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Field Marshal Haig was a good and bad leader. He created the poppy appeal fund after the war, but he also let thousands upon thousands of soldiers walk to their death
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Why have peoples opinions of general Haig changed over time?
No newspapers where published about what Haig did (bad) so it seemed like he was good at his job ;D
Who was general haig?
= = In history, there have been many good and many bad generals during wars. Most generals were seen as being good, however some were bad. Haig was one of them. During (and after) WW1, many people have criticised him. Most of the criticisms were fair, and not many disagreed. He even earned the nickname "Butcher of the Somme" for constantly sending troops, especially on the western front into excessive casualties. Haig was not a coward; in fact he was exactly the opposite. This was not a good thing. He was rarely defensive or passive and too often offensive, sending many men forward into battles that sometimes even he knew they wouldn't win. Many people were forced into an almost certain death like this. Another similar criticism is that Haig would often use cavalry to charge around the trench and make an attack. He usually knew that the enemy would be armed with machine guns and other automatic weapons. The cavalry stood little chance against machine guns. Many soldiers (and horses) died like this. What makes it worse it that the horses required a lot of looking after, feeding and cleaning, which wasted a lot of their time and was not worth it just for it to charge into its almost certain death. Haig himself had never fought in a war/battle, so had little knowledge of what he was sending his troops into. He knew about most of the dangers, but he did not know about the fear of being on a battlefield. Another criticism is that he expected men to be able to cut through or climb over barbed wires. This was a mistake, and led to many casualties and a big waste of time. Haig would also give orders to use massive bombardments thinking that they would destroy the enemy trenches making it easier for the soldiers to capture them. This did not go to plan and were almost useless, as the German trenches were too well defended, and very deep as they were defending, stationary, so had more time to dig the trenches. He built his headquarters a long way from the trenches, usually around 40 miles away. This led to more problems such as taking a long time to send a message from the headquarters to the battlefield. Radio was not efficient then, as it would be costly and may not work, and the signal would have been difficult to understand. Not everyone thought Haig was bad, some even praised him. John Pershing, the general of The Armies of the United States said that Haig was "the man who won the war". Another person that defended Haig was John Terraine, who published a biography of Haig, called "The Educated Soldier" in 1963. In this biography, he claimed that Haig was a "Great Captain". He also claimed that Haig did "the best he could for the situations the soldiers were in". Other defendants of Haig make claims such as he was adapting to the new weapons and technology that were available to use in World War 1, and that rather than just tanks and machine guns, it was good to use a lot of artillery too. However, Haig continued to use them even though he knew they usually would not work and would just be a waste of money, shells and soldiers. He had to use new inexperienced armies and lack of communication. Telephone wires were no good due to the artillery barrages. As well as all this, Haig was fighting for the allied to he was the attackers, which means that they had to be the ones to stand up and walk across no mans land while the Germans sit on machine guns slaughtering our soldiers. Lloyd George claimed that he had never many anyone in such a high position that cannot use his imagination and just tells everyone to charge forward. He did not use any clever tactics that would for example surprise the enemy. In fact, they would never have been surprised if he used bombardments of artillery every time before he attacked! Haig commented that it was French pressure which forced him to keep fighting on the Western Front in 1916-1917, and wrote about the battle of Passchendaele in 1917: 'It is impossible for Winston to know how the possibility of the French army breaking up in 1917 compelled me to go on attacking. General Pétain pressed me not to leave the Germans alone for a week, on account of the awful state of the French troops. Maybe someone other than Haig could have fought the western front with fewer casualties, but it would have been a disaster no matter who was in charge.
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Why have peoples opinions of general Haig changed over time?
No newspapers where published about what Haig did (bad) so it seemed like he was good at his job ;D
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