Earl Haig

pinno

Villain, psychopath or gallant leader/hero?

Apt at this time.

bompington

All of the above, of course. Just because someone is a famous historical figure it does not make them any less complex than any other human being.
It's easy to be "historicist" and say that we would have done things oh-so-different if we had been around then. In my opinion (I would estimate 90% ignorance, 'cos I am better informed than most) the likes of Haig were simply overtaken by technology - they just weren't prepared for the industrialised slaughter of 20th century warfare, and when it happened in front of them, cognitive dissonance kept them from being able to deal with it.

pinno

Interesting concept: cognitive dissonance kept them from being able to deal with it.

Yes, I agree. We must be careful not to subject him and the era to a flawed moral relativism. However, the naval blockade did more to end the war than any loss of life on the frontline.
A few points:
Lloyd George was very concerned about the loss of life in early 1916 but was held to political blackmail and it prevented him of facilitating a change of tactic.
Read the diaries (many forms) of French and Haig. French accounted a campaign where 800 men went over the top and only 27 survived without a single mention of the loss of lives and it is all written in terms of "...they were very brave to the last...", "..what courage they showed...".
The British generals were so arrogant they did not co-operate with the French.
Ludendorf to Hindenberg "The British fight like lions" "Yes, but they are lead by Donkeys".

Personally, I think that they were incompetent, arrogant heartless oafs who repeated the same mistakes ad nauseum to no avail and the consequences were tragic.

nathancom

Wasn't half the issue that Britain had never really had an army to talk of prior to WW1. Britain was nearly beaten by 40,000 farmers in the Boer war and in the run up to the outbreak of war in 1914 the army numbered about 150,000 compared to well over 1 million for the Germans and similar numbers of the French. The British empire was based on naval not land power and we couldn't just turn into a land power overnight however many young men were recruited.

A lack of training, a lack of a real army administration, logistics and strategic experience tied to jingoistic over confidence and fresh soldiers left the army ripe for destruction. Haig is really the figurehead for this disaster but far from the entire story. The led by donkeys quote seems very apt.

pblakeney

Weren't foot soldiers always considered to be simply collateral?

mr_goo

One of the things that really upsets me are the 306 soldiers executed for cowardice or desertion. I am surprised that so few were convicted and dispatched. When you consider the tens of thousands that watched their fellow comrades being mown down or blown to bits on ill judged decisions from the military hierarchy dozens of miles from the front line.

adamfo

Less than 2% of the British population died in WW1 and circa 4.7% of males aged 16-45. The percentages were far higher in some other countries in WW2.

adamfo

pinarello001 wrote:

Ludendorf to Hindenberg "The British fight like lions" "Yes, but they are lead by Donkeys".

Alan Clark's biographer believes he invented the Ludendorff-Hoffmann attribution.There is no proof it was ever said indeed his friend Euan Graham recalled a conversation when Clark said "well I invented it".

In more recent times the historian Richard Holmes said of the alleged 'donkey' conversation between Hindenburg and Ludendorff :

"there is no evidence whatever for this: none. Not a jot or scintilla"

BelgianBeerGeek

pinarello001 wrote:

Interesting concept: cognitive dissonance kept them from being able to deal with it.
....
Personally, I think that they were incompetent, arrogant heartless oafs who repeated the same mistakes ad nauseum to no avail and the consequences were tragic.

^this. Britain had spent many years fighting colonial wars, but they could have learnt lessons from other conflicts. Barbed wire and trench warfare, rapid communication by telegram for example all occurred in the American Civil War.
Doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result is the definition of stupidity. However, British generals were not alone. French and German generals also employed largely the same attritional tactics. In the case of the French it was nearly their undoing.

dabber

For a contentious view of proceeding I can recommend Gordon Corrigan's "Mud, Blood and Poppycock".
A thought provoking read.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mud-Blood-Poppycock-MILITARY-PAPERBACKS/dp/0304366595

RDW

BelgianBeerGeek wrote:

Doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result is the definition of stupidity.

"Would that be the plan to continue with total slaughter until everyone's dead except Field Marshal Haig, Lady Haig and their tortoise, Alan?"

Giraffoto

PBlakeney wrote:

Weren't foot soldiers always considered to be simply collateral?

Verdun was fought solely as a war of attrition - the German generals fed reinforcements in too slowly to achieve a breakthrough, because they wanted to "Bleed France white".

But that was a rare case. Every other offensive was launched with an objective in mind. Even the infamously ill-advised first day of the Somme offensive was fought with the idea that the preliminary bombardment would make it possible to march troops forward at a walking pace and they’d just take possession of the enemy lines. The idea of uncaring officers who sent hundreds forward in the hope that one or two would get there is a later invention by revisionists writing fifty years after the events. Among the many things we owe to everyone involved is a duty to look at events with a more intelligent and nuanced analysis than a series of soundbites

pblakeney

Giraffoto wrote:

PBlakeney wrote:

Weren't foot soldiers always considered to be simply collateral?

Verdun was fought solely as a war of attrition - the German generals fed reinforcements in too slowly to achieve a breakthrough, because they wanted to "Bleed France white".

... Among the many things we owe to everyone involved is a duty to look at events with a more intelligent and nuanced analysis than a series of soundbites

This is true.
But I was referring to centuries of history, not one war. It certainly appears that way up until WWII, at least.
I wonder what the acceptable collateral was for D-Day, and what lessons had been learned.
Or Vietnam.
Or..... Well you get the picture.

Paulie W

I'm no expert on this but I think there was a lot more tactical diversity in WWI than most people think. There was also a steep learning curve in terms of use of new technologies in the context of battle on a scale rarely before if ever seen but there is evidence that commanders did learn and modified tactics accordingly.

pblakeney

I made the mistake of trying to find out about the acceptable collateral for D-Day.

Why was it a mistake to find facts? Because I didn't, but I did find this nugget which really depresses me.

http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/sho ... php?t=7497

Mankind really depresses me.
I need to get out on my bike now, return to my family and just savour life.

mr_goo

PBlakeney wrote:

I made the mistake of trying to find out about the acceptable collateral for D-Day.

Why was it a mistake to find facts? Because I didn't, but I did find this nugget which really depresses me.

http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/sho ... php?t=7497

Mankind really depresses me.
I need to get out on my bike now, return to my family and just savour life.

I wasn't aware of any of the crimes committed by the allies post D-Day. But I guess that now reading of this, it now comes as no surprise that it happened.
Interestingly an article further down discusses the current conflict in Gaza. Stating that civilian/collateral damage was acceptable during the Iraq and Afghan conflicts of the last 10 years. However the Palestinian issue is so delicate that any civilian death gets condemned due to its political sensitivity.

DesB3rd

Modern wars between combatant who lack a major technological, tactical or resource base dissimilarities are unusual (what’s the likelihood of all those factors lining up?) and are invariably bloody, protracted and indecisive. The only example that springs to mind is the Iran-Iraq war, which similarly revolved around each side massing resources, launching a grand offensives then mutually pouring in reserves until the bag was empty and the fighting petered out. The respective militaries commands involved, assuming both show competence (by which I mean they’re both composed of reasonable versed, educated & willing individuals), can only have so much influence on the situation; so it was in WWI, replace Haig et al with different people and the difference would be in the detail only.

N.B. Lloyd George – it gives me no end of satisfaction the extent to which his contemporary attempts to self-pen his place in history have unravelled and revealed him as an unscrupulous character assassin who was certainly no less frequently at fault during WWI than were his military underlings.