Following a week of artillery bombardment, Allied infantry attacked the north of the River Somme. Much like Verdun, this battle was intended to end the war by means of attrition, only this time it began with an Allied offensive. The Battle of the Somme was fought between July 1 to November 18, 1916.
Image credit: Amanda Slater, from Coventry (England) via Wikimedia. Battle Of The Somme Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme is a war memorial dedicated to the missing British and South African servicemen who died in the Battle of the Somme. Finally, for the French, the Battle of Verdun was and still is held up as an example of their resilience.
It also became a symbol of the pointlessness of the Great War, with hundreds of thousands of lives being lost for no real reason. Verdun saw 700 000 causalities and 300 000 deaths. Thereafter, the French launched a counteroffensive, and by December, they had pushed the Germans from all their previously held positions. The final German offensive occurred on September 3, 1916, yielding no gains. Nonetheless, fighting continued throughout June, July, and August. By May, talk of an imminent British attack on the Somme River made it, so both sides had a vested interest in ending the battle. Their advances then slowed to a crawl as French artillery hit German trenches. Within the first three days, the Germans had captured Fort Douaumont, a key defense that had protected Verdun for centuries. The first phase of the battle began on February 21, 1916, with German artillery bombardments along the 19-mile French front. Finally, after about a year of no meaningful progress and 500 000 causalities on both sides, Allied troops were evacuated in January 1916. Those who survived began digging in an attempt to make trenches. When combined with a lack of cover on the beaches, this meant that many Allied soldiers were immediately mowed down. However, cliffs provided the Ottomans with a significant height advantage. Therefore, in April, British troops attacked the Gallipoli peninsula, hoping that controlling the land would facilitate an easier passage through the strait. With Ottoman mines proving problematic, it became clear that forcing open the strait would not work. In February 1915, British ships began their assault. As would soon be apparent, these plans were overly ambitious and based on incorrect assumptions about the strength of the Ottoman Empire. The head of the Royal Navy, Winston Churchill, thought that forcing open the strait could then allow the British to seize the Ottoman capital of Istanbul. Britain thereby decided to attack the Dardanelles, a narrow strait that marked the separation between Europe and Asia. After fighting the Ottomans in the Caucasus for months, they thought that an Allied attack elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire would relieve pressures on this front.
In early 1915, Russia asked Britain and France for help. Battle Of Gallipoli Landing at Gallipoli, April 1915. When combined with Russia mobilizing much quicker than expected-entering the war within two weeks-this meant that Germany would indeed be fighting a war on two fronts. Despite some initial success, an Allied counteroffensive in the First Battle of Marne forced the Germans to retreat in September. Based on a modified version of the Schlieffen Plan, the Germans thus attacked France through Belgium in the summer of 1914 in hopes of a quick submission. Therefore, while Russia was still mobilizing, the German high command hoped they could quickly beat the British and French forces before shifting their focus to Russia. With Germany facing France in the west and Russia in the east, this meant that a war on two fronts was likely. The United Kingdom, France, and Russia made up the Allied Powers (or Triple Entente) on one side, and Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire made up the Central Powers on the other. By the end of 1914, all the major European powers were involved in the conflict. This was followed by Germany mobilizing against Russia. Thereafter, Russia, a Serbian ally, mobilized against Austria-Hungary. Following the assassination of the Archduke, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.
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