I have posted very little recently from a century ago. This is because my main source, The Times, has become rather dull. You would have thought with hundreds of people being killed every day on three continents it would have lots to say but it doesn’t. Part of this is due to censorship. For understandable reasons, there is very little that the military authorities are prepared to make public. Another part of it is due to self-censorship. In wartime newspapers are extremely reluctant to criticise. Criticism is close to defeatism and defeatism is close to treason. Criticism can also carry a high price. A couple of months ago The Times criticised Lord Kitchener’s handling of munition supplies with the result that copies of the paper were burnt on the floor of the Stock Exchange.
Britain has to recruit, train and equip an army and until such time as she does there is very little she can do that’s going to make much of a difference. Even after she does these things it won’t make much of a difference because the army won’t have the experience to make itself truly effective.
So, actual front line reports tend to be all very similar. It’s all talk of our brave men, victories and heavy losses inflicted upon the enemy. Sure, the men are brave but it is difficult to cover up the fact that the frontline is hardly moving.
I was on the verge of giving up. My plan was to find a particularly egregious example of this sort of vapid war report and hang up my typing fingers until next year when things will get a bit more interesting. But occasionally you get an article that pricks your interest. In this case it’s a sentence: “Gradually, but inevitably, the voluntary is yielding to the compulsory”. It appears in a leader prompted by a bunch of City types asking the government – I kid you not – to increase taxes.
The sad thing is that it is true. Conscription will be introduced. Restrictions on the sale of alcohol are already starting to come in. Indeed, in some places it is already a criminal offence to buy a round of drinks. There will be rationing. Before long the Liberal Party will split and then wither away. Many liberals are giving up on liberalism altogether and becoming out and out socialists.
Before we condemn the war for this it is important to bear in mind that the voluntary principle was in big trouble well before its outbreak. The telephones had (effectively) been nationalised. State pensions and sick pay had been introduced. Many doctors found themselves working for the state. There were also the beginnings of unemployment benefit.
It’s all very sad – although not for The Times. The Times is all in favour of compulsion. Long before the war it was in favour of trade barriers or “imperial preference” (as it was then known) and national service. Ever since it has been campaigning for conscription and restrictions on the sale of alcohol. The paper is enjoying itself:
The truth is that all these so-called principles are nothing but expediency generalized and embodied in a formula. When the circumstances are sufficiently changed to make them no longer expedient, then they cease to be valuable and become mischievous.
The voluntary principle is a case in point. People are still clinging to it when it has already half gone and must go altogether. They cannot readjust their ideas, and the more they resist the more painful it becomes. They are kicking against the pricks – the pricks of war.
Nice, although it does beg the question if principles are bosh then what exactly does The Times think we are fighting for?
However, that is not to deny that this does rather put me in a bind. I think Britain was – perhaps I should say “Britons were” – right to fight the First World War. Willhelmine Germany posed a direct threat to Britain’s peace and prosperity. But do I really think the war could have been fought without compulsion? There are two questions here. After all, the British government existed long before 1914 and a government is nothing if not a mechanism of compulsion. So, could the war have been fought without any compulsion? and it could it have been fought without any extra compulsion?
I’ll deal with the second question and leave the first to the idealists. Could the men have been recruited? Large numbers of men signed up shortly after the outbreak of war and I have heard it said that conscription which was introduced in 1916 was not particularly successful. So maybe they could.
But could they have been equipped without a massive increase in either taxes or deferred taxes in the form of borrowing? That I very much doubt.
In the days before the welfare state there were all sorts of ways that funds were raised for “good” causes: friendly societies, public subscription and flag days were among them. There were all sorts of social pressures applied to get people to cough up. Not nice but a lot nicer than outright extortion via the tax system. Even so the amounts raised by the best-known funds were not spectacular. There was a fund created after the sinking of the Titanic and it raised a lot of money but nothing on the scale needed to fight a war.
It’s all very well sticking up for your principles but if a society that follows those principles can’t defend itself those principles are worthless. And if you abandon your principles in order to win what was the point of fighting in the first place? It seems to me that wars are often – if not always – battles of ideas. Oh, those ideas might be well hidden but more often than not they are there. War is often the ultimate test of political ideas. So, it seems a bit of cheat to go into war proclaiming a set of principles that you then abandon.
The Times 23 July 1915 p9
Yes indeed Patrick.
Government has been increasing, in both size and scope, since the 1870s – and the Liberal party (and the Conservative party) had been in intellectual trouble long before that.
19th century British thought is not, actually, very good (with a few exceptions) – the only wonder is that government did not start to grow before it did.
