INTRODUCTION:

The Battle of the Somme, also known as the Somme offensive, was a battle of the First World War fought by the
armies of the British Empire and French Third Republic against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and
18 November 1916 on both sides of the upper reaches of the Somme, a river in France. The battle was intended to
hasten a victory for the Allies. More than three million men fought in the battle and one million men were wounded or
killed, making it one of the deadliest battles in human history.

DESCRIPTION OF AREAS INVOLVED IN WAR:

The French and British had committed themselves to an offensive on the Somme during the Chantilly Conference in
December 1915. The Allies agreed upon a strategy of combined offensives against the Central Powers in 1916 by the
French, Russian, British and Italian armies, with the Somme offensive as the Franco-British contribution. Initial plans
called for the French army to undertake the main part of the Somme offensive, supported on the northern
flank by the Fourth Army of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). When the Imperial German Army began
the Battle of Verdun on the Meuse on 21 February 1916, French commanders diverted many of the divisions
intended for the Somme and the "supporting" attack by the British became the principal effort. The British troops on
the Somme comprised a mixture of the remains of the pre-war army, the Territorial Force and Kitchener's Army, a
force of wartime volunteers.
On the first day on the Somme (1 July) the German 2nd Army suffered a serious defeat opposite the French Sixth
Army, from Foucaucourt-en-Santerre south of the Somme to Maricourt on the north bank and by the Fourth Army
from Maricourt to the vicinity of the Albert–Bapaume road. The 57,470 casualties suffered by the British, including
19,240 killed, were the worst in the history of the British Army. Most of the British casualties were suffered on the
front between the Albert–Bapaume road and Gommecourt to the north, which was the area where the principal
German defensive effort (Schwerpunkt) was made. The battle became notable for the importance of air power and
the first use of the tank in September but these were a product of new technology and exceedingly unreliable.

On July 1, 1916, after a week of prolonged artillery bombardment, 11 divisions of

the British Fourth Army (recently created and placed under Sir Henry
Rawlinson) began the attack north of the Somme on a front extending for 15
miles (24 km) from Serre and Beaumont-Hamel southward past Thiepval,
Ovillers, and Fricourt (east of Albert) and then eastward and southward to
Maricourt, north of Curlu. At the same time, the French attacked with five
divisions on a front of 8 miles (13 km) mainly south of the river (from Curlu
toward Péronne), where the German defense system was less highly developed.

Historical bkgr of war:

The Battle of the Somme (1 July - 18 November 1916) was a joint
operation between British and French forces intended to achieve a decisive
victory over the Germans on the Western Front. For many in Britain, the
resulting battle remains the most painful and infamous episode of the First
World War. 
In December 1915, Allied commanders had met to discuss strategies for
the upcoming year and agreed to launch a joint French and British attack in
the region of the River Somme in the summer of 1916. Intense German
pressure on the French at Verdun throughout 1916 made action on the
Somme increasingly urgent and meant the British would take on the main
role in the offensive. 

Causes of war:

For a number of months the French had been taking severe losses at Verdun, east
of Paris. To relieve the French, the Allied High Command decided to attack the
Germans to the north of Verdun therefore requiring the Germans to move some
of their men away from the Verdun battlefield, thus relieving the French. After the
war, Sir William Robertson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, explained what this
strategy was:

“Remembering the dissatisfaction by ministers at the end of

1915, because the operations had not come up to their
expectations, the General Staff took the precaution to make
quite clear beforehand the nature of success which the Somme
campaign might yield. The necessity of relieving pressure on
the French Army at Verdun remains, and is more urgent than
ever. This is, therefore, the first objective to be obtained
by the combined British and French offensive. The second
objective is to inflict as heavy losses as possible upon the
German armies.”

Ironically, the head of the French Army, General Foch, believed that the attack in
the Somme would achieve little – this view was shared by some leading British
commanders such as General Henry Rawlinson. However, orders from the army’s
political masters in London and Paris ensured that the battle would take
place. Just how backward military thinking was then is shown by the fact that the
British put a regiment of cavalry on standby when the attack started, in order to
exploit the hole that would be created by a devastating infantry attack. British
military faith was still being placed on cavalry attacks in 1916 when the nature of
warfare in the previous two years would have clearly indicated that cavalry was
no longer viable. This shows how conservative military thinking was during this
war. Moreover the soldiers sent to fight on the battlefield were newly recruited
volunteers and not trained military personnel. Conscription only began in Britain
in 1916 but had been in place many years previously in France, meaning the
French conscripts had usually some degree of military knowledge or training.
British soldiers on the other hand were at a huge disadvantage and simply were
not trained nor prepared for life on the battlefield.

