James Faux, History coursework
Question A
Q. Study sources A and B. How far does Source A prove that Haig did not care about the lives of his men?
A. Source A is written by General Haig himself, so it is a reliable source to a certain extent. Where Haig says: ‘The nation must be taught to bear losses’, you can see that he expects a lot of men to die. Haig famously said, ‘not even a rat would be alive’. At about half past seven on the morning of July 1st the British and French soldiers were ordered to go over the top, they didn’t however duck and run. They marched slowly, upright exposing their chests to the hail of bullets that were about to come their way. They were Haig’s orders. The Germans were ready for this attack, and had known about it for a good time, so had prepared themselves accordingly, digging large trenches, and lowering their machine guns on pulleys. Haig knew this to some extent, but he thought that because he was sending out so many waves of men, this would make a breakthrough. Over 620, 000 men were lost by the end of the Battle of the Somme, and not once did Haig contemplate stopping the war. But this was because he had been told by his superiors, one of which was Lloyd-George, that he must make a breakthrough in the Germans frontline, because the stalemate had been going on for too long. He said in source A: ‘The nation must be prepared to see heavy casualty lists.’ He knew that heavy casualties were going to be lost, but this doesn’t mean he did not care about the lives of his men. Haig also genuinely thought his men were doing well, as we can see in source b: ‘Very successful attack this morning. All went like clockwork.’ But his sub-ordinate officers were feeding him false information, telling him that the allies were doing better than they actually were, because his men were scared of him. It could be said that he didn’t care about the lives of his men, but seeing that he was being fed false information about their well beings, he did not feel it necessary to stop the battle, as he believed they were doing well. So in some ways he did care about the lives of his men, but in some ways he did not.