Denis Winter’s Haig: A Manufactured FraudDenis Winter, Attacks on Haig: 1) Haig did not get his command on ability, 2) Haig was a lousy commander, 3) Haig falsified the History of the Great War, Reviews: On the jacket (journalists), On the jacket (historians), Brian Bond, On the web.
Denis Winter, Haig’s Command – A Reassessment (Viking 1991)
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Denis
Winter was born in 1940, and read History at In
1980, Winter became a Research Fellow at the Winter
simply attacks Haig from start to finish.
Among his assertions are:
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1.
Haig did not get his command on military ability:
His period of command had exposed grave professional weaknesses in
a man whose rise had always owed more to intrigue and patronage than to
any evidence of talent as a soldier. Denis Winter, Haig’s
Command A Reassessment (2001 Penguin edition), page 41.
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1. Haig did not get his command on ability |
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2.
Haig was a lousy commander.
Much
of Winter’s analysis is speculative assertion that he (Winter) could
have thought of a way to do things better than Haig.
A lot of his chapter on the Winter’s
account is riddled with value-judgement phrases like ‘ponderous lines,
advancing like a German machine-gunner’s dream’ (p.58), ‘Haig’s
blunders’ (p.79), ‘months of fumbling’ (p. 84),
‘the smoke-screen of lies and fictions put out by Haig’ (p.
87), ‘costly error’ (121), ‘fundamental error’ (p.152) etc.
His
conclusions are damning: The
army Haig sent onto battle was therefore badly organised…
Poorly trained and ill equipped, supported by staff work of low
quality and commanded by generals inadequate to the task, the BEF under
Haig was, indeed, the bluntest of swords. Denis Winter, Haig’s
Command A Reassessment (2001 Penguin edition), page 150.
[Haig’s
generalship had] three basic weaknesses: a faulty selection of
battlefield, an inability to break the crust of the enemy’s defensive
positions at the outset and a failure to exploit such fleeting
opportunities for breakthrough which appeared. Denis Winter, Haig’s
Command A Reassessment (2001 Penguin edition), page 151.
With
military dogmas cut and dried before 1914, Haig felt no need to study
the details of his profession, and many competent judges were astounded
by the gaps in Haig’s knowledge relating to the most elementary
aspects of soldiering. Denis Winter, Haig’s
Command A Reassessment (2001 Penguin edition), page 163. (To
support this, Winter quotes John Monash, commander of the Australian
forces on the Western Front, and James Edmonds, the government’s
official historian of the war.) Symptoms
of a man avoiding situations which might challenge his own rigid
conceptions of command were accompanied by a disturbing change in Haig
himself … As soon as he became Commander in Chief, a religious
dimension appears … It was an unhealthy development in a man already
tending towards delusions of infallibility. Denis Winter, Haig’s
Command A Reassessment (2001 Penguin edition), page 165.
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3.
Haig falsified the History of the Great War
In
the final chapters of his book, Winter describes how Haig set about
falsifying the historical record after the war:
The
end product of Denis Winter, Haig’s
Command A Reassessment (2001 Penguin edition), page 255.
In
this way, Haig made sure that his
version of the war became the accepted version of the war.
Thus, claims Winter, there was: ‘falsification on a
considerable scale’ (p. 3). Haig
had systematically falsified the record of his military career,
underpinning the most important years with a diary written for
circulation in his own cause during the war and re-written in his own
favour after it. Denis Winter, Haig’s
Command A Reassessment (2001 Penguin edition), page 3.
The
official record of the war – political as well as military – had
been systematically distorted both during the war as propaganda and
after it, in the official history… All documents passed on the Public
Record Office were carefully vetted so as to remove those which
contradicted the official line.’
Denis Winter, Haig’s
Command A Reassessment (2001 Penguin edition), page 4. Even,
according to Winter, when the Cabinet and War Office papers were opened
to the public in the 1960s, historians who ‘get most of their material
within strolling distance of the Public Record Office’s excellent
cafeteria’ (p. 2) were unable to realise that Haig had falsified the
record. Only,
says Winter, when he (Winter) did his ground-breaking work on Australian and Canadian papers, did
Haig’s manufactured fraud come to light.
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What do they say about Denis Winter’s book, Haig A Reassessment?
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As
you might have expected, the reviews on the jacket of the Penguin
edition of Winter’s books (2001) all praise it.
Some newspaper reviews have been very enthusiastic:
This
well-researched and important book brings to life the polemics and
controversies of a past generation over Field Marshal Haig ... The
fresh documentary evidence produced by Winter makes it difficult for
historians in future to take up the cudgels for Haig. Richard
Lamb, Spectator In
Haig's Command Denis Winter
launches the most devastating attack on Haig's reputation since the
publication of Lloyd George's self-serving memoirs in the Thirties ...
Michael
Howard,
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And
– if you accept the book cover – historians, also, have praised the
book:
A
major contribution to Great War history ... It has long been
known that the British Official History was painstakingly sanitized,
and that Haig had a hand in the process. How exactly it was done
Winter explains in detail. John
Keegan, Daily Telegraph This
is history on several levels, human, technical and, in the end, moral.
