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Douglas Haig took command of the British Expeditionary Force in France on 19 December 1915. Having arrived at the top, he needed to articulate his strategic views. Within a month he had formulated this document, which involves many levels of military activity from grand strategy to operations.
There are two key points. Before the war, Haig had overseen the writing of the British army's capstone doctrine manual, Field Service Regulations. FSR had anticipated two kinds of attacks: preliminary and decisive. In this document (paragraphs 4 and 5) Haig recognizes a third kind of attack: limited, efficient in a purely attritional sense. Then, having defined this category, Haig writes (paragraphs 6 and 7) that such attacks are difficult to combine with a decisive offensive because of the logistic burden they imposed.
Without saying so, Haig is dismissing the option of limited, attritional, attacks in 1916. The Battle of the Somme would be launched as a decisive attack, and at this stage Haig still expects to launch preliminary attacks (paragraph 9) although they would fall by the wayside because guns and shells were in short supply. There is no record of Haig revising this policy document for 1917 or 1918; in 1917 the only attacks that could be seen as limited and attritional are at Vimy Ridge and Messines Ridge, but at the same time they were combined with other offensives rather than free-standing attritional attacks.
Although cognizant of an attritional option, Haig continued to believe in the traditional idea of a decisive attack winning the war at a stroke.
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General factors to be weighed in considering the allied plan of campaign during the next few months.
1. The enemy's central position, excellent communications, and (for all practical purposes) unity of control, must be accepted as ruling factors in considering the future conduct of the campaign by the allies.
There is only one way in which the allies can deprive the enemy of the advantages of his interior lines-that is by simultaneous pressure action on all three fronts conducted with the utmost possible vigor.
If the allies do not act simultaneously their efforts can be dealt with in detail, as they have been up to date.
2. It appears that a simultaneous offensive by the...