Architect of Victory

Douglas Haig

Walter Reid

• Publisher: Birlinn
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9780857901248

Douglas Haig's popular image as an unimaginative butcher is unenviable and unmerited. In fact, he masterminded a British-led victory over a continental opponent on a scale that has never been matched before or since. Contrary to myth, Haig was not a cavalry-obsessed, blinkered conservative, as satirised in Oh! What a Lovely War and Blackadder Goes Forth. Fascinated by technology, he pressed for the use of tanks, enthusiastically embraced air power, and encouraged the use of new techniques involving artillery and machine-guns. Above all, he presided over a change in infantry tactics from almost total reliance on the rifle towards all-arms, multi-weapons techniques that formed the basis of British army tactics until the 1970s. Prior re-evaluations of Haig's achievements have largely been limited to monographs and specialist writings.

Walter Reid has written the first biography of Haig that takes into account modern military scholarship, giving a more rounded picture of the private man than has previously been available. What emerges is a picture of a comprehensible human being, not necessarily particularly likeable, but honourably ambitious, able and intelligent, and the man more than any other responsible for delivering victory in 1918.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Military Formation
• Preface
• Map: The Western Front 1914–18
• 1. Butcher and Bungler or Architect of Victory?
• 2. Family and Youth
• 3. In Top Boots Amongst the Intellectuals: Haig at Oxford. Sandhurst at last
• 4. Regimental Life. India. Johnnie French
• 5. Repulsed and then Victorious. Staff College
• 6. Active Service in the Sudan War
• 7. The South African War. Regimental Command. The Debate over Cavalry. India
• 8. Emerges into Society. Marries
• 9. At the War Office with Haldane. Army Reforms. India again
• 10. ‘The Best Command in the Army’ and ‘The Ugliest Man in the Army’: Aldershot and Henry Wilson
• 11. War. The Army searches for its Role. The Great Retreat. First Ypres. Haig on the Menin Road
• 12. Disputed Appointments. Neuve Chapelle
• 13. The Approach to Loos
• 14. Loos: Destruction of the BEF and Creation of a Commander-in-Chief
• 15. Haig’s Command
• 16. The Somme
• 17. Deceit and Misinformation: The Calais Conference Backfires on Lloyd George. Arras
• 18. The Abandonment of Attrition. Third Ypres
• 19. Third Ypres, Passchendaele. Cambrai
• 20. The Enemy in Whitehall
• 21. Kaiserschlacht. The Doullens Conference and Unified Command. Haig Takes the Initiative
• 22. The Hundred Days. ‘There Never Has Been Such a Victory’
• 23. Sunset
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index