The Somme and Normandy compared

[phil andrade]

Let me reiterate, Bernard, that the 250,000 deaths from 1939-45 contained a very much higher proportion of sailors and airmen than was the case in 1914-1918. If army deaths only are counted, the Great War took five times as many British lives as the Second World War.

Increased lethality of weapons entails greater dispersal of manpower, which can reduce casualties. Robert has emphasised this.

We've mentioned the Hundred Days of 1918....consider the Hundred Days a hundred years earlier ; the Waterloo campaign of 1815.

Black powder muzzle loading weapons - feeble by comparison - but the carnage they inflicted in small areas over short time periods was appalling. Forty or fifty thousand men killed or wounded on June 18th 1815 : how many on June 6th 1944 ? Fewer than fifteen thousand ? And that, Siege Gunner, allows for British, Americans, Canadians, French and Germans.

Phil (PJA)

[phil andrade]

I know nothing about Normandy casualties but I am dubious of the value of comparing a seaborne landing and the mobile fighting in the bocage which followed, with the trench fighting on the Somme. One thing I am confident of, staistics never lie. Only people do that. The oft quoted statement re lies and statistics is on a par with the statement that ' history is bunk' and about as useful in a reasoned debate.

Another saying :

Figures can't lie but lies can figure.

Phil (PJA)

[SiegeGunner]

And that, Siege Gunner, allows for British, Americans, Canadians, French and Germans.

I wasn't thinking of the landing phase, Phil, but of the later fighting inland. It may be unfair, in which case I apologise in advance, but it seems to me that you know far more about numbers than you do about the experience of the men on the ground. Men with a knowledge of horrific battles in history and recent experience of the Eastern Front said that the fighting in Normandy was as dreadful as anything they had ever seen or heard of, and that's good enough for me. The statistics may not stack up for Normandy being more costly than the Somme, but in terms of intensity and moment-by-moment awfulness, I still think that Normandy takes the biscuit.

There are two factors that may colour my thinking differently from yours. The first is that I view the Normandy campaign from the German perspective, and the second is that I have never been much impressed by the magnititude of the losses on the first day of the Somme because a member of my family lives on the edge of the battlefield of Towton, which puts later battles and 'first days' into perspective.

[centurion]

I know nothing about Normandy casualties but I am dubious of the value of comparing a seaborne landing and the mobile fighting in the bocage which followed, with the trench fighting on the Somme. One thing I am confident of, staistics never lie. Only people do that. The oft quoted statement re lies and statistics is on a par with the statement that ' history is bunk' and about as useful in a reasoned debate.

Especially when you get the quote wrong. Henry Ford did not say "History is Bunk" what he did say to the Chicago Times was "History is more or less bunk" which is more subtle as indeed some is and some isn't (distinguishing is the difficult bit). Statistics (if not faked) do not lie but they can mislead. There is a tired old saying ' guns do not kill people, people do' to which the rebuttal should be 'yes very often people with guns') in the same way people may use statistics to mislead , sometimes unintentionally. My first and second degree courses involved a fair amount of stats and I would say that they can very easily mislead.

I would say that the fighting in the bocage was anything but mobile and did have similarities to the Somme after the climactic first day. You take one defensive position only to have to do it all over again with another and so on and so on (the mountain top is always over the next ridge to use a metaphor). In the case of the Somme it was yet another set of trenches in Normandy another bank with a hedge on top just across from the field you've just taken.

[SiegeGunner]

Normandy was not all 'bocage'.

[phil andrade]

Sometimes, while reading Jack's book The German Army at Ypres 1914 , I was tempted to think of the stories of Normandy. German soldiers attacking in Flanders in October and November 1914 were confronted by a patchwork of small fields, hedgerows, copses and hamlets. The drainage systems exacerbated the hotch potch nature of the ground. The Germans struggled to make headway, and were confronted by sudden bursts of fire at close quarters. It does bring the experience of bocage in 1944 to mind.

The way that numbers are presented makes profound impact on historiography.

Siege Gunner, you infer - albeit in a gracious, apologetic way - that I am a number crunching nerd .

Please do not imagine that, because I hope to make valid statistical comparisons about casualties, I am unaware of the human dimension. This is a horrible excercise, dealing with people in extremis....but then that could be said about the study of warfare in general.

Normandy was horrifically intense, as Beevor has recently emphasisied. Apart from the sufferings of the Germans, whose perspective you are keen to countenance, there was an appalling toll taken of civilians, which had not happened on anything like the same scale in the 1916 Somme fighting.

