Why Is The Somme Important

Over the last century, since it happened on the 1st July 1916, the Battle of the Somme has been viewed and qualified as one of the most significant battles in history. It was the first major offensive of the war against the main enemy, the Germans, in which British troops played the leading part. Many different historians in different times have almost opposite opinions/facts about what happened. However, they all agree on one thing: it’s significance. Whether it was due to failures, successes, seen as a ‘sheer bloody murder’ or a big advance in technology at the time, one thing can be fully confirmed: it was not ‘just another battle’. The impacts on the military and tactical development aspects of the battle clearly show that its significance wasn’t based just on successes and advances, but also in the failures and many lessons learnt. It could be said that almost all the failures taught more valuable lessons and were more significant on a long term scale than most of the successes at the start of the battle.

The Battle of the Somme is known as one of the most significant and disastrous battles of the history. When studied, we concentrate on the …show more content…
With a shockingly large number of losses and quite the amount of failures and lessons learnt, it has become a historic event of wide significance. The military successes and failures (specially on the first day of the battle) had a great impact on the battlefield and away in the home front both on the short and long term. People on the home front suffered effects such as shell shock, which was considered by many as ‘torture’ and would have preferably died. Tactical developments also had significance as with every failure or success new lessons were learnt and progress made. This led to a stronger army overall helping defeat the German Empire in the end and making the Battle of the Somme one of the most significant battles in