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The First World War lasted four years and claimed the lives of some 10 million soldiers. But what was the deadliest single day of the Great War? The answer might come as a surprise - and a useful reminder. From 1914 to 1918, in Europe, Africa, Asia and on the high seas, the Great War claimed the lives of around 10 million soldiers from dozens of nations. That's about 6700 lives lost every single day for more than 1500 days. But of course not every day was the same - in any given 24 hour period a section of the front might be very quiet, or the fighting might rage so fiercely that
tens of thousands were killed in just a few hours. Some infamous dates stand out in popular history books and for history buffs: the first day of the battle of the Somme in 1916, the peak of the fighting in the battle of the Frontiers in 1914, or the start of the German Spring Offensive in 1918. But do we know what was the single bloodiest day of the war, or can we know? The best answers we have lie in the casualty records left in the archives by the armies from each belligerent state. After a battle, each unit would report on how many soldiers were killed,
wounded, or missing, and these reports would then be tabulated by staff officers to keep track of overall losses and fighting power. But often these records are incomplete, inaccurate, or combine several days losses together. And since each country's army kept its own records, and sometimes these records are not easy to compare or have since been lost like when the German archives were destroyed in 1945 or when many Russian records were lost after the revolution. The data we have doesn't let us say which day was bloodiest for all armies combined, but what we can do is focus on which day was the deadliest for
one single country - and it turns out recent findings have upended conventional wisdom. So let's start with one of the most infamous days of the Great War - July 1, 1916. Britain had a small army when the war began, but by 1916, it was ready to launch its first major offensive at the Battle of the Somme. The British army suffered some costly days in the Great War - like at Passchendaele, Ypres, or in the German offensive of 1918. But worst of all was July 1, 1916. By mid-1916, Britain's new volunteer armies had been trained and sent to the front lines in
France and Belgium. It had taken time to build up British military strength, and the French had been doing the bulk of the fighting since 1914. Now was Britain's moment to take its share of the load and contribute to an offensive on either side of the Somme river alongside the French army. But not everything went according to plan - the German offensive at Verdun put the French under such pressure that the British had to take on a larger role in the attack. The British hoped that they could rely on artillery to win - if their unprecedented weight
of artillery fire could smash the German trenches and dugouts before the infantry went over the top, victory would be assured. British troops trained to advance at a steady pace across No Man's Land, since it was expected most German defences would already be destroyed. For a week the British guns pounded German positions and turned the landscape into a mass of shellholes and broken trenches. On July 1, 1916, Britain's New Army went over the top. But the German defences were mostly intact - many of the British shells had been duds, and German bunkers had protected many of their men from the shelling. As the British advanced across No Man's Land,
the Germans were able to come up into their trenches and put their machine guns to work, with deadly results. Some British units were broken up and stopped before even reaching the German trenches. Other British units managed to penetrate into the German lines but were then stuck in exposed positions and couldn't communicate with their commanders on the British side. A Scottish soldier remembered the hours after a failed advance: "We began to work [our way] towards the communication trench, but owing to the lie of the ground we were badly exposed and I at length found myself the only living occupant of that
corner. [.] I found my platoon officer, Lieut. MacBrayne, lying shot through the head. Of the others of my platoon I could get no news, except those I saw lying dead or wounded." (Arthur 45) The British did make some limited gains that day, but not as much as the French did on their part of the battlefield, and at much higher cost. July 1, 1916 was Britain's deadliest day not just in the First World War, but in all of British military history: 19,240 men were killed and about 38,000 wounded. The battle of the Somme went on for more than four months, but no day was
as costly as the first. That's part of the reason why the Somme and July 1916 have had such an important influence on British memory of the war - there have been countless books, films, and television series, and thousands of Britons still visit the battlefield every year. That said, July 1 on the Somme was not the bloodiest day of the war for a single army. For the British Dominions, by the way, Newfoundland had its worst day of the war on July 1, 1916 as well, losing 85% of its men killed or wounded. The Australians suffered their most
intense losses on July 19, 1916 at Fromelles with 2000 dead from a single division. For Canada, it was the 2400 dead at Vimy Ridge on April 9, 1917 - the first day of Canada's most famous victory. Germany's worst day of the war, in terms of dead, was probably the first day of the Spring Offensive, the Kaiser's Battle - the final German offensive to win the war in March 1918. The Germans had transferred fresh troops from the East after Russia had signed a peace treaty, and struck the British near where the British and French sections of the front met. The German
