I need to know how this battle changed the nation for a final culminating activity in history.|||The Battle of the Somme was perhaps one of the greatest defeats in British history. Even today, the true magnitude of this defeat is not taught in schools. There was a profound loss of confidence by the British people about their leaders after the war, that led to Munich. For American observers who witnessed this debacle, a firm resolve never to let British Generals command American troops. No American General would have attacked this way, we learned our lessons at Fedricksburg 50 years before. The British Generals apparently did not learn their lessons, because they repeated them again the next year.
The British Captains who would later be generals in WW2 never repeated these mistakes.|||The Battle of the Somme, whilst a bloodbath, was a British victory - the scale of the losses are taught to British scool children - I know - I taught my Year 9s about the battle only last month.
The lessons learnt from the battle were that tanks could be used to break through the enemy%26#039;s lines and that to the practise of walking into the enemy%26#039;s fire was suicidal. New tactics were called for - the use of the %26quot;rolling barrage%26quot;, this co-ordinated artillery with infantry, who followed the barrage as closely as they could, allowing the enemy no time to recover from the artillery.
