HSTR 344A Lecture 1: HSTR 344A Full Term Course Notes
HSTR 344A A01 Professor Zimmerman
1
HSTR 344A: History of the First World War
Thursday, January 5, 2017
Haig and the Somme
• Douglas Haig, Commander of BEF 1915-18, and the Somme
o Dumb, but part of the Edwardian army that was based on class, not
experience
o Cavalryman
o After 2 years of war Haig believed he could lead the British Army to
victory
o BEF under his command were untrained amateurs
• Spring, 1916: Haig conceives plan for breakthrough of German Lines through
which he could send cavalry
o Believed he had the technology to do so
o Plan was rushed
▪ French Army were fighting at Verdun and asked Haig to speed up
plans to take pressure of the French
o Joint British/French operation
• Attack was planned along a 32 km-long front
• Hoped to penetrate German defensive lines 4.5 km thick
• Key was to use massive amounts of artillery, then cavalry would break through
into German army’s rear area
• Days of artillery bombardment before the attack to pulverize German defenses
• Haig faced German trenches
o Formed from North Sea, through France and parts of Belgium, to Swiss
border by end of 1914
o Highly photographed – airplanes
▪ Could get accurate photos of enemy positions
o Every effort to break through defenses failed
▪ Millions of casualties in attempts
o Barbed wire meters deep, front-line trench with dugouts, support trench
with dugouts, concrete block shelters with machine guns, reserve trench,
long range artillery up to 10 km behind the lines
• Haig had 1400 artillery pieces
o BUT 1000 were light field pieces
▪ Small guns like French 75 mm or British 18 pounders
o 400 larger guns with destructive power
▪ Only 4 of the massive, super-heavy guns available at the Somme
• These were needed to break German pillboxes
• 23 June Allied Artillery opened fire for a 7 day bombardment
o 1 ton of steel per square yard of front
o Served as a week notice of an attack to the Germans hunkered in their
dugouts
o Poorly aimed
• 1 July 1916: 66 000 soldiers went over the top at 7:30 a.m.
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HSTR 344A A01 Professor Zimmerman
2
o Carried 66lbs of equipment
o Walked only yards apart across open land, slowly
o Told not to slow down to fire on the enemy, to use bayonets on the
Germans once they got to them
▪ Bayonets fixed, rifles unloaded
o Rolling artillery barrage 100m ahead wasn’t very accurate
▪ Soldiers walked to slow/fast
▪ Germans jumped out as soon as the barrage went over their
trenches
• Haig was an idiot and didn’t like machine guns despite high accuracy and high
volume of bullets
o German crews fired on approaching infantry – massive casualties
• German dugouts weren’t destroyed because bombardment was poorly aimed/shell
duds/wrong type of shells and deep bombproof shelters
• Terrible terrain, swamp-like, muddy, could drown in a shell hole
• No Canadian troops on the front lines on July 1, but there was a Newfoundland
regiment (not part of Canada yet)
o Cream of the crop of Newfoundland’s young men
o Royal Newfoundland Regiment was part of the British 88th Brigade of the
29th Infantry Division, assigned to Third Attack Wave at 0845
o Miners had dug under the German lines and placed explosives under
Hawthorne Ridge
▪ Many Germans died, but others were able to hide in the crater
created and set up their machine guns
o Attack based from town of Beaumont-Hamel
o RNR suffered 85% casualties in an hour
▪ 233 dead, 386 wounded, 91 reported missing, only 110 unscathed
▪ Units are considered wiped out if they suffer more than 10%
casualties
▪ Some villages lost every single young man they had sent
▪ Regiment was replaced by new recruits, as would happen twice
more
▪ Some historians argue that Newfoundland’s demise as a dominion
is direction connected to these losses
• First major conflict captured with movie cameras
o Footage of training exercises for the most part, not of actual conflict
▪ Done on purpose – British were the first to put out propaganda
films of brave British men fighting
• Battle of the Somme continued until December, for miniscule gains
• Canadians reached the Somme in September
“Lions Led by Donkeys” – comment of a German soldier about the BEF
• First day of the Battle of the Somme sets the stage for much WWI mythology
o Horrors and futility of war is demonstrated by 1 July 1916
• Anti-war movement in the 60s used WWI as an example of war’s stupidity
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HSTR 344A A01 Professor Zimmerman
3
• 1961: Alan Clarke writes The Donkeys about the stupidity of British officers and
the senseless slaughter that occurred because of brutual, unthinking, uncaring
generals
• Called the war to end all wars because people hoped there would be some sense to
it all
• John McCrae’s “Flanders Fields”
o Read as an anti-war poem, but it isn’t
o Calls for people to take up arms and finish the fight
The Beginning of the WWI
• 28 June 1914: Assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, heir to the
Austro-Hungarian Empire
o Franz Ferdinand and his wife went to Sarajevo against the advice of many
advisers
▪ Area annexed by the Austro-Hungarians – many angry people
o Group of Serbians organized a plot to murder the heir and his wive
▪ Under the Black Hand terrorist group
▪ Sent a young group to assassinate
o Assassination plot failed at first, bomb thrown at the motorcade killed no
one
o Royal route changed and happened to drive past and stop near Gavrilo
Princip, Bosnian Serb who had been part of the plot
▪ He shot the heir and his wife
• Why did this lead to war?
o 1961: Fritz Fischer writes Germany’s Aims in the First World War
▪ Argued that expansionist war goals grew out of imperialist
aspirations to create a massive, German-dominated Mitteleuropa,
or central Europe
o Some say that conflict was inevitable, whether it started in 1914 or not
• Alliance structure
o 1882: Triple Alliance forms between Germany, Italy, and A-H Empire
▪ Germany realized that France was an implacable foe
▪ Not really clear why they joined with these countries
• Italy wasn’t much of a power, A-H had issues
o 1894: French and Russian governments sign mutual defence treaty
▪ Largely because of the Triple Alliance
o 1902: Anglo-Japanese Accord
▪ Japan was building a huge navy in the Pacific, Britain was a naval
power
o 1904: British and French sign a loosely defined pact (Entente Cordial)
o 1900: All powers except Britain had huge conscript armies – millions of
men usually
▪ Men had to serve in the military, then they were part of the
reserves
Monday, January 9, 2017
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