Saw with uncomprehending eyes
A hundred of thy sunsets spill
Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice,
Ere the sun swings his noonday sword
Must say goodbye to all of this!
By all delights that I shall miss,
Help me to die, O Lord".
But on 21 February 1915, Germany pre-empts Allied plans by mounting a huge offensive in the west, against the historic French fortress city of Verdun. Verdun is of no great strategic value to France, but it is a symbol of French national pride, and the Germans guess (correctly) that the French General Staff will commit every man it has to Verdun's defence, rather than let the city fall. So the purpose of Germany's attack there is not to make a strategic breakthrough, but simply to cause the French Army such heavy casualties as to destroy France's will to continue the war: to "bleed the French Army white" in the words of German commander, General Erich von Falkenhayn.
On the Italian Front, Italy's preparations for a summer offensive to support Anglo-French efforts on the Somme are also derailed, in this case by an Austrian offensive in the Trentino region of the South Tyrol. On 15 May, two Austrian armies take the offensive against the Italian First Army south of Rovereto. The Austrians hope to break through the Italian left flank and push on all the way to Venice, thus cutting off the bulk of Italian forces deployed further east on the Isonzo Front, and forcing Italy to make a separate peace with the Central Powers. Determined Italian resistance denies Austria the swift and decisive victory she had hoped for, but by the beginning of June the Italian Army has suffered almost 150,000 casualties, and is forced into a fighting retreat.
Under the weight of the Verdun and Trentino offensives, both France and Italy appeal to Russia to bring forward her planned summer campaign, to draw German and Austrian reserves to the east, and so ease pressure on the French and Italian fronts. In response to France's request, the Russians launch a hurried offensive on 18 March against German defences around Lake Naroch, but this makes little progress, at a cost of 100,000 Russian casualties. On 4 June, the Commander of the Russian South-Western Front, General Brusilov, responds to Italy's appeal for help by launching a surprise attack against the southernmost 300 miles of the Austro-Hungarian line facing him. The Austrians are taken completely by surprise, and by the end of June Brusilov's four armies have advanced as far as sixty miles along the entire front, and taken 350,000 prisoners. The Russian advance continues until September, when it finally stalls in the face of impossibly long supply lines, and enemy reinforcements rushed in from the Western and Italian Fronts. The Brusilov Offensive serves its purpose in easing the pressure on France in the west, and forcing Austria-Hungary to abandon the Trentino Offensive, but the cost to Russia is enormous. Even before the offensive opened, the Russian Army had suffered five million casualties, and the additional loss of a million more during the summer of 1916 leads to unrest and indiscipline in the Russian ranks. Within months of the end of the Brusilov Offensive, the majority of Russian troops will no longer be prepared to support the war.
On the Western Front, the huge expenditure of French divisions around Verdun also significantly changes the nature of the proposed attack on the Somme. The planned French participation in the opening day of the offensive is reduced from the original thirty-nine divisions down to just five divisions, passing the main burden of the Somme offensive to the newly-recruited and hastily-trained British infantrymen of Kitchener's New Armies. To compensate for this lack of experience, the British prepare a detailed timetable for the assault, emphasising the role of the preparatory artillery bombardment, and minimizing the importance of individual initiative among the infantry by sending them "over the top" in close formation waves at one-minute intervals. But when the Battle of the Somme begins on 1 July 1916, the advancing infantry discover that much of the German frontline defences remain unbroken by the preliminary artillery bombardment. When the German defenders emerge unscathed from their deep shelters to re-man their machine guns, they find themselves confronted by British infantry battalions advancing slowly, exposed and in close formation across No-Man's-Land. In the bloodiest single day suffered by any nation during the Great War, the attacking British troops are cut down in their thousands: many do not get beyond their own wire, most do not see the enemy that cuts them down.
The Battle of the Somme continues, albeit in a series of smaller-scale offensives, for a further four-and-a-half months. When the battle finally peters out due to bad weather and exhaustion in November 1916, the Allies have advanced little more than eight miles on a 20-mile front. For these gains, the British Army loses some 450,000 men, French Army 150,000. The Germans, whose policy throughout the Somme offensive has been to hold on to every position at all costs, probably suffer as many as 600,000 casualties.
1916 is also the year of the war's greatest sea battle, as the German High Seas Fleet attempts to break out into the North Sea from Wilhelmshaven, where it has been penned in for the first two years of the war. At the Battle of Jutland, 31 May - 1 June 1916, the Royal Navy fights a running action against Admiral Scheer's battle fleet, most of which manage to escape back to home port as a result of their superior gunnery and construction. The Royal Navy loses 6,000 men and fourteen ships (including six cruisers) at Jutland, but the battle confirms that the German Navy cannot operate in the North Sea without risking destruction. The German High Seas Fleet does not venture out of port for the rest of the war.
The major battles of 1916 reflect the World War One of popular imagination, characterised by huge offensives of massed infantry going "over the top", only to be mown down by impenetrable defences. By the end of the year, all belligerents have suffered casualties of previously-unimagined proportions. On the Western Front alone, almost one million men have been killed during the second half of the year - an average of more than 6,600 deaths per day, 277 deaths per minute, or almost five men killed every second of every day. Casualties on such a scale bring the realities of the war home to the civilian population. A creeping rise in social and industrial unrest on all fronts (but particularly in Russia) indicates that for the first time since 1914 civilian workers are questioning whether the war really is a patriotic endeavour or, in the words of one British poet, "the blind leading the blind, and the deaf dragging the mute". Despite these first expressions of doubt and discontent , all belligerent nations remain officially committed to continuing the war until final victory. As the year ends, plans are already well underway for the British and French Spring offensives of 1917.