Conduct of war:
Over the course of the campaign both sides fired artillery shells by the tons, unleash
streams of machine gun fire, spray chemical weapons, fire flamethrowers, and British
troops deployed tanks for the first time. Casualties just kept rising as the Somme
became a grueling battle of attrition.

Action by opposing forces:

After the Autumn Battles (Herbstschlacht) of 1915, a third defensive position another 3,000 yards (1.7 mi; 2.7 km)
back from the Stützpunktlinie was begun in February 1916 and was almost complete on the Somme front when the
battle began. German artillery was organised in a series of Sperrfeuerstreifen (barrage sectors); each officer was
expected to know the batteries covering his section of the front line and the batteries ready to engage fleeting targets.
A telephone system was built, with lines buried 6 feet (1.8 m) deep for 5 mi (8.0 km) behind the front line, to connect
the front line to the artillery. The Somme defences had two inherent weaknesses that the rebuilding had not
remedied. The front trenches were on a forward slope, lined by white chalk from the subsoil and easily seen by
ground observers. The defences were crowded towards the front trench with a regiment having two battalions near
the front-trench system and the reserve battalion divided between the Stützpunktlinie and the second position, all
within 2,000 yards (1,800 m) of no man's land and most troops within 1,000 yards (910 m) of the front line,
accommodated in the new deep dugouts. The concentration of troops at the front line on a forward slope guaranteed
that it would face the bulk of an artillery bombardment, directed by ground observers on clearly marked lines.[26]

Aftermaths of war:
At the end of the battle, British and French forces had penetrated 6 mi (10 km) into German-occupied territory along
the majority of the front, their largest territorial gain since the First Battle of the Marne in 1914. The operational
objectives of the Anglo-French armies were unfulfilled, as they failed to capture Péronne and Bapaume, where the
German armies maintained their positions over the winter. British attacks in the Ancre valley resumed in January
1917 and forced the Germans into local withdrawals to reserve lines in February before the scheduled retirement by
about 25 mi (40 km) in Operation Alberich to the Siegfriedstellung (Hindenburg Line) in March 1917. Debate
continues over the necessity, significance and effect of the battle. British soldiers derogatorily called the battle the
"Great Fuck Up", where Haig had originally called it the "Great Push Forward."[7]

Lessons learnt:
the Battle of the Somme involved heavy casualties on both sides. By the end of the first day on 1
July 1916, British forces had suffered 57,470 casualties, of whom 19,240 were killed. This
represented the largest losses suffered by the British Army in a single day. The Germans too
learnt lessons from the Somme and other battles. They moved away from defending linear
trenches to a much looser and more flexible system of defending strongpoints and using
reserves in the counterattack role. They abandoned their policy of automatically
counterattacking every Allied gain. But ultimately they learnt a wrong lesson. By
concentrating resources on a relatively small number of elite “storm” units, they reduced the
overall quality of their army. In the long run this proved to be a disastrous policy.

Clausewitz:

Carl Philipp Gottfried (or Gottlieb) von Clausewitz[note 1] (/ˈklaʊzəvɪts/; 1 June 1780 – 16 November 1831)[1] was a

