Was Sir Douglas Haig the Butcher of the Somme?

Sir Douglas Haig started his military career off as the head boy of his class at a military college in Sandhurst. As he grew older he became more respected and worked his way up the promotion ladder.

The idea of the battle of the Somme was to relieve pressure on Verdun. Verdun is town in France, which was under siege from the Germans. It was also planned to lift the spirits in the French camp and damage the German armies morale. At first the battle did not go as planned, no ground was made and this was meant to be an easy battle. The battle went on for a long time and hundreds of thousands of men from both the Allies and the Germans were killed.

Haig and his men had very different views of how the war was going. This is summed up in two quotes. Haig said, “The work of our artillery is wholly admirable”, this evidently shows that Haig is happy with the performance of his soldiers and that they are doing well in the battle of the Somme. But lieutenant J A Raws said, “It’s horrible but why should people at home not know?” This statement clearly shows that men are unhappy, and the situation is not what Haig has made it out to be. Haig’s diarie

A German machine gunner scrutinises the attitude of the Allies and the carelessness of the allies. “When we started firing, we just had to load and reload. They went down in hundreds”. This statement backs up A. J. P. Taylor in the sense that the soldiers did no have enough training and were not prepared for the battle. We might not be able to trust this source as the German machine gunner might just be trying to dislike the Allies as they were his enemy and he will probably hold a grudge. But as A.J.P. Taylor and the German machine gunner say similar things about what happened, this probably means that the statements are true. Therefore we can assume that the German machine gunner is reliable.

A national newspaper was sent a letter by Lord Landsdowne who was an ex cabinet minister so he is likely to be biased as he used to work for the government. His letter was about the seriousness of the casualties in the Somme. “We are slowly but surely killing off the best of the male population of these islands”. Around 620,000 troops were killed, this figure was only the British, there are many more people dead if we include the Germans. For this extreme large total of dead only a few square miles were gained in this whole battle (around 8 km).

s were used as propaganda to support the war effort back home. Propaganda is where usually the Government or people in charge deceive, lie or exaggerate situations to provoke an emotion from the country’s people against the enemy, and to gain support for any actions that the Government or people in charge are planning to do. Haig could have been lying to keep the morale at home high. This also casts doubt on the reliability of Haig’s sources. We may not be able to trust the soldiers views as they could be angry as they could have seen a disturbing image for example they could h

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