As for the war – there is a massive difference between attacking the tactics (the way the war was fought) and wanting the enemy to win.
In the Napoleonic wars British people attacked (in savage terms) various tactical decisions – as they did in the Crimean War.
But by the First World War the statist spirit was not just German (Frederick the Great and Bismark – and the evil worse people who replaced Bismark), it was British also.
I have no time, none, for people who say that the First World War was not “really” the fault of the German regime. They come out with endless Harry Elmer Barnes style evasions and lies – and it disgusts me.
But I also have no time, none, for people who refuse to accept that disasters occurred in the British conduct of the war.
For example on July 1st 1916 – when 20 thousand British soldiers were killed and about 40 thousand British soldiers were wounded (in one day).
The fact that General Haig did not resign after this shows that he was not an honourable man, and the fact that the government did not sack him shows that they were a government of cowards.
On the matter of abandoning your principles to win, I see nothing wrong with that. So long as you return to them after you win. When a man sets out to kill you, there is nothing, NOTHING that is out of bounds to stop him. However that doesn’t give you the license to kill freely once you are no longer in danger.
Very true Mr. Black. But the sad truth is the state is not a machine with an on/off switch. Once the devil is handed a pitchfork, it is no small matter to take it back.
When it comes to Haig there is no question that he made mistakes and that he certainly made them on the opening day of the Somme. However, he was not responsible for the strategic imperative to relieve the pressure on the French, or the fact that a lot of shells were duds or the wrong sort, or that the army lacked experience.
It is revealing that in January 1918, Lloyd George went all out to get rid of Haig. He sent Smuts and Hankey to France to find a replacement. Haig was not replaced. My inference is that Smuts and Hankey found a great deal of support for the man. Anyway, whatever his mistakes he probably more than made up for them when, in August 1918, he was the first senior allied commander to suggest that the war could be won in 1918. That must have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
“It seems to me that wars are often – if not always – battles of ideas.”
If by “ideas” you mean something in the nature of “principles”, I’m not convinced. That does seem to be the case with WW2; nazism (and its retarded sibling fascism) were certainly evil “ideas” and it was proper to resist them. But what “ideas” animated WW1? German expansionism versus British politicians’ desire to protect their territory? Would it really have made much of a difference to the average Briton (or Frenchman) if Germany had won that war? Or, for that matter, if Napoleon had been victorious at Waterloo?
Perry, I think that is true with regards to the civil apparatus of the state, secret police and midnight raids and that sort of thing probably can’t be put back in the box. But if we’re talking about sending an army “over there” to slaughter and maim until none are left to resist, that does seem to be responsive to the off switch. Armies return home, battalions are disbanded and those people return to civilian life. We’ve actually got a pretty good record of that in the west.
Where we’ve failed is in keeping the civil and military state separate when it comes to war making. We’ve tried to make the military play by civil, legal rules and utterly hamstrung their ability to win wars, or even battles. To compensate, the civil apparatus has been given quasi-military powers of intelligence gathering and raids and detentions to use against the home population, it’s quite strange really.
It seems to me that civil society, in peacetime, whose business is simply the production of prosperity, is best run by proper reference to the wisdom of crowds, whether garnered via democracy, the market or some other means. However war is best conducted by authoritarian means.
It was Britain’s good fortune up until the first world war that we were able to restrict the size of our wars to those we could conduct with large authoritarian navy and a small authoritarian army, leaving civil society to function more or less by the wisdom of crowds.
Unfortunately the first world war required such a gigantic effort that all of society had to be put under an authoritarian regime. As noted above, once an authoritarian regime is in place it is very difficult to eliminate it. Yes you disband the army and shut down the munition factories, but the politicians and civil servants have got out of the habit of listening to the people’s ideas, and indeed the people have got used to taking orders.
Before we had fully recovered from the first world war along came the second, requiring a further expansion in authoritarianism, and accompanied by much propaganda to the effect that if a central plan was best for defeating Hitler then it must be best for producing prosperity. The people, now well used to accepting authority responded by electing an authoritarian government who instituted central authority over our civic lives to an extent not seen before.
We have a very long way to go to get government planning out of our lives, the legacy is very long lasting, but given the general low opinion of politicians I believe this will eventually erode away- provided we can avoid another war on the scale of WW1 or WW2.
Patrick do not play silly buggers.
There were lots of Generals who would have done a less bloody awful (pun intended)job than Haig including people who were on the Western front in 1918. To give a random example – Arthur Currie the Canadian commander.
