The Somme The Darkest Hour On The Western Front - 927 Words

The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front by Peter Hart is a narrative describing the battle at the Somme. It begins with a description of the war before for the action and the preparations that took place to prepare for this battle. It progresses quickly then to the opening day, with its goal of breaking through the German lines. The author then discusses the numerous battles that occurred over this four and a half months long battle until the stalemate ending. The author then offers an assessment of this brutal and futile military encounter; one of the bloodiest and deadliest battles of all time. The author, Peter Hart, is a British military historian. He attended Liverpool University, Crewe Alsager College, and Liverpool Polytechnic. He is an oral historian and currently directs the Imperial War Museum in London. He writes primarily about World War I and has authored eight books about this period of war. The beginning, the first few chapters of Hart’s book, is about the war before the battle of the Somme. The British has for the most abandoned their naval battle and moved into a battle over land that developed into a trench warfare system that stretched from Switzerland to the North Sea. The Allies knew this could not remain as it was, and developed a plan for stopping this war. That plan, according to Haig, was to wear down the enemy and then send a massive amount of troops in to break through the enemy line and win the victory. Finally, the plan was