Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Douglas Haig: A Great Military Commander?
Channel Five is running a weekly documentary series on Friday nights entitled “Great British Commanders”. It is fronted by Major Gordon Corrigan, who is straight out of central casting (toothbrush moustache, leathery battered face, a few teeth missing; this is a man who’s clearly been in a scrap or two over the years). My antennae quivered at the realisation that last Friday’s episode was on Douglas Haig, commander of the British Army on the western front in the First World War. I have minimal interest in Henry V, the Duke of Wellington or Lord Nelson, but I am interested in a man who played a large role in a war which left some of my ancestors listed on memorials to the dead of the Great War. So I taped the programme and have now got round to watching it.
Major Corrigan turned out to be Douglas Haig’s number one fan. “Haig was a brilliant soldier. He was a master of organisation and planning and a visionary champion of new technology…Right from the beginning of his military career, when he went to Sandhurst, his natural ability shone through. It was clear he was destined for high command… Haig was a fine man, not only brave and humane but also modest.”
Of course there was that spot of bother known as the Battle of the Somme - 60,000 casualties in a single day, not good. “It wasn’t anybody’s fault”, Corrigan explained. The British army was largely an army of civilians and “heavy casualties are inevitable while that army learns its trade”. What’s more “Haig learned from his mistakes and that’s the making of a great commander.” (Eh? What mistakes? I thought he didn’t make any.)
In support of his thesis the Major gazed at some pages of Haig’s diary, in the company of Colm McLaughlin, curator of the National Library of Scotland. He also talked to an English woman who runs a bed and breakfast near the Somme, a French bloke who’d excavated the remains of a tank, and Earl Haig (born 1918), who remembers his dad as a lovely man.
“It was Haig who spearheaded the introduction of technology to the western front. He integrated tanks and aircraft with the troops on the ground to eventually drive through the German defences. By November 1918 the Germans had had enough. Faced with defeat on the battlefield and revolution at home, they pleaded for peace… It was Haig’s victory.”
So why do some base personages still persist in regarding Haig as a less than superb military leader?
Denis Winter’s ground-breaking book Haig’s Command: A Reassessment (1991) supplies the reasons. (Winter’s book, by the way, has made him many enemies, not least by exposing the complacency and inaccuracy of standard histories of the war and its battles. Winter discovered that the Public Record Office was useless - if you want the truth, go to archives in Australia.)
Haig did not have natural ability as a soldier. He failed the entrance exam to Camberley Staff College. Luckily his sister was married to the Keeper of the Prince of Wales’s racing yachts; with the help of influence at Court, Haig was admitted. His early military performance was undistinguished. His rapid promotion almost certainly owed something to him lending (actually giving) £2,000 to his senior officer, Sir John French. Winter concludes that Haig’s rise through the ranks “had always owed more to intrigue and patronage than to any evidence of talent as a soldier.” (p. 41, Penguin edition)
Haig’s mediocrity and incompetence as a military commander was evident from his very earliest involvement in the Great War. In 1914, at Mons, Le Cateau and Landrecies, he repeatedly bungled his command in the face of the enemy. At the battle of 1st Ypres, Haig claimed he had bravely ridden into the heart of the danger zone to rally his men; the episode turned out not to have existed, and was characteristic of his tendency retrospectively to fabricate accounts of his bravery and shrewdness which had no basis in historical fact. (Haig’s much-quoted diary is an unreliable document because it was doctored after the war.)
In March 1915 Haig took charge of the first major British offensive, at Neuve Chapelle. The British force outnumbered the Germans three to one, with a field gun each five yards and heavy artillery every nineteen yards. Haig was confident of a great victory, asserting that “We are entering on a serious offensive with the object of breaking the German line. It is very likely than an operation of considerable magnitude may result.” But the attack went horribly wrong. The British force advanced 1,000 yards, but at the cost of 12,000 casualties.
