“Somme. The whole history of the world cannot contain a more ghastly word.” Friedrich Steinbrecher
Yesterday was the 93rd anniversary of the first day of the Battle of The Somme. Originally conceived to draw German resources away from the bloodbath at Verdun, The Somme would become the most costly battle of all of World War I. The scale of the battle is almost otherworldly. Following a seven-day artillery barrage, at 0730 on July 1, 1916, thirteen British and eleven French divisions began their advance across no man’s land into the teeth of ten well fortified German divisions. By the end of the day, the British alone would suffer more than 57,000 casualties. Fifty. Seven. Thousand. Killed, captured, or wounded in one day. By then end of the battle on November 18 (yes, four and a half months of continuous fighting), Britain, France, and their allies had taken more than 625,000 casualties, and lost catastrophic numbers of tanks and aircraft. The Germans took 450,000 casualties. Strategically, the battle accomplished nothing.
Reading about The Somme, Verdun, and others like it absolutely blow my mind. It’s really hard to comprehend the numbers of dead and wounded. The most fascinating and bothersome part, for me, at least is that the unimaginable slaughter of WWI accomplished very little. In fact, it probably did more harm that good. The constraints placed on Germany and the massive sociopolitical upheaval that stemmed from the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire did nothing other than pave the way for the next time the world would go to war.
War was a foredrawn conclusion in Europe in 1914; the assasination of Archduke Ferdinand was just the match in the powder keg. Europeans saw war as a noble and glorious struggle, with chivalrous warriors clashing on an open field. It took four years of trench warfare, chemical weapons, tanks, machine guns, and tens of millions of military and civilian casualties to show them how wrong they were. It’s a lesson we ignore at our own peril.
More reading about the Battle of the Somme on wikipedia.
2 years ago