Haig

Legitimising the debate

Cisco managed to legitimise the debate, the feedback and so the learning. Unfortunately Field Marshal Douglas Haig did not. His story gives us an extended analogy of the self–preoccupied, anxious and driven leader repeatedly covering up his own failures. Part of his cover–up was to do things by the book, to conform to the pre–established and long engrained methods of the regimented army and, at the same time, to deny the potential to learn the value of new thinking and new writing. As such, he and his generals, as late as 1918, were still rejecting the tank, mobile and surprise attack, in favour of the cavalry, and still committed to long–discredited and disastrous trench warfare. Haig’s performance as the Chief of the British Army on the Western Front can scarcely by equalled in modern times. He presided over three years of futile and incompetent warfare that cost millions of lives. Throughout that period he obdurately refused to learn from the new battle tactics being used by the French, the Canadians and the Germans. He persistently appointed generals on the basis of seniority as opposed to fitness for purpose. He covered up his own record, and, to the very last, failed to challenge his own thinking or to learn from experience. Who was this man? How far does he match the patterns we have already summarised in terms of behaviour?

Denis Winter and Alan Clarke provide brilliant support research to this summary.

Haig is the quintessentially unlearning leader. We start by setting out his character and background, and then summarise two great battles – the Somme and Passchendaele – before considering why leaders do not learn from experience.

  1. Haig’s character – externally handsome, quiet, silently charming – Haig was taciturn, inarticulate, and almost unfathomable when giving orders. Unable to communicate easily, he was for the most part icy cold, formal and aloof. Paranoid in particular about those he perceived able to threaten his position, and utterly focussed on his own success – “Please, God, send me victory before the Americans come!” was his concern not “… before more men are killed!“
  2. Haig’s childhood – without a father (abroad), he was stifled and spoilt by an adoring mother and sister. Without pressure or example to succeed, his was a poor performance at school and Oxford, where he failed his exams.
  3. The Army – from his start in the army, he was a loner, messed alone, antagonistic, already hating equals, superiors and those he had to report to, such as politicians. He hated foreigners, and especially the French.
  4. Haig’s record – it is likely he fabricated some of his supposed early successes, such as his “winning a sword at Sandhurst”. His early career was undistinguished, but, a glutton for honours and status, he worked diligently to the point of covering up his own shortcomings and blaming other generals, falsifying records, or blaming the French.
  5. Haig’s record as a learning soldier–whatever the background, Haig had four years to develop his skills during the Western Front. However, he was unfortunately not concerned with learning new skills, using new tactics or employing new technologies. The Somme, and Passchendaele in 1916 and 1917 demonstrated his refusal to learn: At the Somme he rejected the experience of the despised French and, without sufficient clarity of planning, the battle foundered on,
  • employing the wrong shells for destroying barbed wire
  • using artillery–men ill–equipped or ill–trained to shoot accurately and so supply the essential precision for a creeping barrage
  • persisting with over–burdened serried ranks of infantry, rather than the scattered attack groups developed by the French
  • providing inadequate structural support and follow–up for the attackers.

Passchendaele was no less terrible a battle. Haig subsequently covered up, by reinventing history to give the impression that he did not have the men, the resources, the time to plan fully, or the French support – he did. The truth focussed on several specific challenges, none of which he dealt with adequately, or seemed interested in:

  1. The chosen battle area of the Western Front had long been relatively quiet. So the Germans had used their "idle time" to create ever more massive, deep and complex defences.
  2. As part of this, they had developed a form of floating defence supported by carefully constructed barbed wire entrapments. At the onset of a barrage, their soldiers retreated from their advanced positions, and then swept the entrapments with machine–gun fire once the British infantry attack was launched. The British Army was not prepared for these defences; there could be no surprise, and no attempt was made to create one. But this was nothing compared to the refusal to choose the field of battle properly.
  3. By comparison, before the Battle of Waterloo, Wellington was at great pains to check the field of action. In the event he used the dips and hollows he found to hide and shelter his troops. Not so Haig. He went to the Front only once throughout the war. At Passchendaele he overlooked the high water table (see Sidebar 11) and the history of bad weather and, finally, when the attack had failed, he refused to pull back.

See “Haig’s Command” Dennis Winter: Classic Penguin, 2001 "The Donkeys" Alan Clark: Pimlico, 1991 for further reading.

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