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I've recently been reading up on WWI in general, and was wondering about something.

But before I get into detail here, this needs to stay realistic, no German or British commander in his right mind during WWI would knowingly or willingly pit their fleets against each other in a pitched battle, and in fact the battle of Jutland it's self was only fought because the British thought that they had a decisive advantage and the risk of losing a significant number of men and ships was worth catching the German fleet off guard and utterly destroying them, this obviously failed.
As the German fleet was fleeing back to port, British code breakers tracked the fleet relaying it's location back to Admiral Jellicoe, but thinking this was most likely a trap he chose not the give chase.

The Germans' goal was to lure the British Grand Fleet out of port and destroy them piece meal off the coast of Britain, again this obviously failed, and only because of Admiral Scheers' quick thinking did the fleet escape (mostly) in one piece.

However the singular event that had the most effect on the battle and possibly the entire war was the capture of the German cruiser Magdeburg.
The capture of this ship and the Code book it carried, proved to have disastrous effects on German naval movements and civilian shipping.
Using the information in this book, "Room 40", the British governments' main go-to guys for breaking existing codes and creating new ones during WWI, the British Navy learned about the impending attack and launched the entire Grand Fleet to meet them, and hopefully catch them with their pants down as it were.

The point of this thread is to speculate as to whether or not the German plan could have even worked in the first place, if the codes had never been stolen and the Grand fleet never alerted or would it have just been yet another pointless waste of life in a war full of wasted life.

Well, there were were at least two instances where the British had dispatched part of their forces which nearly ran into the whole German fleet.

Thanas wrote:Well, there were were at least two instances where the British had dispatched part of their forces which nearly ran into the whole German fleet.

I've read about several of those instances as well, but from what I've read and watched so far there was this idea of... well how do I say it?

"Well we've got these giant ass navies built up now, but by god we're so afraid we'll lose'em that we sure as hell won't use'em"

Does that sound about right?

You mean how the British won by not fighting and in a battle could only lose or achieve something probably worthless?

Stark wrote:You mean how the British won by not fighting and in a battle could only lose or achieve something probably worthless?

I think I understand what you're saying, but please clarify.

I'm wondering if it had been at all possible to catch the Grand Fleet in port if the codes had never been cracked.
Say, the HSF had went ahead and fought the GF at Jutland instead of retreating and won (highly unlikely), they would have sustained tremendous damage and therefore would not have had the tonnage to prevent British reinforcements from coming or had the forces to blockade British ports.

I don't know about you but that still sounds like a loss to me.

The goal was, to wipe out the GF with as few losses as possible and still have the forces to protect their own civilian shipping and enforce their own blockade of British ports.

Underlined part is what I'm wondering about.

I would say the fact that Jutland worked out the way it did was a spectacul success - loosing 11 ships while sinking 14 of almost twice the tonnage, while outnumbered 3:2 in numbers or worse in various other metrics is about as good as it gets.

But even if you project the battle linear from what it has been (which is very generous, considering the state of the HSF when they managed to slip away), the HSF would never have won. There would still be ~20-30 British ships left after the last German one had sunk.

LaCroix wrote:I would say the fact that Jutland worked out the way it did was a spectacul success - loosing 11 ships while sinking 14 of almost twice the tonnage, while outnumbered 3:2 in numbers or worse in various other metrics is about as good as it gets.

But even if you project the battle linear from what it has been (which is very generous, considering the state of the HSF when they managed to slip away), the HSF would never have won. There would still be ~20-30 British ships left after the last German one had sunk.

I agree with that, but that's not the question.

I'll restate the OP.

The point of this thread is to speculate as to whether or not the German plan could have even worked in the first place, if the codes had never been stolen and the Grand fleet never alerted or would it have just been yet another pointless waste of life in a war full of wasted life.

The original German plan...

The Germans' goal was to lure the British Grand Fleet out of port and destroy them piece meal off the coast of Britain, again this obviously failed.

