The First World War is often remembered as a
futile waste of life. A pointless slugging match that saw uncaring commanders send thousands of
young men to their untimely deaths. Lions led by donkeys. In Britain in particular it's the mud
soaked trenches of Passchendale which capture public imagination, while Field Marshal Sir
Douglas Haig is remembered as 'the butcher of the Somme'. But were British soldiers really lions led
by donkeys? Or are we looking at the First World War in the wrong way? Well to find out we first
need to understand where this idea comes from. So the idea of lions led by donkeys is really
popular right up until today. But up until 1928 when he died, Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig was
held in high regard across Britain and the empire. But after his death his reputation started to go
downhill. Firstly in the 1930s he was attacked in Lloyd George's war memoir. Lloyd George was a
great adversary of of Haig during the First World War. He was joined in that attack on Haig by Basil
Liddell Hart the populist military strategist who wrote in newspapers and books. And then after
the Second World War there were growing social movements that attacked the establishment and
we have the play and film Oh! What a Lovely War which castigates the Western Front tactics in
general. And then after the 1960s the lions led by donkeys idea comes into popular culture
and in 1989 we have Blackadder Goes Forth. Fantastic comedy, but not great First World War
history. But today, historians are challenging this idea of lions led by donkeys and looking
anew at Haig and his commanders to produce a more nuanced view of of their command
and generalship in the First World War. There is no disputing that the First World
War was a bloodbath of epic proportions. Over 16 million people lost their lives in
a total war unlike any that had come before it. But the roots of those losses go way
back before the conflict had even begun. The armies that went to war in 1914 were
trained to fight a totally different war. An old-fashioned style classical war of
maneuver, infantry assaults, cavalry charges, direct firing artillery. This is all pretty
old-school stuff. In the lead up to the First World War we've had the Boer War at the turn of
the 20th century and then the Russo-Japanese war in 1904/05. Various commanders took different
lessons from those wars. Most armies took the idea tha,t as long as you had enough firepower
support and your infantry had good enough morale, you could still put in a successful infantry
assault. But we know now that they drew the wrong lessons and after 1914 that was to have serious,
tragic consequences for the armies of Europe. When the First World War arrived in 1914,
new weapons like modern magazine fed rifles, machine guns, and artillery ran up against
tactics from a century before. Unprepared generals on all sides made catastrophic errors in
an environment they had not trained for. In the east an entire Russian army was outmaneuvered
and destroyed at the Battle of Tannenburg, in Galicia four Austro-Hungarian armies were
routed by the Russians with hundreds of thousands of casualties, and in Alsace and Lorraine French
infantry charged headlong at German machine guns with little artillery support. Within six
weeks the 1.5 million strong French army had taken 25 casualties. In the face of these huge
losses, the armies of Europe went underground. So by the end of 1914 we've got trench deadlock,
especially on the Western Front. Everybody's underground and then it becomes an artillery
war. This six-inch Howitzer in 1914 was one of the biggest pieces of artillery with the British
army. But by 1916 it was dwarfed by larger guns of bigger caliber and much longer range. This
was going to be a war where the advantage was very much with the defender and attackers had
to find new ways of breaking that deadlock. As 1915 began on the Western Front the imperative
was with the Allies to try and win back some of the territory they'd lost to Germany the
year before. There were some successful attacks which proved that trench defenses
could be overcome. But commanders struggled to exploit their successes. At the Battle of
loos for instance British and French forces were able to break into German positions,
but the reserves were held too far from the front line to enable a breakout. The only
rapid movement force available was cavalry, who were far too vulnerable to machine
gun and artillery fire. On top of that, communication problems made command
and control extremely difficult. So we're here in one of the conservation labs at
IWM Duxford and this is where we care from some of our many thousands of objects we hold in the
collection, such as this Austro-Hungarian field telephone. So you can just imagine trying to be
a commander in the First World War you're relying on on officers at the front sending through
information on rudimentary field telephones like this. And the information not coming
through or coming through late or garbled messages coming through and it led to poor
decision-making. Successes aren't reinforced, quite often you know troops are going
to the wrong area, heavy casualties are resulting. A lot of it wasn't their fault
they didn't have the information to hand. After the failure at Loos the British army
received a new commander in the form of Sir Douglas Haig, a former cavalryman
with an eye for detail and a devotion to duty. The old professional British Army had
essentially been wiped out by the end of 1914, with Indian Army, territorial units and
some Kitchener volunteers used to make up the numbers. As such the British had
only played a bit part on the Western Front so far. But thanks to mounting
French losses, 1916 would see Haig's forces take a central role for the first
time - whether they were prepared or not. In 1914 the British Army's tiny compared to
other European armies, it's about 220,000 men in total. But by 1916-1917, it's grown to
about 2 million men. And the big problem for the British Army is they do not have enough
officers, trained staff officers to actually control this army and to actually get it into
the field and to use it. So everybody has to learn and unfortunately trying to learn in the
middle of a world war means learning on the job and that means there are going to be mistakes
made and there are going to be heavy casualties. Just like Russia Austria-Hungary and France before
them, it was now Britain's turn to learn some tough lessons as the mass army was deployed for
the first time at the Battle of the Somme. Haig wanted to attack further north in Flanders and
give himself more time to train his inexperienced army, but he was overruled on both counts by
the French. When the preceding six-day artillery bombardment failed to penetrate the deep German
dugouts, their machine gunners mowed down the advancing British soldiers in their thousands. It
was the bloodiest day in British military history. Although it's been seen as a a
tragic defeat for the British Army, mainly based on people looking at just
the first day. If you look at it in in the strategy of the First World War it was vital,
it had to go on after the first day because the pressure had to be taken off the French
at Verdun. And of course the Germans really, really suffer on the Somme and along Verdun
as well. When it gets to 1917 the Germans are taking more and more desperate strategic
gambles to avoid another battle like the Somme. Another charge leveled at Haig and his commanders
was that they were so-called 'chateau generals' who stayed miles behind the front line drinking
and feasting without a care for the men under their command. But Haig was not oblivious
to the loss of life on the Somme, in fact he visited casualty clearing stations during
the battle. He was also deeply concerned for the suffering of ex-servicemen and would go on to
help found the Royal British Legion after the war. We've got a few objects here relating to
Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig. Firstly there's a British Union Flag, this was actually
carried by his cavalry bodyguard. And then we have his his saddle set, the leather box
for containing it, silver sandwich box, and a drinks flask. Haig would be out
almost daily going towards the front line, chatting with officers, seeing what the problems
were, what improvements could be made. And if he went out before lunch he quite often just
stopped by the side of the road have a quick sandwich and a drink and this is what he was
using for those visits. So these objects show that Haig wasn't really the 'chateau general'.
