My Grandad is quoted in Middlebrook's book about wondering why the Cavalry never took advantage of the gains at Montauban. It's intriguing to hear that Haig thought the same and Rawlinson failed to take advantage of the opportunity. What would've been the story if the Reserves had pressed on to the empty Bernafay Wood and then captured High Wood and Trones Wood, maybe Guillemont, Longueval & Delville Wood? How many lives were lost as a result of Rawlinson holding back reserves and these positions not been capitlised from eneny disarray? As Prof Sheffield says, we will never know but its a fascinating thought and amazing my Grandad wondered the same 50 years ago.
Yet the Somme campaign would see those 'improvised cadres' of the BEF's citizen-soldiers grow in skill and confidence, whilst, in a bloody contest of attack and counter-attack the old German Imperial Army was destroyed. In all 97 German Divisions were drawn into the fighting over the course of four and a half months. Some were withdrawn and then, of necessity, sent back into the cauldron. It was on the Somme that, as Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria lamented, "what still remained of the old first-class peace trained German infantry [was] expended on the battlefield." (21) As the British and French bludgeoned their way forward, the Germans fought desperately to regain every yard of lost trench. Seventy-eight German counter-attacks were counted in the first two weeks of September alone, many of them repeat assaults on positions from which they had already been bloodily repulsed. German losses on the Somme are generally estimated at between 500,000 and 660,000. Allied (French and British) losses in the same battle are placed in the region of 630,000.(22) The Germans, having already been through the horrors of Verdun and the Brusilov offensives, could afford such losses far less than the British, for whom the Somme was the first major offensive of the war. The damage inflicted on the German army was not just physical but psychological. When Thiepval fell, a German soldier commented; "...it was absolutely crushing... every German soldier from the highest general to the meanest private had the feeling that now Germany had lost the first great battle." (23) In 1928, the German Reichsarchive produced a series of monographs on the Somme, which passed this verdict on the battle; It would be a mistake to measure the results of the battle of the Somme by mere local gain of ground. Besides the strategic objectives, the British and French followed out a definite plan of exhausting the power of the defenders by the employment of great masses of artillery in constantly repeated attacks. Although ... the casualties of the Entente were numerically greater than ours ... this grave loss of blood affected Germany very much more heavily. Quite apart from the facts that its very loss narrowed down the limited possibilities of replacing it, and that the war industries drew off into their service able-bodied men in a constantly increasing measure, the battle of attrition gnawed terribly into the vitals of the defenders. The enormous tension on all fronts compelled the Supreme Command to leave troops in the line until they had expended the last atom of their energy, and to send divisions time after time into the same battle. In the circumstances, it was unavoidable that the demoralizing influences of the defensive battle affected the soldier more deeply than was proper in the interests of the maintenance of his fighting spirit and his sense of duty. Still more serious was it that, as the demand for self-sacrifice greatly surpassed what could be expected of the average man, the fighting largely fell on the shoulders of the best of the troops, and not least the officer. The consequences of this were a frightful death-roll of the finest and most highly trained soldiers, whose replacement was impossible. It was in this that the root of the tragedy of the battle lies. (24) Even as the battle was being fought, this erosion of the fighting quality of the German army was being noted. Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria recorded in his diary that "the old experienced officers and men decrease steadily in numbers, and the reinforcements incorporated in masses have not enjoyed the same soldierly instruction and training, and physically are mostly inferior."(25) More recently Holger Hewig has echoed the same themes of damage to morale and the loss of irreplaceable veterans, noting that not only did the Somme witness "the first instances of blatant fragging..." in the German army, but also that it had "lost its last small-unit leaders: it would never be the same instrument again."(26) Charles Carrington concluded that the Somme was where the British army fought it out with the German army, and established their superiority, inflicting casualties which Germany could ill afford. The result is patent. In August the German government dismissed Falkenhayn, their Chief-of-Staff, who had failed in attack at Verdun and failed in defence on the Somme … In September, their worse month for casualties, the new leaders, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, conceded defeat by planning a strategic withdrawal, though, with their usual tenacity they clung to their positions until the winter gave them a short respite before retreating. The German Army was never to fight so well again, but the British Army went on to fight better. (27) The pressure applied by both Haig's BEF and the French on the Somme was, thus, a vital part of the process of wearing down the German army, the process of 'destroying its arms' and 'breaking its will,' the process, in short, which was the prerequisite of ultimate victory. www.gwpda.org/comment/haig1.html
Even if the French represented 46 % of the initial attack and were the only succesful allies during the 10 first days of the Offensive, forcing Germany to sent 35 Divisions from Verdun to defend the Somme. Even if the French managed to obtain a ratio of 1:1 at the Somme while attacking when the British were suffering a 1,6:1 ratio against the Germans, while at the end, the French represented 48 % of the forces at the Somme. The Somme is probably a French Victory and a British disaster while the French were taking the bulk of the German tentative of breakthrough at Verdun.
@@davidchardon1303 Well the Brits were innitially less prepared for such a war and took a lot of casualties. The French were more experienced but it did not prevent them from failing later on at Le Chemin des Dames. A lot of suffering.
@@davidchardon1303 the difference in readiness between the French army and the just made from scratch British army can account for those early discrepencies i think. I also wonder whether there was a difference in the quality of ground on which the two armies fought which could have made a difference. Still, that assessment falls in line with the now mainstream opinion; that the early days of the "battle" (the word, "battle", really hampers understanding; a front so large, and an operation continuing for so long, outstrips the connotation of the word battle, which stops the mind from easily assessing it as a whole. it should be called something like the Somme operation) were disasterous for the British but by the end, despite appalling casualties, the German army was irrervisbly damaged and the British army had now evolved into an exceptional fighting force.
@@davidchardon1303 _”The Somme is probably a French victory and a British disaster.”_ Drivel. You’re an ignorant, prejudiced, anti-British, chauvinistic French person. Your comments all over RUclips show this. Britain was committed to an attack at the Somme by the Chantilly Agreement 1915 but Haig would have liked to have delayed the attack until August when more artillary would have been available but Joffre shouted at him in a meeting *_’that the French Army would cease to exist’ if he left it that long.’_* _The Somme was _*_the muddy grave of the German field army_*_ and of the faith in the infallibility of German leadership, _*_dug by British industry and its shells ... The German Supreme Command, which had entered the war with enormous superiority, was defeated by the superior techniques of its opponents. It had fallen behind in the application of destructive forces,_*_ and it was compelled to throw division after division without protection against them into the cauldron of the battle of annihilation.’_ -Captain Captain von Hentig of the German Guard Reserve Division. The Somme campaign would see those 'improvised cadres' of the BEF's citizen-soldiers grow in skill and confidence, whilst, in a bloody contest of attack and counter-attack the old German Imperial Army was destroyed. In all 97 German Divisions were drawn into the fighting over the course of four and a half months. Some were withdrawn and then, of necessity, sent back into the cauldron. It was on the Somme that, as Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria lamented, _”what still remained of the old first-class peace trained German infantry [was] expended on the battlefield."_ As the British and French bludgeoned their way forward, the Germans fought desperately to regain every yard of lost trench. Seventy-eight German counter-attacks were counted in the first two weeks of September alone, many of them repeat assaults on positions from which they had already been bloodily repulsed. German losses on the Somme are generally estimated at between 500,000 and 660,000. Allied (French and British) losses in the same battle are placed in the region of 630,000. The Germans, having already been through the horrors of Verdun and the Brusilov offensives, could afford such losses far less than the British, for whom the Somme was the first major offensive of the war. The damage inflicted on the German army was not just physical but psychological. When Thiepval fell, a German soldier commented: _"...it was absolutely crushing... every German soldier from the highest general to the meanest private had the feeling _*_that now Germany had lost the first great battle."_* That the British lost more men isn’t clear since the German way of accounting was different to that of the allies. The German system give much lower figures - they did not add in the lightly wounded nor those who were missing who then reappeared after a few days, it was a different system. This system gave German casualties approximately two-thirds of that of the Allies. Trying to adjust the figures, so that the accounting systems are the same, is fraught with difficulties. However, some academics have attempted doing this exercise of adjusting the figures, and have come up with the following: Allied casualties 623,907 against German casualties 465,000 - 600,000. Taking these figures it shows quite a high range for the German casualties, which makes the comparison not worthwhile. Casualties, however, is those men who were absent from role call on a particular day(s), which equates to the sum of the killed, wounded and missing. Although some of the wounded will not be able to return to duty, most will over time . So a far better comparison is the sum of the killed and missing (missing being those killed without being seen, AWOL or PoW). The figures for those are of more interest as follows: Allied killed and missing 146,431 against German killed and missing (PoW) 164,055 + 38,000, a total of 202,055 Therefore, by the finish of the battle the Germans had 55,624 less men available than the British and the French. This is why the Germans refer to the Battle of the Somme as the *’death of the old German Army’.* This caused the German High Command to retreat back to the so called Hindenburg Line in the winter of 1916-17. It was also the battle that taught the newly recruited British Army how to fight and win a modern war. The long term losses of trained soldiers in the German Army were greater than that of the British and the French, which could be regard as a defeat for the Germans, leading to the German giving ground. The German lines were broken and pushed back several miles, and - importantly - they were pushed off some of the heights from which they could observe and direct fire into Allied territory, instead now being overlooked themselves.
"German losses on the Somme are generally estimated at between 500,000 and 660,000." Repeating Sheffield's lie about this is not a good look. Wikipedia: "German Empire 434,000-445,000[8][5][7]" To put the German laments you quote in context, NONE of the armies, and the British far less than any other, retained much in the way of their professional soldier cadre. "The Germans, having already been through the horrors of Verdun and the Brusilov offensives..." The "horrors" of the Brusilov Offensive were, for the Germans, not so very horrible. Maybe a sixth of the Russian casualties, but unfortunately for their was effort, also about a fourth of the Austro-Hungarian casualties. (Where are you getting the plural from, in "Offesives", btw?) Wikipedia, again: "...the German army did not suffer much from the operation and retained most of its offensive power afterward." (The Austro-Hungarians became more of a burden, but that's not what you said.) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brusilov_offensive#Aftermath The Somme was an avoidable disaster. If the Donkeys hadn't insisted on it most of the bloodletting could have been avoided by staying on the defensive while the British blockade did its work.
Britain was committed to an attack at the Somme by the Chantilly Agreement 1915 along with simultaneous offensives by Italy and Russia. Haig would have liked to have delayed the attack until August when more artillary would have been available but Joffre shouted at him in a meeting ‘that the French Army would cease to exist’ if he left it that long. The attack on the Somme helped save the French at Verdun. The Somme meant more and more German troops had to be transferred to fight the British and Empire forces. This drastically reduced the ability of the Germans to undertake offensive operations. Von Falkenhayn had underestimated the ability of the British to launch an attack and when Haig ordered the British over the top, the Germans were unprepared. In order to salvage the situation on the Somme, the Germans had to move badly needed forces out of Verdun. Some four divisions were transferred from the assault in order to help defend German positions on the Somme. The German advance lost steam in the Summer of 1916 and were reduced to only local offensives. The commanders in Berlin were forced to use most of their strategic reserves on the Somme and the units in Verdun were starved of any reinforcements. The fighting in Verdun was intense and many German divisions became badly depleted and were unable to receive the reinforcements they needed. This prevented them from continuing with their offensive. The transfer of German units from Verdun meant they were eventually forced to adopt a defensive posture. Even with the negation of 500,000 German soldiers on the Western Front, the French still almost lost the battle. Their army was being bled white and was almost broken as a fighting for force, even with the Somme drawing off German reserves that would otherwise have been used to almost certainly destroy the French Army in 1916. The large battles of 1916-17 inflicted heavy damage on the Germans.The Somme-all five months of it- was seen as a marginal yet very costly, bloody victory. It changed the momentum against the Germans. The Germans retreated to the Hindenburg line sooner than they had planned.Ludendorff described it as ‘a heavy blow.’ If the weather hadn’t intervened the German Army might have cracked on the Somme. Ludendorff certainly feared it would. Together with Verdun and The Brusilov Offensive, The Somme, led to what historian Martin Kitchen called a ‘silent dictatorship’ in Germany when Hindenburg and Ludendorff took over and began to warp German strategy to its detriment.
In fact, only the French attacks on the Somme relied the pressure on Verdun since the British were unable to any serious advance. From the 50 German divisions at Verdun, the Germans refused to let less than 30 divisions in front of the French counter-attacks and offensives. Only 14 divisions were sent from Verdun to the Somme ... So, it is not the Somme that released the pressure, but Verdun that released pressure on the British at the Somme ...
@@davidchardon1303 You’re an ignorant, prejudiced, anti-British, chauvinistic French person. Your comments all over RUclips show this. _”But Verdun released pressure on the British”_ The French *were being attacked at Verdun.* The British attacked at the Somme to take pressure off the French. Britain was committed to an attack at the Somme by the Chantilly Agreement 1915 but Haig would have liked to have delayed the attack until August when more artillary would have been available but Joffre shouted at him in a meeting *_’that the French Army would cease to exist’ if he left it that long.’_*
@@gandydancer9710 it achieved its objective which was to wear the german army down , thats the reality of warfare between large and advanced nations , ukraine today is no different , both nations are bleeding eachother white , people have been using the invasion of iraq as some base of comparison for how wars ought to be fought , but if you take for example the iran iraq war instead you get the same picture , long wars of attrition
Years ago I had a conversation with a Royal Engineer involved in the removal of unexploded ordnance in France. He had gained the impression that over 30% of the shells fired failed in some way, either falling short or failing to explode. If his view is correct, one must wonder what the effect would have been, for example, on the Somme, if manufacturers had paid more attention to quality and less to profits!
Do you have any evidence for claiming profits were the issue and not the more simple explanation that facilities, personnel and demand drove misfires. And that's before accounting for the mud.