plan was to split the Allies apart and crush the BEF, and to do it they used Stormtrooper tactics: groups of well-trained infantry who entered British lines and penetrated as far as they could, bypassing strongpoints for the regular infantry to mop up. On March 21, the very first day, the Germans lost about 11,000 men killed in action - most of them well-trained infantry who could not be replaced. German officer Ernst Junger remembered a close call: "The attacking waves of infantry bobbed up and down in ghostly lines in the white rolling smoke. Against all expectation a machine-gun rattled at us from the [British] second line. I and the men with me jumped for a shell-hole. A second later there
was a frightful crack. [A comrade] had a hole through his arm, and assured us, groaning, that he had a bullet in his back. We pulled off his uniform and bound him up. The churned-up earth showed us that a shrapnel shell had burst at the level of our faces on the edge of the shell-hole. It was a wonder we were still alive." (Junger, 142-143) Even though at first the Germans made huge gains and created a crisis in Allied command, in the end the offensive failed and was called off two weeks later. For some of the other states, the totals are harder to estimate due to poor record-keeping
or lost archives. For Italy, one contender for bloodiest day might be the first day of the Battle of Caporetto on October 24, 1917, when Austro-Hungarian and German troops smashed through the Italian army. Or it might have been June 29, 1916, when the Austro-Hungarians launched a phosgene gas attack on Monte San Michele and killed nearly 3000 Italians while poisoning 4000 others, along with some of the Austro-Hungarians themselves. In the end, that attack did not significantly change the front lines in the area. Austria-Hungary's bloodiest single day of the war is hard to pin down given the chaos of some of
their early battles. It might have been in August 1914, when the Habsburg armies rushed into Galicia to attack the Russians, only to stopped and suffer a crushing defeat by the more numerous and better coordinated Russian armies. Another possibility is February 27, 1915, when the already weakened Austro-Hungarians launched an offensive against Russian positions in the Carpathian mountains in the dead of winter. On that day alone, the Austro-Hungarian 2nd and 3rd armies reported 40,000 missing, many of whom had been killed in the fighting or died of hypothermia in the
snow. A third possibility would be June 4, 1916, when the Russians began the Brusilov Offensive, which ultimately broke the fighting power of the Austrian army. Russian casualty records are also in a state that makes it hard to reconstruct accurate figures. It is possible though, that the Russian army suffered its worst day during the 1915 Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive, when the combined armies of the Central Powers pushed the Russian army out of Poland and inflicted hundreds of thousands of losses. Or maybe it was a day during the intense
opening phase of the Brusilov Offensive in 1916 - but we will never know for sure. France suffered proportionally greater military losses than other Great Power during the First World War, so it's no surprise that the French army is usually mentioned in discussions of the costliest day. The war began in 1914 with a frightful two months for the French army. Faced with the full might of the Germans and with limited British support due to the small size of the BEF, the French had to bear the brunt of the fighting and dying. Their plan was to attack the Germans along the border, but these assaults did not go as planned in what became known as the Battle of the Frontiers from August 20-23.
French troops attacked the Germans from Belgium to Alsace, but the larger German armies threw them back as part of their move to encircle Paris according to the Schlieffen Plan. French soldier Georges Veaux, described how his division advanced into devastating German artillery fire: "The shooting began to be heard with fury, then faded away. The Germans, who had advanced into the Fosse plain, ran awai y from our troops. […] Once they reached the road to Ham, they deployed in long lines of skirmishers and disappeared behind a fold in
the terrain. But then the heights on the other side of the Sambre were crowned with lightning; the German artillery attacked; shrapnel shells burst everywhere on the plain." (Veaux 54) The French offensive failed at great cost, because the Germans were able to bring to bear superior firepower, and because the French lacked the artillery ammunition and tactics to overcome the Germans' effective use of their own heavy guns. The single worst day for the French, or for any power, was August 22, 1914, when about 27,000 men were killed - or so it was thought for many years.
As part of the 100th anniversary commemorations of the war in 2014, the French government put the death cards of the 1.4 million French soldiers killed in the war in an online database called Memoire des hommes. It was this digitization project that paved the way for a re-assessment of the fallen on each day, and thanks in part to the efforts of the online French military history community, we estimate that the number of dead on August 22, 1914 was probably closer to 21,000. Still a terrible number, but much lower than previously believed.