My late father in law was an infantryman in the Caen sector. He landed on the beaches when he was nineteen. I have some awareness of the ordeal of the men on the ground, let me assure you.

Phil (PJA)

[MartH]

The fighting in Normandy did not have one thing the Eastern Front had: the horrific cold and the impact it had on wounded mens bodies. My dear old mum of 87 was a young nurse on the Eastern Front and was at Tali-lhantala. (July 1944), but what she really remembers is the terrible impact of cold on wounded men before then.

[phil andrade]

That's a good point of discussion....evacuation and treatment of wounded in the two campaigns.

It almost goes without saying that the fate of the British wounded on July 1st 1916 was dreadful.....Keegan implies that several thousand of the 21,000 British fatalities that day were wounded men who were left on the field to die, and that they might have survived - or at least died in a degree of comfort - if things had not gone so badly on such a large part of the front attacked.

As to the rest of the battle, I wonder how the evacuation system fared,

Not much is said about this in relation to Normandy. It's tempting to imagine that the system in 1944 was running smoothly, but there must have been episodes when things became a bit shambolic. I would also guess that the intense close quarters combat, combined with the lethally effective weapons, meant that those soldiers who were struck down stood a higher chance of being killed outright than they had been in 1916. OTOH, the men of 1916 were more likely to be left lying where they fell, and hence hit repeatedly...that's suppositional on my part, I confess.

Siege Gunner might give us the story of the sufferings of the wounded in Normandy from the German perspective. Pretty damned awful, I should think. The firepower arrayed against the Germans in Normandy was fantastic, from land, sea and air. The ordeal of their soldiers must have been horrific, and this was surely intensified for the wounded.

I think it might be revealing if we took a look at the Canadian experience. Some of the bitterest fighting in Normandy took place between Canadians and the more fanatical elements of the German army, with atrocity being the hallmark. Compare that with Regina Trench in October 1916 - another nightmare - and we might see how the casualty rates ( more especially the fatality rates) stacked up.

Phil (PJA)

[charlesmessenger]

Perhaps worth adding that divisions were in the front line for significantly longer periods in Normandy than they were on the Somme, where they could be sent to quieter parts of the line to recuperate.

Charles M

[phil andrade]

How long did it take before the beachead at Normandy has expanded and deepened sufficiently to allow for quieter parts of the line, or a rear area, to develop for recuperation ?

For how long did it resemble Anzio, or ANZAC ?

The Somme, for all its horrors, at least afforded some sort of routine in regard to the rotation and recuperation of units.

Phil (PJA)

[Robert Dunlop]

Anecdotal accounts note that the rear areas were quieter from 2-3 days into the Normandy landings. This reflected, in large part, the massive Allied air superiority. It prevented the Germans from taking systematic counter-preparatory measures. The German defenders were thrown in to contain the initial breakouts from the beaches. It was not possible to quickly bring in the large numbers of heavy- and super-heavy artillery that characterised defensive actions on the Western Front.

Robert

[phil andrade]

Thank you, Robert....you do have this exquisite knack of quietly and firmly helping me to see things clearly !

Off topic, but with a certain tentative relevance, since we've been discussing the fate of the wounded...have you encountered a book titled Guthrie's War which deals with the famous surgeon of the Napoleonic War ? I think the author is Michael Crumkin, a retired surgeeon, and bearing in mind your background I was wondering whether you might recommend it.

Phil (PJA)

[Robert Dunlop]

Phil, I haven't come across the book. The Napoleonic Wars is not an area of interest. Sorry I can't be of more help.

Robert

[PhilB]

It doesn`t change the statistics but it should be borne in mind, in relation to the losses, that the Normandy campaign resulted in a breakout by late July whereas the Somme didn`t after 4 months.

[squirrel]

But the Normandy bridgehead didn't have an endless line of several sets of heavily wired trenches and strong points all the way round it.

[horrocks]

It is a terribly interesting debate that you touch upon Phil, and one that I find myself particularly drawn to as a rather inept armchair student of both campaigns. I am sure that it is one that has been dealt with thoroughly by historians both within and without this forum, but at some risk of broaching the notorious 'can of worms,' I find myself drawn not only towards suggestion of comparison between the Somme and Normandy, but also towards your mention of comparison between Haig and Monty.

