1916 The Battle of the Five Empires: 15 May - 28 September 1916

The Battle of the Somme remains a controversial subject for the British to this day. Although it has been dissected, debated, and analysed in minute detail by scholars and historians, we still have only a partial picture and limited understanding of its true nature. Most accounts overlook the fact that the Somme was an Anglo-French offensive, carried out by French and British troops in almost equal numbers, led by Frenchmen. The battle was just one part of a much broader strategy, in which the Russians played a part, to defeat an actor that received little attention from most historians: the Austro-Hungarian empire. Drawing on new historical sources, published on the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme, and on unpublished personal papers of his ancestor, the General de Castelnau, second in command of the French army in 1916, Benoît Chenu places these events in a global context, highlighting their military and diplomatic interactions. He reveals a major strategic error made by the French leaders during the first week of the Battle of the Somme, depriving the Allies of victory, which would undoubtedly have brought about the end of war that year. These revelations shed new light on the contribution of the British to this war, which has often been underestimated in history.