Douglas Haig-a Great Soldier

The role of Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig during the First World War continues to be a matter of abiding controversy that I do not suppose will ever be settled one way or the other, though I have a feeling that the pendulum is beginning to swing in his favour.

I have long been of the view that only the English could have developed such a negative view of arguably one of the nation's greatest commanders. His contribution in defeating the Germans was widely recognised at the time, by both the people of Britain and a number of foreign observers, including General Pershing.

It was several years later when the true extent of the sacrifice involved in winning the Great War began to sink in that a new mood of hostility and revisionism began to emerge. This developed over the years, finding popular expression in Joan Littlewoods’s stage production of Oh, What a Lovely War, as well as support in several academic monographs. The whole campaign of vilification seemed to be based on the assumption that Haig sacrificed men unnecessarily; that battles were fought simply for reasons of attrition, and nothing besides; that there was somehow another, less bloody, road to victory that Haig and his colleagues did not take.

But wars cannot be won without confronting the main enemy army in battle; and this, sad to say, is inevitably a gruesome process. Consider the example of U. S Grant, who in his campaign from the Wilderness to Petersburg in 1864 and 1865 was arguably responsible for the death of more Americans than any other man in history. At one battle alone, Cold Harbour in the early summer of 1864, the Union losses, as a proportion of the total strength of the Army of the Potomac, were as great as some of the battle losses on the western front. Grant could have taken the same road as McClellan, Burnside, Hooker and so many others before him and retreated back to his start line; but he pushed on to Richmond and victory.

Likewise, in the Second World War, Georgy Zhukov, the greatest of all the Soviet commanders, sustained losses at Stalingrad and Kursk quite as dreadful as those at the Somme and Passchendale. What other way was there of defeating the Germans?

Haig, like all other commanders at the time, began without really knowing what the new warfare, the great battle of men and materials, was really about: heavy prolonged artillery barrages were followed by unsupported and uncoordinated assaults on enemy positions, with the inevitable consequences in casualties.

However, by 1918, Haig had moved through a sharp learning curve, turning the British Army into one of the best in the world, a remarkable achievement when one considers that the country had little in the way of a military tradition, and in 1914 was only able to field four 'contemptible' divisions in France. In the final offensive of 1918 Haig, in carefully co-ordinating a creeping artillery barrage with measured and discreet infantry attacks, was able to advance in relentless stages against the German positions, covering more ground than the rest of the Allied armies. It was this that broke the back of the German army and assured victory.

England and the First World War

I post this piece in memory of Harry Patch, the last of the Tommies, who died yesterday.

Would it have been possible, I ask myself, for England to have remained out of the Great War, on much the same basis it had during the Franco-German conflict of 1870-71? The simple answer is yes, it would. There is not a trace of evidence that the Kaiser was any more ambitious than Bismarck, nothing at all to confirm the supposition that he was determined on European conquest. Indeed, at the outset of the conflict Germany had no long-term war aims at all, and its military actions were just as defensive as they had been during the earlier conflict with France.

What about the German Navy, an objection that might immediately be offered? Was that not a genuine threat to our national security? Actually rather too much can be made of the Anglo-German naval race which preceded the war, often viewed in isolation from naval developments elsewhere in Europe. Though they were certainly weaker than the Kriegsmarine, it is important not to underestimate the combined strength of the French and Russian navies. Now at war, Germany would hardly have wished to antagonise the British, and risk bringing in the Royal Navy; and one sure way of doing this would have been by a unilateral blockade of France. Look at the map; such a move would have been quite impossible in the face of English opposition. Germany most assuredly would not have control of the seas.

I do not believe the war, without English involvement, would have been a long one; and I also believe that the victor would have been Germany, not France. In any peace that followed the Germans would have had to take cognisance of the English view, which would surely have precluded any punitive treaty.

Let's look at some of the facts. The Triple Entente between England, France and Russia was not an alliance, merely an 'understanding', that loosest of diplomatic terms. Up to the very last minute the British cabinet was of the view that it would have been possible to remain aloof. Ah, but the invasion of Belgium made English entry inevitable, did it not? Well, no, it didn't. As late as 1905 the Foreign Office was of the view that the 1839 Treaty of London did not bind England to defend Belgium 'in any circumstances', and I stress this expression. There was even a possibility that England would simply stand back if the Germans moved through the peripheries of Belgium and paid for any damage caused, a view taken by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George.

