Haig's Intelligence: GHQ and the German Army, 1916-1918

Description

Haig's Intelligence is an important study of Douglas Haig's controversial command during the First World War. Based on extensive new research, it addresses a perennial question about the British army on the Western Front between 1916 and 1918: why did they think they were winning? Jim Beach reveals how the British perceived the German army through a study of the development of the British intelligence system, its personnel and the ways in which intelligence was gathered. He also examines how intelligence shaped strategy and operations by exploring the influence of intelligence in creating perceptions of the enemy. He shows for the first time exactly what the British knew about their opponent, when and how and, in so doing, sheds significant new light on continuing controversies about the British army's conduct of operations in France and Belgium and the relationship between Haig and his chief intelligence officer, John Charteris.

Dr Jim Beach is Senior Lecturer in Twentieth-Century History at the University of Northampton. He is also Secretary of the Army Records Society.

'The word 'seminal' is all too often applied to books, but in the case of Haig's Intelligence it is thoroughly deserved ... [Beach's] findings about Haig's relations with his intelligence officers feed directly into one of the most studied and controversial aspects of the field, and need to be integrated into existing scholarship on British high command in the First World War.' Gary Sheffield, War in History 'Beach's superbly researched and carefully argued study is a rejoinder to ... blinkered interpretations of the BEF's war and the role of the army's intelligence system in shaping it ... Beach has written what will come to be seen as the definitive work on the BEF's intelligence system.' James Kitchen, Twentieth Century British History