Talk:Role of Douglas Haig in 1918

(Comment)

(Moved here from the article's page). This is part of the expansion of the biog of Field Marshal Haig. Article (mainly my work over a period of about a year) has got too long and needs to be split up for more detailed treatment of the Somme (1916) and Third Ypres (1917) which will shown him in a much worse light than the 1918 victories, as well as a future separate article on the evolution of his reputation over time (national hero in the 1920s, public hate figure c1960-2000) with a view to getting the bias tag lifted.Paulturtle (talk) 15:58, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Interesting article, but perhaps needs more editing

Interesting article, but perhaps needs more editing :

Why so little linking to other Wikipedia articles ?

Why are so many names of people and places not spelled in the form used by Wikipedia, to give just two out of many examples Pétain and Poincaré ?

And why are distances in France and Belgium converted to yards and miles ?

Clifford Mill (talk) 19:39, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

It's a work in progress (ie. it's fully complete up until the early summer but not for the Hundred Days). I haven't finished the detailed sub articles on the other years or on Haig's reputation at all and at this instant haven't done any work on them since summer 2015. Multi-page articles about famous men (eg. US Presidents) are common now but were uncommon then and back in 2012 I met with kneejerk obstruction, which annoyed me and threw a spanner in the works. For what it's work, I have similar multi-page articles brewing about two British Prime Ministers (HH Asquith and Anthony Eden) whilst the long article about Rab Butler (an almost Prime Minister) is about 60% done but needs splitting so I can finish it. Which is a roundabout way of saying I haven't been focussing on WW1 generals for a few years.

I'm really not going to quibble about the spelling of Pétain or Poincare.

And if distances are in yards and miles that's because they would have been in that form in the British book from which the info was copied, and army staffs would have thought in imperial measurements at the time when planning barrages, depths of planned infantry advances, transport links etc. To be honest it gets very irritating when somebody insists on adding metric conversions after every single number.Paulturtle (talk) 12:03, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Significant POV issues, due to the sources, not the author

The article purports to be about Haig's role in 1918, but it is much more Haig's claims about Haig's role in 1918. The excessive reliance of Haig's diaries, and on historians excessively relying on Haig's diaries, severely detract from its neutrality. I have only reviewed it in detail for the period leading up to and during the Michael Offensive, but there are numerous consequential errors (by Haig, not the article's author). The section of 24/25 March suggests the diaries are occasionally in error, but in fact, for the entire period Haig is what is known in the fiction industry as an "unreliable narrator". Almost every statement touching on the French Army and specifically Pétain's role is incorrect, illogical or misrepresented due to lack of context. The Annexes to the official Armées Francaises dans le Grande Guerre (available through the French National Library's Gallica site) contains transcripts of thousands of contemporary French (and many British) documents - over 1200 for the period 21 March to 31 March alone - which paint a very different picture.

I'm reluctant to speculate on Haig's motivation - honest mistake, ego boosting, psychological projection are all posited in the article, and I'm inclined towards the last - but the credibility of the diaries is highly doubtful on many issues, and is unsuitable as a virtual sole source. Without going into pages of blow-by-blow detail, contemporary documents show little evidence of a defeatist streak in Pétain, or a lack of support for the British, or that he was in a "funk" at any point. Pétain's orders repeatedly emphasise the need to maintain the connection with the British (the "retreating on Paris" thing is an out of context quote-mine, and is completely nullified by the actual placement of French reserves, well to the northwest of where they would be if this was ever Pétain's intention).

There are numerous instances of Haig claiming to have initiated some action that had, in fact, started days before he "started" it. And when one looks at the actual decisions - when reserves were moved, and to where; orders given, minutes of conferences, and the logical inferences those documents allow - there is a severe disconnect between Haig's claims about his intentions (and those of Pétain and others) on the one hand, and what the facts show. His claim to be prepared to to abandon his northern flank is nonsense when you see where he direct his reserves. He claims a significant role in Foch's appointment to coordinate the General Reserve, but had no power to do so (it was a political decision, not a military one), and had spent the winter arguing against it.

As an aside, Clemenceau's disdain of Pétain, and liking of Foch, was simply a personality clash, and not much of a basis for historical judgement. Clemenceau and Foch (and David Lloyd George for that matter) both liked to talk a good game and were charismatic and likeable. Pétain talked strategy with all the charisma of a tax accountant. Even though, as conditions changed, Foch was eventually able to launch his massive offensive to end the war, his arguments earlier in the year were not well grounded in fact, proposing a strategy that the French and British manpower could not support and would likely have brought about swift defeat. It was the dour Haig and Pétain who were left to tip a bucket of cold water over Foch's ideas, and Clemenceau and Lloyd George would not have been pleased. FrankDynan (talk) 13:47, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Thinking a little more, what you've tried to do here might be impossible. Over-reliance on Haig's account affects its authority, rejecting Haig's account and relying only on other sources would produce an outcome significantly different to the conventional wisdom which would be an unstable target for conflicting edits, and taking a balance of these would result in something that had length side discussions about conflicting sources intruding, or was so inconsistent as to be incoherent.FrankDynan (talk) 14:01, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

For some reason I never got round to writing a reply to the above. I'm well aware that there are issues with Haig's reliability as a narrator, and in a wider sense with what I call the "British Milhist View of the War". However, I can only rely on what published books have to say, which is why there is so much emphasis on the work which people like Tim Travers have done in trying to unpick what actually happened in March 1918. One of these days I'll plough through the late Liz Greenhalgh's Foch biog, which is based on work in French archives, but it's a question of finding the ruddy time. If you know of any other good books, feel free to suggest them. One day I may return to Haig, but not just yet.Paulturtle (talk) 06:09, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Well, I read the Greenhalgh Foch biog a year or two ago, and jolly good it was ... Paulturtle (talk) 02:13, 7 October 2024 (UTC)