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Three Armies on the Somme: The First Battle of the Twentieth Century
For decades, the Battle of the Somme has exemplified the horrors and futility of trench warfare. Yet in Three Armies on the Somme, William Philpott makes a convincing argument that the battle ultimately gave the British and French forces on the Western Front the knowledge and experience to bring World War I to a victorious end.
It was the most brutal fight in a war that scarred generations. Infantrymen lined up opposite massed artillery and machine guns. Chlorine gas filled the air. The dead and dying littered the shattered earth of no man’s land. Survivors were rattled with shell-shock. We remember the shedding of so much young blood and condemn the generals who sent their men to their deaths. Ever since, the Somme has been seen as a waste: even as the war continued, respected leaders—Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George among them—judged the battle a pointless one.
While previous histories have documented the missteps of British command, no account has fully recognized the fact that allied generals were witnessing the spontaneous evolution of warfare even as they sent their troops “over the top.” With his keen insight and vast knowledge of military strategy, Philpott shows that twentieth-century war as we know it simply didn’t exist before the Battle of the Somme: new technologies like the armored tank made their battlefield debut, while developments in communications lagged behind commanders’ needs. Attrition emerged as the only means of defeating industrialized belligerents that were mobilizing all their resources for war. At the Somme, the allied armies acquired the necessary lessons of modern warfare, without which they could never have prevailed.
An exciting, indispensable work of military history that challenges our received ideas about the Battle of the Somme, and about the very nature of war.
It was the most brutal fight in a war that scarred generations. Infantrymen lined up opposite massed artillery and machine guns. Chlorine gas filled the air. The dead and dying littered the shattered earth of no man’s land. Survivors were rattled with shell-shock. We remember the shedding of so much young blood and condemn the generals who sent their men to their deaths. Ever since, the Somme has been seen as a waste: even as the war continued, respected leaders—Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George among them—judged the battle a pointless one.
While previous histories have documented the missteps of British command, no account has fully recognized the fact that allied generals were witnessing the spontaneous evolution of warfare even as they sent their troops “over the top.” With his keen insight and vast knowledge of military strategy, Philpott shows that twentieth-century war as we know it simply didn’t exist before the Battle of the Somme: new technologies like the armored tank made their battlefield debut, while developments in communications lagged behind commanders’ needs. Attrition emerged as the only means of defeating industrialized belligerents that were mobilizing all their resources for war. At the Somme, the allied armies acquired the necessary lessons of modern warfare, without which they could never have prevailed.
An exciting, indispensable work of military history that challenges our received ideas about the Battle of the Somme, and about the very nature of war.
656 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
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162 people want to read
About the author
William J. Philpott
8 books9 followersWilliam Philpott joined KCL's department of War Studies in September 2001 as a lecturer in military history, becoming Professor of the History of Warfare in 2011.He was previously a member of the Department in 1991–2, when he was a research fellow working for a collaborative research project investigating British civil–military relations, 'Government and the Armed forces in Britain, 1856-1990'. Before returning to the department he held teaching appointments in European and international history at the University of North London, Bradford University, and London Guildhall University.
Philpott is Secretary General of the British Commission for Military History and served on the Council of the Army Records Society from 1998-2009, holding the office of Honorary Secretary, 2000–2005. He is currently chair of the University of London’s Military Education Committee, and sits on the council of the National Army Museum.
Philpott has published extensively in the fields of First World War history and twentieth century Anglo-French relations including monographs, textbooks, journal articles and book chapters. His recent international history of the battles of the Somme, Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme and the Making of the Twentieth Century (Little, Brown, 2009) won the 2009 Society for Army Historical Research Templer Medal and the US Western Front Association’s Norman B. Tomlinson Jr Book prize.
- Adapted from King's College London
Philpott is Secretary General of the British Commission for Military History and served on the Council of the Army Records Society from 1998-2009, holding the office of Honorary Secretary, 2000–2005. He is currently chair of the University of London’s Military Education Committee, and sits on the council of the National Army Museum.
Philpott has published extensively in the fields of First World War history and twentieth century Anglo-French relations including monographs, textbooks, journal articles and book chapters. His recent international history of the battles of the Somme, Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme and the Making of the Twentieth Century (Little, Brown, 2009) won the 2009 Society for Army Historical Research Templer Medal and the US Western Front Association’s Norman B. Tomlinson Jr Book prize.
- Adapted from King's College London
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
December 2, 2010
Good but not great. Dispels conventional wisdom. Clearly relied on original sources and not other historians' works. Yet I find it a less dramatic and memorbale telling of the story of this most appalling battle. It lacks the punch of Keegan's The Face of Battle, for example.
July 30, 2014
“Three Armies on the Somme: The First Battle of the twentieth Century.” By William Philpott, a military historian from England. Philpott seeks to change the perception about General Douglas Haig, one of the British commanders at the battle of the Somme. The author explains that Haig’s approach to the war was one of attritional strategy. The five month battle of the Somme is probably the most famous of the WWI battles. For almost a century now, those five months have been known by their first day only, a day of such stark and horrifying unrealities as ever bloody-minded Tennyson never dreamed. The Somme offensive had originally been planned as the staging ground for the ‘one big push’ the allied command (French/English) hoped would break through the German defenses.
Recently I had read “The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front” by Peter Hart. Compared to Hart’s book, William Philpott is more specifically interested in the overall war, and he used the Somme as an introductory set up to analyze the war itself, whereas, Hart was only interested in the battle of the Somme. Philpott points out the scope of the Somme battle was enormous, while the principals were French, English and German, eventually the battle involved millions of soldiers from twenty five nations and all five continents confronted on another on a battle front that stretched forty miles. (The 25 nations were from the three countries former colonies.)
Throughout this long and contentious volume, Philpot cites the work of other historians, usually dismissing their efforts in unflattering terms. Philpot’s massively research text demonstrates the battle was fought with a coherent strategic and operational plan. Historians are still struggling with the nature of an industrial war of attrition to this day. You need to be careful reading this book and decide for yourself, where facts give way to historical revisionism. If one is a student of World War One, reading both of these books, will provide a better understanding and the various view points of the battle of the Somme. I would have gave this 3 and one half but Goodreads does not allow it.