Funny how the ‘Butcher Haig critics’ never mention the Hundred Days. John Terraine: ‘The toughest assignment in modern British military history (i.e. since the creation of our first real Regular Army, the New Model) has been high command in war against the main body of a main continental enemy. Three British officers have undertaken such a task and brought it to a successful conclusion: the Duke of Marlborough, the Duke of Wellington and Field-Marshal Lord Haig. And in that Final Offensive, which ended with a German delegation crossing the lines with a white flag to ask for an armistice, the British Armies under Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig captured 188,700 prisoners and 2840 guns. All the other Allies together, French, Americans, Belgians, captured 196,500 prisoners and 3775 guns. In other words, the British took just under 50% of all the prisoners and just over 40% of all the guns. That was the achievement of the British Citizen Army; I have called it, more than once, the 'finest hour' of the British Army. There has never been anything like that '100 Days' Campaign' of continuous victory in the whole of our military history. In the words of one who served from 1916 to 1918 and died only recently, Professor C. E. Carrington: In our thousand years of national history there has been one short period (1916-1918) when Britain possessed the most effective army in the world, and used it to win decisive victory. The most sinister of all the delusions within the trauma was to lose sight of that. What was the position of Haig's army on that day? It amounted to nearly two million men of the British Empire - the largest land force in the Empire's history. And they had just reached the end of a 'Hundred Days' Campaign' as glorious and decisive as that of 1815 which concluded the Battle of Waterloo - but infinitely less known. It was, in fact an unparalleled achievement in the history of the British Army, revealed by the stark statistics. And this was done in nine successive victories which were largely instrumental in bringing the war to an end in 1918 - and a consummation that Haig was determined to bring about. These victories should be as famous as Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet or Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria and Waterloo. Instead, they are forgotten and unknown, so I will list them now: The Battle of Amiens, 8 August 1918 ('the black day of the German Army'); The Battle of Albert, 21 August (the day on which Haig told Churchill 'we ought to do our utmost to get a decision this autumn'); The Battle of the Scarpe, 26 August; The Battles of Havrincourt and Epehy, 12 September (the approaches to the HindenburgLine); The Breaking of the Hindenburg Line, 27 September - 5 October (35,000 prisoners & 380 guns taken, the British Army's greatest feat of arms in all its history); The Battle of Flanders, 28 September; The Second Battle of Le Cateau, 6 October; The Battle of the Selle, 17 October; The Battle of the Sambre, 1-11 November. These were Haig's victories, handsomely acknowledged by Marshal Foch: Never at any time in history has the British Army achieved greater results in attack than in this unbroken offensive .... The victory was indeed complete, thanks to the Commanders of Armies, Corps and Divisions, thanks above all to the unselfishness, to the wise, loyal and energetic policy of their Commander-in-Chief, who made easy a great combination and sanctioned a prolonged and gigantic effort.’ In 1918, the British Army was the only Allied army capable of mounting a massive and sustained offensive.
giovani Pierre. Bloody hell Not one mention of the Australians Kiwis Canucks Battle of Ameins Australian and Canadian troops there my friend and not led by Butcher Haig but planned by Lt Gen John Monash
@@hoatattis7283 No, it’s the other way round. Monash applied the combined arms tactics devised and perfected by the BEF, commanded by Haig. Hamel was not the enormous smashing victory commonly believed in Australia, but was a line-straightening exercise which was over in 90 minutes. The Australian Corps was an integral part of the BEF, and its tactics and weapons systems were not developed in isolation. By late 1918 the BEF was the world’s most mechanised army, supported by the world’s largest air force, and was fighting, perhaps of the only time in British history, a rich man's war because of the enormous output of British industry. The Australian Corps was responsible for none of that. The Monash myth really does need challenging. Does a corps commander, no matter how competent, (and Monash was) really merit 22 biographies? To serious Australian military historians, the narrative of Australian military exceptionalism ad the routine denigration of British forces is an embarrassment. The BEF drove the German Army back 6 miles at Cambrai on 20 November 1917., employing massed tanks and novel artillery techniques. Monash was nowhere near at the time. As the (Australian) reviewer in the (Australian) The Age, said about another Monash biography, ‘Readers who cling to the simplistic view that British commanders in World War I were bunglers and butchers will find comfort in the hoary old story of Allied infantry as "lions led by donkeys", a story now retold with Monash instructing the donkeys how to win a war. Others, I fear, will recognise another example of what Robert Rhodes James called "a kind of nationalistic paranoia".’ Do some reading. You may find your “Monash masterminded these offensives” narrative challenged. The idea that the most junior corps commander masterminded the final victorious offensives is a little silly.
G Puierre: "Funny how the ‘Butcher Haig critics’ never mention the Hundred Days." The Hundred Days was of course the product of the German Army having been hollowed out by the Blockade, etc., and shot its last bolt, morale-wise, in the Ludendorf Offensives, not the product of Haig's ham-handed butchery which, if had produced the results you claim, would never have allowed Operation Michael to be (relative to Haig's handiwork) so successful.
I respectfully disagree with Professor Sheffield, I think Haig’s reputation is most associated with/ tarnished by the Passchendaele campaign - especially the last two months.
I don't understand how he can argue that Haig learned the lessons of the Somme after his catastrophic strategic failure a year later at Third Ypres. The only successes in that latter campaign were Plumer's limited but methodical bite and hold attacks.
@@squeeth2895 July and September's victories had more to do with the Royal Navy's strangulation finally taking hold than Haig. While Haig was no worse than many of the allied generals, he was certainly no Marlborough or Wellington. Haig truly seems to have learned nothing from the Battles of the Frontiers in 1914. And any claims to competency must be utterly dismissed in the face of Passchendaele.
@@PaulfromChicago just as the Somme offensive was necessary to divert German troops to take pressure off the French at Verdun, so 3rd Ypres was necessary to distract the Germans while the French army was in mutiny after the failure of Nivelle's offensive.
Agreed, Gough was the wrong commander for a battle which needed a bit of nuance and detailed staff work, hence Plumer and his Chief of Staff being dragged in. They should have shut it down earlier after the dreadful rain in August.
Regarding Haig, I am not a great detractor of his. But he did not cover himself with glory on the retreat from Mons. He let Smith Dorrien down several times.
Regarding Haig I always wondered how he and Rawlinson could ever command an attack, as they both had different ideas, Eg Haig breakthough, Rawlinson Bite and Hold
I also wish to inquire about this gentleman's earlier life and his academic qualifications. What, exactly, allows him to call himself a "military historian" at all? None of this information seems to appear on his Wikipedia page.
@@willkettle3959 No they didn’t, how do people like you exist? The British captured part of 3 objectives. 80% of their objectives were not met. This isn’t hard to research. You are simply wrong. They made minor gains but overall their main objectives weren’t met
If I understand this correctly, Prof. Sheffield is saying that the reason the British failed at the Somme is that they didn't launch a cavalry attack? He must be a graduate of the Black Adder School of Military Studies
Dan Bernstein Failed? ‘The Somme was the muddy grave of the German field army and of the faith in the infallibility of German leadership, dug by British industry and its shells ... The German Supreme Command, which had entered the war with enormous superiority, was defeated by the superior techniques of its opponents. It had fallen behind in the application of destructive forces, and it was compelled to throw division after division without protection against them into the cauldron of the battle of annihilation.’ -Captain Captain von Hentig of the German Guard Reserve Division.
Dan Bernstein Yet the Somme campaign would see those 'improvised cadres' of the BEF's citizen-soldiers grow in skill and confidence, whilst, in a bloody contest of attack and counter-attack the old German Imperial Army was destroyed. In all 97 German Divisions were drawn into the fighting over the course of four and a half months. Some were withdrawn and then, of necessity, sent back into the cauldron. It was on the Somme that, as Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria lamented, "what still remained of the old first-class peace trained German infantry [was] expended on the battlefield." (21) As the British and French bludgeoned their way forward, the Germans fought desperately to regain every yard of lost trench. Seventy-eight German counter-attacks were counted in the first two weeks of September alone, many of them repeat assaults on positions from which they had already been bloodily repulsed. German losses on the Somme are generally estimated at between 500,000 and 660,000. Allied (French and British) losses in the same battle are placed in the region of 630,000.(22) The Germans, having already been through the horrors of Verdun and the Brusilov offensives, could afford such losses far less than the British, for whom the Somme was the first major offensive of the war. The damage inflicted on the German army was not just physical but psychological. When Thiepval fell, a German soldier commented; "...it was absolutely crushing... every German soldier from the highest general to the meanest private had the feeling that now Germany had lost the first great battle." (23) In 1928, the German Reichsarchive produced a series of monographs on the Somme, which passed this verdict on the battle; It would be a mistake to measure the results of the battle of the Somme by mere local gain of ground. Besides the strategic objectives, the British and French followed out a definite plan of exhausting the power of the defenders by the employment of great masses of artillery in constantly repeated attacks. Although ... the casualties of the Entente were numerically greater than ours ... this grave loss of blood affected Germany very much more heavily. Quite apart from the facts that its very loss narrowed down the limited possibilities of replacing it, and that the war industries drew off into their service able-bodied men in a constantly increasing measure, the battle of attrition gnawed terribly into the vitals of the defenders. The enormous tension on all fronts compelled the Supreme Command to leave troops in the line until they had expended the last atom of their energy, and to send divisions time after time into the same battle. In the circumstances, it was unavoidable that the demoralizing influences of the defensive battle affected the soldier more deeply than was proper in the interests of the maintenance of his fighting spirit and his sense of duty. Still more serious was it that, as the demand for self-sacrifice greatly surpassed what could be expected of the average man, the fighting largely fell on the shoulders of the best of the troops, and not least the officer. The consequences of this were a frightful death-roll of the finest and most highly trained soldiers, whose replacement was impossible. It was in this that the root of the tragedy of the battle lies. (24) Even as the battle was being fought, this erosion of the fighting quality of the German army was being noted. Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria recorded in his diary that "the old experienced officers and men decrease steadily in numbers, and the reinforcements incorporated in masses have not enjoyed the same soldierly instruction and training, and physically are mostly inferior."(25) More recently Holger Hewig has echoed the same themes of damage to morale and the loss of irreplaceable veterans, noting that not only did the Somme witness "the first instances of blatant fragging..." in the German army, but also that it had "lost its last small-unit leaders: it would never be the same instrument again."(26) Charles Carrington concluded that the Somme was where the British army fought it out with the German army, and established their superiority, inflicting casualties which Germany could ill afford. The result is patent. In August the German government dismissed Falkenhayn, their Chief-of-Staff, who had failed in attack at Verdun and failed in defence on the Somme … In September, their worse month for casualties, the new leaders, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, conceded defeat by planning a strategic withdrawal, though, with their usual tenacity they clung to their positions until the winter gave them a short respite before retreating. The German Army was never to fight so well again, but the British Army went on to fight better. (27) The pressure applied by both Haig's BEF and the French on the Somme was, thus, a vital part of the process of wearing down the German army, the process of 'destroying its arms' and 'breaking its will,' the process, in short, which was the prerequisite of ultimate victory. www.gwpda.org/comment/haig1.html
@@giovannipierre5309 The French troops represented almost 50 % of the allied soldiers while they brough more artillery, almost two times more heavy artillery and artillery in general (with 120 very heavy artillery on train rail) and also, 1100 Trench Artillery with no equivalent on the British side. So, the French represented almost 50 % of the allied manpower volume but brough more and better heavy war gears ... The French suffered 5000 casualties the first of the Somme, the British 59 000 ... Pretty strange how the British industry dug graves to the German by killing its own soldiers ... The French were the only dangerous attacking force So I guess that taking the Somme as an example to prove the superiority of the BEF is not quite relevant since this are the French that saved the British from embarassement to not been able to properly attack an ennemy that is already attacking somewhere else....
@@giovannipierre5309 Captain von Hentig complaining about superior British methods? The Brits suffered 60,000 casualties on the first day including 20,000 dead. And 25% more than French and British casualties than the Germans throughout the entire battle.
@@psilvakimo the French suffered well over 320,000 casualties in just over a month at the start of the war including 72,000 in one day. You can’t judge an Army only by its worst day.
Maxse and the adjoining French broke through the lines in the southern section (where, incidentally, the guns were used in greater concentration along with a creeping barrage modelled along the lines of the French... effective pollination of better ideas by receptive soldiers like Allan Brooke whom appreciated what he could actually learn from Britain's allies). Why didn't Haig deploy his massed calvary here? Sheffield blames Rawlinson, but I've heard Jon Rosebank put the blame squarely on Haig.
42:40 The idea that Jutland had anything like the claim to significance that the Somme has is utterly ludicrous, and Sheffield's assertion that the dismissal of any such claim has the significance he attributes to it is ridiculous as well. It was a lost opportunity to remove the High Seas Fleet from the equation, but the High Seas Fleet was anyway not all that weighty a factor. Maybe it kept the Baltic invasion or effective blockade option off the table, but that's about it.
Haig made terrible misstakes and seemed to learn little from each "the first few times". We are talking both over time and thousands upon thousands off dead here. Sticking to the "usefull cavalry" idea long into WW1 probably makes most people just shake their head..But what whould be very interesting whould be to know how much political and diplomatic preassure was put on Haig to do many offensives and when to do them etc. In 1914 the Britrish where relucant to counterattack at all. My impression is that by 1916 with the horrific losses of 1915 and Verdun 1916 to preassure to attack/take the initiative (at any cost) must have been extreme. Also in 1917 after the French mutinies...
Haig is tainted for me because he did his selfish best to discredit Smith-Dorrien, who proved he was the better battlefield commander by his competent actions in the most difficult of circumstances at Mons and Le Cateau. Haig connived with French to denigrate Smith-Dorrien until his disgraceful dismissal. Would the war's course have been different if Smith-Dorrien had succeeded French as C-in-C, who knows, but he had an infantryman's affinity with his troops that cavalrymen like French and Haig did not, and so I believe the horror of 1st July would have been avoided.
Smith Dorrien seems to have been badly treated at the time Political and personal reasons seem to a reason As I understand it Smith Dorrien pushed for Calvary marksmanship over lances Haigs appointment appears to be based more on political reasons than on merit
Why defend Haig ? Too many British lives were thrown away & horrendous numbers of wounded troops, because the attack made to assist the French was mismanaged. There is no glory in this action - just using foot soldiers & artillery to try to bludgeon a hole in the enemy line for months was a moronic strategy (even though it also cost the enemy large losses).
You're condemning Haig for this, but what alternatives were there? Haig didn't choose the time or place for the Somme offensive - he inherited it from Sir John French and Joffre. He knew his army wasn't ready, but he wasn't able to delay to August or September (as he was trying to do) because the French army would have collapsed at Verdun if he had. He went forward with the best he had at the time in the place that had been assigned to him. But, even if he had been able to move at a time and place of his choosing, the question remains - what alternatives were there? The trench lines ran from the border of Switzerland to the North Sea - there was no flank to turn. The German army had invaded and occupied Belgium and part of France - a purely defensive stance would accomplish nothing in regards to liberating any of it. And if you actually look at what the front lines were like, it doesn't take long to see that a breakthrough in 1916 was an impossibility - there were at least two lines behind it, and in the time it would take to reinforce and and press on, the Germans would have already regrouped and started counter-attacking. Then you have the tools available - "foot soldiers and artillery." What else was Haig supposed to use? Coarse language? Tanks weren't ready until September (and they proved to be better as infantry support than as their own means of assault). His army literally consisted of foot soldiers, artillery, and support for both. If you read up on the battle in books like Peter Hart's, the key to success in attacks at the Somme was artillery support and counter-battery fire - if you could shut down the German guns, they couldn't cut off and destroy the British attacks. On the first day of the Somme, arguably more damage was done to the British attacks by German artillery than by machine guns (among other things, at least half, if not more, of the British divisions attacking took their front line objectives, and were destroyed through German counter-attacks and artillery). World War I was an attrition war, and could only be won through attrition. Haig did what needed to be done. The tragedy is not that hundreds of thousands of soldiers died or were wounded under his command - the tragedy is that there was no other way to do it.
