The 3 major players in this battle were France, Britain and GermanyBritish General: Sir Douglas Haig (nickname was

the Butcher of the Somme)French General: JoffreGerman General: Von Falkenhayn

This battle started unofficially on June 24th, 1916 when Haig strategized to have an 8 day bombardment on German lines to weaken the fieldThis strategy failed tremendously because the

shells were too weak to penetrate German bunkers*Look at Map of first day to create

The Battle of the Somme officially began on July 1, 1916, with 27 divisions making up over 750,000 men and 80% were British troops.

The failed bombardment and Heig’s ineptitude to new modern warfare led to the highest number of casualties in one day of battle in British historyBritish casualties mounted to over 58,000, of those

20,000 were fatalitiesGerman casualties were over 10,000 to 12,000 on

this daySir Douglas Haig had his men fight in marching

style and they got torn to pieces by artillery and machine gun fire. The average soldier carried 60 lbs of supplies in the “No Man’s Zone”

The July 14th Night Attack

The British were able to gain an advantage by taking over the Mametz Woods and onward to take a strategic zone known as High Woods (heavily guarded by the Germans)

The British took High Woods and its nickname was “Ghastly by day, Ghostly by night the rottenest place on the Somme

The tank was used during the battle of Flers-Courcelette to try and break the stalemate that existed in the Somme32 Tanks in total will be used during this

September battleThe British were finally able to gain the High

Woods and continued to push the German lineThe tanks were highly unreliable and broke

down constantly because of the destruction around the “No Man’s Zone”

The Allies were able to advance a grand total of 7 miles during the 5 months of battle

Total Casualties for the Allies was well over 624,000 (over 420,000 were British)The German casualties were over 680,000

In all this battle had over 1 million casualties and neither side really gained control of the war