Of course, given Haig’s skill at intriguer (under the I-am-just-an-inarticulate-soldier act Haig had a real talent for political intrigue, “office politics” – wire pulling, it was the only real skill he had) and his vindictive nature….
Any soldier under the command of Haig would have said “I have every confidence in Haig” as they would have been utterly finished if they had not said that – and they knew perfectly well that Haig had ways of finding out what was said in “private”.
Haig was useless – end of discussion.
However, if you wish for one…..
Haig should not have been in the army at all – at least not as an officer.
The rules were bent (repeatedly) in his favour, to cover up his low marks and failed exams. He was even awarded the pre First World War version of the sword-of-honour in a calculated insult to the men who had actually done some work,
Haig is then promoted rapidly over the heads of men who had vastly greater combat experience and had real achievements to show (as opposed to being “mentioned in dispatches” for the same reason he was passed in examinations with marks that meant he should have been failed, INFLUENCE).
Haig performance in 1914 is very poor (a mixture of incompetence and panic – covered up by him and his defenders) – but Smith-Dorian is sent home, partly because Sir John French did not like Smith-Dorian (not just over Smith-Dorian view that cavalry should be trained as mounted infantry – it was a personality clash between the Puritan Smith-Dorian and the dashing Cavalier that Sir John believed himself to be).
However, it was not just dislike of Smith-Dorian that means that he (not Haig) is sent home in 1914 – Haig had a hold over Sir John French (having lent him money at a key time).
In 1915 Haig (after gassing his own men on the first day of the Battle of Loos) lies on the second day of the Battle of Loos – claiming that two reserve divisions are being sent to chase a defeated and retreating enemy.
Haig knew perfectly well that the Germans were actually waiting in their trenches – behind vast amounts of barbed wire (many feet high and thick).
Ten thousand men are sent in a suicide attack – eight thousand are killed or wounded.
There are no German casualties from this attack.
The most lop sided day in British military history.
Does Haig kill himself?
Does he at least resign?
Of course not….
He blames everything on Sir John French (claiming, FALSELY, that the reserves were not where he had asked them to be).
For some time Haig had been sending letters to the royal court (violating the chain of command) to try and get the top job.
1816, 1917, 1918 proceed in much the same way.
Haig passing the buck for failure to other people (even his lick spittle Hugh Gough gets stabbed in the back in 1918 – not that Gough was not utterly useless, he was utterly useless, but he was only “his master’s voice” he never made independent decisions), and taking the credit for the successes of other men.
The fantasy “official history” even has Haig taking a leading rule in the last months of 1918 – when Foch, in reality, had forced Haig out of any strategic role.
And, as you quite rightly say Patrick, Haig never claimed any tactical knowledge (his get-out-of-jail-free card for messed up battles – the tactical decisions are naught to do with me governor), he was a “strategic thinker” and that rule was TAKEN AWAY FROM HIM after the German victories of early 1918.
From then on Haig does not perform a tactical role (Plumer, Currie and others do that).
And he does not perform a strategic role either – this being left to Foch.
Apart from……
Haig does one more important strategic act.
He stabs Foch in the back (as he had so many people before Foch), by supporting the compromise peace of November 1918 (supporting the very politicians who are supposed to have been his enemies).
As Foch said in 1919 “this is not peace this is a 20 year truce” – and he said it in despair.
Foch had been betrayed – and, rather more importantly, the millions of men who had died in the war (died to break Germany) had been betrayed – as had the millions who would die in the Second World War.
But to avoid the risk of getting lost in details.
On July the 1st Haig lost almost 60 thousand men – in one day.
Of these 20 thousand (twenty thousand) were DEAD.
Haig did not kill himself.
Nor did he resign.
He was a man without honour.
As are his defenders.
But the politicians – who did NOTHING (apart from grumble that they would like to get rid of Haig but they could not because…….) were no better.
Damn them to Hell.
Indirectly philosophy may have played a role in all this.
If one does not really believe that human beings are agents (i.e. that we can make real choices) then nothing is our own fault – it is all “fate” or “the historical process” of (even) the “Providence of God”, a series of causes-and-effects beyond our control.
Translated from philosophical double-talk (the stock-in-trade of David Hume and co) “It is not my fault – indeed “I” do not really exist anyway”.
And someone (second or third hand) has this view of human beings (i.e. that they are not really beings at all) is not going to be wildly disturbed by the deaths of these pre programmed flesh robots.
Also utilitarianism helps – no hard and fast moral law.
Everything is justified if it is for the “greater good” (the “greatest good of the greatest number”).
For example LYING is good if it is for the “greater good”.
