Does Haig deserve the title 'butcher of the Somme'?

In this battle 425 thousand British troops were killed and 500 thousand German soldiers were killed. The Somme was a huge military disaster from most points of view though. But it served its purpose. ‘The cost of victory was appalling, but Haig’s military methods were in line with the ideas of the time’. This suggests that what Haig did was what other commanding general’s would have done and so it was not all entirely his fault because it was the ‘normal’ thing to do.

He made it difficult for people to tell him bad news about the battle. This was a big mistake and it meant that anyone trying to tell him something would be afraid of the way he would react. They would distort the news to make it sound like the battle is going better than it actually was. ‘Very successful attack this morning’ this was obviously not true because on that day they had lost about 65,000 men so this suggests that general Haig might have been given some distorted news. This means that Haig would be hearing news that wasn't accurate to the actual battle, so he would be acting on false information. This could arguably mean that Haig's decisions at the Somme were made under the false impression that everything was going to plan, if he had been told that the truth was, the men were getting slaughtered and the Germans were alive, he may have changed his strategy.

 But on the other hand Haig thinks that ‘the object of all war is victory and a defensive attitude can never bring this about’ this suggests that he is willing to pay ‘the price of victory’ ‘the best of the male population’ of the islands. He understood that ‘losses are bound to be heavy on both sides, and for this the price of victory is paid’. These statements suggest Haig really wants to win the war and will go to extremely long lengths to do so. This maybe one of the reason that he was given the title of the ‘butcher of the Somme’. But I do not fully agree that he deserves this title because of the pressure he was under and the information he could have received.