Recently I had read “The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front” by Peter Hart. Compared to Hart’s book, William Philpott is more specifically interested in the overall war, and he used the Somme as an introductory set up to analyze the war itself, whereas, Hart was only interested in the battle of the Somme. Philpott points out the scope of the Somme battle was enormous, while the principals were French, English and German, eventually the battle involved millions of soldiers from twenty five nations and all five continents confronted on another on a battle front that stretched forty miles. (The 25 nations were from the three countries former colonies.)
Throughout this long and contentious volume, Philpot cites the work of other historians, usually dismissing their efforts in unflattering terms. Philpot’s massively research text demonstrates the battle was fought with a coherent strategic and operational plan. Historians are still struggling with the nature of an industrial war of attrition to this day. You need to be careful reading this book and decide for yourself, where facts give way to historical revisionism. If one is a student of World War One, reading both of these books, will provide a better understanding and the various view points of the battle of the Somme. I would have gave this 3 and one half but Goodreads does not allow it.
August 17, 2020
Philpott's detailed and readable account of the Battle of the Somme takes a wider view that most accounts you will read of one of the Great War's most infamous battles.
Firstly, it deals extensively with the experiences of all three combatant nations engaged in the Somme battle: French and Germans as well as British.
Secondly, it spends considerable time on the way in which the fighting of the Battle of the Somme represented an important turning point in the Allies understanding of how to fight effectively on the modern battlefield. The French had, as of the opening of the Somme on July 1, 1916, already learned how to fight primarily with material rather than manpower: heavily concentrating their artillery and limiting the scope of their objectives and the speed of their advance according to how quickly they were able to move up artillery and prepare the ground. The British expended a record number of shells in preparation for the Somme attack, but they did so along a very long front, and thus ended up using a lower density of fire than they had at some of the battles in 1915. Thus, while the French saw fairly consistent success on the first days of the battle, meeting their objectives with low casualties, the British famously had men marching on positions in which the machine guns were still very much in place. During the course of the slogging months ahead, the British learned how to emphasize material instead of men, and began to achieve more with (comparatively) lower casualties -- bringing the German army to a point of near collapse by the time that the weather made further campaigning impossible in the fall.
Thirdly, Philpott spends considerable time on how historical and cultural understandings of the Somme have formed and developed in the time since the battle. This section on meaning and mourning I found particularly interesting.
Firstly, it deals extensively with the experiences of all three combatant nations engaged in the Somme battle: French and Germans as well as British.
Secondly, it spends considerable time on the way in which the fighting of the Battle of the Somme represented an important turning point in the Allies understanding of how to fight effectively on the modern battlefield. The French had, as of the opening of the Somme on July 1, 1916, already learned how to fight primarily with material rather than manpower: heavily concentrating their artillery and limiting the scope of their objectives and the speed of their advance according to how quickly they were able to move up artillery and prepare the ground. The British expended a record number of shells in preparation for the Somme attack, but they did so along a very long front, and thus ended up using a lower density of fire than they had at some of the battles in 1915. Thus, while the French saw fairly consistent success on the first days of the battle, meeting their objectives with low casualties, the British famously had men marching on positions in which the machine guns were still very much in place. During the course of the slogging months ahead, the British learned how to emphasize material instead of men, and began to achieve more with (comparatively) lower casualties -- bringing the German army to a point of near collapse by the time that the weather made further campaigning impossible in the fall.
Thirdly, Philpott spends considerable time on how historical and cultural understandings of the Somme have formed and developed in the time since the battle. This section on meaning and mourning I found particularly interesting.
September 1, 2017
Here are the most salient features in short :
despite popular believe (especially in Britain **), this atrocious battle
(on each side around 600 000+ casualties were the result of the
July - December 1916 battle) can be classified as an Allied success
story, because :
a. both the British, but especially the French forces and leadership
developed a better sense of what operationally is needed to break
the stalemate on the Western Front, learning how to fight a truly
industrial war, with emphasis shifting more to "materi'el" intensity
rather than manpower (acknowledging the importance
of artillery)
b. of the beginning breakdown of German morale with the realisation that
initial superiority in training and determination had faded
The concept of "attrition" is central to the book, and in the following I summarise
some of the key factors that go into his reversal of popular opinion, that has the battle as
the prototype of senseless mass-slaughter resulting in neither gain of territory nor tactical position.
(*) Note that in Britain, this book appeared under the title "Bloody Victory: the Sacrifice on the Somme and the Making of the Twentieth Century", and apparently contains another 100+ pages.
(**) Basically, Philpott tries to unmask Winston Churchill's and Liddell Hart's verdict of a "senseless massacre of the innocents" as a myth -- in fact, he sometimes becomes extremely vitriolic when Churchill is concerned.
Detailed notes :
1. The overlooked French contribution
At the beginning of 1916, the Allies had grand plans for a coordinated Summer
Offensive on basically all fronts, with the French carrying the main weight in the
Western theatre. And indeed, the frontline to the South of the Somme had been
targeted as main objective to achieve a "breaktrough". However, the German
attack on Verdun earlier that year was tying down a sizeable fraction of the French
Armies, and
hence the operations on the Somme had to be down-scaled substantially.
As a result, now the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was supposed to contribute
substantially. The BEF, however, was at this stage in an interesting phase of its
development of what towards the end of the war became a veritable war-machine
that could match the French (or even overpower the Germans) : the campaigns of
1914 and 1915 had basically exhausted the very small manpower of professional
soldiers, and the vast majority of the infantry ("Kitchener's New Army" ) had not yet
experienced the trench warfare to which both the French and Germans had become used
for almost 2 years.
Almost unsurprisingly hence, the BEF's casualty toll, especially on the very first day
of the Battle (01 July 1916) turned out to be disastrously high, which subsequentially lead
to much bitterness in the review of the Battle on the British side (see below).
While for the French (and to a certain degree the Germans) "the Somme" thus remained
just one of the horrible battles (Verdun being deemed more important, although that may
also be unjustified, as Philpott demonstrates, since Verdun and the Somme have to be
seen as "conjoined twins"), the role of the Somme Battle to the BEF was regarded
much more important, due to the trauma induced by entering the mass slaughtering for
real. This may explain the fact that in most British, but also French analyses of the
July - December 1916 events, the contribution of the French has been severely
overlooked, as Philpott claims.
