In the second part of this source Haig was writing on the 30th June 1916, the day before the attack by troops and towards the end of the artillery bombardment. The source does not say who Haig was writing to so you cannot judge if he had a motive or was biased in what he wrote so this is weak evidence for supporting Keegan’s assertion. Haig is talking about the British army’s morale and how well prepared everything is. If this source is to be trusted then it is useful for supporting Keegans view because it is showing that Haig is a good commander and is ‘efficient and highly skilled’ because ‘the wire was well cut’, ‘the artillery preparation so through’ and there is good morale. Haig uses the phrase ‘several have said’ to support what he is saying but we do not know who is saying this or why they said it so we cannot tell how reliable that part is. We only have Haig’s opinion. If we knew who his audience was then we would be able to see if Haig is a reliable source here because he may have motive to change what he is saying if he is talking to some people rather than others. Haig may just have poor information. The artillery used shrapnel that did not cut the wire ‘well’ and the British did not have enough heavy guns so the artillery preparation was not ‘thorough’.
Part three of the source is Haig on the day of the first attack. Again it does not say who this is written to but it sounds like a diary. If it was, then he would not be biased unless he was going to publish them. If he wanted to publish them, he might be worried about how he’d be remembered. The source shows how badly he was being informed because he says ‘all went like clockwork’ and ‘very successful’ is how he is describing the worst day in British military history when there were nearly 60,000 casualties including 20,000 deaths. If the Germans were ‘surrendering freely’ and were ‘short of men’ then this would be some support for Keegan’s view but this source is Haig’s view and because it is badly informed it is not a very reliable source.
Source D, was written by Anthony Livesey who is a modern historian. The source is from Great Battles of the First World War and was published in 1989. Anthony Livesey had no motive or any reason to be biased, so I would say this source is probably reliable. The source states an opinion about Haig but it does not explain or give any evidence to tell us why Livesey has this opinion. In the source it says that Haig is shrewd. This supports Keegan because it suggests that Haig was clever and had made good choices. However, the source doesn’t give an example of how Haig was shrewd this would be needed to make this source reliable. It also says that he thought he had been ‘chosen by God to serve his country’…‘this inability to recognise defeat that led to his continuing attacks on the Somme’. To not ‘recognise defeat’ supports Keegan’s view that Haig contributed to ‘victory’ but not because Haig was ‘efficient’ or ‘skilled’. For this to be really reliable we would need some evidence or an explanation for calling him shrewd.
Source E, was written after the war by David Lloyd George who had been Prime Minister during the war. As Lloyd George knew Haig and was in government he might know things that no one else does because being Prime Minister gives privileged access to information. This source is an extract from his war memoirs and he is questioning his own responsibility for the ‘slaughter’ in the war. He is a politician and he might want to present himself in a good light in the memoirs so that he won’t be blamed in the future and he was not friendly with Haig so this could be a biased source. When Lloyd George writes of ‘two or three’ he may be implying that Haig is one of the ‘blunderers’ and that he is responsible for many men’s deaths. It might be that he was angry with Haig or that he wanted to blame Haig. This is not useful for supporting Keegan’s idea of Haig as a ‘highly skilled soldier who did much to lead Britain to victory’ but it is only Lloyd George’s own view.
Source F was written by Duff Cooper. He was a very clever writer who had fought in the war but not at the Somme. The extract is from the official biography of Haig that Duff Cooper had been asked to write by Haig’s family after Haig had died. Cooper had access to Haig’s personal diaries and was a friend of the family so he may have been well informed but he may be biased because he did not want to damage Haig’s reputation. Source H says Haig was a national hero when he died. ‘To refuse to fight…would have meant the abandonment of Verdun to its fate and the breakdown of co-operation with the French’. What Cooper says is accurate but it does not say anything about Haig’s ability as a soldier so it is not really useful in supporting Keegan’s view that Haig is a ‘highly skilled soldier’, but it suggests that the Battle of the Somme was important because if the allies did not fight the Germans at the Somme then all their troops could have gone to Verdun, and easily beaten the French resistance so it partly supports the view that Haig ‘did much to lead Britain to victory in the First World War.’ Someone who was not paid by Haig’s wife to defend his reputation and with no motive to be biased could provide more reliable evidence. If we had evidence of specifically how Haig was ‘efficient and highly skilled’ then this source would be more useful.
Source G is quite recent and is probably written by a modern historian as it is published in a history source that was meant for GCSE pupils, so it’s likely to be reliable because children are going to be learning from that book so it is going to well researched and written. The writer is talking about the modern assessment of Haig. As a modern writer he would be able to make use of a lot of historical views so he can come to a more informed opinion. He mentions some of these in the source such as ‘blaming Haig the individual for the failings of the British war effort’. The source is fairly written because it begins with a statement that states a view of many people but then provides information that supports and argues against the statement. The writer is giving a balanced view this makes the source more reliable. The source says that Haig was ‘ultimately victorious’ and the Somme was ‘the muddy grave of the German army’. This supports Keegan’s view that Haig ‘did much to lead Britain to victory’. The source also mentions ‘Haig’s numerous mistakes’ and this does not support the view that Haig was ‘efficient and highly skilled’.
