The Somme

[Firn]

Indeed there was no doubt that the outnumbered and outgunned would get ever more outnumbered and outgunned so the later German decision to give up was quite understandable.

Interestingly our mountains made it into the top story of the Telegraph. Along the old frontline are many beautiful spots with a harrowing story. You can often combine a good day of sport with tragic history.

The ends with Ungaretti, which developed close fascist relationships. Still I enjoy his poems, like:

Soldati

Si sta
come d'autunno
sugli alberi
le foglie.

10 WWI Myths, at least according to the BBC. Sadly number 9 is argued in part with a fallacy.

The treaty was notably less harsh than treaties that ended the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War and World War Two. The German victors in the former annexed large chunks of two rich French provinces, part of France for between 2-300 years, and home to most of French iron ore production, as well as presenting France with a massive bill for immediate payment.

Versailles was not harsh but was portrayed as such by Hitler who sought to create a tidal wave of anti-Versailles sentiment on which he could then ride into power.

The payed payment after WWI was bigger, but the key problem is that x is not bigger than x + y, with x and y being positive numbers. The two rich, german-speaking former French provinces were annexed by France plus Germany lost a considerable amount of territory in the East. So it is almost impossible to argue that the French had harsher terms.

And obviously Mr. Hitler was far from being alone in his sentiment, pretty much every moderate party considered it as such, to a good exent because of the y factor plus the clause that only the Central Powers were to blame. The great man Keynes covered the part about the economy, and more, neatly in The Economic Consequences of the Peace.

In any case number 9 should not have slipped through in that form, leading his own arguable argument partly at absurdum.

[davidbfpo]

The 100th anniversary of the battle of the Somme's start looms closer, 1st July 2016 and there is a flurry of new books, so this article is part of that.

British commanders planning for the disastrous Somme offensive misinterpreted detailed intelligence reports that may have prevented the bloodiest day in the Army’s history, a new book on the First World War battle claims. Prisoners taken in the run up to the battle gave their British captors detailed reports of where a massive week-long bombardment had destroyed the German defences and where the shells had been ineffective.
German captives had told the British that sections of their southern defences were badly damaged by the onslaught, but elsewhere the bunkers were deeper and likely to be more resilient.

Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...ners-that-cou/


Very mixed reviews so far:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Somme-Into-...nto+the+Breach

[davidbfpo]

Professor Robin Prior, a noted Australian WW1 historian, has a short column on Defence-in-Depth; the first of six comments on this battle.

He starts with:

The Battle of the Somme is to be remembered or commemorated but hardly celebrated on its hundredth anniversary this year. The battle has a number of distinctive features – few of them pleasant. It was the largest battle, in number of troops committed, ever fought, or likely to be fought by the British army; it also was the most costly in terms of casualties; and in terms of dead and wounded it contains the very worst day in British military history with 57,000 casualties – 19,000 of them dead – on the first day of battle 1 July 1916.

In a pithy line he ends with:

One hundred years later we must look at the Somme not as a bloody victory or indeed any kind of victory. It was a dire defeat and perhaps the nadir of British command on the Western Front.

Link:https://defenceindepth.co/2016/07/01...ritish-battle/

[davidbfpo]

A WW1 & WW2 battlefield guide's commentary on visiting The Somme is a short read. He ends with poignant words:

I’ve walked the Somme a thousand times, and I hope to continue to walk and visit it for many years to come, whether for television, with a Leger group or just on my own. It is a place that haunts you, and along its dusty lanes, and under the trees of its many woods, the voices of a generation of men still resonate.

The Somme will stand for so much to so many: sacrifice, tragedy or sheer bloody murder. But for me, it will always be a place where I can focus on the essence of the Great War: ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances, doing their bit in something they knew was bigger than them, and which defined the deaths of those who fell and the lives of the majority who came home. The Somme changed them all, and a hundred years later it can change us.

Link:http://www.leger.co.uk/blog/2016/08/...e-means-to-me/

I have been to several WW1 battlefields, visiting cemeteries for all those who fell. The Somme is a strange place; blood-soaked land. On a wet day I visited Newfoundland Park, walking around the now much wider trenches.

Thinking tonight I do wonder how long will our successors visit such places. Interest in WW1 has grown for at least twenty years here; for the French it is deeply embedded - along with others.

Enough melancholy.