Battle of Somme
- Submitted by: phil2491
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- Category: History
- Date Submitted: 05/12/2016 06:26 AM
- Pages: 2
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Why the battle of the Somme was successful
For a lot of people the Battle of the Somme was considered a failure purely because of the amount of British soldiers lost per day. On the first day Britain had over 57,470 casualties along with 19,240 killed.
But if you look at the battle in a tactician’s perspective the battle was a major success that led to the Germans downfall.
First of all Britain learnt from their mistakes and started placing commanders in to the front line so that they could easily and quickly give out new commands (Before it could take them 11 hours to find out what was going on and then to issue a command, because they were miles behind the front line). They also realized that when they attacked early in the morning however much of land they gained by midday Germany could have the rest of the day to counter Attack and take back the land that they had lost.
Second of all because Britain was losing the battle they decided to take a big risk by using the tank for the first ever time in history! This was a great success as the British pushed on a few miles quicker than normal. (Although the tanks eventually broke down part way through the battle so then they were no use after but Britain then knew they were a powerful weapon)
As well as all that Britain learnt many other things but the biggest one that allowed them to achieve more victories in the attacks was this one. When Britain used to launch an attack they would bombard the Germans for 7 days and 7 nights to completely destroy the Germans defences and wipe out all the Germans. But the Germans had built strong concrete bunkers that were strong enough to withhold the bombardment. This meant the Germans had only lost around 14 men like in the battle of the Somme (The British commanders thought all the Germans were dead so they ordered the men to walk across no-mans land, and when the British started being fired upon the 11 hour journey for the message took too long but also the...
For a lot of people the Battle of the Somme was considered a failure purely because of the amount of British soldiers lost per day. On the first day Britain had over 57,470 casualties along with 19,240 killed.
But if you look at the battle in a tactician’s perspective the battle was a major success that led to the Germans downfall.
First of all Britain learnt from their mistakes and started placing commanders in to the front line so that they could easily and quickly give out new commands (Before it could take them 11 hours to find out what was going on and then to issue a command, because they were miles behind the front line). They also realized that when they attacked early in the morning however much of land they gained by midday Germany could have the rest of the day to counter Attack and take back the land that they had lost.
Second of all because Britain was losing the battle they decided to take a big risk by using the tank for the first ever time in history! This was a great success as the British pushed on a few miles quicker than normal. (Although the tanks eventually broke down part way through the battle so then they were no use after but Britain then knew they were a powerful weapon)
As well as all that Britain learnt many other things but the biggest one that allowed them to achieve more victories in the attacks was this one. When Britain used to launch an attack they would bombard the Germans for 7 days and 7 nights to completely destroy the Germans defences and wipe out all the Germans. But the Germans had built strong concrete bunkers that were strong enough to withhold the bombardment. This meant the Germans had only lost around 14 men like in the battle of the Somme (The British commanders thought all the Germans were dead so they ordered the men to walk across no-mans land, and when the British started being fired upon the 11 hour journey for the message took too long but also the...