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00:00When Field Marshal Douglas Haig was buried in his native Scotland in 1928,
00:16he was a national hero, revered by public and veterans alike.
00:21But that's not how most people remember him today.
00:29Field Marshal Haig has formulated a brilliant new tactical plan to ensure final victory in the field.
00:38Ah, would this brilliant plan involve us climbing out of our trenches and walking very slowly towards the enemy, sir?
00:45How could you possibly know that, Blackadder? It's classified information.
00:49It's the same plan that we used last time and the 17 times before that.
00:54Exactly!
00:59Haig was stubborn as a donkey. He was unthinking as a donkey. He was as inarticulate as a donkey.
01:08So Haig, in fact, was the worst donkey on the British side of the war.
01:14The First World War is remembered for carnage, brave men sent to their deaths by incompetent officers.
01:33But new research by military historians into the performance of the British army suggests this may not be the whole story,
01:45as these army cadets are discovering.
01:48You all know the popular myth about the British army of the First World War.
01:53That it was a group of lions led by donkeys and that Douglas Haig was a callous and incompetent butcher.
02:00The reality was rather different.
02:03Many modern historians, myself included, would argue that by 1917 the British army was a very effective instrument of war.
02:12Haig was far from the idiot of popular myth.
02:15And the fact that his army has won the greatest series of victories in British military history mean we must take him seriously as a commander.
02:23Douglas Haig's ideas on fighting campaigns were forged during his years as a cavalryman.
02:52officer in the Sudan and South Africa.
02:56They were reinforced here at British Army Staff College where, unlike most of his colleagues, Haig took his studies seriously.
03:05But he did come from the same background as his fellow officers.
03:09Haig was wealthy and upper class.
03:16At Staff College, Haig was taught not to shrink from the attack.
03:22Battles were planned and executed in set stages.
03:25After the enemy had been worn down, the cavalry was to break through their defensive line in the final sweep to decisive victory.
03:33But war had changed.
03:38The First World War is the first war in modern history, the first war in any history in which two great industrial powers are pitted against each other.
03:50And modern industry can produce killing weapons in prodigious numbers.
03:56Weapons like the machine gun, the magazine-fed rifle, artillery using axial recoil, which means you could fire shells very rapidly.
04:06If you look at the introduction of barbed wire as stopping forces on the attack, the whole balance in warfare has moved away from the advantage being with the attacker to the advantage being with the defender.
04:19But this harsh military reality was not grasped in 1914 when patriotism swept the nations of Europe, all believed in a speedy outcome.
04:37When we joined up the army, it was generally thought that the war would last six months and no longer.
04:45That was a common thought.
04:47But it was in the media as well and everyone said, oh, you'll be back in six months.
04:51One of the great problems that all the politicians in all the countries faced was to tell their electorates that the war would not go on and on and on forever,
05:09that it was with a foreseeable end in sight.
05:12And the generals, therefore, equally had an obligation to bring that about.
05:17The main focus of fighting was on the Western Front once the German army had swept through Belgium and northern France.
05:25In 1915, Britain's allies begged her government to intervene, and the task was entrusted to the commander-in-chief of the regular British army, Sir John French.
05:35He turned to his subordinate, General Douglas Haig.
05:39The location selected by Haig was the tiny German-held village of Neuve-Chapelle.
05:45Of little importance strategically, capturing it would prove to the French that the British were taking their obligations seriously.
05:57By the spring of 1915, Neuve-Chapelle, like the rest of the Western Front, had been fortified.
06:03The Germans had dug a defensive line of trenches with strong points and barbed wire.
06:09The problem would be how to get British infantry soldiers across no man's land and into the German trenches.
06:15Haig and his subordinates had a plan.
06:19They saw that the way to proceed was to gather up all the artillery and all the shells that they could employ,
06:27and to use them on a length of front that was appropriate to that amount of shelling.
06:33Once British shells had destroyed the German barbed wire and machine guns, the infantry would cross no man's land and take the German trenches and the village.
