Why did Field Marshall Haig send so many troops to slaughter during the Somme Offensive of 1916 during WWI?

Question

After the catasrophic losses during the first 24 hours of the battle of the Somme,why do you think Field Marshall Haig allowed his generals send their troops into the maelstrom of German machine gun fire for four months?

And again from July 31st to November 6th,1917 at Passchendaele?

Considering that the new tanks did not perform well it seems he changed his tactics very little.

Sending troops marching abreast,at a walking pace across no-mans land,and into the spray of machine gun fire and artillery seems absurd.

Answer 1

The Problem with some of your answers is that Germany very much did change and evolve in their tactics.

Not so much with France and especially Britain.

Germany used combined arms tactics as early as 1914 : a combination of infantry,storm troops,and a variety of artillery (caliber and shell types) and a special group of combat engineers called "Pioniere" who employed a particularly nasty weapon known as "Minenwerfer" or (minethrower)

The 170 mm Minenwerfer launched a shell with a 37 kilogram payload of high explosives equal to 18 French 75mm shells.

All of these were used in concert to effect bite and hold tactics and were employed by Von Mudra to take the Argonne Forest from late August to late September 1915 in a succession of small but continuous attacks,used to confuse and wear down the enemy.

In addition Germany also had a special section called Nachrichten Abteilung whose purpose was to analyse the allied armies and their battlefield tactics.

The allies made no serious effort to study the German army and it's evolving tactics : for example well into 1916 the BEF had no one studying German artillery.

Germany also had decentralized it's command allowing commanders in the field to change their plans of attack according to their observations of the battle at the front line position.

The British commanders had no such power.If the British high command issued orders for a certain amount of soldiers to attack the enemy thats what they had to do.Even if it meant sending thousands of soldiers,in waves to their death,when often they could pull back and regroup.

German commanders would often forfeit gained ground to pull back to the strategic high ground and dig in leaving the allies exposed in the lowlands.

And for tanks : while initially successful as a weapon of shock the technology was new and the tanks were employed in too small of numbers to be effective and suffered tremendous casualty rates from mechanical failure alone.Slow moving tanks were soon being destroyed by German artillery once they realized that they moved so slow that the artillery could hone in on them.

It wasn't until the battle of Cambrai that tanks were employed in sufficient numbers to be effective and still they suffered heavy losses.

At Passchendaele they simply sank in the liquid mud!

Haig was an old calvary man who failed to realize the devasting effect the machine guns had on his horses and infantry.Tanks would come into thier own in WWII and become the replacement for calvary.

British failure to study enemy tactics and delegate power to thier commanders at field level was devastating.

Haig and other allied commander held a strong belief through most of the war thet Germany was on it's last leg and the next great offensive would topple this too was erroneous.

While Americas envolvement was short and late in the war it was very much a large part of the reason for allied success.

France,Britain, and Germany by spring 1918 were quickly running out of steam and running out of resources mainly men.Attrition was winning the war and it was a matter of who could hold out the longest.

The appearance of U.S. troops on the battlefield was important because even though they lacked experience thay quickly gained a reputation as determined and fierce fighters.

Faced with the prospect of virtually unlimited equipment and manpower Germany had little choice but to sue for peace.

So while their contributions on the battefield may not have been decisive it was the prospect of all of the fresh troops that turned the tide.

So it wasn't what the AEF did but what was to come.

Canada did indeed make a major contribution to the war and with no disrespect intended I doubt very much that the Germans feared the sound of bagpipes this was propaganda for sure.

For the most part all the soldiers were scared most of the time and no fighting song, bugle,whistle or bagpipe did much to increase that fear, the constant wail of artillery pretty much took care of that.

Answer 2

What alternative strategy would you propose?

The attack was not at the place or time of his choosing, but was necessary to prevent Germans allocating more divisions to Verdun, where there was a serious prospect of a collapse of the French army, which could have lost the war.

The level of artillery support was unprecedented, though not adequate by the standards of 1917 and 18. All there was, was committed. The factory production of shells, particularly from America, was not yet up to volume or quality.

The troops were in many instances not fully-trained, this being the result of the massive expansion of the army from the BEF of six infantry divisions of 1914 (almost all Britain had available as a mobile force !)
More advanced "fire and move" and infiltration tactics came with experience at all levels. The first US army assaults in 1918 had similar high casualty rates to the Somme.
(And Normandy was even worse in WW2!)
And the troops were often heaviily laden because the biggest threat was of counter-attack after the first line trench had been taken. Ammunition, barbed wire, entrenching tools, all had to be immediately on hand.

