Imperialism, War, and Revolution, 1881–1920 545died in offensives that failed to break the stalemate.
Heavy artillery bombardment could not produce a
breakthrough: Krupp guns virtually leveled the fortifi-
cations at Verdun without producing a breakthrough.
The German introduction of poison gas (such as phos-
gene and mustard gas) at the battle of Ypres (Belgium)
in 1915 and the British use of the first tanks in 1916
could not break the defensive lines. Two of the most
murderous battles of human history were fought on this
front in 1916—the German offensive at Verdun and an
Anglo-French counterattack along the Somme River—
but neither battle broke the defensive positions. The
fighting around Verdun cost France 542,000 casualties
and Germany 434,000, shifting the lines only slightly.
The French commander at Verdun, General Henri Pé-
tain, became famous for claiming that the Germans
“shall not pass” and a national hero when they did not.
(Pétain’s reputation, like Hindenburg’s, suffered greatly
when he became a postwar head of state.)
Even while the carnage at Verdun continued, the
British and French began their own offensive on the
Somme River. After seven days and nights of artillery
bombardment on the German trenches (see document
27.2), Allied soldiers went “over the top,” walking to-
ward the German lines, with sixty-six pounds of equip-
ment strapped to their backs. They marched into a
storm of machine gun fire, and by nightfall 40 percent
of the British frontline troops and 60 percent of their
officers were dead. In one day of fighting, the bloodiest
day in the history of the British army, they suffered
twenty thousand deaths (compared with an American
death toll of fifty-eight thousand in the entire Vietnam
War). When the Allies finally stopped their attack, they
had pushed the German lines back a maximum of seven
miles, at the combined cost of 1.2 million casualties.The Home Front
Civilian populations suffered terribly during the war.
Seven million civilians were killed, and in several coun-
tries (especially in the Balkans and eastern Europe)
more civilians were killed than soldiers. Civilian popu-
lations that were spared direct contact with the fightingDOCUMENT 27.2
Robert Graves: Life in the Trenches
Robert Graves was a British poet and author who was nineteen when
World War I began. He first won fame for his autobiography, pub-
lished in the 1920s, that covered the war years. This excerpt is from
that autobiography, entitled Goodbye to All That.
After a meal of bread, bacon, rum, and bitter stewed tea
sickly with sugar, we went... up a long trench to battal-
ion headquarters. The trench was cut through red clay. I
had a torch [flashlight] with me which I kept flashed on
the ground. Hundreds of field mice and frogs were in the
trench. They had fallen in and had no way out. The light
dazzled them and we could not help treading on them.
...
The trench was wet and slippery. The guide was giv-
ing hoarse directions all the time. “Hole right.” “Wire
high.” “Wire low.” “Deep place here, sir.” “Wire low.” I had
never been told about the field telephone wires. They
were fastened by staples to the side of the trench, and
when it rained the staples were always falling out and the
wire falling down and tripping people.... The holes were
the sump-pits used for draining the trenches. We were
now under rifle fire.... The rifle bullet gave no
warning.... [W]e learned not to duck to a rifle bullet, be-
cause once it was heard it must have missed.... In a
trench the bullets, going over the hollow, made a tremen-
dous crack. Bullets often struck the barbed wire in front of
the trenches, which turned them and sent them spinning
in a head-over-heels motion....
Our guide took us up to the front line. We passed a
group of men huddled over a brazier. They were wearing
waterproof capes, for it had now started to rain, and cap-
comforters, because the weather was cold. They were lit-
tle men, daubed with mud.... We overtook a
fatigue-party struggling up the trench, loaded with timber
lengths and sandbags, cursing plaintively as they slipped
into sumpholes and entangled their burdens in the tele-
phone wire. Fatigue parties were always encumbered by
their rifles and equipment, which it was a crime ever to
have out of reach.... [W]e had to stand aside to let a
stretcher-case past.
Graves, Robert. Goodbye to All That.London: Cape, 1923.