Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke

The Rt. Hon. The Viscount Alanbrooke
Alan Brooke at his desk as CIGS, 1942
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	British Army
Years of service	1902–1946
Rank	Field Marshal
Commands held	School of Artillery (February 1929 - 1932) 8 Infantry Brigade (1934 - 1935) Mobile Division (1937) Anti-Aircraft Corps (1938) II Corps (1 September 1939 - 25 June 1940) C-in-C, Southern Command (26 June 1940 - 19 July 1940) C-in-C, Home Forces (20 July 1940 - 24 December 1941) CIGS (25 December 1941 - 25 Jun 1946)
Battles/wars	World War I World War II - France, 1940
Awards	KG GCB OM GCVO DSO
Other work	Lord High Constable of England President of the Zoological Society of London (1950 - 1954) Vice-president of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

Field Marshal Alan Francis Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke, KG, GCB, OM, GCVO, DSO (23 July 1883 - 17 June 1963) was a British career soldier, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff during the Second World War, and was promoted to Field Marshal in 1944. As chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee he was the foremost military advisor to Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He is regarded as one of the chief architects of the Allies' victory in 1945. In retirement he served as Lord High Constable of England during the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. His war diaries have attracted attention for their criticism of Winston Churchill and other leading figures of the war.

Background and early life

He was born in 1883 at Bagnères-de-Bigorre, France, to a prominent Northern Irish family with a long military tradition. He was the sixth son and ninth child of Sir Victor Brooke, third baronet of Colebrooke, Brookeborough, County Fermanagh, and Alice Bellingham Brooke, second daughter of Sir Alan Edward Bellingham, third baronet, of Castle Bellingham in County Louth.

Alan Brooke was educated in France where he lived to age 16, and at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Thanks to his upbringing in France he became a fluent speaker of French. During World War I he served with the Royal Artillery in France, ending the conflict as a Lieutenant-Colonel and with a reputation as an outstanding planner of operations. Between the wars he was a lecturer at the Staff College, Camberley and the Imperial Defence College, where Brooke knew most of those who became leading British commanders of the Second World War.

World War II

Following the outbreak of World War II, Brooke commanded the II Corps of the British Expeditionary Force - which contained the 3rd Division, commanded by the then Major-General Bernard Montgomery, whose superior he thus was - and distinguished himself in the handling of the British forces in the retreat to Dunkirk. Shortly after the evacuation from Dunkirk he was again sent to France to take command of the remaining British troops in the country. Brooke soon realized that the situation was untenable and, in his first conversation with the prime minister Winston Churchill, he recommended that all British forces should be withdrawn from France, which they subsequently were. In July 1940 he was appointed to command United Kingdom Home Forces to take charge of anti-invasion preparations, and in December 1941 was appointed Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS); he later also became chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, holding both posts until retirement from active service in 1946.

For most of the Second World War, Brooke was the foremost military adviser to the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill (who was also Minister of Defence), the War Cabinet, and to Britain's allies. As CIGS, Brooke was the functional head of the Army, and as chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, which he dominated by force of intellect and personality, he took the leading military part in the overall strategic direction of the war effort. In 1942, Brooke joined the Western Allies' ultimate command, the US-British Combined Chiefs of Staff, in Washington D.C.

Brooke (on the left) and Churchill visit Montgomery's mobile headquarters in Normandy, 12 June 1944.

Alan Brooke's focus was primarily on the European theatre of operations. Here, one of his key issues was to keep a strong pressure on the Axis in North Africa and Italy, thereby opening up the Mediterranean for Allied shipping, and then, when the Allies were ready and the Germans sufficiently weakened, mount the cross channel invasion. This strategy was essentially the one which was implemented, not always in initial agreement with the American allies whose strong commitment to an invasion of western Europe was in contrast to Brooke's and the British view on the importance of the Mediterranean operations. Not all of Brooke's plans were however ultimately met with success. For example he had great hope of bringing Turkey into the war on the Allied side, but this hope he admitted after the war remained a "wild dream".