And, overall it was a success. In the horror of the level of casualties, it's not not often noted that German ones were higher, and less sustainable than those of the allies. Not just in numbers but in the loss of more experienced officers and men.

I recommend Gary Sheffield: Forgotten Victory
and Gordon Corrigan: Mud, Blood and Poppycock.

Answer 3

Why? Well Haig was a cavalry man to put it simply. He didnt' understand this new static warfare. Also the bombardment on the Somme was supposed to kill most of the German defenders but alas the bombs they used were mostly Shrapnel. Not HE or High Explosive ones which could've one them the battle.

Remember, the Somme was a massive diversion to help the French who were at the time battling for Verdun.

Passchendaele was hell, again tactics weren't learned fully until the last year of the War. Infiltration and Rolling barrages stopped the last major German offensive which was 40 miles outside of Paris.

To conclude I guess Haig was a terribly slow learner costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of Empire troops. He only learned from his many mistakes when it was desperate.

Answer 4

Haig didn't adapt his tactics. It was Easter 1917 when the first conclusive battle of WWI occurred. It was lead by Generals Byng and Curry and consisted of all four divisions of the Canadian Army attacking Vimy Ridge. We (Canadians) cleaned it up in three days. According to General Byng: "If anyone can do it, the Canadians can."

It seems to me that British leadership just refused to stray from trying to bleed the Germans to death, while letting the Germans bleed them at the same time. Poor tactics, in my opinion. You had a bunch of stuffy, inflexible old farts running a modern (for the era) war machine in a war that could be won with dynamic fighting tactics.

Had it not been for American interference, the allies would have won WWI outright and WWII could have been avoided. The end of WWI was called "Canada's hundred days". After Vimy Ridge, the Germans knew they were done for when they heard the bagpipes that always were at the front of a Canadian attack. The British used us like shock troops, or cannon fodder, depending on your view. We didn't lose a battle that we fought under our own command.

In the end, had President Woodrow Wilson not proposed a conditional surrender of Germany, Canada could have beat the Germans into the ground. There would not have been WWII, the Vietnam war, the Korean war, either war in Iraq, instability in Africa, and problems in the Middle East.

Canada took Passchendaele in 1918 with less than 10,000 wounded or dead. That's what good strategy does. WWI is yet another reason why Canada kicks a**!

Answer 5

The first day of the Somme was the 141st day of Verdun. One of the purposes of the Somme was to draw off German forces from the French at Verdun. In that they succeeded.

The three British myths about WWI:
1. It was nobody's fault, or six of one and half a dozen of another. In fact it was overwhelmingly the fault of the Germans - something like 10 to 2 if you like.
2. German aims and demands were less overbearing than in WWII. In fact, they were more overbearing. Hitler wanted the East. The Kaiser and his Generals wanted the West and the ocean as well.
3. The war could have been fought without mass casualties. In fact, casualties on the Western front were similar to casualties on the Eastern or Russian Front in WWII. In either case, that was where the Germans had the bulk of their forces.

Answer 6

~Somebody had to do something to take people's minds off the slaughter that had been going on at Verdun. Given the tactic of the day, and the novelty of the new weaponry, what do you find absurd? The tactics worked so well for Bobby Lee on July 3, 1863, perhaps someone felt an encore was in order.

How well we learn from history. Georgie the Younger actually conned 98% of the U.S. population into believing an invasion of Afghanistan could succeed and that such an invasion or an invasion of Iraq, was not only justifiable but just. Now THAT I find to be absurd and more than a little frightening. Worst still are the fools who have not only learned the obvious lesson from those debacles but are pushing for a repeat performance in Korea and Iran. So it goes.

Answer 7

The truth is, EVERY general of WW-1, Allied or Central Powers, sent men to colossal slaughter at the western front.

Be it Ludendorf, Foch, Joffre, Von Falkanhyan, or even Pershing. The Somme was the just the most horrible of the horrid. The tactics and results were always the same when a so-called "offensive" was launched.

America lost more of it soldiers at Meuse-Argonne (July-Nov 1918) than any other battle in it's history.

Answer 8

He underestimated German machine-gun placements. He thought a heavy artillery barrage would be enough to take them out, but was wrong.
Another reason was that quite a number of Generals and high ranking officers didn't care about the soldiers. They cared more about metals and hopes for victory and fame the way they were taught at military academies throughout Europe in the nineteenth century.

Answer 9

That was the way war was fought in those days. Haig knew no better way to attack the Germans.
The use of tanks did make a difference as they were able to drive through the lines.
Yes it was stupidity in hindsight, 90 years later.