Douglas Haig Quotes

with the centenary of 1914 rapidly approaching it is high time to stop regarding the first world war as current affairs and douglas haig as our contemporary

point of comparison, over the previous century, during which it had expanded its empire to five continents, the British Empire had been involved in some forty different conflicts around the globe—colonial insurrections mostly, but including the Crimean and Boer wars—and had lost some forty thousand soldiers in the process. Over the next four years, it would lose over twenty times that number. In the disastrous Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, France had suffered an estimated 270,000 battlefield casualties; in the present war, it was to surpass that number in the first three weeks. In this conflict, Germany would see 13 percent of its military-age male population killed, Serbia 15 percent of its total population, while in just a two-year span, 1913 to 1915, the life expectancy of a French male would drop from fifty years to twenty-seven. So inured would the architects of the carnage become to such statistics that at the launch of his 1916 Somme offensive, British general Douglas Haig could look over the first day’s casualty rolls—with fifty-eight thousand Allied soldiers dead or wounded, it remains the bloodiest single day in the history of the English-speaking world—and judge that the numbers “cannot be considered severe.” The effect of all this on the collective European

As Sir Douglas Haig's despatch makes clear, the series of engagements collectively known to history as the Battle of the Somme did not begin as a battle of attrition. The Somme battle was designed from the first as an offensive but major battles and offensives do not happen overnight.

The Western Front was at all times, according to this view, the decisive theatre of the war, and all the available forces should continually have been concentrated there. The only method of waging war on the Western Front was by wearing down the enemy by ‘killing Germans in a war of attrition.’ This we are assured was always Sir Douglas Haig’s scheme; he pursued it unswervingly throughout his whole Command. Whether encouraged or impeded by the Cabinet, his policy was always the same: ‘Gather together every man and gun and wear down the enemy by constant and if possible by ceaseless attacks.’ This in the main, it is contended, he succeeded in doing, with the result, it is claimed, that in August, 1918, the enemy, at last worn down, lost heart, crumpled, and finally sued for peace. Viewing the events in retrospect, Colonel Boraston invites us to see, not only each of the various prolonged offensives as an integral operation, but the whole four years, 1915, 1916, 1917 and 1918, as if they were one single enormous battle every part of which was a necessary factor in the final victory. We wore the enemy down, we are told, upon the Somme in 1916, we wore him down at Arras in the spring, we continued to wear him down at Passchendaele in the winter of 1917. If the army had been properly reinforced by the politicians we should have persisted in wearing him down in the spring of 1918. Finally, as the fruits of all this process of attrition and ‘killing Germans’ by offensive operations, the enemy’s spirit was quelled, his man power was exhausted, and the war was won. Thus a great design, measured, foreseen and consciously prepared, reached its supreme accomplishment. Such is the theory. These views are supported in the two important

El general Douglas Haig, que dirige el ataque desde su cómoda retaguardia y cada noche dobla los calzoncillos antes de acostarse, se encoge de hombros. A mí que me registren. Él ha observado escrupulosamente lo que se enseña en las mejores academias del ramo: previa preparación artillera, toda una semana diluviando metralla sobre las posiciones enemigas y carga final a la bayoneta. No es culpa suya si la mitad de los proyectiles no ha estallado (por defecto de fabricación), ni si la mitad de las alambradas estaban tan intactas como los boches que brotaban por docenas de sus madrigueras, las ametralladoras por delante, en cuanto escampó.

Los cuadros de bajas expuestos en el capítulo titulado «Estadística sangrienta» muestran la falsedad de esta impresión. Sir Douglas Haig no fue bien servido en esta ocasión por su Servicio de Información del Gran Cuartel General196 la tendencia a decirle a un jefe de elevada situación solo las cosas que gusta de oír es una de las explicaciones más corrientes de una dirección

Los cuadros de bajas expuestos en el capítulo titulado «Estadística sangrienta» muestran la falsedad de esta impresión. Sir Douglas Haig no fue bien servido en esta ocasión por su Servicio de Información del Gran Cuartel General196 la tendencia a decirle a un jefe de elevada situación solo las cosas que gusta de oír es una de las explicaciones más corrientes de una dirección equivocada. La visión del jefe de cuya decisión dependen los acontecimientos fatales es así, en general, mucho más confiada de lo que exige la brutalidad de los hechos.

Douglas Haig remained Commander-in-Chief of the British Armies in France until the end of the war but his reputation was blasted by the death toll on the Somme and took a further beating in 1917, after the losses of Passchendaele. Only now, more than 80 years after the Great War ended, has Haig's reputation begun to recover. This seems only fair, for many of the attacks on his character and reputation seem misguided. Haig was neither callous nor incompetent; he fought a long, hard and ultimately successful war with considerable skill.

Consider a youthful major named Douglas Haig. Before setting off across the Sudanese desert, he had asked his sister to send him from home “jams, tinned fruits, cocoa, vegetables, haddock in tins, tongue, biscuits, some hock and a bottle or two of brandy,” all of which, along with extra silk underwear, Haig would transport by the three camels that were at his disposal, along with four horses, a donkey, a goat (for milk), a cook, a valet, and various servants to look after the animals.

I write, therefore I am.

No podrá decirse que «los militares», es decir, el Estado Mayor, no hayan actuado a su gusto. Pudieron llevar su triste experimento hasta el final; sacaron de Gran Bretaña todo lo que pidieron; gastaron a la vez los hombres y los cañones del ejército británico casi hasta su destrucción y lo hicieron frente a las más claras advertencias y contrargumentos que no podían contestar. Sir Douglas Haig actuó por convicción, pero sir William Robertson se dejó arrastrar pesadamente: ha aceptado plenamente su responsabilidad y no podía dejar de hacerlo. «Yo era más que un simple asesor; era el jefe profesional de todos los ejércitos británicos, como Haig lo era de los del frente francés. Se recurría a mí, como hizo el Imperio entero, para que no se les pidieran cosas imposibles y para no encontrarse colocados en ninguna parte en situación desventajosa»216 y también el 23 de junio: «Mi propia responsabilidad […] no es pequeña al pedir la continuación de un plan con el que el primer ministro se ha mostrado disconforme […]».217 Y, finalmente, de Robertson a Haig, el 27 de septiembre: «Usted conoce ya mi opinión personal. Siempre ha sido la defensiva en todos los teatros menos en el Oeste. Pero la dificultad está en probar que esto es lo correcto ahora que Rusia ha caído. Confieso que me empeño en ello más bien porque no veo otra cosa mejor y porque me impulsa mi intuición, no porque disponga de ningún buen argumento en que apoyarlo».218 Estas palabras son terribles cuando se aducen para justificar el sacrificio de cerca de 400.000 hombres.