alternatehistory.com

… The Somme Offensive had originated as a decisive war winning effort. Originally it was supposed to be a purely British affair in Flanders to drive the Germans from the Belgian coast and eliminate the U-Boat bases there, with the pressure of it along with other simultaneous offensives combining to overwhelm the Central Powers. This was soon changed to an offensive at the joining of the British and French lines in Picardy to better allow the French to participate.

The German offensive at Verdun on February 22nd soon forced a change. The Germans were able to gain significant amounts of ground on the east bank of the Meuse during February, and offensive on the west bank secured those gains in March. To protect the city the French were forced into costly counterattacks into the teeth of German artillery attacking from three sides. The Somme was thus downgraded from a potential decisive blow to a means of relieving the pressure on Verdun.

The Germans learned of the attack from a group of Irish deserters several weeks before it happened. As such they were prepared, fortifications were expanded and 3 sets of trench lines were built, a lightly manned frontline, a strongly held second line, and a reserve line, built with zig zags to contain shrapnel. Despite this the Germans did not take things as seriously as they should have, and did not reinforce as heavily as they could have, as General Von Falkenhayn wanted to save troops for Verdun and a counteroffensive to occur once the Somme Offensive was halted.

On July 1st 16 British and 15 French divisions attacked 15 German divisions. At 7:20 in the morning, after a weeklong preparatory bombardment the first of 19 mines exploded. When the final mine went off at 7:30 and the bombardment ended the attack went over the top. The French and British XIII and XV Corps had great success, with only one minor objective unachieved by XV corps. The rest of the British were not so lucky and while some temporary success was achieved, most was eliminated by German counterattacks in the afternoon. The British had taken 71,000 casualties, 27,000 fatal, while the French had taken 10,000 and the Germans 15,000. For the British Army it was their worst day ever until this point.

The Offensive then bogged down into a grinding attrition match as the Entente slowly pushed forwards. On July 25th, the German Sixth Army to the north launched a counter offensive at Arras, which while achieving limited success on the first day, bogged down as well. By the end of August, the Arras offensive was abandoned by the Germans, and Verdun became a defensive operation to prevent a failure on the Somme.

Fighting continued intermittently all three fronts until December. The first tanks showed up on the Somme front in September but had no effect. No power had achieved their goal, Germany had not needed to transfer forces from the East until after the critical moments there. Meanwhile the French Army had not been destroyed at Verdun, thanks to the Noria system of troop rotation over 85% of the French Army had rotated through the battle there, preventing a collapse of the French Army. This hindered German plans to butcher a hasty British relief offensive and splinter the Entente.

All together the major battles of 1916 in the west were highly costly to all sides, the Germans took 840,000 casualties, the French 630,000 and the British 460,000. With the Western Entente better able to replace these losses than the Germans 1916 had only avoided being a disaster by victories in the East. As such General von Falkenhayn, the German Chief of staff was replaced with Von Hindenburg.

Von Hindenburg, and his assistant Ludendorff, advocated for an Eastern strategy for 1917 to end that front, before a decisive Western offensive in 1918. Their decisions in pursuing such an offensive would prove counterproductive…


-Excerpt from European Wars for Americans, Harper & Brothers, New York, 2004



Somewhat short but I had to work this morning, lucky to have an update