It indeed failed completely, instead of catching the GF in a bad way as they planed they were forced to meet them head on at Jutland.

The first several paragraphs on this site paint a decent picture of sheer's plan.

The recently appointed commander of the German High Seas Fleet, Reinhard Scheer, had returned to the policy of making sorties against the British coast, confident that his codes were secure, and thus that the main British battle fleet, at Scapa Flow in the north of Scotland could not intervene.

Had the code never been broken, and Sheer been able to make his sorties against the British coast unmolested, is it possible that he would have been successful?
To break the blockade, slowly pick the GF apart by luring it out for a fight and knock out Admiral Beatty's battle cruiser squadron.

Also, I can't help but wonder why Admiral Scheer didn't have at least a couple U-boats flanking the HSF to unleash onto the GF when the battle started, hell we know there were U-boats in the area at the time as it was a U-boat captain that alerted them to the approaching GF, although the captain believed that what he was seeing was nothing but Beetty's squadron, not the entire damned Grand Fleet.

Was this an oversight? Did they just not think it necessary? Did it go against how they thought "proper naval war" should be fought? Did they just not think of it or believe it to effective? Gah?

I can't say anything about the plann to assault the fleet at Scapa Flow (as far as I know, the whole thing was a plan to lure the battlecruisers into a trap), although I believe that if they managed to sneak up on them, they could have certainly caused great damage to the British in these confined waters.

About the missing submarine support - delays in the departure of the HSF the subs were out there too long, and were having problems to avoid detection. Supplies were almost out by the time the fleets actually departed. It might just as well be that their prolonged stay actually alerted the British that something was bound to happen.

Visibility was extremely poor, which caused that misidentification of th GF you mentioned. And because of the "early departure" of the GF and Beatty due to the decryptions, they had no chance to get into proper positions in time. Since no submarine can catch up with a Battlefleet (even the heavily damaged units still outran them), there was no way they could join the battle.

There is no way they can sneak up to Scapa Flow, not with all that merchant traffic and all the screening ships.

Getting close to Scapa Flow would be extremely dangerous too, because the British used tons of submarines and destroyers to protect the coast. The Scouting Force was able to get close to the coast in 1916, but only to quickly and ineffectively terrorize a few coastal towns with scattered night bombardments. Nothing like bumrushing one of the most protected anchorages in the world.

In fact this was just the sort of thing the Royal Navy would love, because running a gauntlet of British coastal protection before finally being able to engage the Royal Navy bare miles from its home port is just the sort of situation the ever cautious Jellicoe would favor.

Stark wrote:You mean how the British won by not fighting and in a battle could only lose or achieve something probably worthless?

Virtually all of the RN's modern ships were tied down for the duration of the war and unable to do anything else. How much is that worth? Craddock was literally sent to his death at Coronel because the Brits couldn't spare any modern warships to hunt Spee down. de Roebuck came very close to forcing the Dardanelles in a purely naval assault at the start of 1915 utilizing only predreads (he had two modern ships; one was forbidden to participate by ROE, and the other was an I class battlecruiser forced to beach after being torpedoed). de Roebuck backed off and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory because his predreads could easily be sunk by a single torpedo or mine. They had fairly large crews and this risked a LOT of casualties.

A British fleet in the sea of Marmara knocks the Ottomans out of the war, opens up a direct route to Imperial Russia, starts the diplomatic dominoes tumbling in the Balkans (Rumania, Greece and Bulgaria), keeps Serbia in the war, and opens up an extra front in the Balkans. This puts the Central Powers in a fair amount of doodoo right away, and it takes the pressure off Russia and puts in on Austria as Italy inevitably dogpiles in.

The German fleet was never going to be able to directly defeat the RN unless the latter repeatedly sortied individual squadrons to be gobbled up piecemeal till the numbers tilted the other way. They did however manage to keep it tied down for the duration enforcing a blockade that only significantly militarily impacted Germany after 4 very long bloody years.

