What do you think of Douglas Haig?

>I know nothing of the historical reality of the war.

Haig, and GHQ, were not great. For reasonably large parts of the war they were unable to give a solid direction to the fighting. Especially in the 100 Days, Haig did little other than watch the offensives unfold. He didn't really take an active role in shaping British policy. This is perhaps the most important criticism of his command.

Other than this, not a terrible commander by WWI standards.

The motherfucker Should have been executed for incompetance

very low standards. you should add.

Not really fair. It was a difficult, bloody war. No one looked great in hindsight, doesn't mean they were horrible men.

Where are so many posters getting the idea that Haig was "incompetent"? As far as I know that isn't how historians recognize him.

>No one looked great in hindsight
Lettow-Vorbeck did.

Seriously. No one had ever fought a war like it, and everyone in the generalship had "a really good idea of how wars are fought." Except that almost every single facet of war had been revolutionized by the development of new technologies! hell, the British Navy had radios that their captains didn't want to use, because they were more familiar with the flag system!

>t. never read a nonfiction book about WW1
>t. XYZ

I don't get this meme. What does it mean? What's 't.'?

lurk more. shits pretty simple to intuit

t. user who needs to lurk the fuck more

He killed probably more Albions and Frogs with his incompetence than the Germans did, so he's good in my book

It's how he's portrayed in Blackadder.

>anglo generals

>he legitimately thought that tanks would never replace cavalry
clinical retard
Only Allied general worth his salt were Petain and Joffree

Pff what a newfag, i bet he doesnt even own a fingerbox.

Haig > Zukhov for meme potential?

totally, let´s begin

> "Numbers are an abstraction" - Douglas Haig

>I must unite the British Empire under Flanders Fields
-Douglas Haig

>forgetting based Currie

> "Yes I know about machine guns but we shouldn´t duck. It makes us look bad"
Douglas Haig

Propaganda

youtube.com/watch?v=mufPyc1L3hc

"How bad could something called mustard gas be?"
Douglas Haig

...

>The idea that a war can be won by standing on the defensive and waiting for the enemy to attack is a dangerous fallacy, which owes its inception to the desire to evade the price of victory.

He was a good man who wanted to remove the Germ at all costs. Sadly, some people don't know how to appreciate this.

>Svetozar Borojevic
What a lad

Haig was considered a pretty good general at the time. Some considered him the man who won the war due to the way he induced the late German collapse.
He got turned into a scapegoat by politicians running scared of Communism after the war. Much easier to blame the deaths on incompetent generals than point out how silly nationalist imperialism is

Currie was above average. Competent, hard working, and willing to stand up for his men yes, but much of his success is due to the efficiency of the staff of the Canadian Corps, not his own genius.

Lmao this fucking kid thinks Haig did a good job Jesus Christ.

Haig was an idiot, so we're all the generals. They knew it was pure murder, why do you think so many destroyed their memoirs.

>What is the American civil war
>What is the Russo Japanese war
>What is the Franco Prussian war

"Mustard gas you say? Give the men some pretzels! It will be delicious!"

- Douglas Haig

None of those were anything like WWI

Idiot kill yourself

They weren't

Literally keep digging yourself into that hole retard.

I'm curious to know what misinformed tripe you're parroting.

I'm not curious to know what revisionist nonsense you're using to justify poor command and leadership

Haig was lauded as a hero at the end of WW1 so wouldn't that mean the severe critics like you are the revisionists?

Only of your familiarity with the literature terminates in 1920

So you're accusing me of revisioning the revisionists?

No I'm accusing you of being a dumb nigger who doesn't know anything

You never did tell me where you got the idea that Haig was incompetent from. In all the books I've read about WW1 he's described typically as unimaginative, sometimes heartless, but adequate to the job.

Name one of those books.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Port_Arthur

This was literally a proto-WW1 battle

John Keegan The First World War

Wow shocking choice there user. Good thing you picked a book that isn't a study of Haig or of his command.

Like all the ones that you've read?

Yes.