While casualties in the French sector of the offensive were by and large much smaller
than on the British side (and bascially on par with the Germans, which is the
main feature of the concept of "attrition"), this cannot be equated to a lesser contribution
or a less intense fight on the French side. Rather, according to Philpott, the French
had by mid-1916 already figured out how to structure an attack on entrenched strong
enemy positions with fewer men to be sacrificed. (see below)
Lastly, he spends some time demonstrating the doggedness of the German defence,
which against superior Allied artillery firepower held on tenaciously, while the homefront,
however, slowly drifted into despair due to the effects of blockades and the increasing
demand of a "total" war.
Hence, he thereby justifies the title "Three Armies on the Somme", highlighting the
specific differences of all three forces meeting that fateful year 1916 : for the French,
liberation of the homeland was of course a main motivator, whereas Germans felt that
the war had escalated (or better : they had allowed it to escalate) to a level that
threatened the existence of the country as a whole (rather than "just" winning or losing
some military pride), whereas for the British the wider question of retaining their Empire
certainly played into their calculations of how much effort to spend on the Continent.
An interesting side aspect is the description of the difficulties of the Allied forces to
even communicate properly -- failure to coordinate actions in the beginning proved
extremely costly (there is one example, where on the evening of an important
operation, the French and British high-level officers met, and apparently could not
do anything but point more or less silently at maps, while not having mastered each
other's language sufficiently to discuss details of the next morning --- I have not been
able to verify that claim......).
2. The implementation of new operational procedures
The central theme of Philpott is his thesis that by early 1916, the combattants
slowly began to realise what it really meant that the war (at least on the Western
Front, but even on large parts anywhere else) had turned from a quick
manoeuvre-based to a stalemate-like trench-based : the emphasis shifted from
"fast annihilation" to "long drawn-out attrition". Having to throw the full weight of
the whole economy into the effort, with the home front being almost equally
important to the success of the whole endeavour (or failure : Philpott describes
in detail how on all sides the political and societal fissures created by the ongoing
and escalating war effort often dangerously jeopardised military successes), also
caused immense logistical problems, that had hitherto been completely unknown.
Supply lines being the prime example, especially when in late Fall the North
of France turned into a muddy hell.
This is exactly where usually the criticism of this Battle of the Somme (but of the
whole conduct of the War in general) sets in : once the concept of atttrition
is accepted, it seems that large sacrifices in human live alongside of
vast materi'el (Philpott uses the French term throughout his book, in the following I
am going to leave out the accent) were simply tolerated, and shortly thereafter
(notably by Winston Churchill, but also by the majority of the politicians in
France) heavily criticised as "senseless slaughter".
Philpott demonstrates that this notion is not quite correct. While never arguing
the horribly high rate of casualties (total counts are apparently very hard to get
correctly, but solid estimates have them in the range of 200 000some for
the French, 420 000some for the British, and about 580 - 650 000some on the
German side for just the short 60 mile frontline of the Somme in the span of
July 1 to late-December 1916), he points out that during the offensive
new operational procedures were developed that helped reducing the cost of
lives.
It began to dawn upon the military leaders that warfare had changed profoundly,
even since the start of hostilities in 1914. And that was literally a slow process ---
in hindsight, it is very easy for us to point fingers, and declare easily that
it essentially should have come to their mind that it equated to murder sending soldiers over the top into sure death
marching into machine gun fire. But changing the habits of warfare when
commanding Armies of >2 000 000 million soldiers on each side is a
process which is more complex and takes longer than that simple realisation.
During the Somme offensive, as Philpott explains, especially the French
developed new procedures that acknowledged the importance of new technology
having entered the battlefield :
a. the overwhelming importance of artillery with unprecedented firepower,
especially in being able to destroy barbed wire and protect the
infantry's forward motion by preventing defender's machine
gun nests to be manned after the barrage lifted
Fayolle, the French General, developed precise descriptions of
how long such intense barrages had to be sustained in order to
even make any attempt in attacking German front lines, and
specifically invented a "creeping" barrage concept, i.e. basically
a solid, deadly "metal screen" that was to move in front of the slowly
advancing soldiers with a certain timetable.
b. this realisation lead also to the need of improving reconnaisance and
communcation , partly to know what exactly to bomb, but also - more
importantly - to judge success and determine exact progress while
an offensive was going on. These tools were just being developed,
and were basically put to the test for the first time -- leading to a much
more modern integration of different arms (including e.g. the air forces
in their fledgling stages). Especially quick communication was a real
problem : the leaders behind the front lines basically had no clue
what was going on, and it sometimes took even days to get a clear
picture -- a fact often overlooked nowadays !
c. combined with the concept of "the artillery conquers, the infantry occupies"
it was realised that massed attacks in large formations were absolutely
futile. The French had already learned that, and their organisation
down to the platoon level had changed by 1916, now placing a lot more
emphasis on small groups infiltrating the enemy lines after heavy
heavy bombardment, and then "mopping up" nests of resistance with
secondary units specifically trained to that purpose. Also, the equipment
of such storm-troops began to change, with the introduction of weapons
better suited to that type of combat (grenades, flame-throwers, light
machine guns, etc....). Lastly, tanks made their appearance in the theatre
of war -- but again : those new machines had to be tested, and
initially did not prove too effective.
The British Army of volunteers simply had not been exposed long enough
to these changes such that they were on an extremely steep learning
curve, explaining especially the initial high numbers of casualties when
compared to both the French and Germans. By the end of the Somme,
November - December 1916, however, the BEF had certainly incorporated
a lot of these new directives (one controversy in the debate of the
BEF's conduct remains : why did it take them as long to learn from the
French ? Communication problems ?).
The main point that Philpott makes is that the Somme provided
namely Foch, whom he basically dubs as a strategic genius,
with the basic tools that would allow him as Allied Generalissimo
late in 1918 to finally break the stalemate in the West, and
pummel the Germans via successive, relentless large-scale operations
into submission -- operations that he had studied intensively
on a much smaller scale in 1916 at the Somme.
