Battle of the Somme Opens on Western Front
By mid-1916 World War I had stalemated into trench warfare along the Western Front. Britain and France planned a major offensive near the Somme River in France to relieve pressure on Verdun and break through German lines. After a week-long artillery bombardment, British forces attacked at 7:30 a.m. on July 1, 1916, with eleven divisions advancing across a fifteen-mile front. German machine-gun fire inflicted devastating casualties as many British soldiers were cut down in no-man's-land. French forces to the south achieved limited gains, but the British suffered nearly 60,000 casualties on the first day alone, the bloodiest single day in British military history.
Why it matters: The Somme offensive lasted nearly five months and introduced tanks to warfare while demonstrating the futility of mass infantry assaults against prepared defenses. It symbolized the industrial-scale slaughter of the First World War and shaped British and Commonwealth memory of the conflict for generations.