Prussian general and military theorist who stressed the "moral" (meaning, in modern terms, psychological) and
political aspects of war. His most notable work, Vom Kriege transl. On War, was unfinished at his death.
Clausewitz was a realist in many different senses and, while in some respects a romantic, also drew heavily on the
rationalist ideas of the European Enlightenment.
Clausewitz's thinking is often described as Hegelian because of his dialectical method; but, although he was probably
personally acquainted with Hegel, there remains debate as to whether or not Clausewitz was in fact influenced by
him.[2](pp183–232) He stressed the dialectical interaction of diverse factors, noting how unexpected developments unfolding
under the "fog of war" (i.e., in the face of incomplete, dubious, and often completely erroneous information and high
levels of fear, doubt, and excitement) call for rapid decisions by alert commanders. He saw history as a vital check
on erudite abstractions that did not accord with experience. In contrast to the early work of Antoine-Henri Jomini, he
argued that war could not be quantified or reduced to mapwork, geometry, and graphs. Clausewitz had
many aphorisms, of which the most famous is "War is the continuation of politics by other means."[3](p87)
Clausewitz was born on 1 June 1780 in Burg bei Magdeburg in the Prussian Duchy of Magdeburg as the fourth and
youngest son of a family that made claims to a noble status which Carl accepted. Clausewitz's family claimed
descent from the Barons of Clausewitz in Upper Silesia, though scholars question the connection.[6] His grandfather,
the son of a Lutheran pastor, had been a professor of theology. Clausewitz's father, once a lieutenant in
the army of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, held a minor post in the Prussian internal-revenue service.
Clausewitz entered the Prussian military service at the age of twelve as a lance-corporal, eventually attaining the rank
of major general.[1]
Clausewitz served in the Rhine Campaigns (1793–1794) including the Siege of Mainz, when the Prussian
army invaded France during the French Revolution, and fought in the Napoleonic Wars from 1806 to 1815. He
entered the Kriegsakademie (also cited as "The German War School", the "Military Academy in Berlin", and the
"Prussian Military Academy," later the "War College") in Berlin in 1801 (aged 21), probably studied the writings of the
philosophers Immanuel Kant and/or Fichte and Schleiermacher and won the regard of General Gerhard von
Scharnhorst, the future first chief-of-staff of the newly reformed Prussian Army (appointed 1809).
Clausewitz, Hermann von Boyen (1771–1848) and Karl von Grolman (1777–1843) were among Scharnhorst's
primary allies in his efforts to reform the Prussian army between 1807 and 1814.[citation needed]
Clausewitz served during the Jena Campaign as aide-de-camp to Prince August. At the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt on
14 October 1806—when Napoleon invaded Prussia and defeated the massed Prussian-Saxon army commanded
by Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick—he was captured, one of the 25,000 prisoners taken that day as the
Prussian army disintegrated. He was 26. Clausewitz was held prisoner with his prince in France from 1807 to 1808.
Returning to Prussia, he assisted in the reform of the Prussian army and state.[1]

Opposed to Prussia's enforced alliance with Napoleon I, Clausewitz left the Prussian army and served in the Imperial
Russian Army from 1812 to 1813 during the Russian Campaign, taking part in the Battle of Borodino (1812). Like
many Prussian officers serving in Russia, he joined the Russian-German Legion in 1813. In the service of
the Russian Empire, Clausewitz helped negotiate the Convention of Tauroggen (1812), which prepared the way for
the coalition of Prussia, Russia, and the United Kingdom that ultimately defeated Napoleon and his allies.[1]
In 1815 the Russian-German Legion became integrated into the Prussian Army and Clausewitz re-entered Prussian
service as a colonel.[9] He was soon appointed chief-of-staff of Johann von Thielmann's III Corps. In that capacity he
served at the Battle of Ligny and the Battle of Wavre during the Waterloo Campaign in 1815. An army led personally
by Napoleon defeated the Prussians at Ligny (south of Mont-Saint-Jean and the village of Waterloo) on 16 June
1815, but they withdrew in good order. Napoleon's failure to destroy the Prussian forces led to his defeat a few days
later at the Battle of Waterloo (18 June 1815), when the Prussian forces arrived on his right flank late in the afternoon
to support the Anglo-Dutch-Belgian forces pressing his front. Napoleon had convinced his troops that the field grey
uniforms were those of Marshal Grouchy's grenadiers. Clausewitz's unit fought heavily outnumbered at Wavre (18–19
June 1815), preventing large reinforcements from reaching Napoleon at Waterloo. After the war, Clausewitz served
as the director of the Kriegsakademie, where he served until 1830. In that year he returned to active duty with the
army. Soon afterward, the outbreak of several revolutions around Europe and a crisis in Poland appeared to presage
another major European war. Clausewitz was appointed chief of staff of the only army Prussia was able to mobilise in
this emergency, which was sent to the Polish border. Its commander, Gneisenau, died of cholera (August 1831), and
Clausewitz took command of the Prussian army's efforts to construct a cordon sanitaire to contain the great cholera
outbreak (the first time cholera had appeared in modern heartland Europe, causing a continent-wide panic).
Clausewitz himself died of the same disease shortly afterwards, on 17 November 1831.[1]
Clausewitz was a professional combat soldier who was involved in numerous military campaigns, but he is famous
primarily as a military theorist interested in the examination of war, utilising the campaigns of Frederick the
Great and Napoleon as frames of reference for his work.[11] He wrote a careful, systematic, philosophical examination
of war in all its aspects. The result was his principal book, On War, a major work on the philosophy of war. It was
unfinished when Clausewitz died and contains material written at different stages in his intellectual evolution,
producing some significant contradictions between different sections. The sequence and precise character of that
evolution is a source of much debate as to the exact meaning behind some seemingly contradictory observations in
discussions pertinent to the tactical, operational and strategic levels of war, for example (though many of these
apparent contradictions are simply the result of his dialectical method). Clausewitz constantly sought to revise the
text, particularly between 1827 and his departure on his last field assignments, to include more material on "people's
war" and forms of war other than high-intensity warfare between states, but relatively little of this material was
included in the book.[10] Soldiers before this time had written treatises on various military subjects, but none had
undertaken a great philosophical examination of war on the scale of those written by Clausewitz and Leo Tolstoy,
both of whom were inspired by the events of the Napoleonic Era.
Clausewitz's work is still studied today, demonstrating its continued relevance. More than sixteen major English-
language books that focused specifically on his work were published between 2005 and 2014, whereas his 19th-
century rival Jomini has faded from influence. The historian Lynn Montross said that this outcome "may be explained
by the fact that Jomini produced a system of war, Clausewitz a philosophy. The one has been outdated by new
weapons, the other still influences the strategy behind those weapons."[12] Jomini did not attempt to define war but
Clausewitz did, providing (and dialectically comparing) a number of definitions. The first is his dialectical thesis: "War
is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will." The second, often treated as Clausewitz's 'bottom line,' is
in fact merely his dialectical antithesis: "War is merely the continuation of politics with other means." The synthesis of
his dialectical examination of the nature of war is his famous "trinity," saying that war is "a fascinating trinity—
composed of primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; the play of
chance and probability, within which the creative spirit is free to roam; and its element of subordination, as an
instrument of policy, which makes it subject to pure reason."[13][improper synthesis?] Christopher Bassford says the best
shorthand for Clausewitz's trinity should be something like "violent emotion/chance/rational calculation." However, it is
frequently presented as "people/army/government," a misunderstanding based on a later paragraph in the same
section. This misrepresentation was popularised by U.S. Army Colonel Harry Summers' Vietnam-era interpretation,
[14]
 facilitated by weaknesses in the 1976 Howard/Paret translation.[15]
The degree to which Clausewitz managed to revise his manuscript to reflect that synthesis is the subject of much
debate. His final reference to war and Politik, however, goes beyond his widely quoted antithesis: "War is simply the
continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other means. We deliberately use the phrase 'with the addition
of other means' because we also want to make it clear that war in itself does not suspend political intercourse or
change it into something entirely different. In essentials that intercourse continues, irrespective of the means it
employs. The main lines along which military events progress, and to which they are restricted, are political lines that
continue throughout the war into the subsequent peace."[16]
A prince or general who knows exactly how to organise his war according to his object and means, who does neither
too little nor too much, gives by that the greatest proof of his genius. But the effects of this talent are exhibited not so
much by the invention of new modes of action, which might strike the eye immediately, as in the successful final
result of the whole. It is the exact fulfilment of silent suppositions, it is the noiseless harmony of the whole action
which we should admire, and which only makes itself known in the total result.

