1916-11-18 Somme Ends

.18th November 1916: Battle of the Somme ends with a German withdrawal - HiPo > .

On 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.

By the end of the battle the Allies had advanced more than six miles into German-held territory. The Somme had offered the opportunity for them to refine their use of aircraft and had also introduced the tank for the first time.

Following the withdrawal of the German troops Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig called a halt to the operation, claiming the Somme offensive to have been successful. In his dispatch from the front, Haig stated 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 went on to state that ‘any one of these three results is in itself sufficient to justify the Somme battle.’

The Somme offensive, and the enormous number of casualties that totalled more than a million men on both sides, has drawn fierce criticism ever since. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George 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 high, 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 following Germany’s signing of the Armistice of Compiègne on 11 November 1918.