This article is about the role of Douglas Haig in 1918. In 1918, during the final year of the First World War, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig was Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front. Haig commanded the BEF in the defeat of the German Army's Spring Offensives, the Allied victory at Amiens in August, and the Hundred Days Offensive, which led to the war-ending armistice in November 1918.
Political manoeuvres
War Cabinet discussions
On 1 January Derby told Haig that he saved Robertson from the sack by threatening resignation. He also hinted to Haig that the government wanted the removal of Launcelot Kiggell ("a tired man") as BEF Chief of Staff, and that General Butler, Haig's preferred choice, was not acceptable. Haig had an interview with the King (2 January) to pick up his Field Marshal's baton. Haig appears to have been placing too much faith in recent German peace feelers ("Germany is now ready, we are told, to give all we want in these respects"), now known not have been seriously intended. He told the King that British soldiers (who, in a large conscript army, now included men from "all classes in the nation, and many are most intelligent") needed to be told what they were fighting for. In Haig's view, Britain should keep to her original war aims – the defence of France and liberation of Belgium – not try to gain Alsace-Lorraine for France or Trieste for Italy. In Haig's view the "democratising of Germany", about to be publicly reiterated by Lloyd George as a British aspiration in his Caxton Hall speech (5 January), was likely to destabilise Germany, as the fall of the Tsar in March 1917 had destabilised Russia, and was not "worth the loss of an Englishman" (like many Scots of his era, Haig often referred to Britain or even the British Empire as "England").
Haig attended a meeting of the War Cabinet (7 January). He claimed to have recommended that the British should keep the initiative and draw in German reserves (to prevent a German attack on the French) by renewing the offensive around Ypres, and that this proposal did not meet with political approval. In fact the logistical infrastructure was not available for a breakout from the Ypres salient, and there is no mention of his suggestion in the official minutes. The minutes do agree with Haig's account that he warned only of limited German offensives. After the meeting Robertson, who had also been present and who had been concerned that Haig had not got his point across, insisted that Haig submit a paper warning of the danger of a major German offensive. Over lunch (9 January) at 10 Downing Street with Lord Derby (Secretary of State for War) and Lloyd George (Derby bet a skeptical Lloyd George 100 cigars to 100 cigarettes that the war would be over by the following year), Haig predicted that the war would end within a year because of the "internal state of Germany" (a broadly accurate prediction). Charteris' final intelligence report had deduced that Germany was bringing 32 divisions, ten per month, from the moribund Eastern Front, so the most likely time for a German Offensive was in late March (again, a correct prediction). Bonar Law (Chancellor of the Exchequer and Conservative Leader) asked Haig what he would do if he were a German general: Haig replied that any German attempt to "break through" would be a "gambler's throw" as Germany had only a million men as reserves and the balance of manpower would shift in favour of the Allies in August (i.e. when more US troops had arrived – in fact this would happen a month or two earlier as US deployment was speeded up after the German Spring Offensives) and that if he were a German general he would launch only limited offensives, although he did warn that the German generals might try to keep the civilians out of power by launching an attack to knock out France. Haig again left the politicians with the impression that he thought the Germans would launch small attacks on the scale of Cambrai.