I agree. IMO if the Somme was a meaningful battle of attrition as some claim it was, Haig never seemed to fully state that in his diaries and was always overly optimistic.
@David Miner: Essentially, Because there simply wasn’t anyone else competent, qualified or experienced anywhere near enough as Haig was, & also don’t overlook or underestimate the stark facts that no other General or Field Marshal on either side, could do any better or show any other initiatives to break the sclerotic, strategic stalemate of the Western Front between 1915-18! This ‘Attritional Warfare’ nature & situation in WW1 was never of Haig’s making or any of his desired choices, but he was also a “prisoner of the prevailing circumstances” & he simply didn’t have the options to choose any other, meaningful or viable, alternative courses of action! Effectively, he inherited this whole onerous situation, especially at the Somme, of which he had actually wished & intended to delay its commencement by about another two months, in order to better train, equip & supply his troops to an enhanced state of readiness & conditioning, before commencing this huge attack there, but he had been previously overruled in this endeavor by his political masters in London, under pressure from the French Government & Military Command that were also undergoing a huge burden of sacrifice & then also enduring catastrophic losses & also thereby avert an imminent French Army collapse at Verdun & to thus require urgent relief & deliverance from this dire situation themselves immediately in the wake from Haig’s British Army on the 01/July/1916 One other statistic you might want to ponder & reflect upon, are the comparatively low casualty rates of the British & Imperial Forces in all theatres of war when compared with either their Allies or especially with their Adversaries, whether you measure it in terms of actual casualty numbers (Total Wounded, Captured, Missing or Killed in Action, or as a direct result of battle-wounds previously incurred) or else in terms of comparative percentages of total forces available! The British 🇬🇧 Empire (Britain, its Dominions & Colonies etc.) in total lost around one million direct war fatalities between 1914-1919, far fewer than France 🇫🇷, Imperial Germany, Imperial Russia 🇷🇺, Austria-Hungary & even in terms of ratio of total forces fighting, far less in percentage terms than Belgium 🇧🇪, Italy 🇮🇹 & the USA 🇺🇸!! Haig, like WW2 Generals, much preferred to use technologies & weaponry rather than expend the lives of his troops unnecessarily, if he was able to, that is! These facts are self-evident & speak clearly for themselves!! However, the results of the Somme later paved the way for the BIF’s series of unstoppable victories in the Summer/Autumn of 1918 known to posterity as “The Final Hundred Days,” & authentically recognized as one of the British Army’s four (4). Supreme Historical Achievements of Arms in War, for the Allied Armies there!
I have read about the Somme for many years also. To think that any general would think that launching an attritional battle or campaign is a bit disgusting. That is we have more men, than the enemy and if we lose man for man, we will win in the end. This is what the Russians are doing in Ukraine.
Attrition was the general strategy the entente agreed upon in the 1915 chantilly conference. Yes, attritional warfare is bloody and horrendous, but that is the consequence of modern industrial powers fighting each other.
attrition is the general strategy of most wars where the opponents more or less equal , vietnam , iran-iraq and today ukraine and russia , both sides are bleeding eachother white thats the reality of war on this scale
The Somme was dreadful and bloody and everything you want to believe. But. Sometimes an Army has to do what it has to do. Haig started with an undertrained army which could not approach 1914 Regulars' standards of fieldcraft and musketry, which could only walk in straight lines towards the Germans and fire their rifles ineffectively. No wonder they died in unacceptable numbers. Later in the battle, they did much better, they were forced to use better tactics, most of them learned how to shoot effectively and fewer of them died. In other words, the Somme was a battle where your Army had to learn on the job.
Haig was far from perfect but all the criticisms regarding his tactics and results can be made about the likes of Zhukov who is much more of a 1-dimensional butcher and is considered one of the best Generals of WW2
J south: "...all the criticisms regarding [Haig's] tactics and results can be made about the likes of Zhukov " False. Zhukov had victories over a near-peer opponent when it was still near-peer. Haig produced nothing but inconclusive bloodbaths, or bloodbaths in defeats, until the Kaiser's Germany had utterly shot its bolt.
"The British Army did a good job" - good to have, ahem, the British Army's official historian on hand to offer an impartial view. I don't know about you but I'm thoroughly convinced by his objectivity, especially given how upfront he is about the whole arrangement. A less honest man might be tempted to masquerade as some sort of academic
@@PolakInHolland _The Somme was _*_the muddy grave of the German field army_*_ and of the faith in the infallibility of German leadership, _*_dug by British industry and its shells ... The German Supreme Command, which had entered the war with enormous superiority, was defeated by the superior techniques of its opponents. It had fallen behind in the application of destructive forces,_*_ and it was compelled to throw division after division without protection against them into the cauldron of the battle of annihilation.’_ -Captain Captain von Hentig of the German Guard Reserve Division. The Somme campaign would see those 'improvised cadres' of the BEF's citizen-soldiers grow in skill and confidence, whilst, in a bloody contest of attack and counter-attack the old German Imperial Army was destroyed. In all 97 German Divisions were drawn into the fighting over the course of four and a half months. Some were withdrawn and then, of necessity, sent back into the cauldron. It was on the Somme that, as Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria lamented, _”what still remained of the old first-class peace trained German infantry [was] expended on the battlefield."_ As the British and French bludgeoned their way forward, the Germans fought desperately to regain every yard of lost trench. Seventy-eight German counter-attacks were counted in the first two weeks of September alone, many of them repeat assaults on positions from which they had already been bloodily repulsed. German losses on the Somme are generally estimated at between 500,000 and 660,000. Allied (French and British) losses in the same battle are placed in the region of 630,000. The Germans, having already been through the horrors of Verdun and the Brusilov offensives, could afford such losses far less than the British, for whom the Somme was the first major offensive of the war. The damage inflicted on the German army was not just physical but psychological. When Thiepval fell, a German soldier commented: _"...it was absolutely crushing... every German soldier from the highest general to the meanest private had the feeling _*_that now Germany had lost the first great battle."_* That the British lost more men isn’t clear since the German way of accounting was different to that of the allies. The German system give much lower figures - they did not add in the lightly wounded nor those who were missing who then reappeared after a few days, it was a different system. This system gave German casualties approximately two-thirds of that of the Allies. Trying to adjust the figures, so that the accounting systems are the same, is fraught with difficulties. However, some academics have attempted doing this exercise of adjusting the figures, and have come up with the following: Allied casualties 623,907 against German casualties 465,000 - 600,000. Taking these figures it shows quite a high range for the German casualties, which makes the comparison not worthwhile. Casualties, however, is those men who were absent from role call on a particular day(s), which equates to the sum of the killed, wounded and missing. Although some of the wounded will not be able to return to duty, most will over time . So a far better comparison is the sum of the killed and missing (missing being those killed without being seen, AWOL or PoW). The figures for those are of more interest as follows: Allied killed and missing 146,431 against German killed and missing (PoW) 164,055 + 38,000, a total of 202,055 Therefore, by the finish of the battle the Germans had 55,624 less men available than the British and the French. This is why the Germans refer to the Battle of the Somme as the *’death of the old German Army’.* This caused the German High Command to retreat back to the so called Hindenburg Line in the winter of 1916-17. It was also the battle that taught the newly recruited British Army how to fight and win a modern war. The long term losses of trained soldiers in the German Army were greater than that of the British and the French, which could be regard as a defeat for the Germans, leading to the German giving ground. The German lines were broken and pushed back several miles, and - importantly - they were pushed off some of the heights from which they could observe and direct fire into Allied territory, instead now being overlooked themselves. In 1928, the German Reichsarchive produced a series of monographs on the Somme, which passed this verdict on the battle; It would be a mistake to measure the results of the battle of the Somme by mere local gain of ground. Besides the strategic objectives, the British and French followed out a definite plan of exhausting the power of the defenders by the employment of great masses of artillery in constantly repeated attacks. Although ... the casualties of the Entente were numerically greater than ours ... this grave loss of blood affected Germany very much more heavily. Quite apart from the facts that its very loss narrowed down the limited possibilities of replacing it, and that the war industries drew off into their service able-bodied men in a constantly increasing measure, the battle of attrition gnawed terribly into the vitals of the defenders. The enormous tension on all fronts compelled the Supreme Command to leave troops in the line until they had expended the last atom of their energy, and to send divisions time after time into the same battle. In the circumstances, it was unavoidable that the demoralizing influences of the defensive battle affected the soldier more deeply than was proper in the interests of the maintenance of his fighting spirit and his sense of duty. Still more serious was it that, as the demand for self-sacrifice greatly surpassed what could be expected of the average man, the fighting largely fell on the shoulders of the best of the troops, and not least the officer. The consequences of this were a frightful death-roll of the finest and most highly trained soldiers, whose replacement was impossible. It was in this that the root of the tragedy of the battle lies. (24) Even as the battle was being fought, this erosion of the fighting quality of the German army was being noted. Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria recorded in his diary that "the old experienced officers and men decrease steadily in numbers, and the reinforcements incorporated in masses have not enjoyed the same soldierly instruction and training, and physically are mostly inferior."(25) More recently Holger Hewig has echoed the same themes of damage to morale and the loss of irreplaceable veterans, noting that not only did the Somme witness "the first instances of blatant fragging..." in the German army, but also that it had "lost its last small-unit leaders: it would never be the same instrument again."(26) Charles Carrington concluded that the Somme was where the British army fought it out with the German army, and established their superiority, inflicting casualties which Germany could ill afford. The result is patent. In August the German government dismissed Falkenhayn, their Chief-of-Staff, who had failed in attack at Verdun and failed in defence on the Somme … In September, their worse month for casualties, the new leaders, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, conceded defeat by planning a strategic withdrawal, though, with their usual tenacity they clung to their positions until the winter gave them a short respite before retreating. The German Army was never to fight so well again, but the British Army went on to fight better. (27) The pressure applied by both Haig's BEF and the French on the Somme was, thus, a vital part of the process of wearing down the German army, the process of 'destroying its arms' and 'breaking its will,' the process, in short, which was the prerequisite of ultimate victory.
In the final 100 days of the Great War the BEF engaged, and defeated, 99 of the 197 German Divisions in the West. Between July 18 and the end of the war, the French, American and Belgian armies combined captured 196,500 prisoners-of-war and 3,775 guns, while British forces, with a smaller army than the French, engaged the main mass of the German Army and captured 188,700 prisoners and 2,840 guns. Let me repeat that: the French, American and Belgian armies combined captured 196,700 prisoners-of-war and 3,775 guns, while British forces captured 188,700 prisoners and 2,840 guns. British forces captured *only 8,000 fewer prisoners and 935 less guns than the other allies combined.* In other words *the British Army took just under 50% of the prisoners and just over 40% of the guns.* Historian John Terraine: _’The toughest assignment in modern British military history (i.e. since the creation of our first real Regular Army, the New Model) has been high command in war against the main body of a main continental enemy. Three British officers have undertaken such a task and brought it to a successful conclusion: the Duke of Marlborough, the Duke of Wellington and Field-Marshal Lord Haig._ _And in that Final Offensive, which ended with a German delegation crossing the lines with a white flag to ask for an armistice, the British Armies under Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig captured 188,700 prisoners and 2840 guns. All the other Allies together, French, Americans, Belgians, captured 196,500 prisoners and 3775 guns. In other words, the British took just under 50% of all the prisoners and just over 40% of all the guns._ _That was the achievement of the British Citizen Army; I have called it, more than once, the 'finest hour' of the British Army. There has never been anything like that '100 Days' Campaign' of continuous victory in the whole of our military history. In the words of one who served from 1916 to 1918 and died only recently, Professor C. E. Carrington:_ _In our thousand years of national history there has been one short period (1916-1918) when Britain possessed the most effective army in the world, and used it to win decisive victory._ _The most sinister of all the delusions within the trauma was to lose sight of that._ _What was the position of Haig's army on that day? It amounted to nearly two million men of the British Empire - the largest land force in the Empire's history. And they had just reached the end of a 'Hundred Days' Campaign' as glorious and decisive as that of 1815 which concluded the Battle of Waterloo - but infinitely less known._ _It was, in fact an unparalleled achievement in the history of the British Army, revealed by the stark statistics. And this was done in nine successive victories which were largely instrumental in bringing the war to an end in 1918 - and a consummation that Haig was determined to bring about._ _These victories should be as famous as Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet or Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria and Waterloo. Instead, they are forgotten and unknown, so I will list them now:_ _The Battle of Amiens, 8 August 1918 ('the black day of the German Army');_ _The Battle of Albert, 21 August (the day on which Haig told Churchill 'we ought to do our utmost to get a decision this autumn');_ _The Battle of the Scarpe, 26 August;_ _The Battles of Havrincourt and Epehy, 12 September (the approaches to the HindenburgLine);_ _The Breaking of the Hindenburg Line, 27 September - 5 October (35,000 prisoners & 380 guns taken, the British Army's greatest feat of arms in all its history);_ _The Battle of Flanders, 28 September;_ _The Second Battle of Le Cateau, 6 October;_ _The Battle of the Selle, 17 October;_ _The Battle of the Sambre, 1-11 November._ _These were Haig's victories, handsomely acknowledged by Marshal Foch:_ _Never at any time in history has the British Army achieved greater results in attack than in this unbroken offensive .... The victory was indeed complete, thanks to the Commanders of Armies, Corps and Divisions, thanks above all to the unselfishness, to the wise, loyal and energetic policy of their Commander-in-Chief, who made easy a great combination and sanctioned a prolonged and gigantic effort.’_
620,000 casualties for around 10km of ground cannot be called a victory. Yes it cost the Germans badly too, but I believe many lives were wasted and the British and French high commands inflexibility was largely responsible for this. Read ‘The myth of the great war’ it shows how the Germans undoubtedly had the superior military, in both command and tactics. While Germany was splitting her forces on 2 fronts the British, French, Canadians, ANZACS, Indians and French colonial divisions couldn’t really dent the Germans positions in a meaningful way, and campaigns like the Somme high light this. It was only vastly superior logistics and supplies that the Americans gave that secured an Entente victory. This is not to say by any means the British or French were bad, we did perform well in many campaigns, but statistically the Germans were the best.