— Clausewitz, On War, Book III, Chapter 1[17]:Vol. I pgs. 85–86

Clausewitz introduced systematic philosophical contemplation into Western military thinking, with powerful
implications not only for historical and analytical writing but also for practical policy, military instruction, and
operational planning. He relied on his own experiences, contemporary writings about Napoleon, and on deep
historical research. His historiographical approach is evident in his first extended study, written when he was 25, of
the Thirty Years War. He rejects the Enlightenment's view of the war as a chaotic muddle and instead explains its
drawn-out operations by the economy and technology of the age, the social characteristics of the troops, and the
commanders' politics and psychology. In On War, Clausewitz sees all wars as the sum of decisions, actions, and
reactions in an uncertain and dangerous context, and also as a socio-political phenomenon. He also stressed the
complex nature of war, which encompasses both the socio-political and the operational and stresses the primacy of
state policy. (One should be careful not to limit his observations on war to war between states, however, as he
certainly discusses other kinds of protagonists). While Clausewitz was intensely aware of the value of intelligence at
all levels, he was also very skeptical of the accuracy of much military intelligence: "Many intelligence reports in war
are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.... In short, most intelligence is false."[17]:Vol. I pg. 38 This
circumstance is generally described as part of the fog of war. Such skeptical comments apply only to intelligence at
the tactical and operational levels; at the strategic and political levels he constantly stressed the requirement for the
best possible understanding of what today would be called strategic and political intelligence. His conclusions were
influenced by his experiences in the Prussian Army, which was often in an intelligence fog due partly to the superior
abilities of Napoleon's system but even more simply to the nature of war. Clausewitz acknowledges that friction
creates enormous difficulties for the realization of any plan, and the fog of war hinders commanders from knowing
what is happening. It is precisely in the context of this challenge that he develops the concept of military genius,
whose capabilities are seen above all in the execution of operations. 'Military genius' is not simply a matter of
intellect, but a combination of qualities of intellect, experience, personality, and temperament (and there are many
possible such combinations) that create a very highly developed mental aptitude for the waging of war.[