Such as J.S. Mill pretending that no one opposed the Labour Theory of Value (when he knew damn well that the theory of David Ricardo and his own father, James Mill, was hotly contested).
Not much of step from these sort of attitudes (passed on – second or third hand) to faking enemy casualty figures and lying about just about everything else.
Or to treating soldiers as toys – meant to march in straight lines (just lie toy soldiers – no real grasp of actual infantry tactics) not real skirmishers. How the officers THOUGHT Napoleonic battle had been fought (not how Wellington and so on had actually fought these battles – with skirmishers and even line regiments being used flexibly).
Remember the Ulster Division – who operated rather differently on July 1st 1915.
They used real tactics (rather than behaving like flesh robots or toy soldiers – whose heads one can stick back on, if they get blown off) and they had bullets in their rifles (their officers having given back the bullets to the men, having taken the bullets in line with ORDERS).
But one unit can not win on its own.
Yes the Ulster Division took its objectives – but it was isolated (the people from the “big island” having failed) and so had to come back – being shot at by both sides.
Both sides – because the British army high command never really believed that anyone would actually take their objectives (the battle was just a sick GAME of “attrition” – there was no real intention of actually WINNING the battle) and so could not believe where the Ulstermen had ended up, British artillery shelled them.
Denis Winter sneers at the “feudal” “old army” but he is WRONG.
The British Army was not really “feudal” – any more than that whiskey fake Haig was a real aristocrat.
It was not Wellington’s army (not that I am denying the horrible side of Wellington’s army). Any more than the Royal Navy was Nelson’s navy (and I am not denying the horrible side of that either) – the Navy of 1914 was much more interested in bureaucratic games than gunnery and actually WINNING.
Never mind if you actually achieve the objective – as long as your paperwork is correct and you have covered your backside.
No room for individuals – some good, some bad. It (the army) was a machine – of conformist officers, people who had been “good boys” at school. Schools very different from wild places that Wellington and co had gone to.
Denis Winter answer me this – if someone had “called out” Haig (or any officer)on a point of honour, what would have happened?
Wellington faced down a challenger even in old age.
Haig would simply have had a challenger arrested.
And so would the rest of the top officers.
This was not a “feudal” army – this was not the “old army”.
It was FAKE.
England, Wales and Scotland had changed – they pretended to be like the old days, but they were not really.
And they regarded with horror people who fought with a sense of personal honour (for example where duelling over points of honour had not died out).
Just as they hated people who fought with actual individual intelligence – rather than as toy soldiers in nice rows (again how they THOUGHT Napoleonic battles were fought).
Of course there were brave officers – Sir John French was as “brave as a lion” (even in his old age in Ireland), Sir John Maddox was to (although his actions after the so called “Easter Rising” indicate a man who had been fighting too long). Smith-Dorian was almost insane in his courage. After all he not only is one of the few people to survive the Zulu in 1878 – he actually SAVED SOMEONE ELSE, the man screamed for help, so “of course” Smith-Dorian (the darling man – i.e. raving lunatic) goes back for him. There are only many thousands of Zulu warriors cutting people open at the time.
But they had still “internalised” the new age. It would not have occurred to any of them to “reinterpret” orders (as many people did in the age of Nelson and Wellington and before – for good or ill) or to challenge someone they regarded as wrong on a point of principle.
At least not “challenge” in the old sense.
This was not the old Britain – it was, even long before 1914, the new Britain.
The old Britain (where even Prime Ministers carried pistol or sword – and were used to using them) most likely died with Palmerston in 1865.
The old freedom loving Britain, with all its terrible vices as well as its virtues, was dead (or at least dying) by 1914.
The National Rifle Association might have had two million members – and there might still be a network of “Constitutional Clubs” – but this was not the Britain of the time when a single individual was in charge of vast operations – winning everything if they won (and dying if they lost).
This was the new Britain of bureaucracy (where individual commanders did not take responsibility for failure – because, they claimed, everything was approved by committees and so on) – an imitation of what they thought Prussia was like.
It was not the “old army” – it was (even in 1914) the new army.
The Civil Service (itself a Victorian invention – in imitation of what they thought Prussia was like) with rifles.
Not individual commanders – some good, some bad. Being in control of operations and taking responsibility for operations.
They claimed that the new scientific age dictated an end to individual thought and action (if such things ever “really” existed).
But the new age (and the new scale of things) had done no such thing.
It was their own philosophy (second or third hand) that led to poor methods of warfare.
“in some places it is already a criminal offence to buy a round of drinks”
??? Can somebody enlighten me on that?
