The Long Road to the Somme: Episodes 1870-1915
902 pages, 124 photographs, 21 original maps
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The Somme: 7.29 a.m., 1st July 1916. The young men of two armies wait to go ‘over the top’.
The outcome: for Britain the costliest day in its Army’s history – 57,000 dead, wounded and missing. For France, a relative stroll as they took every objective within a few hours.
In two volumes, The Long Road to the Somme seeks to explore, understand and, possibly, explain two such dramatically different outcomes.
Volume I: Episodes 1870 –1915 – looks at previous wars – the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the Second Boer War, the Russo-Japanese War 1904–45, and the First Balkan War 1912–13, to see what lessons were learnt and what was ignored.
In Part Two: Frace – Tactics of Revenge the development of Fernch military philosophy, strategy and tactics is closely examined including the disastrous concept of the offensive a utrance – all out attack – which cost France so dearly in the opening months of the war. The development of and short-sighted reliance on the excellent 75-mm fied gun is also looked at in detail.
Other sections look at politics and society, at education and training, at strategies and tactics, at how the public were conditioned to accept war as inevitable – and at the prescient men like Bloch, Brett and Mayer who, unlike the military commanders, accurately forecast the way in which The Great War would be fought.
Volume II: Planning the Big Push (link to page for Vol. II under Just out tab) – recounts the development of the Somme plan, the impact of Verdun, and the great differences in tactics employed by the two Armies on 1st July.
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Contents
Part One: A War Foretold
1. Priming the War Pump
2. Prophets without Honour
Part Two: France – The Tactics of Revenge
3. Defeat, Dreyfus and War Plans
4. Offensive à Outrance: Tactic of Inferiority
5. The French Artillery Debate
Part Three: A Second-Class Army?
6. Wars and Rumours of Wars
7. Class, Cash or Competence
8. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
9. More warnings: Manchuria and the Balkans
10. The Army and Change in Edwardian Society
Part Four: The Western Front: Trial and, Mainly, Error
11. Prologue
12. The Making of the New Armies
13. The British Armaments Failure
14. A Very British Shell Crisis
Part Five: Action and Reaction
15. From Mulhouse to the Marne
16. French Tactical Tinkering
17. Sir Douglas Haig takes over
Appendix 1: The Virginia Campaigns 1864-5
Appendix 2: The Franco-Prussian War 1870-1
Appendix 3: 2nd South African War 1899-1902
Appendix 4: Russo-Japanese War 1904-5
Appendix 5: First Balkan War 1912-3
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