Battles of the Somme

Battles of the Somme, two important series of battles fought by the British and the French against German forces during World War I (1914-1918), in the Somme River area in France.

The First Battle of the Somme was fought from July to November 1916. The British forces were commanded by General Douglas Haig and the French by General Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre; the German forces were commanded by generals Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. The main purpose of the five-month Allied offensive was to relieve the German pressure on Verdun in northeastern France by a large-scale attack against the strongly fortified German positions along the Somme River. In this, the Allies were successful, because the Germans abandoned the Verdun offensive on July 16, 1916, and by the end of November had retreated from the Somme River to a previously prepared line of fortification and trenches, known as the Hindenburg Line. The French had also gained important ground at Verdun, and although the Allies gained only 324 sq km (125 sq mi) of territory at the Somme, the battle is often considered the real turning point in the war for the Allies. The battle, however, was costly: Allied and German troops sustained about 600,000 casualties each. The battle is renowned for the first use, by the British, of the modern tank.

The Second Battle of the Somme was launched on March 21, 1918, by German forces under the command of Ludendorff; it marked the last great series of German offensives of World War I. The immediate objective of the assault was to drive a wedge in the Allied lines and to capture Amiens before proceeding to Paris. The British and the French forces were joined by a few Belgian and American troops, and all four were commanded individually until March 26, when General Ferdinand Foch of France was appointed commander in chief of all Allied armies. The German thrust was successful at first, and the British were forced to retreat to the town of Amiens, leaving a narrow Allied line of defense. A German breakthrough at this time would have meant defeat in battle and a major setback for the Allies, but large British and French forces, aided by a small number of American reserves, were skillfully maneuvered by Foch into slowing and then halting the German advance by staging a counterattack on March 30.

In the Second Battle of the Somme, also known as the Battle of Saint Quentin, 30 British and 15 French divisions were engaged against 100 German divisions, resulting in about 200,000 British casualties and loss of 190,000 prisoners to the Germans, and about 180,000 German casualties. A major Allied counteroffensive from July to November 1918 drove the German forces back to the Hindenburg Line, breaking that line in September to produce a final victory for the Allies.