Editing Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig (section)

===Other historians===
One of Haig's defenders was the military historian [[John Terraine]], who published a biography of Haig (''The Educated Soldier'') in 1963, in which Haig was portrayed as a "Great Captain" of the calibre of the [[John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough|Duke of Marlborough]] or the [[Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington|Duke of Wellington]]. Terraine, taking his cue from Haig's "Final Despatch" of 1918, argued that Haig pursued the only strategy possible given the situation. Gary Sheffield stated that although Terraine's arguments about Haig have been much attacked over forty years, Terraine's thesis "has yet to be demolished".<ref name="Sheffield 2002, p. 21"/>

Australian historian [[Les Carlyon]] wrote that while Haig was slow to adapt to the correct use of artillery in sufficient quantities to support infantry attacks and was generally sceptical that such doctrine had much place in military theory, he was fully supportive of excellent corps and field commanders such as [[Herbert Plumer]], [[Arthur Currie]] and [[John Monash]], who seem to best grasp and exercise these concepts, especially later in the war. Carlyon also wrote that there was a case to answer, for his support of more dubious commanders such as [[Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton|Ian Hamilton]], [[Aylmer Hunter-Weston]] and Hubert Gough.<ref>[[Les Carlyon|Carlyon, Les]]. 2006. ''The Great War'', Pan MacMillan.</ref>

====Tactical developments====
Critics, including [[Alan Clark]] and Gerard De Groot, argue that Haig failed to appreciate the critical science of artillery and that he was "unimaginative", although de Groot added that he has had the misfortune to be judged by the standards of a later age.<ref>Groot 1988, p. 407.</ref> [[Paul Fussell]], a literary historian, wrote in ''[[The Great War and Modern Memory]]'':
[[File:Earl Haig Memorial, Whitehall, London, UK - 20130629-01.jpg|thumb|left|Earl Haig Memorial, Whitehall, London]]

<blockquote>although one doesn't want to be too hard on Haig ... who has been well calumniated already ... it must be said that it now appears that one thing the war was testing was the usefulness of the earnest Scottish character in a situation demanding the military equivalent of wit and invention. Haig had none. He was stubborn, self-righteous, inflexible, intolerant—especially of the French—and quite humourless ... Indeed, one powerful legacy of Haig's performance is the conviction among the imaginative and intelligent today of the unredeemable defectiveness of all civil and military leaders. Haig could be said to have established the paradigm.<ref>[[Fussell, Paul|Paul Fussell]]. 1975. "The Great War and Modern Memory".</ref></blockquote>

[[Military history|Military historian]] John Bourne wrote that Haig, although not familiar with technological advances, encouraged their use. He also rejected claims that Haig was a traditionalist and focused only on cavalry tactics.<ref>Bond 2009, p. 4.</ref> Cavalry represented less than three per cent of the BEF in France by September 1916, whilst the British were the most mechanised force in the world by 1918, supported by the world's largest air force. The [[Royal Tank Regiment|Tank Corps]] was the world's first such force and some 22,000 men served in it during the war. The [[Royal Artillery]] grew by 520 per cent and the engineers who implemented [[combined arms]] tactics grew by 2,212 per cent. Bourne wrote that this hardly demonstrates a lack of imagination.<ref>Bond 2009, p. 5.</ref> Other historians, notably [[John Keegan]], refused to accept that the British Army underwent a "learning curve"; despite this example, Bourne wrote that there "is little disagreement among scholars about the nature of the military transformation".<ref>Bond 2009, pp. 5–6.</ref> Popular "media opinion" had failed to grasp that under Haig, the British Army adopted a modern style of war in 1918.<ref>Bond 2009, p. 6.</ref>

