“The principle that guided Haig was if he could kill more Germans than the Germans could kill his men, then he would at some time win the war.”
This suggests that Haig lost the lives of many soldiers, when he could have avoided because he used cavalry as it says in source J:
“I expressed my doubts to Haig as to whether cavalry could ever operate successfully on a front bristling for miles with barbed wire and machine guns.”
As Lloyd George expressed his doubts to Haig, Haig should have listened and maybe changed his tactics but he didn’t as he kept on sending men over the top.
I think the purpose of source F is to put down Haig as source F is biased because it is an extract from a book called ‘British Butchers and Bunglers of World War’, which would only write negative and untrue things about Haig because of the books title.
Sources that don’t support the view of General Haig being an uncaring general who sacrificed the lives of his men for no good reason are sources B, H and I.
Source B was written by Haig and in it he says:
“The men are in splendid spirits. All commanders are full of confidence.”
This part of the source was written before the Somme, when Haig wouldn’t have known the outcome of the first day, and the men were in good spirits as they were with the friends. This is because Lord Kitchener thought of getting pals battalions to get more men in the war and it worked. General Henry Rawlinson also suggested that men would be more willing to join up if they could serve with people they already knew, also Lord Kitchener said that:
‘The war would be decided by the last million men that Britain will throw into battle.’()
So this had to be done quickly as Britain didn’t really have a million men ‘throw’ until Kitchener’s idea came about, and it was a very big success.
Source H praises General Haig by saying:
“Had Haig not had the courage to shoulder the main burden of the struggle in the Somme battles of 1916, French resistance would have crumbled. Haig was one of the maim architects of the allied victory.”
This in some cases is true as the last 100 days of the war the BEF defeated the German army on the western front. Also Haig did help the French from the Germans from the attack of Verdun as the Somme reduced pressure on the French:
“The French pressed the British strongly to attack on the Somme by the end of the month and help relieve the pressure at Verdun.”(users.tibus.com/the-great-war/sommewww) so in a way Haig helped the French from losing a battle which could have resulted in losing the war, by having the battle of Somme.
In source I Lloyd George congratulates Haig by saying:
“The tide is now definitely turned in our favour”
He says this in the last days of the Somme when it was nearly over and when the British had nearly won the battle, and also as Lloyd George didn’t know the full story behind the Somme as Haig was his inside information person and Haig was not being completely truthful because Haig was a chief commander, and so he wouldn’t want to tell his prime minister that he was doing a bad job of the battle and that he was basically a failure.
Overall I think that Haig didn’t care about the lives of his men mainly because in another part of source B he says:
“Very successful attack this morning. All went like clockwork.”
I know he is lying because on the first day of the Somme there were 60,000 casualties and this is the highest amount of casualties ever to happen in one day of a battle. Haig was able to lie because of D.O.R.A (Defence of Realm Act). Also Haig made the soldiers carry 66lb over no man’s land:
“Which made it difficult to get out of a trench, impossible to move much quicker than a slow walk or to rise or lay down quickly” (source H, The First World War. Nigel Kelly)
This suggests to me that Haig didn’t bother looking at how the men were going to get across or to even look at them, because if he did he would have noticed they were carrying too much weight.
