It's unfortunate that I found this book to be very poor; normally when I see anything by Cassell I buy it and treasure the history it contains.

This book, however, is not only difficult to follow but allows the reader very little understanding of just what this battle was about. If you are a military historian who just loves nothing but numerical facts, figures, and troop movements from one spot to another, maybe this is your book. I have a minor in history in college, and read much military history, but this book for my taste is either too much or not enough. I'm going to try to sell it on Amazon for it is no good on my shelf. I've just recently bought a new release on the Somme and believe it to be better, how could it be worse.

Pass this one by, gang.

Semper Fi.

This is just a so ridculous book that if not for all the waste of lives in the battle, you will laugh at the silly, baised polemics advanced by "noted" pseudo historian Sheffiled, who like Philip Warner, manages to turn all BEF defeats and fiascos into gallant victories and coups.

This book is an attempt to justify the British state's role before and during the First World War. But Sheffield misreads the war's origins, methods and results. Like all too many historians of this war, he lines up supporting one imperialist power against another.

He tries to justify the war as British self-defence, but it was a war between rival pirates, whose similarities are more important than their differences, and it doesn't matter which pirate drew the knife first. The rival historians are still quarrelling with Lenin, without honestly and openly confronting his analysis of imperialism.

Sheffield describes the Somme as "if not a strategic victory, certainly a strategic success." It's fortunate that he's a military historian at King's College London, not a general! He doesn't mention the battle's casualty figures - Britain and France lost 600,000 killed, Germany 650,000 - claiming that he is not into `the grisly process of comparing casualty statistics', although he does so for the battles of Passchendaele and Amiens. He notes, only in passing, that the British and French blockade killed 243,000 German civilians in 1918.

Overall, the Allies killed 3.5 million people, the Central Powers 5 million, so by Sheffield's criterion for `strategic success', the Central Powers won the war! He tries to claim that the appalling carnage was worthwhile, because it was a war for democracy. But in reality, millions were killed just so that Britain and France's ruling classes, not Germany's, should run the Middle East.

The First World War raises the questions - how can wars be prevented? How can they be stopped? Not by voting Labour! The Labour Party opposed the war, until it started, and then backed it when it began - just as now. Only the working class could have prevented the war, or stopped it early, by seizing power from the warmongers. The Russian revolution ended the war: revolutions in other countries too would have prevented the Second World War.

This book is not the `radical new interpretation' that the publishers promise: it is the conventional, ancient case for empire and war, in modern academic guise.

At first glance, the latest volume in Cassell's Field of Battle series - The Somme by Gary Sheffield - is a disappointment from the previous high quality in this series. Unlike the previous volumes, such as Cannae, Gettysburg and Tannenberg, The Somme is physically smaller and shorter. Furthermore, the color battle maps in the previous volumes have been supplanted with less appealing black and white maps. In terms of content, Professor Sheffield delivers a sound narrative of the Battle of the Somme from July-November 1916 (a lot to cover in only 168 pages). Yet while Sheffield is quite good in dealing with facts, his subjective opinions and conclusions are less certain. In short, Sheffield wants to build a case that the Battle of the Somme was not an "unmitigated disaster," but a qualified success, of sorts.

The Somme consists of six chapters, with 34 pages concerning the infamous first day of the campaign and three other chapters covering the follow-on battles. The author provides a detailed order of battle for the Commonwealth forces (although corps assignments are not listed), a much less detailed German order of battle (no corps listed), and nothing for the French. The bibliography and footnotes are also considerably less than other volumes in the series. The 12 black and white maps generally support the campaign narrative very well (although French attacks are only detailed on one map) but the lack of color makes it difficult to distinguish different advance lines, which differ only slightly in shading. The photographs are also good, if not particularly unique.