I can understand Jellicoe's caution. He was of the opinion that the Germans had better gunnery and their ships were an order of magnitude tougher. There was a fair amount of "unknown" technology being deployed like aircraft and submarines. He didn't want to be on the end of some sort of "Tsushima surprise" scenario where a new weapon or tactic dramatically alters the balance of power.

gigabytelord wrote: Also, I can't help but wonder why Admiral Scheer didn't have at least a couple U-boats flanking the HSF to unleash onto the GF when the battle started, hell we know there were U-boats in the area at the time as it was a U-boat captain that alerted them to the approaching GF, although the captain believed that what he was seeing was nothing but Beetty's squadron, not the entire damned Grand Fleet.

Was this an oversight? Did they just not think it necessary? Did it go against how they thought "proper naval war" should be fought? Did they just not think of it or believe it to effective? Gah?

Scheer was always trying to use his Uboats as part of his "piecemeal and attrition" the RN to death. The plan was sortieing the German fleet, then having lines of Uboats waiting along the paths the British would take when they sortied to intercept, and hopefully picking off some dreadnaughts as they passed. The Uboats never managed an intercept. I don't know if the technology simply wasn't there to allow Uboats to engage enemy warships, or if it was a tactics and doctrine thing or what. Yes the Germans did sink 3 obsolete British armored cruisers with a Uboat that one time, but that particular one instance was like shooting tin ducks at a county fair.

CaptHawkeye wrote:Getting close to Scapa Flow would be extremely dangerous too, because the British used tons of submarines and destroyers to protect the coast. The Scouting Force was able to get close to the coast in 1916, but only to quickly and ineffectively terrorize a few coastal towns with scattered night bombardments. Nothing like bumrushing one of the most protected anchorages in the world.

In fact this was just the sort of thing the Royal Navy would love, because running a gauntlet of British coastal protection before finally being able to engage the Royal Navy bare miles from its home port is just the sort of situation the ever cautious Jellicoe would favor.

It depends on the how much surprise they achieve. It takes quite a while to get hundreds of units out of a restricted anchorage, for instance it takes the USN an entire day to sortie the fleet out of Norfolk and thats less than half the units of the GF. Then they have to form up in their divisions and and screens and whatnot. If the HSF could attack during this process it would cause chaos.

The issue of course is again the level of surprise they can achieve, I personally think it was far to optomistic to think they would get enough for a decisive advantage due to the reasons already noted (merchant trafic, coastal defense patrols, submarines, etc.)

gigabytelord wrote: Also, I can't help but wonder why Admiral Scheer didn't have at least a couple U-boats flanking the HSF to unleash onto the GF when the battle started, hell we know there were U-boats in the area at the time as it was a U-boat captain that alerted them to the approaching GF, although the captain believed that what he was seeing was nothing but Beetty's squadron, not the entire damned Grand Fleet.

Was this an oversight? Did they just not think it necessary? Did it go against how they thought "proper naval war" should be fought? Did they just not think of it or believe it to effective? Gah?

WW1 submarines are incapable of operating with a battlefleet. They are far too slow, have not nearly enough endurance, too easily mistaken for enemy submarines and would be at high risk of simply run down in a night collision as would later happen with the mighty K class the RN built for precisely this purpose. Scheer used his submarines correctly, as forward scouts and ambushing units. The problem is at Jutland by the time the HSF actually sortied many of the submarines deployed for this purpose had already been forced to return to base from lack of supplies due to some random delays. So the warning network was incomplete and only a few submarines ever gained attack positions, and hit nothing. In one of the later HSF sorties several RN cruisers were sunk by submarines sent to lie in wait, the Grand Fleet main body was just too heavily escorted over too wide an area for anyone to have much chance of attacking it.