So if it wasn't the British on July 1, 1916, and it wasn't the French on August 22, 1914, what was the deadliest day - and why did so many soldiers from one country die on that particular day? One stat that has been clear is that 1915 was the deadliest year of the war for the French army. The British army was growing but until mid-1916 the French were responsible for all the major operations in the west. At the same time, Russia suffered a major defeat in 1915, the Italians made little progress against the Austrians, and the Anglo-French assault on Gallipoli failed. Allied
factories were still gearing up production which meant that artillery and especially shells were in short supply. This meant the French army's task on the western front was going to be tough. In May, the French attacked in the northern Artois region, and Moroccan troops briefly seized the crest of Vimy Ridge before losing it again. Throughout the summer, the French launched smaller attacks according to General Joseph Joffre's idea of "nibbling away" at the enemy. But the major push would come in the fall. Many Frenchmen had high hopes for the great offensive of September 1915, as did General Joffre in his message to the troops:
"Soldiers of the Republic, […] the hour has struck for us to launch an offensive to defeat the [enemy.]. Your élan will be irresistible. It will carry you forward in one initial effort right through the fortified lines which oppose you and up to the enemy battery positions. You will permit them neither rest nor repose until victory has been won." (Sheldon 469-470) The French plan was to break through German lines on either side of the Noyon salient, throw the Germans out of their trenches and force them to fight in the open. If no breakthrough happened, the French wanted to continue "nibbling" and wear down the Germans.
After three days of bombardments against the German lines in Champagne, half a million French troops went over the top on September 25, 1915 - the beginning of the 2nd Battle of Champagne. In some areas, French guns had pulverized German defences, and groups of French infantrymen broke into the lines. Sous-Lieutenant Jean Duclos was in charge of a machine gun platoon and recalled the start of the attack: "The heart tightens at the moment of getting out of the trench. Forced voices shout "forward"; a burst of energy and here I am running in the yellow grass, my revolver in my hand. The bayonets are shining all around me. some German machine-guns are cracking, their bullets are raising small flakes of dust,
hitting the ground under our steps; and we are still running." (Duclos 175-176) German Corporal Oswald Eichler experienced the battle from the opposite perpsective: "It was soon obvious that gas shells were exploding around us, and we had to react at once. Ignoring the heavy small arms fire, we dashed across to the soldiers' dugout and grabbed for our gas masks […] I decided to take five men and investigate along the communications trench. We did not get far. Men in blue helmets had closed right up to the dugout and were attacking with hand grenades." (Sheldon 472-473).
The French managed to break through along a 12-km sector of the front and took thousands of Germans prisoner. Some French units utilized new tactics of fire coordination with artillery, gas, enhanced reserves to exploit a breakthrough, and a liberal use of grenades among the assaulting infantry. Others relied on more dated forms of warfare to achieve a breakthrough - the 5th French Hussars received a mistaken report that the infantry in their sector had cleared the German trenches, and charged the German line at the gallop: "Immediately, […] the entire column came under heavy machine-gun fire, while groups of Germans,
looking terrified, came out of the trench with their arms raised. The Hussars jumped to the ground and rushed into the Trench. Everything that resisted was shot or knocked out. The two machine guns that stopped the progress of the Infantry were silenced." (Historique du 5e Hussards) Despite the relative success of the first days, the going was difficult and losses were heavy. The 5th Hussars lost 140 horses in that charge; the 2nd Zouaves regiment lost 24 officers and 1100 men killed or wounded crossing the 200 meter-wide No Man's Land. At the same time the French went over the top in Champagne,
they were also attacking again in Artois. The northern arm of the French offensive in fall 1915 included an attack in the Artois region starting on September 25, the 3rd Battle of Artois. This time, the British played a supporting role with an attack at Loos. A few hours after the British attack began, French troops advanced towards the German-held strongpoint of Vimy Ridge in the pouring rain. Even though the British had distracted some German reserves, the French shortage of artillery meant their attack did not have the firepower to break the German lines.
