General Haig and the Battle of Somme

Why was the Battle of the Somme important and why do people have different interpretations of this battle?

Originally planned as an attack by the French army with British support. German attack at Verdun altered the plans. Objectives: gain territory draw German troops away from Verdun. To kill as many Germans as part of the attrition

The gradual reduction of somethings strength or effectiveness trough prolonged attack or pressure

Huge artillery bombardment and mines would devastate German positions. The enemys barbed wire would be cut, German trenches and dug-outs smashed. Rebuild and defend German trenches . Cavalry where kept in readiness to charge into gaps in the German line.

The defenders were on high ground. The German defences had been in place since 1914. - Dug-outs were deep underground and fortified with concrete. Barbed wire stretched more than 30 meters wide along the front. Almost impossible to penetrate. Many of the shells supplied to the allied gunners were of poor quality.

1 July 1916

Infantry attack began at 7:30. Two huge mines placed under German lines were detonated. Twenty-seven divisions (750,000men) against the Germans 16 divisions. French forces made some quick gains. British forces was advancing too slowly. 57000 casualties on the first day, about a third of them killed. Military disaster.

Rawlinson was devastated by the events of the first day and expressed doubts about continuing. Haig insisted that the attacks should continue had to relieve the French at Verdun. Haig was bitterly criticised - for throwing men at massed defences and being obsessed with out of date tactics like cavalry charges. This was not entirely fair Haig varied his tactics at a different part of Somme and used tanks for the first time. Small gains had cost the British casualties of around 420 000 the French around 200 000 and the Germans around 500 000.

Haig was bitterly criticised after the battle by his own soldiers, politicians and in the newspapers. Haig gained the unwanted title of the butcher of Somme. He warned the country that they needed to be prepared for heavy losses if the war was to be won. Haig believed that the key objections of the battle of the Somme were achieved. It saved Verdun its main objective. And some of Germany best troops where killed and injured.

This was little comfort to people in Britain. The war changed British attitudes to the war. Until the Somme, people believed that a victorious battle could lead to a breakthrough and thus end the war. The Somme brought home to many that this would be a long, grim war of attrition. The battle also damaged confidence in the leaders. In the chaos and confusion of the first days of the battle, many of the reports were misleading and over-optimistic.

Green block Questions 1 4 on page 36.

Read the information and sources on pages 33 36 and do some research of your own. Decide how the people in Britain should remember the battle of the Somme. Use some of the descriptions on page 36 to start your thinking.

History test day will be on Tuesdays. There won't be a test on every Tuesday. Tuesdays are booked for History Test so no other test may be written on a Tuesday.

1) 2)

3) 4)

North Africa, Middle East and Turkey. They began to look for another way to gain a breakthrough in the war. See textbook on page 38. See textbook on page 38.

The western Front was only part of a war that also caused suffering and destruction in eastern Europe, the middle East and North Africa. There were spectacular battles in the mountains between Italian and Austrian troops. There were tremendous on the Eastern Front where Russians fought Germans and Austrians. In the Middle East, Turkish troops with German officers fought British Commonwealth and Empire troops, along with their Arab allies.Fun fact: Rule of succession.

How would you remember the Battle of the Somme?

Read and complete the focus task on page 36.

Draw your own copy of the chart on page 37 Fill it out as you find out about each of the other fronts

In 1915 casualties were mounting on the Western Front and government ministers in London could see no prospect of breaking the stalemate. They began to look for another way to gain a breakthrough in the war. One possibility was to attack one of Germanys allies. Lloyd George described this as knocking out the props from under Germany. However, this was not a very accurate description of Germanys allies. Germany was propping up its allies rather than the other way round.

Nevertheless the war planners were attracted to the idea of a knock-out blow against Turkey, whom they considered to be one of Germanys more vulnerable allies. Winston Churchill, who was head of the navy, and Lord Kitchener, who was in effect overall commander of the war effort, persuaded the government to attempt an attack on the Dardanelles strait, a narrow stretch of water linking the Aegean Sea and the sea of Marmara.

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. Winston Churchill A joke is a very serious thing. Winston Churchill A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. Winston Churchill A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality. Winston Churchill A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. Winston Churchill

A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen. Winston Churchill A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him. Winston Churchill All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope. Winston Churchill

Readmore:http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/winston_churchill.html #ixzz1cI5BPwl1

The plan.

