The Schlieffen Plan and Deadlock on the Western Front » Haig and the Western Front: Successes and Failures

Successes and failures on the Western Front

Sir Douglas Haig, a cavalry officer, took command of the British army in France in December 1915 and kept the job until the war ended. To judge him fairly, start with the whole picture of the Western Front up to the end of 1917.

Key terms:

• Commander-in-chief: the general in charge of a country's whole army in one area of the war.
• General Headquarters (GHQ): the offices where the commander-in-chief and his staff planned the battles.
• Learning curve: the idea that the British army steadily got better at attacking by learning from its mistakes.

The case against Haig

Critics have called Haig the 'Butcher of the Somme'. Later, people spoke of British soldiers as 'lions led by donkeys', meaning brave men led by foolish generals. The main charges are these:

• He aimed too high. At both the Somme and Passchendaele he hoped for a breakthrough, with cavalry riding into open country. It never came. His own generals had doubts. Before the Somme, General Rawlinson wanted smaller attacks with limited aims.
• He trusted the artillery too much. He believed the week of shelling before the Somme would destroy the German defences. It did not, and the infantry paid for it on 1 July 1916.
• He did not know when to stop. The Somme went on for four and a half months. Passchendaele went on into November 1917, long after rain had turned the battlefield into a swamp and the coast was clearly out of reach.
• He was out of touch. GHQ was at Montreuil, far behind the front line. Critics say Haig and his staff did not understand the conditions they were sending men into.
• The cost. The two battles together cost Britain and its Empire well over 600,000 casualties.

The prime minister from December 1916, David Lloyd George, believed Haig was wasting lives. Yet he did not remove him.

The case for Haig

• The problem was the deadlock, not one man. Defence was stronger than attack for every general. French and German commanders also failed to break through, and lost just as many men trying.
• He could not sit still. Germany was occupying French and Belgian land, so the Allies had to attack to drive it out. Haig also had to help his allies. The Somme was fought partly to save the French at Verdun, and Passchendaele partly to cover the French army after its mutinies.
• His army was new. In 1916 most of his soldiers were volunteers in their first big battle. Once a battle began, generals could barely control it, because telephone wires were cut and there were no radios to carry.
• Attrition worked. Germany could not replace its losses as easily as the Allies could. The German general Ludendorff later wrote that by the end of 1916 his army 'had been fought to a standstill and was utterly worn out'.
• He backed new ideas. Haig used tanks at Flers as soon as he had them, and afterwards asked for 1,000 more. Under him the army learned to use the creeping barrage and bite and hold. This is the learning curve.
• He won in the end. Haig was still in command when the British army played a leading part in the victories of 1918. You will study these in The Hundred Days and Why Germany Lost.

Views of Haig have changed over time. When he died in 1928, huge crowds lined the streets for his funeral. His reputation fell in the 1930s, when Lloyd George's memoirs attacked him. Historians still disagree today.

Exam-style question

Source A: From the War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, published in 1934. Lloyd George was British prime minister from 1916 to 1922. Here he is writing about Passchendaele. His figure for British losses is higher than most modern estimates.

'No soldier of any intelligence now defends this senseless campaign ... not even the first objective of the campaign had been attained ... Soon after the termination of the campaign, Headquarters realised that at an expense of 400,000 men, they had only forced the British Army into a more dangerous position than it was in before the battle commenced.'

Source B: From Sir Douglas Haig's official despatch on the Battle of the Somme, dated 23 December 1916 and published in the London Gazette. 'Those objects' means the aims the Allies were fighting for.

'The enemy's power has not yet been broken ... But the Somme battle has placed beyond doubt the ability of the Allies to gain those objects. The German Army is the mainstay of the Central Powers, and a full half of that Army, despite all the advantages of the defensive ... suffered defeat on the Somme this year.'

Extract C: From a modern history textbook (a practice extract written for this lesson).

'Haig must carry the blame for the failures on the Western Front. At the Somme and Passchendaele he kept attacking long after any hope of a breakthrough had gone, and won a few kilometres of mud at a terrible cost. Yet these battles also weakened the German army, and no general found a quick way to end the deadlock.'

Study Extract C. Extract C suggests that Haig was to blame for the failures of the British army on the Western Front. How far do you agree with this interpretation? Use Extract C, Sources A and B and your own knowledge to explain your answer. [16 marks]