The concept of a breakthrough to outflank an entrenched enemy
had by then be replaced with the idea of laterally exploiting small scale
break-ins on widely separated points of the long front-line, stopping
immediately when the going got to hard, and attacking somewhere else ;
which cost many fewer casualties than the former
strategy.
3. breaking German morale
However little progress in terms of territory the actual Battle of the Somme
made (the Germans retreated early in 1917 back to the Hindenburg
line some 30 miles east of the battleground), there is one very important
if intangible aspect : the question of morale.
As it became clear after the War, Ludendorff (the German Chief of General
Staff) realised during the Battle of the Somme in 1916 that the War
for Germany is un-winnable, and by the end of the year, the German
soldiery began to show severe signs of war-weariness, no doubt being
fueled by the realisation that for the first time, the Allied Forces on the
West had been successively able to overpower them even in heavily
fortified defensive positions.
Conversely, the morale especially of the French was boosted
tremendously, as they avoided defeat in Verdun, and for the first time
came to understand that they could match the Germans (or even
outclass them with regards to artillery skills).
Even for the BEF the spirit of late-1916 was much improved from the
disastrous beginning at July 1st --- and here especially some of the
Empire's "colonial" forces (namely the Anzac and Canadians, but also
the South Africans) proved to be tremendous fighting forces.
4. the shift in perception and remembrance throughout the years
One of the most interesting chapters is that on how the Battle has been
analysed over time - with wide swings depending on the specific
circumstances at each epoch.
Since the Germans retreated early 1917 (and war only came back to
exactly the same battlefield in Summer 1918 during the last hooray
of Germany fueled by the collapse of the Russian front), the battleground
itself (a front of about 90 miles in Northern France, at a depth of only a
few miles itself) must have been an absolutely eerie site :
completely destroyed villages, craters (later on compared to Lunar land-
scapes) everywhere, cadavres of men and horses rotting away,
while nature slowly reclaimed the totally barren ground --- already
then commentators, trying to grasp what had been going on,
made the astonishing experience that such a "hallowed ground"
without any actual fighting soldiery present anymore is utterly
incomprehensible.
Hence, even during war time, a business of "memorisation and
analyses" from different points of view started, mostly detailed
by Philpott on the British side. Logically, eloquent politician and
high-level soldiers (namely General Haig) brought forward their
individual points, while the common soldier's point of view only came to
the foreground after hostilities had ended in 1918.
Philpott identifies at least three different main phases :
a. immediately after WWI the idea prevailed that the
Battle of the Somme - while potentially needlessly bloody -
was fought for a noble cause, and indeed important
enough in subduing German militarism that the
sacrifices were worthwhile.
despite popular believe (especially in Britain **), this atrocious battle
(on each side around 600 000+ casualties were the result of the
July - December 1916 battle) can be classified as an Allied success
story, because :
a. both the British, but especially the French forces and leadership
developed a better sense of what operationally is needed to break
the stalemate on the Western Front, learning how to fight a truly
industrial war, with emphasis shifting more to "materi'el" intensity
rather than manpower (acknowledging the importance
of artillery)
b. of the beginning breakdown of German morale with the realisation that
initial superiority in training and determination had faded
The concept of "attrition" is central to the book, and in the following I summarise
some of the key factors that go into his reversal of popular opinion, that has the battle as
the prototype of senseless mass-slaughter resulting in neither gain of territory nor tactical position.
(*) Note that in Britain, this book appeared under the title "Bloody Victory: the Sacrifice on the Somme and the Making of the Twentieth Century", and apparently contains another 100+ pages.
(**) Basically, Philpott tries to unmask Winston Churchill's and Liddell Hart's verdict of a "senseless massacre of the innocents" as a myth -- in fact, he sometimes becomes extremely vitriolic when Churchill is concerned.
Detailed notes :
1. The overlooked French contribution
At the beginning of 1916, the Allies had grand plans for a coordinated Summer
Offensive on basically all fronts, with the French carrying the main weight in the
Western theatre. And indeed, the frontline to the South of the Somme had been
targeted as main objective to achieve a "breaktrough". However, the German
attack on Verdun earlier that year was tying down a sizeable fraction of the French
Armies, and
hence the operations on the Somme had to be down-scaled substantially.
As a result, now the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was supposed to contribute
substantially. The BEF, however, was at this stage in an interesting phase of its
development of what towards the end of the war became a veritable war-machine
that could match the French (or even overpower the Germans) : the campaigns of
1914 and 1915 had basically exhausted the very small manpower of professional
soldiers, and the vast majority of the infantry ("Kitchener's New Army" ) had not yet
experienced the trench warfare to which both the French and Germans had become used
for almost 2 years.
Almost unsurprisingly hence, the BEF's casualty toll, especially on the very first day
of the Battle (01 July 1916) turned out to be disastrously high, which subsequentially lead
to much bitterness in the review of the Battle on the British side (see below).
While for the French (and to a certain degree the Germans) "the Somme" thus remained
just one of the horrible battles (Verdun being deemed more important, although that may
also be unjustified, as Philpott demonstrates, since Verdun and the Somme have to be
seen as "conjoined twins"), the role of the Somme Battle to the BEF was regarded
much more important, due to the trauma induced by entering the mass slaughtering for
real. This may explain the fact that in most British, but also French analyses of the
July - December 1916 events, the contribution of the French has been severely
overlooked, as Philpott claims.
While casualties in the French sector of the offensive were by and large much smaller
than on the British side (and bascially on par with the Germans, which is the
main feature of the concept of "attrition"), this cannot be equated to a lesser contribution
or a less intense fight on the French side. Rather, according to Philpott, the French
had by mid-1916 already figured out how to structure an attack on entrenched strong
enemy positions with fewer men to be sacrificed. (see below)
Lastly, he spends some time demonstrating the doggedness of the German defence,
which against superior Allied artillery firepower held on tenaciously, while the homefront,
however, slowly drifted into despair due to the effects of blockades and the increasing
demand of a "total" war.
Hence, he thereby justifies the title "Three Armies on the Somme", highlighting the
specific differences of all three forces meeting that fateful year 1916 : for the French,
liberation of the homeland was of course a main motivator, whereas Germans felt that
the war had escalated (or better : they had allowed it to escalate) to a level that
threatened the existence of the country as a whole (rather than "just" winning or losing
some military pride), whereas for the British the wider question of retaining their Empire
certainly played into their calculations of how much effort to spend on the Continent.