He was moving around, meeting his troops, meeting his army, and actually finding out
what was going on towards the front line. As the war continued, all sides were constantly
experimenting with new tactics and technologies to try and break the trench deadlock. One
of these was the tank which made its debut on the Somme in 1916. Although the 50
or so tanks deployed saw mixed results, Haig saw their potential and immediately
ordered another thousand to boost his offensive capabilities. This experimentation
was happening in the skies as well. Behind me is the Bristol Fighter which
is a great representative example of new technology in the air war of the First World
War. Although this is a two-seat aircraft, it could be flown like a single-seat
fighter. It could also be used as a bomber, a reconnaissance aircraft, a photo recce
aircraft, and could do ground attack. So it really brought flexibility to British air
power in the First World War. But air power wasn't the only thing that was was increasing and
improving during the First World War. People tried mining to undermine defenses, they tried gas
warfare, they tried heavier artillery pieces, and new forms of infantry assault tactics as
well. Everything was trial and error and it was really an arms race between the offensive side
of warfare and the defensive side of warfare. By 1918 the Allies believed they finally
had the offensive advantage they needed to bring back mobile warfare. After
containing the German spring offensive, the Allies went on an attack of their own
incorporating all they had learned over the previous years of war. They brought all
their new technologies and tactics together in what we now call combined arms or the
all-arms battle. It was extremely effective. So the all-arms battle would unfold not
with a long bombardment of four, five, six days. It would be a short hurricane
bombardment onto key enemy positions using a mixture of high explosive and gas to dislocate
and disorientate. What would then happen is that a creeping barrage would be put down, but when that
barrage lifts out of the front line Allied troops are there immediately behind. The infantryman
is not advancing in a line, he's a specialist who's either a specialist rifleman, he was a light
machine gunner, or a specialist grenade thrower, or rifle grenade man. Alongside the Infantry are
lots and lots of tanks to crush the barbed wire and then to take on key strong points held
by German infantry. Above them are aircraft, the aircraft are going forward, they're knocking
out German anti-tank guns to make sure the tanks go forward, and ground strafing German reserves
that are moving up so the German ability to fight back and launch counter attacks is degraded
before it even gets near the front line. Well we did all the right things for a
change. We'd learned to hide our attacks, moving at night from one place to
another, then going right through. I was commanding a section of tanks.
We had then the experience of Cambrai, we knew that we were going to do it properly
and we would also be supported by adequate forces of the other arms and the thing
was immense success from the start. The tanks were going forward and
taking position after position, the infantry following up behind. You could
feel a hair pickling up your spine with excitement because we knew that that was
going to be the end of the end of the war. So the ultimate result of that all arms
battle was the defeat of the German army in the main theater of war the Western
Front in 1918. And of course if we're going to look at the generals and blame them
for many of the defeats in say 1916/1917. We should also look at 1918 and the Hundred Days
Offensive and give credit where credit is due. While the lions led by donkey's myth
is an understandable one given the huge casualties suffered on the Western Front, it's not the true story of the British army
during the First World War. Upon re-examination, we can see that the army had to learn how to
fight in the middle of a world war and that, despite the losses, it helped delivered the
killing blow against the Germans in 1918. If you compare the First World War to the Second
World War the main theater of war in the Second World War is the Eastern Front with the Russian
forces against the Germans. And it's the Russians that are really wearing down the German army in
the same way that the French and the British had to wear down the German army in the First World
War before victory could be achieved. But that's not to excuse poor generalship and there was
poor generalship on on on all sides of course. But one thing you could level against Haig was
that he was often very over optimistic in what he expected his army to be able to do. Many of
these attacks were carried on well past the point of diminishing returns. But by 1918 the British
army had come a long way. It had commanders in place who knew how to fight a modern war.
And while Haig and his commanders may not have reached the heights of lions themselves,
they were far from the donkeys of popular myth.