Nah son, don't you be spurning dat legitimate criticism, you take that criticism.

Other guy, you oughta post one book for rookie here.

new faggot, try this:

military-history.org/books/haig-master-of-the-field-by-maj-gen-sir-john-davidson.htm

Now you learn to take legitimate criticism now, y'hear?

>No mention of Franchet d'Esperey, Gallieni nor Lyautey

T. Is how Finnish people sign there post, so its mocking the poster

He could look at a section of enemy line, say what forces he needed to break it, and then predict the resulting casualties to within two dozen men. If that doesn't make you numinous I don't know what you want.

muh lions led by lambs

When will it die?

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He wasn't the only general who was able to appreciate the casualties it would take to achieve an objective (and you overstate the accuracy of his claims of you are talking about Passchendaele). Any examination of Currie's leadership needs to take into account the notable missteps of his career. He was not immune to the learning curve, he and his staff just incorporated the lessons learned by the British and ANZAC's very efficiently.

An argument can also be made for the Canadian Corps have way more firepower than a comparably sized British force. This undoubtedly contributed to their battlefield success, and consequently Currie's military reputation.

...

The only British commanders of seniority that were actually decent were Allenby and Plumer. There were quite a few officers of lesser grades that stood out, but not sure if they were up to fielding that kind of manpower. Outside of India, British generals weren't used to wielding armies over the size of 100,000. Hence, why they had to painstakingly learn the kind of staffwork and structure for the millions of Britons fielded in WWI.

Personally, I think the British should've swallowed their pride and allowed Currie and Monash to take command of British troops. At least with those 2, you KNEW you're efforts would actually result in something and the commanders wouldn't carelessly throw your lives away.

But as bad as senior British commanders, the French were plagued with even worse. That itself is the real tragedy of WWI.

Actually plummer was a fool who burned his memoirs.

French commanders were generally more effective than their British counterparts.

When you realize it was true. The assholes in charge learned nothing from the US Civil War or the Russo-Japanese War. An entrenched enemy that's well-supplied and determined would wreck havoc on the attacker. And the fact that advances in artillery as well as the introduction of the machine gun makes this point even more succinct.

A fucking Polish banker accurately predicted much of the Western Front in 1870. I mean, I can understand generals in 1914 and even the beginning of 1915 to not fathom how things have changed, but the fact that they kept on throwing away hundreds of thousands of men in useless offensives is unforgivable. Insanity is when you do the same thing over and over and over again while expecting a different result. I mean, making a mistake is not a problem, failure to correct it is.

They had wireless, not radio. Spoken voice radio transmission post dates the war. Wireless is more like morse code transmitted without telegraph wires.

Read more about Haig and GHQ. There were a lot of technologies with their own theorists competing for Haig's favour. He just happened to favour the cavalry, it does not make the man clinically retarded you twat.

I am pretty sure they tried different things, barrages, bombings from plane, tanks etc.I think you're an ignorant fool.

No, it falls short.

What about Smith Dorrien?

>implying I'm not an avid reader of WWI
I'm well-aware that the tech revolution confounded a lot of generals to the point where they had to do trial-and-error. Like I said, 1914 and 1915 is somewhat understandable for the bloodshed, but 1916 and 1917 was a waste of human life.

Personally, I think the biggest fuck-up of all time was Gallipoli. Both the army AND naval commanders fucked up royally. If they had pushed on and showed a little more initiative, the Dardanelles would've been opened and Russia would have an outlet to the greater world again.

Idiot. Gough and Rawlinson and all these clowns were just Haig's buddies from India and south Africa. After sir John French's move to home defence Lord Kitchener should have assumed supreme command as his supporters favoured. This would have kept Haig out of the system and kept the war focused on the flanks rather than the retard Western front

Why would they learn anything from wars in far away shitholes?

In large part they weren't. Elements were present sure, but not the specific circumstances of the war, specifically the Western Front.

To suggest otherwise is foolish.

John French was incredibly petty with him. Smith-Dorrien was not a bad commander when you compare him to some of the others. Not great, but certainly competent.

