Why You Can't Stop an Attack in the First World War

The first day of the Battle of the Somme is the bloodiest in British history. Many wonder why it had to happen at all, and couldn’t it have been prevented? Many have gone so far to even accuse the British generals as being butchers, murderers, or if nothing else horrendously incompetent. This “Lions led by donkeys” narrative couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, once an offensive the scale of the Somme was established…it was almost impossible to call it off.

~~Sources & Further Reading On This Topic~~

My other videos on WW1 that I referenced:

Read about the Battle of the Somme here:

Read about the Battle of Verdun here:

Read about the scale of units in WW1:

Statistics for the aircraft used at the Somme, including what roles they played and their fates:

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~~Timestamps~~
Intro 00:00
War is Not a Vacuum 02:10
The Scale of the Somme 05:28
Warfare by Timetables 13:18
Modern Judgements 24:12

[BrandonF]

And of course feel free to email me with any questions you may have!

[geralddrake]

I remember reading that one of the reasons that the British commanders always wanted to keep pressing was because during the opening days of the war when under attack from the Germans they had gotten to the point where if the Germans had come one more time they wouldn't have been able to stop them, but the German commander had decided that the British position was too strong and decided to call off the attacks.

The German commander couldn't see how badly mauled the British were, how low they were in ammunition, and how thin the line had become. If they had only pushed one more time they would have carried the position and won the day.

They had internalized that you can't effectively see the damage you've inflicted on the enemy and you can't know how far they are from breaking so you have to keep hammering away.

[nematolvajkergetok]

I once met an elderly Canadian guy whose grandfather served at Passchendaele. He and his unit arrived at the front in the darkest of the night, and trench runners, who were familiar with the area, guided them to their defense position. As they arrived, he glanced out of the trench, and saw mountains against the night sky. He was pretty surprised, he expected Flanders to be all flat land. When the morning came, he saw that those weren't mountains but huge piles of dead bodies, not very far from their position.

[justinrastin]

This is an incredible video that has helped me reconsider a lot of the assumptions I had about the upper leadership in the First World War. However, I can’t help but imagine myself standing ankle deep in mud and hearing the whistle to go over the top, and then having this gentleman explain the logistical reasons that my death was inevitable.

[nicholaswalsh]

I think a lot of people are spoiled by modern telecommunications. There are few people alive today who lived at a time when the most common method of communication was a hand written letter or, if you were fortunate, a telegram. Even for the armies, often the most effective form of communication was a man carrying a written message from Point A to Point B.

[jamesharding]

Even at the scale of a rifle platoon, it's an absolute nightmare to keep control without the benefit of radios -- especially if, like me, your shouting voice can't match an angry First Sergeant. You can only say so much with an orange flag, a whistle, and a couple of pen flares. Even with the aids of modern sensors and communications, redirecting an operation on the fly is one of the most difficult and potentially deadly things an officer can attempt.

That’s at the scale of 40 men, spread over a frontage of a few hundred yards, where the officer can usually see the entire action with Mark 1 Eyeball — no communications lag, no miscommunicated reports, no vague written orders.

[jochum]

300.000

That's an entire Iceland.

[vampirecount]

When I didn't understand anything about how an army works, and I watched movies about the First World War, I had the impression that the generals and officers were incompetent, arrogant and stupid. When I started reading books, researching bibliography and studying in depth, I realized that the generals and officers were not only not incompetent, but were also very experienced and capable. The more you learn, the more you appreciate the work of those who knows what they are doing.

[jakethorn]

Re: Time tables, this stuff is still a problem today. In Bakhmut, I was involved in the assault to retake control of Khromove highway(the only major supply route for bakhmut at that time), and in the planning the previous evening we had worked out coordinating grad strikes on the positions we were assaulting. There was a 10 minute window between when the grad strikes were supposed to occur and when our assault was to begin, but the strikes never happened that morning for us due to counter battery fire. The guys in the first wave went across the road, we had already risked moving to the last friendly positions anyways and needed to retake control of the highway to get casualties out and supplies into the city. 10 minutes later my group followed, to the trenches just over the highway where what was left of the first wave was. We managed to take the first 1/3 or so of the positions we were supposed to capture but took 100% casualties in the process. The 3rd wave came up behind us about an hour later just to help us hold what we had, but we couldn't leave to evacuate casualties until the fourth wave came another hour later.

