The First World War was an unprecedented catastrophe that shape our modernistic earth . Erik Sass is covering the events of the warfare exactly 100 long time after they go on . This is the 213th installment in the series .
1 February 2025: Agreeing Armageddon – The Somme
After the twindisastersof the Second Battle of Champagne and Loos , the French Army and British Expeditionary Force paused to reorganise , resupply , bring up fresh troop and set up for a second winter in the trenches . But the nonstarter of these offensives did nothing to alter the strategical outlook of the man directing the war on the Western Front , and from December 6 - 8 , 1915 , top Allied commanders meeting behind shut room access agreed to a plan that would result in one of the bloodiest battles in story – the Somme .
As representatives from France , Britain , Russia , Italy , and Serbia gathered at the Paris suburb of Chantilly for the Second Inter - Allied Conference ( top ; the first was inAugust ) , the situation was look grim . Russia was temporarily out of the secret plan follow hugelossesof men , material , and territory during the Central Powers ’ successful summertime offensive ; Serbia was beingcrushed ; Italy had achieved nothing in multipleattackson the Isonzo front ; and the British and French were just about to throw in the towel atGallipoli .
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To plow the place around , Gallic gaffer of the cosmopolitan staff Joseph Joffre nominate a bold design involve simultaneous attacks on all movement for cancel out the strategical advantage confer by the enemy ’s fundamental position ; by hitting Germany , Austria - Hungary , and the Ottoman Empire from every side at once , they would ( hopefully ) preclude them from shuttle troops back and off between the unlike front to see off threats one by one , finally allowing the Allies to exploit their advantage in workforce .
The memoranda present by the French to the other ally at Chantilly summarized the threat position by the enemy ’s fundamental location :
To forbid this , the memorandum advised , “ The Allied army ought to resume the general offensive on the Franco - British , Italian and Russian presence as before long as they are in a state to do so . All the efforts of the Coalition must be exerted in the preparation and execution of this critical action , which will only produce its full impression as a co - ordination of offensive . ”
In various theatres , the coordinated campaigns would finally include Russia ’s failed Lake Naroch Offensive on the Eastern Front in March 1916 , followed by the arresting succeeder of the Brusilov Offensive that summertime ; a Russian advance into eastern Anatolia on the Caucasoid front ; the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo , lead in predictable failure , on the Italian front ; and subsidiary effort by Britain against the Turks in the Sinai and Arabia ( the Mesopotamian field was about to take a disastrous turn with thesiegeof Kut ) . The French also managed to sway the reluctant British to keep the recently occupied berth in Salonika in northerly Greece , which would now be reinforced with the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force from Gallipoli , thus threatening Bulgaria and possibly even encourage Romania to join the Allies .
However the main exploit would go down to Britain and France on the Western Front , where Joffre meditate a giant combined offensive against the German salient in northerly France sometime in the spring or summer of 1916 , focusing on the enemy ’s defensive positions on both sides of the Somme River in Picardy . Joffre and BEF commander Sir John French ( who was about to be replaced by Sir Douglas Haig ) believe that concentrate , overwhelming artillery unit firepower , combine with control of the skies and huge numerical superiority on the background , would allow them to shatter the German Second Army and threaten all the opposition armies to the southeast with blockade , forcing the Germans into a oecumenical retreat .
The Allies were prepared to commit phenomenal number of Isle of Man and gun to this fabulously challenging program , call for an attack on a 60 - mile - long front : indeed , in gain to the British Fourth Army and French Sixth Army , the British were fain to define aside an full , new “ Reserve Army ” ( subsequently the Fifth Army ) to exploit the hop - for breakthrough . all told the British would progress with 400,000 men ; to support this huge elbow grease they would build up new roads , railroads , and power stations , collect a fleet of thousands of trucks and other vehicle , and make a meshing of hundreds of miles of telephone conducting wire .
With the shell shortage of 1914 - 1915 finally easing , the Allies would for the first sentence have firepower to match the Germans : with over 1,500 guns and trench mortar amassed , the preliminary bombardment at the Somme would last a workweek and use up 1.6 million shells , with virtually continuous sack during this period to powder German deep and stronghold . To stop it off the British would burrow 19 jumbo mines under the German positions , including one with 27 tons of high explosives , which together get the largest human race - made detonation in history up to that point .
On paper the plan of approach face invincible – but reality failed to live up to arithmetic mean . For one thing , many of the British troops were fresh military recruit in Secretary of State for War Lord Kitchener ’s “ New Army , ” with plenty of ebullience but no fight experience . what is more the “ crawling barrage ” of artillery unit , mean to empty the agency for the advancing foot , was a mostly untested technique , and aerial observation failed to deliver the precise targeting of German weapon hoped for . Meanwhile , in addition to building a second line of defenses and bug out a third , the Germans had also built rich dugouts , tunnel 40 foot or more below the control surface , open of sheltering entire battalion through the most punishing outpouring , to reemerge when the British and French infantry began their advance .
The most of import factor by far , however , was something none of the Allied commander could have screw – a plan already germinating in the nous of the German chief of the cosmopolitan staff Erich von Falkenhayn , who was also contemplating a mighty conflict to end the warfare . As it come about the German blow would fall down first , at a blank space foretell Verdun .
“In Flanders Fields”
On May 3 , 1915 , amidst the chaos of theSecond Battle of Ypres , Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae , a Canadian medical officer , wrote a few short verses that were fated to become the iconic verse form of the First World War . Wildly democratic follow its publishing by the British magazine Punch on December 8 , 1915 , “ In Flanders Fields ” would go on to be used for propaganda purpose ( specially in backup of recruiting efforts ) but is today appreciate more for its simple , lyric encapsulation of the tragedy of the First World War . It also run to the adoption of the red poppy as asymbolof memory and support for veterans , especially in Britain .
See theprevious installmentorall entries .
