why did the battle of the somme happen

On 1 August 1916 Winston Churchill, then out of office, criticised the British Army's conduct of the offensive to the British Cabinet, claiming that though the battle had forced the Germans to end their offensive at Verdun, attrition was damaging the British armies more than the German armies. The German military accordingly undertook significant defensive preparatory work on the British section of the Somme offensive. Causes. Larger operations resumed in January 1917. Haig consulted with the army commanders and on 17 October reduced the scope of operations by cancelling the Third Army plans and reducing the Reserve Army and Fourth Army attacks to limited operations, in co-operation with the French Sixth Army. The defences were crowded towards the front trench with a regiment having two battalions near the front-trench system and the reserve battalion divided between the Stützpunktlinie and the second position, all within 2,000 yards (1,800 m) of no man's land and most troops within 1,000 yards (910 m) of the front line, accommodated in the new deep dugouts. Hundreds of thousands of shells landed on the German trenches. Ludendorff rejected the proposal the next day, but British attacks on the First Army – particularly the Action of Miraumont (also known as the Battle of Boom Ravine, 17–18 February) – caused Rupprecht on the night of 22 February to order a preliminary withdrawal of c. 4 mi (6.4 km) to the R. I Stellung (R. I Position). On the night of 12 March, the Germans withdrew from the R. I Stellung between Bapaume and Achiet le Petit and the British reached the R. II Stellung (R. II Position) on 13 March. (Despite the certainty by mid-June of an Anglo-French attack on the Somme against the 2nd Army, Falkenhayn sent only four divisions, keeping eight in the western strategic reserve. Battle of the Somme centenary: What happened and why it is the defining British battle of the First World War? The front trenches were on a forward slope, lined by white chalk from the subsoil and easily seen by ground observers. So,the battle of the Somme happened because Haig wanted to use the large British army to win the war with one blow. More than three million men fought in the battle and one million men were wounded or killed, making it one of the deadliest battles in human history. The combined attack was also intended to deprive the German defenders further west, near Thiepval of reinforcements, before an attack by the Reserve Army, due on 26 September. (20 January 1917)[47], and that half measures were futile, retreating to the Siegfriedstellung was unavoidable. The British believed that they had obliterated the German defenses.On the first of July the British and the French ‘went over the top’, that is they left their trenches and entered into no man's land. The silence was announced during a speech by the Prime Minister David Cameron who said, "There will be a national two-minute silence on Friday morning. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, Armistice between Russia and the Central Powers, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_the_Somme&oldid=1001906157, Battles of the Western Front (World War I), Battles of World War I involving Australia, Battles of World War I involving New Zealand, Battles of World War I involving South Africa, Battles of World War I involving the United Kingdom, Battles involving the French Foreign Legion, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with incomplete citations from May 2020, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2016, Articles with unsourced statements from June 2020, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, 1 July 1916 – 18 November 1916 (140 days), All allied objectives achieved at a cost of high casualties, This page was last edited on 21 January 2021, at 22:42. Some members wanted to take a shorter step back to a line between Arras and Sailly, while the 1st and 2nd army commanders wanted to stay on the Somme. The swift increase in the size of the army reduced the average level of experience within it and created an acute equipment shortage. This school of thought sets the battle in a context of a general Allied offensive in 1916 and notes that German and French writing on the battle puts it in a continental perspective. Spanning 141 days (July 1, 1916 - November 18 1916), the Battle of the Somme occurred on the … Though Churchill was unable to suggest an alternative, a critical view of the British on the Somme has been influential in English-language writing ever since. Numerous meetings were held by Joffre, Haig, Foch, General Sir Henry Rawlinson (commander of the British Fourth Army) and Fayolle to co-ordinate joint attacks by the four armies, all of which broke down. [38], The Battle of Thiepval Ridge was the first large offensive mounted by the Reserve Army of Lieutenant General Hubert Gough and was intended to benefit from the Fourth Army attack at Morval by starting 24 hours afterwards. [51][52] The Somme was a great test for Kitchener's Army, created by Kitchener's call for recruits at the start of the war. As part of co-ordinated attack on German forces on the Western, Eastern and Italian Fronts - 13 British army divisions and six French divisions launched an attack on six German divisions. As one German officer wrote. South of the Ancre, St. Pierre Division was captured, the outskirts of Grandcourt reached and the Canadian 4th Division captured Regina Trench north of Courcelette, then took Desire Support Trench on 18 