>Implying turkey would have given up.

They wouldn't gave.

>they kept on throwing away hundreds of thousands of men in useless offensives

As opposed to what? "Useful offensives" against the same fortified earthworks that stretched the entire length of the Western front? The problems presented by trench warfare weren't solved by some tactical development. They were solved by technological advances, the tank & the field radio. It wasn't a deficiency in generalship that lead to a war of attrition.

No you're wrong you stupid fuck. The circumstances were nearly identical.

Without another decade of technological advances which yet increased the power of the defensive.

Port Arthur is also misleading because the Japanese won. Sure it was horrible, but hey they won. It was totally rational to make the conclusions that the European generals did from the example of Port Arthur.

Read it, also read a lot more than that. Your point?

the butcher of his own men, sure

...

It's pretty obvious that's where your information is coming from thanks for confirming

That one works on so many levels.

Yah totally rational: ie, it is militarily acceptable to kill tens of thousands of your forces to gain strategic positions.

Literally no different than Sevastopol in 1854

I wonder if somebody could've recreated trenchworks like Petersburg and issued paint-rounds to the men's rifles? And even create shrapnel shells that are full of paint-balls. The soldiers are equipped with helmets and goggles while they charge the emplacements? Because that would've opened up eyes if someone had the foresight to initiate a training program like this in 1910 for example.

No they weren't or else we would have had a repeat of the Western Front, which manifestly did not happen in any of those wars.

Yes, elements of the problem were manifesting as early as 1864, but you do not see trench warfare in its WWI form in any of those wars, nor do you see the solutions to trench warfare expressed in them.

Stop trolling and actually make an argument other than ad hominem's.

Travers is a good military historian, he makes solid conclusions. There are other very good historians of the BEF in WWI.

This is just "muh unprecedented circumstances learning curve" argument which as you all can clearly see can only be substantiated if you pretend the 19th century didn't happen.

Do you misunderstand the point of a military operation?

The military method is spending lives to obtain a political objective. How many lives you spend to obtain that objective depends on what your nation is willing to support, but in many cases there is no recourse other than to spend lives.

You may disagree with the methods, but that doesn't make them irrational.

They TRIED new things. They didn't work. They knew the tech to change all that was in the works, but wouldn't be ready for a few more years, so they did LITERALLY the only thing they could.

No one in the past was truly stupider than you, who has 20x20 hindsight. They did the best they could with what they had. If something looks like insanity to you, perhaps you should recall that those men couldn't see the fucking future and learn how shitheaded their plans would look to history.

You think people in the US Civil War ENJOYED lining up and firing volleys at ten paces? Did they ENJOY rushing trenches in the Somme? Did those poor fuckers ENJOY holding back plate-armored knights with fucking sticks once upon a time? Fuck no! But it was the most sensible thing to do considering the technology at hand, in all cases.

Gain some perspective.

There's quite a bit of wars that get overlooked in the 19th century. Like the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War. The Siege of Plevna was another bookmark in how much things changed since Napoleon's era.

...

An intelligent man learns from his mistakes; a wise man learns from another's. All those men that suffered and died in the ACW could've been a lesson for generals post-1865 to 1914. Surely some young officer between the Civil War and WWI realized that doctrine couldn't catch up to weapons advances.

You don't just learn what interests you from past battles, you also examine the full facet of its impact. Everyone learned partial lessons from the ACW and later conflicts.

I'm not pretending these previous wars didn't happen. To us, we can divine which lessons were important in light of what we know happened in the Great War. But this is a bullshit historical methodology.

You need to understand the situation of the men in 1914. The lessons of those wars were not immediately apparent. Hell for all they knew, it was eminently possible for infantry to attack through artillery and machine guns. The fucking Japanese did it at Port Arthur.

Never mind all of the things that radically changed in the mere decade since that war.

Well apparently the army method is driving against fortified positions fruitlessly and at enormous cost for some dirt in flanders. I'm not sure that's what Clausewitz intended by political objectives