There is no consensus on the speed of a learning curve. Tim Travers blamed the management of early campaigns on the ethos of the pre-war officer corps, which was based on privilege, with a hierarchy intent on self-preservation and maintaining individual reputations. As a consequence the army was poorly positioned to adapt quickly. Travers wrote that initiative was discouraged and that the ethos of the army was pro-human and anti-technological. The offensive spirit of the infantry, quality of the soldier, rapid rifle-fire and the idea of the soldier being the most important aspect of the battlefield prevailed. The lessons of the [[Russo-Japanese War]] and the power of artillery were ignored, which caused costly tactical mistakes in the first half of the war. The tactics that Haig pursued were beyond the mobility and range of artillery, which contributed to operational failures and heavy losses. Travers also criticised Haig ''and'' enemy commanders for seeing battle as perfectly organised and something that could be planned perfectly, ignoring the concept of [[fog of war]]. Travers wrote that top-down command became impossible in the chaos of battle. The lack of attention to lower levels of command in the early years of the war created a command vacuum.<ref>Bond 2009, pp. 6–7.</ref>

Bourne considered this to be too harsh, arguing that Haig progressed along with other commanders of the Edwardian era in implementing advances in operational methods, technology and tactical doctrine. Bourne also wrote that it was difficult to reconcile the commanders of 1918 with the dogma-ridden, unprofessional, unreflecting institution depicted by Tim Travers.<ref>Duffy 2007, pp. 320–328.</ref><ref>Bond 2009, pp. 7–8.</ref>

Biographers Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson in the ''[[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]'' (2004) state:
<blockquote>As a result of his determination to accomplish great victories Haig too often disregarded key factors such as weather, and the condition of the battlefield, placed his objectives beyond the range which his artillery could cover and incorporated in his schemes a role for cavalry which this arm was helpless to accomplish. These shortcomings, it needs to be stressed, were not at all peculiar to Haig.&nbsp;... But the outcome, too often, was British operations directed towards unrealizable objectives and persisted in long after they had ceased to serve any worthwhile purpose. The consequence was excessive loss of British lives, insubstantial accomplishment, and waning morale.<ref>Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, "Haig, Douglas, first Earl Haig (1861–1928)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33633, accessed 19 Jan 2015]</ref></blockquote>

====Casualties====
Haig has been criticised for the high casualties in British offensives, but historians like John Terraine argue that this was largely a function of the size of the battles, as British forces engaged the main body of the German Army on the Western Front after 1916.<ref>Terraine 1980, pp. 37, 105, 108</ref> Although total deaths in the [[World War II|Second World War]] were far higher than in the First, British deaths were lower, because Britain fought mainly peripheral campaigns in the Mediterranean for much of the [[Second World War]], involving relatively few British troops, while most of the land fighting took place between Germany and the [[USSR]].<ref name="westernfrontassociation.com"/><ref>Corrigan 2002, p. 70.</ref> When British forces engaged in Normandy in 1944, total losses were fewer than on the Somme in 1916, as Normandy was around half the length and less than half the size but casualties per unit per week were broadly similar.<ref>Corrigan 2002, pp. 298–300, 408.</ref> David French wrote that British daily loss rates at Normandy, in which divisions lost up to three quarters of their infantry, were similar to those of Passchendaele in 1917, while average battalion casualty rates in 1944–45 (100 men per week) were similar to those of the First World War.<ref>French 2000, p. 154.</ref>

John Terraine wrote:
{{blockquote|It is important, when we feel our emotions rightly swelling over the losses of 1914–18, to remember that in 1939–45 the world losses were probably over four times as many ... the British task was entirely different, which is why the (British) loss of life was so different: about 350,000 in 1939–45 and about 750,000 (British deaths, 1 million including the Empire) in 1914–18 ... – ... The casualty statistics of the Great War ... tell us ... virtually nothing about the quality of ... British generals. The statistics show that ... the British losses in great battles were generally about the same as anyone else's.}}

