General Rawlinson had many ideas for different attacks but general Haig didn’t listen to them and even if Rawlinson had gone ahead with his ideas he had the chance of being shot to death by Haig.
Rawlinson’s plan was called “bite and hold”. The idea of this plan was to smash the German frontline and then bombard and pulverize it with artillery, then move methodically through the trenches.
The Germans began yet another attack on February 1916. They sent hundreds of soldiers to attack the French fort of Verdun. They thought that they would not be able to brake through the resistance, but their main plan was to wear down the soldiers and weaken their morale. After 700,000 deaths the French were still not giving in. General Haig realised that he needed to relieve the pressure on the French so he decided to launch an attack on the River Somme. Haig’s idea was to draw most of the German soldiers away from Verdun.
About five months after the artillery bombardment took place, the pressure on Verdun lifted, however, hundreds and thousands of troops had been killed at the Somme. In November 18th of 1916 field Marshall Haig brought an end to the war as a consequence of the terrible weather conditions and the blizzards that covered the fighting ground in snow.
There were mixed feelings about General Haig from the troops. Many just went along with the orders and made no complaints while others wrote in their diaries and in letters home how unhappy they were with their general and the way in which he was running things.
You are able to see in Source A [written by Lieutenant J.A. Raws of the 23rd Battalion in a letter to his family shortly before his death] that Lieutenant Raws wasn’t satisfied with the way Haig dealt with the war or led them. He not only complained about how Haig was treated, but also called Haig a murderer of his fellow troops.
Also, in Source B, from an interview with Private George Coppard, you learn that he also could not believe the things that Haig had taught the soldiers and also their uneducated ideas about the war. The idea that General Haig simply didn’t care about the troops he ordered into battle is shown in source C. [biography of Haig, by Gerard De Groot.
Nonetheless, some soldiers were happy to fight in the battle irrespective of what the conditions were or how General Haig commanded them. The only evidence I have of this is a letter that a soldier wrote home to his parents before he died. [Source D]
Overall, I believe that the soldiers disagreed with General Haig on all of the things that he ordered them to do. However, they were too frightened to say anything because if they were to criticize the commanders then they would simply be shot too death by them. Only a few exceedingly brave soldiers wrote about how much they opposed of Haig’s ideas and seeing as their letters were screened and read by others they risked their lives in doing so. On the other hand, many of the soldiers were very new and had very little experience so they would have probably just thought that that was the ‘done’ thing, however bizarre it seemed.
As with the soldiers, I believe there were mixed feelings about Haig and the Battle of the Somme back in Britain.
This, I assume, was because many had no idea about what the war was like or the terrible ordeals that the men went through, let alone the amount of deaths or the horrifying conditions they had to live in.
Nevertheless, when the first movie about the war came out showing actual footage, many controversial issues occurred, mainly critical of Haig.
For example, in Source E, in this section of the poem by Siegfried Sassoon you learn how the people at home understood the terrible condition that troops were in and that nobody even knew you were gone or made a fuss because it was a normal part of the day to the soldiers.
Politicians and members of the government even debated the way Haig run the war and questioned whether Haig was doing more harm than good.
Winston Churchill wrote in a personal memoir of his just this. [Source F]. As did Lord Lansdowne, except the only difference was that Lord Lansdowne took the bravery to be the first politician too publicly question the way the war was being fought. However he didn’t direct it to the soldiers, but the commanders. [Source G.]
Historians, however, aren’t as judgmental as others as they look at the situation from what it would have been like at the time it happened rather than a modern day perspective. Source H shows us what Haig wrote about his methods for winning and Source I shows us what Historian Philip Warner had to say about it.
As you can see, the point that Warner makes is valid, but I still believe that many hundreds of deaths could have been prevented if Haig had listened to Rawlinson and gone with the “bite and hold” plan. By doing this they would have gained lots more land and gradually would have stopped the outrageous amount of deaths that occurred per day.
Even though some historians believe that Haig was a success, they also give ways in which Haig could have improved his techniques.
- Devised new plans
- Taken German’s by surprise
- Use the British Navy
- Used machine guns to attack weak sections
Quite understandably, Haig supporters don’t believe that he was the Butcher of the British soldiers. In a newspaper article written by Andrew Wilson. He states that Haig was an “…emotional man…” and when the allegations that Churchill made against him about the way he ran the war, his “…voiced cracked with emotion…”
He also argues that Haig was more “…a victim of circumstances than a callous monster.”
Although Wilson says this, there was no indication shown by Haig that he helped out the troops, visited any one of them, but lots of evidence to suggest he didn’t carefully plan his actions through. Wilson then goes on to say, “…his troops had nothing but respect for the man they knew as Dougie.” This is quite clearly untrue as solid evidence suggests. The only reason why Haig could have been led to believe this was for the soldiers fear of being killed by him if they shared their views about him.
Further on in the article, Wilson argues that Haig was “…fed misleading information by the head of intelligence…” even if this was true, Haig never even made a backup plan for if this wasn’t the case or if anything went wrong.
There are many different points to consider when answering a question such as this.
Before the war began, people were aware that trench warfare would come about; the only problem was that when it did arrive, nobody knew how to deal with it. From this point of view Haig cannot be blamed. However, when he decided to use tactics that had worked in previous wars he had commanded, that was a smart idea. Yet, the reason he failed was because he tried the same strategy time and time again instead of devising new ideas that would have resulted in fewer deaths. Whereas if he had listened to General Rawlinson, and taken heed in the ‘bite and hold’ arrangement then it may have ended a lot sooner than it did.
One of the sources Haig relied on was his patrolman. Their job was to go out onto no man’s land and report back to him whether or not the barbed wire had been cut. In spite of what he had told them, many did not wish to lose their lives so reported back to Haig that it had been cut and all was fine, whereas in actual fact it hadn’t and was in even more of a mess than when they had started. This was clearly not Haig’s fault, but many troops actually did their job and when they reported back their actual findings he chose not to listen which caused even more of a problem.
In conclusion to this essay ‘Was Field Marshall Haig the Butcher of the Somme?’ I believe, that overall, in effect, he was. Although there are many pieces of evidence that suggest otherwise, there are also more damning quotes to suggest that he was.
I believe my main point for this is that the majority of the soldiers were new and had absolutely no idea about the state of affairs they were going to go through, nor were they trained for an event this intense. After Haig had been in many wars and fought for most of his life I believe that the amount of training he gave the troops was poor and inadequate for a man of his experience. The men were simply led on false pretences and made to believe that the war wasn’t going to be that bad, whereas if Haig had made it worse than he knew it was going to be then they would have displayed better fighting qualities and would have been fully prepared.
Another focal point that suggests against Haig; is that even when it was clear that his plan wasn’t working he stuck to it and didn’t think about trying to change his ideas to suit the new type of trench warfare.
