THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME, 1916 term paper

By the summer of 1915 it was clear that World War I, the war between the Allied Powers (France, Great Britain, Italy, and Russia) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungry, Bulgaria, and Turkey), would be long, especially on the Western Front. To break the stalemate both sides planned offensives for 1916. General Erich von Falkenhayn, the German chief of staff, selected the fortress system of Verdun in northeastern France as his target. The German plan aimed at drawing the French army into Verdun and bleeding it to death. Between February and August 1916, a horrific battle raged at Verdun, resulting in French losses of 315,000 and German losses of 282,000. Meanwhile, in December 1915 France’s Marshal Joseph Joffre met with Britain’s General Douglas Haig to plan the Allied spring offensive. Unaware at that time of Falkenhayn’s plans for Verdun, Joffre and Haig decided upon a July offensive in northwestern France where the British and French trenches met astride the Somme River. On 24 June 1916, British artillery erupted along an eighteen-mile front in a continuous eight-day barrage of more than 1.5 million shells that supposedly would obliterate the German trenches. On 1 July, 200,000 British and French soldiers clambered “over the top” of their trenches and crossed 500 yards of no man’s land toward the eleven battle-hardened German divisions of General Fritz von Below. Immediately, things went terribly wrong for the untested all-volunteer New British Army. Despite the massive artillery barrage, the German trenches were not obliterated. Suddenly German machine gun squads appeared and took deadly aim at the exposed British infantry, weighted down with sixty pounds of equipment. The British soldiers who survived the German gunners and reached the German lines found that their wire cutters could not cut the German barbed wire. Hundreds caught on the wire were easy targets for German guns. Some British officers kicked soccer balls across no man’s land to inspire their troops, but by sunset of 1 July, the British army suffered 57,470 casualties and counted 20,000 dead. Never in the history of the British army had there been such a terrible day. The offensive ended on 18 November 1916. The British army lost 419,00 men, the French more than 204,000, and the Germans some 500,000. The Somme offensive was a murderous battle of attrition. The failure to break the German defenses and the conquest of only 125 square kilometers chilled enthusiasm for future offensive attacks and affirmed for many the value of defensive strategy for the next two years.
Suggestions for Term Papers
1. Read Wilfred Owen’s famous poem “Dulce et Decorum Est.” Investigate his experiences in World War I and write a paper analyzing the last two lines of the poem.
2. Compare John Keegan’s chapter on the Somme in his The Face of Battle with parts 3 and 4 of The Great War and the Shaping of the Twentieth Century (see Suggested Sources).
3. Read Robert Graves’s chapters on the Battle of the Somme in his Good-Bye to All That and present a report on his experiences in combat (see Suggested Sources).
4. Based on reading and viewing, draw a detailed, annotated plan for trenches of the kind British or French soldiers might have constructed. An alternative project would be the actual construction of a short section of a front-line trench.
5. In a research paper on the history of the machine-gun, discuss why Europeans were surprised at the way in which it changed the style of warfare in World War I.
6. Investigate the life of General Douglas Haig and evaluate his handling of the Somme campaign.

Research Suggestions

In addition to the boldfaced items, look under the entry for “The French Army Mutinies, 1917” (#8). Search under World War I, Field Marshall Kitchener, and Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg.

SUGGESTED SOURCES

Primary Sources

Graves, Robert. Good-Bye to All That. New York: Doubleday, 1985. First published in 1929. Despite fictionalized parts, this memoir remains one of the most poignant accounts of the fighting.

Sassoon, Siegfried. Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. New York: Coward-McCann, 1930. One of many memoirs that illustrate the futility of the fighting and the bravery of the combatants.

Silkin, Jon, ed. First World War Poetry. New York: Viking Penguin, 1997. An excellent collection of poetry from the war.

Secondary Sources

De Groot, Gerard J. Douglas Haig, 1861–1928. London: Unwin Hyman, 1988. An accessible, recent full-length study.

Ferguson, Niall. The Pity of War: Explaining World War I. New York: Basic
Books, 1999. The most important reevaluation of Britain’s role in World War I in fifty years.

Fussell, Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. An imaginative account of the “troglodyte world” of the trenches showing in great detail how the prose and poetry of World War I forever changed the English language.

The Great War and the Shaping of the Twentieth Century. [videorecording] A KCET/BBC co-production in association with the Imperial War Museum. Distributed by PBS Video, 1996. Excellent contemporary footage of the fighting on the Western Front together with insightful comments by British, American, and French historians.

Horne, Alistair. Death of a Generation: Neuve Chapelle to Verdun and the Somme. New York: American Heritage Press, 1970. A crisp introduction to the great battles of 1916. The photographs, maps, and artwork capture the horrific style of fighting.

Keegan, John. The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. New York: Random House, 1967. A masterly analysis of the battle that shows its significance for modern military history.

McDonald, Lyn. Somme. London: Michael Joseph, 1983. Based on the diaries of the men who fought in Lord Kitchener’s New Army, this study includes large selections from soldiers’ diaries in the text.

Middlebrook, Martin. The First Day on the Somme, 1 July 1916. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972. The best single source, complete with pictures, maps, and charts.

World Wide Web

“World War I: Trenches on the Web.” http://www.worldwar1.com. Battlefield maps are one of the strengths of this site, and there are good photographs of the trenches.