The Somme

by Peter Hart

The definitive account of one of the bloodiest battles in world history―a military tragedy that would come to define a generation. On July 1, 1916, the British Army launched the "Big Push" that was supposed to bring an end to the horrific stalemate on the Western Front between British, French and German forces. What resulted was one of the greatest single human catastrophes in twentieth century scrambling out of trenches in the face of German machine guns and artillery fire, the British lost over twenty thousand soldiers during the first day. This "battle" would drag on for another four bloody months.Expertly weaving together letters, diaries, and other first-person accounts, Peter Hart gives us a compelling narrative tribute to this infamous tragedy that epitomized the futility of "the war to end all wars."

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War I, War, Military History, Military Fiction, European History

589 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2005

About the author

Peter Hart is a British military historian.

He has been an oral historian at Sound Archive of Imperial War Museum in London since 1981.

He has written mainly on British participation in the First World War. His books include; The Somme, Jutland 1916, Bloody April on the air war in 1917, Passchendaele, Aces Falling (on the air war in 1918), 1918 A Very British Victory and Gallipoli.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Britain’s Attempt on the Western Front

By 1916 the First World War had been raging across Europe for 18 months, with unimaginable death, destruction and suffering. It had gone much longer than the old ‘it’ll be over before Christmas’ trope. Many like Earl Kitchener foresaw a long war, dragging out and wearing now modern industrial nations for years to come. This was certainly what was happening, each throwing seemingly endless resources into the blood filled well to wear the other down. However, for the United Kingdom, it was the allies who had borne the brunt. Russia and France were already exhausted and as 1916 came the pressure was building on Sir Douglas Haig, the commander on the British Army and HH Asquith, the Prime Minister to join the horror of war, spend British (and Empire) lives and ‘do their bit.’ The Germans had launched the Verdun offensive in January 1916, General Erik von Falkenhayn’s master plan to ‘bleed the French white’. This shocked everyone, but both sides became obsessed with taking the famous fortresses in and around the town causing up to 150,000 dead on each side. Britain really now had to help and releave this pressure and launch their major offensive to finally breakthrough the German lines on the Western Front.

Peter Hart’s The Somme focuses on the five month offensive which started on that famous day on 01/07/1916 and ended with a mud soaked whimper on 18/11/1916; today we know this as the Battle of the Somme. His book is written from a British and dominion perspective mostly, with small entries of German memory. Hart makes this clear as he wants to challenge the narrative and some of the preconceptions about the battle. These include that the Somme in the UK and elsewhere has been portrayed as the death of the flower of British manhood, politicians were sneaky and weak willed, generals were stupid and out of touch, soldiers were brave victims and war poets tragic saints. Hart shows that this wasn’t the case. For me, most interestingly I have found the war poets criticised by a number of historians (Niall Ferguson being another), showing that their work portrayed innocent hero’s has warped our sense of history.

Hart makes it clear he wants to be grateful and thank every British soldier who was involved for doing their bit. He wants to rebuild the respect of every aspect of the military in this war, from the brigadier general risking his life to see what was happening (yes they were killed too), to the overworked officer, to the artillery at the back who saw themselves as the lucky ones to the young working class heroes who went over the top never to return again. Everyone’s role, from logics, to in the air to GHQ to the front is appreciated. One of the other major issues discussed is the ‘lions led by donkeys’ myth. As Hart shows Haig used what tactics were best available to him at the time. They had not yet fully worked out the effectiveness of the creeping barrage, the Tommy was overladen with pack, so could only but walk in the early stages of the battle and the bite and hold method advocated by Sir Henry Rawlinson was too slow politically. This was in fact the best way to deliver maximum casualties to the Germans whilst keeping the most allied soldiers alive. The only problem was that it was painfully slow and would take huge amounts of shells and discipline to work, with only 2500 yards being able to be captured at a time. With the pressure needed to be relieved on the French and the overconfidence of British themselves, this wasn’t an option at that point. It’s also important to note the tank was also still in its infancy to be a ‘war changer’ and calvary missing out by 15-20 years to be effective.

All of these points become food for thought after reading The Somme. I was also able to imagine the battle a lot better, rather than the men going over the top and being slaughtered before they could reach the enemy barbed wire. Of course this happened, famously to the New Foundlanders, but troops did get through, fire their rifles, fight, capture Germans and their trenches. The scale of the battle is something else which I can also appreciate, as I mentioned above it went on for five months and so the early attacks by the end felt like a lifetime away, the Hawthorn Crater was blown again at one point and with further attacks, old killing zones were revisited.

The Somme, like all of Hart’s work, is told using the diaries, letters and memoirs of those who were there. So we get the real experiences from the private to the commander in chief, from those in the infantry, air, artillery, GHQ and tanks to give a human and personal touch to the battle. This works, but I found in some places could become a little overburdensome. Overall the detail and different angles are needed to give a rounded view of the battle. Of course as I mentioned above, this is the battle told from the allies’ and therefore mainly British perspective. For me there isn’t much to add to the study, although some may disagree with Hart’s opinion that it wasn’t as bloody as people think it was. Maybe I need that point explaining better to me, Hart is a WWI expert after all…but in either case The Somme is worth your time and has added to my Great War knowledge.

[Dennis McCrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was a US Army commissioned officer, we discussed epochs of war technology and the accompanying strategies. That the Civil War and how it was strategized was different than WWI and WWI was different than WWII, etc. WWI was truly a meat grinder, stalemate war, thus the accompanying trenches, until the advancement of the tank and the entry of the United States provided overwhelming force. We also discussed the ineptitude of the primary military leaders of both sides…how they were woefully unprepared strategy wise for how the war played out and how slow they were to adapt new strategy.

