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Gary D. Sheffield is an English academic and military historian. [1] He publishes on the conduct of British Army operations in World War I, and contributes to print and broadcast media on the subject. [2]
Sheffield is a proponent of the "revisionist school" of thought with regard to the conduct of military operations on the Western Front by the British Army during the First World War. [3]
In 2001 he published a First World War revisionist book, Forgotten Victory: The First World War, Myths & Realities. The British literary academic Frank McLynn, in a book review in The Independent , said Sheffield was a " single-minded Right-wing ideologist" who had "tied himself in illogical knots" to "rescue (Douglas) Haig from the justifiable charge of being an incompetent butcher" and "launder" his reputation in an "eccentric and cocksure work" that was "an insult to the memory of the soldiers who had died in droves under his command on the Western Front." [4] In a book review in The Guardian, historian David Horspool says Sheffield "sets out the arguments for an interpretation not exclusively based on the war poets, Alan Clark and Blackadder" in his compassionate, clearly argued book". [5] David Filsell, reviewing it for the Western Front Association in 2002, said "That it has been a great publishing success - with a paperback edition imminent - should be cause for particular pleasure for all that have taken study beyond the bigoted blatherings of the Butchers and Bunglers nursery school", and says that it is "amongst the most important books to have been published on the Great War for some years. Whether it will change public opinion is another matter, but when (in the distant future) the ruler of history - and not weight of emotion - measures the Great War, I feel sure that Gary Sheffield's views will be firmly amongst those which predominate". [6]
In 2013 he was appointed professor of War Studies at the University of Wolverhampton. [1] In 2011 he published his second book on Field Marshal the Earl Douglas Haig, The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army (Aurum Press, 2011). Reviewing the book in The Daily Telegraph the historian Nigel Jones commented on its 'solid scholarship and admirable advocacy', yet added that (with reference to Sheffield's thesis that the extremely high casualties of the British Army can be partly explained by Haig's understandable lack of experience in such matters in the years 1914 to 1917): 'the nagging thought remains: what a terrible shame it was that Haig's progress along his learning curve had to be greased by such deep floods of blood.' [7]
Sheffield is a member of the Advisory Board of the Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, Visiting Professor at the Humanities Research Institute of the University of Buckingham, member of the academic Advisory Panel of the National Army Museum and a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Trust. [1] He became the Honorary President of The Western Front Association in 2019. [6]
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The Western Front was one of the main theatres of war during the First World War. Following the outbreak of war in August 1914, the Imperial German Army opened the Western Front by invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The German advance was halted with the Battle of the Marne. Following the Race to the Sea, both sides dug in along a meandering line of fortified trenches, stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier with France, the position of which changed little except during early 1917 and again in 1918.
The Battle of the Somme, also known as the Somme offensive, was a major battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British Empire and the French Third Republic against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on both sides of the upper reaches of the river Somme in France. The battle was intended to hasten a victory for the Allies. More than three million men fought in the battle, of whom more than one million were either wounded or killed, making it one of the deadliest battles in all of human history.
Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, was a senior officer of the British Army. During the First World War he commanded the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front from late 1915 until the end of the war.
The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was the six divisions the British Army sent to the Western Front during the First World War. Planning for a British Expeditionary Force began with the 1906–1912 Haldane Reforms of the British Army carried out by the Secretary of State for War Richard Haldane following the Second Boer War (1899–1902).
The Australian Corps was a World War I army corps that contained all five Australian infantry divisions serving on the Western Front. It was the largest corps fielded by the British Empire in France. At its peak the Australian Corps numbered 109,881 men. By 1918 the headquarters consisted of more than 300 personnel of all ranks, including senior staff officers, as well as supporting personnel such as clerks, drivers and batmen. Formed on 1 November 1917, the corps replaced I Anzac Corps while II Anzac Corps, which contained the New Zealand Division, became the British XXII Corps on 31 December. While its structure varied, Australian Corps usually included 4–5 infantry divisions, corps artillery and heavy artillery, a corps flying squadron and captive balloon sections, anti-aircraft batteries, corps engineers, corps mounted troops, ordnance workshops, medical and dental units, transport, salvage and an employment company.
The Reserve Army was a field army of the British Army and part of the British Expeditionary Force during the First World War. On 1 April 1916, Lieutenant-General Sir Hubert Gough was moved from the command of I Corps and took over the Reserve Corps, which in June before the Battle of the Somme, was expanded and renamed Reserve Army. The army fought on the northern flank of the Fourth Army during the battle and became the Fifth Army on 30 October.