From this Haig went on to another splendid victory at Loos in September 1915, when he had the bright idea of sending his troops across a thousand yards of open downland at 11 in the morning, in full view of the German machine gunners. “The result of all this was that the two divisions lost 8,000 men in the first hour.” (p. 41)
As for Haig the “master of organisation and planning”. In 1915 Haig had calculated that to fight a major battle you needed twenty-nine supply roads and seven broad-gauge railway lines. But at the Battle of the Somme he had neither. Both the road and railway supply lines were grossly inadequate. Haig planned for a battle which would last 14 days. In the event it lasted from July 1 1916 through to November. During that time the British and German armies suffered one million casualties, fighting over an area of land just seven miles square. Contrary to the popular “attrition” argument put forward by some Haig apologists, British casualties were twice those of the Germans.
On 1 July 1916 the French army at the Somme achieved all its objectives at a cost of 7,000 casualties. British troops failed to make any significant advance, at a cost of 60,000 casualties. [The supposedly “humane” Haig, incidentally, remarked “We almost seem to be fighting against the laws of nature in trying to keep alive races who are obviously of an inferior kind” – by which he was referring to Italians (“a wretched people, useless as fighting men but greedy for money”) and the French (“Few realize the difference between right and wrong, between honest, straightforward dealing and low cunning”).]
So why did the shifty, slippery French succeed where the honest and decent British failed? Because the French army took its artillery seriously, whereas British gunners were poorly trained and had no experience of night-firing, counter-battery work or long range indirect fire. When Noel Birch was appointed Haig’s chief artillery officer he was stunned to discover that there was a complete organisational shambles. There wasn’t even a list available of the artillery then in France. In Winter’s words, “The great weakness was an utter lack of concern with accuracy.” (p. 60) That’s a point worth bearing in mind the next time you see old movie footage from the Great War. The British army not only lacked the ability accurately to neutralise the enemy’s front line, it was also incapable of precision creeping barrages. The impact of shelling was often merely to plough up the ground that the attacking troops had to cross, slowing them down and making them even easier to pick off. These crucial failures in British army strategy are rarely acknowledged in accounts of the First World War. By contrast, French artillery barrages possessed great tactical sophistication.
Passchendaele was the next catastrophe. By 1917 both French and German strategists appreciated the importance of flexible barrages, infiltration and attack in small groups. Haig remained wedded to the disastrously stupid tactic of massed linear advance. British casualties at Passchendaele were around 350,000 – German losses were about two thirds of that figure. In Winter’s words, “Haig’s unerring instinct for choosing the worst place to launch an attack is a matter of record.” (p. 151)
In fact far from being a superb organiser and brilliant strategist Haig’s mind was of a rigidly conservative cast. He knew nothing about infantry, engineers or artillery – and made no effort to find out. In late 1917 he still believed that you could punch a hole in the enemy’s front line and send in the cavalry. But what do trifles like strategy and supply lines matter when you have God on your side? Haig wrote: “I know quite well that I am being used as a tool in the hands of the Divine Power and that my strength is not my own.”
As for Corrigan’s claim that Haig was “a visionary champion of new technology”. That is a truly preposterous assertion. Haig is on record as complacently telling senior staff, “I hope none of you gentlemen is so foolish as to think that aeroplanes will be able to be usefully employed for reconnaissance in the air. There is only one way for a commander to get information by reconnaissance and that is by the use of cavalry.” Haig was a cavalry man, with a mindset still firmly lodged in the nineteenth century. Far from regarding planes and tanks as cutting edge machines for winning a war, as late as 1918 Haig remained firmly convinced that they were still less valuable than cavalry, to which they should always be subordinate.
In March 1918 the German army launched an attack which drove the British back forty miles. The British lost 600 guns, suffered 40,000 casualties and 25 of Haig’s 60 divisions were reduced to little more than skeletons. It was the greatest defeat suffered by any army on the Western front up to that time. Haig in fact almost lost the war. By June 1918 the German army seemed poised on the brink of victory. But German commanders, disastrously, failed to follow up their advantage. By August the German army was in retreat. This owed nothing to Douglas Haig and everything to the strategy of the French commander, Foch, who had obtained precise foreknowledge (through intelligence) of German military intentions. But the German army was far from a spent force. Less than a month before the end of the war, Haig gloomily acknowledged the strength of the German army and thought that two more years of war would be necessary: “In 1920, the real crushing of Germany will be possible, always provided that the British Army is kept up to its present strength.”
The sudden, wholly unexpected collapse of Germany had nothing at all to do with military defeat, because the German army was never defeated. Germany collapsed because a revolution broke out. Britain did not win through military superiority, and its victory was in spite of Douglas Haig, not because of his leadership. As a military commander he was an unimaginative mediocrity.