I have read very few WWI books over the years (Tuchman’s ‘Guns of August’) and (Remarque’s ‘All Quiet On The Western Front’). But none that concentrated on one battle like this one.

The Battle of the Somme started on July 1, 1916 and continued to November 16, 1916. It was the major effort of 1916 to break the trench warfare stalemate of the Western Front. Total estimated casualties of the 4 1/2 month battle: over 300,000 deaths and over 1 million casualties.

And by the end, the front had moved but a few kilometers.

[Jonny]

If this book has achieved anything, I hope it will be a renewed respect for the British soldier at war. All off them. Not just the gallant infantry,but the men of the Royal Artillery, the Royal Flying Corps, the Royal Engineers, the Army Service Corps, the Army Ordinance Corps - everyone and anyone that was sucked into the gaping maw of the Somme. Not just the usual soldier poets,the tragic young working-class heroes and the mounds of dead and wounded. Let us not forget other less popular stereotypes: the ordinary soldier's and gunners who did not see themselves as victims, the staff officers ground down by overwork and responsibility, the brigadier general risking his life to see what was happening to his men, a few art and cowards intent only on dodging their fate, the sanctimonious Padres and the 'blood and guts' old colonels. All of them had lives that they put at risk in the cause of their country and each in their own way did their best in that cause.

Peter Hart's examination of the Commonwealth offensive in the latter half of 1916 puts the offensive in the context not only of the Western Front but also, latterly, of the wider World War in that year. Using personal testimony to good effect, backed up with an effective narrative filling the gaps between quotes and a humanitarian approach to the subject Mr Hart moves successfully beyond any overwrought examination of the dreaded First Day to show how tactics evolved on both sides of the wire, and showcases the growing importance of the Royal Artillery in the British scheme of war.

Yes, it's unashamedly Commonwealth (the German archives not having been successfully mined at this point, I'd guess), although he does note German responses to British shifts in tactics, and the German troops don't remain silent. Equally the book's not going to please anyone who clings to views of the battle that are about as old as I am, but he pulls together the threads to create a more complete overview of the campaign than any other I've yet read. His conclusion is surprising but ultimately correct, and I have to say that he succeeds admirably in his stated claim. If you can afford the three hours worth of telly, it's probably better backed up with Peter Barton's "The Somme From Both Sides of the Wire"

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Somme is an oral history by an oral historian about one of the grimmest battles of World War I. I didn't really like it, but I also didn't dislike it. That is to say, I didn't loathe it with any particular intensity, and that's saying something, because I can get fairly riled up over inconsequential matters.

To begin, I will damn with faint praise.

The Somme was an allied offensive that began in July 1916 in the Somme River Valley of France. To paraphrase William Goldman's script for A Bridge Too Far, the offensive was like every other offensive in military history: designed to get the boys home by Christmas. It did not succeed.

Author Peter Hart takes the position that the Somme of reality was not nearly so grim as the Somme of myth. He argues that the soldiers weren't helpless victims who left their trenches in long lines only to get mowed down by German machine guns. And he argues that the British generals weren't nearly the boorish, brutish, pig-headed incompetents they've been made out to be.

It's difficult to write about World War I battles. Unlike other battles in other wars, there is very little in the way of tactics and maneuver. World War I battles are a lot like chess games, except that instead of moving the pieces, the players take turn punching each other across the board. Whatever embellishment you try to put on the Somme, it can be reduced to moving forward, taking a trench, fending off a counterattack, then attacking the next trench, all while a new trench is being dug a few thousand yards away. It was a war of brutal attrition, and the tactic was dubbed by General Rawlinson as "bite and hold."

Hart does an admirable job of breaking down the battle. He provides plenty of maps (even though the maps weren't that great, they were better than nothing) and does a good job moving down the line, focusing on important segments of the overall battle, such as the various fights around strategic towns and redoubts. This is helpful in portraying the battle as something more than men walking into slaughter, but really, Hart never proves his argument that the generals were actually trying new tactics or attempting bold maneuvers. Really, the only redeeming thing I learned about the various generals - Haig and Rawlinson, for the most part - was that they weren't laughing drunkenly as they ordered their men to death. Other than that, they don't come off too well. (Hart does show that the generals were often stymied by a lack of artillery, for the key to success was a powerful creeping barrage with x number of guns to y number of yards of enemy territory for z number of minutes. The algorithm wasn't a mystery, but getting the proper number of guns and shells proved a problem).

As befits an oral history by an oral historian, much of the book is told in the words of others. Roughly 1/3 of the book is taken from letters, diaries, memoirs, reports, etc. Normally, an author takes these primary sources and interweaves them into the author's own narrative. Not in this book. Instead, the primary sources are the main event, and the author's own words the glue holding together various reminisces.

To be sure, sometimes this works. At times, the piecing together of the stories of captains and lieutenants and sergeants and privates is thrilling. Sometimes the amateur authors are very good at describing what they saw, did, and felt.

A German fired point-blank at me and I thought he had blown part of my face off, the pain was so intense, but instinctively lowering my rifle like a pistol, I blew the top of his head off as he came up at me; my reaction to this being, 'Gosh, just like lifting the lid off a boiling pot!'

Just as often, though, the voices meld together, lacking distinction. Many of them share the same deprecatory, terse, just-doing-my-duty tone that you would expect from a British Tommy. I respect the awe-shucks heroism of these men, but this humility does not make for an exciting narrative. By the time you've read the phrase "it can't be described in words" a dozen times, you start to wonder why you're reading the book at all. (And by the way, it can be described, as Erich Maria Remarque has ably shown).

Oddly, most of the story is told from the grunt's eye. Usually, I'm all for getting the low-level perspective. However, I have only a limited facility with World War I, and definitely needed more perspective and context. I needed to know more about what Haig was thinking.