That's not so true knowing that the US American troops were : trained by the French and mostly equipped by them. Surely the German had a better cohesion, fought on Belgian and French foreign ground (they could plunder and destroy as they liked : they occuppied French industrial mainland (North coal mining and steel industry regions). They had more discipline, somewhat better heavy equipment because of their industry. The Americans were more like the tipping point that had a progressive demoralizing action on fully exhausted Germans. From which army did the Germans suffered most casulaties? You tell me...
22:10 "But all these things together, I think it's fair to argue that while Somme was not an Allied victory as some historians have claimed, not a victory in the traditional sense, the Somme WAS a significant strategic success" Notice lecturer doesn't argue it was a victory. Somme did achieve its strategic objective of pulling away German strength from Verdun and weakening them further. And for the Allied high command, they did their best and they did contain Germany, the supposed super war machine, if the Germans were so superior, they would have smashed through France, a country with 50% less population with a measly 100,000 British soldiers in 1914.
..."statistically the Germans were the best." Well, your statistics are clearly not accounting for logistics. They certainly were not the best in logistics. You can't win an industrial war with bad logistics. Tactics are not everything.
_”the Germans had undoubtedly the superior military in command and tactics”_ Unfortunately, war is also fought at the operational and strategic level. And you seem unaware that the Germans were on the defensive for the most part. Attacking is more costly that defending. What a lot of people don’t get is that even for their defensive victories, German casualties are horrific; far worse than would be expected for a reasonably managed defensive victory. This is because of Entente innovative tactics, and also poor German tactical decisions; such as counterattacking lost ground immediately. This was always horrendously costly, even before the ‘Bite and hold’ tactics of the Allies came into force. The lauded German general staff, so efficient in the Franco-Prussian War, had become stagnant and stubborn. I honestly cannot fathom why it is only the Entente countries willing to hold up their hands to the things they got wrong; the Central Powers made some incredible mistakes that just don’t get the same scrutiny. Or, of course, we could ask how it was that despite a supposedly “better K/D ratio” the German military ended up comprehensively and completely defeated and disarmed, the German population starving and freezing, and the Kaiser kicked out of his job? Those are rather more important “numbers and statistics” describing the outcome of a war, don’t you think? Statistically the Germans were the best? Normally, the attacker expects to lose more than the defender: a point well known to the educated and informed. Indeed, in 1914 when the Germans attacked the British, they lost *five* of their troops for every British casualty they inflicted. When the British attacked the Germans on the Somme, they suffered 419,000 casualties - but the Germans lost nearly *600,000!*(Sheffield, G. The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army, 2011. London: Aurum Press) Somehow, the Germans, defending at the Somme, were so “superior” that even in defence they managed to lose *three men for every two British casualties!* Perhaps you should study a little more. Germany was hopelessly inefficient in defending against the British, and equally inept on the few occasions they dared to try attacking. Which, of course, brings us to the outcome; where the German military is collapsing in mutiny and revolt, and launching an armed insurrection to demand an end to the war rather than risk further fighting with the British… *Germany lost at a 5:1 ratio when they attacked the British: *yet the British could inflict more casualties than they suffered, when they attacked German positions.* At the Marne, the British hadn’t had time to entrench or fortify, yet inflicted massive casualties on the German attackers, sending them reeling back in disorder. At the Somme, the Germans had had plenty of time to construct extensive entrenchments, massive wire entanglements and thoroughly prepared positions: yet they lost more troops defending, than the British did attacking, and were sent back reeling in disorder. Why, it’s almost as if the British turned out to be better at this “war” business than the Germans… Remind me again, what happened when the High Seas Fleet was ordered to steam out and fight the British in October 1918? Did they man their ships, close to battle, and fight the long-promised Der Tag ? Or did the prospect of a rematch with the Royal navy cause them refuse to fight, overthrow their officers, and declare an armed revolution that brought down the German government? (see Kiel mutiny) Not sure that’s really the sign of a “stronger” military, but hey - they had a better KIA ratio while they were losing! Well, that’s what happens when one side spends its war hiding, running away and losing, while the other spends the war advancing, attacking and winning: you lose less of your force by surrendering, mutinying or running away, than by actually fighting. Presumably, the Treaty of Versailles was also a great political and economic triumph for Germany, achieved on the back of their “superior KIA ratio”? So your Navy in armed revolt, your Army broken and in headlong retreat, your Kaiser abdicating and your entire country surrendering before being occupied is “efficient” and “superior”. Just out of interest, why couldn’t “superior”Germany win in 1917? The US was still neutral, the Russians were in full-on revolution, the French army had mutinied and were refusing to fight… and yet somehow the “efficient” Germans couldn’t even defeat puny Britain given that golden opportunity to take them down. Germany and Austro-Hungary threw everything they had into a war; and were completely and comprehensively, defeated. (When your Kaiser abdicates, your military collapses, and your opponents disarm you and hammer you for reparations, you’ve been defeated: trying to claim otherwise, merely led Germany to an even more humiliating repeat of its failure) Victory is “efficient”. Defeat is “inefficient”. Carl von Clausewitz understood and explained this: strangely, his German heirs ignored him, while foreigners put his work to rather better use. Why did Germany fight a war? Why not demonstrate true efficiency by shooting a million or two of its own soldiers, starving its population, overthrowing the Kaiser, sinking the High Seas Fleet in port, handing over colonies and territories, and paying vast indemnities to France, in 1914? By your claims, that would be the most efficient outcome of all: achieving all of Germany’s war aims without any need for conflict at all. Of course, this does require that Germany’s position in 1919 was what they went to war to achieve… Germany was able to reduce itself to impotent, disarmed, revolution-torn bankrupt humiliation, and place itself at the mercy of its enemies. That was very efficiently done - assuming its situation in 1919 was what the Kaiser and his cronies had dreamed of in 1914. In 1917, when the Italians were beaten, the French in mutiny and the Russians out of the war thanks to revolution… Germany could not defeat Britain when she was fighting alone. Why couldn’t Germany overcome the British when they had no other threats to fight? Oh, that’s right - the British were much too strong and capable for Germany to defeat. In early 1917, Britain was fighting alone. The US was still neutral; Russia had collapsed into revolution; and the French armies were in full-scale mutiny after the failed Nivelle offensives. Yet despite this, Germany completely and totally failed to win. It’s almost as if the German military were “not very efficient” at winning wars, isn’t it?
Germany was splitting her forces on two fronts? The British were fighting in France and in the Middle East. They also had to raise train and equip a conscript army from scratch. Yet in 1917, when the Italians were beaten, the French in mutiny and the Russians out of the war thanks to revolution… Germany could not defeat Britain when she was fighting alone. Why couldn’t Germany overcome the weak, helpless British when they had no other threats to fight? Oh, that’s right - the British were much too strong and capable for Germany to defeat. Inconvenient facts… don’t you just hate them? In early 1917, Britain was fighting alone. The US was still neutral; Russia had collapsed into revolution; and the French armies were in full-scale mutiny after the failed Nivelle offensives. Yet despite this, Germany completely and totally failed to win. It’s almost as if the German military were “not very efficient” at winning wars, isn’t it? Also in 1918, after Russia left the war, the transfer of all those divisions from the east gave the Germans a temporary superiority over the allies. This should have resulted in outright victory. *It never did.*
While I think haig is wrongly portrayed as a callous butcher in media, the execution of his strategy was abysmal even by 1916 standards. His plan was sound but the tactical execution was largely terrible. The British army on the 1st July arguably had the worst offensive tactics out of every army, they had learned virtually nothing from their own allies, the French and Russians, not much from the Germans either. The only unit which used more sophisticated assault tactics were the ulsters, who sent raiding parties into no mans land who bombarded the Germans trenches with grenades and charged in rapidly as soon as the bombardment ended, surprising and shocking the defenders and actually taking their initial and secondary objectives, however most of the British units being inexperienced had very basic assault methods, waiting 10 mins after the bombardment lifted to advance, while its a bit of an exaggeration to suggest they walked in line slowly getting mown down by machine guns, but the assault waves did advance steadily in extended lines and just got pinned down in shell holes, suffering huge losses. They could’ve used a number of more sophisticated tactics to better achieve their objectifies, the russian Brusilov offensive used an interval bombardment, shelling heavily mapped Austrian positions, then randomly pausing the shelling once in a while to check accuracy, and to trick the defenders into emerging from their bunkers and manning defences. Then once the shelling resumed it often caught them in the open, this happened several times and it made the defenders more and more nervous to leave their dug outs, all the while Russian shock squads were creeping as close as they dared to the enemy lines, when the bombardment finally ended for real, at 6pm after 10hrs, of heavy, accurate and intervalled shelling the Russians swarmed into the trenches rapidly before the Austro Hungarian defenders could even leave their bunkers, blocking dug out exists with machine guns and rolling grenades down to those who didn’t immediately surrender, they took the first line very easily and immediately pushed into the second catching defenders in the open when counter attacking. The French and Germans also had similar style tactics, the Germans in particular emphasised smashing into the enemy lines at a small point, and infiltrate at a few specific weak spots, then push THROUGH the enemy lines bypassing strong points and getting behind defenders and encircling them, leaving strong points to be mopped up by the following troops, this was more effective than frontally assaulting the enemy lines. Infiltration was better than a frontal assault in most situations. Although it was 1917 and 1918 that this doctrine became fully in use by the Germans, they used Proto versions of these tactics at Verdun to good initial success, and on the eastern front too, the French did so too on the counter attacks to significant affect. The British had a sound strategic view for the Somme offensive, haig at a point, but the execution of the assault was a disaster with inflexible command, poor artillery standards, and unimaginative assault tactics in many areas of the front. The British military rightfully deserves criticism for throwing away so many lives for tangibly minimal gains. It didn’t need to be so much of a slaughter for Britain, they had successes to learn from and didn’t seem to take much on board. I think what happens often is people who know better are rightfully indignant about the caricature of haig being a clueless callous fool, and seek to correct this historical wrong, but then to too far and make him out to be some misunderstood unsung hero and go too far in the opposite direction….
You have the benefit of hindsight - what would you have done differently then? Remember the British soldiers had 70 pounds of equipment and had to walk across half a mile of No Mans Land in some places.
@@atrlawes98 The only ones to achieve all their objectives left their packs behind, were halfway to the German lines before the barrage stopped and them bombed the crap out of the Germans in front of them. A stupid officer might have said take everything you need for a week in the field with you and wait till I blow this whistle before you start. It was not a failure by High Command but a failure of common sense at Battalion level which cost most of the casualties.
An Establishment historian defending an Establishment stalwart, in Haig. It's pretty embarrassing, really. This pathetic campaign to 'rehabilitate' Haig and co, is really a bit of an IQ test. And it shows up those who are still susceptible to propaganda and the 'government line' on things, even today...
Did you watch the video? If you did, you’d know the speaker acknowledges the horrendous losses in human life, but that is the way attritional warfare among modern industrial nations is waged. Perhaps you could suggest what the British should have done differently?
More like Foch deciding that his pets, the offensively tuned Canadian Corps under Arthur Currie, were needed for two key offensives within the larger 100 Days offensive to win the war... This drives Brit revisionists crazy by the way: for in salvaging Brit high command from 'butchers and bunglers' critiques, they simultaneously display this obsessive need to underplay both commonwealth and allied contributions. They want their cake and eat it too.
All of the major battles on the western front were won and lost well before American troops arrived in any significant number. It was the policies of the British under their field marshal Haig and his army along with the French that were the instrument of final victory.
America had the worlds 17th largest army at time.. you were nothing in this war..the British naval blockade brought germany to its knees...america😅laughable
Haig should have been summarily executed on the spot. Every politician forced to tour the front with or without a ceasefire. He just kept stuffing mother's sons through a sausage grinder for NO DAMNED REASON !!!!!!! Too sad for words or tears. At the very least he should have been fired/removed from command/cashiered/retired or put in the front lines.
The only way out of Grinding Poverty, Poor living conditions, poor wagers, Tug the Forelock and poor health care was the real reason to join up to escape this way of life. Then, when it was all over it was back to the same old story. When they were promised a "Land Fit For Heros" A JOKE, Never Happened. I have seen a clip of young recruits and by the look of them to me they looked under weight and small in stature. Could this be through a poor diet? Why can't these Historians stop writing about the battles and Generals and write books on the real conditions that they ran away from?
americans had very little impact on ww1 , by the time they got to europe the german army was a shadow of its former self , all the americans added was more meat for the meatgrinder and thats it
This gentleman claims to be a "revisionist" historian of the British Army in WW1. I suggest rather that he is merely an apologist for the stupid upper-class butcher Haig. My old regiment, the Lancashire Fusiliers, went in on 1 July and did not do, shall we say, very well. I also suggest that this gentleman, although he talks so glibly and so often of "attrition" in this battle, had he been put in a trench himself would have shat himself.
My Grandad is quoted in Middlebrook's book about wondering why the Cavalry never took advantage of the gains at Montauban. It's intriguing to hear that Haig thought the same and Rawlinson failed to take advantage of the opportunity. What would've been the story if the Reserves had pressed on to the empty Bernafay Wood and then captured High Wood and Trones Wood, maybe Guillemont, Longueval & Delville Wood? How many lives were lost as a result of Rawlinson holding back reserves and these positions not been capitlised from eneny disarray? As Prof Sheffield says, we will never know but its a fascinating thought and amazing my Grandad wondered the same 50 years ago.