Whilst it is perhaps easy to seek comparisons between the two campaigns, it is important to bear in mind too the important distinctions. The Somme was launched towards the beginning of the war, or at least that point at which it had become a war of siege rather than movement. The Normandy campaign took place towards the end of WWII, and only after the Axis forces had been ground down in North Africa, Italy but of course most importantly on The Eastern Front. Secondly, The Somme took place at a point of what has been recently described as 'technological stasis,' which is to say that totally unprotected infantrymen were pitched against sophisticated, multilayered defences based around barbed-wire, machine guns and, most importantly, artillery. The tank was introduced during the campaign, but was not yet to be sufficiently refined to being close to decisive. Normandy involved the use of the combined arms of naval gunfire, tanks, artillery and air power which, though continuously and rapidly evolving, had been tested through 5 years of warfare. The infantry at the sharp end of the Somme relied primarily on runners and wired telephones, both notoriously vulnerable to the fixed barrages that the Germans would place behind the attacking troops, to call in artillery strikes onto positions which might be holding up an advance. In Normandy forward air and artillery observation officers travelling up-front in armoured vehicles could vector in instantaneous, pin-point strikes by radio, both from increasingly mobile artillery that could move forward rapidly behind the attacking troops, and by calling down air from the standing 'cab-ranks' of Typhoon and Thunderbolt aircraft. Artillery counter-battery techniques were infinitely more refined in Normandy than they had been in The Somme.

Basic infantry tactics were also quite different. The relatively undertrained infantry of the New Armies were simply instructed to leave the trenches and walk forward in the open and in extended order towards the German trenches, a hazardous undertaking that relied initially for its success on the ratio of numbers of attacking waves against that of the distance across no-man's land – if the attacking troops were not upon the enemy trench faster than the troops that manned it had come up from their deep shelters following the lifting of the barrage, they would be cut down. During the campaign, the concept of the creeping barrage was developed, but was only effective when on a sufficiently wide front that it would also suppress machine-gun fire from the flanks. In Normandy there was increasingly effective infantry-tank co-operation, and the infantry were trained in fire and movement.

For all of the reasons given above, German defensive techniques in Normandy could not possibly rely upon the fixed, entrenched and wired techniques so effective on The Somme – they would have been rapidly destroyed and overrun. Instead, defence was elastic and in-depth, often relying on makeshift battlegroups set around perhaps a single assault gun, a carefully sited anti-tank gun, or a group of tanks, and mobile infantry using armoured half-tracks. The German troops were highly trained and versatile – battlegroups, commanded perhaps by an NCO, would be made up on the spot from stragglers, cooks and drivers to restore a situation. Allied troops in Normandy were notoriously poor at preparing for the inevitable German counter-attack that would almost always come in after a position had been taken – in The Somme such counter-attacks were often equally inevitable, but it was standard practice for the British infantry to turn captured tranches around as soon as they had been taken in order to prepare for the onslaught.

Whilst the basic infantry armament was virtually identical on both sides as it had been in 1916, there was a far greater utilisation of newer automatic weapons, particularly the light machine-gun in the form of the successor to the Lewis, the Bren, the MG34 and the MG42, notorious for its devastating rate of fire. The German forces enjoyed technological superiority on the ground in the form of the MG42, the Panther and Tiger tanks which were notoriously invulnerable to the 75mm with which most of the (under-armoured) Allied tanks were equipped, the multi-barrelled Nebelwefer, and of course the dreaded 88mm anti-tank/aircraft gun, with which the defenders were liberally equipped and which could destroy any Allied vehicle long before it had itself come within range of the attacker's gun. The Allies enjoyed vastly superior industrial capacity, which meant that, unlike the Germans, equipment losses were rapidly made up. Most of all, the Allies had total air superiority, which allowed them to interdict German resupply, and ultimately almost all daylight movement of men and vehicles was at best extremely hazardous, although German anti-aircraft techniques and weapons rendered Allied aircraft extremely vulnerable to being shot down.

In the case of The Somme, the technology was more equally balanced on each side. The British initially enjoyed superiority in the air, leaving our aircraft at liberty to spot for the artillery. However, towards the end of the battle and with the advent of new German machines, the British gradually lost that advantage. The tank was too undeveloped to yet be decisive.

So where are the similarities? In both cases the British were junior partners in a coalition. Both were battles designed to break-through and break-out, and both became battles of attrition in which the human cost to both sides was horrendous. In the case of Normandy, the techniques of attrition ultimately succeeded as the British and Canadian divisions eroded the once fabulous German armoured units on the Caen front, whilst American attacks kept the thinly stretched defenders off-balance in the west, culminating in the US breakthrough in Operation Cobra. In The Somme, the technological stasis prevented Haig's dreamed-of breakout – the technology available simply did not permit the infantry to break through multiple fixed defence lines. Here, of course, lies another much chewed-over debate, in that the attrition of German forces was the point of The Somme. However, it is undisputed that whatever the greater strategic goals, Haig had wished and planned upon breaking through the German lines.

