While these historians have presented a convincing argument about British tactical development during the course of the war, one has to question their wider conclusions and hence their reinterpretation of the significance of the battle of the Somme. There can be no doubt that the British army developed tactically during the war and that by 1918 it was a much more effective force than in 1916. Further, there can be no doubt that the British army learned from its mistakes during the battle of the Somme, as it had from its battles in 1914 and 1915. However, it was not only the British army that underwent a learning curve, so too did the German army. Indeed, the battle of the Somme was an important learning experience for the Germans as well as the British.

The battle forced them to rethink fundamentally their defensive tactical doctrine: At the beginning of the battle, German regulations called for the holding of the first line of trenches at all costs, a tactic that cost them dearly. By the end of the battle, this inflexible defence had been abandoned for a more flexible defense in depth. The change in German defensive tactics occasioned in large part by the battle of the Somme countered effectively the advances made by the British in their offensive tactics. When the two armies met again in 1917, the results were almost identical to those of 1916. Massive losses for little gain. Indeed, one even has to question the ostensible British tactical prowess shown by the breakthrough of the German defensive line, the Hindenburg Line, in September-October 1918. This outwardly impressive position was largely built in 1916. As a result, it did not represent the cutting edge of German defensive doctrine and was more vulnerable to the new British tactics than a newly constructed position would have been.

Moreover, one also has to question the consequences of this British tactical development. The revisionists have tended to see the Entente victory in 1918 as a result of battlefield success, a success that was largely achieved by the increasingly tactically effective British army. Contrary to what German nationalists argued in the 1920s and 1930s, the German army was certainly defeated in the field in 1918. However, offensive action by the Entente armies was only one factor in this defeat. The German army had suffered extremely high casualties in its own offensives in 1918, losses that seriously weakened its ability to maintain its defensive position and perhaps more importantly losses that gravely dented German morale.

Even before its offensives in 1918, the German army had been badly weakened by the effects of the Entente naval blockade. This blockade had critically reduced the availability of important supplies, most notably food. Lack of sufficient food made German soldiers all the more susceptible to the influenza pandemic sweeping through all the armies still fighting in 1918. These factors led to a deep crisis in morale in the German army by late summer 1918, a crisis that was apparent from the thousands of deserters behind the German lines by late 1918. Thus, in their ‘hundred-days campaign’ in late 1918, the Entente armies pushed against a German army that was a shadow of its former self and largely incapable of continued resistance. Against such an enemy, even an army that had not developed at all tactically would have achieved battlefield success, as was shown by the victories of the much-less sophisticated U.S. Army.

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