Yet the Somme campaign would see those 'improvised cadres' of the BEF's citizen-soldiers grow in skill and confidence, whilst, in a bloody contest of attack and counter-attack the old German Imperial Army was destroyed. In all 97 German Divisions were drawn into the fighting over the course of four and a half months. Some were withdrawn and then, of necessity, sent back into the cauldron. It was on the Somme that, as Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria lamented, "what still remained of the old first-class peace trained German infantry [was] expended on the battlefield." (21) As the British and French bludgeoned their way forward, the Germans fought desperately to regain every yard of lost trench. Seventy-eight German counter-attacks were counted in the first two weeks of September alone, many of them repeat assaults on positions from which they had already been bloodily repulsed. German losses on the Somme are generally estimated at between 500,000 and 660,000. Allied (French and British) losses in the same battle are placed in the region of 630,000.(22) The Germans, having already been through the horrors of Verdun and the Brusilov offensives, could afford such losses far less than the British, for whom the Somme was the first major offensive of the war. The damage inflicted on the German army was not just physical but psychological. When Thiepval fell, a German soldier commented; "...it was absolutely crushing... every German soldier from the highest general to the meanest private had the feeling that now Germany had lost the first great battle." (23)
In 1928, the German Reichsarchive produced a series of monographs on the Somme, which passed this verdict on the battle;
It would be a mistake to measure the results of the battle of the Somme by mere local gain of ground. Besides the strategic objectives, the British and French followed out a definite plan of exhausting the power of the defenders by the employment of great masses of artillery in constantly repeated attacks. Although ... the casualties of the Entente were numerically greater than ours ... this grave loss of blood affected Germany very much more heavily. Quite apart from the facts that its very loss narrowed down the limited possibilities of replacing it, and that the war industries drew off into their service able-bodied men in a constantly increasing measure, the battle of attrition gnawed terribly into the vitals of the defenders. The enormous tension on all fronts compelled the Supreme Command to leave troops in the line until they had expended the last atom of their energy, and to send divisions time after time into the same battle. In the circumstances, it was unavoidable that the demoralizing influences of the defensive battle affected the soldier more deeply than was proper in the interests of the maintenance of his fighting spirit and his sense of duty. Still more serious was it that, as the demand for self-sacrifice greatly surpassed what could be expected of the average man, the fighting largely fell on the shoulders of the best of the troops, and not least the officer. The consequences of this were a frightful death-roll of the finest and most highly trained soldiers, whose replacement was impossible. It was in this that the root of the tragedy of the battle lies. (24)
Even as the battle was being fought, this erosion of the fighting quality of the German army was being noted. Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria recorded in his diary that "the old experienced officers and men decrease steadily in numbers, and the reinforcements incorporated in masses have not enjoyed the same soldierly instruction and training, and physically are mostly inferior."(25) More recently Holger Hewig has echoed the same themes of damage to morale and the loss of irreplaceable veterans, noting that not only did the Somme witness "the first instances of blatant fragging..." in the German army, but also that it had "lost its last small-unit leaders: it would never be the same instrument again."(26)
Charles Carrington concluded that the Somme was
where the British army fought it out with the German army, and established their superiority, inflicting casualties which Germany could ill afford. The result is patent. In August the German government dismissed Falkenhayn, their Chief-of-Staff, who had failed in attack at Verdun and failed in defence on the Somme … In September, their worse month for casualties, the new leaders, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, conceded defeat by planning a strategic withdrawal, though, with their usual tenacity they clung to their positions until the winter gave them a short respite before retreating. The German Army was never to fight so well again, but the British Army went on to fight better. (27)
The pressure applied by both Haig's BEF and the French on the Somme was, thus, a vital part of the process of wearing down the German army, the process of 'destroying its arms' and 'breaking its will,' the process, in short, which was the prerequisite of ultimate victory.
www.gwpda.org/comment/haig1.html
Even if the French represented 46 % of the initial attack and were the only succesful allies during the 10 first days of the Offensive, forcing Germany to sent 35 Divisions from Verdun to defend the Somme. Even if the French managed to obtain a ratio of 1:1 at the Somme while attacking when the British were suffering a 1,6:1 ratio against the Germans, while at the end, the French represented 48 % of the forces at the Somme.
The Somme is probably a French Victory and a British disaster while the French were taking the bulk of the German tentative of breakthrough at Verdun.
@@davidchardon1303 Well the Brits were innitially less prepared for such a war and took a lot of casualties. The French were more experienced but it did not prevent them from failing later on at Le Chemin des Dames.
A lot of suffering.
@@davidchardon1303 the difference in readiness between the French army and the just made from scratch British army can account for those early discrepencies i think. I also wonder whether there was a difference in the quality of ground on which the two armies fought which could have made a difference. Still, that assessment falls in line with the now mainstream opinion; that the early days of the "battle" (the word, "battle", really hampers understanding; a front so large, and an operation continuing for so long, outstrips the connotation of the word battle, which stops the mind from easily assessing it as a whole. it should be called something like the Somme operation) were disasterous for the British but by the end, despite appalling casualties, the German army was irrervisbly damaged and the British army had now evolved into an exceptional fighting force.
@@davidchardon1303
_”The Somme is probably a French victory and a British disaster.”_
Drivel. You’re an ignorant, prejudiced, anti-British, chauvinistic French person. Your comments all over RUclips show this.
Britain was committed to an attack at the Somme by the Chantilly Agreement 1915 but Haig would have liked to have delayed the attack until August when more artillary would have been available but Joffre shouted at him in a meeting *_’that the French Army would cease to exist’ if he left it that long.’_*
_The Somme was _*_the muddy grave of the German field army_*_ and of the faith in the infallibility of German leadership, _*_dug by British industry and its shells ... The German Supreme Command, which had entered the war with enormous superiority, was defeated by the superior techniques of its opponents. It had fallen behind in the application of destructive forces,_*_ and it was compelled to throw division after division without protection against them into the cauldron of the battle of annihilation.’_
-Captain Captain von Hentig of the German Guard Reserve Division.
The Somme campaign would see those 'improvised cadres' of the BEF's citizen-soldiers grow in skill and confidence, whilst, in a bloody contest of attack and counter-attack the old German Imperial Army was destroyed. In all 97 German Divisions were drawn into the fighting over the course of four and a half months. Some were withdrawn and then, of necessity, sent back into the cauldron. It was on the Somme that, as Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria lamented, _”what still remained of the old first-class peace trained German infantry [was] expended on the battlefield."_ As the British and French bludgeoned their way forward, the Germans fought desperately to regain every yard of lost trench. Seventy-eight German counter-attacks were counted in the first two weeks of September alone, many of them repeat assaults on positions from which they had already been bloodily repulsed. German losses on the Somme are generally estimated at between 500,000 and 660,000. Allied (French and British) losses in the same battle are placed in the region of 630,000.
The Germans, having already been through the horrors of Verdun and the Brusilov offensives, could afford such losses far less than the British, for whom the Somme was the first major offensive of the war. The damage inflicted on the German army was not just physical but psychological. When Thiepval fell, a German soldier commented:
_"...it was absolutely crushing... every German soldier from the highest general to the meanest private had the feeling _*_that now Germany had lost the first great battle."_*
That the British lost more men isn’t clear since the German way of accounting was different to that of the allies. The German system give much lower figures - they did not add in the lightly wounded nor those who were missing who then reappeared after a few days, it was a different system. This system gave German casualties approximately two-thirds of that of the Allies.
Trying to adjust the figures, so that the accounting systems are the same, is fraught with difficulties. However, some academics have attempted doing this exercise of adjusting the figures, and have come up with the following:
Allied casualties 623,907 against German casualties 465,000 - 600,000.
Taking these figures it shows quite a high range for the German casualties, which makes the comparison not worthwhile. Casualties, however, is those men who were absent from role call on a particular day(s), which equates to the sum of the killed, wounded and missing. Although some of the wounded will not be able to return to duty, most will over time . So a far better comparison is the sum of the killed and missing (missing being those killed without being seen, AWOL or PoW). The figures for those are of more interest as follows:
Allied killed and missing 146,431
against
German killed and missing (PoW) 164,055 + 38,000, a total of 202,055
Therefore, by the finish of the battle the Germans had 55,624 less men available than the British and the French. This is why the Germans refer to the Battle of the Somme as the *’death of the old German Army’.* This caused the German High Command to retreat back to the so called Hindenburg Line in the winter of 1916-17. It was also the battle that taught the newly recruited British Army how to fight and win a modern war.
The long term losses of trained soldiers in the German Army were greater than that of the British and the French, which could be regard as a defeat for the Germans, leading to the German giving ground.
The German lines were broken and pushed back several miles, and - importantly - they were pushed off some of the heights from which they could observe and direct fire into Allied territory, instead now being overlooked themselves.
"German losses on the Somme are generally estimated at between 500,000 and 660,000."
Repeating Sheffield's lie about this is not a good look.
Wikipedia: "German Empire 434,000-445,000[8][5][7]"
To put the German laments you quote in context, NONE of the armies, and the British far less than any other, retained much in the way of their professional soldier cadre.
"The Germans, having already been through the horrors of Verdun and the Brusilov offensives..."
The "horrors" of the Brusilov Offensive were, for the Germans, not so very horrible. Maybe a sixth of the Russian casualties, but unfortunately for their was effort, also about a fourth of the Austro-Hungarian casualties. (Where are you getting the plural from, in "Offesives", btw?) Wikipedia, again: "...the German army did not suffer much from the operation and retained most of its offensive power afterward." (The Austro-Hungarians became more of a burden, but that's not what you said.)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brusilov_offensive#Aftermath
The Somme was an avoidable disaster. If the Donkeys hadn't insisted on it most of the bloodletting could have been avoided by staying on the defensive while the British blockade did its work.
Britain was committed to an attack at the Somme by the Chantilly Agreement 1915 along with simultaneous offensives by Italy and Russia. Haig would have liked to have delayed the attack until August when more artillary would have been available but Joffre shouted at him in a meeting ‘that the French Army would cease to exist’ if he left it that long.
The attack on the Somme helped save the French at Verdun. The Somme meant more and more German troops had to be transferred to fight the British and Empire forces. This drastically reduced the ability of the Germans to undertake offensive operations. Von Falkenhayn had underestimated the ability of the British to launch an attack and when Haig ordered the British over the top, the Germans were unprepared. In order to salvage the situation on the Somme, the Germans had to move badly needed forces out of Verdun. Some four divisions were transferred from the assault in order to help defend German positions on the Somme.
The German advance lost steam in the Summer of 1916 and were reduced to only local offensives. The commanders in Berlin were forced to use most of their strategic reserves on the Somme and the units in Verdun were starved of any reinforcements. The fighting in Verdun was intense and many German divisions became badly depleted and were unable to receive the reinforcements they needed. This prevented them from continuing with their offensive. The transfer of German units from Verdun meant they were eventually forced to adopt a defensive posture.
Even with the negation of 500,000 German soldiers on the Western Front, the French still almost lost the battle. Their army was being bled white and was almost broken as a fighting for force, even with the Somme drawing off German reserves that would otherwise have been used to almost certainly destroy the French Army in 1916.
The large battles of 1916-17 inflicted heavy damage on the Germans.The Somme-all five months of it- was seen as a marginal yet very costly, bloody victory. It changed the momentum against the Germans. The Germans retreated to the Hindenburg line sooner than they had planned.Ludendorff described it as ‘a heavy blow.’ If the weather hadn’t intervened the German Army might have cracked on the Somme. Ludendorff certainly feared it would.
Together with Verdun and The Brusilov Offensive, The Somme, led to what historian Martin Kitchen called a ‘silent dictatorship’ in Germany when Hindenburg and Ludendorff took over and began to warp German strategy to its detriment.
In fact, only the French attacks on the Somme relied the pressure on Verdun since the British were unable to any serious advance.
From the 50 German divisions at Verdun, the Germans refused to let less than 30 divisions in front of the French counter-attacks and offensives. Only 14 divisions were sent from Verdun to the Somme ...
So, it is not the Somme that released the pressure, but Verdun that released pressure on the British at the Somme ...
@@davidchardon1303
You’re an ignorant, prejudiced, anti-British, chauvinistic French person. Your comments all over RUclips show this.
_”But Verdun released pressure on the British”_
The French *were being attacked at Verdun.* The British attacked at the Somme to take pressure off the French.
Britain was committed to an attack at the Somme by the Chantilly Agreement 1915 but Haig would have liked to have delayed the attack until August when more artillary would have been available but Joffre shouted at him in a meeting *_’that the French Army would cease to exist’ if he left it that long.’_*
@@davidchardon1303 the about of Germans tied up and killed on the Somme had an impact on verdun, clearly.
@G Pierre: You are full of bad history.
The Germans were so unprepared that they inflicted 60,000 casualties in 1 day and held 90% of their ground
"Bad history is a very dangerous thing indeed."
Truth, that.
Claiming that the Somme was an Allied victory, as Sheffield does, is very bad history indeed.
@@gandydancer9710 It's too complicated a campaign to assign a "victor" in the traditional sense.
@@gandydancer9710 it achieved its objective which was to wear the german army down , thats the reality of warfare between large and advanced nations , ukraine today is no different , both nations are bleeding eachother white , people have been using the invasion of iraq as some base of comparison for how wars ought to be fought , but if you take for example the iran iraq war instead you get the same picture , long wars of attrition
Indeed.
Years ago I had a conversation with a Royal Engineer involved in the removal of unexploded ordnance in France. He had gained the impression that over 30% of the shells fired failed in some way, either falling short or failing to explode. If his view is correct, one must wonder what the effect would have been, for example, on the Somme, if manufacturers had paid more attention to quality and less to profits!
Do you have any evidence for claiming profits were the issue and not the more simple explanation that facilities, personnel and demand drove misfires. And that's before accounting for the mud.
Funny how the ‘Butcher Haig critics’ never mention the Hundred Days.
John Terraine:
‘The toughest assignment in modern British military history (i.e. since the creation of our first real Regular Army, the New Model) has been high command in war against the main body of a main continental enemy. Three British officers have undertaken such a task and brought it to a successful conclusion: the Duke of Marlborough, the Duke of Wellington and Field-Marshal Lord Haig.
And in that Final Offensive, which ended with a German delegation crossing the lines with a white flag to ask for an armistice, the British Armies under Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig captured 188,700 prisoners and 2840 guns. All the other Allies together, French, Americans, Belgians, captured 196,500 prisoners and 3775 guns. In other words, the British took just under 50% of all the prisoners and just over 40% of all the guns.
That was the achievement of the British Citizen Army; I have called it, more than once, the 'finest hour' of the British Army. There has never been anything like that '100 Days' Campaign' of continuous victory in the whole of our military history. In the words of one who served from 1916 to 1918 and died only recently, Professor C. E. Carrington:
In our thousand years of national history there has been one short period (1916-1918) when Britain possessed the most effective army in the world, and used it to win decisive victory.
The most sinister of all the delusions within the trauma was to lose sight of that.
What was the position of Haig's army on that day? It amounted to nearly two million men of the British Empire - the largest land force in the Empire's history. And they had just reached the end of a 'Hundred Days' Campaign' as glorious and decisive as that of 1815 which concluded the Battle of Waterloo - but infinitely less known.
It was, in fact an unparalleled achievement in the history of the British Army, revealed by the stark statistics. And this was done in nine successive victories which were largely instrumental in bringing the war to an end in 1918 - and a consummation that Haig was determined to bring about.
These victories should be as famous as Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet or Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria and Waterloo.
Instead, they are forgotten and unknown, so I will list them now:
The Battle of Amiens, 8 August 1918 ('the black day of the German Army');
The Battle of Albert, 21 August (the day on which Haig told Churchill 'we ought to do our utmost to get a decision this autumn');
The Battle of the Scarpe, 26 August;
The Battles of Havrincourt and Epehy, 12 September (the approaches to the HindenburgLine);
The Breaking of the Hindenburg Line, 27 September - 5 October (35,000 prisoners & 380 guns taken, the British Army's greatest feat of arms in all its history);
The Battle of Flanders, 28 September;
The Second Battle of Le Cateau, 6 October;
The Battle of the Selle, 17 October;
The Battle of the Sambre, 1-11 November.
