ssible to the English-speaking world.
Haig and General Rawlinson have been criticised ever since 1916 for the human cost of the battle and for failing to achieve their territorial objectives. On 1 August 1916 Winston Churchill criticised the British Army's conduct of the offensive to the British Cabinet, claiming that though the battle had forced the Germans to end their offensive at Verdun, attrition was damaging the British armies more than the German armies. Though Churchill was unable to suggest an alternative, a critical view of the British on the Somme has been influential in English-language writing ever since.
A rival conclusion by some historians (Terraine, Sheffield, Duffy, Chickering, Herwig and Philpott et al.) is that there was no strategic alternative for the British in 1916 and that an understandable horror at British losses is insular, given the millions of casualties borne by the French and Russian armies since 1914. This school of thought sets the battle in a context of a general Allied offensive in 1916 and notes that German and French writing on the battle puts it in a continental perspective. The Battle of the Somme has been called the beginning of modern all-arms warfare, during which Kitchener's Army learned to fight the mass-industrial war, which the continental armies had been engaged in for two years. This view sees the British contribution to the battle as part of a coalition war and part of a process, which took the strategic initiative from the German Army and caused it irreparable damage, leading to its collapse in late 1918.
- Despite the certainty by mid-June, of an Anglo-French attack on the Somme against the Second Army, Falkenhayn sent only four divisions, keeping eight in the western strategic reserve. No divisions were moved from the Sixth Army, despite it holding a shorter line with 17 1⁄2 divisions and three of the reserve divisions in the Sixth Army area. The maintenance of the strength of the Sixth Army, at the expense of the Second Army on the Somme, indicated that Falkehnayn intended the counter-offensive against the British to be made north of the Somme front, once the British offensive had been shattered.
- Falkenhayn implied after the war that the psychology of German soldiers, shortage of manpower and lack of reserves, made the policy inescapable, since the troops necessary to seal off breakthroughs did not exist. High losses incurred in holding ground by a policy of no retreat, were preferable to higher losses, voluntary withdrawals and the effect of a belief that soldiers had discretion to avoid battle. When a more flexible policy was substituted later, decisions about withdrawal were still reserved to army commanders.
- Churchill, W. S. C. The World Crisis (1923–1931) Philpott, W. Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme and the Making of the Twentieth Century (2009)
- Hart 2006, pp. 27–37.
- Hart 2006, p. 37.
- Doughty 2005, p. 291.
- Philpott 2009, pp. 81, 86.
- Foley 2007, pp. 248–249.
- Foley 2007, pp. 206–207.
- Wynne 1939, p. 104.
- Sheffield 2003, pp. 18–19.
- Philpott 2009, pp. 412–413.
- Dowling 2008, pp. xv, 163.
- Sheffield 2003, p. 27.
- Miles 1938, p. 555.
- Simpson 2001, p. 34.
- Sheldon 2005, p. 223.
- Wynne 1939, pp. 100–101.
- Miles 1938, p. 86.
- Sheffield 2003, pp. 21, 64–65.
- Wynne 1939, pp. 100–103.
- Sheffield 2003, pp. 41–69.
- Sheffield 2003, pp. 76–78.
- Sheffield 2003, pp. 79–85.
- McMullin 2006.
- Miles 1938, p. 133.
- Philpott 2009, p. 251.
- Sheffield 2003, pp. 94–95.
- Sheffield 2003, pp. 94–96.
- Sheffield 2003, pp. 98–100.
- Philpott 2009, p. 355.
- Sheffield 2003, pp. 112–124.
- Philpott 2009, p. 383.
- Miles 1938, pp. 458–459.
- Miles 1938, p. 474.
- Sheffield 2003, pp. 130–131.
- Miles 1938, pp. 447–456 & 460–466.
- Miles 1938, pp. 476–477.
- McCarthy 1995, pp. 148–162.
- Miles 1938, pp. 570–572.
- Philpott 2009, pp. 150–151.
- Sheffield 2003, p. 186.
- Edmonds 1932, p. 483.
- Prior & Wilson 2005, p. 119.
- Sheffield 2003, p. 156.
- Philpott 2009, pp. 436–437.
- Duffy 2006, p. 326.
- Sheldon 2009, p. 398.
- Sheldon 2009, p. 4.
- Sheld