06:43The cavalry would then exploit the break in the German line, pushing out into open country.
06:49The British bombardment took the Germans by surprise, but the artillery was inaccurate and the enemy defences were not neutralised.
07:01The British infantry succeeded in taking the village that morning, but there was no chance of a cavalry breakthrough.
07:07The Germans brought in reserves at the last minute to set up another line of defence further back.
07:15By the end of the three-day battle, important lessons had been learned by both sides.
07:21The Germans needed more trenches and deeper defences.
07:25And Haig, having seen the power of the artillery, believed he needed more guns, more shells, more men and a wider front for the next big offensive.
07:36He drew the conclusion that more could have been accomplished,
07:41and that therefore what they had to do was to do Nerve Chapelle better in order that they could actually achieve a breakthrough.
07:52By the time the opportunity came for a big offensive, Haig had taken Sir John French's place as British commander-in-chief on the Western Front.
08:01The strengths and weaknesses of his character would affect the running of the war and seal the fate of his army,
08:07now numbering almost a million men.
08:12The general headquarters for this rapidly expanding army was in the small provincial town of Montreux.
08:18Haig himself lived and worked in nearby Chateau Beaureupier, 40 miles behind the front line.
08:30On taking command in December 1915, he confided to his wife,
08:35My darling Doris, all seem to expect success as the result of my arrival,
08:40and somehow give me the idea that they think I am meant to win by some superior power.
08:45While doing my utmost, I feel one's best can go but a short way without help from above.
08:51Your loving husband, Douglas.
08:56He saw himself as the instrument of God.
09:00And again he said this, that God Almighty would see him through his various battles.
09:05Well, God Almighty had no more knowledge of what was going on on the Western Front than Haig did.
09:09And to rely on God Almighty really was a pretty false read at that time.
09:15And for Haig to say that God was at his right shoulder or his right arm and helping him.
09:21Well, that's a form of blasphemy.
09:26The very fact that he is commander of the British Army and the British nation being God's nation
09:32means that he has been selected by God to lead the British Army to victory.
09:39This is the way he sees his position.
09:41And part of that belief in authority is to be remote from those you command.
09:45And if you look at it from the point of view of the people he commands,
09:49the men admire an officer probably much more if he has an air of superiority and distance about him.
09:58Oh, he looked very smart and well, yes.
10:03I was. I was a good looking chap.
10:06He looks every inch a soldier, every inch a commander.
10:09He looks a capable man, you know.
10:12He didn't ever go up to the front line.
10:15He didn't go up to the trenches and dirty his boots.
10:18Haig had no comprehension of what he was sending men into.
10:22A great commander knows exactly what he's sending his men into,
10:26as later commanders, such as Field Marshal Montgomery did.
10:30But Haig didn't.
10:31And this was partly because of the extraordinary way in which he lived
10:36at Montreville-sur-Mer, where he had his headquarters.
10:39There was absolutely no purpose in the commander being close to the front.
10:44He couldn't see a thing.
10:46He would be seeing only a few inches, in effect, of the total picture.
10:50He had to be somewhere where he could see as much of the total picture as he could.
10:53In other words, he had to be at a communications centre where information from over this huge front was coming into him.
11:03Haig's remoteness from the day-to-day life of the front was partly inspired by his own notions of the role of a commander,
11:13as recorded in his staff college notebook some twenty years earlier.
11:16In order to command, it is necessary to foresee. The chief duty of the higher command is to prepare for battle, not to execute it on the battlefield.
11:28After having clearly indicated to subordinate leaders their respective missions, we must leave the execution to them.
11:34That sounds like an almost perfect recipe for the command style of modern armies, whereby you give somebody a mission and you leave them to work out the details how to achieve that mission.
11:49But we have a problem with Douglas Haig. He is not good at orally communicating. So you, in some respects, have got the worst of all situations with Haig's planning.
12:02He has a general plan. It is his intention to stand back and not get involved in the details. Yet he does interfere. His subordinate commanders are frightened of him.
