Germany's Defeat in the First World War by Mark Karau

Author:Mark Karau
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC-CLIO
Published: 2015-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

Armageddon Unleashed

The German assault on Verdun, though not unexpected, did force the British and French commanders to alter their own plans for 1916. The initial conception for the Entente’s assault had been for the French forces, led by Ferdinand Foch, to play the lead role and the British New Armies to play a supporting role. The British army was to wear down the German forces along the Somme sector with a series of heavy assaults that would pull in the German Western Front reserves. This was essentially the same concept that lay behind the German assault on Verdun. Then, when the German army had been sufficiently worn down by the British, the French would launch a massive assault on their own portion of the Somme sector, which would break through the German lines and win the war in 1916. The French losses at Verdun however forced the British to take on the major role in the offensive. In the new plan both British and French forces along the Somme would take part in the initial wearing down operations and then the British would break through the German lines and end the stalemate in the west.

The planning of the actual offensive fell to the new British commander, Douglas Haig. In some ways his plan resembled the German plan for Verdun: the basic concept was to substitute materiel for manpower and to make maximum use of heavy artillery to destroy the enemy. At that point the two plans diverged however. Rather than seeking to bleed the Germans white, Haig sought to annihilate them and clear the way for a major advance. To accomplish these goals the British prepared the largest artillery barrage ever seen, one that would dwarf the German barrage that launched the assault on Verdun and would shock the German generals with its intensity and its duration. The barrage was made possible by the mobilization of the British economy that had been accomplished under David Lloyd George’s Ministry of Munitions. The British assembled 1,500 guns for the barrage and amassed more than 2 million shells. Unlike the German barrage, which lasted for several hours, the British barrage was to last for at least five days.7

The extensive barrage was necessary because the Entente forces were attacking one of the most strongly defended positions on the entire German front. The German position consisted of a series of three consecutive deep trenches dug into the chalky soil of the region, with several underground dugouts, some as far as 30 feet underground, where up to 25 men could shelter from artillery barrages.8 The trenches were separated by roughly 200 yards with the front trench lightly held and the main forces based in the second trench with reserves in the third. In front of these trenches were barbed wire entanglements sometimes as much as 10 feet in depth.9 The German defensive system was designed to expose as few men as possible to enemy artillery. They anticipated that the lightly held front trench would be lost

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