Also, the book is told entirely from the British point of view. There were only a few German voices, and these at the front of the book. There was no mention of German military units, commanders, or casualties. There is a chapter on the participating armies that only talks about the British Expeditionary Force. You literally got only one side of the story. I had a hard time imagining who or what it was that the British troops were attacking. This was a glaring oversight, and not a little ironic, since the British still get angry at the mention of Saving Private Ryan because it focused solely on the Americans. (Note to England: if you want to make a movie about the assault on Sword Beach, do it yourself and stop whining. Americans make movies about Americans. Why is that difficult to accept?).

The best part of the book was a small chapter in the middle talking about the plight of the wounded. There is no better image of the sickening trade of war than flies laying eggs inside the bodies of wounded men. It was this section that best utilized the power of oral history. In the other sections, the often-contradictory memories of the participants just made the narrative confusing.

Yet I fully admit to being a World War I novice; perhaps this wasn't a good place to start my focused attention on the Great War.

[Bruce McLaren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am sort of stunned to see that this history of the fighting on The Somme in WW1 only has a rating of 3.78! For my mind this book cannot be rated highly enough...

Before reading Hart's book on the history of The Somme my knowledge of the fighting that took place on the Western Front was at best as murky a quagmire as the front itself. Other theatres of fighting such as Verdun seemed more comprehensible because they were more focused and concentrated affairs. But the theatre of The Somme was so vast, so widespread, so complicated that I opened this book with trepidation.

My first observation was that a lot of the book comprised verbatim diary entries by those that were at the front. This made me wince because, in my opinion, too many history books follow that format and often to ill-effect. To use diary entries effectively requires strategy and skill.

Fortunately, Hart is a master. Not only are soldiers accounts arranged to have maximum effect, but Hart as the narrator is a masterful story-teller. Hart really brings these momentous events to life in a clear and coherent manner - no small achievement considering the task at hand.

Understanding the complexities of The Somme also calls for good, detailed maps, and Hart has them as well.

The combined effect is a history of a devastating conflict as complex as a spirdersweb, made easy to understand. For the first time I could genuinely get a feel for the scale of the fighting, the life in the trenches, the failures of strategy and planning. Also, for the first time I could get a sense of the massive scale of carnage, starting with that first dark day in July 1916, a day when 20000 British soldiers were cut down.

On a final note, for anyone who wants to read this book, I found it extremely useful to have GoogleEarth open as I read so that I could trace events on the battlefield. One sees how open and even the terrain is, can go down to road level and look around, visit the sites of mass cemetaries where the fighting was particularly fierce, or look over the rim of the crater left by one of the enormous detonated mines.

This is a great read. Five stars I say!

[Arthur · Rating 3 out of 5]

At 20 hours this book covered many intricacies. Getting into detail. As an audiobook it had the usual issue where there were no maps to look at, which I'm sure the print book had. So it's rough to keep pace with what was happening where, even if chronologically presented. The strength of this book was the plethora of first person diary accounts to really paint the picture. The downside is the very few accounts from those who weren't British that also fought there (French and Germans). I liked it- three stars.

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read several books about World War I, a war wrapped up in tragedy and generationally altering circumstances that extend far beyond the war itself. While I do not think that any of the revelations in this book were groundbreaking, what made for an excellent read was the fact that first-hand accounts from all types of soldiers who participated in the Somme battle were peppered throughout. Grander geopolitical affairs and larger battlefield strategies and tactics certainly have their place in military history, but I also enjoy reading more intimate, personal details. In that way, you can more easily place your in their shoes, and understand what warfare is really all about. I would recommend for any history buff.

[Jerome Otte · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-written, insightful and detailed history of the Battle of the Somme. The Battle of the Somme has become one of the most common ways to illustrate the horror and apparent futility of the First World War. “The overall context of the Great War has long been forgotten and the teaching of the subject reduced to an adjunct of English literature that can be brutally summarized in just five words: ‘the pity of it all.’ Politicians are portrayed as Machiavellian, but simultaneously weak, generals are stupid, soldiers are brave helpless victims and war poets---war poets are the latter-day saints made flesh,” Hart writes. Hart largely eschews this “crude sentimental approach,” while admitting that the battle’s death toll is “higher than any sane individual would like to comprehend.”

Hart argues that, while the Somme was certainly dreadful, the war itself could only be won through this type of attritional warfare due to the modern technology of war---and that the war could only have been won on the Western Front, contrary to the wishes of “Easterners” like Lloyd George and Churchill.

Hart’s treatment of the battle is quite balanced. Although generations of earlier historians have blasted Haig and Rawlinson for the slaughter on the Somme and presented them as uncaring, unfeeling morons that sacrificed British youths for no good reason, Hart is defensive and argues that much, if not all, of the blame they receive is undeserved. Hart describes the many limitations that Haig and Rawlinson operated under, some of them unavoidable, some of them imposed on them by Joffre. Hart is still critical of the generals’ ambitious “big-push” ideas, arguing that the smaller-scale “bite-and-hold” tactics were more workable. Hart also criticizes Haig for his failure to learn from his many and repetitive tactical errors. Rather than an endless repetition of fiascoes, Hart argues that the Somme was a steep, bloody learning curve.

As is usual for Hart, he provides a large amount of first-hand accounts by participants, even though the vast majority of the ones Hart chooses are British, and many of them seem repetitive and uninteresting. He describes the various military and political factors (and agendas both overt and secretive) that brought Douglas Haig to the Somme, the dramatic and famous first day and the later battles. He fully captures the feelings of futility and distrust among the soldiers. He also includes many letters and diary entries to flesh out the horror of the fighting; many of these accounts are quite honest, even gloating, about the number of Germans shot by British troops after attempting to surrender.