I have no idea how many people died in total that day in Bakhmut but I had to walk over the bodies of six friendlies in the approach, and at least a dozen died fighting for the single position we were at, the northern most bend in the road. You knew you didn't want to let the guys who went before you down by leaving. We didn't want to let go of the progress we had made that cost us blood, and I'm sure the guys who came up after us thought the same. I'll never forget what one of the guys in the fourth wave said before we left, "It's ok, we'll go to storm, you're not alone now."

[DaHuuudge]

My favorite thing about your channel is that it provides an antidote to the temptation to think about war in poetic terms. There’s nothing poetic about people butchering and torturing each other, dying en masse of disease and starvation and the elements, obliterating in moments works of beauty that took generations to create.

[jarvy]

By the time Vimy rolled around just a few months later, and you're seeing sophisticated combined arms and highly drilled infantry taught to work on personal initiative at the lowest level. To act as if the British Army didn't learn from the Somme is nonsense.

[marscaleb]

Another one of the big problems with the people saying "Why didn't they do X, are they stupid?" is that it trains everyone else to automatically assume that is the mentality of anyone asking questions about these battles. I have been researching WW1 lately to understand many aspects explicitly from the perspective of wanting to know why X idea wasn't an option, and every time I ask something I have to put up disclaimers about what I'm asking to avoid people talking down to me like I'm some armchair historian. Even when I do have the disclaimers I still get people trying to talk to me like I was a child.

We today sit in an entirely different context than was in this period, and we need to ask "why didn't they X" and we need to explain "why didn't X" in order to establish that context so that people can understand what is going on.

[georgepatton]

Remember folks, logistics and organization takes time, very subtle, and unglorious, but it is what wins war, Haige being called a butcher is like grant being butcher, out of context and speaking from a pedestal mindset

[ShuRugal]

The Battle of the Somme was a major failure of leadership.

But the leadership which failed was not military. It was political. The issue was not "the generals kept sending men into a meat grinder", it was "the politicians created a situation where there was no choice BUT to send men into the meat grinder".

[Source]

I had family in Ww1 and my great granda lost the use of his hand because of a grenade but he still worked a farm for 60-70 years after it

[AgasAepad]

On the topic of how long it takes orders to reach units, Grand Tactician The Civil War has a mechanic for this where once you give an order the unit doesn't actually respond to it until a runner physically reaches them, its a game that really puts into perspective how much pre-planning is needed for military actions and how difficult it is to change the orders on the fly once they're underway

[biyurica]

My late grandpa always referred ww1 as not "the war to end all wars" but "the war to end all hope for humanity"

Edit: can ya'll stop arguing in the comments

[commissarchenkov]

I think in the UK we often see this whole "lions led by donkeys" trope more as a political and class thing. Fundamentally the war was being fought for no meaningful reason to the people on the ground so any battle no matter how well logistically organised was a total waste of life.

[FSUFAN-grvp]

Dearest Brandon, I am a huge fan of your channel! As a person who has been studying history since he was five years old (30+) and who has an extreme passion for World War I, this is one of your best videos to date. I am glad you mentioned the movie 1917, one of my biggest gripes with that movie was the notion of being able to call off an attack even if that attack was going to result in a trap or an ambush. Two runners crossing that much ground to warn an Officer of such an issue seemed farfetched to me based on the difficulties at the time. As always thanks for the amazing content!

[michaelsinger]

The thing about the Somme is that the Germans lost about the same number of men defending as the British did attacking. The Germans were HAMMERED by offensives like The Somme and after awhile they could not replace those losses.

And German accounts show that their morale was badly damaged as well.