Monday, September 1, 2014

Miserable 20th Century European Leaders - Volume 4; General Douglas Haig (England)

While it's true that there were a great many piss-poor generals during World War One (most of them being on the Allied side), none of them were as miserable, incompetent, and wretched as Haig (a man who basically got to where he was solely through through his friendship with King George V). Not only was this asshole an incompetent strategist who rarely if ever visited the front, he was also an individual who had absolutely ZERO regard for human life (and, yes, I'm talking about his own damn soldiers here). I mean, the guy would routinely send thousands upon thousands of his own men into what were literally little more than suicide missions (almost 20,000 deaths during the first day of the Battle of Somme, for instance) and the only saving grace to the story here is the fact that British Prime Minister, Andrew Lloyd George, ultimately grew weary and wise to the man's idiocy/callousness and put him on a leash.

1 comment:

BB-Idaho said...

A result of the old semi-political
promotion policy of the Brit military; He was with Kitchener through Ombdurman, and again in the Boer War rounding up women and children (all the while writing criticisms of his boss).
Like Kitchener, his real talents
should have led to a job in a butcher shop.