Douglas Haig and the First World War
Author: J. P. Harris
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2008-11-06
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 0521898021
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Contains primary source material.
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The Chief
Author: Gary Sheffield
Publisher: Aurum
Published: 2011-09-22
Total Pages: 280
ISBN-13: 1845137345
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →‘Well written and persuasive …objective and well-rounded….this scholarly rehabilitation should be the standard biography’ **** Andrew Roberts, Mail on Sunday ‘A true judgment of him must lie somewhere between hero and zero, and in this detailed biography Gary Sheffield shows himself well qualified to make it … a balanced portrait’ Sunday Times ‘Solid scholarship and admirable advocacy’ Sunday Telegraph Douglas Haig is the single most controversial general in British history. In 1918, after his armies had won the First World War, he was feted as a saviour. But within twenty years his reputation was in ruins, and it has never recovered. In this fascinating biography, Professor Gary Sheffield reassesses Haig’s reputation, assessing his critical role in preparing the army for war.
The Donkeys
Author: Alan Clark
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2011-09-30
Total Pages: 234
ISBN-13: 1448104025
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The landmark exposé of incompetent leadership on the Western Front - why the British troops were lions led by donkeys On 26 September 1915, twelve British battalions – a strength of almost 10,000 men – were ordered to attack German positions in France. In the three-and-a-half hours of the battle, they sustained 8,246 casualties. The Germans suffered no casualties at all. Why did the British Army fail so spectacularly? What can be said of the leadership of generals? And most importantly, could it have all been prevented? In The Donkeys, eminent military historian Alan Clark scrutinises the major battles of that fateful year and casts a steady and revealing light on those in High Command - French, Rawlinson, Watson and Haig among them - whose orders resulted in the virtual destruction of the old professional British Army. Clark paints a vivid and convincing picture of how brave soldiers, the lions, were essentially sent to their deaths by incompetent and indifferent officers – the donkeys. ‘An eloquent and painful book... Clark leaves the impression that vanity and stupidity were the main ingredients of the massacres of 1915. He writes searingly and unforgettably’ Evening Standard
Douglas Haig
Author: Gary Sheffield
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2015-11-05
Total Pages: 576
ISBN-13: 1474603351
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →There's a commonly held view that Douglas Haig was a bone-headed, callous butcher, who through his incompetence as commander of the British Army in WWI, killed a generation of young men on the Somme and at Passchendaele. On the other hand, there are those who view Haig as a man who successfully struggled with appalling difficulties to produce an army which took the lead in defeating Germany in 1918. Haig's diaries, hitherto only previously available in bowdlerised form, give the C-in-C's view of Asquith and his successor Lloyd George, of whom he was highly critical. The diaries show him intriguing with the King vs. Lloyd George. Additional are his day-by-day accounts of the key battles of the war, not least the Somme campaign of 1916.
Douglas Haig
Author: Gary Sheffield
Publisher: Aurum
Published: 2016-05-19
Total Pages: 427
ISBN-13: 1781316171
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →'Well written and persuasive ...objective and well-rounded....this scholarly rehabilitation should be the standard biography' - Andrew Roberts, Mail on Sunday 'A true judgment of him must lie somewhere between hero and zero, and in this detailed biography Gary Sheffield shows himself well qualified to make it ... a balanced portrait' - The Sunday Times 'Solid scholarship and admirable advocacy' - Sunday Telegraph Douglas Haig is the single most controversial general in British history. In 1918, after his armies had won the First World War, he was feted as a saviour. But within twenty years his reputation was in ruins, and it has never recovered. Drawing on previously unknown private papers and new scholarship unavailable when The Chief was first published, eminent First World War historian Gary Sheffield reassesses Haig's reputation, assessing his critical role in preparing the army for war.
With Our Backs to the Wall
Author: David Stevenson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2011-09-19
Total Pages: 747
ISBN-13: 0674063198
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →With so much at stake and so much already lost, why did World War I end with a whimper-an arrangement between two weary opponents to suspend hostilities? After more than four years of desperate fighting, with victories sometimes measured in feet and inches, why did the Allies reject the option of advancing into Germany in 1918 and taking Berlin? Most histories of the Great War focus on the avoidability of its beginning. This book brings a laser-like focus to its ominous end-the Allies' incomplete victory, and the tragic ramifications for world peace just two decades later. In the most comprehensive account to date of the conflict's endgame, David Stevenson approaches the events of 1918 from a truly international perspective, examining the positions and perspectives of combatants on both sides, as well as the impact of the Russian Revolution. Stevenson pays close attention to America's effort in its first twentieth-century war, including its naval and military contribution, army recruitment, industrial mobilization, and home-front politics. Alongside military and political developments, he adds new information about the crucial role of economics and logistics. The Allies' eventual success, Stevenson shows, was due to new organizational methods of managing men and materiel and to increased combat effectiveness resulting partly from technological innovation. These factors, combined with Germany's disastrous military offensive in spring 1918, ensured an Allied victory-but not a conclusive German defeat.