Such cynicism would have been an exercise in pure Realpolitik, I know, but it could have left England as the arbiter of Europe. We know that the Germans were desperate to keep England out of the conflict. In July 1914, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, the German Chancellor, told the British ambassador in Berlin that, in return for his country's neutrality, that Germany would guarantee the integrity of France and Belgium. A victory would have left Germany the dominant military power in central Europe, certainly, but not necessarily in control of France and the Low Countries.

Let me say, in conclusion, entering into the virtual history at its most pure, that it would have been better for England to have remained aloof: it would have saved the lives of a million men and ensured that the Empire was not weakened, as it was, by participation. A German victory would have saved the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, in many ways infinitely better and more humane than what followed. It would have avoided the problems caused by an enlarged Serbia, which were to trouble the world for decades after, and have still not completely gone away. The defeat of Tsarist Russia without a prolonged struggle would not have created the misery that saw the victory of Communism and the emergence of Lenin and Stalin. Above all, we would never have heard of Adolf Hitler. Now, would that not have been better for us all?

Clausewitz on the Iraq War

What could the great Prussian strategist have to say about that particular fiasco? Well, consider the following passage from On War-

No one starts a war-or rather, no one in his senses should do so-without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.

You see, what is important here, what Clausewitz understood and American strategic planners did not, is not so much the specific design, the aims and objectives as these are conceived in advance of an attack, but what unintended consequences may arise. War is then not a 'continuation of policy by other means.' Rather it can, and does, produce entirely new lines of policy that turn the original objectives inside out. For Washington the unintended consequences of the war in Iraq have, quite simply, been endless.

So, what did the Bush administration not anticipate? For one thing they did not anticipate that America casualties would be greater after 'victory' than before. Above all, it did not anticipate being involved in a sectarian war of possibly indefinite duration. It was all so one dimensional: a deposed dictator, a grateful people a new democracy. In reality, the real consequences, the new departure in policy, has been a more unstable Middle East, an increased danger of terrorism, a growing threat to the civil liberties of the democratic nation, and a widespread distrust of the United States among the Islamic countries.

In response to a deteriorating strategic situation Donald Rumsfeld, the then US Secretary of Defense, said quite simply, in the crassest possible way, 'Stuff happens'. But you see, stuff should not happen if war is a rational pursuit of policy in the sense that Clausewitz conceived this. The advice that the great Prussian strategist would have given to Bush and Rumsfeld is to read the signs history for possible consequences, in an attempt to minimise the variables. But they did not read history; they did not read Clausewitz and they did not understand Iraq. The only certainty now is more chaos.

Diktat-Versailles, the Failed Peace

The problem with the Versailles settlement of 1919-and by this I mean the whole of the post-war settlement-is not so much that it was unfair, but that it created an unstable peace; a peace based on the satisfaction of some national aspirations and the frustration of others.

It also, it has to be said, created tensions within the various successor nations that were simply not compatible with democracy. In place of the nationality problems in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire came the nationality problems in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia and Romania, in some ways even more severe that what went before. Most serious of all, it was a peace predicated on the continuing weakness of Germany and Russia, and that could not last forever.

To this mixture of instability there was the added problem of Soviet Russia, where the democratic revolution of February 1917 was effectively destroyed by the Bolshevik counter-revolution in October. And I make no apology here for using the term counter-revolution in this particular context. After the forced dismissal of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918, the only fully democratic body in Russian history to that date, Lenin said that this "means a complete and frank liquidation of the idea of democracy by the idea of dictatorship. It will serve as a good lesson.” It certainly did, in Italy in 1922 and Germany in 1933.

Was there a solution to the nationality problem? Yes, I suppose there was, as the Population exchange between Greece and Turkey demonstrated. But can you imagine that happening across Europe, in nation after nation, across multiple frontiers? Can you imagine the upheaval and misery caused? Now go fast forward to 1945.