These were Haig's victories, handsomely acknowledged by Marshal Foch:
Never at any time in history has the British Army achieved greater results in attack than in this unbroken offensive .... The victory was indeed complete, thanks to the Commanders of Armies, Corps and Divisions, thanks above all to the unselfishness, to the wise, loyal and energetic policy of their Commander-in-Chief, who made easy a great combination and sanctioned a prolonged and gigantic effort.’
In 1918, the British Army was the only Allied army capable of mounting a massive and sustained offensive.
giovani Pierre. Bloody hell Not one mention of the Australians Kiwis Canucks Battle of Ameins Australian and Canadian troops there my friend and not led by Butcher Haig but planned by Lt Gen John Monash
He does say 2million men from the British Empire, not just Britain.
I only caught your last sentence. Are you forgetting the Americans? They executed a highly successful offensive in 1918 at Meuse Argonne.
@@hoatattis7283
No, it’s the other way round. Monash applied the combined arms tactics devised and perfected by the BEF, commanded by Haig.
Hamel was not the enormous smashing victory commonly believed in Australia, but was a line-straightening exercise which was over in 90 minutes.
The Australian Corps was an integral part of the BEF, and its tactics and weapons systems were not developed in isolation. By late 1918 the BEF was the world’s most mechanised army, supported by the world’s largest air force, and was fighting, perhaps of the only time in British history, a rich man's war because of the enormous output of British industry. The Australian Corps was responsible for none of that.
The Monash myth really does need challenging. Does a corps commander, no matter how competent, (and Monash was) really merit 22 biographies?
To serious Australian military historians, the narrative of Australian military exceptionalism ad the routine denigration of British forces is an embarrassment.
The BEF drove the German Army back 6 miles at Cambrai on 20 November 1917., employing massed tanks and novel artillery techniques. Monash was nowhere near at the time.
As the (Australian) reviewer in the (Australian) The Age, said about another Monash biography, ‘Readers who cling to the simplistic view that British commanders in World War I were bunglers and butchers will find comfort in the hoary old story of Allied infantry as "lions led by donkeys", a story now retold with Monash instructing the donkeys how to win a war. Others, I fear, will recognise another example of what Robert Rhodes James called "a kind of nationalistic paranoia".’
Do some reading. You may find your “Monash masterminded these offensives” narrative challenged. The idea that the most junior corps commander masterminded the final victorious offensives is a little silly.
G Puierre: "Funny how the ‘Butcher Haig critics’ never mention the Hundred Days."
The Hundred Days was of course the product of the German Army having been hollowed out by the Blockade, etc., and shot its last bolt, morale-wise, in the Ludendorf Offensives, not the product of Haig's ham-handed butchery which, if had produced the results you claim, would never have allowed Operation Michael to be (relative to Haig's handiwork) so successful.
I respectfully disagree with Professor Sheffield, I think Haig’s reputation is most associated with/ tarnished by the Passchendaele campaign - especially the last two months.
I don't understand how he can argue that Haig learned the lessons of the Somme after his catastrophic strategic failure a year later at Third Ypres. The only successes in that latter campaign were Plumer's limited but methodical bite and hold attacks.
Fair point as long as you give him credit for 31 July and the late September - early October victories.
@@squeeth2895 July and September's victories had more to do with the Royal Navy's strangulation finally taking hold than Haig.
While Haig was no worse than many of the allied generals, he was certainly no Marlborough or Wellington.
Haig truly seems to have learned nothing from the Battles of the Frontiers in 1914. And any claims to competency must be utterly dismissed in the face of Passchendaele.
@@PaulfromChicago just as the Somme offensive was necessary to divert German troops to take pressure off the French at Verdun, so 3rd Ypres was necessary to distract the Germans while the French army was in mutiny after the failure of Nivelle's offensive.
Agreed, Gough was the wrong commander for a battle which needed a bit of nuance and detailed staff work, hence Plumer and his Chief of Staff being dragged in. They should have shut it down earlier after the dreadful rain in August.
Regarding Haig, I am not a great detractor of his.
But he did not cover himself with glory on the retreat from Mons. He let Smith Dorrien down several times.
Smith-Dorrien saved Haig's hide at Le Cateau.
Regarding Haig I always wondered how he and Rawlinson could ever command an attack, as they both had different ideas, Eg Haig breakthough, Rawlinson Bite and Hold
I also wish to inquire about this gentleman's earlier life and his academic qualifications. What, exactly, allows him to call himself a "military historian" at all? None of this information seems to appear on his Wikipedia page.
It was reported that the artillery barrage had failed to destroy the German barbed wire.
And yet the Generals still sent their men forward.
And guess what? The British achieved all their initial objectives on the first day of the offensive.
@@willkettle3959
No they didn’t, how do people like you exist? The British captured part of 3 objectives. 80% of their objectives were not met. This isn’t hard to research. You are simply wrong. They made minor gains but overall their main objectives weren’t met
If I understand this correctly, Prof. Sheffield is saying that the reason the British failed at the Somme is that they didn't launch a cavalry attack?
He must be a graduate of the Black Adder School of Military Studies
Dan Bernstein
Failed?
‘The Somme was the muddy grave of the German field army and of the faith in the infallibility of German leadership, dug by British industry and its shells ... The German Supreme Command, which had entered the war with enormous superiority, was defeated by the superior techniques of its opponents. It had fallen behind in the application of destructive forces, and it was compelled to throw division after division without protection against them into the cauldron of the battle of annihilation.’ -Captain Captain von Hentig of the German Guard Reserve Division.
Dan Bernstein
Yet the Somme campaign would see those 'improvised cadres' of the BEF's citizen-soldiers grow in skill and confidence, whilst, in a bloody contest of attack and counter-attack the old German Imperial Army was destroyed. In all 97 German Divisions were drawn into the fighting over the course of four and a half months. Some were withdrawn and then, of necessity, sent back into the cauldron. It was on the Somme that, as Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria lamented, "what still remained of the old first-class peace trained German infantry [was] expended on the battlefield." (21) As the British and French bludgeoned their way forward, the Germans fought desperately to regain every yard of lost trench. Seventy-eight German counter-attacks were counted in the first two weeks of September alone, many of them repeat assaults on positions from which they had already been bloodily repulsed. German losses on the Somme are generally estimated at between 500,000 and 660,000. Allied (French and British) losses in the same battle are placed in the region of 630,000.(22) The Germans, having already been through the horrors of Verdun and the Brusilov offensives, could afford such losses far less than the British, for whom the Somme was the first major offensive of the war. The damage inflicted on the German army was not just physical but psychological. When Thiepval fell, a German soldier commented; "...it was absolutely crushing... every German soldier from the highest general to the meanest private had the feeling that now Germany had lost the first great battle." (23)
In 1928, the German Reichsarchive produced a series of monographs on the Somme, which passed this verdict on the battle;
It would be a mistake to measure the results of the battle of the Somme by mere local gain of ground. Besides the strategic objectives, the British and French followed out a definite plan of exhausting the power of the defenders by the employment of great masses of artillery in constantly repeated attacks. Although ... the casualties of the Entente were numerically greater than ours ... this grave loss of blood affected Germany very much more heavily. Quite apart from the facts that its very loss narrowed down the limited possibilities of replacing it, and that the war industries drew off into their service able-bodied men in a constantly increasing measure, the battle of attrition gnawed terribly into the vitals of the defenders. The enormous tension on all fronts compelled the Supreme Command to leave troops in the line until they had expended the last atom of their energy, and to send divisions time after time into the same battle. In the circumstances, it was unavoidable that the demoralizing influences of the defensive battle affected the soldier more deeply than was proper in the interests of the maintenance of his fighting spirit and his sense of duty. Still more serious was it that, as the demand for self-sacrifice greatly surpassed what could be expected of the average man, the fighting largely fell on the shoulders of the best of the troops, and not least the officer. The consequences of this were a frightful death-roll of the finest and most highly trained soldiers, whose replacement was impossible. It was in this that the root of the tragedy of the battle lies. (24)
Even as the battle was being fought, this erosion of the fighting quality of the German army was being noted. Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria recorded in his diary that "the old experienced officers and men decrease steadily in numbers, and the reinforcements incorporated in masses have not enjoyed the same soldierly instruction and training, and physically are mostly inferior."(25) More recently Holger Hewig has echoed the same themes of damage to morale and the loss of irreplaceable veterans, noting that not only did the Somme witness "the first instances of blatant fragging..." in the German army, but also that it had "lost its last small-unit leaders: it would never be the same instrument again."(26)
Charles Carrington concluded that the Somme was
where the British army fought it out with the German army, and established their superiority, inflicting casualties which Germany could ill afford. The result is patent. In August the German government dismissed Falkenhayn, their Chief-of-Staff, who had failed in attack at Verdun and failed in defence on the Somme … In September, their worse month for casualties, the new leaders, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, conceded defeat by planning a strategic withdrawal, though, with their usual tenacity they clung to their positions until the winter gave them a short respite before retreating. The German Army was never to fight so well again, but the British Army went on to fight better. (27)
The pressure applied by both Haig's BEF and the French on the Somme was, thus, a vital part of the process of wearing down the German army, the process of 'destroying its arms' and 'breaking its will,' the process, in short, which was the prerequisite of ultimate victory.
www.gwpda.org/comment/haig1.html
@@giovannipierre5309 The French troops represented almost 50 % of the allied soldiers while they brough more artillery, almost two times more heavy artillery and artillery in general (with 120 very heavy artillery on train rail) and also, 1100 Trench Artillery with no equivalent on the British side. So, the French represented almost 50 % of the allied manpower volume but brough more and better heavy war gears ...
The French suffered 5000 casualties the first of the Somme, the British 59 000 ... Pretty strange how the British industry dug graves to the German by killing its own soldiers ... The French were the only dangerous attacking force
So I guess that taking the Somme as an example to prove the superiority of the BEF is not quite relevant since this are the French that saved the British from embarassement to not been able to properly attack an ennemy that is already attacking somewhere else....
@@giovannipierre5309 Captain von Hentig complaining about superior British methods? The Brits suffered 60,000 casualties on the first day including 20,000 dead. And 25% more than French and British casualties than the Germans throughout the entire battle.
@@psilvakimo the French suffered well over 320,000 casualties in just over a month at the start of the war including 72,000 in one day. You can’t judge an Army only by its worst day.
Maxse and the adjoining French broke through the lines in the southern section (where, incidentally, the guns were used in greater concentration along with a creeping barrage modelled along the lines of the French... effective pollination of better ideas by receptive soldiers like Allan Brooke whom appreciated what he could actually learn from Britain's allies).
Why didn't Haig deploy his massed calvary here?
Sheffield blames Rawlinson, but I've heard Jon Rosebank put the blame squarely on Haig.
42:40 The idea that Jutland had anything like the claim to significance that the Somme has is utterly ludicrous, and Sheffield's assertion that the dismissal of any such claim has the significance he attributes to it is ridiculous as well. It was a lost opportunity to remove the High Seas Fleet from the equation, but the High Seas Fleet was anyway not all that weighty a factor. Maybe it kept the Baltic invasion or effective blockade option off the table, but that's about it.
All the HSF did after Jutland was gather weed on its bottoms in harbour.
Haig made terrible misstakes and seemed to learn little from each "the first few times". We are talking both over time and thousands upon thousands off dead here.
Sticking to the "usefull cavalry" idea long into WW1 probably makes most people just shake their head..But what whould be very interesting whould be to know how much political and diplomatic preassure was put on Haig to do many offensives and when to do them etc. In 1914 the Britrish where relucant to counterattack at all. My impression is that by 1916 with the horrific losses of 1915 and Verdun 1916 to preassure to attack/take the initiative (at any cost) must have been extreme. Also in 1917 after the French mutinies...
Haig is tainted for me because he did his selfish best to discredit Smith-Dorrien, who proved he was the better battlefield commander by his competent actions in the most difficult of circumstances at Mons and Le Cateau. Haig connived with French to denigrate Smith-Dorrien until his disgraceful dismissal. Would the war's course have been different if Smith-Dorrien had succeeded French as C-in-C, who knows, but he had an infantryman's affinity with his troops that cavalrymen like French and Haig did not, and so I believe the horror of 1st July would have been avoided.
The War for Civilisation I didn’t believe in it then and I believe it less so now
J.R.R. Tolkien circa 1960s
Says someone who wrote stories for children featuring dwarves and elves.
Wonder if it was someone from the Navy that decided that the Battle of Jutland was the battle that won WW1?
Smith Dorrien seems to have been badly treated at the time
Political and personal reasons seem to a reason
As I understand it Smith Dorrien pushed for Calvary marksmanship over lances
Haigs appointment appears to be based more on political reasons than on merit
Why defend Haig ? Too many British lives were thrown away & horrendous numbers of wounded troops, because the attack made to assist the French was mismanaged. There is no glory in this action - just using foot soldiers & artillery to try to bludgeon a hole in the enemy line for months was a moronic strategy (even though it also cost the enemy large losses).
You're condemning Haig for this, but what alternatives were there? Haig didn't choose the time or place for the Somme offensive - he inherited it from Sir John French and Joffre. He knew his army wasn't ready, but he wasn't able to delay to August or September (as he was trying to do) because the French army would have collapsed at Verdun if he had. He went forward with the best he had at the time in the place that had been assigned to him.
But, even if he had been able to move at a time and place of his choosing, the question remains - what alternatives were there? The trench lines ran from the border of Switzerland to the North Sea - there was no flank to turn. The German army had invaded and occupied Belgium and part of France - a purely defensive stance would accomplish nothing in regards to liberating any of it. And if you actually look at what the front lines were like, it doesn't take long to see that a breakthrough in 1916 was an impossibility - there were at least two lines behind it, and in the time it would take to reinforce and and press on, the Germans would have already regrouped and started counter-attacking.
Then you have the tools available - "foot soldiers and artillery." What else was Haig supposed to use? Coarse language? Tanks weren't ready until September (and they proved to be better as infantry support than as their own means of assault). His army literally consisted of foot soldiers, artillery, and support for both. If you read up on the battle in books like Peter Hart's, the key to success in attacks at the Somme was artillery support and counter-battery fire - if you could shut down the German guns, they couldn't cut off and destroy the British attacks. On the first day of the Somme, arguably more damage was done to the British attacks by German artillery than by machine guns (among other things, at least half, if not more, of the British divisions attacking took their front line objectives, and were destroyed through German counter-attacks and artillery).
