How far was Haig responsible for the failings of the British war effort on the western front in 1916 and 1917?
In December 1915, Haig was appointed commander in chief of the BEF. Haig now became under extreme pressure from the French to produce a diversion from Verdun. The first Battle of the Somme was fought from July to November 1916. The Battle of the Somme was planned as a joint French and British operation. The idea originally came from the French Commander-in-Chief, Joseph Joffre and was accepted by General Sir Douglas Haig. Haig used 750,000 men against the German front-line. However, the bombardment failed to destroy the barbed-wire or the concrete bunkers protecting the German soldiers. This meant that the Germans were able to exploit their good defensive positions on higher ground when the British and French troops attacked at 7.30 on the morning of the 1st July. The British suffered 58,000 casualties (a third of them killed), therefore making it the worse day in the history of the British Army. During the First World War Verdun was a fortified French garrison town on the River Meuse 200km east of Paris. In December 1915, General Erich von Falkenhayn of the German Army, decided to attack Verdun. Although he admitted he would be unable to break through at this point on the Western Front, he argued that in defending Verdun, the Germans would "bleed the French army white".
The battle of the Somme was fought from trenches. There were usually two trenches the front trench for riflemen this trench had a step so they could see over the top. The second trench was set further back this was for the soldiers to rest in. Behind that was the artillery. The allied trenches were mainly situated in Flanders in Belgium. The land was below sea level so the land needed a sophisticated drainage system to keep it farmable and to stop it flooding. The German artillery fire destroyed this drainage system turning Flanders back into the marsh it once was. This made the terrain terrible for fighting. The trenches were full of sticky mud and water making the soldiers feet cold and wet all the time. The soldiers rose at dawn and were ordered to ‘stand to’ then they went to the firing step just incase the enemy was going to attack, then men would be posted on look out, if there was no sign of attack then they would have breakfast. This was followed by inspection and trench repairs. Then there was a stand to at dusk. This life style isn’t what the soldiers believed it would be when they signed up they thought the war would be over by Christmas. The war was a defensive war until Haig and other generals sent the men ‘over the top’ to be confronted by heavily guarded German defenses and machine guns. The machines guns mowed the soldiers down at a 60% casualty rate in the first day of the battle of the Somme. Soldiers had no defense against the German machine guns. In some areas there was artillery fire followed by the soldiers running in but with bad communications it sometimes went horribly wrong. Haig’s war tactics were old and out dated he didn't use any new tactics or new technology like tank till later on in the war. The Germans were using new style war tactics which hadn’t been used in a war before Haig just decided to push more and more men ‘over the top’ to grind the Germans down this was working slowly but at a great cost of men thousands died every day. And this was just one battle which came to halt in November 1916 after fighting from June and there was nothing to show for it apart from thousands of dead men. The allied forces used artillery against the German forces but they had dug there trenches deep down and had created a series of networks. So the allied artillery fire didn't have much effect on them, also the artillery fire was very in accurate. Haig first used tanks in the Somme there were 49 of them, they got stuck in mud and broke down but some got threw to German defenses and cased havoc in the German trenches, haig then ordered 1,000 more tanks.
