Foundation 2 History
Assignment 3: Douglas Haig – the ‘Butcher of the Somme’?
Instructions:
This is a source-based assignment.
You will use all the sources to write a source-based answer to the set question.
You will also be expected to complete and submit the planning table.
Total marks for this assignment = 35
Use the sources as well as your own knowledge, to answer the question:
To what extent do the given sources suggest that Douglas Haig was deserving of
the nickname, “The Butcher of the Somme’? (20)
Complete and submit the following planning table with your answer. (15)
Total: 35 marks
Source Evidence suggesting that Evidence suggesting that Comments on
Haig deserves this name Haig does not deserve this source reliability
name
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
Also complete the following sentence:
This table shows that there are ___________ (more/fewer) sources which suggest Haig
deserved this name than there are sources which of the sources suggest that Haig was not
deserving of this name.
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Your essay will be assessed according to the following criteria:
• Has the information been correctly extracted from all the sources?
• Have logical assumptions been made based on the information in the source?
• Have the sources been used to either support or reject the statement?
• Has source evaluation been included in this answer?
• Is the essay well-structured with an introduction and a conclusion?
Total: 35 marks
Sources
Source A
The nation must be taught to bear losses. No amount of skill on the part of the higher
commanders, no training, however good, on the part of officers and men, no superiority,
however great, of arms and ammunition, will enable victories to be won without the
sacrifice of men's lives... We must be prepared to accept great losses in future without
flinching whenever and wherever it becomes necessary to sacrifice men in order to gain
some important advantage or to foil the enemy's endeavours to gain one.”
Douglas Haig, writing to British newspaper editors in 1916, before the battle began
Source B
Hundreds of dead were strung out [on barbed wire]… quite as many died on the enemy
wire as on the ground… It was clear that there were no gaps in the wire at the time of the
attack. The Germans had been reinforcing the wire for months. It was so thick that daylight
could barely be seen through it. How did the planners imagine that Tommies [British
soldiers] would get through the wire?
An interview with Private George Coppard, a British soldier who survived the Battle
of the Somme.
Source C
It is not too much to say that when the Great War broke out our Generals had the most
important lessons to learn. They knew nothing…about the actual fighting under modern
conditions. Haig ordered many bloody battles in this war. He only took part in two. He
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Foundation 2 History
never even saw the ground on which his greatest battles were fought, either before or
during the fight.
From the war memoirs of David Lloyd George, published in the 1930s. Lloyd George was
the British Prime Minister during the war.
Source D
By 1918 the best of the old German army lay dead on the battlefields of Verdun and the
Somme . . . As time passed, the picture gradually changed for the worse. As the number of
old peacetimes [1914] officers in a unit grew smaller these were replaced by young fellows
of the very best will, but without sufficient knowledge.
A German opinion on the German army of 1918.
Source E
My tunic is rotten with other men’s blood and partly spattered with a friend’s brains… The
horror was indescribable… I want to tell you on record that I honestly believe that Goldie (a
mate) and many others were murdered through the stupidity of those in authority.
Written by Lieutenant J. A. Raws in August 1916 in a letter to his family.
Source F
If the criterion of a successful general is to win wars, Haig must be judged a success. The
cost of victory was appalling, but Haig’s military methods were in line with the ideas of the
time, when attrition was the method, all sides used to achieve victory. [His critics] criticise
the cost of the way he did it [win the war] without offering alternative methods.
From a book called Field Marshal Haig, written by the historian Philip Warner in 1991
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Foundation 2 History
Source G
OUR MAN
With Mr. Punch’s grateful
compliments to Field Marshall, Sir
Douglas Haig
Cartoon published in Punch magazine, Nov 27, 1918
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