World War I was an attrition war, and could only be won through attrition. Haig did what needed to be done. The tragedy is not that hundreds of thousands of soldiers died or were wounded under his command - the tragedy is that there was no other way to do it.
I agree. IMO if the Somme was a meaningful battle of attrition as some claim it was, Haig never seemed to fully state that in his diaries and was always overly optimistic.
@David Miner: Essentially, Because there simply wasn’t anyone else competent, qualified or experienced anywhere near enough as Haig was, & also don’t overlook or underestimate the stark facts that no other General or Field Marshal on either side, could do any better or show any other initiatives to break the sclerotic, strategic stalemate of the Western Front between 1915-18!
This ‘Attritional Warfare’ nature & situation in WW1 was never of Haig’s making or any of his desired choices, but he was also a “prisoner of the prevailing circumstances” & he simply didn’t have the options to choose any other, meaningful or viable, alternative courses of action! Effectively, he inherited this whole onerous situation, especially at the Somme, of which he had actually wished & intended to delay its commencement by about another two months, in order to better train, equip & supply his troops to an enhanced state of readiness & conditioning, before commencing this huge attack there, but he had been previously overruled in this endeavor by his political masters in London, under pressure from the French Government & Military Command that were also undergoing a huge burden of sacrifice & then also enduring catastrophic losses & also thereby avert an imminent French Army collapse at Verdun & to thus require urgent relief & deliverance from this dire situation themselves immediately in the wake from Haig’s British Army on the 01/July/1916
One other statistic you might want to ponder & reflect upon, are the comparatively low casualty rates of the British & Imperial Forces in all theatres of war when compared with either their Allies or especially with their Adversaries, whether you measure it in terms of actual casualty numbers (Total Wounded, Captured, Missing or Killed in Action, or as a direct result of battle-wounds previously incurred) or else in terms of comparative percentages of total forces available! The British 🇬🇧 Empire (Britain, its Dominions & Colonies etc.) in total lost around one million direct war fatalities between 1914-1919, far fewer than France 🇫🇷, Imperial Germany, Imperial Russia 🇷🇺, Austria-Hungary & even in terms of ratio of total forces fighting, far less in percentage terms than Belgium 🇧🇪, Italy 🇮🇹 & the USA 🇺🇸!! Haig, like WW2 Generals, much preferred to use technologies & weaponry rather than expend the lives of his troops unnecessarily, if he was able to, that is! These facts are self-evident & speak clearly for themselves!!
However, the results of the Somme later paved the way for the BIF’s series of unstoppable victories in the Summer/Autumn of 1918 known to posterity as “The Final Hundred Days,” & authentically recognized as one of the British Army’s four (4). Supreme Historical Achievements of Arms in War, for the Allied Armies there!
What might I ask was the alternative way to fight the Somme offensive.
I have to ask if you listened to the defence before condemning it.
I have read about the Somme for many years also.
To think that any general would think that launching an attritional battle or campaign is a bit disgusting.
That is we have more men, than the enemy and if we lose man for man, we will win in the end.
This is what the Russians are doing in Ukraine.
Attrition was the general strategy the entente agreed upon in the 1915 chantilly conference. Yes, attritional warfare is bloody and horrendous, but that is the consequence of modern industrial powers fighting each other.
attrition is the general strategy of most wars where the opponents more or less equal , vietnam , iran-iraq and today ukraine and russia , both sides are bleeding eachother white thats the reality of war on this scale
To summarise, 'the Somme wasn't that bad,' hmm?
The Somme was dreadful and bloody and everything you want to believe. But. Sometimes an Army has to do what it has to do. Haig started with an undertrained army which could not approach 1914 Regulars' standards of fieldcraft and musketry, which could only walk in straight lines towards the Germans and fire their rifles ineffectively. No wonder they died in unacceptable numbers. Later in the battle, they did much better, they were forced to use better tactics, most of them learned how to shoot effectively and fewer of them died. In other words, the Somme was a battle where your Army had to learn on the job.
Haig was far from perfect but all the criticisms regarding his tactics and results can be made about the likes of Zhukov who is much more of a 1-dimensional butcher and is considered one of the best Generals of WW2
J south:
"...all the criticisms regarding [Haig's] tactics and results can be made about the likes of Zhukov "
False. Zhukov had victories over a near-peer opponent when it was still near-peer.
Haig produced nothing but inconclusive bloodbaths, or bloodbaths in defeats, until the Kaiser's Germany had utterly shot its bolt.
@@gandydancer9710I’ve been saying that for years. Well said.
Excellent
10 million horses died in WW1
If they can't take a joke they shouldn't have joined up.
@@vatsmith8759 not funny
Another terrible statistic.
I think you will find it was 2 million.
"The British Army did a good job" - good to have, ahem, the British Army's official historian on hand to offer an impartial view. I don't know about you but I'm thoroughly convinced by his objectivity, especially given how upfront he is about the whole arrangement. A less honest man might be tempted to masquerade as some sort of academic
Butthurt?
@@importedmusic No just knowledgeable. The Somme was a shambolic disaster.
Perhaps you can share with us all the results of your vast research on Facebook and Instagram?
@@PolakInHolland
_The Somme was _*_the muddy grave of the German field army_*_ and of the faith in the infallibility of German leadership, _*_dug by British industry and its shells ... The German Supreme Command, which had entered the war with enormous superiority, was defeated by the superior techniques of its opponents. It had fallen behind in the application of destructive forces,_*_ and it was compelled to throw division after division without protection against them into the cauldron of the battle of annihilation.’_
-Captain Captain von Hentig of the German Guard Reserve Division.
The Somme campaign would see those 'improvised cadres' of the BEF's citizen-soldiers grow in skill and confidence, whilst, in a bloody contest of attack and counter-attack the old German Imperial Army was destroyed. In all 97 German Divisions were drawn into the fighting over the course of four and a half months. Some were withdrawn and then, of necessity, sent back into the cauldron. It was on the Somme that, as Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria lamented, _”what still remained of the old first-class peace trained German infantry [was] expended on the battlefield."_ As the British and French bludgeoned their way forward, the Germans fought desperately to regain every yard of lost trench. Seventy-eight German counter-attacks were counted in the first two weeks of September alone, many of them repeat assaults on positions from which they had already been bloodily repulsed. German losses on the Somme are generally estimated at between 500,000 and 660,000. Allied (French and British) losses in the same battle are placed in the region of 630,000.
The Germans, having already been through the horrors of Verdun and the Brusilov offensives, could afford such losses far less than the British, for whom the Somme was the first major offensive of the war. The damage inflicted on the German army was not just physical but psychological. When Thiepval fell, a German soldier commented:
_"...it was absolutely crushing... every German soldier from the highest general to the meanest private had the feeling _*_that now Germany had lost the first great battle."_*
That the British lost more men isn’t clear since the German way of accounting was different to that of the allies. The German system give much lower figures - they did not add in the lightly wounded nor those who were missing who then reappeared after a few days, it was a different system. This system gave German casualties approximately two-thirds of that of the Allies.
Trying to adjust the figures, so that the accounting systems are the same, is fraught with difficulties. However, some academics have attempted doing this exercise of adjusting the figures, and have come up with the following:
Allied casualties 623,907 against German casualties 465,000 - 600,000.
Taking these figures it shows quite a high range for the German casualties, which makes the comparison not worthwhile. Casualties, however, is those men who were absent from role call on a particular day(s), which equates to the sum of the killed, wounded and missing. Although some of the wounded will not be able to return to duty, most will over time . So a far better comparison is the sum of the killed and missing (missing being those killed without being seen, AWOL or PoW). The figures for those are of more interest as follows:
Allied killed and missing 146,431
against
German killed and missing (PoW) 164,055 + 38,000, a total of 202,055
Therefore, by the finish of the battle the Germans had 55,624 less men available than the British and the French. This is why the Germans refer to the Battle of the Somme as the *’death of the old German Army’.* This caused the German High Command to retreat back to the so called Hindenburg Line in the winter of 1916-17. It was also the battle that taught the newly recruited British Army how to fight and win a modern war.
The long term losses of trained soldiers in the German Army were greater than that of the British and the French, which could be regard as a defeat for the Germans, leading to the German giving ground.
The German lines were broken and pushed back several miles, and - importantly - they were pushed off some of the heights from which they could observe and direct fire into Allied territory, instead now being overlooked themselves.
In 1928, the German Reichsarchive produced a series of monographs on the Somme, which passed this verdict on the battle;
It would be a mistake to measure the results of the battle of the Somme by mere local gain of ground. Besides the strategic objectives, the British and French followed out a definite plan of exhausting the power of the defenders by the employment of great masses of artillery in constantly repeated attacks. Although ... the casualties of the Entente were numerically greater than ours ... this grave loss of blood affected Germany very much more heavily. Quite apart from the facts that its very loss narrowed down the limited possibilities of replacing it, and that the war industries drew off into their service able-bodied men in a constantly increasing measure, the battle of attrition gnawed terribly into the vitals of the defenders. The enormous tension on all fronts compelled the Supreme Command to leave troops in the line until they had expended the last atom of their energy, and to send divisions time after time into the same battle. In the circumstances, it was unavoidable that the demoralizing influences of the defensive battle affected the soldier more deeply than was proper in the interests of the maintenance of his fighting spirit and his sense of duty. Still more serious was it that, as the demand for self-sacrifice greatly surpassed what could be expected of the average man, the fighting largely fell on the shoulders of the best of the troops, and not least the officer. The consequences of this were a frightful death-roll of the finest and most highly trained soldiers, whose replacement was impossible. It was in this that the root of the tragedy of the battle lies. (24)
Even as the battle was being fought, this erosion of the fighting quality of the German army was being noted. Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria recorded in his diary that "the old experienced officers and men decrease steadily in numbers, and the reinforcements incorporated in masses have not enjoyed the same soldierly instruction and training, and physically are mostly inferior."(25) More recently Holger Hewig has echoed the same themes of damage to morale and the loss of irreplaceable veterans, noting that not only did the Somme witness "the first instances of blatant fragging..." in the German army, but also that it had "lost its last small-unit leaders: it would never be the same instrument again."(26)
Charles Carrington concluded that the Somme was
where the British army fought it out with the German army, and established their superiority, inflicting casualties which Germany could ill afford. The result is patent. In August the German government dismissed Falkenhayn, their Chief-of-Staff, who had failed in attack at Verdun and failed in defence on the Somme … In September, their worse month for casualties, the new leaders, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, conceded defeat by planning a strategic withdrawal, though, with their usual tenacity they clung to their positions until the winter gave them a short respite before retreating. The German Army was never to fight so well again, but the British Army went on to fight better. (27)
The pressure applied by both Haig's BEF and the French on the Somme was, thus, a vital part of the process of wearing down the German army, the process of 'destroying its arms' and 'breaking its will,' the process, in short, which was the prerequisite of ultimate victory.
In the final 100 days of the Great War the BEF engaged, and defeated, 99 of the 197 German Divisions in the West. Between July 18 and the end of the war, the French, American and Belgian armies combined captured 196,500 prisoners-of-war and 3,775 guns, while British forces, with a smaller army than the French, engaged the main mass of the German Army and captured 188,700 prisoners and 2,840 guns.
Let me repeat that:
the French, American and Belgian armies combined captured 196,700 prisoners-of-war and 3,775 guns, while British forces captured 188,700 prisoners and 2,840 guns.
British forces captured *only 8,000 fewer prisoners and 935 less guns than the other allies combined.*
In other words *the British Army took just under 50% of the prisoners and just over 40% of the guns.*
Historian John Terraine:
_’The toughest assignment in modern British military history (i.e. since the creation of our first real Regular Army, the New Model) has been high command in war against the main body of a main continental enemy. Three British officers have undertaken such a task and brought it to a successful conclusion: the Duke of Marlborough, the Duke of Wellington and Field-Marshal Lord Haig._
_And in that Final Offensive, which ended with a German delegation crossing the lines with a white flag to ask for an armistice, the British Armies under Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig captured 188,700 prisoners and 2840 guns. All the other Allies together, French, Americans, Belgians, captured 196,500 prisoners and 3775 guns. In other words, the British took just under 50% of all the prisoners and just over 40% of all the guns._
_That was the achievement of the British Citizen Army; I have called it, more than once, the 'finest hour' of the British Army. There has never been anything like that '100 Days' Campaign' of continuous victory in the whole of our military history. In the words of one who served from 1916 to 1918 and died only recently, Professor C. E. Carrington:_
_In our thousand years of national history there has been one short period (1916-1918) when Britain possessed the most effective army in the world, and used it to win decisive victory._
_The most sinister of all the delusions within the trauma was to lose sight of that._
_What was the position of Haig's army on that day? It amounted to nearly two million men of the British Empire - the largest land force in the Empire's history. And they had just reached the end of a 'Hundred Days' Campaign' as glorious and decisive as that of 1815 which concluded the Battle of Waterloo - but infinitely less known._
_It was, in fact an unparalleled achievement in the history of the British Army, revealed by the stark statistics. And this was done in nine successive victories which were largely instrumental in bringing the war to an end in 1918 - and a consummation that Haig was determined to bring about._
_These victories should be as famous as Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet or Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria and Waterloo. Instead, they are forgotten and unknown, so I will list them now:_
_The Battle of Amiens, 8 August 1918 ('the black day of the German Army');_
_The Battle of Albert, 21 August (the day on which Haig told Churchill 'we ought to do our utmost to get a decision this autumn');_
_The Battle of the Scarpe, 26 August;_
_The Battles of Havrincourt and Epehy, 12 September (the approaches to the HindenburgLine);_
_The Breaking of the Hindenburg Line, 27 September - 5 October (35,000 prisoners & 380 guns taken, the British Army's greatest feat of arms in all its history);_
_The Battle of Flanders, 28 September;_
_The Second Battle of Le Cateau, 6 October;_
_The Battle of the Selle, 17 October;_
_The Battle of the Sambre, 1-11 November._
_These were Haig's victories, handsomely acknowledged by Marshal Foch:_
_Never at any time in history has the British Army achieved greater results in attack than in this unbroken offensive .... The victory was indeed complete, thanks to the Commanders of Armies, Corps and Divisions, thanks above all to the unselfishness, to the wise, loyal and energetic policy of their Commander-in-Chief, who made easy a great combination and sanctioned a prolonged and gigantic effort.’_
620,000 casualties for around 10km of ground cannot be called a victory. Yes it cost the Germans badly too, but I believe many lives were wasted and the British and French high commands inflexibility was largely responsible for this.
Read ‘The myth of the great war’ it shows how the Germans undoubtedly had the superior military, in both command and tactics. While Germany was splitting her forces on 2 fronts the British, French, Canadians, ANZACS, Indians and French colonial divisions couldn’t really dent the Germans positions in a meaningful way, and campaigns like the Somme high light this. It was only vastly superior logistics and supplies that the Americans gave that secured an Entente victory.