An interesting side aspect is the description of the difficulties of the Allied forces to
even communicate properly -- failure to coordinate actions in the beginning proved
extremely costly (there is one example, where on the evening of an important
operation, the French and British high-level officers met, and apparently could not
do anything but point more or less silently at maps, while not having mastered each
other's language sufficiently to discuss details of the next morning --- I have not been
able to verify that claim......).
2. The implementation of new operational procedures
The central theme of Philpott is his thesis that by early 1916, the combattants
slowly began to realise what it really meant that the war (at least on the Western
Front, but even on large parts anywhere else) had turned from a quick
manoeuvre-based to a stalemate-like trench-based : the emphasis shifted from
"fast annihilation" to "long drawn-out attrition". Having to throw the full weight of
the whole economy into the effort, with the home front being almost equally
important to the success of the whole endeavour (or failure : Philpott describes
in detail how on all sides the political and societal fissures created by the ongoing
and escalating war effort often dangerously jeopardised military successes), also
caused immense logistical problems, that had hitherto been completely unknown.
Supply lines being the prime example, especially when in late Fall the North
of France turned into a muddy hell.
This is exactly where usually the criticism of this Battle of the Somme (but of the
whole conduct of the War in general) sets in : once the concept of atttrition
is accepted, it seems that large sacrifices in human live alongside of
vast materi'el (Philpott uses the French term throughout his book, in the following I
am going to leave out the accent) were simply tolerated, and shortly thereafter
(notably by Winston Churchill, but also by the majority of the politicians in
France) heavily criticised as "senseless slaughter".
Philpott demonstrates that this notion is not quite correct. While never arguing
the horribly high rate of casualties (total counts are apparently very hard to get
correctly, but solid estimates have them in the range of 200 000some for
the French, 420 000some for the British, and about 580 - 650 000some on the
German side for just the short 60 mile frontline of the Somme in the span of
July 1 to late-December 1916), he points out that during the offensive
new operational procedures were developed that helped reducing the cost of
lives.
It began to dawn upon the military leaders that warfare had changed profoundly,
even since the start of hostilities in 1914. And that was literally a slow process ---
in hindsight, it is very easy for us to point fingers, and declare easily that
it essentially should have come to their mind that it equated to murder sending soldiers over the top into sure death
marching into machine gun fire. But changing the habits of warfare when
commanding Armies of >2 000 000 million soldiers on each side is a
process which is more complex and takes longer than that simple realisation.
During the Somme offensive, as Philpott explains, especially the French
developed new procedures that acknowledged the importance of new technology
having entered the battlefield :
a. the overwhelming importance of artillery with unprecedented firepower,
especially in being able to destroy barbed wire and protect the
infantry's forward motion by preventing defender's machine
gun nests to be manned after the barrage lifted
Fayolle, the French General, developed precise descriptions of
how long such intense barrages had to be sustained in order to
even make any attempt in attacking German front lines, and
specifically invented a "creeping" barrage concept, i.e. basically
a solid, deadly "metal screen" that was to move in front of the slowly
advancing soldiers with a certain timetable.
b. this realisation lead also to the need of improving reconnaisance and
communcation , partly to know what exactly to bomb, but also - more
importantly - to judge success and determine exact progress while
an offensive was going on. These tools were just being developed,
and were basically put to the test for the first time -- leading to a much
more modern integration of different arms (including e.g. the air forces
in their fledgling stages). Especially quick communication was a real
problem : the leaders behind the front lines basically had no clue
what was going on, and it sometimes took even days to get a clear
picture -- a fact often overlooked nowadays !
c. combined with the concept of "the artillery conquers, the infantry occupies"
it was realised that massed attacks in large formations were absolutely
futile. The French had already learned that, and their organisation
down to the platoon level had changed by 1916, now placing a lot more
emphasis on small groups infiltrating the enemy lines after heavy
heavy bombardment, and then "mopping up" nests of resistance with
secondary units specifically trained to that purpose. Also, the equipment
of such storm-troops began to change, with the introduction of weapons
better suited to that type of combat (grenades, flame-throwers, light
machine guns, etc....). Lastly, tanks made their appearance in the theatre
of war -- but again : those new machines had to be tested, and
initially did not prove too effective.
The British Army of volunteers simply had not been exposed long enough
to these changes such that they were on an extremely steep learning
curve, explaining especially the initial high numbers of casualties when
compared to both the French and Germans. By the end of the Somme,
November - December 1916, however, the BEF had certainly incorporated
a lot of these new directives (one controversy in the debate of the
BEF's conduct remains : why did it take them as long to learn from the
French ? Communication problems ?).
The main point that Philpott makes is that the Somme provided
namely Foch, whom he basically dubs as a strategic genius,
with the basic tools that would allow him as Allied Generalissimo
late in 1918 to finally break the stalemate in the West, and
pummel the Germans via successive, relentless large-scale operations
into submission -- operations that he had studied intensively
on a much smaller scale in 1916 at the Somme.
The concept of a breakthrough to outflank an entrenched enemy
had by then be replaced with the idea of laterally exploiting small scale
break-ins on widely separated points of the long front-line, stopping
immediately when the going got to hard, and attacking somewhere else ;
which cost many fewer casualties than the former
strategy.
3. breaking German morale
However little progress in terms of territory the actual Battle of the Somme
made (the Germans retreated early in 1917 back to the Hindenburg
line some 30 miles east of the battleground), there is one very important
if intangible aspect : the question of morale.
As it became clear after the War, Ludendorff (the German Chief of General
Staff) realised during the Battle of the Somme in 1916 that the War
for Germany is un-winnable, and by the end of the year, the German
soldiery began to show severe signs of war-weariness, no doubt being
fueled by the realisation that for the first time, the Allied Forces on the
West had been successively able to overpower them even in heavily
fortified defensive positions.
Conversely, the morale especially of the French was boosted
tremendously, as they avoided defeat in Verdun, and for the first time
came to understand that they could match the Germans (or even
outclass them with regards to artillery skills).
Even for the BEF the spirit of late-1916 was much improved from the
disastrous beginning at July 1st --- and here especially some of the
Empire's "colonial" forces (namely the Anzac and Canadians, but also
the South Africans) proved to be tremendous fighting forces.
