Posted on 11/10/2008 11:14:39 PM PST by bruinbirdman
He is the most pilloried military leader in British history, caricatured as a butcher and a bungler who sent hundreds of thousands of men over the top to their deaths. Now a new biography pins a further damning indictment on Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig. Late in the final year of the First World War, it argues, he was pushing for a peace that would have left Germany as the real winner of the war.
According to Dr J. P. Harris, senior lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Haig was not quite the uncaring monster of popular myth but nor was he, as some recent studies have suggested, a clear-sighted and imperturbable leader who should take the credit for Britain’s ultimate victory. Rather, he was a poor battlefield commander who “didn’t have the sort of intellect that could penetrate the fog of war”.
In Douglas Haig and the First World War, published today on the 90th anniversary of the Armistice, Dr Harris argues that Haig’s failings led him to misread the strength of the German armies, counselling aggression when they were strongest in the middle of the war and caution as they weakened spectacularly in its final weeks.
Haig became the leading advocate of a compromise peace in Britain, Dr Harris said yesterday. “He wanted to offer the Germans very, very, easy ceasefire terms in late 1918.” This would apparently have left Germany armed and in possession of its territorial gains in Eastern Europe.
“He seemed to show no realisation of just what a serious defeat for Britain such a peace – which might have left Germany as the hegemonic power on the Continent – would actually be.”
Among the arguments he cited were the weakness of the other Allied armies (the
(Excerpt) Read more at entertainment.timesonline.co.uk ...
Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery Boulder City, Clark County, Nevada
yitbos Sp/5 bruinbirdman, Hq&Hq Ft. Greely, USARAL '69-'71
Good article and comment.
The war to end all wars: one of my favo(u)rite movies is “Chariots of Fire” as it occurred soon after World War I. Those soldiers and those British soldiers certainly made sacrifices.
I know the war started in Yugoslavia, at least by history the event that touched if off. I don’t know what was going on in that far part of Europe as much.
We all know World War II well and the books are written about that war mostly. I’ve read a few good books on the first one.
the money shot:
“But he added: “We tend to forget that it was the British armies that won the First World War in the field, not the Americans or the French or the Belgians and if we blame Haig for the disasters we must credit him for the victories too.”
Maybe Europe would have been better off.
Completely overlooked:
Easy peace = No Hitler = No WWII
At least according to some historians.
From what I can get from this, if Haig prevailed with his soft treatment of Germany, that country would have been able to rise up and wage another war.
But we all know that didn't happen...well, at least immediately.
German hegemony over central Europe would have been much better that what we got instead: the Nazi’s, the Fascists, and seven decades of communism.
Could the Versailles treaty been made less harsh and onesided? Certainly. But keeping the Kaiser, Hindenburg and Ludendorff would have been disastrous not to speak that the Germans had interest in them anymore either.
It was Imperial Germany that installed Communism in the East in order to cancel out Tsarist Russia. And on terms of genocidal antisemitism Ludendorff and the Kaiser didn’t owe Hitler a lot.
okay, play this out: Germany the hegemonic power on the Continent: Not a great thing for Britain, but then again, a bulwark against Bolshevik Russia without the nastiness of Hitler, who probably goes on to an undistinguished career as an NCO and dies as an old-age pensioner sometime around 1960. No Holocaust, the Japanese are contained peacefully, and some hundred million people in Europe and Asia go on to live out a full lifespan. The Containment policy takes place in Asia instead of Europe. China doesn’t fall to Communism, no Korean and Vietname wars. Africa and the Mideast are decolonized in an orderly manner with relatively little conflict and take their place among civilized nations. There’s probably still an Israel, but it coexists in relative tranquility with its neighbors.
By the forties we have orbiting satellites, by the fifties we’re on the moon, by the seventies we’re colonizing Mars. In the nineties we cure cancer and solve the energy crisis.
Probably not, in all likelihood we go down a different, but equally catastrophic path. But interesting to think about.
The let Lenin pass through their territory. I wouldn’t call that installing him. And you are missing the point. If peace had been made there would have been no need for the Germans to help Lenin and no way Lenin could have succeeded anyway.
wasnt it general pershing of the us forces that said, if we dont pummel germany now and let them know they lost, we will just have to come back and do this all over again...
talk about foresight....
Also I fear you are missed this point:
“He wanted to offer the Germans very, very, easy ceasefire terms in late 1918.”
As you know The Bolshevik takeover was already in 1917.
No more so than the British and the French. Remember the British joined the war mainly because they thought Germany was a threat to their colonies. And France joined the alliance that got them into the war because they wanted to remain the European hegemonic power themselves.
It's worth remembering that when war broke out the British people knew nothing about any pact with France. The British parliament knew nothing about it. And the British cabinet wasn't told until the French began pressing the British government for troops. Britain is usually held up as the model for democracy in these WW I narratives. But the truth is there were about two thousand families that ran the entire empire.
Is this an example of historical deconstruction?
yitbos
The commies would not have survived if Imperial Germany had not been destroyed. The Germans would have simply put the Romanovs back on the throne.
I would be interested to know if he made these peace suggestions before or after Parliament refused him any additional troops.
So while I think that the Versailles treaty in many respects could have been more easy and balanced, letting Germany off the hook entirely, much less granting them huge territorial gains would have been fatal, illegal and imoral.
This would have meant German dominance over what are Poland and the Baltics.
Britain is usually held up as the model for democracy in these WW I narratives.
Yeah, that's amusing indeed. In fact most of Europes thrones from London to Petersburg were inhabited by an extended clan of German nobles.
Maybe... but if we follow the timeline of Haig's proposal and the fall of the German monarchy in Winter 1918 it would have been to late to reinstall the Tsars, as they were executed already in July 1918. Though it could be argued that Germany would have allied with the Western Powers and intervened in Russia during the Civil War (beyond the Freikorps stuff happening in the Baltics) on side of the Whites.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.