This is not to say by any means the British or French were bad, we did perform well in many campaigns, but statistically the Germans were the best.
That's not so true knowing that the US American troops were : trained by the French and mostly equipped by them.
Surely the German had a better cohesion, fought on Belgian and French foreign ground (they could plunder and destroy as they liked : they occuppied French industrial mainland (North coal mining and steel industry regions). They had more discipline, somewhat better heavy equipment because of their industry.
The Americans were more like the tipping point that had a progressive demoralizing action on fully exhausted Germans. From which army did the Germans suffered most casulaties? You tell me...
22:10 "But all these things together, I think it's fair to argue that while Somme was not an Allied victory as some historians have claimed, not a victory in the traditional sense, the Somme WAS a significant strategic success"
Notice lecturer doesn't argue it was a victory. Somme did achieve its strategic objective of pulling away German strength from Verdun and weakening them further.
And for the Allied high command, they did their best and they did contain Germany, the supposed super war machine, if the Germans were so superior, they would have smashed through France, a country with 50% less population with a measly 100,000 British soldiers in 1914.
..."statistically the Germans were the best." Well, your statistics are clearly not accounting for logistics. They certainly were not the best in logistics. You can't win an industrial war with bad logistics. Tactics are not everything.
_”the Germans had undoubtedly the superior military in command and tactics”_
Unfortunately, war is also fought at the operational and strategic level. And you seem unaware that the Germans were on the defensive for the most part. Attacking is more costly that defending.
What a lot of people don’t get is that even for their defensive victories, German casualties are horrific; far worse than would be expected for a reasonably managed defensive victory.
This is because of Entente innovative tactics, and also poor German tactical decisions; such as counterattacking lost ground immediately. This was always horrendously costly, even before the ‘Bite and hold’ tactics of the Allies came into force. The lauded German general staff, so efficient in the Franco-Prussian War, had become stagnant and stubborn.
I honestly cannot fathom why it is only the Entente countries willing to hold up their hands to the things they got wrong; the Central Powers made some incredible mistakes that just don’t get the same scrutiny.
Or, of course, we could ask how it was that despite a supposedly “better K/D ratio” the German military ended up comprehensively and completely defeated and disarmed, the German population starving and freezing, and the Kaiser kicked out of his job? Those are rather more important “numbers and statistics” describing the outcome of a war, don’t you think?
Statistically the Germans were the best?
Normally, the attacker expects to lose more than the defender: a point well known to the educated and informed.
Indeed, in 1914 when the Germans attacked the British, they lost *five* of their troops for every British casualty they inflicted.
When the British attacked the Germans on the Somme, they suffered 419,000 casualties - but the Germans lost nearly *600,000!*(Sheffield, G. The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army, 2011. London: Aurum Press)
Somehow, the Germans, defending at the Somme, were so “superior” that even in defence they managed to lose *three men for every two British casualties!*
Perhaps you should study a little more.
Germany was hopelessly inefficient in defending against the British, and equally inept on the few occasions they dared to try attacking.
Which, of course, brings us to the outcome; where the German military is collapsing in mutiny and revolt, and launching an armed insurrection to demand an end to the war rather than risk further fighting with the British…
*Germany lost at a 5:1 ratio when they attacked the British: *yet the British could inflict more casualties than they suffered, when they attacked German positions.*
At the Marne, the British hadn’t had time to entrench or fortify, yet inflicted massive casualties on the German attackers, sending them reeling back in disorder.
At the Somme, the Germans had had plenty of time to construct extensive entrenchments, massive wire entanglements and thoroughly prepared positions: yet they lost more troops defending, than the British did attacking, and were sent back reeling in disorder.
Why, it’s almost as if the British turned out to be better at this “war” business than the Germans…
Remind me again, what happened when the High Seas Fleet was ordered to steam out and fight the British in October 1918? Did they man their ships, close to battle, and fight the long-promised Der Tag ? Or did the prospect of a rematch with the Royal navy cause them refuse to fight, overthrow their officers, and declare an armed revolution that brought down the German government? (see Kiel mutiny) Not sure that’s really the sign of a “stronger” military, but hey - they had a better KIA ratio while they were losing!
Well, that’s what happens when one side spends its war hiding, running away and losing, while the other spends the war advancing, attacking and winning: you lose less of your force by surrendering, mutinying or running away, than by actually fighting.
Presumably, the Treaty of Versailles was also a great political and economic triumph for Germany, achieved on the back of their “superior KIA ratio”?
So your Navy in armed revolt, your Army broken and in headlong retreat, your Kaiser abdicating and your entire country surrendering before being occupied is “efficient” and “superior”.
Just out of interest, why couldn’t “superior”Germany win in 1917? The US was still neutral, the Russians were in full-on revolution, the French army had mutinied and were refusing to fight… and yet somehow the “efficient” Germans couldn’t even defeat puny Britain given that golden opportunity to take them down.
Germany and Austro-Hungary threw everything they had into a war; and were completely and comprehensively, defeated. (When your Kaiser abdicates, your military collapses, and your opponents disarm you and hammer you for reparations, you’ve been defeated: trying to claim otherwise, merely led Germany to an even more humiliating repeat of its failure)
Victory is “efficient”. Defeat is “inefficient”. Carl von Clausewitz understood and explained this: strangely, his German heirs ignored him, while foreigners put his work to rather better use.
Why did Germany fight a war? Why not demonstrate true efficiency by shooting a million or two of its own soldiers, starving its population, overthrowing the Kaiser, sinking the High Seas Fleet in port, handing over colonies and territories, and paying vast indemnities to France, in 1914?
By your claims, that would be the most efficient outcome of all: achieving all of Germany’s war aims without any need for conflict at all.
Of course, this does require that Germany’s position in 1919 was what they went to war to achieve…
Germany was able to reduce itself to impotent, disarmed, revolution-torn bankrupt humiliation, and place itself at the mercy of its enemies. That was very efficiently done - assuming its situation in 1919 was what the Kaiser and his cronies had dreamed of in 1914.
In 1917, when the Italians were beaten, the French in mutiny and the Russians out of the war thanks to revolution… Germany could not defeat Britain when she was fighting alone.
Why couldn’t Germany overcome the British when they had no other threats to fight?
Oh, that’s right - the British were much too strong and capable for Germany to defeat.
In early 1917, Britain was fighting alone. The US was still neutral; Russia had collapsed into revolution; and the French armies were in full-scale mutiny after the failed Nivelle offensives.
Yet despite this, Germany completely and totally failed to win.
It’s almost as if the German military were “not very efficient” at winning wars, isn’t it?
Germany was splitting her forces on two fronts?
The British were fighting in France and in the Middle East. They also had to raise train and equip a conscript army from scratch.
Yet in 1917, when the Italians were beaten, the French in mutiny and the Russians out of the war thanks to revolution… Germany could not defeat Britain when she was fighting alone.
Why couldn’t Germany overcome the weak, helpless British when they had no other threats to fight?
Oh, that’s right - the British were much too strong and capable for Germany to defeat.
Inconvenient facts… don’t you just hate them?
In early 1917, Britain was fighting alone. The US was still neutral; Russia had collapsed into revolution; and the French armies were in full-scale mutiny after the failed Nivelle offensives.
Yet despite this, Germany completely and totally failed to win.
It’s almost as if the German military were “not very efficient” at winning wars, isn’t it?
Also in 1918, after Russia left the war, the transfer of all those divisions from the east gave the Germans a temporary superiority over the allies. This should have resulted in outright victory. *It never did.*
While I think haig is wrongly portrayed as a callous butcher in media, the execution of his strategy was abysmal even by 1916 standards. His plan was sound but the tactical execution was largely terrible. The British army on the 1st July arguably had the worst offensive tactics out of every army, they had learned virtually nothing from their own allies, the French and Russians, not much from the Germans either.
The only unit which used more sophisticated assault tactics were the ulsters, who sent raiding parties into no mans land who bombarded the Germans trenches with grenades and charged in rapidly as soon as the bombardment ended, surprising and shocking the defenders and actually taking their initial and secondary objectives, however most of the British units being inexperienced had very basic assault methods, waiting 10 mins after the bombardment lifted to advance, while its a bit of an exaggeration to suggest they walked in line slowly getting mown down by machine guns, but the assault waves did advance steadily in extended lines and just got pinned down in shell holes, suffering huge losses. They could’ve used a number of more sophisticated tactics to better achieve their objectifies, the russian Brusilov offensive used an interval bombardment, shelling heavily mapped Austrian positions, then randomly pausing the shelling once in a while to check accuracy, and to trick the defenders into emerging from their bunkers and manning defences. Then once the shelling resumed it often caught them in the open, this happened several times and it made the defenders more and more nervous to leave their dug outs, all the while Russian shock squads were creeping as close as they dared to the enemy lines, when the bombardment finally ended for real, at 6pm after 10hrs, of heavy, accurate and intervalled shelling the Russians swarmed into the trenches rapidly before the Austro Hungarian defenders could even leave their bunkers, blocking dug out exists with machine guns and rolling grenades down to those who didn’t immediately surrender, they took the first line very easily and immediately pushed into the second catching defenders in the open when counter attacking.
The French and Germans also had similar style tactics, the Germans in particular emphasised smashing into the enemy lines at a small point, and infiltrate at a few specific weak spots, then push THROUGH the enemy lines bypassing strong points and getting behind defenders and encircling them, leaving strong points to be mopped up by the following troops, this was more effective than frontally assaulting the enemy lines. Infiltration was better than a frontal assault in most situations. Although it was 1917 and 1918 that this doctrine became fully in use by the Germans, they used Proto versions of these tactics at Verdun to good initial success, and on the eastern front too, the French did so too on the counter attacks to significant affect.
The British had a sound strategic view for the Somme offensive, haig at a point, but the execution of the assault was a disaster with inflexible command, poor artillery standards, and unimaginative assault tactics in many areas of the front. The British military rightfully deserves criticism for throwing away so many lives for tangibly minimal gains. It didn’t need to be so much of a slaughter for Britain, they had successes to learn from and didn’t seem to take much on board.
I think what happens often is people who know better are rightfully indignant about the caricature of haig being a clueless callous fool, and seek to correct this historical wrong, but then to too far and make him out to be some misunderstood unsung hero and go too far in the opposite direction….
The Somme is a battle in the wrong place and using an Army not fit for purpose.
I wonder if he would like to walk slowly towards machine gun fire ? Brilliant inspired tactics !
David jordan
Another ludicrous comment.
David Jordan... Well at least we know where you get your history from.
You have the benefit of hindsight - what would you have done differently then? Remember the British soldiers had 70 pounds of equipment and had to walk across half a mile of No Mans Land in some places.
@@atrlawes98 The only ones to achieve all their objectives left their packs behind, were halfway to the German lines before the barrage stopped and them bombed the crap out of the Germans in front of them. A stupid officer might have said take everything you need for a week in the field with you and wait till I blow this whistle before you start. It was not a failure by High Command but a failure of common sense at Battalion level which cost most of the casualties.
The cavalry failed miserably at the Battle of Amien in 1918. Only good for riding in parades and guarding prisoners.
Miller Sandra Hernandez Nancy Young Helen
Another apologist. His idea of 'nuance' is nothing else but a version of subtlety in finding excuses for the Haig syndicate.
Haig was given orders by his politicians to win. Given he had no tanks or air power how was he supposed to do that?
An Establishment historian defending an Establishment stalwart, in Haig. It's pretty embarrassing, really. This pathetic campaign to 'rehabilitate' Haig and co, is really a bit of an IQ test. And it shows up those who are still susceptible to propaganda and the 'government line' on things, even today...
So true. Haig was a willing tool
Absolutely correct 👍
All this revisionism...the Somme was a bloody disaster...26,000 dead in one day. UFB.
Did you watch the video? If you did, you’d know the speaker acknowledges the horrendous losses in human life, but that is the way attritional warfare among modern industrial nations is waged. Perhaps you could suggest what the British should have done differently?
Utter tosh. American intervention meant defeat for Germany. Cavalry, pah
More like Foch deciding that his pets, the offensively tuned Canadian Corps under Arthur Currie, were needed for two key offensives within the larger 100 Days offensive to win the war...
This drives Brit revisionists crazy by the way: for in salvaging Brit high command from 'butchers and bunglers' critiques, they simultaneously display this obsessive need to underplay both commonwealth and allied contributions.
They want their cake and eat it too.
All of the major battles on the western front were won and lost well before American troops arrived in any significant number. It was the policies of the British under their field marshal Haig and his army along with the French that were the instrument of final victory.
America had the worlds 17th largest army at time.. you were nothing in this war..the British naval blockade brought germany to its knees...america😅laughable
Haig should have been summarily executed on the spot. Every politician forced to tour the front with or without a ceasefire.
He just kept stuffing mother's sons through a sausage grinder for NO DAMNED REASON !!!!!!! Too sad for words or tears.
At the very least he should have been fired/removed from command/cashiered/retired or put in the front lines.
Ron Chitwood so what would you have done differently? Hindsight is a fine thing...
The ignorance behind these statements is startling.
The only way out of Grinding Poverty, Poor living conditions, poor wagers, Tug the Forelock and poor health care was the real reason to join up to escape this way of life. Then, when it was all over it was back to the same old story. When they were promised a "Land Fit For Heros" A JOKE, Never Happened. I have seen a clip of young recruits and by the look of them to me they looked under weight and small in stature. Could this be through a poor diet? Why can't these Historians stop writing about the battles and Generals and write books on the real conditions that they ran away from?
They were conscripted or volunteered in 1914 in a fit of national hysteria. Most of these volunteers had good jobs and a comfortable existence.
The British remember they lose both wars without America, don’t they?
americans had very little impact on ww1 , by the time they got to europe the german army was a shadow of its former self , all the americans added was more meat for the meatgrinder and thats it
America meant nothing in this war...a real war...not like vietnam or the pacific 😅
This gentleman claims to be a "revisionist" historian of the British Army in WW1. I suggest rather that he is merely an apologist for the stupid upper-class butcher Haig. My old regiment, the Lancashire Fusiliers, went in on 1 July and did not do, shall we say, very well. I also suggest that this gentleman, although he talks so glibly and so often of "attrition" in this battle, had he been put in a trench himself would have shat himself.
Another apologist for butcher Haig.
ALA so what would you have done differently? Hindsight is a fine thing...
I thought that bullshit died off decades ago.
@@TheRanblingjohnnyot if you are an Australian, which I am not.
Agreed 💯
@@BrbWifeYellingNot hindsight. Every front line officer knew they faced disaster, and voiced it, only to be told, "Shut it"