4. the shift in perception and remembrance throughout the years
One of the most interesting chapters is that on how the Battle has been
analysed over time - with wide swings depending on the specific
circumstances at each epoch.
Since the Germans retreated early 1917 (and war only came back to
exactly the same battlefield in Summer 1918 during the last hooray
of Germany fueled by the collapse of the Russian front), the battleground
itself (a front of about 90 miles in Northern France, at a depth of only a
few miles itself) must have been an absolutely eerie site :
completely destroyed villages, craters (later on compared to Lunar land-
scapes) everywhere, cadavres of men and horses rotting away,
while nature slowly reclaimed the totally barren ground --- already
then commentators, trying to grasp what had been going on,
made the astonishing experience that such a "hallowed ground"
without any actual fighting soldiery present anymore is utterly
incomprehensible.
Hence, even during war time, a business of "memorisation and
analyses" from different points of view started, mostly detailed
by Philpott on the British side. Logically, eloquent politician and
high-level soldiers (namely General Haig) brought forward their
individual points, while the common soldier's point of view only came to
the foreground after hostilities had ended in 1918.
Philpott identifies at least three different main phases :
a. immediately after WWI the idea prevailed that the
Battle of the Somme - while potentially needlessly bloody -
was fought for a noble cause, and indeed important
enough in subduing German militarism that the
sacrifices were worthwhile.
January 16, 2024
My Amazon review on December 30, 2014: 2 and 1/2 Armies is more like it
I was hoping for something to compare with John Keegan's outstanding 'Six Armies in Normandy'. Something that gets to essence of the armies. What I mainly got was tired cliches about the superiority of the British Army despite its supposed disadvantages. He is a British author so I guess it necessarily emphasizes the role and 'success' of the British Army on the Somme. But 100 years later you hope for somewhat more objective treatment. Haig is more or less given a pass for everything that happened on the Somme and emerges quite well from Philpott's viewpoint. So the British get 1 Army. The French Army is given a lot of overdue credit for its role on the Somme as an effective fighting force and is given a 3/4 Army in the book. The German Army get about a 1/2 Army share of attention and credit and is frequently referred to in dismissive terms as nothing better than a 'professional' force, bereft of the noble motives of the good old boys of the British Empire. As if the 1916 German Army infantry conscripts even resembled the 1914 pre-war army which perhaps was more 'professional' and obviously larger than the British. By 1916 the average German conscript at the Somme had no more experience than the heroic Tommies and Aussies the author likes to praise endlessly. His constant assertions that the British and French infantry gained some magical superiority over the German infantry at the Somme that somehow translated into ultimate victory in 1918 are grating and unsupportable. The reality which he almost completely ignores is that the appearance of over 1 million American soldiers on the western front that utterly changed the calculus of strength and especially morale on the respective sides. After the failed spring 1918 offensives the German soldier knew the game was up and their leaders as well. His oft-repeated claims to the sudden superiority of the British and French infantry in late summer 1918 owed little to the slaughter on the Somme, but everything to incredible artillery support and the reality and morale boosting prospect of the endless U.S. troops and eventually industrial power. I was also very disappointed by the lack of quantitative analysis about the relatives strengths of the Allied and German artillery in the battle. There are anecdotal references but what was the relative firepower of the two sides? Since anyone who was looked at these western front battles agrees that it was an artillery war this omission is all the more glaring. This was not a bad book by any means, there is a good deal of research and some interesting theories presented but in the end I was disappointed. I will not be buying his new book which promises to be a rehash of how 'attrition' was the right strategy. It was perhaps, but only if you get America on your side. There is no clear winner to WW1 absent the American entry which I doubt he will bother to conclude in the other book either. That would have been the far better outcome to the whole mess.
I was hoping for something to compare with John Keegan's outstanding 'Six Armies in Normandy'. Something that gets to essence of the armies. What I mainly got was tired cliches about the superiority of the British Army despite its supposed disadvantages. He is a British author so I guess it necessarily emphasizes the role and 'success' of the British Army on the Somme. But 100 years later you hope for somewhat more objective treatment. Haig is more or less given a pass for everything that happened on the Somme and emerges quite well from Philpott's viewpoint. So the British get 1 Army. The French Army is given a lot of overdue credit for its role on the Somme as an effective fighting force and is given a 3/4 Army in the book. The German Army get about a 1/2 Army share of attention and credit and is frequently referred to in dismissive terms as nothing better than a 'professional' force, bereft of the noble motives of the good old boys of the British Empire. As if the 1916 German Army infantry conscripts even resembled the 1914 pre-war army which perhaps was more 'professional' and obviously larger than the British. By 1916 the average German conscript at the Somme had no more experience than the heroic Tommies and Aussies the author likes to praise endlessly. His constant assertions that the British and French infantry gained some magical superiority over the German infantry at the Somme that somehow translated into ultimate victory in 1918 are grating and unsupportable. The reality which he almost completely ignores is that the appearance of over 1 million American soldiers on the western front that utterly changed the calculus of strength and especially morale on the respective sides. After the failed spring 1918 offensives the German soldier knew the game was up and their leaders as well. His oft-repeated claims to the sudden superiority of the British and French infantry in late summer 1918 owed little to the slaughter on the Somme, but everything to incredible artillery support and the reality and morale boosting prospect of the endless U.S. troops and eventually industrial power. I was also very disappointed by the lack of quantitative analysis about the relatives strengths of the Allied and German artillery in the battle. There are anecdotal references but what was the relative firepower of the two sides? Since anyone who was looked at these western front battles agrees that it was an artillery war this omission is all the more glaring. This was not a bad book by any means, there is a good deal of research and some interesting theories presented but in the end I was disappointed. I will not be buying his new book which promises to be a rehash of how 'attrition' was the right strategy. It was perhaps, but only if you get America on your side. There is no clear winner to WW1 absent the American entry which I doubt he will bother to conclude in the other book either. That would have been the far better outcome to the whole mess.
January 8, 2018
An incredibly detailed telling of the Somme. The author makes a compelling argument that accepted history regarding this battle misses the point. If you agree or not, this is clearly a well thought out and interesting book.