2nd Lieutenant Robert Desaubliaux's unit advanced over a field covered in corpses from the fighting in the same area in December 1914. He watched as the first wave began to return to French trenches after failing to get into the enemy trenches: "In spite of the bombardment, mines and trench mortars, there is still wire, that deadly obstacle that cannot be crossed under fire. […] In front of me, [a sergeant] collapses, his hands clutching his stomach. […] I try to bandage him: but his intestines hang from two wounds. He convulses and rolls in the mud, but [his movements] soon slow. He cries like
a little child. […] Other wounded men arrive and contemplate the agony of their comrade. But his suffering does not move them. They think only of themselves and how to escape." (Desaubliaux, 175) French troops forced a few breaches in the German lines, but did not come close to breaking through, or even making it as far as they had in May. General Ferdinand Foch ordered limited French attacks in Artois until mid-October. He did not want to give the British the impression the French had given up in the sector, and he felt that scarce munitions had to be conserved for successful operations in Champagne.
But the offensive in Champagne did not gain much ground after the penetrations of the first days. Ironically, these limited successes turned into more French dead, since false rumours of a complete breakthrough caused French commanders to feed more and more units into a meatgrinder. Sous-Lieutenant Duclos is caught up in the slaughter and the confusion in a captured German position: "In front of me, invisible enemy machine guns are waking up and we are flooded with bullets. It's like being surrounded by a swarm of bees. I try to see from where these bullets come from, which kill and wound several soldiers around me,
I suddenly feel a violent blow to my face, and my nose starts to bleed; it is a bullet which has just taken off the tip of my nose […] (Duclos 178-179) Joffre finally called off the Champagne offensive on October 14. The fall campaign had failed because the French army was not yet able to solve the riddle of trench warfare: they could sometimes get into the German trenches, but they couldn't break through them. They lacked heavy artillery and ammunition, struggled with command and control in the fog of war, and they had not yet refined infantry tactics to minimize losses.
The double offensives in Artois and Champagne helped make 1915 the bloodiest year of the war for France. In those two campaigns, they lost 81,000 wounded and 63,000 killed or went missing, and most of the missing were dead. In Artois, the French lost 2684 killed or wounded for every square kilometer of ground they gained - an unsustainable hemorrhage. And the bloodiest day of all - for France or for any single state in the First World War - was probably the first day of the double offensive on September 25, 1915. According to the French death
cards database on the Memoire des hommes website, about 23,000 French troops were killed that day, not including those mortally wounded who died later. That's more deaths than any other day, anywhere, as far as we can tell from the evidence that we have access to today. The 3rd Battle of Artois and the 2nd Battle of Champagne don't play a prominent role in the public memory of the First World War, internationally or in France. When we think of the symbolism of the lives lost, we often think of the Somme or Verdun - but going beyond the symbols is a critical part of understanding history. The fact that the bloodiest day of the war happened during battles that many of us have never heard of,
that don't get made into movies, and that aren't the focus of armistice day commemorations should make us all reflect on how we remember the Great War and the 10 million men whose lives it took. The casualty numbers of the first industrial war of the 20th century were a shock to societies around the world. The Second World War would topple these numbers and end with one of the deadliest inventions in human history when the US dropped the newly developed atom bomb over Japan. The other world powers needed to keep up with this development because they understood
the strategic implications of such weapons of mass destructions. In the Soviet Union Stalin accelerated the development of nuclear weapons and also nuclear energy as a whole. If you are interested in the Soviet nuclear program, you should check out the first episode of our new documentary series Red Atoms where we explore the USSR nuclear story from its origins. In later episodes we will also explore the Chernobyl disaster and much more. So, where can you watch Red Atoms? On Nebula, a streaming service we are building together with other creators.
Nebula is a great place where you can enjoy exclusive content from us and other creators and support our work directly. If you can't get enough of Cold War history, check out Mustard's "Tip of the Spear: The B-2 Spirit" about the iconic stealth bomber. Oh, and all our regular videos are also available there ad-free and usually earlier than here on YouTube. Your Nebula subscription now also includes access to classes where you can learn new things from Nebula creators. Check out Joseph from Real Life Lore and his class about using maps effectively - we took a lot of notes for this for our videos and for Red Atoms in particular.
If you follow the link in the video description or the pinned comment below this video to sign up for just you can get access to Nebula for just $30 for an entire year. Watching on Nebula supports us directly and allows us to produce documentaries that we couldn't put on YouTube. We'd like to thank James Taub for his help with this episode. And if you are watching this video on Nebula, thank you so much for the support. As usually you can find all our sources for this video in the video description below. I am Jesse Alexander and this is a production
of Real Time History - the only history channel that knows that if the battle of Champagne happened somewhere else it would be known as the battle of sparkling wine.
