To What Extent Was The Battle Of Somme Successful

The battle of Somme was a tiresome attrition battle. For approximately five months the British, French and German armies engaged in what was called “one of the bloodiest (battles) of World War One”. Located in Northern France. During this battle the British were unsuccessful; their strategies were incompetent to the harsh conditions of the stalemate. Thus, making the battle of Somme a complete failure to the Triple Entente.

Many historians argue that the Germans had caused more significant amount of casualties to the British and French separately, making the attritional battle a success. However, collectively France and Britain had 623,907, overthrowing the Germans by a total of an outstanding 158,907. Therefore, making this argument only prove the war was a failure for the British and French, as caused them more loss.

Furthermore, it is believed that the Battle was an obvious success because all the ‘objectives’ of the battle of Somme presented by General Haig were achieved. However, This evidence is unreliable as the objectives were only published a month after the
British bombs couldn’t explode, leaving German defences intact; this backfired as shells created bumps on the ground, making it far more difficult to advance forward. In addition, German trenches and artillery were stronger than British defences. British tanks quickly broke down and became useless. Britain soon had limited protection and weapons. As a result, approximately 60,000 British soldiers tragically died within the very first day, ruining General Sir Douglas Haig’s tactics. They continued to have large amounts of bloodshed throughout the battle, as so vividly described by John Laffin, a writer, “That is an appalling kind of strategy. Its not a strategy at all its slaughter…he knew he had no chance…but he still sent his mean to their deaths” A truly inhumane action, just to result in