It is undeniable that in both campaigns the British commanders made fearful mistakes - in the case of Haig that of over-delegation in that he allowed far too great a degree of autonomy to his Corps and Divisional commanders in the planning of the many attacks that took place between the set pieces of July 1^st, 14^th, Flers-Courcelette and so on, resulting in the inexcusable, repetitive and appallingly wasteful expenditure in humanity, whilst Monty by contrast stands accused of being over-cautious and over-controlling. That he was priggish and often boastful of successes that had yet to be achieved is arguably less relevant than the fact that his caution with the lives of his men may well have ultimately proven more costly than would have greater displays of boldness.

One other comparison is surely worthy of note – in both campaigns the German forces were as superb, brave and professional in defence as the Allies were, sadly, often unprofessional, and, dare I say, sometimes even inept in the attack.

[phil andrade]

A superb rendition, Toby, thanks....cogent, concise and candid, and, of course, controversial.

The question that intrigues me is whether, in our atempt to dispel the exaggerations and caricatures of the Somme - and, by extension, the Great War itself - we have downplayed it too much. I have encountered statements in several military histories that play to this theme...the combat experince of Anglo- American soldiers at the Sharp End in NW Europe 1944-45, was, they insist, more lethal than that of their fathers. Now I believe this to be wrong.... almost a case of reverse sensationalism. Corrigan has presented statistics which, far from being challenged, have been accepted by Sheffield and others, Never let it be said that Normandy was a soft option ; to present it as more lethal than the Somme for the British and Canadian infantryman is pushing things too far.

Phil (PJA)

[squirrel]

..........One other comparison is surely worthy of note, in both campaigns the German forces were as superb, brave and professional in defence as the Allies were, sadly, often unprofessional, and, dare I say, sometimes even inept in the attack.

I agree with PJA - a concise and well considered piece of writing that is a pleasure to read.

My only quibble would be with the last sentence as quoted - the Germans got it wrong at times as well; First Ypres for instance.

[phil andrade]

The "Genesis" of this flawed statistical analysis of the death rates in Normandy compared with those of the Somme is, I suspect, the school of historians that is striving to present Haig's generalship in the best light.

However far we agree with this - and I, for one, subscribe to the view that Haig was a first rate commander - the argument to bolster Haig's reputation is somewhat compromised when these comparisons of fatality rates are exposed as erroneous.

Edit : And do Haig didn't win the vote at the National Army's competition for Britain's greatest General ! Victory shared by Wellington and Bill Slim. There we go. What can you expect from the distracted multitude ?

Phil (PJA)

[horrocks]

A superb rendition, Toby, thanks....cogent, concise and candid, and, of course, controversial.

The question that intrigues me is whether, in our atempt to dispel the exaggerations and caricatures of the Somme - and, by extension, the Great War itself - we have downplayed it too much. I have encountered statements in several military histories that play to this theme...the combat experince of Anglo- American soldiers at the Sharp End in NW Europe 1944-45, was, they insist, more lethal than that of their fathers. Now I believe this to be wrong.... almost a case of reverse sensationalism. Corrigan has presented statistics which, far from being challenged, have been accepted by Sheffield and others, Never let it be said that Normandy was a soft option ; to present it as more lethal than the Somme for the British and Canadian infantryman is pushing things too far.

Phil (PJA)

Thank you Phil. I was a little fearful of placing my neck on the block, for I am neither as well read nor informed as many, indeed I suspect most, on this forum. The well known remark about a little knowledge rings loudly......!

I strongly agree with your comments. I do suspect that revisionism can tip the balance too far, and that this has quite possibly been the case with The Great War, and specifically in the context of this thread, of The Somme. Corrigan makes much of how trench conditions have been exaggerated, of how cleanliness and order were the norm, even of how there was very little rainfall during the campaign, yet any rereading of the many, many first hand accounts of the appalling conditions quickly and universally experienced as the battle developed must convince otherwise - there are simply too many truly hideous tales of putryfying bodies and bits of bodies in battered trench walls and floors, repeatedly buried and re-exhumed by shellfire or digging parties, of corpses lying out in no-man's land for months, of the random casualness of death, the fear, the utter exhaustion, and of the filth, the stench and the mud, for us not to give them credence.

