General Haig Deserve To Be Remembered As The Butcher Of The Somme Essay

In this essay I will discuss whether General Haig deserves to be remembered as ‘the butcher of the Somme’. General Haig’s title of ‘the butcher of the Somme’ originated after the First World War, when, due to large number of casualties Britain suffered from the war and mostly the Somme. The people of Britain wanted someone to blame. This was a coping mechanism in which people could deal with the loss of the ‘lost generation’. Arguably Haig does deserve his nickname. This is because Haig sent thousands of men to their deaths continuously after his war efforts seemed not to be working. For instance 60,000 soldiers died in the first day alone in the battle of the Somme. The reason that so many people died was that Haig ordered his men to walk across no-man 's land. They were easy

This shows that he only cared for himself, not for the hard fighting soldiers. Haig did not spend his time on the front line with his men, but stayed away from the direct fighting. This was done not so he could live a luxurious life, but so he was able to see a further stretch of the trenches and plan his tactics accordingly. This is compared to being on the front line and only seeing a small area of the battle field and would therefore have less well planned tactics as they would only take a small proportion of the trenches into account. Hence Haig was acting well in his role, rather being ‘the butcher of the Somme’ as he positioned himself in a position where he could have an overview of the whole battlefield. This resulted in the best planned tactics in the given circumstances. Also, if Haig was in the front line of the Trenches then there was a higher risk of him being killed and then the army would be in a much worse state than actually being in the state they were in when General Haig was in