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Field Marshal Haig and the WWI generals were donkeys leading lions

More than 90 years after it ended, the First World War, "the war to end all wars", is widely and seemingly indelibly associated in Britain with the futile slaughter on the Western Front, presided over by hidebound, uncaring, incompetent generals led by Field Marshal Douglas Haig. According to the received wisdom, the generals of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) repeatedly threw their troops against the heavily defended German trenches in bovine deference to Victorian or even Napoleonic military theory, tactics which resulted in immense casualties.

In recent years though, the reputation of Haig and his fellow generals has been gradually rising, at least in academic circles. It is now perfectly respectable to suggest that the BEF’s generals were not the military simpletons of popular legend, that they did their best in very difficult circumstances and even that some of them were flexible and innovative.