Tuesday 13th December Why was the Battle of the Somme such a disaster for the British Army? On July 1st 1916, a battle commenced that made the bloodiest day inn British military history. 60,000 British men died on the first day of fighting, with a third of them perishing in the first hour. The aim of this essay is to examine factors of the battle and decide which one contributed the most to the failure of the battle. The plan for the Battle of the Somme was to assemble a huge new army of soldiers.
The Battle of Somme The most catastrophic day the British forces ever faced, the 1st of July marked the beginning of the Battle of Somme taking the life of more than 57,470 casualties in a single day. Amongst them, the greatest losses were suffered by the Newfoundland Regiment with 255 dead, 386 wounded and 91 listed missing. “Following the attack, only 68 men out of 801 answered the roll call (Martin, Battle of Somme, Introduction page)”. Many heart ceased to thump but not much was conquered. “The Battle of Somme marked the beginning of modern warfare (Martin, Battle of Somme, Introduction Page).” Tanks came into action in the war grounds alongside armed battalions on their feet.
Alistair Horne: The Price of Glory The battle of Verdun in is said to have been one of the greatest and most protracted battles in the history of warfare. The battle started in 1916; it was the longest war in World War 1. They thought the war would not last awhile with all of their artillery but they were wrong. . The war involved so many men, positioned on a small piece of land.
• British battles of Neuve Chapelle, Aubers Ridge, Festubert and Loos. • Loos involved the first of Kitchener’s New Army divisions. • Scottish losses were so dreadful that no part of Scotland was unaffected. The Black Watch (raised in Tayside) had massive casualties; the 9th lost 680 officers and men in the first hours of the fighting. Of 950 men of the 6th Cameronians who went into battle, 700 were
Does Field Marshall Haig deserve to be viewed as the ‘Butcher of the Somme’? Field Marshall Douglas Haig was commander-in-chief in one of the biggest battles history has ever seen. The Battle of the Somme took place along a 30-kilometre front between the 1st July and the 18th November 1916 by the River Somme, in France. It was a crucial event in the First World War as this was the moment when Britain unleashed the massive volunteer army that had been recruited so enthusiastically and it seemed the ideal opportunity to break the long lasting stalemate that had gripped the war for the past 2 years. The battle claimed the lives of around 620,000 British and empire force soldiers, with casualties reaching almost 60,000 on the first day alone.
The war was a large mistake for the Tsar. Although Russia obtained some successes at the beginning, they were facing one of the most advanced military powers in the world and were being led by incompetent Generals as well as being badly equipped Nicholas II made a grave error, when he fired the military commander and took command of the army. This was a mistake in the fact that he had no military experience whatsoever and from then on, the Tsar was seen as responsible for every failure and defeat that Russia suffered. It saw the loss of 200,000 men and around 15 million peasants were enrolled in the army from the farms. This would lead to the army losing their faith in the Tsar which was extremely vital, for as long as the army remained loyal to the him, they were able to put down any threat of revolution however, the poor conditions eventually led to them refusing to fire upon rioters.
There is no official casualty figure for D-Day but it is estimated that more than 425,000 allied and German troops were killed, wounded, or went missing during the battle (Allies prepare for D-Day, 2011). The Battle of the Bulge The Battle of the Bulge was the largest land battle of World War II. “More than a million men participated in this battle including some 600,000 Germans, 500,000 Americans, and 55,000 British” (Lopez, 2009). The Battle of the Bulge was one of the worst battles in terms of losses of American Forces in World War II. At the end of the battle the casualties were highest out of the entire war.
Chris Purchase Within the context of the period 1815-1917, how far was the First World War the main cause of the fall of the Romanovs in February 1917? February 1917, the First World War is going badly for Russia; supplies not getting through to the soldiers; huge numbers of Russian soldiers dying, wounded by the German army on the eastern front; Nicholas II lacking in military experience resulting in costly defeats for his army. Back home in Petrograd, the country is in chaos. Rasputin has been murdered and the revolutionaries are gaining in strength. So the question is... how did the rule of the Romanovs fail after 300 years in power?
In the late summer of 1914, the ancient monarchies of Austria, Russia and Germany plunged their countries into a world war which engulfed Europe in one of the bloodiest conflicts in history. The Eastern Front of that great war had a profound impact on the remainder of the 20th century, even though the Western Front with its British, French and American combatants achieved somewhat greater fame. The statistics for the Eastern war are grim. More than three-million men died in the fighting, more than nine-million men were wounded, and every major country which participated lost its form of government. One of them, Russia, collapsed so completely and catastrophically that the ensuing consequences still resonate in today's world.
The World War I was draining all of Russia’s resources. There was shortage of food throughout the country, which left people starving. At the battlefront, millions of Russian soldiers were dying, they did not possess many of the powerful weapons that their opponents had. The government under Czar Nicholas II was disintegrating, and a provisional government had been set up. In November of 1917, Lenin and his communist followers known as the Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government and set a communist government in Russia.