Study source A. do you agree with this interpretation of the importance of the battle of the Somme? Use the source and knowledge from your studies to explain your answer

In the source it says that ‘the German solders are now practically beaten men and that they are ‘ready to surrender….thoroughly tired of war and expecting defeat.’ It demonstrates his confidence in the past and future events on the western front. Haig possible hopes that if he shows his confidence politicians and soldiers will have more confidence in him. Haig is writing this with the view of keeping his job. However, these statements are just Haig’s views and opinion with no actual facts. Haig has never visited the front line himself he was always in his headquarters so this shows that the decisions made by Haig were influenced by unreliable intelligence and that he was being misinformed.

In his report Haig doesn’t show any negativity throughout but he admits that the amount of land gained was not great but that the soldiers have shown that they can drive the enemy out of strong defensive positions. Britain only advanced 12 kilometres. General Haig’s tactic of attrition was slow in making progress and was the main cause of the large amount of casualties. Haig comments on German casualties been greater than ours (this is one of the parts of the report that uses facts) even though not by many Germany had 500,000 and Britain had 420,000. however both sides lost a lot of solders and a lot of their morale.

Finally Haig doesn’t comment on their never being a significant breakthrough the German lines and we know this because battles continued on the western front during 1917 and the war continued till 1918

In conclusion source A is very subjective and biased throughout. This isn’t surprising when General Haig was practically writing the report just to save his career. In the report Haig just talks about the positive points of the battle and doesn’t mention the negative ones Haig tried his best for his country but it wasn’t enough his tactic of attrition was clearly the wrong tactic to use which he failed to acknowledge I don’t agree with source A as General Haig doesn’t give a full account of events.