12:13And yet, frequently, when he has identified things that they are doing wrong, he stands back and doesn't try and correct them.
12:22Now, that strikes me as being a recipe for military disaster.
12:36Douglas Haig is the commander whose battle plans are blamed for mass slaughter.
12:41You look surprised, Blackadder.
12:44I certainly am, sir. I didn't realise we had any battle plans.
12:48Well, of course we have. How else do you think the battles are directed?
12:53Our battles are directed, sir.
12:55Well, of course they are, Blackadder, directed according to the grand plan.
12:59Would that be the plan to continue with total slaughter until everyone's dead except Field Marshal Haig, Lady Haig and their tortoise, Alam?
13:05The principle which guided him, that if he could kill more Germans than the Germans could kill his men, then he would inevitably, at some time, win.
13:17Now, that is an appalling kind of strategy. It's not a strategy at all. It's just slaughter.
13:26Haig did not launch his campaigns simply in order to kill Germans or to get his own men killed.
13:33He always had great visions for what his operations were going to achieve.
13:38There was nothing wrong about Haig launching a big campaign.
13:43What was wrong was Haig dreaming that he could accomplish such huge objectives.
13:48In 1916, here on the River Somme, Haig planned a great offensive, in part to relieve pressure on the French army suffering horrendous losses at Verdun.
14:01Chosen for political, not strategic reasons, this was the point on the Western Front where the British and French armies met.
14:08Just as in the planning for Neuve Chapelle, Haig intended a classic cavalry breakthrough after the infantry had captured the enemy trenches.
14:19But everything depended on the artillery.
14:22The whole concept of the 1st of July 1916 was going to be that nothing would have survived the barrage, the bombardment, and that when the barrage lifted, the infantry would walk over and occupy the shattered trenches and then move on again.
14:39The shells would come here all day long and all night long.
14:46Yes, it was that, it was a real bombardment.
14:50Yes, yes, the gunfire would tell them.
14:54We knew something was happening all right.
15:00On the eve of the battle, Haig's confidence was high.
15:04With God's help, I feel hopeful.
15:08The men are in splendid spirits.
15:11Several have said that they have never before been so instructed and informed of the nature of the operation before them.
15:17The wire has never been so well cut, nor the artillery preparations so thorough.
15:23A week before the battle, they blew all this wire up and cleared the ground for the men to go over the top.
15:32But unfortunately, they didn't clear sufficient.
15:36When they came to go over the top, a lot of the wire was still in position.
15:47At 7.20am, several huge mines signalled the beginning of the attack.
15:55They claimed that the fire statement went forward.
15:57Well, no one told us there was going to be an onslaught.
16:02Well, you're just going up over the top and you went forward.
16:06You listened to the guns going, your friends next door to you.
16:09This chap on my right, I was talking to him one minute, the next minute he wasn't there.
16:14He was somewhere behind, what's left of him.
16:16But you just had to go through, through the barbed wire if you could get through, if your kilt caught on it, where you just left your kilt on it.
16:27And went straight forward without your kilt, for hell let loose it, from both sides.
16:32There were nearly 60,000 British casualties that day, 20,000 of them killed.
16:45Well, on the evening of the first of July, I went up onto the, what was the battlefield, and you couldn't walk on grass, there were all dead bodies everywhere.
16:55The infantry came along and dug big holes, say 100 bodies.
17:01Hague should not have been attacking on as wide a front as he was, and he should not have been attacking to the depth that he was.
17:13He insisted on doubling the depth which his second in command, Rawlinson, had proposed,
17:19which meant halving the intensity of the artillery bombardment.
17:23As a result, the artillery bombardment that he fired, which was supposed totally to destroy the enemy defences, in fact, hardly dented them.
17:34British gains along the front varied, depending on the effectiveness of the bombardment.
17:40On the southern part of the battlefront, British soldiers were able to advance one mile and take the German-held village of Montauban.
17:49This was their greatest success.
17:51Nine miles to the north, opposite the village of Beaumont-Hermel, British soldiers suffered heavy casualties without gaining a single yard.
