The Battle of Le Transloy was the last big attack by the Fourth Army of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in the 1916 Battle of the Somme in France, during the First World War. The battle was fought in conjunction with attacks by the French Tenth and Sixth armies on the southern flank and the Reserve/5th Army on the northern flank, against Army Group Rupprecht of Bavaria (Heeresgruppe Rupprecht) created on 28 August. General Ferdinand Foch, commander of groupe des armées du nord (GAN, Northern Army Group) and co-ordinator of the armies on the Somme, was unable to continue the sequential attacks of September because persistent rain, mist and fog grounded aircraft, turned the battlefield into a swamp and greatly increased the difficulty of transporting supplies to the front over the roads land devastated since 1 July.

The German armies on the Somme managed a recovery after the string of defeats in September, with fresh divisions to replace exhausted troops and more aircraft, artillery and ammunition diverted from Verdun or stripped from other parts of the Western Front. Command of the German Air Service (Die Fliegertruppen) was centralised and the new Luftstreitkräfte (German Air Force) was able to challenge Anglo-French air superiority with the reinforcements and new, superior, fighter aircraft. The German flyers further reduced the ability of the Anglo-French airmen to support the armies with artillery-observation and contact patrols in the rare periods of clear weather.

The German armies lost much less ground and had fewer casualties in October than in September but the proportion of casualties increased from 78.9 to 82.3 per cent of the Anglo-French total. Rain, fog and mud were lesser problems for the Germans, who had to carry supplies forward over a much narrower beaten zone and were being forced back onto undamaged ground. German bombardments on the few roads between the original front line and the line in October increased the difficulties of the British and French armies; the size and ambition of Anglo-French attacks was reduced progressively to local operations.

Every soldier endured miserable conditions but the Germans knew that the onset of winter would end the battle, despite the many extra casualties caused by illness. The British and French outnumbered the Germans and could relieve divisions after shorter periods in the line. Severe criticism of General Sir Douglas Haig and General Henry Rawlinson during and since the war for persisting with attacks on October, was challenged in 2009 by William Philpott, who put the British share of the battle into the context of strategic subordination to French wishes, the concept of a general Allied offensive established by Joffre and the continuation of French attacks south of Le Transloy which had to be supported by British operations. In a 2017 publication, Jack Sheldon translated overlooked German material on the ordeal endured by the German armies.

In September, Foch had managed to organise sequential attacks by the four Anglo-French armies on the Somme, which had captured more ground than any previous month and inflicted the worst monthly casualties on the Germans of the battle. During the Battle of Morval (25–28 September), the French Sixth Army (General Émile Fayolle) had crossed the Péronne–Bapaume road around Bouchavesnes, the Fourth Army (General Henry Rawlinson) had taken Morval, Lesbœufs and Gueudecourt in the centre and the Reserve Army (Lieutenant-General Hubert Gough), which became the Fifth Army on 30 October, had captured most of Thiepval Ridge on the left flank. On 29 September, General Sir Douglas Haig instructed the Fourth Army to plan operations to advance towards Bapaume, reaching Le Transloy on the right and Loupart Wood north of the Albert–Bapaume road on the left. The Reserve Army was to extend the attacks of the Fourth Army by making converging attacks on the Ancre valley after the Battle of Thiepval Ridge (26–28 September), by attacking northwards towards Loupart Wood, Irles and Miraumont on the south bank.

On 28 August, the Chief of the General Staff General Erich von Falkenhayn simplified the German command structure on the Western Front by establishing two army groups. Armeegruppe Gallwitz–Somme was dissolved and General Max von Gallwitz reverted to the command of the 2nd Army. Heeresgruppe Kronprinz Rupprecht controlled the 6th, 1st and 2nd armies, from the Belgian coast to the boundary of Gruppe Deutscher Kronprinz, south of the Somme. The emergency in Russia caused by the Brusilov Offensive, the entry of Rumania into the war and French counter-attacks at Verdun put further strain on the German army. Falkenhayn had been sacked from Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL) on 29 August and replaced by Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff. This Third OHL ordered an end to attacks at Verdun and the despatch of troops to Rumania and the Somme front. Colonel Fritz von Loßberg, Chief of Staff of the 2nd Army, was also able to establish Ablösungsdivisionen (relief divisions) 6.2–9.3 mi (10–15 km) behind the battlefield, ready to replace tired divisions.

German counter-attacks became bigger and more frequent, making the Anglo-French advance slower and more costly. After the Anglo-French attacks in mid-September, a comprehensive relief of the front-line divisions had been possible. On 5 September, proposals for a shorter line to be built in France were ordered from the commanders of the western armies, who met Hindenburg and Ludendorff at Cambrai on 8 September; the new leadership announced that no reserves were available for offensive operations, except those planned for Rumania. Ludendorff condemned the policy of holding ground regardless of its tactical value and advocated holding front-line positions with the minimum of troops and to recapture lost positions by counter-attacks. On 21 September, after the battle of Flers–Courcelette (15–22 September), Hindenburg ordered that the Somme front was to have priority in the west for troops. During September, the Germans had sent another thirteen fresh divisions to the British sector and scraped up troops wherever they could be found. The German artillery had fired 213 train-loads of field artillery shells and 217 train-loads of heavy artillery ammunition, yet the début of the tank, the defeat at Thiepval (26–28 September) and the 130,000 casualties suffered by the armies on the Somme in September, had been severe blows to German morale.

German artillery on the Somme slowly improved in its effect, when Gallwitz centralised counter-battery fire and used aircraft reinforcements for artillery observation, which increased the accuracy and efficiency of bombardments. The 2nd Army had been starved of reinforcements in mid-August, to replace exhausted divisions in the 1st Army and plans for a counter-stroke had been abandoned for lack of troops. Reinforcements for the Somme front in September began to reduce the German inferiority in guns and aircraft. Field artillery reduced its barrage frontage from 400–200 yd (370–180 m) per battery and increased its accuracy by using one air artillery flight (Artillerieflieger-Abteilung) per division. As the Germans had been pushed out of their original defences, Loßberg established new positions based on principles of depth, dispersal and camouflage, rather than continuous lines of trenches. Rigid defence of the front-line continued but with as few soldiers as possible, relying on the firepower of machine-guns firing from behind the front-line and from the flanks. The area behind the front-line was defended by support and reserve units, dispersed on reverse slopes, undulations and in any other cover that could be found, so that they could open machine-gun fire by surprise, from unseen positions and then counter-attack swiftly, before French and British infantry could consolidate captured ground.