If others in the British army share Major Corrigan’s belief that Haig sets a marvellous example of military leadership and strategy, I guess this goes some way to explaining why things are going so splendidly in Iraq.
Major Corrigan turned out to be Douglas Haig’s number one fan. “Haig was a brilliant soldier. He was a master of organisation and planning and a visionary champion of new technology…Right from the beginning of his military career, when he went to Sandhurst, his natural ability shone through. It was clear he was destined for high command… Haig was a fine man, not only brave and humane but also modest.”
Of course there was that spot of bother known as the Battle of the Somme - 60,000 casualties in a single day, not good. “It wasn’t anybody’s fault”, Corrigan explained. The British army was largely an army of civilians and “heavy casualties are inevitable while that army learns its trade”. What’s more “Haig learned from his mistakes and that’s the making of a great commander.” (Eh? What mistakes? I thought he didn’t make any.)
In support of his thesis the Major gazed at some pages of Haig’s diary, in the company of Colm McLaughlin, curator of the National Library of Scotland. He also talked to an English woman who runs a bed and breakfast near the Somme, a French bloke who’d excavated the remains of a tank, and Earl Haig (born 1918), who remembers his dad as a lovely man.
“It was Haig who spearheaded the introduction of technology to the western front. He integrated tanks and aircraft with the troops on the ground to eventually drive through the German defences. By November 1918 the Germans had had enough. Faced with defeat on the battlefield and revolution at home, they pleaded for peace… It was Haig’s victory.”
So why do some base personages still persist in regarding Haig as a less than superb military leader?
Denis Winter’s ground-breaking book Haig’s Command: A Reassessment (1991) supplies the reasons. (Winter’s book, by the way, has made him many enemies, not least by exposing the complacency and inaccuracy of standard histories of the war and its battles. Winter discovered that the Public Record Office was useless - if you want the truth, go to archives in Australia.)
Haig did not have natural ability as a soldier. He failed the entrance exam to Camberley Staff College. Luckily his sister was married to the Keeper of the Prince of Wales’s racing yachts; with the help of influence at Court, Haig was admitted. His early military performance was undistinguished. His rapid promotion almost certainly owed something to him lending (actually giving) £2,000 to his senior officer, Sir John French. Winter concludes that Haig’s rise through the ranks “had always owed more to intrigue and patronage than to any evidence of talent as a soldier.” (p. 41, Penguin edition)
Haig’s mediocrity and incompetence as a military commander was evident from his very earliest involvement in the Great War. In 1914, at Mons, Le Cateau and Landrecies, he repeatedly bungled his command in the face of the enemy. At the battle of 1st Ypres, Haig claimed he had bravely ridden into the heart of the danger zone to rally his men; the episode turned out not to have existed, and was characteristic of his tendency retrospectively to fabricate accounts of his bravery and shrewdness which had no basis in historical fact. (Haig’s much-quoted diary is an unreliable document because it was doctored after the war.)
In March 1915 Haig took charge of the first major British offensive, at Neuve Chapelle. The British force outnumbered the Germans three to one, with a field gun each five yards and heavy artillery every nineteen yards. Haig was confident of a great victory, asserting that “We are entering on a serious offensive with the object of breaking the German line. It is very likely than an operation of considerable magnitude may result.” But the attack went horribly wrong. The British force advanced 1,000 yards, but at the cost of 12,000 casualties.
From this Haig went on to another splendid victory at Loos in September 1915, when he had the bright idea of sending his troops across a thousand yards of open downland at 11 in the morning, in full view of the German machine gunners. “The result of all this was that the two divisions lost 8,000 men in the first hour.” (p. 41)
As for Haig the “master of organisation and planning”. In 1915 Haig had calculated that to fight a major battle you needed twenty-nine supply roads and seven broad-gauge railway lines. But at the Battle of the Somme he had neither. Both the road and railway supply lines were grossly inadequate. Haig planned for a battle which would last 14 days. In the event it lasted from July 1 1916 through to November. During that time the British and German armies suffered one million casualties, fighting over an area of land just seven miles square. Contrary to the popular “attrition” argument put forward by some Haig apologists, British casualties were twice those of the Germans.
