John Keegan, a modern military historian, suggests that Haig was an 'efficient and highly skilled soldier who did much to lead Britain to victory in the First World War'. Is there sufficient evidence in Sources A to H to support this interpretation?

Authors Avatar

Katie Sutton

2003 GCSE Examination History

Specification B

HAIG

3) John Keegan, a modern military historian, suggests that Haig was an ‘efficient and highly skilled soldier who did much to lead Britain to victory in the First World War’.

Is there sufficient evidence in Sources A to H to support this interpretation? Use the sources and your own knowledge to explain your answer.

 John Keegan says that Haig was ‘highly skilled and efficient’ soldier; there are several sources that agree and several that do not. The fact that he is a military man leads me to believe that Keegan's statement could be true and not one-sided. There are many sources and pieces of information, which express some of their opinions on Haig. Some are written by Haig himself, and so might be one-sided for obvious reasons.

There are some sourses agree with Keegan. Source A suggests that Haig is in control of the situation, although on reading it though thoroughly I have concluded that some of the statements are either untrue or impossible to know, as Haig wouldn’t be able to know at that stage, how many German casualties there were.

Haig also writes another source that also agrees with Keegan, but he also suggests that that maybe even he does not have enough skill to prevent heavy loses. On the second part of the source suggests that the troops are more than happy with his level of command and are in ‘splendid spirits’. He also says that the barbed wire has never been so well cut. We now know this is not true as many soldiers were caught init. This leads to suspicion that perhaps Haig has not told the whole truth on some matters. The hird part of the source supports this theory and he says the Germans are surrendering freely, which was not proved. Although Haig may not be lying intentionally as he could have been being fed the wrong information from the front line.  

Join now!

Source F agrees with keegan but addresses the faults of Haig’s commanding. He admits that with out the battle of the Somme the Battle of Verdun would have failed which meant the breakdown of co-operation with the French, it seems the author thinks that there may have been a better way but doesn’t give his ideas, were there any others? There one problem, the passage was written because Haigs family asked for it to be done, sop it may not be entirely true.

The next source doesn’t give a straight answer on whether Haig was a highly skilled ...

This is a preview of the whole essay