Lions, Donkeys and Myths

[As the "Saudi post" is still congealing, I'll tell you something about the first world war, instead]

The first world war is one of those curious subjects where there is an almost complete disconnect between popular knowledge and scholarship.
Although WW1 revisionism has been gaining ground academically since the late 60's, popular opinion owes more to Blackadder than to serious history.I only studied history to GCSE, but the version we were fed at school consisted of sadistic generals throwing brave young men to their deaths, in a battle which neither politicians nor generals understood. As Corrigan[1] says of “Oh, What a lovely war”, this is “about as historically useful as The Wind in the Willows”.

There has been a fascinating and timely series of posts over at the Political Umpire's Cricket and Civilisation, which take on many of the myths, and rebuts them convincingly.

The only thing I'd disagree with is an aspect on Haig, where the author states that "The British Legion...was founded by Field Marshall Haig". A lot of work has been done on this by Barr and Sheffield [2], some of which I summarise below.
Although Haig was an important figure in the organisation of the series of Unity Conferences (lasting a year!) that led to the 1921 unification of the four main ex-servicemen organisation into the British Legion [3], he played no role in the conferences themselves.
Indeed, Haig paid fulsome tribute to those who spend so long stating that in the future “full credit will be given to the leaders of those earlier organisations who had the wisdom, foresight and true patriotism to sink all personal aims and differences that the Legion might be established”[4]. Further, Wootton says “The Legion has no founder, only founders. It is a monument to a number of men, not one”[5]. The longstanding dispute between the two views, that the foundation of the Legion demonstrated Haig’s humanity[6] or Haig founded the British legion to rehabilitate his image [7], are both rendered moot as “Haig was not the founder of the British legion” [8].

Two superb books on the new histories of WW1 are "Mud, Blood and Poppycock" [1] and "The Smoke and the Fire" [9]. The latter is by John Terraine, who kicked off a lot of the WW1 revisionism in 1960 with his reappraisal of the battle of Mons.
"Haig" [2] is necessarily more specialist, but combines scholarship with beautifully readable prose.



References:
[1]Gordon Corrigan, “Mud, Blood, and Poppycock”2003 p14

[2]Niall Barr and Gary Sheffield “Douglas Haig, the Common Soldier and the British Legion” in “Haig: a reappraisal 70 years on”, ed. Brian Bond and Nigel Cave: p228-230

[3] John Terraine, “Douglas Haig: The Educated Soldier” 1963, p484

[4]The Haig Papers are to be found at the National Library of Scotland. The speech, Galashiels 1927, is reference no. 235c but is cited in [2]

[5] Graham Wootton “The Official History of the British Legion” 1956 p107

[6] John Terraine, “Douglas Haig: The Educated Soldier” 1963, p484

[7] Norman Dixon, “On the psychology of Military Incompetence” 1976 p387

[8] Niall Barr and Gary Sheffield “Douglas Haig, the Common Soldier and the British Legion” in “Haig: a reappraisal 70 years on”, ed. Brian Bond and Nigel Cave: p229

[9] John Terraine, “The Smoke and the Fire” 1980