18:06Hague was determined the battle should continue despite politicians' concerns.
18:12He informed London on the 1st of August that he intended to maintain the offensive.
18:17The Battle of the Somme lasted for a total of 142 days.
18:24Hague's decision to go on with the Battle of the Somme to the 18th of November, with each day getting worse and worse, criminal negligence because there was no possibility of any kind of gain.
18:34Now, that was negligent. The criminality came in knowing that each day he was losing more and more men who were trying to do the impossible, the absolute impossible.
18:48One of the big criticisms that is made of Hague is that he should have stopped the offensive at a certain date.
18:55Obviously, he was not going to achieve a breakthrough and we were suffering as many casualties as the Germans.
19:00One of the reasons why Hague doesn't do this is because the intelligence picture he is getting is that the Germans are being worn down and one more push and you're going to break the German army.
19:13Hague's belief in a German collapse was fostered by his head of intelligence, John Charters.
19:19John Charters.
19:22Charters tended to put the view that the glass was half empty rather than the glass was half full as his appreciation, he put it forward.
19:30He was also highly conscious that Douglas Hague was bearing an immense burden.
19:35And he tried to lighten that burden by putting a little bit of an additional spin on the information he gave.
19:44And the result was that continually Douglas Hague was coming through with an opinion that the Germans were actually nearer collapse than they were.
19:54Charters begins to interpret his role as not to find out what is actually going on with the German army and how to win the war, but rather to show, to provide Hague with the evidence that the war is in fact being won.
20:13The result of that being, of course, that there is no reason then to change what you are doing.
20:18During the four months of the campaign, the Germans suffered such losses that their commanders decided to withdraw to new lines of defence up to 20 miles back.
20:31And despite heavy casualties, the British army gained some hard experience.
20:37In many ways, the Somme was the most important campaign the British fought in the First World War.
20:43This was the battle which turned the British army from being a group of amateurs into a fairly hard-bitten and very effective army.
20:57No one can visit the Somme battlefield without being impressed with the magnitude of the effort made by the British army.
21:05So that credit for pluck and resolution has been earned by men from every part of the empire.
21:10Although new to this terrible game of war, they were able, time and again, to form up their commands in the darkness of night.
21:21And in spite of shell holes, wire and other obstacles, lead them forward in the grey of the morning to attack these tremendous positions.
21:30To many, it meant certain death.
21:35And all must have known that before they started.
21:38He once said there is nothing more difficult than to go on planning, knowing that whatever you plan is going to cause men to die.
21:47But it had to be done.
21:49And he was prepared for it and he was prepared to take the punishment and bear the strain of it.
21:56Because after all, the buck stopped with him and he was prepared to take it.
22:00You've only got to look at Douglas Haig to see the immense resilience and endurance of the man.
22:06And this is what his troops knew.
22:09Well, I thought he was a good commander.
22:12What if he hadn't have sent him over, what would have happened?
22:15What would have happened? The war would have gone on and on and on and on.
22:19It was a war of attrition who could stand it the longest.
22:23I wouldn't like the responsibility of sending people to their death. I wouldn't like that.
22:33I certainly wouldn't ask anyone to do a job if they were going to get killed.
22:37I wouldn't like to do it myself.
22:39But hey, someone had to do it to accept the responsibility.
22:42Within Haig's religious beliefs, there is the idea of sacrifice for a Christian cause.
22:57Now, if you believe devotedly in that idea, as Haig does, then the men who die, in a sense, are being rewarded.
23:08Because the sacrifice is the reward.
23:12So to fall on the battlefield, in Haig's view, is not a tragedy.
23:19I attended the Church of Scotland service.
23:23The Reverend G. Duncan conducted and preached a good sermon.
23:27We lament too much over death, he said.
23:31We should regard it as a welcome change to another room.
23:34The great danger with Haig's religion is his assumption that his men have the same devout religious beliefs.
23:47And therefore that his men are going to death as comfortable with this sacrifice as Haig himself is.
