Who won the Battle of the Somme?
Nobody won outright. The Anglo-French offensive on the Somme, fought from 1 July to 18 November 1916, gained about seven miles of shattered ground at a cost of more than a million casualties on all sides. But it relieved the French at Verdun and wore down the German army so badly that in early 1917 it fell back to the shorter Hindenburg Line.2
At 7:30 on the morning of 1 July 1916, along fifteen miles of front north of the river Somme, tens of thousands of British soldiers climbed out of their trenches and began to walk toward the German wire. By nightfall 19,240 of them were dead. The battle they began ground on for four and a half months, cost more than a million men killed, wounded or captured, and has stood ever since as the symbol of World War I's industrial slaughter.3
The Big Push
In December 1915 the Allied commanders agreed to launch a joint British and French offensive astride the river Somme in the summer of 1916, timed to coincide with attacks by Russia and Italy. Then, on 21 February, the Germans struck at Verdun. As the French poured division after division into the battle there, their share of the Somme plan shrank, and the British had to take the lead. The attack became, among other things, a way to take pressure off Verdun.4
The British commander in chief, General Sir Douglas Haig, hoped for a breakthrough, with cavalry riding through to Bapaume on the first morning. The man who would lead the attack, Lieutenant General Sir Henry Rawlinson of the new Fourth Army, preferred modest bite-and-hold steps, a long bombardment and a short advance. Haig overruled him, and Britannica judges that the result was a compromise suited neither to a swift penetration nor to a siege. Haig was warned even by his own artillery adviser that he was stretching his guns too far.5
Most of the men who would attack were volunteers who had answered Lord Kitchener's call in 1914 and 1915. Many served in Pals battalions, raised from friends, relatives and workmates from the same towns, who had trained together for a year and would now go into their first great battle side by side.6
A week of shells
The preliminary bombardment began on 24 June and lasted seven days. The British fired some 1.5 million shells, but as many as 30 percent may have failed to explode, and the shrapnel that made up much of the barrage could not touch the concrete dugouts the Germans had dug deep into the chalk. In many places the barbed wire was left uncut. Because Haig had widened the objectives, the fire was spread over a larger area than first planned, and the French, with more than 900 heavy guns on a narrower front, had nearly twice as many heavy pieces as the British.7
Rawlinson and Haig nevertheless told their subordinates again and again that the bombardment would destroy all resistance and that the infantry would only have to walk over and take possession. Each man went forward carrying about 66 pounds of equipment, which made it hard even to climb out of a trench, let alone run.8
1 July 1916
Ten minutes before zero hour a great mine went up under Hawthorn Ridge, warning the Germans that the attack was coming. At 7:30 the barrage lifted and 14 British divisions went over the top. The Germans climbed from their dugouts, set up their machine guns and fired into the advancing lines. In most places the British could not reach their objectives; some men got into the German trenches only to be driven out, and others never got past the wire.9
There were successes in the south, where the 30th and 18th (Eastern) Divisions took all their objectives around Montauban and the 7th Division captured Mametz, and south of the river the French, facing weaker defenses and backed by far more heavy artillery, advanced deeper still. At Thiepval the 36th (Ulster) Division took the Schwaben Redoubt but had to give it up when the attacks on either side failed. A battalion from Newfoundland went in with the 29th Division.10 › 1 July in military history, 1916
By nightfall the British had suffered 57,470 casualties, 19,240 of them killed: the largest loss the British army has ever suffered in a single day. That night Rawlinson simply ordered his corps to continue the attack. There was no question of stopping while the French were still locked in battle at Verdun.11
The slogging match
After the failure of the first day, Haig gave up hope of a quick breakthrough to Bapaume and Cambrai and turned to a method of limited advances meant to wear down German strength. More attacks between 3 and 13 July cost some 25,000 more British casualties. On 14 July four divisions made a dawn attack on the Longueval ridge, took the German second line around Bazentin by mid-morning, and for a moment the way seemed open, but the chance was not taken.12
The Somme became a dozen separate battles fought over the same few miles, many of them slogging matches that lasted for weeks around woods and villages such as Delville Wood. Canadians, Newfoundlanders and other soldiers from across the Empire were drawn in, while on the German side Fritz von Below ordered that every yard of lost trench be retaken by counterattack, which drove German losses ever higher.13
Tanks at Flers
On 15 September 1916, at Flers-Courcelette, a new weapon crawled across no man's land for the first time: the tank. The attack advanced about a mile and a half but brought no breakthrough. Britannica judges that the tanks were used too early, before enough of them were ready, and that the British threw away the chance of a great strategic surprise. Yet more discerning eyes saw that here, properly used, was a key that would one day unlock the trench barrier.14
Into the mud
As autumn rains turned the battlefield into a swamp, the offensive slowed to a crawl. A last stroke along the Ancre river in mid-November, delivered by General Hubert Gough on a flank still untouched by the main fighting, brought some gains. Then, on 18 November 1916, Haig closed the offensive down. In 141 days the British had advanced at most seven miles and taken a strip of ground some 20 miles long.15
The reckoning
The cost was immense on both sides. The National Army Museum counts 420,000 British Empire, 200,000 French and at least 450,000 German casualties; Britannica gives 420,000 British, 194,000 French and rather more than 440,000 German. In all, more than a million men were killed, wounded, missing or captured on the Somme.16
Was it a defeat? For many years the Somme was remembered simply as futile slaughter, and the casualties played a large part in earning Haig the nickname of the Butcher. Historians have since stressed the other side of the ledger. The battle relieved Verdun. It turned an inexperienced citizen army into a battle-hardened one, and commanders who had never handled troops on such a scale learned to use creeping barrages, tanks and new infantry tactics that would win the battles of 1918. And it wore the German army down so badly that in the spring of 1917 it retreated to the shorter, stronger Hindenburg Line to save men. A German officer called the Somme the muddy grave of the German field army.17
The long shadow
No battle did more to fix the image of World War I in British memory. The official film The Battle of the Somme, shot by Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell and shown in cinemas from 21 August 1916, was the first feature-length film to record soldiers in action, and an estimated 20 million people saw it in its first months, many hoping to glimpse a son, brother or father. Among the soldiers who lived through those months in the front-line trenches was a young officer named J. R. R. Tolkien.18
More than 150,000 British soldiers lie buried on the Somme. Above Thiepval stands the great memorial arch to the missing, which bears the names of some 72,000 officers and men who have no known grave. Two years later the armies fought across the same ground again, as the Allies drove east in the Hundred Days Offensive of 1918.19 › Battle of Passchendaele, 1917
For the wider war see our guide to the greatest battles of World War I and the World War I era page.20