Professor Sheffield's hypothesis is broadly similar to Paddy Griffith's Battle Tactics of the Western Front (1994), that the British High Command had little choice but to launch protracted offensives to wear down the Germans and that these offensives, while costly, were not a mere waste of lives. While Sheffield admits that the Somme was essentially an attritional battle, rather than a breakthrough battle, he asserts that the campaign ended in an Allied success. Sheffield quotes an obscure German captain that, "the Somme was the muddy grave of the German field army," to support his claim that the British offensive successfully eroded the German army. Indeed, Sheffield goes so far as to make the silly claim that the German army was reduced to "a militia" due to heavy losses in officers and NCOs, and that the eventual German collapse in 1918 was a direct result of the pounding received on the Somme two years earlier. In the short run, Sheffield also uses the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in 1917 as "proof" that the Germans had been defeated on the Somme and that they could not withstand another such battle. However, none of these assertions really prove a German defeat or British victory on the Somme. If both sides suffered about 600,000 casualties on the Somme, it is hard to see how the much larger German Army could afford these losses less than the manpower-restricted British.

Sheffield also concurs with Paddy Griffith that the British Army learned a great deal of tactical knowledge on the Somme - albeit at high cost - that would contribute to success in 1918. Certainly the Battle of Morval and the capture of Thiepval indicated that the British had learned to use their artillery more effectively and that it was possible to seize limited objectives at modest cost in lives. However, if the British Army learned lessons on the Somme, so did the Germans, who adopted a new doctrine for "elastic defense" that would cost the Allies dearly in 1917. Thus while Sheffield explains that both sides learned valuable lessons on the Somme, he fails to demonstrate that the British gained a significant doctrinal advantage over the Germans.

There is a great deal that must be left unsaid to propose a theory that the British "won" the Battle of the Somme. Sheffield completely ignores the fact that the Germans began transferring over one million troops back from the Eastern Front in 1917 and that they were able to mount the powerful "Kaiserschlact" offensive in early 1918. There is not a word here of the "backs to the wall" period for the BEF in 1918, where the German Army was clearly not reduced to "a militia." Nor is there a word about the American contribution to victory, and even the French participation in the Somme is little covered after the first day. Finally, the author makes little effort to assess the damage done to the British Army by this four-month slugfest, other than to note the "amazing" resiliency of the British troops to fight on despite heavy losses and hardship. Sheffield even has the audacity to claim that since the British were losing inexperienced troops (the New Army) in exchange for German veterans, the casualties were not so serious for the British (whose own pre-war regulars had been destroyed in 1914).

In retrospect, it would be difficult for any sober analysis to view the Battle of the Somme as much of success and Professor Sheffield's hypothesis should be treated as polemical rather than objective. Aside from the disastrous first day of the offensive, the British lost tens of thousands of troops for insignificant objectives. In one case, the Australians suffered 23,000 casualties in a week - more than they suffered in months at Gallipoli - in the unsuccessful attempt to seize "Moo Cow Farm." Indeed, if one looks at the area carved out of the German defenses by the four month offensive, it is obvious that not a single major town, road intersection or key piece of terrain is located in this area. What Sheffield's book delivers is a good blow-by-blow account of a long campaign, but it fails to deliver a balanced assessment that this campaign drained both sides.

At first glance, the latest volume in Cassell's Field of Battle series - The Somme by Gary Sheffield - is a disappointment from the previous high quality in this series. Unlike the previous volumes, such as Cannae, Gettysburg and Tannenberg, The Somme is physically smaller and shorter. Furthermore, the color battle maps in the previous volumes have been supplanted with less appealing black and white maps). The result is a book that is considerably shorter and less graphically appealing than the previous volumes in the series. In terms of content, Professor Sheffield delivers a sound narrative of the Battle of the Somme from July-November 1916 (a lot to cover in only 168 pages). Yet while Sheffield is quite good in dealing with facts, his subjective opinions and conclusions are less certain. In short, Sheffield wants to build a case that the Battle of the Somme was not an "unmitigated disaster," but a qualified success, of sorts.