Interesting stuff that I agree with. Haig once commented that we’d win because we had more men. That’s quite chilling. An I hadn’t heard that quote from Foch about a “20 year truce”. Bang on the money there wasn’t he.
I have to partially disagree with just one thing. As well as the clockwork soldiers perversion of military science there was a sentimentalism in the UK about the nobility of sacrifice. Think of hymns like, “I vow to thee my country”. It is all about dying for your country and not killing for it.
I prefer the George Patton approach,
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets.
and,
The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
Or, in a sense I don’t regard sacrifice as a virtue. Success, as cheaply achieved as possible, is what matters.
I think Wellington himself said something along those lines. “In war there is no substitute for victory”.
And among them were ardent and life-long supporters of Free Trade, who came to beg the Government to tax imports. These gentlemen have readjusted their ideas, and it is evident that the Government are doing the same.
So a gang of ‘businessmen’ want the government to tax their competition out of existence so the peasantry will have no alternative to their high prices, and this socialist cretin at the Times interprets this as ‘readjusting ideas’ in favour of higher taxes and more socialism?
Is the author really that stupid, or is the article intended to be ironic?
My guess would be ‘that stupid’, or maybe ‘that naive’ – remember, that what 100 years ago, before socialism was actually tried on any significant scale.
On the question of ideas, I think the big conflict was between monarchism and republicanism. I have blogged about this before. Many aspects of the war can be traced back to this conflict.
Would it have made a great deal of difference to the British had Germany won? Yes. Germany would have been able to expand its navy (from its already dangerous level) and to threaten Britain’s trade. As Britain was dependent on trade for its food supply this would have put Britain in an almost impossible position.
Banning the buying of rounds. See here. Although the article seems to imply that the first application of the law did not come about until 1916. I will see if I can drag out the article that made me think it started a little earlier.
After a little research it seems that the first ban on the buying of rounds came in July 1915 and applied to Newhaven in Sussex. The source for this is The Times 19 July 1915 p3.
There is not evidence that any British general had a better grasp of logistics or strategy than Haig.
There is no evidence that Haig had any particular skill at “office politics”.
There is no evidence that Haig was vindictive. After all, who would he be vindictive towards?
Smith-Dorrien was relieved of his command in 1915.
The men who participated in the gas attack at Loos were provided with gas hoods. My understanding is that about 8 died from the effects of gas.
There is no evidence that Haig knew beforehand what would happen to 21st and 24th Divisions.
There is no tradition in the British army of officers shooting themselves after reverses.
Haig sent extracts of his diary to the King at the King’s request. There is no evidence that the King had much influence on the conduct of the war.
There is no evidence that Haig had anything other than a peripheral role in the Armistice negotiations.
There is no evidence that British soldiers went into battle without bullets for their rifles.
Patrick, as I think I have mentioned before, you are not telling the truth.
Many Generals at the time had a better grasp of tactical and strategic matters than Douglas Haig – not that is a particular high standard to beat.
And Haig was an expert at “office politics” (wire pulling and so on) – indeed he owned his entire rise in the army (long before the war) to his contacts and networking skills.
He also used his skills in this area to get to the top in the army on the Western Front (backstabbing anyone, “old friends” included, whenever it suited his purpose) and stay at the top in spite of his endless blunders.
This is were Denis Winter is WRONG – he gets a mountain of documentary evidence (the evidence you dishonestly claim does not exist Patrick) showing Haig’s military incompetence and great skill at wire pulling and influence – but then attributes this to the “old army” or even the “feudal army”.
It was nothing of the kind – it was the new army created by the reforms of the late 19th century and early 20th century.
An army where someone who was essentially a bureaucrat (like Haig – and by “bureaucrat” I do not mean an expert in logistics, I mean a wire puller and someone who could use bits of paper as weapons in the “war” for his personal advancement and the destruction of rivals) could get to the top and stay there – in a way that would have astonished previous generations.
Nick.
Yes Wellington and Patton were correct.
For example had Wellington being given the task of taking Berlin he would have done it – he might have done it in very nasty ways (I do not deny it), but he would have done it.
Just as Marlborough would have done – again by nasty methods if he had (but he would have done the job).
It is not a “change in technology” or a “change in the nature of war” that is to blame for the mess under Haig – it is matter of shits being in charge (shits like Haig).
Men without a shred of personal honour – as Haig’s failure to kill himself (or even resign) after the second day of the Battle of Loos, or the first day of the Battle of the Somme shows.
Of course scumbags have been in charge before – but the new “cult of respectability” (i.e. cover everything up) and “cult of administration” (meaning imitating what the political and intellectual administrative class THOUGHT Prussia was like) meant that nothing could be done – or, at least, nothing was done.