23:56Haig's view on death was a very, very simple one.
24:03That there were going to be enormous losses in fighting the German army.
24:08The British had to take the whole brunt on themselves.
24:11He was quite conscious of this weight and he knew what it meant in terms of casualties.
24:14If you are content to believe that heavy casualties are inevitable, they will indeed be inevitable.
24:24This became a fixation.
24:26So that Haig and others fully expected that no matter what they did, no matter what tactics they pursued,
24:32there would be heavy casualties among our own men.
24:34This fixation was to me not only stupid but criminal, in that no other alternative was conceived.
24:45This is the only time in history that Britain has had an army of that size which met the main enemy in the main theatre of operations.
24:58The simple fact is, in fighting that sort of warfare, casualties are bound to be heavy.
25:11When you look at casualty rates in the Second World War, at least in the 1944-45 campaign,
25:18the campaign from Normandy to the Baltic, casualty rates equaled or exceeded those on the Western Front.
25:24There is no evidence that British losses in the First World War were disproportionately higher than those of our allies, the French,
25:35or indeed of our enemies, the Germans.
25:40In the popular mind, casualties still remain the dominant feature of the Great War.
25:45Hague had accepted that casualties would be high when he was planning the Somme campaign,
25:56and a memo to the press had been issued in advance of the battle.
26:00Together with patience, the nation must be taught to bear losses.
26:04No amount of skill on the part of the higher commanders.
26:08No superiority, however great, of arms and ammunition will enable victories to be won without the sacrifice of men's lives.
26:17To sum up, the lessons which the people of England have to learn are patience, self-sacrifice, and confidence in our ability to win in the long run.
26:28Eighty years ago, the British public was bearing the losses with stoicism, but British politicians weren't.
26:38In particular, David Lloyd George, the new Prime Minister.
26:41It's often said Lloyd George was very concerned about casualties.
26:46Lloyd George only once went to visit a wounded man who was the son of a politician who asked him to go and see his son.
26:54Lloyd George came away from that saying, I should never have been asked to go and see that man.
26:59I am too sensitive to witness such a scene.
27:02I cannot continue with my job if I have to see people in that condition.
27:06Lloyd George, it needs to be remembered, was the person who gave Hague all those soldiers and all those guns with which to get on and fight the war.
27:20As the new year dawned, these two powerful men were completely at odds.
27:26The radical Welsh politician cast himself as the people's champion.
27:30The wealthy commander was backed by the king and his friends.
27:33Each was convinced that his formula for winning the war was the right one.
27:40To Hague's consternation, Lloyd George believed that victory could be bought more cheaply by fighting Germany's allies in Turkey, in the Balkans or on the Italian front.
27:52The thing you notice about Lloyd George's preferred campaigns is either they were totally harebrained, like the idea of a campaign in the Balkans, or they had very little relevance with the war against Germany.
28:06They may have been fine in a war against Turkey, but we weren't fighting Turkey primarily, we had to win the war by defeating the Germans.
28:15The other thing you notice about Lloyd George is that he is always talking about big campaigns producing big successes.
28:23And this is something he has in common with the Douglas Hague, though they are loath to recognise the fact that they are both men who think big, they are both men who want to achieve great purposes.
28:34Lloyd George is the Prime Minister. He has to look at the war from a wide perspective, the political, economic and the military.
28:43And Douglas Hague and the military frequently forget that they are but one part of the war effort.
28:51I mean a crucial part of the war effort, but they are but one part of the war effort.
28:55The politicians are going to have a say, they have a constitutional right to have a say.
29:00Although he couldn't get rid of Hague, Lloyd George set in motion a scheme to seriously limit his power.
29:08Having done a secret deal with the new French commander Robert Nivelle, Lloyd George set up a conference in February 1917.
29:16Hague arrived to find that the Prime Minister had arranged for the British Army, including Hague, to come under the direct control of the French.
29:24The aftermath of the Calais Conference probably reveals Hague at his most dignified.