Douglas Haig and the First World War
Author: J. P. Harris
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2009-10-15
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780521158770
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →From December 1915 until the armistice of November 1918, Sir Douglas Haig was commander-in-chief of the largest army his country had ever put into the field. He has been portrayed as both an incompetent 'butcher and bungler' and a clear-sighted, imperturbable 'architect of victory'. However, in this magisterial account, J. P. Harris dispels such stereotypes. A dedicated military professional, Haig nevertheless found it difficult to adjust to the unprecedented conditions of the Western Front. His capacity to 'read' battles and broader strategic situations often proved poor and he bears much responsibility for British losses 1915-17 that were excessive in relation to the results achieved. By late 1917 his own faith in ultimate victory had become so badly shaken that he advocated a compromise peace. However, after surviving the German spring offensives of 1918, he played a vital role in the campaign that finally broke the German army.
Douglas Haig, 1861–1928
Author: Gerard J. De Groot
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2021-03-30
Total Pages: 389
ISBN-13: 1000338983
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →For seventy years Douglas Haig had been portrayed on the one hand as the ‘Butcher of the Somme’ – inept, insensitive and archaic; and on the other as the ‘Saviour of Britain’ – noble, unselfish and heroic. This polarised, strident and ultimately inconclusive argument had resulted in Haig becoming detached from his own persona; he had become a shallow symbol of a past age to be pilloried or praised. The middle ground in the Haig debate had been as barren as No Man’s Land. There should be no mystery about Haig. Certain from a very early age of his own greatness, he preserved every record of his achievements: diaries, letters, official reports etc. The opinions of his contemporaries are likewise readily available. But until this book the material had not been used to construct a complete and accurate picture. Critics and supporters have raided the historical records for evidence of the demi-god or demon and have ignored that which conflicts with their preconceptions. They have likewise raced through his early life in order to get to the war, in the process ignoring the complex process of his development as a soldier. Analyses of Haig’s command have consequently been as shallow as the prevailing images of the man. After eight years of painstaking and detailed research into previously neglected sources, Gerard De Groot gave us a more complete and balanced picture. This book, originally published in 1988, which will appeal both to the general and the specialised reader, is not simply a critique of Haig’s command in the war, but an exploration into his personality. Close attention to his early life and career reveals him as a creature of his society, a man who mirrored both the virtues and the faults of Edwardian Britain. What emerges is an intense, dedicated, but ultimately flawed servant of his country whose ironic fate it was to grow up in one age and to command in another.
Haig's Enemy
Author: Jonathan Boff
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2018
Total Pages: 400
ISBN-13: 0199670463
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →During the First World War, the British army's most consistent German opponent was Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. Commanding more than a million men as a General, and then Field Marshal, in the Imperial German Army, he held off the attacks of the British Expeditionary Force under Sir John French and then Sir Douglas Haig for four long years. But Rupprecht was to lose not only the war, but his son and his throne. In Haig's Enemy, Jonathan Boff explores the tragic tale of Rupprecht's war--the story of a man caught under the wheels of modern industrial warfare. Providing a fresh viewpoint on the history of the Western Front, Boff draws on extensive research in the German archives to offer a history of the First World War from the other side of the barbed wire. He revises conventional explanations of why the Germans lost with an in-depth analysis of the nature of command, and of the institutional development of the British, French, and German armies as modern warfare was born. Using Rupprecht's own diaries and letters, many of them never before published, Haig's Enemy views the Great War through the eyes of one of Germany's leading generals, shedding new light on many of the controversies of the Western Front. The picture which emerges is far removed from the sterile stalemate of myth. Instead, Boff re-draws the Western Front as a highly dynamic battlespace, both physical and intellectual, where three armies struggled not only to out-fight, but also to out-think, their enemy. The consequences of falling behind in the race to adapt would be more terrible than ever imagined.
Douglas Haig, the Educated Soldier
Author: John Terraine
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Published: 1963
Total Pages: 552
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The history of the Western Front and the First World War is one of battles of attrition against an entrenched enemy, with terrible casualties suffered by both sides in some of the worst fighting ever. In this history the picture has emerged of British generals remote and detached from the reality of the trenches who repeatedly sent their men to die in pointless attacks against the enemy. This book, by the renowned historian of the First World War John Terraine, scrupulously researched and brilliantly written, takes a more objective and accurate approach to the figure of Haig - the supreme commander of the British Army - and to the history of the War.