On 1 July 1916 the French army at the Somme achieved all its objectives at a cost of 7,000 casualties. British troops failed to make any significant advance, at a cost of 60,000 casualties. [The supposedly “humane” Haig, incidentally, remarked “We almost seem to be fighting against the laws of nature in trying to keep alive races who are obviously of an inferior kind” – by which he was referring to Italians (“a wretched people, useless as fighting men but greedy for money”) and the French (“Few realize the difference between right and wrong, between honest, straightforward dealing and low cunning”).]
So why did the shifty, slippery French succeed where the honest and decent British failed? Because the French army took its artillery seriously, whereas British gunners were poorly trained and had no experience of night-firing, counter-battery work or long range indirect fire. When Noel Birch was appointed Haig’s chief artillery officer he was stunned to discover that there was a complete organisational shambles. There wasn’t even a list available of the artillery then in France. In Winter’s words, “The great weakness was an utter lack of concern with accuracy.” (p. 60) That’s a point worth bearing in mind the next time you see old movie footage from the Great War. The British army not only lacked the ability accurately to neutralise the enemy’s front line, it was also incapable of precision creeping barrages. The impact of shelling was often merely to plough up the ground that the attacking troops had to cross, slowing them down and making them even easier to pick off. These crucial failures in British army strategy are rarely acknowledged in accounts of the First World War. By contrast, French artillery barrages possessed great tactical sophistication.
Passchendaele was the next catastrophe. By 1917 both French and German strategists appreciated the importance of flexible barrages, infiltration and attack in small groups. Haig remained wedded to the disastrously stupid tactic of massed linear advance. British casualties at Passchendaele were around 350,000 – German losses were about two thirds of that figure. In Winter’s words, “Haig’s unerring instinct for choosing the worst place to launch an attack is a matter of record.” (p. 151)
In fact far from being a superb organiser and brilliant strategist Haig’s mind was of a rigidly conservative cast. He knew nothing about infantry, engineers or artillery – and made no effort to find out. In late 1917 he still believed that you could punch a hole in the enemy’s front line and send in the cavalry. But what do trifles like strategy and supply lines matter when you have God on your side? Haig wrote: “I know quite well that I am being used as a tool in the hands of the Divine Power and that my strength is not my own.”
As for Corrigan’s claim that Haig was “a visionary champion of new technology”. That is a truly preposterous assertion. Haig is on record as complacently telling senior staff, “I hope none of you gentlemen is so foolish as to think that aeroplanes will be able to be usefully employed for reconnaissance in the air. There is only one way for a commander to get information by reconnaissance and that is by the use of cavalry.” Haig was a cavalry man, with a mindset still firmly lodged in the nineteenth century. Far from regarding planes and tanks as cutting edge machines for winning a war, as late as 1918 Haig remained firmly convinced that they were still less valuable than cavalry, to which they should always be subordinate.
In March 1918 the German army launched an attack which drove the British back forty miles. The British lost 600 guns, suffered 40,000 casualties and 25 of Haig’s 60 divisions were reduced to little more than skeletons. It was the greatest defeat suffered by any army on the Western front up to that time. Haig in fact almost lost the war. By June 1918 the German army seemed poised on the brink of victory. But German commanders, disastrously, failed to follow up their advantage. By August the German army was in retreat. This owed nothing to Douglas Haig and everything to the strategy of the French commander, Foch, who had obtained precise foreknowledge (through intelligence) of German military intentions. But the German army was far from a spent force. Less than a month before the end of the war, Haig gloomily acknowledged the strength of the German army and thought that two more years of war would be necessary: “In 1920, the real crushing of Germany will be possible, always provided that the British Army is kept up to its present strength.”
The sudden, wholly unexpected collapse of Germany had nothing at all to do with military defeat, because the German army was never defeated. Germany collapsed because a revolution broke out. Britain did not win through military superiority, and its victory was in spite of Douglas Haig, not because of his leadership. As a military commander he was an unimaginative mediocrity.
If others in the British army share Major Corrigan’s belief that Haig sets a marvellous example of military leadership and strategy, I guess this goes some way to explaining why things are going so splendidly in Iraq.
# posted by Ellis : 6:19 AM
