GUEST,dave - 14 Dec 15 - 12:14 PM He any different from GUEST Dave??

"Knowledge, or at least understanding, doesn't always move on, sometimes things which were quite well understood are clouded by more recent, flawed, research, or, by flawed opinions based upon preconceptions and political positions."

Examples of this please? Could be that GUEST,dave was the nameless one who considered that any historical theory was cyclical but who when asked could provide no such examples - This will undoubtedly result in no examples to prove this theory coming forward. But a few questions for dave:

1: What flawed research? Do you dispute that today there are far wider and more comprehensive research material available to the historian interested in the period. An Historians conclusions are drawn from his research so what preconceptions and political positions are you referring to - any examples of these? I would offer up Alan Clark and his book "The Donkeys", written as the 50th anniversay of the start of the Great War was approaching and written by his own admission to earn him a few quid (He also admitted to making up "The Lion's led by Donkeys" Quote)


2: "As to whether Haig or Lloyd George was the more culpable for the disaster of the Somme, well thats a futile argument between a pot and a kettle."

Only thing wrong there dave, if you look at the entirety of the Somme campaign it was without any shadow of a doubt a strategic defeat for the Germans and a tactical victory for the Entente Powers. It forced a general German retreat to the Hindenburg Line, Falkenhayn the German Commander on the Western Front was dismissed and resulted in irreparable damage being done to the German Army. It was the first major campaign fought by Great Britain's first citizen Army and from it they went from strength to strength. Lloyd George and the British Government were undoubtedly culpable - it was they who put Haig and the British Armies in Europe under French command (Joffre), it was they who backed Joffre's insistence that the attack be made on the Somme, thereby over-ruling Haig's preferred location.

"Though LLoyd George was in part responsible for the entry of Britain into the war in the first place."

The vote to declare war on Germany following the German invasion of Belgium was, I believe, taken by the House of Commons.