History Revision - Assessment 4

The Somme

Where was it?

Somme is a river, Picardy, France

Where were the armies on this?

The German trenches were East to this

The 2 sides

Triple Entente

Triple Alliance

Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy

Britain, France, Russia

Trenches

Why were they difficult to capture?

Artillery Fire

Important Figures of WW1

Douglas Haig

They had lots of barbed wire

They were underground

The cover provided by the trenches was effective as it exposed very little of the soldier's body.

They were arranged in zig-zags

The race to the sea was a race in which both sides built trenches from the North sea to the Swiss border

It ran between the British and French trenches

Replaced Sir John French as Commander-in-Chief of all British Forces at the end of 1915

He lived from 1861 - 1928

Served as a Inspector-General of all Cavalry in India

He was educated at Oxford University and the Royal Military academy in Scotland


Stalemate
When both armies are unable to move.

Hazards

Weak structure

Heavy objects were on the ground

Waterlogged Trenches

Disease

The British/French plan on the Somme

They were going to have an extremely large offensive attack

They had a large numerical advantage

Why did they fail at the Somme?

1/3 of all shells did not explode

The Germans hid in concrete bunkers while this happened

All machine guns survived - they were meant to be destroyed

There were 100,000 Brits

On the first day there were 57,000 British casualties - 20,000 dead

The men were told to walk - they assumed machine guns were destroyed and the men were inexperienced

They were attacking uphill

They attacked on the 1st July

The German trenches were protected by lots of barbed wire

It changed because the French were fighting in Verdun at the same time