The post of CIGS was less rewarding than command in an important theatre of war, but the CIGS chose the generals who commanded those theatres and decided what men and munitions they should have. When it came to finding the right commanders he often complained that many would be good generals had been killed in World War I, and that this was one reason behind the difficulties the British had in the beginning of the war. However, he does not seem to have reflected on that the Germans did not suffer from the same problem, which they would have had to the same extent. When General Claude Auchinleck was to be substituted as the commander of the Eighth Army in 1942, Brooke preferred Bernard Montgomery instead of Lieutenant-General William Gott who was Churchill's candidate. Soon thereafter Gott was killed in an air crash and Montgomery got the command. Brooke would later reflect upon the tragic event which led to the appointment of Montgomery as an intervention by God. Earlier in 1942 Brooke had himself been offered the command of British forces in the Middle East, Brooke declined, believing he now knew better than any other general how to deal with Prime Minister Churchill, who too often seemed vulnerable to unwise advice from unqualified people.

A year later, the war had taken a different turn and Brooke no longer believed it necessary to stay at Churchill's side. He therefore looked forward to take the command of the Allied invasion of Western Europe, a post Brooke believed he had been promised to have by Churchill on three occasions. But during the first Quebec conference, in August 1943, it was decided that the command would go to US General George C. Marshall. (Although in the event Marshall's work as US Army Chief of Staff was too important for him to leave Washington DC, and a different US General, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was in fact appointed.) Brooke was bitterly disappointed, both of being passed over and of the way the decision was conveyed to him by Churchill, who according to Brooke "dealt with the matter as if it were one of minor importance".

Statue of Field Marshal The Viscount Alanbrooke, MoD Building, Whitehall, London.

As CIGS Alan Brooke had frequent disagreements with Churchill over strategic issues. During the first part of the war Brooke was alone among the Chiefs of Staff in being able to stand up to the Prime Minister on these matters. But with the appointment of Admiral Andrew Cunningham as First Sea Lord in October 1943, which tilted the balance of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, Brooke got an important ally in his arguments with Churchill. The most serious clash regarded the British preparations for the final stages of the Pacific War. Brooke and the rest of the Chiefs of Staff wanted to build up the forces in Australia while Churchill preferred to use India as a base for the British effort. It was an issue over which the Chiefs of Staff were prepared to resign, but in the end a compromise was reached . A general complaint from Brooke was that Churchill often advocated diversion of forces where the CIGS preferred concentration. Brooke was particularly annoyed by Churchill's idea of capturing the northern tip of Sumatra . But in some cases Brooke did not see the political dimension of strategy as the Prime Minister did. For example, Brooke was sceptical about the British intervention in Greece in late 1944, an operation which he believed drained troops from the central front in Germany. But at this stage the war was practically won and Churchill saw the possibility to prevent Greece from becoming a communist state.

Alan Brooke, or "Brookie" as he was generally known, is reckoned to be one of the foremost of all the heads of the British Army. He was quick in mind and speech and deeply respected by his military colleagues, both British and Allied, although his uncompromising manners could make the Americans somewhat wary. His influence on the Western Allied grand strategy was strong, perhaps the strongest any individual had. Among the most important of his contributions to the course of the war ranks the delaying of the second front. Despite their disagreements, Brooke and Churchill held an affection for each other, and their partnership was a very successful one. The combination of Churchill's vision and Brooke's down to earth-method of running the war led Britain to victory in 1945.

War diaries

Alan Brooke kept a diary during the whole of World War II. Originally intended for his wife, Benita, the diaries were later commented by Brooke in the 1950s. The diaries contain descriptions on the day-to-day running of the British war effort (including some quite indiscreet references to top secret interceptions of German radio traffic), Brooke's thoughts on strategy as well as frequent anecdotes from the many meetings Brooke had with the Allied leadership during the war.

The diaries have become famous mostly because of the frequent remarks on and criticisms of Winston Churchill and other leading figures of the time. Although the diaries contain appraisal and admiration of Churchill, they also served as a vent for Brooke's frustration with Churchill's habits and working methods, his abuse of generals and constant meddling into strategic matters. In one passage Churchill is described as a "genius mixed with an astonishing lack of vision -- he is quite the most difficult man to work with that I have ever struck but I should not have missed the chance of working with him for anything on earth!".

The diaries give a rough opinion on several of the top Allied leaders. The American generals Eisenhower and George Marshall are for example described as poor strategists and the British Field Marshal Harold Alexander as unintelligent. Among the few individuals who Brooke seems to have only positive opinion of are General Douglas MacArthur, Field Marshal John Dill and Joseph Stalin (for his war leadership).

