Source E: Before the battle begins, he admits there will be heavy losses.
“The nation must be prepared to see heavy casualty lists.”
He also says that this is an unavoidable sacrifice that was essential for victory. This shows that he was in fact correct about how his tactic was going to work, apart from the fact that no ground would made by Britain. Though this source shows why he kept on going with the attack even though he was losing huge amounts of men, it can also be viewed negatively. Some might say that he should have never gone ahead with the attack in the first place, and see him and a heartless butcher for doing so.
In this source he seems to be in a happy and confident mood just before the battle of the Somme took place. He also claims that everything else is going really well.
“The men are in splendid spirits… The barbed wire has never been so well cut nor the artillery preparation so thorough. Are commanders are full of confidence.”
I do not think that he is being entirely honest here. He probably knew that things were not going as well as he says, but cannot admit it. The reason I think this is due to Source F:
“It was probably this inability to recognize defeat…”
I do not think that we can discount this source as it is a primary source from the man himself, and coupled with source F shows what kind of man Haig was. He was a great optimist who was always trying to find the positive in things, which you could say is a good thing, however this did leave him rather short sighted. He could not see his own tactical errors and lead to him suffering intense criticism.
Source F as mentioned before shows some of Haig’s strengths and weaknesses. According to the source his strengths are:
“…reserved, Haig was also shrewd and ambitious and had great self-confidence.”
With my own knowledge I would say that this statement is accurate is defining his strengths. He was ambitious to undertake the huge operation of ‘The Battle of the Somme” and self-confidence is evident when he continued with it even in the face of defeat. However the person who wrote this source, Anthony Livesey wrote it in 1989 and is unlikely to have met General Haig. However the source seems to be well research is credible enough to be taken into account. He also mentions Haig’s weaknesses in this source:
“Perhaps his greatest failing was his constant, often misplaced, optimism,”
Here I think he has not looked at his other weaknesses close enough. At ‘The Battle of the Somme’ he obviously got his tactics wrong and his creating of tactics is essential to be considered as a good General.
Source G: This is the Prime minister at the time of the war, David Lloyd George writing about Sir General Haig. He here is very obviously anti Haig:
“…and also to the two or three individual who would rather the million perish than that they as leaders should admit- even to themselves- that they were blunders”
Though Haig is not mentioned here, we can guess that he is being talked about here, when he say the individuals are ‘leaders’ and would not admit blunders to themselves. I find that the source here is very biased against Haig and unfairly so. At the time of the war if the Prime Minister did not like how Haig was managing the war then he was one person that could do something about it.
Source H: This is written by Duff Cooper. He says that the Battle of the Somme had to go ahead for this reason:
“To have refused to fight would have meant the abandonment of Verdun to its fate and the breakdown of co-operation with the French.”
He also says that this is the only opinion there can be on the matter, which is wrong as there have been many arguments over whether Haig should have pulled out of the Battle of the Somme as he knew he was going to lose a lot of men. Therefore this source cannot really be taken into account not because of its reliability, but because it’s wrong.
Source J: This is a tribute by the Germans about General Haig. It is very pro- Haig and this is not surprising considering the Germans lost to him and his army, however they were still in the middle of war at the time. However they still managed to get an anti English quote in there.
“… and like the majority of able Britons, he is of Scottish origin.”
This shows to me that the source is just trying to please its own German readers. The source also has another reference in there about Briton not being able to get a successful attack. Though this was written at the time of the source many of the statement s seem false and cannot be trusted from an enemy source.
Source K: This source tries to defend Haig from being totally at fault for the British war effort. However we won the war so surely he should be being praised for good leadership. The reasons why Haig should not be blamed range from that he was like every other military leader in that time to the German leader having the same problems as him at ‘The Battle of the Somme’. These both may have been true but the fact is, he cannot be blamed for winning the war.
Source L: This source states that Hague had no general intelligence and no imagination. You would think that these would be very important characteristics for a Military leader, so Hamilton Fyfe is obviously saying that he is not cut out be a leader. This is only his own opinion having met him and may just have caught him at a wrong time.