And Haig was not the worst General in the army – have a look at the people sent out to command at Sulva Bay (although that may have been deliberate – many people wanted that whole campaign to fail, so may have deliberately chosen the worst people to command it that they could find, this would have been known by the word “treason” in previous centuries).
And the Royal Navy had also declined.
True it was no longer the horrible environment of “rum, sodomy and the lash” (although there were a lot of women and children aboard in the navy of Nelson’s day, hence “son-of-a-gun” for people brought up sleeping under a cannon from the time they were babies – so they were not sodomites) – but it was no longer very good at killing the enemy either.
Being “respectable” had become far more important than being a good killer.
Parades more important than gunnery.
Had the Royal Navy of previous centuries been given the task of taking Constantinople they would have done it – anyway they had to.
Otherwise the Admiral in charge would have been hanged for failure (see Admiral Byng – as Voltaire put it, “the English hang an admiral from time to time – to encourage the others”).
You have failed in your mission – why are you not dead?
Do not worry – we will fix that for you.
The new W…… Park car parking system has been a great success over the last year – we have not lost vast sums of money, or if we have it is for totally unrelated reasons.
The carboot sale today was also a great success – I was not turning away carboot sellers from 0730 (i.e. lots and lots of money). There was not hopeless incompetence in the amount of land allocated for this task and how that land was used.
Our fearless leader is an educated Scot who “looks the part” – slim and elegant (unlike the pot bellied and hopelessly untidy Canadian commander Arthur Currie). And sounds it do – a man of few, but manly, words. Spoken in a sincere voice (a carefully practiced sincere voice).
Our fearless leader is not responsible for wasting hundreds of thousands of Pounds on mad schemes – indeed looked at “in the correct light” all these schemes are really a success.
And, anyway, “there is no evidence” that anyone would be better at running W. Park than our fearless leader – the educated Scot.
I now claim the title of “official historian”
I am James Edmonds – the writer of the Official History (after Fortescue was forced out for the terrible crime of honesty).
I have been covering up for our fearless leader since Professor Henderson told me to do Haig’s work for him at Camberley – and I just carry on doing it.
Do not listen to old fat-bald people who rely on common sense and experience – that is not the “educated” way. The “educated” way is to have certain fixed ideas and to be utterly unmoved by their failure – apori warfare.
To “keep making the same mistake – over and over again” and then blame “technology” or the “new scale of warfare” for one’s personal incompetence
After all – they (they silly people – like me) got their knowledge of the First World War from the people who had actually fought in it (like my grandfather and the rest of the people at the Lancing British Legion in the old days). And what could people who had actually been there know?
To be serious for a minute (thinking of the vast heaps of dead men) – even John Burke’s “A History of England” (a children’s book given to me for Christmas in 1974 – guess who gave it to me) gives a better view of Haig and co than you do Patrick.
So does the late Colonel A. J. Barker in his little sketches of such battles as Passchendaele.
As I wrote to Helen S. earlier today.
The British establishment is on the march.
Justifying Appeasement in the 1930s (“Chamberlain was buying necessary time”) and justifying the terrible strategic and tactical conception in the First World War – “Haig was a great soldier – or, at least, no worse than anyone else”.
And libertarians who spread the establishment’s stuff do not even seem to see that they are being used.
I am too irritated to clean up my grammar and typos.
I am sick of talking to a brick wall.
After all I have been doing that, in various different contexts, all my life.
No time to wallow in self pity – lots of other things to do.
Well, did not Basil Liddell-Hart (per Wikipedia) state:
?
Do you know Haig’s life better than Liddell-Hart?
So ‘vindictive’ is a small leap.
And when you parrot ‘…there is no evidence…’, do you seriously expect me to believe that you have considered all the evidence in existence for your proposition, and found nothing to support it, as if it were a proposition as implausible as the Moon being made of cheese?
There is a simpler explanation, that you are using a rhetorical trick to defend your bullshit, in the expectation that no one will cite any evidence to the contrary.
It seemed afterwards that the differences between Imperial Germany and its adversaries were not worth the enormous cost of the war. But this is in some ways an illusion, spawned by the horrible differences between Nazi Germany and its adversaries.
If Britain had not resisted Germany, if Germany had triumphed – then the Bernhardi ethos (that might literally does make right) would have been validated. Conquest by violence would have succeeded – and surely would have been tried again. Schrecklichkeit would have been successful – its practicioners crowned with victor’s laurels.