So too we should not ignore or belittle the equally numerous accounts of the dreadful conditions experienced by those who endured the appalling, sudden violence of the fighting in the bocage. Here there lies an interesting contrast between the two campaigns already touched on in the thread - units were rotated through the front line in The Somme far more quickly than was the case in Normandy, where many divisions on both sides remained on the line throughout the 11 odd weeks of the campaign, with only brief periods of rest. The effect of this, combined with the then relatively nascent concept of what we now refer to as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder/Syndrome resulted in massively higher numbers of battle fatigue cases in Normandy than had been the case with The Somme, where the act of removing oneself from the line would usually be considered an act of cowardice in the face of the enemy. Battle fatigue became a huge burden on the system in Normandy - I don't have the figures to hand, but at periods it constituted a significant proportion of the casualty rate, becoming almost endemic within some units during the more evolved attritive stages of the battle - it quickly dissipated once the battle became mobile following the American breakout.

[horrocks]

I agree with PJA - a concise and well considered piece of writing that is a pleasure to read.

My only quibble would be with the last sentence as quoted - the Germans got it wrong at times as well; First Ypres for instance.

Thank you too Squirrel. Yes, you raise an important point, albeit drawing on an example from outside the topic of this thread - it should be argued that it is easier to defend from a concealed or protected defensive position than it is to expose yourself in attacking that position. The German forces suffered dearly in both Normandy and The Somme when they exposed themselves in the attack, and in Normandy certainly they often attacked clumsily - the desperate and costly assault on the Polish positions on The Mace during the final days of the breakout from The Falaise debacle is a perhaps slightly glib example to cite. But so too it is true that even in the attack they often showed greater skill and flexibility than did the Allied forces - the use of nightime infiltration was a technique often employed to great effect by the SS Panzergrenadiers in the bocage - when the British adopted similar tactics as at Mont Pincon, they too often suceeded. In The Somme the Germans of course employed specialist units to conduct rapid counterattacks, 'der Gegenstoss,' though in fairness it must also be accepted that this professionalism in defence was developed after Ludendorff, the architect of the new doctrine of 'elastic defence in depth,' took over from von Falkenhayn in August. Prior to that the German policy had been to overman the fire trenches, thereby accepting unecessarily high casualties.

[squirrel]

Thanks Toby - a well considered reply.

[phil andrade]

Another aspect of this is the question as to whether British commanders in Normandy - and elsewhere in WWII - felt constrained by the memory of the Somme and other Great War battles, and consequently refrained from displaying the "push" that American generals were more willing to engage in. This notion is hardly sustainable if it turns out that Corrigan and Sheffield are right in their contentions about British infantry casualties in Normandy and NW Europe.

I suppose that in 1944 British commanders were very aware of a shortage of infantry ; in 1916 Haig might have been more comfortable countenancing the necessary prodigality that the Somme was bound to entail. This is not to suggest that Haig was complacent or callous about the prospect of massive casualties, but that he was better equipped, physchologically and materially, to incur them.

Phil (PJA)

[horrocks]

Another aspect of this is the question as to whether British commanders in Normandy - and elsewhere in WWII - felt constrained by the memory of the Somme and other Great War battles, and consequently refrained from displaying the "push" that American generals were more willing to engage in. This notion is hardly sustainable if it turns out that Corrigan and Sheffield are right in their contentions about British infantry casualties in Normandy and NW Europe.

Phil (PJA)

I think it is widely accepted that Monty's perceivedly somewhat cautious nature, indeed that of many senior British officers in NW Europe, was a direct consequence of what they had themselves witnessed in The Great War, and as I alluded to above, overcaution was not necessarily successful in the long term in preserving life. Hesitation almost invariably resulted in longer, more drawn-out campaigns, ultimately at greater cost. The price, for example, that the 21st Army Group paid for halting after the fall of Antwerp and failing to cut-off the retreat of the German 15th Army across the Scheldt and through Walcheren was arguably significant in extending the war into mid-1945. Should we not be cautious too of further myth-creation in crediting all American Generals with the 'push' that was personified by the likes of Maxwell D Taylor, Anthony McAuliffe and of course George Patton? Given that Monty, Bradley and Patton all advocated strong, concentrated and rapid thrusts into Germany in the fall of 1944 whilst the Axis forces remained briefly off-balance, it might be argued that the most cautious of all was the Supreme Commander himself, distinctly American, who for better or worse advocated the 'broad front' strategy.

[PhilB]

It might be argued that the most cautious of all was the Supreme Commander himself, distinctly American, who for better or worse advocated the 'broad front' strategy.

Which might also be an echo of WW1 as Foch won the war with it in 1918!