Haig does not come at all well out of this work; but Winter does, for
he demolishes, piece by piece, the version that was served by the
Official Histories ... This is among the score of books on 1914-1918
which will live. Norman
Stone Denis
Winter has lobbed a hand grenade into the British historiography of
the First World War… This
angry attitude makes for vigorous and splendid entertainment…
The author's indefatigable exploration of the sources and
impassioned presentation of the case for the prosecution should ensure
that his study is taken seriously by all future historians of the
First World War. Brian
Bond, History Today
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Actually, although generally positive, Brian Bond's review was not wholly positive, and you may wish to compare some of his other comments with the spiel on the jacket cover:
[His]
angry attitude makes for vigorous and splendid entertainment, but also
raises questions about the author's objectivity and judgement... Brian
Bond, History Today
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You
should also know that the reaction of First World War
buffs on the web has been very hostile: Winter's
"Haig's Command" has received deserved adverse criticism for
its lack of complete honesty, cavalier distortions and personal
"Out to get him" attitude.
I am no big fan of Douglas Haig but the tone of
that book put me off, coming over as unscholarly, and as if the author
had a personal vendetta. From:
"Michael Kendix" Date: Thu, WWI Modeling Mailing List Archive A
very serious attack on Denis Winter "Haig's Command" may be
found in Stand To no 36 winter 1992 in which a John Hussey claims that
Winters book is quote: "an astonishing mass of deception
and downright lying". I
would beware of Winter's book on Haig, his references are for the most
part unsatisfactory and he seems not to have the impartial attitude of
a fair historian. An example is that he quotes the, now
disproved, story of Kiggel bursting into tears and saying "Did we
really send men to fight in this" after Passchendaele! Not
a good reference book IMHO and too biased! From:
"Geoffrey Miller", Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004
Much
of Winter's claim to authority and originality lay in his alleged use
of archival materials held in A check of the documents cited in the Heyes papers, collected for C.E.W.Bean in London in the 1920s, and in the correspondence between Bean and the British Official Historian, Sir James Edmonds, not only fails to substantiate Winter's claims but reinforces still further Barnett's criticisms of his capacity as a researcher. Space does not permit a full listing, but such a catalogue would include the misidentification of documents, misquotation of documents, the running together of passages from different documents without identification in any form that the material is from different sources, and misdating of material. The
most serious shortcomings are to be found in his handling of the
Bean-Edmonds correspondence. Here Winter misdates a letter by
seventeen years in order to support his conspiracy case against
Dr.
Jeffrey Grey of the Also,
two reviews on a website called booksunderreview.com have been
particularly hostile:
Denis
Winter's nickname in Great War history circles is "The
self-appointed Witchfinder General of the Great War".
It's not catchy, but it's pretty accurate.
This
book is a nonsense that would be ridiculous were it not worryingly
popular. Winter's
thesis is effectively a vehicle to advance his own agenda and has been
debunked by a number of highly reputable historians, including Winter
accuses a lot of people (pretty much everyone in On
top of this, ironically given the relish with which he accuses others
of lying and distorting history, it has been demonstrated that Winter
systematically misquotes and selectively edits sources and distorts
the evidence… Of course, for people without the time to look or
access to archived material it is fairly difficult to refute this sort
of thing and for a long time Winter's claims went unquestioned (aided
in no small part by the fact that he was often telling people what
they wanted to hear)… In
summary, this is a terrible book.
It is bad history. It
is polemical. And
above all it is intellectually dishonest.
There are far better books on great war generalship out there,
if only people would care to look.
Sadly, most people seem happier reinforcing their prejudices
with this sort of thing and as long as this is the case I don't doubt
Winter's books will continue to sell like hot cakes while more worthy
academic works will continue to gather dust on the shelves.
Part
military history, part rant, part character assassination, and part
conspiracy theory, Denis Winter's "Haig's Command" has, in a
morbid sense, something for everyone.
The
central thesis of the book is simple, yet sensational: The
"truth" about British military operations in France during
the First World War was concealed for nearly fifty years because Field
Marshal Douglas Haig, with the complicity of the British government,
bowdlerized and rewrote the official records so that his own
incompetence (and indirectly that of the British Government) would be
hidden. Winter
claims that the true story can be pieced together by comparing the
histories and minutes of the Dominion records (i.e. Australian and Canadian) that escaped the censorious scalpel
and became public record in the 1960s.
From
beginning to end, Winter unleashes a firestorm of abuse on Haig.
To begin with, he says, Haig's military career is the story of
a completely fabricated C.V. and the patronage of a few, well-placed figures in the British
Army. Moreover, the
author hints that Haig's relationship with these key mentors -- most
notably Lords Kitchener and From
the moment Haig takes command in December 1915, Winter's book so
entirely rewrites the history of the Western Front that it is
impossible to synthesize his points and accusations.
Needless to say, everything you've read before is wrong;
everything Haig did was a moronic disaster; and everything in the
British war records is a willful, malicious lie.
This
book comes with the imprimatur of dusk jacket praise from Norman
Stone, a respected historian of the First World War.
It also lists some prominent endorsements for Winter's previous
effort, the widely acclaimed "Death's Men." It isn't
surprising that John Keegan and others refused to sign up in support
of the author's latest work.
If
you are a serious student of military history and the First World War
in particular, it may not be a bad idea to familiarize yourself with
Winter's arguments, if only to reject them out of hand.
Otherwise, don't bother with this book. www.booksunderreview.com
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Mendacious
Nonsense
A
polemic, not history