General Haig: Butcher or Misunderstood Man (1 Viewer)

[ChoppedLiver]

Suggestion - General Haig: Butcher or Misunderstood Man.

I am trying to plough through the material that is both net based and paper-based and conclusions fall roughly down the middle.

I have found a couple of online activities that are cute i.e http://www.activehistory.co.uk/GCSE/ww1/somme_sources.doc but again it comes back to the central questions:

1. Did Haig have any other choice?
2. Butcher or misunderstood?

Any thoughts?

CL

 

[1985guy]

id say hes misunderstood
people are using hindsight to judge Haig without taking into account that he was a man of his time.
He only knew one way to conduct troops and this was the way he was taught.

 

[frodo]

yeah even though there aren't many sources that can back it up i dont think any normal human being could actually deliberately kill his own men. i think he didnt get enough information to make the right decisions, nor the right training and he didn't learn fast enough. eg. in 1926 he was still writing about how good the horse is in battle and how it would never lose its importance

 

[GemmaHavok]

Complete Moron... I have my reasons but I'll go on forever. I know I have the benefit of heinsight but.... I still think he's a moron...

 

[Ziff]

Yes you have to judge history on its own terms

 

[1985guy]

Haig's experience was in places like south africa and indochina, where wars of attrition were highly successful.
On the western front his opposition was relatively unaffected by this attrition as the German army was supported completely by the home front, as Britain was.
I have to say he should have figured that out sooner than he did.

 

[imsooverskool]

BUTCHER!

im sorry but it just seemed to me that his insistence on sending his men over the top when it was clear that it was futile was simply him refusing to admit that his tactics were wrong- ie. he was an egomaniac

 

[ChoppedLiver]

'Haig the Butcher' is very much a 'take' on Haig after his death in 1928. After the war he spent most of his time on the welfare of ex-servicemen (instigated the Royal British Legion, Poppy appeal etc). Lloyd Geroge (once the war was won!) criticised Haig for his handling of events on the Somme and at Passchendaele. It's important to remember that the Somme was conducted as a result of extreme French anxiety for the British to do 'something' (anything!) to help relieve the pressure at Verdun (where the German army were trying to "bleed the French white", bleeding themsleves white in the process). It is arguable that, regardless of who was in charge, the results at the Somme would have been inevitable, thus tactics of the time were inappropriate. It is certainly not true to suggest that the British didn't learn as the war unfolded; Paddy Griffiths' book 'Battle tactics on the Western Front' is a superb unfolding of developing tactics.

CL

 

[enter~space~cap]

some people argue that haig was a misunderstood man and that all the blame for the war of attrition can be put into his subordinate such as Rawlinson. This rawlinson man was famous because he was prepared to risk high casualties, gave the troops extremely unrealistic traiining before the somme (they thought they could simply walk through as they did in the training), and he also gave Haig misleading information.

but thats just one example. For more info read 'British butchers and Bunglers of World War One' by John Laffin

 

[Jos]

Butcher. He was a highly experienced officer. And I agree with other person above that he was an egomaniac. Sure, perhaps he didn't have all the info that would have made his choices better but any idiot can see thousands of men getting killed with virtually no result is pointless and tragic.

 

[Ziff]

Here an essay I wrote for the hell of it The mark was like 90% or something, I wanted to be polemic lol

 

[enter~space~cap]

haha madd, i'll be the first one to download it thankyou very much

 

[enter~space~cap]

also haigs conduct on WWI can relate to his personality. Apparantely he is very shy when communicating to a group of people (military elites, politicans, media, etc). This may explain the breakdown of interraction he had with his men, dwindling the chances of him actually reliasing the conditions on the front especially has he rarely made trips to them.