The driving force behind the attack at the Somme in the summer of 1916
was General Sir Douglas Haig. A friend to the royal family and a scion of
the Scottish aristocracy, Haig was a supremely confident commander whose
resolute conduct of the war was buttressed by a deep religious faith. Wedded
to offensive operations at almost any cost, Haig's philosophy of war had
been formed in the pre- 19 14 environment of the army's Staff College. The
goal of operations was to defeat the enemy decisively on the battlefield,
with infantry as the key to success. Then the victorious general was to
exploit that success with cavalry operations. As historian Tim Travers has
put it, Haig considered the role of modern fire power but believed that "it
was ultimately simple solutions such as morale, discipline and leadership
that decided battles." Haig applied this nineteenth-century view of war,
"still Napoleonic, still pre-industrial," at the Somme.
The British leader's enthusiasm was bolstered by the policy of his
government—namely, to take the war to the enemy. Moreover, the great
recruitment drive of the first two years of the war had produced literally the
"New Army." Composed of volunteers who had answered the call of Lord
Kitchener, these new divisions had seen little combat in 1915. They constituted
a tool that seemed both powerful and available. When the Germans
assaulted the French lines at Verdun, the pressure grew for a British force
to launch a large-scale offensive.
World History