In March 1915 the warships began their assault. They bombarded the strong forts that lined the strait, then made their advance. As the British and French ships entered the strait, a combination of mines and shell fire from the forts on the shore sank three battle cruisers and damaged others. The heart of the British navy was thus threatened. The allied commanders decided that this naval attack would not succeed, and that the risk of the navys trying to continue towards Constantinople were to great.

They decided that after all they would launch a land invasion to capture the peninsula. Once the Turks were driven off Gallipoli, the naval operation could restart. In April a hastily assembled force of British, French and ANZAC (Australian, New Zealand) troops attacked Helles beach. However, the war commanders had severely underestimated the power of the defending army.

The commanders had been refused aid from the Royal Flying Corps, which could have helped a lot in assessing the strength of the Turks. The Turks had been well aware that an attack was coming. A German commander Otto Liman von Sanders had doubled the defensive forces, and dug them into strong positions on the hills overlooking the beaches on which the Allies were likely to land. He had given the troops a crash course in defending a trench positions including training in British speciality, the use of a bayonet.

At four oclock in the morning on 25 April, in pitch dark, the first troops went ashore and charged up a steep hillside under a hail of machine-gun fire which continued for most of the day. By mid-afternoon the beach was strew with the dead lying. Despite the massive odds against them, the troops fought very bravely and captured a number of Turkish trenches.

However, by the following day it was already clear that the objective of clearing the Turks off the peninsula could not be achieved. Should they dig in or withdraw? The order came through to dig in. you have got through the difficult business, said the commander, now you only have to dig, dig, dig, until you are safe.

Conditions for the troops were awful. In the blistering summer heat, and with decaying corpses strewn along the front line on both sides, disease was rampant. With so many unburied corpses lying in no mans land between the between the trenches On 20 May both sides agreed a one-day truce. They frantically buried the dead. Some Turks and Allied troops met and exchanged greetings.

At sunset they returned to their trenches. And the next day the killing started again. Neither side could break the deadlock and both poured more troops into the area. In August another landing was made at Suvla Bay, but again the troops could not break through the defenses of the Turks.

One part of the Allies campaign in the Dardenelles was successful. Submarines did get through the minefields of the strait to attack Constantinople harbour. Turkish warships, troopships and merchant vessels were sunk in such numbers that the Turkish war effort was seriously affected. But the main fleet never again attempted to get through.

In November the troops at Gallipoli were facing a new problem Frostbite. The hard Turkish winter had closed in. The troops were extremely ill-equipped. In one snowstorm there were 16,000 cases of frostbite and 300 deaths. In December, eight moths after the landing, there was no prospect of success. Tens of thousands of soldiers lay dead around the coast of Gallipoli. The decision was taken to pull out. The withdrawal was supremely well organised and was a complete success. The campaign, however, was seen as a failure and Churchill was humiliated.

Complete the questions on page 39 in the green blocks.

Why was Gallipoli a failure? Read all the sources on page 40. Explain why Gallipoli was a failure.

Fighting took place across a vat area of land on the Eastern Front. There were some trenches, but warfare did not get bogged down in the same way as on the Western Front. Look at source 16 Discuss focus task on page 42.

The sea campaign of the First World war were unusual in that, although they were vitally important, relatively little fighting took place between the warships. They key objective was to control the seas to stop supplies getting to the enemy. The British BLOCKADE of German ports which stopped supplies reaching Germany as a crucial factor in the Allied victory over Germany.

It was just as important as any military victory on land. Both sides knew how important it was to control the sea, and the war at sea became a cautious war. The British Commander Admiral Jellicoe said that he could lose the war in an afternoon if he rashly allowed his fleet to be put out of action.

There were some battles at sea. In August 1914 the Royal Navy scored a clever (but small) tactical victory in the North Sea at Helgoland, but generally the German navy remained in its ports. Early in 1914 German battle cruisers shelled British east coast towns. (see page 67) In the Mediterranean, the German cruiser Goeben evaded the Royal Navy to reach Constantinople. This was an important event, since it influenced the Turks, who were pro-German, to make the decision to enter the war - otherwise they would have had to force the Goeben to leave.