Brigadier-General Sir John Edmond Gough, was a British Army officer and a recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.
Robert Georges Nivelle was a French artillery general officer who served in the Boxer Rebellion and the First World War. In May 1916, he succeeded Philippe Pétain as commander of the French Second Army in the Battle of Verdun, leading counter-offensives that rolled back the German forces in late 1916. During these actions he and General Charles Mangin were accused of wasting French lives. He gives his name to the Nivelle Offensive.
"Lions led by donkeys" is a phrase used to imply a capable group of individuals are incompetently led. Coined in classical antiquity, the phrase was commonly used after World War I to contrast senior commanders who had led armies, most prominently those of the British Armed Forces, with the men they commanded. The historiography of the United Kingdom during the 20th century frequently described the infantry of the British Army as brave soldiers (lions) being sent to their deaths by incompetent and indifferent commanders (donkeys).
John Alfred Terraine, FRHistS was an English military historian and TV screenwriter. He is best known as the lead screenwriter for the landmark 1960s BBC-TV documentary The Great War, about the First World War, and for his defence of British General Douglas Haig – who commanded the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front from late 1915 until the end of the war – against charges that he was "The Butcher of the Somme".
The Battle of Neuve Chapelle took place in the First World War in the Artois region of France. The attack was intended to cause a rupture in the German lines, which would then be exploited with a rush to the Aubers Ridge and possibly Lille. A French assault at Vimy Ridge on the Artois plateau was also planned to threaten the road, rail and canal junctions at La Bassée from the south as the British attacked from the north. The British attackers broke through German defences in a salient at the village of Neuve-Chapelle but the success could not be exploited.
Major-General Sir Frederick Barton Maurice, was a British Army officer, military correspondent, writer and academic. During the First World War he was forced to retire from the army in May 1918 after writing a letter to The Times criticizing Prime Minister David Lloyd George for making misleading statements about the strength of British forces on the Western Front. He also later founded the British Legion in 1920, and served as its president from 1932 to 1947.
Brian James Bond is a British military historian and professor emeritus of military history at King's College London.
The Fifth Battle of Ypres, also called the Advance in Flanders and the Battle of the Peaks of Flanders is an informal name used to identify a series of World War I battles in northern France and southern Belgium (Flanders) from late September to October 1918.
The Society for Army Historical Research is a learned society, founded in 1921 to foster "interest in the history and traditions of British and Commonwealth armies, and to encourage research in these fields." It is one of the oldest societies of its kind. Past members include notable British Field Marshals Wavell, Auchinleck and Templer. The current president is Lieutenant-General Sir Edward Smyth-Osbourne and Major-General Ashley Truluck is chairman of its council. The patron of the society is Field Marshal HRH the Duke of Kent.
The Battle of Courtrai was one of a series of offensives in northern France and southern Belgium that took place in late September and October 1918.
The Battle of the Lys and the Escaut was the third and last phase of the Second Battle of Belgium or the Ypres-Lys Offensive, and took place in Belgium between 20 October and 11 November 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.
Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig led the British Expeditionary Force during World War I. His reputation is still controversial. Although a popular commander during the immediate post-war years, with his funeral becoming a day of national mourning, Haig also became an object of criticism for his leadership on the Western Front. He was criticised by politicians such as Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George, and by influential historians such as Basil Liddell Hart. Some regard him as representing the very concept of class-based incompetent commanders, stating that he was unable to grasp modern tactics and technologies, and criticism of Haig is sometimes hard to disentangle from criticisms of the war itself. However, many veterans praised Haig's leadership and since the 1980s some historians have argued that the public hatred in which Haig's name had come to be held failed to recognise the adoption of new tactics and technologies by forces under his command, or the important role played by the British forces in the Allied victory of 1918, and that the high casualties suffered were a function of the tactical and strategic realities of the time.
The Dury, Compiègne and Abbeville meetings were held by the Allies during World War I to address Operation Michael, a massive German assault on the Western Front on 21 March 1918 which marked the beginning of the Kaiser's Spring Offensive. Since the fall of 1917, a stalemate had existed on the Western Front. However, German victory against Russia in 1917, due to the Russian Revolution and the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, freed up German armies on the Eastern Front for use in the west. During the winter of 1917-1918, approximately 50 German divisions in Russia were secretly transported by train to France for use in a massive, final attack to end the war. The battle that followed, Operation Michael, totally surprised the Allies and nearly routed the French and British armies from the field. The meetings below were held under these dire circumstances.
