Battle of the Somme

[Smitty-48]

Just to try and get back on topic.
What were the reasons the "rolling barrage" failed at the Somme. Was it a failure of the barrage in cutting the barbed wire and churning up the ground meaning the attacking troops were to far from the German trenches when the shelling stopped?

There was no such thing as rolling barrages at the Somme, that tactic had not been developed by this point, they hadn't yet mastered the technique of coordinating fire support with the advance, that was an all new tactic which was only developed in the wake of the Somme.

After the Somme, cordinated fire support was mastered, along with combined arms, echeloned assaults, specialist sub units, comprehensive preparation of the battlefield, etcetera, so at Vimy Ridge the next spring, you see the Canadian Corps take an objective in a day, which the British and French had previously failed to take after weeks of trying, with the French suffering 150,000 casualties in the attempt.

Under Field Marshall SIr Julian Byng (Future Canadian Viceroy) and General Sir Arthur Currie (Father of the Canadian Army), the Canadian Corps was assembled as an elite formation which would employ the bleeding edge of tactics, techniques and procedures, inventing many of them as they went, and their first test, came on 9 April 1917 at Vimy Ridge, upon which the Shock Troops of the Empire were born.

The Somme Offensive is the last battle of the 19th century, Vimy Ridge is the first battle of the 20th.



Victorious Canadians returning from Vimy Ridge, 1917.

Storm troopers were the bleeding edge. Canadians make fine soldiers but just stop mate.

Au contraire, Stormtrooper infiltration attacks were nothing compared to the comprehensive reordering of the operational art by the Canadian Corps, there was infliltration involved, but the Canadians took it to the next level, digging a network of tunnels right under the noses of the Germans so that the Canadian assault troops would appear on the other side of no mans without having to cross above ground, then launch into the first ever echeloned attack, with units leapfrogging through one another to maintain a constant advance, under the coverage of forward observer telephony directed rolling and close support artillery barrages, also employed thusly for the first time ever, all in combined arms, with specialist combat support in situ with the forward echelons, another first.

As the Canadian Corps continued to attack the Germans in a series of successes in 1917, the Germans became obesessed with the Canadian Corps, it was their nemesis, as David Lloyd George said "Whenever the Germans found the Canadian Corps coming into the line they prepared for the worst."

The Germans began moving their best formations up and down the line in order to stay abreast of the Canadian Corps, at which point the British decided to employ a ruse, wherein a deception campaign was devised to trick the Germans into thinking that the Canadian Corps had moved north, causing the Germans to move their best formations to keep in line with the Canadians, the Canadian Corps however, had not moved, and so was able to launch an offensive into the weakest part of the German line...

... and this initiates the famous Canada's Hundred Days offensive, where the Canadian Corps spearheads the breaking of the German Army, forcing their final defeat, from the Battle of Amiens, through the breaching of the Hindenberg Line, to the Pursuit at Mons, where the German's capitulate on 11 November 1918

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada's_Hundred_Days

[SuburbanFarmer]

Can we really pin the most senseless aspects of the Great War on Haig though? Or was he used as the fall guy by British leadership?

[Smitty-48]

Haig felt that the French were on the verge of breaking over the slaughter at Verdun, which they were, the French Army was on the brink of mutiny, and he was afraid that a similar crisis would occur in the British Army over conscription, the French were demanding that the British launch an offensive to relieve the pressure on the French Army at Verdun, and the British were demanding that Haig win the war, right away.

Haig believed that the Germans were similarly worn out on the other side of the lines, and the greatest fear, was that the Russians were about to collapse on the Eastern Front, which would allow the Germans to transfer 1,000,000 troops to the Western Front, and so it was inperative that the Germans be defeated decisively before that could occur, and he beleived, as everyone did, that the massive concentration of firepower, the heaviest barrage in history to that point, would win the day, and that the troops would simply have to mop up in the wake of it.

After the initial failure, the British were still under pressure from the French, to keep up the offensive, and this pressure fell upon Haig, and so he had little choice but to try to break through, lest the French Army collapse at Verdun, and with it, the entire Western Front.

The reason that the Somme Offensive had to persist, was to prop up the French who were on the verge of mutiny at Verdun, while breaking the Germans in the West before a Russian collapse allowed them bring the Eastern forces to bear to win the war in 1917.

