks and continuous artillery bombardment.
Battle tank and stuffing
Haig, however, had not given up his plans. He prepared their forces for a renewed attack in mid-September. Actually at 06.20 on 15 September 1916 two British corps advanced under the cover of a rolling artillery barrage and under the protection, for the first time in history, of 34 tanks. It had been preceded by a three-day bombardment of the German positions.
The new battle lasted three days and resulted, in addition to the thousands of losses on both sides, in the capture of a few square kilometers of land by the British. Nevertheless, the German front did not break. The hardened Germans simply retreated a little further back and organized a new defensive line. And the tanks, in which the British generals put so much faith, did not achieve much. These early models of Mk I Male and Female tanks were prone to all sorts of minor and serious damage.
On the other hand, they could not cross the lunar landscape, full of craters from the cannon shells, and they had extremely low speed. A few days later, however, the British repeated their attacks and gained some more ground, without again succeeding in splitting the German front. And on the German side, however, not everything was rosy.
The German General Falkenhein's insistence on carrying out direct counterattacks to recapture lost ground had led the German Army to a very serious hemorrhaging, comparable to that of its opponents. An even more negative effect on the morale of the German soldiers was their encounter with enemy tanks, against which they felt powerless.
Under these circumstances the Kaiser removed Falkenhayn from his position and replaced him with von Hindenburg . Meanwhile Haig was preparing another major offensive which would be launched on October 12, this time in collaboration with the French. This new attack was another bloody failure, especially for the French divisions.
The attacks, however, continued until November 3rd, achieving small territorial gains but at a high cost in blood. The final attack was launched on November 18, but crashed in its wake from German artillery and heavy machine gun fire.
Losses
The Battle of the Somme lasted a total of 140 days and is best known for the seven-day initial bombardment, the first use of a rolling barrage of artillery and tanks, and the appalling casualties suffered by the combatants.
The British took the lion's share of the Allied camp casualties, wiping out 420,000 men them from the order of battle of their armies – dead, wounded, captured and missing. The French , despite their relatively short participation time, managed to suffer 180,000 casualties. The Germans they also suffered losses in the order of 435,00 men.
But worst of all was the horrific memory left by the survivors and their terror of the shelling and enemy tanks. “We feel powerless against these iron monsters. Grenades look like matches against them," wrote a German soldier.
However, after the battle of the Somme, the Hindenburg-Ludendorff duo, which took charge of the fate of the German Army, abandoned the practice of bloody counter-attacks and adopted elastic defense tactics. Shortly after the Battle of the Somme the German Army retreated behind a new line of fortifications – the Hindenburg Line. There he held off the Allied attacks for nearly two years, before striking back on the Western Front himself.