29:31He has, after all, suffered probably the most, the worst indignity that a British commander-in-chief can suffer, being betrayed by your Prime Minister and being placed under the command of a foreign general.
29:49That evening, Hague complained in his diary.
29:54It is too sad at this critical time to have to fight with one's allies and the home government, in addition to the enemy in the field.
30:02Nivelle's much heralded spring offensive, supported by Lloyd George, failed to break through and brought the French army to the verge of mutiny.
30:11But British and Canadian forces scored a notable success at Arras.
30:19His position weakened, Lloyd George reluctantly agreed to Hague's own plan in Flanders, the Third Battle of Ypres, known as Passchendaele.
30:28The quiet Belgian town of Ypres was at the centre of the most hellish section of the British Front.
30:39For almost four years it was shelled by the Germans. Ypres was obliterated.
30:44Hague had played a major part in saving the town from German occupation at the beginning of the war.
30:53Hague is haunted by his experiences at the First Battle of Ypres, back in 1914.
31:00That was the destruction of the old regular army and Hague experienced then just how close the Germans came to breaking through.
31:11And I think psychologically that meant that Ypres and the area of Flanders held a special place in his operational thinking.
31:20Hague's objective was to capture the Germans' immediate high ground and break through their lines to seize an important railway junction at Rouleurs and the channel ports beyond.
31:33A major advance at Ypres could win the war.
31:37At Messines Ridge in June, a well-planned and executed attack preceded the main Ypres offensive.
31:43Nineteen colossal mines literally blew the German front line to pieces.
31:50We're standing in Passchendaele New British Cemetery, just about at the tip of the British advance in the Ypres salient in 1917.
32:01The Third Battle of Ypres, or Passchendaele, is probably the most controversial battle that Douglas Hague ever fought.
32:08By the time of Passchendaele, Hague's army was a much more flexible force than it had been only 12 months earlier.
32:17And Hague himself had learned many lessons.
32:20Hague understood the nature of warfare on the Western Front.
32:24He understood that it would be a long-drawn-out attritional struggle to wear down the German army.
32:30But he never lost sight of the idea that ultimately attrition must end and mobile warfare must begin again.
32:38The campaign depended, as Hague knew, on the bombardment.
32:42More than four million shells were fired in two weeks.
32:46Then, after weeks of sunshine, heavy rains began on the first day of the battle.
32:51The battlefield quickly became a quagmire. The attack bogged down immediately.
32:56It was an impossible situation. We lost several men in shells, because they just fell in and they were full of mud and water, you know.
33:10And we lost several men that way.
33:16Some of the chaps had about 120 pounds on their back.
33:19And if he fell at the side, he'd be sucked in. They couldn't pull him out because of all the stuff on him.
33:24They had ropes every time, but they'd really sunk down.
33:28And he'd have to say, oh, for goodness sake, shoot me, shoot me, shoot me.
33:33In fact, they'd have just sunk in the mud when the ceiling came.
33:37We were going through where about 50 men had been caught under heavy shell fire.
33:48They were absolutely wiped out.
33:52It's the first time, it's the only time I've smelt, I've smelt human blood.
34:01And it's the most horrible smell. It's a filthy smell.
34:06But these men had only just been killed.
34:09And we had to more or less just go wade through them, as you might say, to get on.
34:16Because you didn't dally anything like that.
34:20Just as at the Somme, Haig's intelligence reported that the German army was on the verge of collapse
34:27and he refused to call off the campaign.
34:29A series of quick blows almost broke the enemy line, but the German army held out.
34:36The village of Passchendaele, originally a first phase objective,
34:41was finally taken three months later, on November the 6th.
34:46Was the Third Battle of Ypres worth it?
34:49We know that it was an appalling battle for the Germans.
34:53We can say that the British learnt a lot about the operational art of war.
35:00But I think in terms of Douglas Haig, you have to say that it was a failure.
35:05He didn't achieve what his aim was, which was a breakout.
35:11I think that he used up the last remaining bits of credibility he had in London,
35:18not just with Lloyd George and the politicians, but with many of his military peer group.
