British Butchers and Bunglers of World War One

This book has got the sort of title - "British Butchers" - that ordinarily I would not be particularly attracted to, as it sounds like some sort of anti-war 'rant', probably a pacifist tract, as were so many books about World War One, or "The Great War", as it was known in its day, and as it still is known in Europe. But, World War One (WWI), circa 1914-1918, is a subject that I've generally felt that I never really knew enough about, so, given the bargain basement price - they were practically giving it away, something like $3 for a new hardcover at Stacy's downtown - and given the general subject matter, I just bought it, almost absent-mindedly among a slew of others on various subjects. It sat on my bookshelf though for several years, 'till finally one day I was out of stuff to read, and I just picked it up almost idly and started reading. Boy was I ever shocked. First of all, it's not in any way an anti-war tract. The author, in fact, is proud to be a soldier, who served under Montgomery in World War Two, and proud to be from a soldiering family. He thinks war and soldering is the greatest thing since sliced bread, fight it out and may the best man, and the best country win, is his idea. No no. It's not war that he takes issue with at all. His problem is that, from all the extensive research that he'd done, he'd reached the conclusion that World War One was not a war at all. It was, in fact, a mass murder by the rulers of the respective European countries involved, of their OWN soldiers. In other words, what he shows, is that the generals of the respective armies were not out to kill the other country's soldiers so much as being out to kill off their own armies. To the uninitiated, this may sound a little strange. After all, everyone knows that, certainly traditionally, you send armies into battle in order for them to kill off the opposing army; Not, first and foremost, to get one's own troops killed. So goes the propaganda of war, and everyone finds it pretty convincing. This book shows that that's not what happened in World War One. In World War One, armies were routinely thrown onto the field, not so much to kill, but rather to be killed. It was a deliberate and organized mass execution of the entire working class of Europe, not a battle between nations. The ruling classes of all the main nations involved, were killing off the working classes of all the nations involved. Not nation against nation, but rather, and rather overtly at that, ruling classes of all the involved nations against working classes of all the involved nations. It's hard for people to keep this in mind, but this book is the most powerful evidence for this that I've ever seen.

There seem to be commentators who will go to great lengths to prove that Haig and those staff around him were really not bad generals: we wern't there, we don't have enough information, we're colonials who couldn't possibly understand and anyway, their actions saved us from an evil fate so all is forgiven. Haig's people-grinder can be masked by sophistry and the belittling of arguments through the many stings of petty facts; however, I'm sorry to say but the book was a superb contribution to righting the many wrongs of a myopic and severly parochial cadre of historians that simply can't see, refuse to see or prefer to maintain the myth that these fools knew their job.How can any person with a modicum of intelligence accept casualty figures of 250,000 for a five mile dent in German lines at Passchendaele and this was only one example of Haig's military "brilliance"-Laffin has an entire book full of facts like these.Again, I am sorry for writing such a bad comment-I'm sure I'd get the cuts for composing such a sorry couple of paragraphs. The point however is salient because that was, perhaps still is, the soft under belly of the British military-its refusal to accept criticism and that refusal leading to the covering up of unbelievable military horrors committed by its military elite. They seemed to be awash in "form"-function be damned-the soldiers attacking the ineffectual, in Haig's view, machine guns will get through if they walk and not run in clean uniforms.

This book goes into great detail of the incompetence of the British high command in World War I. It tells of the sufferings of the British troops in the muddy trenches and the indifference of the British generals to their own troops fate. Situated 40 to 50 miles behind the front lines, the British generals above the level of a division never came to see what the conditions were like in the trenches or what type terrain the troops would have to go through in a major attack. This is why the death count was so high. There were over 1,100,000 deaths to the British and Commonwealth forces in World War I. In World War II this would have been unacceptible. Sir John French and Sir Douglas Haig, the two men mainly resposible for this carnage, should have not only been court-martialed, but shot for destroying a generation of the best men that Britain had to offer. Instead, after the war they were created Earls and given high pensions for their bloody work. This book stikes you right in the heart and makes you wonder how could this have happened in a civilized society. It's unimaginable that generals in high command could have had such callous regard for their men, but they did.

A scathing analysis of the utter stupidity of the British military bureaucracy who could not think of doing anything but sending even more men into the guns. While German and, to a lesser extent, French militaries were trying to intelligently solve the riddle of the trenches, those at the top in British HQ were actively supressing those below them who had better ideas.

A book that takes no prisoners when it comes to roasting his own countrymen. As better commanders were kept from showing how the war could be run (Monash was, afterall, a colonial!) the top brass seemed to be in a competition to "out-blunder" their fellows. (The Blackadder Syndrome perhaps?) The lessons of the American Civil War and the Boar War were lost on those in command and they refused to believe that they were wrong in their prosocution of the war. As bad as the generals were, remember that they were aided and abetted by their government.I believe this book should be compulsive reading for all military colleges as a prime example of how NOT to wage war.