Source H was a modern video produced for television by the BBC. It shows people giving opinions about Haig. The BBC is usually a reliable source because they use the public’s money to produce high quality videos and have a reputation for it so they aren’t going to produce a poor quality video. The video was made for entertainment as well as a history source so not all the opinions in the video are reliable. Blackadder is a comedy programme and John Laffin is the author of a book about ‘Butchers and Bunglers of WW1’ which he may be trying to sell, this may mean that he gives biased evidence that is not very reliable in order to make his book more interesting. The video includes views in favour and against Haig so it is a balanced view. This makes it more reliable because it shows that the BBC hasn’t got any motive to be biased. The historian Dr Gary Sheffield is knowledgeable because he works at Sandhurst, specialises in military history and he has a good reputation for being reliable. “the Somme was the most important the British fought…turned the British army from a group of amateurs into a fairly hard-bitten and very effective army”. His opinion supports Keegan’s view but Haig went to Sandhurst and Sheffield may be biased towards supporting Haig’s reputation to protect the reputation of Sandhurst as a military base to train officers. Prof. Wilson is knowledgeable and he offered views that both supported and criticised Haig. Most of the criticisms of Haig are from the weakest sources Blackadder and Laffin; these are weakest because they have the most motive to make their evidence biased. There are sources such as Wilson and Hussey that give a neutral view. Many of the sources made comments that supported Keegan’s view. I think this source is reliable overall.
In conclusion the eight sources are very different. Some of them appear to be far more reliable than others. The source that seems least reliable is source B because there is no information about who made this or why it was made so you cannot judge if it is biased. It has the same view of Haig as the Blackadder comedy did of the WW1 generals. These are useful because they show popular opinions but are not good evidence.
The people who wrote sources D and G and some of the people in the source H video are historians and I would expect them to be reliable sources. However source D Livesey is writing an opinion with out showing the evidence. This means we have to rely on his knowledge. This means that source D is not as reliable a source as source G where Warburton uses the evidence to support and argue against a statement. This is the most reliable source because it is written by someone who is trying to give a balanced opinion and it is useful because it has the evidence so that you can judge what the opinion is based on.
A number of the sources are written by people who could have motives that would make them biased. Lloyd George wrote source E. He and Haig had both been criticised for how the war was run and he would have replaced Haig with someone else if he had been able to when he became Prime Minister. He had a lot of reasons to make Haig look bad this could make himself look blame free. He criticises Haig in this source but you have to remember that this does not mean that he was wrong. Duff Cooper wrote source F and he was a friend of Haig and his family. He was writing the official biography of his friend after his friend had died. He was asked to do this by the family. It is useful to know this because it is unlikely that he would want to write anything that would hurt his dead friend but that does not mean he would alter any facts. If the evidence for the facts supporting Haig was included it would make it easier to judge if he was a reliable source.
Some of the sources were written at the time of the war e.g. sources A, C and some of source H, and this is useful because it shows what people thought at the time. Most of these are by Haig but these are useful because they show what he was thinking and it helps explain why he did what he did. The comments of soldiers from the war in source H were surprising because they did not blame Haig. They thought he did a good job. Maybe people agreed with what Haig said in source C1. You had to expect people to die. The soldiers were in the battles so they might understand the situation more. None of the sources were from soldiers who had worked close to Haig like the other generals or his staff. They would have been able to say how skilled he was.
It would have been most useful to see what Keegan used as evidence. All of the sources used here may not be the same as the ones that Keegan based his assertion on. There could be other evidence that is more detailed and shows why Keegan would think Haig is ‘efficient and highly skilled’ and ‘did much to lead Britain to victory in the First World War’. If Keegan used the same sources, he might have more information about the sources that would let him judge how reliable they were. These sources might just be part of a bigger group of evidence that Keegan bases his opinion on. The sources here do not cover the whole war. There is nothing specific about Haig’s role before 1916 except for a few comments in the video like the one by Livesey about the first battle of Ypres in 1919. Passendale cost over half a million lives. Hussey and Wilson make comments about what has happened by 1918 that may be the result of what Haig has done. There is very little in the Sources so we can’t be sure how Haig’s actions from the whole war have influenced Keegan’s opinion. More information about Haig’s actions across the whole of the First World War.
The video gave quite a lot of information but the rest of the sources are very short and don’t give very much information. This means we may not understand how they were meant to be read or how they might look if we could see the whole extract each source came from.
There is some evidence in the sources to support Keegan’s view that Haig ‘did much to lead Britain to victory in the First World War’ particularly on source H but very little to support the view that Haig was an ‘efficient and highly skilled soldier’. I agree with Keegan‘s view but these sources are not sufficient evidence to support his interpretation.
