B). Out of Sources B and C, I would trust source C more. My reasons for this are that a soldier at the scene of action wrote Source C. He must have been a witness to the incident because he was a private so he must have been in the action or at least watching it. Haig wrote Source C and he was a few miles away from the battle so he would have had no clue of what was going on. He would only have a report of the situation through other officers passing the information back to Haig. Haig would have most probably received the truth of what was going on in the battle and then realised that he had made a mistake and then couldn’t face the truth and acted with cowardice and lied to the people back at home. As in many other cases the private could have disliked Haig since Haig was higher than him and wanted to really put him down for his mistakes by letting every one what was going on. I would still find source C more reliable because, as told in the background information, many people did die in the attack on that morning. In source B it could have been true that the men were in splendid spirit, for they were told that “the big push” was going to be fairly easy. They must have been pleased to find out that they were going to finally get some action because they joined the army for this and they were finally going to get it. They had been waist deep in the mud for a long time so they were in good spirits when they realise that they would be getting in the action.
C). I think these sources are irrelevant to historians studying Haig and the battle of the Somme because they are not factual pieces of information. They are merely cartoons made up by people back in England. Source D says that this scene was from a T series and it is a comedy, which are only based on the truth. They were only made to bring back what happened in 1916 and nothing that happens in that picture actually happened in the First World War. I think that source D is made up from what people were stating e.g. lots of people after the First World War started arguing that he only sent all those men forward to move his drinks cabinet six inches closer to Berlin, this in fact was only a joke against Haig and was put in this cartoon. It is a bit obvious that Haig would not have wanted to just to move his drinks cabinet a few inches closer to Berlin. The British officers did not actually realise that the British were going to get “a good old British style thrashing” because they believed because of the artillery and bombardment that they would confidently defeat the German lines. Also Haig was not actually a Field Marshall until the end of the war.
Source F was also written by British magazine. There was never actually any account of this being done. It was clearly made up by somebody who knew what happened at this kind of a briefing. There is no indication where it says where the source came from that it actually occurred so it was probably another way of making fun of the General and trying to prove that he was wrong and lazy. From my knowledge of war and the military, normal soldiers didn’t expect a general to join I the fight because they knew how important they were to the army.
D). Since source G is coming from the Germans, I think that with source H backing it up, they both prove source F wrong. Source F isn’t entirely wrong because it was true that Haig’s strategy was quite bad but G and H are right that the morale of the German troops and their confidence was decreasing slowly. Source F is correct about the fact that Haig didn’t care as long as he lost more German lives than the British and that he sent men to their deaths, but this did however prove to the German army that they were not going to give up and they were laying down a lot of pressure on the Germans which did, as stated in Source G, lower the chances greatly of the a German victory and once it had got inside the German soldiers that there was going to be no victory, this lowered their morale which makes them fight even worse. I don’t think that source H is correct by stating that the British were inspired by their commanders because they did not actually like their superior commanders for staying back and watching the battle. Source H proves source F wrong because source F basically says that there were no advantages to that battle, but it did actually help the French resistance from crumbling as stated in source H. However, if the French resistance did fall, there would have been less chance of the British armies winning the war.
Over all I would agree that Haig was one of the main architects of he war because even though there was a great loss of men, if this battle was not fought, then the war would have been waging on a lot longer which would make the people at home in England more fed up of the war and we would have lost confidence.
E). Source I was written just after the Battle. Haig would have still been around then so I think it differs from Source J, which was written when Haig was dead, because Lloyd George did not want to criticise Haig at the time. Lloyd George was the secretary for war at the time of the battle so he might have wanted to tell the people that the battle did a lot to change the war because he might have got the blame along with Haig for all the lives that were lost in the battle. He might have wanted to raise the hopes of the people in England and said this so that they would have understood why there were so many deaths. He most probably had a lot of respect for Haig and didn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. He changed his opinion when he wrote source J in the 1930s because people were not in such shock from what happened at the Somme because it was a long time ago and people would have go over it. Haig was dead by then and he could say whatever he wanted to say to criticise Haig. There was no chance of the case being brought up again of who was responsible for the deaths of so many soldiers because the battle was so long ago and people would have not been so bothered so Lloyd George would not be getting the blame.
F). It is hard to make an answer from all these sources, but from reading them my opinion is that Haig was not an uncaring General, I think that he just didn’t know what he was doing and didn’t think and was very eager to try and be heroic and gain popularity as a Superior commanding officer. I think he did waste the lives of other men for his own being but I don’t think he realised that so many people were going to be killed in the battle. It shows that he knew he had made a mistake by trying to cover it up in his speeches to the public. Sources like D and E could not be taken too seriously because it was only really about the opinion of other people, but they are relevant to historians in a way that you could get an impression on how annoyed people were about what happened in the war.
Haig didn’t sacrifice the lives the lives of his men for no reason, he truly believed that he could get through those German lines but he was not thinking about his soldiers at the time of his decision, he was thinking about himself. He had good plans but they were not good enough, e.g. the artillery was thought by everyone to smash the Germans to pieces but they did not know about the hidden German dugouts under ground. He was very desperate to get him and his men forward and penetrate the German lines and was prepared to throw whatever he had in a non-strategic sense at the Germans never realising that the cost would be so high. He was fighting a war of attrition.
The battle was not for no reason because the outcome was a partial success due to the fact that the French had the pressure taken off them at Verdun. Maybe, even though there were so many deaths, this battle was actually the cause of Victory to the western powers.
