The Battle of Verdun had been fought for over four months now, the Brusilov Offensive was
a month old, and this week they were joined as one of the biggest and bloodiest battles
in human history also kicked off. This week saw the beginning of the Battle of the Somme.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week the Austrians released cyanide gas on the Italians, though it was the Italians
who advanced on the Asiago Plateau. The Russians advance in Galicia slowly came to a halt as
German reinforcements made a big difference, and the Germans began moving troops and artillery
to the Somme where an Allied artillery barrage throughout the week heralded an impending
offensive. Here’s what came next.
Well, that offensive finally began.
We beat them on the Marne We beat them on the Aisne
We gave them hell at Neuve Chappelle And here we are again! (Gilbert)
On the morning of July 1st, over 250,000 shells were fired on the Germans in a little over
an hour. That’s 3,500 per minute. The barrage was so intense that it could be heard north
of London. At 0730, mines were exploded beneath the German trenches and then the British and
French attacked along a 40 kilometer front. The Battle of the Somme had begun.
John Keegan wrote (Great War), “This is the moment that has come to symbolize the
whole of the Great War. The “lions led by donkeys” school see it as a savage indictment
of the stupidity of British generals; the long lines of overburdened men stumbling toward
the German machine guns are painted as victims, dying for no reason. However, it is crucial
to dispel that myth. The British generals tactics were the best that could have been
conceived at the time...”
But the attack was a disaster. The artillery had in many places failed to cut the barbed
wire, especially when they mostly fired shrapnel shells and not high explosives shells. The
German defense system was still totally intact and the attacks were not so much a story of
British incompetence, but rather of the strength of the German defenses and their resilience.
There were upward of 100 German machine guns that had been in armored nests that had survived
the artillery, and they opened fire as the infantry poured from the trenches. The attackers
had to bunch together to get through what were surprisingly small gaps in the German
barbed wire and there they were killed en masse.
(Gilbert) Most British soldiers carried over 60 pounds of equipment, the rifle, grenades,
ammo, rations, four empty sandbags, a shovel, field dressing, a steel helmet, two gas helmets,
a water bottle and a mess tin. I read in Martin Gilbert that General Edmonds wrote in his
official history, “the weight of this equipment made it difficult to get out of the trench,
impossible to move much quicker than a slow walk, or to rise and lie down quickly.”
Two German held villages, Mametz and Montauban, were captured by the British that day and
the Leipzig Redoubt, a German strongpoint. The cost in men, though, was the highest
that day of any day of battle in the entire war. The British took 57,470 casualties (Hart);
19,240 of those were men killed. There were actions like this one: the 6th Royal Warwicks
reached their goal near Serre, but when German machine guns hit them from both flanks they
retreated to their starting point. 836 men had set out, 520 were killed and 316 wounded.
Every single man was either killed or wounded (Gilbert)
The only British Dominion force fighting that day, from Newfoundland, was nearly totally
destroyed. Of 810 men, only 100 returned unharmed. Still, the intensity of the attack and its
scale caused the Germans to immediately transfer two divisions and 60 heavy guns up from Verdun,
and it seemed to be an end to the German search for victory there.
The French attacks south of the British under General Emile Fayolle were more successful.
In the first place, the Germans weren’t expecting an attack there. In the second,
the French had a lot more experience of offensive action than the British, and the French artillery
was ruthless. The French also had a greater proportion of heavy guns than the British
and they soon put the German guns out of action and destroyed a lot of the machine gun emplacements.
The French infantry smashed through the German lines and took the villages of Frise, Dompierre,
Becquincourt, Fay, Herbecourt, and Assevillers. But they were aware that the British were
lagging behind so they paused; by the time they renewed the offensive the Germans had
reinforced and then they had it just as hard as the British did.
Still, by July 4th, they had broken through the Germans on a ten km front. British wounded
began reaching London in immense endless convoys that day, even as the battle became a struggle
for small woods and tiny villages. Proper identification for hundreds of thousands of
dead would be impossible as artillery tore up the bodies and then the corpses.
