ABSTRACT
Detailed planning for the Somme offensive began on 1 March when Rawlinson was given command of the Fourth Army and told to submit a plan. However, neither Haig nor Charteris thought that the Somme would be an easy victory, and nor did they assume that the Entente would necessarily win the war by the end of 1916. His first success had come on 11 July when the Germans suspended operations at Verdun because of the pressure placed on them along the Somme. On 21 April Buchanan reported that the Russian military attache at Bucharest had prepared a draft military agreement with the Romanian General Staff for Romania's entry into the war. The policy-makers wished to end Germany's ambitions to be a world power and to disarm its navy, but few of them sought to disarm its army. Britain had entered the war in 1914 to preserve the European balance of power.
