The Battle of the Somme — a new perspective. Part 1
The Great War
By the summer of 1916 Europe, after almost a hundred years of peace since Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo , was once again embroiled in a huge continental war. The invading armies of the German Empire and the Allies were fighting a conflict billed as a ‘World War’, but it was actually a European one. The broad reach of the empires on opposing sides (Britain, France and Russia against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey) meant that combat stretched over many parts of the globe, but this was essentially a continuation of the rival European powers incessant struggle for domination.
France was invaded by the German Army in August 1914, at the same time as a combined Austro-Hungarian and German force attacked Russia in the east. The German advance towards Paris had been stalled by the winter of 1914, but at a terrible cost. The ‘Western Front’ had morphed into a line of trenches stretching from the English Channel to the Swiss border that cut across some of France’s most fertile farmland and had degenerated into a bloody stalemate.
Overconfident and unprepared
Led by General Douglas Haig, the scion of a wealthy family who owned the eponymous whiskey distillery, the British Army was in the throes of transforming itself from a colonial army, to one…
