Battle of the Somme

The Battle of the Somme was a joint British and French offensive against the German army on the Western Front of the First World War, fought from 1 July to 18 November 1916 on both sides of the river Somme in northern France. More than three million men took part, and more than a million were killed or wounded, making it one of the deadliest battles in history. Its first day remains the bloodiest in the history of the British Army.

At a conference at Chantilly in December 1915, the Allies agreed to launch simultaneous offensives in 1916 on the Western, Eastern and Italian fronts, so that Germany and its allies could not shift troops between them. Britain and France chose to attack together where their armies met, astride the Somme in Picardy, with the French originally intended to play the main part. In February 1916, however, Germany opened the Battle of Verdun, and the French had to send many of the divisions meant for the Somme to defend it. The British, under their new commander-in-chief Sir Douglas Haig, took on the larger role. Much of their army consisted of wartime volunteers. By late May the aim of a decisive breakthrough had narrowed to relieving pressure on Verdun and wearing down the German army.

The attack began on 1 July 1916 after an artillery bombardment that had begun on 24 June. South of the Albert–Bapaume road the German defence largely gave way, and the French Sixth Army, as well as the British divisions beside it, took their objectives. Further north, however, the German defenders held commanding ground, and their machine guns and artillery cut down the advancing British infantry. The British Fourth Army suffered 57,470 casualties that day, including 19,240 killed. Research published in 2016 found that German interrogators had learned the date and place of the attack weeks earlier from two British soldiers.

The battle then became a long series of costly attacks on fortified villages, woods and ridges. A dawn attack on Bazentin Ridge on 14 July succeeded, but fighting dragged on for weeks at places such as Delville Wood, Pozières and Guillemont, with troops from across the British Empire, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Newfoundland, fighting alongside British and French units. On 15 September, at Flers–Courcelette, the British used tanks for the first time in history. They proved unreliable, though the attack advanced the line by two to three kilometres. Air power also became increasingly important. The last major attacks, on the Ancre, ended on 18 November.

By the end, the Allies had advanced up to about ten kilometres along most of the front, their largest territorial gain since 1914, but they had not taken the key towns of Péronne and Bapaume. Casualty figures are disputed. British and French losses together were around 620,000, roughly two-thirds of them British. Estimates of German losses range from about 237,000 to about 600,000, depending on the source and on how casualties are counted. After further British attacks in early 1917, the Germans withdrew by about 40 kilometres to the Hindenburg Line in March.

In the United Kingdom and Newfoundland, whose regiment fought on the first day, the Somme became the central memory of the war. Remembrance ceremonies are held every 1 July at the Thiepval Memorial to the missing. Historians continue to debate whether the battle was necessary and what it achieved.

Our 1914 map shows the German Empire and the British Empire at the outbreak of the war, and the 1920 map shows the borders after the peace settlements.