At times however, Hart presents his various opinions with little real evidence to support them. And at one point Hart writes that tanks “probably” received their name due to their resemblance to a water tank, even though they were deliberately dubbed “tanks” in order to conceal their purpose, since the project was so secretive. And Hart uses far too many exclamation points.

Easy to read and mostly orderly, even if Hart’s narrative jumps around a lot, and a greater focus on the French and German sides would certainly have helped.

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

really thorough, brought me to tears at some points. loved the final chapter. all of the soldiers' accounts were awesome and i'm glad i got a chance to read them, but ordinary seaman joe murray in one of the later chapters was hilarious, he made me laugh out loud every time he wrote anything. since everyone asked

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is certainly not a pleasant read but one that adds an entire dimension to what human beings can accept. Although not the best book for a general description of the battle, the fact that it is nearly half first-person accounts lends a personal human dimension to a battle where the overall human cost is too stagering to comprehend - over 19,000 British dead in the first day, approximately 1.5 million casualties overall for the four-month battle. After reading the simple personal expressions of the stoicism with which the men lived with death - whether the unburied corpses of others or the likelihood of their own and simply went on,I should never complain about having a hard day again.

[Andrew Canfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

The tale of a costly World War One battle is admirably told in Peter Hart’s The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front. He leans heavily on first hand accounts of men who fought in France’s Somme River Valley during the destructive battle that began on July 1st, 1916, mixing these in with observations by the generals who were ostensibly running the show.

Hart presents the Somme offensive as an effort by the British to take pressure off their French Allied partners in Verdun. While the French were stalemated at the latter battle site, the British were being leaned on to force Germany to fight on yet another front in the West.

Given Britain’s past penchant for exporting continental fighting and preference for instead aiding their allies’ fights monetarily, it was imperative that Britain demonstrate their willingness to run up a high body count in service of defeating the Central Powers. Generals Douglas Haig, Henry Rawlinson, and Hubert Gough’s words are utilized by Hart to speak for the BEF’s high command; the British cross-Channel political leadership is mentioned little. French general Joseph Joffre is also a presence during the Somme, an individual who alongside Ferdinand Foch did not start out enthusiastic about Albion's willingness to go all-in on defeating Germany.

With over one million casualties during four months of fighting, the Battle of the Somme would become emblematic of the pointlessness of many World War One battles. In vivid detail, The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front makes clear the tremendous amount of blood spilt to gain incremental amounts of land.

These gains would oftentimes be quickly lost thanks to swift counterattacks.

Nearly twenty thousand British troops would die on just the first day of combat, and their casualties would total over 400,000 by the battle’s end in November 1916. Unfortunately for the Allies, victory would seem no closer-arguably even more distant-by that point than when the battle began.

Hart recounts how prototype tanks were introduced during the Somme fighting, often resulting in frustration more than a tilting of the battlefield advantage. He even works in the Royal Flying Corps’ (RFC) presence during some of the fighting, a development which, alongside tanks, would take another few decades to fully contribute to a major tactical advantage. Flamethrowers and machine guns made for new, and incredibly violent, additions to wartime arsenals as well.

At times it feels as if Hart almost leans too much on direct quotations from the soldiers who were on the Somme scene, but these also add a lot of realism to the book. By getting down into the trenches and hearing from the infantry, readers gain a strong appreciation for the minute to minute horror experienced by those on the Somme’s front lines.

The author does not provide much in the way of grand, sweeping explanations of wider war aims; he instead succeeds in writing an appropriate tribute to a battle still remembered by the British people over a century later.

The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front is a really good place to start for those hoping to gain an understanding of this costly battle's importance. It will leave readers with a difficult to forget retelling of the Somme horror from the British perspective, and because of this the book is a success.

-Andrew Canfield Denver, Colorado

[Christopher Backa · Rating 4 out of 5]

An oral history of the Battle of the Somme. A brutal look at one of the grueling battles of World War 1. The British lost 57,000 soldiers at the opening of the battle. It is a really interesting first hand accounting of what the Trench Warfare was like in the first world war

[Mike Fendrich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Between Verdun and the Somme, 1916 must be one of the worst years ever in the history of mankind. Of course, we have WWII to look forward to. The sheer brutality of this war is staggering and what was expected from these soldiers defies reason. And for what? This is the heart of man, the crown of creation, turned to brute beasts by his pride and lusts for power. God have mercy.

[Ryan Hanlon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Allow me to paraphrase every battle plan; *ahem*, "Keep sending more men! They'll run out of bullets eventually!"

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Horrific, to imagine a war like that today, is not really possible, During the Gulf war the body count was posted and used as a political weapon against the opposition in power, daily smacking them over the head with the ongoing cost of the war, A great deal of anger was made of the 219 U.S. Soldiers that died in one year of battle, 154 of them in battle 65 died from nonbattle causes. In the battle of the Somme on the first attack Just the british, Not including the French, Russians, or even the Germans, there were over 57,000 casualties, 19,000 deaths and then they just added up daily. the total losses to just the british soldiers during all of WWI were over 744,000 Dead, Not including the wounded which was quite a bit more. Peter Hart makes a decent case for why this horrible battle happened as it did, There was a lot of pressure from allies who felt Brittan had done very little to help in the first two years of the war. There were many mistakes that were taking too long to learn from, but there were also plans that were being tried that were not bad plans, they just didn't work as well as they were expecting. The real problem was that each experiment was so costly in human lives. This book was well written and I find that I thank god that I was not there, as any sane person should. At a time that we are once again on the verge of a great world conflict, with Russia preparing to Invade Ukraine, China Preparing to invade Taiwan, North Korea Threatening South Korea, Iran Arming with Nuclear Missiles, forcing Israel to attack them first or face annihilation as threatened many times in the past,and the United States running around like the Dutch boy trying to put his finger into every little hole, I think about the old saying, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Yay here we go again.

