Melanie Taylor:
How far do you agree that sir Douglas Haig is to blame for the failures at the battle of the Somme?
In the summer of 1916, Britain went into battle against a strong German army in a place called Somme in France. This war would come to be one of the most brutal and memorable battles of all time. In charge of the British army, was Sir Douglas Haig, one of the most controversial war generals ever. The failure at the battle of the somme is predominantly blamed on Haig, however what we are trying to uncover is was Haig really to blame?
General Haig has been highly thought of as the main man responsible for the failures. However, upon researching this, I found an interesting statistic in the book[1]“Mud, blood and Poppycock” by Gordon Corrigan. In the battle of the Somme, 1 in 12 soldiers Commanded by Haig died. However, on the German side it was twice as high, as 1 in ever 6 died. This statistic goes to show that Haig's tactics were much more effective than the Germans, and therefore could not have been too bad. If his tactics were good, then maybe it was a different aspect responsible for the failures at the Somme.
The Germans were clever, their tactics had been well thought out, and they prepared for everything. They had made bomb proof trenches, with bedrooms and running water as there's were perminant, they were not attempting to gain land, but keep it. Whereas the Brit's had mud and insect ridden trenches as theirs were simply temporary. The Brits did not intend to stay in their trenches very long before moving forward and attacking for new territory. The state of the british trenches lowened the soldiers morals. Soldiers were developing trenchfoot from the awful conditions, whereas the Germans were comfortable and unaffected by the problems that the British troops were coping with in their trenches. This depicts that the British troops morals were low, and beaten down in comparison to the Germans high spirits and health. This could not have been helped by Haig. Haig's idea was to move forward and progress all the time, therefore they couldn’t build permanent shelter; It wasn't possible. This was just the nature of the job they had to do, their momentum’s were low and damaged, Haig could do nothing about this, therefore taking his name off the blame for soldiers low spirits which was a huge part of the failures at the Somme.