Edited by historian Arthur Bryant the diaries were first published in 1957 (The Turn of the Tide) and in 1959 (Triumph in the West). Originally the diaries were never meant to be published. One reason why Brooke changed his mind was the lack of credit to him and the Chiefs of Staff in Churchill's own war memoirs which essentially presented their ideas and innovations as his own. Although heavily censored, the books became controversial not only as a result of the many comments on Churchill and others, but also because they launched Brooke as the sole man behind the Allies' victory. Winston Churchill himself did not appreciate the books. In 2001 the publication of the uncensored "War Diaries", edited by Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman, again attracted attention to one of the most influential strategists of World War II.

Post war career and honours

After retirement from the Army Alan Brooke served on the boards of several companies, both in industry and in banking. He was director of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the Midland Bank, the National Discount Company and the Belfast Banking Company. Brooke was particularly fond of being a director of the Hudson's Bay Company where he served for eleven years from 1948.

Brooke was created Baron Alanbrooke, of Brookeborough, County Fermanagh, in 1945, and Viscount Alanbrooke in 1946.

• He won the Distinguished Service Order in World War I,
• He was appointed KCB in 1940,
• The GCB in 1942 ,
• He became a Knight of the Garter,
• A member of the Order of Merit in 1946,
• And GCVO in 1953.

He also served as Chancellor of the Queen's University of Belfast from 1949 until his death. At the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II he was appointed Lord High Constable of England, thus commanding all troops taking part in the event. In 1994 a statue of Brooke was erected in front of the Ministry of Defence in London. The statue is flanked by statues of Britain's other two leading generals of World War II, Lord Slim and Lord Montgomery of Alamein.

Coat of Arms

His Coat of Arms as issued to him by the College of Arms is: "Or, a cross engrailed per pale Gules and Sable, in dexter chief a crescent for difference."

Private life and ornithology

Alan Brooke was married twice. After six years of engagement he married Jane Richardson in 1914, a neighbour to the Brookes in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. Six days into their honeymoon Brooke was recalled to active duty when World War I started. The couple had one daughter and one son, Rosemary and Thomas. Jane Brooke died following a car accident in 1925 in which her husband was at the steering wheel. The death of his first wife was a severe blow to Alan Brooke. He regained happiness when he met Benita Lees, Sir Harold Pelly, 4 Bt. and the widow of Sir Thomas Lees, 2 Bt., whom he married in 1929. The marriage was very happy and resulted in one daughter and one son, Kathleen and Victor. During the war the couple lived in Hartley Wintney, a village in Hampshire. After the war, the Brookes' financial situation forced the couple to move into the gardener's cottage of their former home, where they lived for the rest of their lives. Their last years were darkened by the death of their daughter, Kathleen, in a riding accident in 1961.

Alan Brooke had a love of nature. Hunting and fishing were among his great interests. His foremost passion, however, was birds. Brooke was a noted ornithologist, especially skilled in bird photography. He was president of the Zoological Society of London from 1950 to 1954 and vice-president of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. During breaks in the war planning, the CIGS could sometimes be seen in London book shops looking for rare bird books. He bought a precious collection of books by John Gould, but due to financial reasons he was forced to sell these volumes after the war.

Death

Lord Alanbrooke's gravestone.

On June 17, 1963 Brooke suffered a heart attack and died quietly in his bed with his wife beside him. The same day he was to have had attended the Garter Service in St George's Chapel, Windsor. Nine days later he was given a funeral in Windsor. Then he was buried in St Mary's churchyard, near his home in Hartley Wintney, which is where his son, the last heir to the Alanbrooke viscountcy, still lives.

At his death, Alan Brooke's estate was probated at £50,580 (about £700,000 in 2006).

Quotes

"When I thump the table and push my face towards him what does he do? Thumps the table harder and glares back at me. I know these Brookes – stiff-necked Ulstermen and there's no one worse to deal with than that!" - Winston Churchill on Alan Brooke,

Other

• Alanbrooke House is a house at Welbeck college where all 5 houses are named after prominent military figures.
• Alanbrooke is the Junior Girls house at the Duke of York's Royal Military School, where, like Welbeck college, all houses are named after prominent military figures.

References

General references

• Alanbrooke, Field Marshal Lord (edited by Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman) (2001). War Diaries 1939-1945. Phoenix Press. ISBN 1-84212-526-5. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)

• Fraser, David (1983). Alanbrooke. Hamlyn Paperbacks. ISBN 0-600-20816-8.

• Heathcote, Tony (1999). The British Field Marshals 1736-1997. Pen & Sword Books Ltd. ISBN 0-85052-696-5.

• Reynolds, David (2005). In Command of History, Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War. Peunguin Books. ISBN 0-141-01964-6.

External links

• A link to the churchyard where he is buried - which shows his Coat of Arms