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Somme, a World War I battle that began in July, l916 and went on for four months, was designed to be a breakthrough on the western front by the British against well-defended German positions, but it was a disaster and accomplished virtually nothing. Nothing except the loss of seventy thousand lives and nearly half a million casualties on the British side.

Hart writes that the objective was to provide relief for the French, fighting on another front at Verdun, so it meant that the British commander, Douglas Haig, was under tremendous pressure to smash the Germans and bail out the French. He has been much maligned, along with General Henry Rawlinson, for the needless sacrifice of thousands of young British lives.

Hart doesn't excuse them for a "collective failure of generalship", one that kept ordering new attacks of the same kind that had just failed. How to explain this? Part of it was organization - Rawlinson, for example, believed in "the convention that the general in command merely 'pointed the gun' by setting overall objectives and leaving the details to subordinates." What resulted was confusion and often chaos as soldiers were repeatedly sent "over the top" into no man's land.

Prior to these forays, the German trenches were bombarded for days and days by heavy artillery shells and the theory was that their front line soldiers would be wiped out, making it easy for British infantry to overrun the now empty German trenches. Instead, the Germans were well dug in, often in deep concrete reinforced bunkers. They were hit by shells, but were always able to regroup, using machine guns particularly effectively to cut down the advancing Brits.

It's true that there were isolated successes and that the Germans suffered heavy casualties as well. Haig felt that success was at hand, one more push and the German resistance would collapse. It never did, as over-simplified theories in war never work out as expected. Witness the "light at the end of the tunnel" thinking in Viet Nam, or the expected easy American victory and exit from Iraq in the next century.

The carnage was awful, and much of the book is made up of eyewitness accounts by survivors. After awhile, the horrors of war, grotesquely dismembered bodies lying everywhere, the wounded moaning for help, the noise, the filth, rats, vermin, pile up so that a reader becomes numb to the horrors, just as the original combatants became numb.

The Somme battle came to an end in the autumn of 1916 when what Napoleon called the "fifth element" in war, mud, came into play. The rains came and turned the terrain, already torn up by massive shelling on both sides, into a morass of mud. Horses, artillery cannons, men, all sank into cold mud, sometimes up to their armpits, and in some cases, wounded men died while they were stuck in mud. Fighting became impossible.

In an ironic way, though, the Somme succeeded, though, The Germans adopted an essentially defensive war stance - their offensive against the French at Verdun had stalled, and the Somme was a horror for both sides. Hart points out that they turned to unrestricted submarine warfare to starve the British of needed resources, and that ultimately led to the United States joining the war and tipping the balance against the Germans.

A grim read but edifying in making me think that war, any war, is made up of folly, the greatest folly being the belief on the part of leaders, with the support of their civilian population, that war is a final solution to any deep-seated problems.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Hart is the oral historian of Britain’s Imperial War Museum. Hart has written a well research book and has dissected the battle in detail. Hart mixes facts and figures with direct quotations from participants to help establish “the face of battle”. This narrative/analytical backdrop contextualizing the personal experiences makes for dramatic reading of the battle. Because of his job at the War Museum Hart has unrivaled access to relevant source material. The author vividly presents the run up to the “big push” expected to end the war, instead resulted in the disaster of the first day July 1, 1916. The British suffered nearly 60,000 casualties, the greatest one day lost in the history of the British Army. Hart does make a point that General Douglas Haig (British Army) wanted to start the 1916 campaign in Belgium but French General Joffre the overall commander insisted on the Somme. The battle lasted for four deadly months. The British had only a small army as it always relied upon its navy to fight its wars. Prior wars in Europe the British primarily control the ocean and relied on its allies to fight on land. In World War One the British had to quickly build an army so it depended heavily on its colonies to man the army. The 1st Newfoundland Regiment of the Canadian Army was virtually wiped out at Beaumont Hamel on the first day of the battle July 1, 1916. The Canadian army lost 24,713 men at the Somme. Most people have never heard of Delville Wood, but if you mention it in South Africa you will find it is still a place of fame, only 780 out of 3153 men in the South African Regiment survived the battle. A comprehensive study of the battle of the Somme (1916) found that a million combatants were killed/wounded. The British Army learned to fight in the campaign with numerous innovations such as walking artillery fire, and tanks were used for the first time. The Somme occupies a hallowed place in British memory comparable to Gallipoli for Australians or Gettysburg for Americans, but on a much bigger scale. With just under a half million causalities this was the costliest battle the British Army has ever fought. As I listened to this as an audio book, I used the internet for maps and pictures of the battle of the Somme. I understand the actual book contained many pictures and maps. Mark Ashby did an excellent job narrating the book. This is a must read book for anyone studying the battle of the Somme.

[Matt Caris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great work of history; honest portrayal of the men and yet a fair assessment of the commanders. Strips away the 100 years of myth that now surround the Western Front and especially the British losses at the Somme (and elsewhere).

Only gave 3 stars because the denseness of the detail combined with poorly-detailed maps in the Kindle version make some things hard to follow, but this is typical with detailed campaign histories in ebook form. Also, the battle was so long that from a macro perspective, one doesn't learn much more about how things went wrong or what could have been done better given many of the same mistakes and challenges hobbled Haig and his commanders from July all the way through the end of the year. If you're not into all the detail, definitely skim this one - but it's worth having examined.

Most starkly, Hart presents a compelling case for why there was simply no avoiding the "butcher's bill" on the Western Front - just as in WWII, the only reason the Western Allies escaped WWI-like casualties was because the Soviets paid that bill. This is a good lesson for those who are tempted to think the modern era allows for "short, sharp, and winnable" wars between the great powers. It is also notable given that so much of British (and to a lesser extent, through some common cultural and cultural-strategic traits) American strategy since the Somme has always wrestled with the spectre of another bloodletting like 1 July 1916.

