STUDENT RESOURCE 4-B

Context and Overview of the Great War: SLAUGHTER

More soldiers were killed during World War I than any war before or since. Battlefields were like slaughter houses. Men were mutilated, dismembered and even disappeared as a result of the new weapons and improvement in existing weapons. The writings of men on both sides spoke of and had to get used to living with the body parts of friends and enemies alike. The destruction was so terrible and effective that at war's end, the bodies of over half the nine million were never found to be buried. The destruction that accompanied the "killing fields" in, behind and in front of the trenches on both fronts affected every person who had direct contact with it and the millions of civilians who knew those in uniform.

In early 1916, the stage was set for both sides to try to make the breakthrough on the battlefield that would assure each victory. Instead, by year's end, both sides would lose nearly one million men with very little change in the position of the front line trenches. The battlefields became "killing fields" and only one word "slaughter" accurately describes the extent of the killing, violence and destruction. Three battles exemplify the futility of the efforts on each side and the slaughter that typified the killing.

From February 21st to early December, 1916, a series of battles referred to as the Battle of Verdun was fought after the Germans made a surprise attack to capture this vital French fortress area and town. On the first day, the Germans fired one million shells and poisonous gas canisters along an 8 mile front. After ten months, over 40 million shells had been fired. In part because of the way the battlefield and night skies were constantly lit up by the blasts of the artillery, men on both sides referred to the region around Verdun as "the Furnace."

The German offensive was launched because the German High Command saw it as the last chance to defeat France before all the British forces had landed and because its major advocate, General von Falkenhayn decided, rightly, that Germany could not win the war by attrition or by fighting only on the defense. If Germany was to win the war, he reasoned, she had to win it soon and on the Western Front. After the battle, the front lines were nearly the same as when it began while over 300,000 French and Germans were killed and over 750,000 were wounded. For the French. Even today the efforts by the French at Verdun symbolize the strength and fortitude of her armed forces and the solidarity of the entire nation.

After a few short weeks, the battle took on a life of its own, with small groups of men on both sides fighting local battles in constant struggles for life and survival as well as for the little sections of land they were either protecting or trying to capture and secure. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides fought beyond all expected limits of human endurance under conditions that make the term "killing field" insufficient. Today the Battle of Verdun is considered by many military historians as the "greatest" and most demanding battle in history.

By mid summer 1916, the French demanded a British attack to pull part of the German army from Verdun. Without a distraction such as a major attack by the British, the French army was very likely to lose the region around Verdun with Paris being the next target. Being a good ally, the British General Douglas Haig ordered a British advance that began the Battle of the Somme for reasons that even today are not certain. While the need to attack to take pressure off the French at Verdun was evident, the planning that went into this offensive was not well thought out and what was done was done poorly or with inadequate materials. Because of the use of heavy bombardment of the German lines, British officers told their troops that they would march with ease into the German trenches where they would find all the Germans dead.

The actual results were very different from the expectations. For instance, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, July 1, 1916, of the 100,000 British who attacked, 20,000 were killed and over 40,000 were wounded to only 6,000 German dead. This day remains the single worst day in deaths and casualties in British military history. Many of the units were made up of men from the same community (or "Pals"), so that high death and casualty rates for a unit meant a large portion of men from that community were dead or wounded. For instance, 3,500 men from Manchester and over 5,000 from London died on July 1st within minutes of one another. Eventually this battle which did not change the front line trenches much at all involved over 2 million men along a 30 mile front and resulted in over 1 million casualties.

A year later, General Haig ordered another battle that become known as the Third Battle of Ypres (or "Passchendaele"). This battle began on July 31 and lasted to November 10, 1917. Once again General Haig failed to take advantage of massive destruction of German fortifications caused by nearly 1 million pounds of high explosives on June 7th. During the wettest summer in memory, the rains turned the land into mud fields which quickly and silently swallowed entire vehicles, horses and thousands of men, whether wounded, dead or alive. Men, vehicles and animals were seen slipping off the road and disappearing in seconds beneath the mud. Another danger brought by the rains were the filling up of the bomb craters, foxholes and trenches with water, drowning those too weak to escape, wounded or trapped.

By the end of the Battle of Passchendaele, the British forces, which included Canadians and others from throughout the Empire, defeated the Germans with a gain of only five miles and over 250,000 deaths and casualties. Still neither side was closer to defeating the other, especially on the battle field of the Western Front.

Throughout 1916 to mid 1918, the slaughter continued with no significant gains in territory by either side. However, with the results of the major battles of 1916 men on both sides questioned more openly and often the purposes of continuing the war. The reasons why they were fighting were no longer clear and with this doubt was added doubt about the abilities of their leaders. At the same time, their leaders planned more battles using many of the same strategies and even more destructive weapons. The leaders did not question that their men would continue to fight regardless of the conditions, results and the slaughter.

QUESTIONS

1. What information in this reading would justify the use of the word "slaughter" to describe the results of the fighting on the battlefields?

2. What would be a good definition of a "killing field"? What information in this description would suggest that the battlefields were often "killing fields"?

3. The three battles described are considered by many to be the most memorable of the war. What are two facts about each battle that would make it a "memorable" one?

4. Given the way each battle was fought and the results of each, to what extent were the soldiers on both sides justified in asking why the war was continuing?

5. From the information in this description and the video, what words would accurately describe the battle conditions during any one of these three battles?

6. Imagine you were a soldier in one of these three armies during 1916 and 1917. Which of these three battles would you have most wanted to avoid?

7. Imagine you were a friend or relative of a soldier in this war. Imagine further that the army informed you that it could not find the body of this soldier in order to bury it. What impact might this news have on you? Where might you go to remember this soldier?