The Battle of the Somme, which took place from July 1 to November 18, 1916, began as an Allied offensive against German forces along the Western Front of World War I, near the Somme River in France.
The battle turned into one of the largest battles of the Great War, and among the bloodiest in all of human history. A combination of a compact battlefield, destructive modern weaponry and several failures by British military leaders led to an unprecedented wave of slaughter.
When Union Army general William Tecumseh Sherman famously said “War is hell,” he was referring to war in general, but he could have been describing trench warfare, a military tactic that’s been traced to the Civil War.
Trenches—long, deep ditches dug as protective defenses—are most often associated with World War I. They were employed primarily on the Western Front, and though they may have afforded some protection to soldiers, they also enabled disease and shell shock run rampant.
The Battle of the Somme included the first use of tanks in warfare—though in their early form they proved too primitive to break the military deadlock. Read more.
Join HISTORY Travel on a nine-day trip to France and Belgium and walk the most significant battlefields of World War I, from the Somme to the Marne to Verdun, alongside a HISTORY Channel military historian.
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