It is possible to imagine that Imperial Germany would somehow moderate itself later on, and evolve into a peaceful and just state. (Pre-WW I Germany was not just; it mistreated its subjects in the Polish borderlands and Alsace-Lorraine.) It seems far more likely that its militarism and aggression would be reinforced by success, leading to further wars.
One may argue that conquest by violence was not eradicated – it was tried again twenty years later. (Even sooner if one considers Italy in Abyssinia and Japan in China.) But the most powerful and dangerous aggressor was defeated and disarmed. It was only the perverted genius of Hitler that revived it. And Hitler had to rebuild all Germany’s arms from scratch, and did not start off with an array of Continental satellites.
Victorious Imperial Germany would have retained the powerful High Seas Fleet, and would have had Belgium, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, Poland, and possibly Russia and France as satellites – not as murderous as Nazi Germany, but even more dangerous.
The worst mistakes that Denis Winter makes as an historian of the First World War are actually nothing to do with Haig (on Haig he is generally correct).
For example Denis Winter writes (in “Haig’s Command” 1991) that few Germans were killed in the British attack at Messines in 1917 – actually many thousands of Germans were killed or wounded in this attack.
Winter gets the idea that the Germans had evacuated the area from German sources – which he accepts uncritically (exactly the sort of behaviour he condemns in people who accept British official sources uncritically).
Even Edmunds tells the truth sometimes – and he rightly says that Germans had CONSIDERED pulling out from their positions (or holding them with a token force) before the British attack – but had not actually done so.
A reader will also look in vain for such battles as Polygon Wood and Broodseinde in the major work by Denis Winter.
True Haig was not in charge of these battles (and they were fought with men using tactical concepts that Haig did not favour), but they should still be at least mentioned in any major work on the First World War.
The Germans were not supermen. And with competent opponents (such as Plumer or Currie-Curry [the spelling varied over time]) they could suffer terrible defeats.
Someone (like Denis Winter) who is such an admirer of the military performance and MORAL CHARACTER of General Lundendorff is in error.
Lundendorff was just as capable of taking the success of other men as his own (Tannenberg – actually the German plan was the work of Colonel Hoffman and Major-General Grunert) and twisting history to serve his own purposes as Haig was.
Indeed Ludendorff was worse in this respect – at least in moral terms.
The objective of the writing of Douglas Haig was a simple one (almost charming in its basic semi childlike corruption) how to make ME, Douglas Haig, look good.
Ludendorff had much darker objectives.
He was indeed (unlike Haig) a “deep thinker” – but his thoughts were deep in darkness.
Douglas Haig wanted to be made an Earl (to be a real aristocrat – not a pretend one).
He also wanted a big house, and lots of horses. Haig had a sincere love of horses and was a very good rider. Although he was rejected in favour of Allenby, a greatly INFERIOR rider, as master of the drag hunt before the war [something he never forgave Allenby for – just as Haig never forgave Plumer for giving him, Haig, low marks in an examination] because Allenby was considered to have better tactical skills in relation to the drag hunt.
Haig achieved all these objectives just as he achieved his rapid promotion in the pre war army and his getting and keeping of supreme command during the war – by being a master of manipulation.
His objectives were entirely personal – to be admired [although he did not care about that] and to have lots of nice stuff – especially horses “well bred” ones. And, in themselves, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG with Haig’s objectives.
Ludendorff’s objectives were totally different – they were political.
He was in charge of “War Socialism” in the later period of the First World War – although he did not invent such ideas which go all the way back to Fichte and so on.
Imperial Germany was rotten with these ideas – as the French President (a philosopher) pointed out in 1914 – the German Declaration of War (the pack of lies that has the French bombing Bavaria) was not just against France, it was against the universal principles of reason and justice themselves.
Indeed German philosophers (or the fashionable ones with the elite – Kant was out of fashion) denied the existence of universal principles of reason and justice.
Collectivism was on the rise everywhere – but no where more than Germany.
And none of these ideas were invented by an Austrian born lance corporal.
Someone who would have been nothing (not even a “drummer”) had he not spoken to things already fashionable in Germany.
After all (for example) the turncoat Englishman Houston Stewart Chamberlain (who “anointed” Mr Hitler in a sort of Black Mass type way) has been a friend and adviser to the Emperor himself.
In Britain someone like Houston Stewart Chamberlain was still a freak.
Thinking went more on the lines of “how do I get a big house and lots of nice, well bred, horses – and get a real Earldom……”
Not – how can I aid the forces of Hell to overwhelm the world.
I should have typed “he PRETENDED not to care about that” in relation to being admired.
Innocent, almost childlike, aims – unlike someone like Ludendorff.