35:23Lloyd George didn't sack Haig.
35:30He couldn't find anyone else suitable for the job and Haig still had powerful friends.
35:36But only two weeks after the close of the Passchendaele campaign,
35:39at the Battle of Cornbury, technology promised to break the steel meat.
35:46Haig's attitude to technology was virtually nil.
35:50He didn't understand technology. The horse was always what mattered to him.
35:55And he kept large squadrons of cavalry behind the British lines,
36:01ready for the push-through, the break-through, which he always expected was going to come.
36:05One of the myths that surrounds Douglas Haig is that because he was so fond of the cavalry,
36:11he must have been simply an old fuddy-duddy, always looking backward,
36:16always resistant to innovation and to new weapons.
36:19Now this is quite untrue.
36:21Haig would welcome any weapon that he thought would advance his cause.
36:27From the beginning, Douglas Haig was enthusiastic about tanks.
36:30He ordered a hundred within days of the first prototype being tested in January 1916,
36:35and he used them on the Somme that autumn.
36:39But he didn't believe that the tank was the wonder weapon that could win the war.
36:44Now the problem of the tank is, of course, that the machine gun bullet may bounce off,
36:50though in time it won't, but the high-explosive shell won't bounce off.
36:54So the tank is not going to be an effective weapon until, first of all, your artillery has learned the way of suppressing the enemy's artillery,
37:05in order that the tank can get forward without being turned into a blazing wreck on the battlefield.
37:10The real instance of military obtuseness in the use of the tank is not the British command at all.
37:18It's the German command.
37:20Why didn't these supposedly far-sighted German commanders pick up on the tank as an important new weapon of war?
37:26German commanders put their faith not in technology but in stormtrooper tactics when they launched a massive offensive across a 60-mile front.
37:39They attacked on the 21st of March, 1918, at 6 o'clock.
37:49There was a mist, so that helped them, because they were able to infiltrate without being seen, as you might say.
38:00Hague and his staff were looking forward to a German offensive.
38:08They expected a German offensive because they believed that the British army was well-prepared,
38:14that it had learnt a lot of lessons, and that the Germans would attack and would be badly chewed up by those British defences,
38:23to the extent that Hague seriously believed that this would then enable him to go on to the offensive.
38:28Within 10 days, the Germans had forced the British back 40 miles.
38:35It was the most dramatic movement on the Western Front in over three years.
38:40We were getting pushed back, and they did push us back so far, you see.
38:47And that's where Hague is a disorder that every man had to stand his ground.
38:52Couldn't do anything else, really.
38:54It was either that or let them win.
38:56Many amongst us are now tired.
39:00To those I would say, that victory belongs to those who hold out the longest.
39:07There is no other course open to us but to fight it out.
39:12Every position must be held to the last man.
39:16There must be no retirement.
39:17With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end.
39:26He never doubted himself, and he never doubted the British Army.
39:32He had the determination to see things through, and when other people started buckling at the knees, he held them up.
39:38For four months, it appeared that the German commander, Ludendorff, was achieving what Hague could not, a dramatic offensive victory.
39:49Ludendorff produces striking success.
39:52He gets his army forward 40 miles, and by the time it's advanced 40 miles, it has outrun its artillery, and it is naked to its enemies.
40:02And it is suffering prohibitive casualties.
40:04During that period, the German army suffered almost one million dead and wounded, more than double the number of casualties suffered by the British during the Somme campaign in 1916.
40:20Ludendorff had not learned what was slowly dawning on Sir Douglas Hague, and had become the general pattern throughout the British Army.
40:29Once you'd gone as far as the artillery could protect you, don't try and get any further, then you stopped, then you brought up your artillery, then you did it all again.
40:40You made a series of small steps.
40:45New research by historians shows how by the final months of the war, the British Army had become phenomenally effective in its use and understanding of artillery.
40:55Not just more effective than the Germans, but more effective than its own allies.
41:02And the artillery, of course, undergoes great development under Hague's leadership.