He also wrote that British perceptions were coloured by the terrible losses of [[First Day of the Somme|1 July 1916]], during which the British Army sustained 57,000 casualties, but that it should also be remembered that the British never suffered anything like the losses of [[Brusilov Offensive|June 1916]], when the Austro-Hungarian Army experienced 280,000 casualties in a week, or of [[Battle of the Frontiers|August 1914]], when the French Army lost 211,000 men in 16 days, or of [[German spring offensive|March and April 1918]], when the Germans lost nearly 350,000 men in six weeks, or [[Great Retreat (Russian)|1915]], when Russia suffered 2 million casualties in a year.<ref>Terraine 1980, p. 45</ref>

Total British First World War deaths seemed especially severe as they fell among certain groups such as [[Pals Battalions]] (volunteers who enlisted together and were allowed to serve together) or the alleged "Lost Generation" of public school and university-educated junior officers. British deaths, although heavy compared to other British wars, were only around half those of France or Germany relative to population.<ref>Corrigan 2002, p. 55.</ref>

====Alleged falsification of records====
Denis Winter wrote that Haig protected his reputation by falsifying his diary to mislead historians. Barring a few disputes over contentious meetings, such as the War Council of early August 1914 and the [[Doullens Conference]] of March 1918, "the overall authenticity of Haig's diary is, however, not in doubt", not least because of the frequency with which its contents have been used to criticise him.<ref>Sheffield & Bourne 2005, pp. 2, 9.</ref> John Bourne wrote that "Winter's perceived conspiracy would appear to be one of the least successful in history. The falsification of his diary seems equally inept, given the frequency with which its contents are held against the author's competence, integrity and humanity, not least by Winter himself."<ref>Bond 2009, pp. 3–5.</ref>

Winter wrote that Haig and the British Government had conspired with the Official Historian, Brigadier [[James Edward Edmonds|J. E. Edmonds]], to show Haig in a better light in the [[History of the Great War|Official History]]. These claims were rejected by a number of historians, including Robin Prior and Correlli Barnett. Barnett's comments were supported by John Hussey and Jeffrey Grey of the [[University of New South Wales]], who wrote that:
{{blockquote|A check of the documents cited in the Heyes papers, collected for [the Australian Official Historian] C. E. W. Bean in London in the 1920s, and in the correspondence between Bean and the British Official Historian, Sir James Edmonds, not only fails to substantiate Winter's claims but reinforces still further Barnett's criticisms of (Winter's) capacity as a researcher ... includ(ing) ... misidentification of documents, misquotation of documents, the running together of passages from different documents ... and misdating of material..(including) misdat(ing) a letter by seventeen years ... to support his conspiracy case against Edmonds.<ref>{{cite magazine |url=http://www.johndclare.net/wwi3_winter_thesis.htm |title=Denis Winter's Haig: A Manufactured Fraud |magazine=Times Literary Supplement |year=1991 |access-date=22 June 2013}}</ref>}}

Donald Cameron Watt found Winter
{{blockquote|curiously ignorant of the by-no-means secret grounds on which the Cabinet Office, or rather its secretary, Lord Hankey, initiated a series of official histories of the first world war and the terms which were binding on the authors commissioned to write them.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://frontforum.westernfrontassociation.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1254&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=15 |title=Front Forum: discussing The Great War 1914–18 |publisher=Western Front Association |access-date=22 June 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120722165227/http://frontforum.westernfrontassociation.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1254&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=15 |archive-date=22 July 2012 |df=dmy-all }}</ref>}}

Winter wrote that Edmonds did not canvass the opinion of veterans, which was untrue – some volumes were sent to 1,000 or more officers for their comments, as well as being checked against unit diaries down to battalion level – in some cases entire chapters were rewritten (or in the case of Passchendaele, the volume was rewritten several times in the 1940s, during disputes about the roles of Haig and Hubert Gough, who was still alive). Winter quoted, out of context, Edmonds' advice to his researchers to write a draft narrative first, then invite interviewees to comment over lunch: Andrew Green, in his study of the Official History, wrote that this was done deliberately, for memories to be jogged by the draft narrative and that senior officers were more likely to be frank if approached informally.<ref>Green 2003, pp. 57–59.</ref>