Direct submarine-fleet coordination was not really feasible until the fast nuclear attack submarines of the late 1970s. They also benefited from the development of underwater telephone communications which among other things made it possible to simply ask if the submarine was friendly or not before surface forces blew it up.

gigabytelord wrote:

Stark wrote:You mean how the British won by not fighting and in a battle could only lose or achieve something probably worthless?

I think I understand what you're saying, but please clarify.

The British didn't need a naval battle for their naval strategy to work, because the strategy was 'blockade.'

If the British fight a battle, two things could happen: they can win, or they can lose.

If the British win, the German navy gets smaller. But the German coast defenses are intact, so the British don't gain total freedom for amphibious warfare or anything. They "achieve something probably worthless."

If the British lose, the British naval advantage gets smaller (or maybe even disappears if the Germans pull a superweapon out of their ass). Blockading Germany gets harder and the British naval strategy is undermined and weakened.

Either way, the British are probably better off not fighting the battle. The Germans were arguably better off not building that navy in the first place, or at least not building most of it and keeping enough to stop the Russians from going on the rampage in the Baltic.

The goal was, to wipe out the GF with as few losses as possible and still have the forces to protect their own civilian shipping and enforce their own blockade of British ports.

Underlined part is what I'm wondering about.

Easy. Maintain naval stalemate until the 1930s, then launch a carrier attack on an anchored fleet... oh wait, by then the British have maritime air patrols and much better signals interception, so it won't work. Plus Germany would have starved to death about six times over.

(this is not meant as a sarcastic strike against you, it's just amusing)

Without airplanes, surprising a fleet at anchor is hard. The enemy will probably see you coming, unless it's too foggy and dark for your own ships to shoot straight. Doing it at Scapa Flow is even harder because it's very hard to physically navigate your way into the anchorage. There are rocks and reefs and minefields and big nets in the way. Submarines have died trying to sneak into Scapa Flow to torpedo British warships.

gigabytelord wrote:Also, I can't help but wonder why Admiral Scheer didn't have at least a couple U-boats flanking the HSF to unleash onto the GF when the battle started, hell we know there were U-boats in the area at the time as it was a U-boat captain that alerted them to the approaching GF, although the captain believed that what he was seeing was nothing but Beetty's squadron, not the entire damned Grand Fleet.

Was this an oversight? Did they just not think it necessary? Did it go against how they thought "proper naval war" should be fought? Did they just not think of it or believe it to effective? Gah?

Surfaced U-boats are like destroyers only more fragile and vulnerable. Submerged U-boats are much, much too slow to keep pace with a battlefleet, and in the WWI era there's no way to communicate with them. So you'd more or less have to park them in one spot and hope the British drive into torpedo range of them, sort of like a very expensive, vaguely mobile minefield.

Also- think. A submarine's main weapon is its torpedo tubes, right? Well, the German destroyers (and for that matter cruisers) already had torpedo tubes. They were just as capable of shooting British fleets full of torpedoes as the submarines were; the only difference was that they lacked the advantage of surprise. But since the High Seas Fleet already had dozens of destroyers and cruisers ready to launch a massive torpedo attack against the British any time they pleased, would there really be much benefit to bringing along a handful of submarines, which would at best torpedo one or two British ships out of dozens?

aieeegrunt wrote:Virtually all of the RN's modern ships were tied down for the duration of the war and unable to do anything else. How much is that worth? Craddock was literally sent to his death at Coronel because the Brits couldn't spare any modern warships to hunt Spee down. de Roebuck came very close to forcing the Dardanelles in a purely naval assault at the start of 1915 utilizing only predreads (he had two modern ships; one was forbidden to participate by ROE, and the other was an I class battlecruiser forced to beach after being torpedoed). de Roebuck backed off and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory because his predreads could easily be sunk by a single torpedo or mine. They had fairly large crews and this risked a LOT of casualties.

After 1914, most of the easy options for use of warships were closed. The Dardanelles were better protected, the German commerce raiders long since swept from the high seas, and so on. About all that was left were operations in the bristly, heavily gunned, torpedo-boat infested waters right off the German coastline.

