The Battle of the Somme was a four-month battle fought between July and October 1916. In the book’s account, its scale captures the terrible human cost of the First World War: German losses alone exceeded the number killed in all four years of the American Civil War.

The Western Front in 1916

The battle took place amid a war in which industrial weapons had transformed the costs of combat. Machine guns, automatic rifles, massed artillery, poison gas, flamethrowers, aircraft, and tanks made older battlefield tactics and ideals of heroism seem inadequate to the killing. The Western Front stretched roughly 350 miles, from the North Sea to the Swiss border.

Casualties and the Stalemate

In 1916, the Western Front saw about two million casualties. Despite that immense toll, the line had hardly moved. The Somme’s four months of fighting sharpened the contrast between the scale of loss and the limited territorial change: German losses there alone surpassed the number killed during the American Civil War. The comparison conveys the battle’s place within a conflict whose slaughter continued year after year, while decisive movement remained elusive.