Evaluation of Actions of General Douglas Haig
Some historians believe that General Douglas Haig was a butcher
because of the amount of people killed in action at the Somme. Others
believe he was not to blame as many of the failures were mostly not of
his creation. In truth, Haig is in the middle of this scale as the
evidence and reasoning I am going to present.
General Haig studied at Sandhurst and graduated. He was then sent to
India with his brigades, which were titled the seventh hussars. He
came back from India in 1904 and was made Major General. He was the
youngest ever. He was steadily promoted up the army ranks after this
and made the full General in 1914. After the war, Haig dedicated
himself to the Royal British Legion. He was made Earl Haig in 1919 and
the Baton Haig of Bermersyde. This shows to me that General Haig was
held in high regard by the British army and was obviously identified
as a success and was well respected.
While researching Haig, I discovered that he was not a fully qualified
general and he did not have the key experience. He came from wealthy
background and I think his families wealth had a bit to do with his
appointment.
When people discuss the failure of the Somme, they consider the first
day. This was when the British lost the most men on any one day in the
war. The figure came to 57,000. That is about 40 men a minute. Was all
this loss of life to do with Haig? Was it his fault? These are the
questions I am going to examine in this essay. My main points will be
that “Haig ignored reconnaissance” and to defend him “is the Somme
really a failure and was it his fault”. In my opinion, Haig is mor...
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towards the side which says Haig is not to blame. Purely because Haig
was not fully concentrated on the war as the French had distracted him
and his plans at Verdun and the Germans had the higher ground in the
Battle. With hindsight, we can see that Haig made mistakes and the
first day of the Somme was a disaster. However, we also have to look
at the limited options open to him. He was told to relieve Verdun and
this meant attacking the Germans. Haig made mistakes by altering
Rawlinson's plan, but he could not foresee that 30% of the British
shells would fail to explode. Haig was criticised for sending men to
capture enemy trenches, but no politician or military leader came up
with any alternatives in 1916. It is very telling that most people at
the time did not share the hostility later expressed towards Haig.
I believe that even though most of the sources tell us that Haig was a
Is it true Americans are rightfully notorious for creating inaccurate paradigms of what really happened in historical events Americans are tied to? Has America ever censored historical events in order to protect Americans innocent democratic reputation? After reading, “The Best War Ever” by Michael C.C Adams, I have found the answers to these questions to be yes. Some of the myths that Adams addresses in his book include: 1. America was innocent in world war two and was an ever acting protagonist in the war; 2. World war two or any war for that matter can be, or is a “good war” and bring prosperity to America; 3. War world two brought unity to Americans.
as facts go - Haig was that far away. The rest of the source is
His heart may have been in the right place, but he did not have the
arguing the case that Haig was a fool who cost the lives of too many
"A general who wears down 180,000 of the enemy by expending 400,000 men...has something to answer for." This idea from military historian C.E.W Bean is the main line of argument from traditionalist historians. They represent General Douglas Haig, British Commander-in-Chief of the BEF from 1915 to the end of the war in 1918, in a critical, damning light: a hopelessly incompetent general with a willingness to sacrifice the men of Britain for a few metres of muddy ground. On the converse of this interpretation is a revisionist perspective of Haig as a caring ‘architect of victory’, bringing long-term achievements with his perceptive strategies. With an examination of these two seemingly polemic perspectives and primary evidence, judgement, albeit a complex and multifaceted one, can be reached on both these smaller debates and of Douglas Haig’s role in World War One: villain or vanquisher?
At dawn of 19th August 1942, six thousand and one hundred Allied soldiers, of whom roughly
Over one million people were massacred within Auschwitz over the years that it served its main purposes;...
and militiamen. It spread to several states and 34 lives were lost. The combined forces
1,522 people died. Only 705 lives saved by the ship that found them, called the Carpathia
"World War 2 Casualties." World War 2. N.p., 17 Mar. 2010. Web. 05 Dec. 2013. .
"World War II by the Numbers." National World War II Museum n. pag. Web. .
Three and a half million men women and children died in concentration camps, after they had been worked half to death in the use of slave labour.
By the end of the war, about 5,000 men and 500 women had been charged
A. Some historians told me 200 million died. The smallest number I got from anybody was 60 million. There were travel accounts of people who were in the Congo -- that's a wide river -- saying, ''We could not get the boat through the river, it was choked with bodies.'' That's like a logjam. A lot of people died. Half of them died in those ships.