It wasn’t: outside of a few searingly-incompetent standouts like Italy’s Luigi Cadorna, the majority of World War I Generals were nowhere near as callous or stupid as they have become known in popular imagination.

While there were episodes of negligent planning, overconfident expectations, and simply bad luck, this is true of every army in every war. Particularly on the Western Front, every single General was labouring under unprecedented conditions: armies that were larger than ever before were crammed into a confined battlefield, and had not just the strength to hold the entire line, but to build up defensive positions in depth. There were no flanks to turn or indirect approaches to take. Every attack had to be a frontal one. The destructive power available to the armies of the Great War was immense, but only from fixed positions. This was the true cause of the carnage of the First World War, not incompetent Generals, the mere disparity between manoeuvre and firepower.

What is more, despite the stereotype of tradition-bound Generals still trying to make use of old-fashioned tactics to break the enemy line, every single one of them positively embraced new technology as a solution to not just kill more of the enemy, but also to keep their own men alive. Every single tactical or technical solution that was available was tried, and where successful, adopted: steel helmets, gas, man-portable light machine guns, grenades, trench mortars, tanks, creeping barrages, aerial reconnaissance, radios: you name it, they tried it. The armies of 1918 would have been unrecognisable to an observer in 1914. The technologies that made the warfare of the next war so decisive were tried and tested in the First World War, but were available only in an embryonic, unrefined form that could not produce decisive results. Even when technology was enthusiastically adopted, there remained the question of production: It was not until 1917 that mobile firepower in the form of tanks, creeping barrages, and man-portable machine guns became available. And it was not until 1918 that the Allies were able to properly integrate all their tactical advances into an operational system that included artillery and airpower that allowed them to carry the war to victory against Germany in the Hundred Days Offensive.

I have previously discussed Haig’s attitudes and emotions towards his men here, and I reject the notion that he was particularly callous or cruel towards his men. His troops generally respected him, he was a national hero in Britain after the war, and he was sincerely and deeply mourned when he died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1928. While I do not feel confident in discussing Enver Pasha, Cadorna, or Samsonov in detail, I will point out that Haig is distinguished from both them, and his French allies and German opponents on the Western Front by one thing: the British Expeditionary Force under his command was the only major army on the Western Front not to suffer a major collapse in morale, as nearly destroyed the French Army in 1917 and brought the German Army to its knees in 1918. Whatever Haig was doing for his men’s motivation and morale, he was doing it right.

I notice that you did not mention any French or German Generals in your question: the issue of heavy casualties under Haig’s command is equally applicable to Joffre, Foch, Nivelle, Petain, Falkenhayn, Hindenburg, and Ludendorff. Consider this: Generals of dozens of different armies from across the world, trained under very different military systems, working for governments that had very different strategies, and all of them straining every sinew to win a war of national survival, were uniformly unable to come up with a solution to the deadlock on the Western Front that did not entail a frontal attack, and the attendant heavy casualties. Was every single one of them really so uniformly stupid that not one of them woke up one morning, slapped himself on the forehead and thought, “Maybe there’s a better way of doing this”? What is more, were their governments, particularly in the democracies of Britain and France, really so supine that they did not challenge their Generals on their tactics?

We must conclude that, while one can of course criticise the conduct of particular battles, given the technology available and the conditions they were fighting under, altering plans or adjusting tactics would not have changed the outcome other than by degrees. Would the First Day on the Somme be any less heartrending had the British Army suffered only 15,000 dead rather than 20,000? Would we weep any harder on Remembrance Day if the dead had in fact totalled 25,000? Whether one regards the casualties of the First World War as justified or excusable or not, they cannot be explained solely by stupidity, malice, or incompetence on the part of the Generals.

Sources:

Gordon Corrigan, Mud, Blood and Poppycock

John Keegan, The First World War

Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking With Destiny

Peter Simkins, et al., The First World War: The War to End All Wars

Gary Sheffield, The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army

Matthias Strohn, et al., 1918: Winning the War, Losing the War