I would say Haig was merely a General trying to win the war before the Western Front collapsed and the French were overrun by a reinforced German Army with all its troops from the East, so; just doing his job, with the information he had available to him, in obeyance of his orders as per the mission.

Haig is of course portrayed as a villain regardless, and in the end, he did fail miserably, so fair enough I guess, and moreover, while he respected the prowess of his Canadian troops, he opposed the formation of the Canadian Corps preferring to use Canadians as general replacements in the British Army, so he's doubly villainous in Canada, although, after his total failure at the Somme, he was of course overruled, and thank goodness for that; Canadian Corps, ducimus.

[Hwen Hoshino]

I guess you got trolled then, Aspietard, cause here you are chasing me around again. /shrugs.

It's hard not to notice you on a site with this many active users.

You still talking about me, Aspieboy?

I'm the one contributing insight here, for whomever might be interested, and they can take it or leave it, but your sole contribution to this board is your aspergers syndrome retardation posting, and you really think I'm the one trying to get your attention?

So far, the thread has been fine, except for two useless fuckin' idiots, one the college dorm Snowflake, the other the resident Aspie, so if you two fuckwits would just quit trying to jack the thread to blather on pointlessly with your retardation; problem solved.

Says the guy who wants to fight socialism with tyranny.

[Smitty-48]

Smitty Pinochet prefers the euphemism Emergency Measures Act.

[Hwen Hoshino]

Smitty Pinochet prefers the euphemism Emergency Measures Act.

That's gonna mean precious little for the innocent people executed.

[TheReal_ND]

K... keep me posted.

[ssu]

Although it may have come up already here or somewhere else, have people followed the weekly Great War podcast?
If you have a weekly update on what happened during that week 100 years ago, then I guess the podcast can really get into the fine details, the nuts and bolts of war. See The Great War.

Very interesting...the latest one, I guess:

[SuburbanFarmer]

Subscribing now thanks.

[Montegriffo]

I've spent a little time reading up on Haig this morning and come to a couple of conclusions.

Firstly, whilst there was some feeling that after the Somme Haig should be sacked, led by Lloyd George, and criticisms from the likes of Churchill, there seemed to have been no-one considered to have had the ability to replace him. He may have been in fact the best man available and Churchill himself changed his opinion of him after the war when he was able to study the details more closely.
Haig's main fault appears to have been his belief that the Germans were on the verge of collapse, caused by poor intelligence and Haig's over reliance on a single source (Chateris) for the information without seeking other sources.

Secondly, the loses at the Somme are more a result of the scale of the battle than the quality of the leadership....

Haig has been criticised for the high casualties in British offensives, but it has been argued by historians like John Terraine that this was largely a function of the size of the battles, as British forces engaged the main body of the German Army on the Western Front after 1916. Although total deaths in the Second World War were far higher than in the First, British deaths were lower, because Britain fought mainly peripheral campaigns in the Mediterranean, for much of the Second World War, involving relatively few British troops, whilst most of the land fighting took place between Germany and the USSR (the Soviets suffered roughly as many dead in World War Two, not including civilians, as every country in the First World War combined). When British forces engaged in Normandy in 1944, total losses were fewer than on the Somme in 1916, as Normandy was around half the length and less than half the size but casualties per unit per week were broadly similar. David French wrote that British daily loss rates at Normandy, in which divisions lost up to three quarters of their infantry, were similar to those of Passchendaele in 1917, while average battalion casualty rates in 1944–45 (100 men per week) were similar to those of the First World War.

John Terraine wrote:

It is important, when we feel our emotions rightly swelling over the losses of 1914–18, to remember that in 1939–45 the world losses were probably over four times as many ... the British task was entirely different, which is why the (British) loss of life was so different: about 350,000 in 1939–45 and about 750,000 (British deaths, 1 million including the Empire) in 1914–18 ... – ... The casualty statistics of the Great War ... tell us ... virtually nothing about the quality of ... British generals. The statistics show that ... the British losses in great battles were generally about the same as anyone else's.

He also wrote that British perceptions were coloured by the terrible losses of 1 July 1916 (57,000 casualties) but that it should also be remembered that the British never suffered anything like the losses of June 1916, when the Austro-Hungarian Army had 280,000 casualties in a week, or of August 1914 when the French Army lost 211,000 in 16 days, or of March and April 1918 when the Germans lost nearly 350,000 in six weeks (8,600 per day), or 1915 when Russia suffered 2 million casualties in a year.