Haig: the unknown soldier

Episode of Series “Time watch”.
Scottish field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig is infamous for being known as the man responsible for sending 723,000 British soldiers to their deaths - carnage on an unheard of scale. Inarticulate and stubborn, Haig was accused of being callous and incompetent, the “Butcher of the Somme,” the donkey in charge of the British army of lions. Lampooned and caricatured in the media - print then, television now (BlackAdder). Research by military historians into the performance of the British Army in World War 1 queries the myth of Haig as a buffoon in his position as British Commander in Chief on the Western Front, a post he assumed in December 1915. The program postulates that casualties were high given that it was a war of industrial powers and all that this entailed on a military scale. Provides brief biographical information, readings from Haig’s diary, interviews with historians and veterans and archival footage.