The Germans, though, had tactical issues of their own to deal with. Falkenhayn had made
clear that all lost ground must be recovered no matter what the cost. That cost would be
very high, as we will see.
But high costs were the new normal, it seemed, for they continued unabated on the Eastern
Front.
Alexei Brusilov’s month long offensive had been staggering, and he had repeatedly crushed
the Austro-Hungarian forces, inflicting hundreds of thousands of casualties, however, since
beginning the offensive he himself had lost around 285,000 men killed and at least that
many wounded or taken prisoners. His reserves now were more and more often fresh recruits
and he no longer had his crack, battle-hardened troops.
He had paused his offensive to regroup and meet the Austro-German counter offensives,
which had failed, and he planned to attack to July 3rd because General Alexei Evert,
in the north, was to finally attack that day and prevent the Germans from reinforcing further
south.
Evert surprised everybody by attacking on July 2nd along a 7km front 20km north of Baranovichi.
They had planned to attack toward Vilna, but less than two weeks ago Evert had changed
plans. This meant that his men were really unprepared; their maps sucked, their guns
were unregistered because they hadn’t had time for much aerial observation and once
the attack began communications were in some places non-existent. Still, they nearly made
a breakthrough, but not quite, and on the 4th and 5th when they renewed the assault
they were mown down. Evert rested his troops on the 6th and 7th and the Germans added two
regiments to their lines, and when the Russians attacked on the 8th in ranks 10 or 12 deep
using the same failed tactics they had in 1914 and 1915, 6 Russian divisions could not
defeat one Austrian Corps backed by one German reserve division. The Tsar had this to say,
“Many of our commanding generals are silly idiots who, even after two years of warfare,
cannot learn the first and simplest lessons in warfare.” He was right. In seven days
Evert used more shells than Brusilov used the whole month of June, and his army took
80,000 casualties while inflicting only 16,000. General Kuropatkin, who was also to strike
from the bridgeheads at Riga, made one brief foray this week and that was it.
Brusilov was basically on his own. The focal point of his whole operation now was Kovel
and then Lemberg, and let’s be clear, even with the Somme now in full swing, Brusilov
succeeding was the best chance for a real decision in the war. If he could once again
break through then Romania would quite likely join the war with Russia and Austria-Hungary
would be defeated. He thought it was worth the risk.
And when Brusilov launched his attack on the 4th he immediately opened gaps in the Austro-Germans
lines and took Kopyli, and on the 5th threatened to roll up the whole Styr front once again.
By the end of the week the Russians had broken through the Polish legion and separated them
from the Austrians, the endless Russian infantry poured into the gap, and General Alexander
von Linsingen ordered the entire Austrian northern sector to retreat 100km to behind
the Stochod River.
There was one other notable city that fell this week.
The Battle of Mecca came to an end after three weeks on July 4th with the Sharifan army victorious
taking the holy city from the Ottoman Empire. The Arab Revolt was now one month old and
held both Jeddah and Mecca.
And a week of carnage ends. The British bleeding themselves to death against the Germans, the
French fairing a bit better, the Russians in the north again failing on a gigantic scale,
while to the south the Brusilov steamroller rolls on.
Think, there are now three campaigns going on at once, and two of those would have over
a million casualties each while the other would be close to a million. War on that kind
of scale had never before happened in human history. Think of the Brusilov Offensive.
In just one month the Russians have lost half a million men, and they’re winning! In fact,
they’re winning big. We’ve now reached a point where you can lose half a million
men in one month and that’s success. That is Modern War.
You might have seen that our animations for the Battle of the Somme looked a bit differently
this week. That’s because they were made by Epic History TV which is a great historical
YouTube channel with more top notch animated history. You can check out his video about
the First Day of the Somme right here.
Our Patreon supporter of the week is Foster Hardt. Please help us out on Patreon, so that
we can make more awesome animations and improve our show even further.
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