... led by Donkeys' especially as the majority of those dead were young men in their late teens or early mid twenties. There were long term and short term causes of the battle of the Somme. A short term cause was stalemate was caused by the battles at the begging of the war and a long term cause was Stalemate lead to new tactics which lead to the battle of the Somme. When the war started Germany had a plan called the Schlieffen plan to send German forces through Belgium into France and to quickly knock France out of the war, the theory was Russia would take a long time to mobilise. During that time they would knockout France in 6 weeks. But this plan failed when Belgium held of Germans enough for Britain and France to mobilise which gave a shock to the exhausted Germans and Russia also took less ...

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