Advancing by connections and political skills is what most generals (like all government employees) do. For example: Eisenhower. The age when great Generals were skilled warriors is long gone.
Unfortunately, Jacob is correct. I know someone who retired as a colonel because he wouldn’t play the political games necessary to gain that star. And the US generals appointed during the Obama years are even worse than their predecessors. That’s why I am concerned about the “Jade Help” military exercises being conducted across a dozen southern states. I don’t think they’re really training for the troops (there are far better means of providing that) as for the senior staff.
Obviously, that should have been “Jade Helm”.
Jacob and Laird – I wish I could argue with you, but I fear you are correct.
To some extent “it was ever thus” (manipulation has always been a useful skill in getting and keeping command) – but, in the past, at least General responsible for a disaster was expected to die.
Either by enemy action (and many British Generals have been killed in combat – but not Haig, who does not even appear to have even been wounded in his entire life in the army), or by their own hand.
The “accident whilst cleaning his revolver”.
Haig was at one point, disapproved of by General Sir Redvers Buller VC, an ‘old school’ general. He was so ‘old school’ that somewhere in Mercia (western England) there is a family I came across a few years ago with a tradition. The first-born son of each generation is called and calls his first-born son ‘Redvers’ as their paternal ancestor’s life, a common soldier, was saved in battle by Redvers Buller, in, I believe, the Zulu Wars.
Perhaps I should have said “I am unaware of any evidence” etc. It is impossible to be aware of everything concerned with the First World War – it is too large a subject. And I think if someone wishes to criticise someone who isn’t around to defend themselves the onus is on them to provide the evidence.
I have a very low opinion of Liddell Hart. See here.
Ed – as you know the General you mention got the nickname “Sir Reverse Buller” because of his defeats in the Boar War.
But, yes, he did have a fine combat record – he earned his high rank (even if he did not then distinguish himself as a General).
There were other Generals like that – for example Plumer who had, as a young officer, personally helped save a British square after in the Sudan – i.e. engaged in direct fighting, pistol in hand.
His letter to his wife reveals neither elation or disgust at his first time killing (and it was his first time), just expressing sorrow at the deaths of some of his friends that he was unable to save.
However, I must correct an error of mine.
I may have given the impression that General Lundendorf was a formal Devil worshipper – he would have denied that.
General Lundendorf would have argued that the Devil (indeed the philosophical concepts of “good” and “evil”) were Jewish nonsense that had, via Christianity, undermined the warrior will-to-power of the German Volk.
Personally General Ludendorff was happy to make use of Jews as soldiers or civilian administrators – as long as they were indeed of-use (if not….).
However, (like so many German thinkers going back to Fichte and so on) the entire nation (the economy and so on) must be under the control of the state in order to conquer lands for the German Volk – with existing populations being either driven out or enslaved.
This was not “evil” for, as already explained, the concepts of “good” and “evil” were silly nonsense polluting the warrior people via Judaism and Christianity.
General Haig, not being a German intellectual, did not think in these terms.
General Haig was not a very good General (and he was not a very good man either) – but he did not worship Woden (either literally or as a metaphor for the warrior destiny of the Volk).
For some reason none of this about General Ludendoff, and his associates, is included in Denis Winter’s (admittedly brief but highly favourable) account of them.
People such as Smith-Dorien and Plumer may have killed vastly more people than Ludendorff did (indeed I am not sure that Lundendorff ever killed a man with his own hands – or that Haig ever did).
But they did NOT believe in “blood-for-the-blood-God”
Indeed risking one’s life to save people who had proved themselves to be weak or terror ridden (who had screamed for help – in terror) would have baffled a German intellectual – at least of the fashionable sort.
How would such an action of aided making the Volk stronger rather than weaker?
How was it (even) for the greatest good of the greatest number?
Why risk your life to save the weak or those filled with terror?
Of course “if you have to ask the question – you would not understand the answer”.
They, people such as Smith-Dorien and Plumer, were indeed “Gentlemen” and, contrary to what Denis Winter seems to think (at least sometimes seems to think), this is not a bad thing to be.
I should have typed “after the square had broken” in relation to that conflict in the Sudan.
A somewhat alarming situation to move towards – as opposed to away from.
The German intellectuals (of the fashionable sort among the political elite, contrary to want Randian Objectivists sometimes imply, they were not reading Kant – not that I favour this philosopher) may have seen themselves a “wolves”.
Powerful and graceful – ready to feast upon the “sheep” and beyond such “absurd” concepts as “right and wrong”.
However, some breeds of sheep dog are not afraid of wolves.