Significantly, the people I'd hope are most attentive to this book and much of the World War I centennial scholarship are Chinese military leaders, who I believe are the most tempted by illusions of "short, sharp" war without the cataclysmic consequences that accompanied all the nations who so proudly and confidently went off to Europe's doom in 1914.

[Kenneth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an account of one of the most god-awful battles ever fought in history, beginning on a 25 mile stretch of the Western front, north of the Somme river, against the German army in World War I, on July 1, 1916. The British army had about 50,000 casualties on the first day 0f whom almost 20,000 were killed. The battle dragged on into November, when the beginning of winter weather forced a cessation of new offensives. The author, English historian Peter Hart, is a master story-teller, and weaves extensive quotations from diaries, letters, and later accounts written by the men who were there and who survived, at least long enough to have written them. Oral histories are also quoted. Quotations come from not only the top generals, but even more so from lesser officers and quite a number of enlisted men who were present on the actual battlefields and who experienced what actually happened. This history is mainly told from the perspective of the British army. For what he sets out to do, Hart succeeds totally. An awesome read, but not for anyone who cannot stomach reading about the horrors of war.

[NDH · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are good things to be said about this 2008 book. The structure is essentially chronological with a fully adequate rendition of the strategic situation and considerations leading up to July 1st 1916. The author then telescopes down from the big picture to the intermediate levels and then to a very granular front-line soldier-in-the-trenches view. Indeed, the bulk of the book consists of citations from memoirs and letters written by a range of characters from the highest to the lowest ranks. My criticism at this point would be that one never knows the dates of the relevant citations, if they are near-contemporaneous or were written much after-the-fact.

In terms of maps, the many the author includes are quite good. Starting in the north, the author presents bite-sized chunks of territory and action that make it easy to follow the story. My only criticism of the maps would be that it drives me crazy to read about some location in the text and then find that it’s not identified on the relevant map.

One flaw that stands out is on page 416, where the author states that “Tuesday 26 September also marked the beginning of one of the most amazing battles in British military history.” The author seems subsequently to forget why he finds it “amazing”. We never learn.

It’s also worth commenting that, overall, the author’s “Assessment” is reasonable. The war wasn’t a case of ‘lions led by donkeys’, although I agree that Churchill’s search for Germany’s “soft underbelly” (Gallipoli) was fundamentally stupid. And I also appreciate the author’s assertion that, “…the leaders of the great Western nations had set themselves to resolve long-standing problems through war, with the active or passive encouragement of much of their civilian populations.” And further on: “The responsibility for all the manifold sacrifices lies not so much with the generals as with the enthusiasm with which the world embraced war in 1914.” It kind of puts all the post-war whining about ‘the Lost Generation’ into perspective. Contemporaries really did believe that “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” They got what they asked for.

Nonetheless, there are points with which I take extreme exception, mostly involving moments where the author can’t resist interjecting his very personal and irrelevant feelings and opinions. To illustrate(p 360): “There was no underpinning concept of the welfare state…The…crippled…were a nuisance to a society that believed in standing on your own two feet—if you had them.” What a condescending and self-righteous and utterly unjustifiable condemnation of an entire era, a view which the author supposedly supports by the lengthy whinge from one otherwise-unknown nobody whose war-wounded father died suddenly at Christmas in 1928, a full ten years after the war was over! Just what is the connection supposed to be???

Such virtue signaling on the author’s part is of a piece with the attitude of those who, with perfect 20/20 hindsight, condemn the generals…as the author not infrequently does…for not having and/or properly applying the means of solving their never-before-encountered strategic or tactical problems, means which are self-evident to the author and to the countless subsequent gifted and impressed-with-themselves armchair historians. “It is this sort of damned impudence from people sitting on their haunches miles in the rear” (and separated by decades) “who not only have no idea of the conditions…under which people are working…which makes the…” reader despise the writer. (See Lt. Wood citation on p 297.)

Finally, the author seems to have a particularly vicious enmity towards “sanctimonious padres.” We first encounter this mental twitch on p 188 where the author states. “For some, religion was at the center of their lives and war was viewed through a prism of pure sanctimony.” Following immediately is a quote from one Chaplain Leonard Jeeves which a reader might expect would in some way illustrate this nefarious concept ‘sanctimony’, but it has nothing to do with same. (“Captain Neville led his men into the fight with footballs.”) Immediately thereafter is the author’s comment, “For men like Jeeves everything and anything was a reinforcement of his warped core beliefs.” One would expect the subsequent quote to somehow illustrate those “warped core beliefs,” but in a passage describing a “pitiable spectacle” of prisoners marching to the rear, I find no expression of core beliefs, certainly not warped ones, nor of sanctimony. My only explanation for such passages is that one of the author’s graduate assistants slipped them in without having any idea what he was doing, and neither author nor editor noticed the stupidity.

Now, if you want a good illustration of ‘sanctimony’, consider the following authorial pontificating (p 379): “It is unfortunate to record that there was a vicious practicality about the (take no prisoners) orders given to the Canadians that provided an easy excuse for men inflamed beyond reason by the terrors and fierce joys of battle.” And on p 383, “There were reasons—but no excuses—for this appalling conduct.”

Now THAT is an illustration of the author’s condescending sanctimoniousness.

Please note the quote also on p 379 of one Pvt Lance Cattermole: “The reason for this (no prisoners order) was that so often in British advances, when the Germans had thrown down their arms and our men had moved through them…the Germans had picked up their rifles again and shot our men in the back…”

Here’s one more example: Quoting one Lt. Colonel Maxwell who, in reference to taking no prisoners, says, “…every German should in my opinion be exterminated…” the author helpfully informs us, “This was the old cruelty of the medieval wars.”

