Friday 6th November 2015

notes

Attacks in verdan in 2 parts of France weakening the German army so they can take over France and wipe Britain out.700,000 French soldiers die. Haig decides to attack along the river Somme to distract the Germans from verdum to help France heal their soldiers.he was told that the Germans numbers were smaller than the English. The British suffered 420,000 60,000 on the first day 200,000 French loves were lost and 500,000 Germans.two years of war. Many casualties are lost throught the first battle of verdum slaughter plan produces thousands of people’s deaths 1st July 1916 battle of the Somme. Bombarded Germans with bombs then walk over to the trenches. Sometimes fail and cant  kill people deep underground shelters. The worse slaughter ever bye a British army in asingle day 60,000. Almost entire regiment wiped out by lunch time on the first day. Because of bombs in first . Tabk makes first apperince in battle. German call the war the bloodbath.1,738,000 shells were fired at the Germans.The British soldiers advanced across a 25-mile front. Haig started with a massive artillery run lasting 5 days.Germans had deep concrete shelters they poored out of them and started mchine gunning the english and french down it made the english slower because all of the shells in no mans land.

The Battle Of The Somme

Throughout the begging of the First World War Germany was attacking France the Germans plan was to keep on weakening the French soldiers until they had so many casualties it would overwhelm the French they then decided once they had weakened the French enough they would burst through the borders and take over Paris. They then would walk down to Callie and plan to invade England and win the war. This plan was working very well but the Germans infantries were declining as well as. Britain had an Allie with France to save France and themselves they decided that they should attack the Germans on the side of the river Somme. Haig a commanding general had the plan to bombard the Germans with shells, the idea was that they would shoot shells into the Germans trench to wipe them out. As the Brits had a larger amount of soldiers than the Germans even if the plan failed to a certain extent they could still wipe out all the Germans and win the war. The Brits and the French took part in a five day bombing of the German trenches which made Britain almost certain that the Germans would not be alive. The Brits were not fully aware of the concrete shelters that the Germans had built to protect them from bombings. The Brits advanced to the German trenches seeming relieved that the Germans had been wiped out,or so they thought(some of the British commanders were so certain of the Germans death they sent their troops out in parade formation).

After the bombing raids had been finished they advanced to there artillery stations and as the Brits approached they mowed them down with machine guns. The English lines had began to rapidly decrease because they did not expect the Germans to be waiting for them as they approached the . Haig was outraged as his plan had not worked against the Brits (Haig had commented a few days before this raid that the Brits were certain of the successes of the bombing raid).  As the days progressed the Germans had also summoned their artillery units for the raid which made an even bigger dent on the English forces. As soon as the German artillery had finished there artillery attacks on the first day the Brits had lost the biggest amount of soldiers in one day which summed up to around 60,000.As Haig thought that it would be an amazing idea to let the units carry on with there attacks he set many more units to there deaths. The soldiers were infiltrated with Haig,s decision because they were pretty certain it would lead to death (which it did). As the Brits continued to approach they were harmed by many of their shells approaching them as the had fallen short. As the weeks passed by the deaths had in creased by the thousands because Haig had not stopped the infantries poring in for the attacks. The allies had come from New Zealand and Australia the Australians had lost many of there men on the first day b ut the numbers increased to a sum of 25,000 deaths at this one battle. The Kiwis had introduced the first ever tank into battle this did not seem to be the savoir of the Brits as they had hoped the Kiwis had still lost 6,000 of there men even though they had a tank. As more allies came ion the attacks seemed to be useless and wasting many of there lives. All of the allies had seemed to have lost massive amounts of men. The Brits had lost 420,000 and the French had lost 200,000 as well as the Germans had lost 236,000. A great loss on both sides. The Germans named this battle deblutbad which meant bloodbath in German.  The war was one of the worst in English history and will never be forgotten