The Battle of the Somme 1916

Field-Marshall Sir Douglas Haig ‘The Butcher of the Somme’? Was the Battle of the Somme a success or a failure? Why do you think Haig got the nickname ‘Butcher of the Somme’? Do you think he deserved it?

The Battle of Passchendaele 1917

‘Good God, did we really send men to fight in that?’ This is what Haig’s Chief-of-Staff asked when he saw the scene after the battle.

Two views of historians It has been fashionable to criticise the generals on the Western Front. But it must be remembered that they were all faced with an entirely new situation …… The task of the general in war is to win victories and these are not won by sitting still. Sooner or later one has to attack and they did their best to do this with the tools available. The generals are to be blamed not so much because they failed to open up the trench war as because they went on trying to do it, wasting thousands of lives with each attempt, long after it should have been clear that they could not succeed with the old methods. How does this historian defend the actions of the generals? What does this historian say the generals did wrong? Who do you agree with?