Not good.

Scheer was always trying to use his Uboats as part of his "piecemeal and attrition" the RN to death. The plan was sortieing the German fleet, then having lines of Uboats waiting along the paths the British would take when they sortied to intercept, and hopefully picking off some dreadnaughts as they passed. The Uboats never managed an intercept. I don't know if the technology simply wasn't there to allow Uboats to engage enemy warships, or if it was a tactics and doctrine thing or what. Yes the Germans did sink 3 obsolete British armored cruisers with a Uboat that one time, but that particular one instance was like shooting tin ducks at a county fair.

Again, U-boats underwater are slow, and effective torpedo range is limited to a few miles, especially if the enemy has the sense to zig-zag or do anything to avoid death. You're basically just trolling the subs out there in hopes that the British will be unlucky enough to drive over one, and at best you can cost them a couple of battleships that way IF your torpedoes are deadly, deadly effective. It's useful but not decisive.

Meanwhile, as noted subs have very limited endurance in this era, especially underwater, and can only stay down so long before the crews asphyxiate. Keeping U-boats surfaced in the neighborhood of the British coast is very unsafe too, because they'll get spotted sooner or later.

This has been informative, and as painted a clearer picture for me, thanks for the replies.

I'll try to catch up with everyone, but I'm not a big fan of massive quote boxes so I won't be quoting everyone.

The British didn't need a naval battle for their naval strategy to work, because the strategy was 'blockade.'

If the British fight a battle, two things could happen: they can win, or they can lose.

If the British win, the German navy gets smaller. But the German coast defenses are intact, so the British don't gain total freedom for amphibious warfare or anything. They "achieve something probably worthless."

If the British lose, the British naval advantage gets smaller (or maybe even disappears if the Germans pull a superweapon out of their ass). Blockading Germany gets harder and the British naval strategy is undermined and weakened.

Either way, the British are probably better off not fighting the battle. The Germans were arguably better off not building that navy in the first place, or at least not building most of it and keeping enough to stop the Russians from going on the rampage in the Baltic.

Alright thanks for the clarification. I figured as much.

@Simon, aieeegrunt & Sea Skimmer.

As far the effectiveness of subs; I knew they weren't as effective as those used during the second world war but I wasn't aware that they were that limited in use at that time.

This whole thing makes me wonder about the effectiveness, or rather lack of effectiveness of other planed operations that the HSF had planed, such as the landing of an expeditionary force in southern Ireland to assist in a renewed civil conflict there, or even the pre-war plans to invade the east coast of the US should it get involved.

Even before I started this topic, I had this nagging feeling that even if everything had went Germany's way, i.e. the codes had never been broken, the HSF had the chance to run successful sorties against the GN, the blockade had been broken, etc.. the war would have still been lost, even if it lasted twice as long and been twice as deadly, it didn't matter; They'd still lose.

Of course this is assuming that the US would get involved, and which side it would join.
A lot of people don't realize this now, but in the early 20th century, the US and British Empire had no love for each other, they liked one another about as far as they could throw each other and that wasn't very far.

And up until the point the Lusitania was sank the US was still trading with the Germans and loaning them money, after all why pick a side when both are willing to give you their money.
Also if the blockade has been broken, there is no reason to wage unrestricted naval warfare on civilian shipping.

Another question; Assuming the above is true, how likely would US's entrance into the war have been, and on who's side?

Simon_Jester wrote:

gigabytelord wrote:

Stark wrote:You mean how the British won by not fighting and in a battle could only lose or achieve something probably worthless?

I think I understand what you're saying, but please clarify.

The British didn't need a naval battle for their naval strategy to work, because the strategy was 'blockade.'

If the British fight a battle, two things could happen: they can win, or they can lose.

If the British win, the German navy gets smaller. But the German coast defenses are intact, so the British don't gain total freedom for amphibious warfare or anything. They "achieve something probably worthless."