November. The idea of … When a more flexible policy was substituted later, decisions about withdrawal were still reserved to army commanders. But many being killed by german machine guns; 2. When World War I … Generalleutnant von Fuchs on 20 January 1917 said that, Enemy superiority is so great that we are not in a position either to fix their forces in position or to prevent them from launching an offensive elsewhere. [31], The Battle of Delville Wood was an operation to secure the British right flank, while the centre advanced to capture the higher lying areas of High Wood and Pozières. Battle Of The Somme. Next day the Fourth Army ceased offensive operations, except for small attacks intended to improve positions and divert German attention from attacks being made by the Reserve/Fifth Army. The Somme defences had two inherent weaknesses that the rebuilding had not remedied. [20], Despite considerable debate among German staff officers, Erich von Falkenhayn continued the policy of unyielding defence in 1916. Wet winter weather finally put an end after 140 days of fighting between poorly equipped and ill-prepared troops on both sides. The 57,470 casualties suffered by the British, including 19,240 killed, were the worst in the history of the British Army. At a conference at Cambrai on 5 September, a decision was taken to build a new defensive line well behind the Somme front. The principal role in the offensive devolved to the British and on 16 June, Haig defined the objectives of the offensive as the relief of pressure on the French at Verdun and the infliction of losses on the Germans. More than three million men fought in the battle and one million men were wounded or killed, making it one of the deadliest battles in human history. The German defence south of the Albert–Bapaume road mostly collapsed and the French had "complete success" on both banks of the Somme, as did the British from the army boundary at Maricourt to the Albert–Bapaume road. [75][76][77] The Royal British Legion with the British Embassy in Paris and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, commemorate the battle on 1 July each year, at the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme. The battle was the debut of the Canadian Corps, the New Zealand Division and tanks of the Heavy Branch of the Machine Gun Corps on the Somme. "[7], Allied war strategy for 1916 was decided at the Chantilly Conference from 6 to 8 December 1915. Are you sure you want to delete this comment? Somme. Another cause for the offensive was the fact that that Allies believed that they could break through the German lines and end the war. [68] According to the tables, between July and October 1916, German forces on the Western Front suffered 537,919 casualties, 288,011 inflicted by the French and 249,908 by the British; German forces inflicted 794,238 casualties on the Entente. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on both sides of the upper reaches of the River Somme in France. Organisational difficulties and deteriorating weather frustrated Joffre's intention to proceed by vigorous co-ordinated attacks by the Anglo-French armies, which became disjointed and declined in effectiveness during late September, at the same time as a revival occurred in the German defence. The tragedy of such units was that communities across the country and the British Empire could lose a whole generation of men in one day. Battle of the Somme: From Adolf Hitler to JRR Tolkien – the battle's most famous combatants. To relieve the French, the Allied High Command decided to attack the Germans to the north of Verdun therefore requiring the Germans to move some of their men away from the Verdun battlefield, thus relieving the French. The French Sixth Army and the right wing of the British Fourth Army inflicted a considerable defeat on the German Second Army but from the Albert–Bapaume road to Gommecourt, the British attack was a disaster where most of the c. 60,000 British casualties were incurred. After the loss of a considerable amount of ground around the Ancre valley to the British Fifth Army in February 1917, the German armies on the Somme were ordered on 14 February, to withdraw to reserve lines closer to Bapaume. The concentration of troops at the front line on a forward slope guaranteed that it would face the bulk of an artillery bombardment, directed by ground observers on clearly marked lines. Before the battle, Allied forces bombarded the Germans. why did the battle of refugio happen. The Battle of the Somme was originally meant to be predominantly a French offensive. Winston Churchill had objected to the way the battle was being fought in August 1916 and Prime Minister David Lloyd George, criticised attrition warfare frequently and condemned the battle in his post-war memoirs. For five days the British had blasted the German lines. [30] Of 7,080 BEF casualties, 5,533 losses were incurred by the 5th Australian Division; German losses were 1,600–2,000, with 150 taken prisoner. [11], The Chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, intended to end the war by splitting the Anglo-French Entente in 1916, before its material superiority became unbeatable. The relief offensive to fall south of Morval and because of rain stretched on for a week! Continued, the Allied forces bombarded the Germans began the battle was intended to be emailed when replies... An estimated 20 million people went to see it brigade had lost 2,536 men, similar to the army. 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