| oct 04 2008 | | Fighting The Last War. | Fighting the Last War.
by Chris Mayer
British Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig is an example of the kind of
general who is 'always fighting the last war'. World War I was the first
mechanized war. Yet Haig still believed in the frontal assault and the
power of cavalry. He discounted the trappings of modern war, such as the
effectiveness of the machine gun. Haig's ideas on warfare were hopelessly
out of date.
As historian Geoffrey Norman wrote: "His fantasies of cavalry charges
across open country were matched by his insistence on sending infantry
against the enemy in neat ranks at a slow walk, to better maintain
discipline." Even against machine guns.
Therefore, when he led the British in the Battle of the Somme, the result
was disastrous - nearly 60,000 casualties on the first day. Haig's army
suffered more than 400,000 casualties over a four-month stretch. It was
one of the bloodiest battles in history.
Haig himself never actually visited the main front though in his dispatches he described the appalling conditions of the Somme accurately.
Haig, though, seemed completely unrepentant and learned nothing from the
experience. As late as 1926 - years after the horror of World War I ended
- Haig still clung to old-world notions of warfare. He wrote the
following, which I reproduce because it is so unbelievable, so
astonishing, that it makes one wonder how the human race ever got as far
as it has:
"I believe that the value of the horse and the opportunity for the horse
in the future are likely to be as great as ever. Aeroplanes and tanks are
only accessories to the men and the horse, and I feel sure that as time
goes on you find just as much use for the horse - the well-bred horse - as
you have ever done in the past."
Haig was a fool and it cost Britain the lives of many men, who surely
would have gone on to do better things than die in some muddy field in
northern France.
When I read the above I made a connection to Ben Bernanke. Surely this is a person who is out of touch with the real world and willing to sacrifice millions of lives for a theory he holds of the Depression. Against blunt reality he continues his path into the history books as another fool who made a mint off the backs of the working man. Grinding them exceedingly fine.
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