rence on 15 November 1916, was 485,000 British and French casualties and 630,000 German. A German officer wrote,
Somme. The whole history of the world cannot contain a more ghastly word.
— Friedrich Steinbrecher
In 1931, Wendt published a comparison of German and British-French casualties which showed an average of 30% more Allied casualties to German losses on the Somme. In the first 1916 volume of the British Official History (1932), J. E. Edmonds wrote that comparisons of casualties were inexact, because of different methods of calculation by the belligerents but that British casualties were 419,654, from total British casualties in France in the period of 498,054, French Somme casualties were 194,451 and German casualties were c. 445,322, to which should be added 27% for woundings, which would have been counted as casualties using British criteria; Anglo-French casualties on the Somme were over 600,000 and German casualties were under 600,000.
The addition by Edmonds of c. 30 percent to German figures, to make them comparable to British criteria, was criticised as "spurious" by M. J. Williams in 1964. McRandle and Quirk in 2006, cast doubt on the Edmonds calculations but counted 729,000 German casualties on the Western Front, from July to December against 631,000 by Churchill, concluding that German losses were fewer than Anglo-French casualties but that the ability of the German army to inflict disproportionate losses, had been eroded by attrition. Sheffield wrote that the calculation by Edmonds of Anglo-French casualties was correct but the one for German casualties was discredited, quoting the official German figure of 500,000 casualties. In the second 1916 volume of the British Official History (1938), Miles wrote that total German casualties in the battle were 660,000–680,000. against Anglo-French casualties of fewer than 630,000, using "fresh data" from the French and German official accounts.
|Grand total||c. 1,666,289|
In 1938 Churchill wrote that the Germans had suffered 270,000 casualties against the French, between February and June 1916 and 390,000 between July and the end of the year (see statistical tables in Appendix J of Churchill's "World Crisis") and 278,000 casualties at Verdun. Some losses must have been in quieter sectors but many must have been inflicted by the French at the Somme. Churchill wrote that Franco-German losses at the Somme, were "much less unequal" than the Anglo-German ratio. Doughty wrote that French losses on the Somme were "surprisingly high" at 202,567 men, 54% of the 377,231 casualties at Verdun. Prior and Wilson used Churchill's research and wrote that the British lost 432,000 soldiers from 1 July – mid-November (c. 3,600 per day) in inflicting c. 230,000 German casualties and offer no figures for French casualties or the losses they inflicted on the Germans. Sheldon wrote that the British lost "over 400,000" casualties. Harris wrote that total British losses were c. 420,000, French casualties were over 200,000 men and German losses were c. 500,000, according to the "best" German sources. Sheffield wrote that the losses were "appalling", with 419,000 British casualties, c. 204,000 French and perhaps 600,000 German casualties.
In a commentary on the debate about Somme casualties, Philpott used Miles's figures of 419,654 British casualties and the French official figures of 154,446 Sixth Army losses and 48,131 Tenth Army casualties. German losses were described as "disputed", ranging from 400,000–680,000. Churchill's claims were a "snapshot" of July 1916 and not representative of the rest of the battle. Philpott called the "blood test" a crude measure compared to manpower reserves, industrial capacity, farm productivity and financial resources and that intangible factors were more influential on the course of the war. The German army was exhausted by the end of 1916, with loss of morale and the cumulative effects of attrition and frequent defeats causing it to collapse in 1918, a process which began on the Somme, echoing Churchill that the German soldiery was never the same aga