On the 18th November 1916, the Battle of the Somme ended when German troops retired from the final large British attack at the Battle of the Ancre amid worsening weather. Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig called a halt to the operation, claiming the Somme offensive to have been successful.
By the end of the battle the Allies had advanced more than 6 miles into German-held territory, and as well as refining their use of aircraft had also introduced the tank for the first time. In his dispatch from the front, Haig stated at the end of the battle that “Verdun had been relieved; the main German forces had been held on the Western front; and the enemy’s strength had been very considerably worn down.” He then went on to say that “any one of these three results is in itself sufficient to justify the Somme battle.”
However, the Somme offensive and its enormous number of casualties that totalled more than a million men on both sides has drawn criticism ever since. For example Lloyd George, a fierce critic of Haig, wrote in his War Diaries that “over 400,000 of our men fell in this bullheaded fight and the slaughter amongst our young officers was appalling.”
German losses were also significant, however, and some historians have since claimed that the battle left Germany unable to replace its casualties like-for-like, which contributed to their ultimate defeat through a war of attrition. However it was to be another two years before the war finally ended, after Germany signed the Armistice of Compiègne on the 11th November 1918.