The Somme consists of six chapters, with 34 pages concerning the infamous first day of the campaign and three other chapters covering the follow-on battles. The author provides a detailed order of battle for the Commonwealth forces (although corps assignments are not listed), a much less detailed German order of battle (no corps listed), and nothing for the French. The bibliography and footnotes are also considerably less than other volumes in the series. The 12 black and white maps generally support the campaign narrative very well (although French attacks are only detailed on one map) but the lack of color makes it difficult to distinguish different advance lines, which differ only slightly in shading. The photographs are also good, if not particularly unique.

Professor Sheffield's hypothesis is broadly similar to Paddy Griffith's Battle Tactics of the Western Front (1994), that the British High Command had little choice but to launch protracted offensives to wear down the Germans and that these offensives, while costly, were not a mere waste of lives. While Sheffield admits that the Somme was essentially an attritional battle, rather than a breakthrough battle, he asserts that the campaign ended in an Allied success. Sheffield quotes an obscure German captain (who was Captain von Hentig anyway?) that, "the Somme was the muddy grave of the German field army," to support his claim that the British offensive successfully eroded the German army. Indeed, Sheffield goes so far as to make the silly claim that the German army was reduced to "a militia" due to heavy losses in officers and NCOs, and that the eventual German collapse in 1918 was a direct result of the pounding received on the Somme two years earlier. In the short run, Sheffield also uses the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in 1917 as "proof" that the Germans had been defeated on the Somme and that they could not withstand another such battle. However, none of these assertions really prove a German defeat or British victory on the Somme. If both sides suffered about 600,000 casualties on the Somme, it is hard to see how the much larger German Army could afford these losses less than the manpower-restricted British.

Sheffield also concurs with Paddy Griffith that the British Army learned a great deal of tactical knowledge on the Somme - albeit at high cost - that would contribute to success in 1918. Certainly the Battle of Morval and the capture of Thiepval indicated that the British had learned to use their artillery more effectively and that it was possible to seize limited objectives at modest cost in lives. However, if the British Army learned lessons on the Somme, so did the Germans, who adopted a new doctrine for "elastic defense" that would cost the Allies dearly in 1917. Thus while Sheffield explains that both sides learned valuable lessons on the Somme, he fails to demonstrate that the British gained a significant doctrinal advantage over the Germans.

There is a great deal that must be left unsaid to propose a theory that the British "won" the Battle of the Somme. Sheffield completely ignores the fact that the Germans began transferring over one million troops back from the Eastern Front in 1917 and that they were able to mount the powerful "Kaiserschlact" offensive in early 1918. There is not a word here of the "backs to the wall" period for the BEF in 1918, where the German Army was clearly not reduced to "a militia." Nor is there a word about the American contribution to victory, and even the French participation in the Somme is little covered after the first day. Finally, the author makes little effort to assess the damage done to the British Army by this four-month slugfest, other than to note the "amazing" resiliency of the British troops to fight on despite heavy losses and hardship (stiff upper lip time!). Sheffield even has the audacity to claim that since the British were losing inexperienced troops (the New Army) in exchange for German veterans, the casualties were not so serious for the British (whose own pre-war regulars had been destroyed in 1914).

In retrospect, it would be difficult for any sober analysis to view the Battle of the Somme as much of success and Professor Sheffield's hypothesis should be treated as polemical rather than objective. Aside from the disastrous first day of the offensive, the British lost tens of thousands of troops for insignificant objectives. In one case, the Australians suffered 23,000 casualties in a week - more than they suffered in months at Gallipoli - in the unsuccessful attempt to seize "Moo Cow Farm." Indeed, if one looks at the area carved out of the German defenses by the four month offensive, it is obvious that not a single major town, road intersection or key piece of terrain is located in this area. What Sheffield's book delivers is a good blow-by-blow account of a long campaign, but it fails to deliver a balanced assessment that this campaign drained both sides.