Actually they gain freedom to do something other than staring across the North Sea. If nothing else a crushing RN victory in 1914 or 1915 means not having to build the QE and R class superdreadnaughts, and those resources can go towards something else.

If the British lose, the British naval advantage gets smaller (or maybe even disappears if the Germans pull a superweapon out of their ass). Blockading Germany gets harder and the British naval strategy is undermined and weakened.

Either way, the British are probably better off not fighting the battle. The Germans were arguably better off not building that navy in the first place, or at least not building most of it and keeping enough to stop the Russians from going on the rampage in the Baltic.

Germany undoubtedly would have been better off without building a large navy. They easily could have had the same kind of "we got your back if you get dogpiled" military alliance with Great Britain that Japan had instead.

aieeegrunt wrote:Virtually all of the RN's modern ships were tied down for the duration of the war and unable to do anything else. How much is that worth? Craddock was literally sent to his death at Coronel because the Brits couldn't spare any modern warships to hunt Spee down. de Roebuck came very close to forcing the Dardanelles in a purely naval assault at the start of 1915 utilizing only predreads (he had two modern ships; one was forbidden to participate by ROE, and the other was an I class battlecruiser forced to beach after being torpedoed). de Roebuck backed off and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory because his predreads could easily be sunk by a single torpedo or mine. They had fairly large crews and this risked a LOT of casualties.

After 1914, most of the easy options for use of warships were closed. The Dardanelles were better protected, the German commerce raiders long since swept from the high seas, and so on. About all that was left were operations in the bristly, heavily gunned, torpedo-boat infested waters right off the German coastline.

Not good.

The initial "navy + marines" attack in 1915 almost worked with a fleet almost entirely composed of obsolete British and French predreads. Having more and bigger/tougher ships available and it probably suceeds. This would have had a HUGE impact on the war. Other options include opening up the Adriatic instead of sealing it off with a barrage, and Heligoland/Borchum. This draws Austrian and German strength respectively from the "main event" theatres.

Again, U-boats underwater are slow, and effective torpedo range is limited to a few miles, especially if the enemy has the sense to zig-zag or do anything to avoid death. You're basically just trolling the subs out there in hopes that the British will be unlucky enough to drive over one, and at best you can cost them a couple of battleships that way IF your torpedoes are deadly, deadly effective. It's useful but not decisive.

Meanwhile, as noted subs have very limited endurance in this era, especially underwater, and can only stay down so long before the crews asphyxiate. Keeping U-boats surfaced in the neighborhood of the British coast is very unsafe too, because they'll get spotted sooner or later.

I guess technology restricts them to coastal defence as "mobile minefields" then. It truly baffles me that the Brits didn't use this tactic themselves as a counter to the German shore bombardment raids in the North Sea. Typically the British subs were sitting in harbour when the German BC's started bombarding it, and by the time they got their asses in gear the Germans were long gone.

The Germans made a few attempts to get Uboats into Scapa Flo to attack the British Fleet at anchorage, but they all ended in death for the Uboats involved.

Remember WW1 submarines, and well even modern submarines, need very long periods of overhaul and crew rest between patrols. This is made worse by all the RN subs being coastal types by design. So if they kept them lurking off the coast on defensive patrols they'd have few submarines fit for combat at any given time. The British were much more concerned about a invasion then a random raid which had some political but no military importance, so they kept submarines in port ready to mass sortie against a major threat, thus maintaining a high rate of availability. An invasion would require transports dropping anchor to unload, so the submarines would have time to come out and sink them and deprive an invasion of any supplies or support. It was a literal fear that the Germans would just throw ~100,000 men at London and try to win the war that way, even if most of the Germans fleet was then sunk. Some pretty major defenses were being built into 1918 to oppose such a landing on both side of the Thames, sadly other then one book I know of they aren't very well documented. In the late stages of the war they became an excuse to divert troops away from Haig.

