WI Somme offensive called off after first day

Once the casualty figures and territory gained on the first day come in, the Allied high command halts the offensive and tries to figure out what went wrong. This doesn't preclude them from trying again later that year, maybe somewhere else. What happens.
 
They'd have to resume the offensive immediately, because the near Verdun, the Germans were getting within a hair's breadth of capturing the high ground overlooking the citadel, from which they could exterminate any French counter attack.
 
Agree with dandan - there's no chance the French high command allow the offensive to be stopped and the German reserves to be moved against Verdun instead.
 

Deleted member 1487

Can't happen. Mission creep. The British had invested too much into preparing for the offensive and couldn't rapidly move to another sector, while the French were screaming for help because the pressure at Verdun was overwhelming them. They needed a major offensive to take pressure off the French and to work with the Brussilov offensive, which altogether was thought to be able to break the Central Powers in 1916. They knew German reserves were limited, so by pressing on all fronts at once it was thought they could provoke a breakdown in the German front somewhere, as the strategic reserve would all be committed. So even with the heavy losses on the Somme, strategically that was insignificant to the overall war plan, as it was thought that even with the Germans inflicting heavier losses their more limited manpower would give out before the Entente in 1916.
Though this particular book has a lot of problems framing the discussion and talking about casualty ratios, in the end it does make a good case that the Somme was as necessary evil that helped break the Germans down in the long run and as part of the 1916 situation is was critical to the Entente war strategy:
https://www.amazon.com/Bloody-Victory-Sacrifice-Twentieth-Century/dp/0349120048

Point being: the campaign could not be called off until it ran it's course.
 
Plus the Getmans took nearly as many losses making the tear and wear strategy workable.

Sometimes a mission that's seen as a failure produces results much later
 
The short answer is France collapses. If Britain won't fight then the war is lost and inorder to save lives they will have to surrender. In Britain the government will fall within a fortnight and the armed forces are held in utter contempt. The dominions go fully independent.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
If the British did this, the French would not be enraged not only on account of the need to relieve the pressure on them at Verdun, but because the French forces involved at the Sommer (whose role is often underappreciated) did rather well on the first day.
 
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