Battles: The Battle of the Somme, 1916
Updated - Saturday, 11 August, 2001
Comprising the main Allied attack on the Western Front during 1916, the Battle of the Somme is famous chiefly on account of the loss of 58,000 British troops (one third of them killed) on the first day of the battle, 1 July 1916, which to this day remains a one-day record. The attack was launched upon a 30 kilometre front, from north of the Somme river between Arras and Albert, and ran from 1 July until 18 November, at which point it was called off.
The offensive was planned late in 1915 and was intended as a joint French-British attack. The French Commander in Chief, Joffre, conceived the idea as a battle of attrition, the aim being to drain the German forces of reserves, although territorial gain was a secondary aim.
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The origins of the operation lay in the unexpected success of Operation Overlord (the D-Day landings) on 6 June 1944 and the Battle for Normandy in the immediate aftermath. The Allies had assumed that they would make a slow but steady advance inland once the invasion had taken place and that General Dwight D Eisenhower who commanded the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) would take over the overall conduct of the land campaign from Montgomery after a few weeks. Eisenhower would then control all three Army Groups, the 21st Army Group under Montgomery, 12th Army Group under Lieutenant General Omar Bradley and 6th Army Group under Lieutenant General Jacob Devers advancing from southern France against strong German resistance. What actually happened was that the Allies were bogged down for many weeks in a virtual stalemate in Normandy and that the German defence had virtually collapsed overnight leading to the Falaise pocket, which was a complete disaster for the Germans, of the same magnitude as Stalingrad had been on the Eastern Front. The very size of this victory was to be Montgomery's undoing as success in Normandy had depended upon close cooperation between the Allied commanders and forces. Now that many believed the end of the war was only a matter of time (possibly ending before Christmas), many commanders looked to the future development of their careers.
In mid-August, Montgomery first raised the idea of changing Allied strategy to encompass