Well we’ll be having none of THAT now will we!

The author need only look in the mirror if he needs an example of a sanctimonious buffoon. His pitiful attacks on “sanctimonious padres” (p 534) are, at best, small-minded, ungenerous, uncomprehending, and pathetic.

There’s some good stuff in this book, but the author is not someone I’d care to read any more of.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading Peter Hart’s The Battle of the Somme seemed, at times, as endless as the nearly 5 month long battle for small advances over a pulverized landscape. But that’s one of Hart’s main points. When it comes to war between modern nation states, battlefield geography is somewhat meaningless. And the Somme, with its numerous battles for trench lines, shattered forests, flattened towns, was the British attempt to grind down the German Army. And there was, incredibly, some success with this strategy. Buried in this however is Hart’s defense of General Haig, but I’m not buying into that, since thousands were lost in poorly executed attacks. That should fall on the planners, and Haig was at the top of that particular heap. Still, Hart is fine writer, and the remarkable weave work he does with countless letters from soldiers and the larger narrative of battle itself, is simply amazing. And it’s the voices of these men, who are all gone now, that made this book a worthwhile read.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

The combined British and French offensive in the Somme River Valley of 1916 was one of the deadliest battles in the history of warfare. Hart’s narrative takes us from the first day of the battle, when the British incurred 57,470 casualties and 19,240 dead, to its sanguinary climax. He covers in significant detail virtually every significant attack, and there were many.


Hart’s favorable analysis of British General Douglas Haig is pointed and controversial. (Some of the epithets that have been applied to Haig include "The Butcher of the Somme" and "The Worst General of World War I.") It is also very terse, taking up no more than 15 pages of a 550 page book. The remaining 530 pages support Hart’s characterization of the military leadership as “unimaginative.” I would not recommend this book to anyone who did not want to read a blow-by-blow account of a five and one-half month battle.

Rating: 2.5/5

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interspersing chronology, cold facts, background information and diaries and letters of military personnel at all levels, Hart brings the Battle of the Somme alive. This doesn't make for easy reading. It'd be easy to turn away from the first-hand accounts of going over the top and, a few minutes later, realizing no one else is still standing. Or to close the cover, claiming that the descriptions of the wounded and the maggots are just too much for your stomach. Or that you can't bear reading one more set of last words from a soldier. Or that it's too long.

But so was the battle. Five months. And the horror was too much for the soldiers too. As I read I was keenly aware that the events described took place only a hundred years ago. The last veterans died during this decade. Did we learn anything from their experiences? Books like these can convey the lessons to anyone.

[Joseph Donigian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Confusing

I began reading this book being led to believe that the British troops were much less trained than German troops. Then the German troops appear unable to get out of the way of their own guns. The author seems to not realize the French were fighting since he shows no letters, and he has a few German letters.

I think this is less of history of WWI than a British opinion of the war.

[J.T.K. Gibbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a heart-breaking book. Hart depicts the six-month "battle" with pinpoint, painful detail. He lets us hear the voices of men who fought, suffered and, in a few cases, died in that struggle. Their stories keep the numbness one wants to feel in the face of so much carnage and horror from ever sinking in. A million or more dead, dismembered, missing - they all did their best. Was it worth it? Not even the last man quoted, Philip Pilvich, knew that.

This is history we must remember.

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes, less is more. The first-person narratives are exceptionally powerful but they are often lost in Hart's excessively detailed explanations.

[Seth Benzell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened to this to get a better understanding of trench warfare as I watch horrors unfold in Bakhmut.

The part about the Somme that I still don’t understand is this: People say you need a 3-1 advantage locally to win a battle (minimum). People also say that the Somme was a complete failure, an embarrassment to the English.

But they also say that the English+French only outnumbered the Germans 2-1. They also say that, at the end of the day, battle casualties were 620,00 and 440,000 only somewhat favoring the Germans.

We think of the Somme as coming at the peak of defensive warfare. But here we see a side on the defense having only a small casualty ratio advantage, despite a -supposedly safe- ratio in battle forces.

So what am I missing? Is this not the peak of defensive warfare, or am I not calculating something right.

Bringing my attention to Bakhmut — I have to say that reading about the Somme has kind of black-pilled me on Russia’s potential to grind this war out to a stalemate— if they’re willing to more dramatically mobilize. If I take the analogy to The Somme seriously two things become clear:

>human wave tactics are horrific, but if you really have no regard for the lives of your men, you can kind of feed X% of them into the meat house, after which they can trade 1-1 with the enemy once they enter close quarters combat. All the high-tech stuff in the world (gas, barbed wire, airplanes, long range guns and artillery—all WW1 examples already) is about killing the enemy before they get close to you.

But close combat is a great equalizer. Early in the war this played to Ukraine’s strategic advantage — completely raw partisans and militia members were able to exchange favorably with Russia’s best troops. But as we get deeper into the war, 1-1 exchanges may strategically favor Putin. Russia’s population is four times larger, and Putin’s expending conscripts and convicts.

>both Russia and Ukraine today are far away from the total-mobilization levels that were achieved during WWI, but Russia especially so (Ukraine has about 12% of it’s GDP in the military, and maybe 1/200th of it’s population fighting. Russia’s numbers are lower.)

Maybe a better analogy would be Verdun: there the Germans were on the operational offensive, going after a location that eventually developed into a symbolic prize rather than a practical one. And there too casualty ratios weren’t completely lopsided.