The Germans had few ships in the Pacific, but small squadron gained an early victory in November 1914 off the coast of Chile. The Royal Navy set out to remove this and the German ships were destroyed around the Falkland Island in December 1914. By 1915 only the ships in German ports remained. The Germans tried to enforce their own blockade their own blockade of Britain by using submarines to sink merchant ships.

This was highly effective. In May 1915 U-boats sank the liner Lusitania, with the loss of 1000 passengers. See fact file on page 43

The only major sea battle of the war was at Jutland in 1916. In the event, chaos and confusion reigned. The Germans had the best of the exchanges, but the British fleet was simply too large. The Germans sank 14 British ships and lost 11 themselves but never left their harbours again. Both sides claimed to have won the battle. On the one hand, the Germans caused more damage than they received.

On the other, the Battle of Jutland certainly failed to achieve the most important objective for Germany which was to remove the blockade.

In the early stages of the war, German U-boats concentrated their attacks on Allied warships. When the Allies learned to protect their warships the U-boats attacked Allied merchant ships instead. To start, the attackers would warn a merchant ship that it was about to be sunk and allow the crew to abandon ship. This convention was abandoned in February 1915 when the Germans began a campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare. All Allied ships were targeted.

They could be torpedoed without warning. A notable early casualty of new campaign was the liner Lusitania. British propaganda painted this action as a criminal act, but there was some evidence that the ship was carrying explosives for the war effort. Over 100 American citizens were killed on the Lusitania, causing great tension between the US and German governments.

Two years later, in 1917 USA cited the U-boat campaign as one of its reason for declaring war on Germany. After the sinking of the Lusitania, Germany called off unrestricted submarine warfare, but in 1916 started it again. The Germans aim was to prevent essential supplies getting to Britain and they almost succeeded. By June 1917, Britain had lost 500,000 tons of shipping to the U-boats.

At one point, it was estimated that London had only six weeks supply of food remaining. From 1916 the Allies improved their tactics for dealing with the U-boats. However, two other factors were significant in the fight against submarines: the dedication and heroism of the sailors of merchant navy and the massive output of shipbuilders. By 1917 Britain and the USA were building so many ships that the U-boats could not possible sink them all.

The Germans simply did not have the resources to sustain their campaign and it was finally called off.

The British blockade was a key factor in the defeat of Germany. Starved of supplies, the Germans army was weakened and the German people lost some of their will to support the war. The war at sea was therefore arguably as decisive as the war on land.

Do the Focus task on page 45. Do the activity on page 45.

One aspect of the fighting which captured the publics imagination was the developing war in the air. This seemed to give people what had been looking for in 1914, namely honourable one-to-one combat between gallant young men. The newspapers and journals began to pick up on the story of flying aces from an ear stage in the war. The Germans, French, Australians and others nations all had their own heroes. The most famous was probably the Baron von Richhofen (the Red Baron) and his squadron or flying circus. He shot down 80 Allied planes. Not far behind this total was the Frenchman Rene Fonck with 75 kils.

In the early stages of the war the most important aircraft were airships. Airships were essentially huge bags of lighter-than-air hydrogen gas. They were powered by engines carried in cars in a keel like structure underneath. The cars also carried the crew. The British used airships mainly for escorting ships and for hunting U-boats. They could spot U-boats on the surface and warn the escort warships by radio. German airships were much more advanced and more widely used. Known as Zeppelins (after the designer Count Zeppelin) they were a key weapon in the early war at sea. They were able to fly higher and faster than many early planes and were used as observation decks for the German fleet.

It was not long before the Germans realised the potential of Zeppelins as bombers. The first raids hit British towns in early 1915. The Zeppelins could not carry enough bombs to do real damage, but what they did achieve was psychological damage. Civilians in Britain no longer seemed safe. The British government pulled back fighter planes to defend Britain from these attacks, but in fact such fears were exaggerated.

Once air defences improved, it was clear that Zeppelins were very vulnerable. By 1918 speedy, powerful fighter planes and accurate anti-aircraft fire took a heavy toll of these giant aircraft, as these statistics show:130 Zeppelins in service 7 lost to bad weather 38 lost in accidents 39 lost in enemy action