Those submarines that did patrol were being used as part of ambushes with trawlers to sink U-boats, a rather important job at the time, or else offensive action in the Baltic and the Med. The Germans could send out submarines ahead of the high seas fleet because these were operations planned well in advance, and even then they had major problems staying coordinated and on station long enough to count, as failed at Jutland.

Why would they try to divert troops away from Haig? Making the french bleed more or did he produce too much casualties?

In the period of Arras-Messiness Ridge the British government really started to loose faith in Haig, since now two completely massive offensives had failed to produce a breakthrough. Meanwhile Haig was saying his Flanders campaign would cost 100,000 casualties a month and refused to name a lower figure no matter how plans changed or how many million of shells were allotted just to the preliminary bombardments. In actuality Haig didn’t really expect losses that high, nor suffer them, but it was not confidence inspiring. While America was in the war, the French were just coming off the great mutiny and a real fear existed that Haig might wipe out the British army before the other allies could make a difference. Plus Russia was looking like utter crap ect. Yet the British also had to attack at some level, precisely because of these wider problems. Shitty situation and one of the many reasons why people hotly debate Haig to this day.

So anyway the British government began withholding infantry replacements from him, and as the Flanders offensive ground forward into the locomotive drowning mud this process accelerated. Haig had to compensate by reducing for example the size of British infantry divisions from 12 to 9 battalions of infantry in ordered to maintain flexibility, I forget when exactly. They did want to force Haig to adapt better tactics, but just making sure not everyone died was just as important. Lack of infantry was part of the reason why Haig began backing the mass tank attack at Cambria. Ironically this attack then failed in no small part because it was conducted on the basis of minimizing losses, and while successful, it was not as successful as the planned ‘trigger’ objectives to justify a larger effort. If it'd been another fill the enemy trenches with our guts attack it might have won the war, maybe. Certainly would have gained much more ground.

End result was at the start of 1918 the British army in France was actually weaker then it had been at the start of 1917 numerically, though rather better armed, and 300,000 trained men were defending the British coastline, through not all were first rate manpower. The British were by this point conscripting men up to fifty, I believe Germany was going a bit higher, and Ludendorff writes in his book that he wanted all 16 year olds males mobilized even earlier then this, though possibly only for forced labor use until they got a bit older. Somehow this was not a popular idea and he apparently lacked sufficient Supreme Hun Lord power to implement it. His book is also riddled with hindsight, though it was written right after the war.

Anyway Haig was not simply relieved because the political risk this represented was thought to be in line with collapsing the entire war effort. It would have meant saying in practice if not necessarily reality that Somme was all wrong, Arras was all wrong and all those valiant young lads died for nothing because the Hun didn’t run out of bullets to kill them with as planned. The British government might well have fallen, and a replacement might vote to end the fighting.

Towards the end of the war Haig was being bypassed to some degree by the British government issuing commands and consulting directly with Army level commanders. This went much further with the formation of the supreme allied command structure in the face of the German spring offensive under Marshal Foch. The under strength nature of certain British units meanwhile played a non trivial role in the success of the first German attack in the first place.

ISTR that one of the key points was that Lloyd George and Haig pretty much despised each other, so when the former became PM he started bleeding troops away from Haig. This was also due to Lloyd George being part of the group who believed the war could best be won in the other theaters by defeating all of Germany's allies, in particular the Ottoman Empire, while Haig was part of the group who believed that the other theaters were peripheral to the war effort and that it would be won or lost in France. Lloyd George seems to attempted to promote Haig out of direct responsibility for anything, to replace him, or to recall him, without success, as Haig had wide popular support at home and amongst the British Army and, IIRC, with the Royal Family. My overall impression is that the withholding of troops from Haig was more of a political struggle between him and Lloyd-George than a decision based on military necessities or battlefield results, but I could be wrong. The story of Haig and the First World War is contested, as I understand it.