January 30, 2023
Changed my views of Haig as the leader of the BEF.
July 6, 2012
The debate about Sir Douglas Haig's generalship is old and has swung a lot. Professor Philpott sides with the "educated soldier" crowd more than he does with the "butcher" one; and he tries to depict the Somme campaign as the victory that it sort of was for the Allies. The book's strongest suit is giving due attention to the French side of the operation, way better conducted than the British; and his concluding chapters on how History came to treat the campaign along the decades that followed is superb.
Professor Philpott portrays Haig as a competent professional who knew that attrition was the way to victory, and was willing to pay the price even against the wishes of dilly-dallying politicians. Being a proficient historian, he also shows Haig's petty side, his petulant attitude towards his French peers and sometime superiors, and his authoritarian, undemocratic views. (Haig takes pity on a French colleague for having to answer to a politician -and a Socialist, too!-, as if answering to the guys elected to represent the millions of men they were leading into bloody campaigns was beneath a General's station.) Philpott does not try to hide Haig's pettiness, his misjudgments, his scheming against Sir John French, and his use of personal connections to the royal family as a way to achieve supreme command. But he is much harsher in his judgment of the general's political adversaries, David Lloyd George chief among them. Like Haig, though he claims that only attrition could work, Philpott seems to believe that more decisive results were close to being achieved in the Somme, claiming the offensive "came closer to breaking Germany's resistance than is generally supposed".
That begs the question: in what way? Is he implying that Germany was close to surrender late in 1916? Nope. Is he implying that the Allies came close to a decisive, war-ending breakthrough? Nope; in fact, he states the opposite, claiming that a decisive breakthrough was impossible and praising General Foch for accepting that disagreeable truth. I think that Professor Philpott means that the Somme campaign had to be fought; and that attrition was the only way to win the war. However, there's nothing decisive in that.
But I don't agree with his implied assumption that Haig did the best job possible. Both in the Somme and the Passchendaele campaigns he overextended his armies, and kept them attacking way longer than he should. He played favorites in selecting his generals, promoting Hubert Gough to Army command and keeping him there through a lot of badly-planned and led attacks, I guess mostly because Gough was the brother of Haig's former chief of staff, killed early in the war. (General Plummer and General Byng were both much better than Gough at set-piece attacks, and Rawlison at least learned a lot at the Somme, but then was kept out of the field for a year because he opposed Haig's attack orders late in the offensive). Of course generals were not able to calculate attrition with any kind of accuracy; but Foch and Pétain proved that it was possible to risk their soldiers' lives more judiciously. (And British officers who got their baptism of fire in WW1 proved much more careful with their men in the next conflict.)
Douglas Haig was a 19th century horse soldier and an upper class snob; and I guess that "theirs but to do and die" came naturally to him as regards his lowly charges. Professor Philpott debunks class-based interpretations of the war, and I think he's right about it, but the psychological implication is clear. Though other upper-class officers and commanders formed deep bonds with the soldiers they led, Haig had no empathy at all for the lower ranks and no compunction about using them as cannon fodder, in the name of either attrition or decisive victory in the battlefield (something about which he wavered a lot.)
However, though I don't necessarily agree with the author's conclusions, the book is still great.
Professor Philpott portrays Haig as a competent professional who knew that attrition was the way to victory, and was willing to pay the price even against the wishes of dilly-dallying politicians. Being a proficient historian, he also shows Haig's petty side, his petulant attitude towards his French peers and sometime superiors, and his authoritarian, undemocratic views. (Haig takes pity on a French colleague for having to answer to a politician -and a Socialist, too!-, as if answering to the guys elected to represent the millions of men they were leading into bloody campaigns was beneath a General's station.) Philpott does not try to hide Haig's pettiness, his misjudgments, his scheming against Sir John French, and his use of personal connections to the royal family as a way to achieve supreme command. But he is much harsher in his judgment of the general's political adversaries, David Lloyd George chief among them. Like Haig, though he claims that only attrition could work, Philpott seems to believe that more decisive results were close to being achieved in the Somme, claiming the offensive "came closer to breaking Germany's resistance than is generally supposed".
That begs the question: in what way? Is he implying that Germany was close to surrender late in 1916? Nope. Is he implying that the Allies came close to a decisive, war-ending breakthrough? Nope; in fact, he states the opposite, claiming that a decisive breakthrough was impossible and praising General Foch for accepting that disagreeable truth. I think that Professor Philpott means that the Somme campaign had to be fought; and that attrition was the only way to win the war. However, there's nothing decisive in that.
But I don't agree with his implied assumption that Haig did the best job possible. Both in the Somme and the Passchendaele campaigns he overextended his armies, and kept them attacking way longer than he should. He played favorites in selecting his generals, promoting Hubert Gough to Army command and keeping him there through a lot of badly-planned and led attacks, I guess mostly because Gough was the brother of Haig's former chief of staff, killed early in the war. (General Plummer and General Byng were both much better than Gough at set-piece attacks, and Rawlison at least learned a lot at the Somme, but then was kept out of the field for a year because he opposed Haig's attack orders late in the offensive). Of course generals were not able to calculate attrition with any kind of accuracy; but Foch and Pétain proved that it was possible to risk their soldiers' lives more judiciously. (And British officers who got their baptism of fire in WW1 proved much more careful with their men in the next conflict.)
Douglas Haig was a 19th century horse soldier and an upper class snob; and I guess that "theirs but to do and die" came naturally to him as regards his lowly charges. Professor Philpott debunks class-based interpretations of the war, and I think he's right about it, but the psychological implication is clear. Though other upper-class officers and commanders formed deep bonds with the soldiers they led, Haig had no empathy at all for the lower ranks and no compunction about using them as cannon fodder, in the name of either attrition or decisive victory in the battlefield (something about which he wavered a lot.)
However, though I don't necessarily agree with the author's conclusions, the book is still great.
