Haig's+Responsibilities



Sir Douglas Haig was the Commander of the British forces in on the western front in the battle of the Somme. He was widely criticized for the large casualties that Britain suffered as a result of the Battle of the Somme.

Sir Douglas Haig, despite it being clear that the tactic of attrition was ineffective and nothing more than a waste of people and ammunition continued to use this strategy, as a result 20000 were killed and 40000 wounded on the first day. With a total of 400000 casualties at the end of the offensive. We believe that this was a great failure as it had become clear that the tactic of attrition was not working, despite this he continued to use this ineffective strategy, making it a failure on his part as well. For more information on the first day of the somme click here.

Some may say that Sir Douglas Haig had been an ineffective strategist, whose only result was the loss of a great deal of life, however, some may say that what he did was acceptable as for one thing, his strategies, although not the most effective, were wearing down the Germans, and we believe, helped in the end to defeat them. This is because the German and it's alliedforces had a limited amount of troops (22850000 troops)that they could send, and this amount was a considerable amount less than the allied forces (which had 37888000), and so wearing down the enemies strength bit by bit would have in the end, won the war.

However, one might argue that perhaps at the time this would not have been very effective at stopping the war, as at the time it was not known just how many troops that Germany and Austria Hungary had and so, with the addition of troops seeing their comrades die in an attempt to wear down the German strength may have devastating effects on the morale of the troops and could in fact result in the Allied defeat.

Nonetheless,despite the loss of life, General Haig claimed that three main objectives that the British had set out to achieve had been achieved, learn more by clicking  here .

We believe that although many people may have believed that Haig had done nothing but inflict heavy losses on the British side, he had infact succeeded. As we know, Germans had implimented a tactic of attrition, this tactic, was to attack Verdun, a place that many believed was a symbol of French pride, and with the collapse of Verdun, could bring the downfall of France, therefore, the British had to do something to try and relieve pressure of the French, and so despite the heavy losses we believe that for this reason the battle of the Somme, and therefore Haig's strategy was not a complete Failure.