41:07He's doing what a good commander should do, allowing his experts to get on with the job of being expert, of employing the weaponry, of developing the weaponry, and making it possible for them to bring those weapons to the battlefield where they are needed for the appropriate moment.
41:24By mid-1918, you have a flexible battle, a flexible artillery battle, a flexible artillery battle married in with other arms, including the Royal Flying Corps, Royal Air Force, so that you have the beginnings of the kind of battle that you saw in the Second World War, with communication all working together.
41:45And in 1918, you get an artillery, infantry, tanks and aircraft attack, which the Germans cannot deal with and cannot answer.
41:56From his mobile train headquarters, Hague set his sights on the greatest obstacle on the Western Front, the legendary system of German defences known as the Hindenburg Line.
42:09Making full use of canals and high ground wherever possible, the Germans had built the line after the Battle of the Somme in the winter of 1916.
42:20Up to ten miles deep, the system of defences was considered impregnable.
42:25Always very strongly fortified, with barbed wire in there, and trenches and everything.
42:32And another trench and another trench with barbed wire. Very, very strong.
42:37I don't think the Germans ever thought that we'd break through.
42:40But by that time, we had a tremendous amount of guns going to fire and everything else.
42:52It always breaks through quite easily, really. As far as I'm concerned, it's quite easy.
42:58We just followed the barrage and we were over and we never got any fire or anything. It was amazing.
43:09The new form of integrated attacks with limited objectives brought a startling victory.
43:16Within ten days, Hague's armies had broken through the various lines of the Hindenburg defences into the open fields beyond.
43:23On October 15th, Hague came to savour victory at the San Quentin Canal, the old German front line.
43:33And the breakthrough at the Hindenburg line. That was a big breakthrough.
43:38And we broke through there. That was beginning to the end.
43:42Morale was high, yes, yes, really. I think we could see that we were going to win.
43:47What we are seeing in 1918 is a decisive battlefield victory.
43:53Because Hague has given up the notion of his great sweeping advance,
43:58and therefore is being obliged to fight the sort of battle that the British Army can fight and can win.
44:05Now, I know that the reluctance to take this view on board is so entrenched,
44:09because people are so obsessed with Hague and his failings,
44:14that they cannot believe that an army under such a command could do well.
44:19On the 11th of November 1918, the war ended.
44:26Maybe she still is true to you and true to the rest of the army too.
44:31Hague didn't win. He was there at the finish.
44:36He was the only general from 1916 who was still there in 1918,
44:44because all the others had gone by natural wastage or because they had been removed,
44:49and in most cases very fittingly removed.
44:52He was the only one still there.
44:55After the war, Hague was received as a hero.
44:59And a lot of people who defend him say,
45:01well, yes, look, the people loved him. Look at the way he was lauded back in Britain.
45:06The British public would have cheered Charlie Chaplin,
45:10if Charlie Chaplin had been in command of the army.
45:13They were not cheering Hague, they were cheering the end of the war.
45:18They were cheering their release from this appalling abbeys
45:21into which the country had fallen on the Western Front.
45:32This was an extremely horrible war with massive losses,
45:36and therefore a war which required a commander who could withstand those losses.
45:41A commander with the stubbornness and the determination,
45:45and perhaps even the insensitivity to not be affected by the losses.
45:59Douglas Hague's fate was to lead the British Army at a time when industrial power brought killing on a scale hitherto unimagined.
46:07That same technology brought Hague victory, but at the cost of 723,000 British dead,
46:18and more than one and a half million wounded.
46:21Again and again, people have used him as a scapegoat, as a lightning conductor,
46:34because of people's concentration on one thing, casualties.
46:39It has been this folk memory which has darkened Hague's reputation down the years,
46:45and still darkens it today, and possibly will for another 50 years.
46:52I believe eventually Hague will be seen more clearly and more fairly than he is today,
46:57but certainly it's gone on far longer than one would have dreamt possible.
47:00There's a new series of Time Watch beginning on BBC Two this autumn.
47:19.
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