December 17, 2016
"Three Armies of the Somme" is about the World War One 1915 Battle of the Somme. My British friends share in the "red poppy" remembrance of the loss of an entire generation in WWI and much of that loss was at the Somme River in 1915. The author starts well before the battle and then carries the narrative on to the end of the war, examining all aspects of the battle and it's effects on the rest of the war. I think that the term battle is a misnomer as the offensive started on 1 July and carried on until early December. Douglas Haig, the general in command of British troops has been roundly critized for what is thought to be the senseless slaughter of his troops during the Somme Campaign. As the author explains, there may have been extenuating circumstances. First of all, the army that Britain sent to the war was nearly all wiped out in 1914 during the original German invasion of Belgium and France. So Haig had a brand new untried army of rookies. Secondly, Haig did not want to go on the offensive in July at all and begged the French for more time but the French were fighting alone and needed some relief so Haig was more or less forced to act. Thirdly, the French had a huge army before WWI, much larger than the British, and had many more veterans left who had learned how to fight on the "industrial battlefield," a battlefield dominated by the factories back home more than the fighting prowess of the soldiers on the field. They knew how to use combined arms tactics, using artillery and infantry in concert. Fourthly, both sides were using a strategy of attrition where the side with troops alive at the end is the winner, a strategy which finally brought Germany to its knees. I don't know if I would entirely forgive Haig for a lot of what looks like needless slaughter but the author makes a compelling case. The author expressed that the lessons that the British learned at the Somme eventually led to the defeat of the Germans. The book is well written, informative and makes some great points. It left me with the desire to read more on the subject.
October 13, 2016
This was an excellent book with a new take on a very old story. Most histories of the Somme battle focus on the British disaster of the first day and stop there. Philpott puts the battle in the context of a joint Allied offensive for 1916, with offensives on three fronts aimed at wearing out the German army to the point where it would eventually collapse. Most illuminating for me were Philpott's emphases on (1) the significant and successful French contribution to the Somme battles and (2) the disastrous effect these battles had on the German army.
It has been fashionable since the 1960s to present the Allied commanders as outdated dolts, but Philpott skillfully debunks this stereotype by highlighting how both the British and French high commanders proved to be adept students of the military art, who successfully absorbed lessons that led to the eventual collapse of the German army in late 1918.
Finally, the Allied high command on the Somme have been criticized for not managing a breakthrough on their front. Philpott points out that with the high concentration of men in such a confined geographic area as the Western Front a breakthrough was never going to happen (as the Germans learned to their cost in the first half of 1918).
Overall, an excellent book. The only reason I did not award it 5 stars was because the book tended to drag at times, as the reader became overwhelmed with unit designations and remote village names.
It has been fashionable since the 1960s to present the Allied commanders as outdated dolts, but Philpott skillfully debunks this stereotype by highlighting how both the British and French high commanders proved to be adept students of the military art, who successfully absorbed lessons that led to the eventual collapse of the German army in late 1918.
Finally, the Allied high command on the Somme have been criticized for not managing a breakthrough on their front. Philpott points out that with the high concentration of men in such a confined geographic area as the Western Front a breakthrough was never going to happen (as the Germans learned to their cost in the first half of 1918).
Overall, an excellent book. The only reason I did not award it 5 stars was because the book tended to drag at times, as the reader became overwhelmed with unit designations and remote village names.
April 7, 2016
This book is not for everybody. It is long and extremely detailed. The topic is the epic, some say turning-point of the Great War, the Battle of the Somme in Picardy France. The battle really had two parts and extended from its bloody beginning on July 1, 1916 and into spring and summer 1917. This is World War I with all the horrors of trench warfare, massive artillery barrages and the introduction of new battlefield weapons, tanks and aircraft, along with modification of offensive and defensive tactics. Mr. Philpott covers all of this and much more. He places the battle within its social and cultural contexts with looks before World War I and looks in hindsight to critique the vast number of commentaries on this war and its consequences. With the passing of the last World War I veterans in both the US and Europe, works of this magnitude and scholarship will form the foundation for future knowledge seekers both professional and laymen. If your interest is in humanity and how its component members have behaved towards each other or in purely military discussions of battle ebbs and flows, you can not go wrong in reading this book.
May 2, 2014
I find this a rather interesting account and personal mostly 2 of my grandfathers cousins fought and died in this battle. They were in the German Army and i only resiliently discovered this. Now a disagree with the author that it gave France and England the means to bring the war to and end. But this is Philpott's argument. I Agree with Hastings, Heart and Boot that if it was not for the united States Entry into the war. It would have ended in a draw. Which in my opinion as a 20th century historian. Would have precluded the post war upheaval in Germany and would have checked Hitlers rise to power. Thus preventing the second war bin Europe. I don't think it would have stopped Japan. As for Stalin I think the out come of what eastern Europe went through from 1945-1990 would have been very different. it certainly would have prevented the Holocaust.
February 19, 2014
This rating is for my reading approach, more rigorous students of military history will likely rate it higher. This book seeks to change the perspective on Gen Haig, one of the most reviled British military leaders in history. While that success is up to the reader, I do think Philpott succeeds in explaining that Haig was following a long term attritional strategy and that the Somme was less an act of mindless barbarism than a step on the way to eventual success.
For me, the detail on troop movements was just too significant. It was a challenge to follow and understand what was actually happening and once that uncertainty set in, I found myself lost.
For me, the detail on troop movements was just too significant. It was a challenge to follow and understand what was actually happening and once that uncertainty set in, I found myself lost.
October 1, 2014
The books is well written but I lowered the rating because the author is attempting to justify the bizarre conduct of Haig and company in an attempt to turn bad leadership into the turning point of the war in the west. While Haig-bashing may go to far some times, this attempt to justify his conduct falls flat. 20,000 dead in 30 minutes carries its own weight and apologists 100 years on cannot explain those deaths away.
February 15, 2012
Well done and certainly thorough though at the time pushing it to pedandtry. It certainly presents facets of the battle that are difficult to understand without his play-by-play style. It is not an easy read however, and it certainly provides the commonpro-British mood shared by most authorities on the subject from the country.
December 25, 2014
I am giving this four stars because the author does something rare and does it well here: he makes an argument. The book covers much information and at times can run a bit dry. Overall a good book for those interested in WWI or war in general.
December 30, 2010
history continually be rewritten
January 21, 2011
Excellent overview and corrective to the Anglocentric history I got in school.
Read
April 22, 2017I've been reading a lot about WWI but I couldn't get into this one. I was getting lost in the detail and conceded that I didn't want to know this much.
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