In any case, what I keep coming back to, is that if Putin is able to maintain the will of his country to fight, there really is no reason he shouldn’t be able to grind out a stalemate. Even if Western military supplies quadruple, all this does it make it easier for Ukrainian troops to reach Russian lines, where they’ll be lucky to exchange casualties 1-1. The only real hope to do better than this is to have a complete failure of the Russian army’s morale, and ultimately a political collapse -- like what happened during WWI also. But now the Tsar’s got nukes.

I want the Ukrainians to win as much as everyone, but to me the West’s challenge in Ukraine is one of precisely calibrating the force applied. It’s possible more force will just lead to a bloodier version of the same stalemate. It’s also possible that more force will lead to a collapse and a nuclear outlash. But to not support a nation that was aggressively invaded is also unacceptable; to let its peoples’ dreams of democracy and progress die, against everything we believe in.

It’s a real pickle.

The book was interesting as a glimpse into the lived experience of fighting in the Somme trenches. For my interests, I’d have liked more time spent on the operational and strategic level (the author’s conclusion that the Somme Offensive may have been the best of bad options is under-argued). But good for what it was.

[Bayley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really interesting addition to my First World War knowledge. The Somme is a collection of first hand accounts of the battle with additional context and connective tissue supplied by Hart. It is a very British leaning account and it focuses on people across a wide swath of military experiences.

An aside: In lots of reviews of various books about this war that I have read I see people lamenting that a single book does not do everything, that it is too narrow or too broad, that it only covers a single front or national experience, that the book doesn't provide enough outside context or that it is not focused on the actual war being waged heavily enough. These complaints seem to silly to me, thinking that a single book is going to be able to handle every single aspect of the war and not be so long as to be exhausting to both read and write. I like that with each new book I've picked up on this topic I have been building a framework of understanding the narrative in the book and connecting that information with other sources. It is probably the most engaging part of any history learning and its so weird that so many nonfiction book people are so grumpy about it.

I really enjoyed this book! It is very long and focused on the granular. It provided enough context as to not be confusing but I do definitely want to find other accounts of this battle that take a different approach to fill out my understanding of the political choices, as well as the French and German perspective.

That being said this book does really shine because it is so focused on individual soldiers varied experiences. Hart puts a wide array of people together who have varied opinions and experiences. This kind of recounting of the war is not one I had yet encountered and I think this has been really enlightening.

It was very well structured and easy to follow. I listened to some of this book on audio and read some with my eyes and did not find either experience confusing. Although the book has very many maps that very much enhance the reading experience and I imagine that if you listen you will want to get a hold of a physical copy to actually look at the battle field. I was particularly struck by the map that contrasts the frontline at the start to its final position.

I feel I am not doing a good job talking about this book, but it is just so massive and covers so much ground I feel unsure how to do it justice. I thought it was great. It's a chunk, but it uses the page space very well.

[Mr N P Leversuch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Peter Hart argues that the Somme was not nearly so grim as the myth. That the soldiers weren't helpless victims who left their trenches in long lines only to get mowed down by German machine guns. He also argues that the British generals weren't nearly as pig-headed incompetents as previously portrayed.
I did not find this a convincing argument. In the case of the soldiers, they were operating in an environment where they had intense loyalty to their comrades, where shell shock was poorly understood and often portrayed as cowardice and individuals shot. Also, the book itself repeatedly provides examples where the soldiers were expected to advance slowly in line abreast. So, it is difficult to see how the soldiers were anything other than helpless victims.
In the case of the generals, the author provides multiple examples where the generals rather callously throw away the lives of their soldiers in a deliberate grinding down of the enemy, while discounting the grinding down of their own soldiers. The argument seems to be that the generals had to go through a learning process to find out what tactics worked, however, they seemed to take much longer to learn the lessons than the German generals did. A good example would be how quickly the Germans realised the need to provide deep dugouts to protect their soldiers, whereas the allied generals took the view that it was not worth the effort as they would soon vanquish the Germans.
What is odd is that the ingredients for an effective attack were already known and indeed attempted to be implemented by Rawlinson, but he was overruled. Its almost as if the generals were all ex-cavalry men, determined to revert to cavalry charges at the earliest opportunity as the “honourable” way to conduct warfare.
In general, I found the book a good read, it conveyed very effectively the horrendous conditions for both sides and the demands made on them. Particularly effective in conveying the reality was the many firsthand quotes from soldiers.
The book does illustrate a completely different, more deferential, accepting attitude that prevailed in those days. In modern times I doubt the general staff could behave in such a cavalier manner towards squandering their soldiers lives.
I did find the book a little long and feel it would have been improved if it had been condensed further.

[Casey Wagner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first heard of Peter Hart's work from his interview on Dan Carlin's podcast Hardcore History. From this, I decided to pick up his most recent book, and I was not disappointed. Hart takes the massive 1916 battle of the Somme, and chronicles it through the eyes of those who experienced it. This book contains excerpts from hundreds of personal diaries, letters, and dispatches. Each paragraph Hart writes is then followed by one of these excerpts related to what was said. This habit makes Hart's work stand out from the hundreds of other books on the conflict; as well as his recognizable voice in the writing. He speaks clearly of dispelling the various mythmaking done on this battle by the British populace since it took place. A common target is the idea that all the soldiers were helpless victims, Hart reminds us these were in fact trained killers who would impress this skill onto their enemies should they have gotten the chance. Recognizing this does not alter the tragedy of events or make the deaths of the participates any less heartbreaking. Hart wishes for this history to be viewed clearly so that we can truly learn from it. It is a difficult fact, but a massive majority of the European population in 1914 celebrated the idea of the war. This often gets left out of written histories of the period to make room for the later period of apathy and nihilism the European population experienced. Hart makes room for both, showing us the folly of blind nationalism, and the reliance on violence for matters which would be better suited in over the discussion table. I look forward to reading Peter Hart again, and fully recommend this book to anyone with a passing interest in the battle of the Somme.