Ordeal of Victory

Douglas Haig, Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force in World War I, has been called a stupid, callous, and snobbish intriguer, and many historians have held him responsible for the horrors and shocking loss of life in trench warfare. Now, however. Field Marshal Haig has found an eloquent advocate.

Backed with reliable evidence and sound arguments, John Terraine shows Haig as a man who, though not faultless, still had greater courage and foresight than anyone else of his time; as a soldier willing and able to engage the enemy on ;i scale never before experienced and with weapons and methods never before tried. He has written a lull military biography, more than half of it devoted to World War I. Its climax is a detailed description of the bitter, bloody Battle of Passchendaele, both the struggle in the trenches and the struggles that took place at the highest levels.

Terraine throws a searching light on Haig’s relations with his subordinates, with Lloyd George, with the Allied commanders, and with the King, topics that still provoke a passionate interest among students of military history and World War I.

“Analysis has triumphed over emotion,” wrote Alistair Horne of the book in London's Sunday Telegraph. “A major event in the historiography of the first world war,” added Michael Howard in the Sunday Times. Both as biography and as history, this is a brilliant piece of work, which takes up the history of World War 1 where The Guns of August left off.