James Edward Edmonds

Sir James Edward Edmonds (born December 25, 1861 in London , † August 2, 1956 in Sherborne , Dorset ) was a British brigadier general (Brigadier General) and military historian, best known as the editor of the official British history of the First World War , History of the Great War , (1923 to 1949, 28 volumes).

Life

Edmonds was the son of master jeweler James Edmonds and Frances Amelia Bowler. He attended King's College School in London and the Royal Military Academy Woolwich , which he graduated with top marks. He was versatile (nicknamed Archimedes at Staff College ) and spoke several European and Asian languages. In 1881 he went to the Royal Engineers . He received additional training in Chatham and between 1884 and 1888 was temporarily in Hong Kong and northern China, where he installed mine barriers in front of ports. In 1890 he became a captain, in 1899 a major and from 1888 to 1895 he was an instructor for fortifications at the Royal Military Academy. He traveled extensively to North America, Japan and Russia. In 1896/97 he attended Staff College in Camberley , at the same time as Douglas Haig , Edmund Allenby , Reginald Dyer and William Robertson (a class below him as well as Archibald Murray ). Edmonds made the acquaintance of many later leaders in the British Army and Haig in particular had been entrusted to him by the professor at Staff College George Henderson to mentor him.

He was also the best in his class at Staff College and after a short stopover in Jamaica was employed in the Military Intelligence Department (War Office Intelligence Department) in the Second Boer War in 1899 . In 1901/2 he was in South Africa, where he advised Lord Kitchener on international martial law, for which he was considered an expert. Then he was 1904-1908 as Deputy Assistant to the Quartermaster General in the Intelligence Division in London. He was the author of a book on the American Civil War in 1905 (written with his brother-in-law W. Birkbeck Wood), an interest that began when he met former Confederate Partisan John S. Mosby , who was the US consul in Hong Kong. In 1906 he became first lieutenant (Lieutenant Colonel), was secretary of the British delegation at the conference on the Geneva Conventions (head John Ardagh ) and in 1907 British delegate at the conference on the Red Cross. In 1912 he was to write the official British military manual on international martial law with Lassa Oppenheim .

In the Military Intelligence Division, he first watched the Russo-Japanese War and led from 1906 the Special Duties Section, which was renamed in 1907 in Military Operations Directorate 5 (MO 5), later (from 1916) MI5 , whose first director Vernon Kell he sponsored. He had a particular interest in the German army since he experienced the Franco-Prussian War in France as a child in 1870/71. He studied them carefully (publication of the Handbook of the German Army 1900) and warned against German spies in the run-up to the First World War.

In 1909 he became Colonel and General Staff Officer 1st Class in the War Office and from 1911 in the 4th Infantry Division (under Major General Thomas D'Oyly Snow).

During the First World War he was head of the staff of the 4th Infantry Division of the British Expeditionary Force , but was relieved in September 1914 after the battle of Mons and the subsequent forced retreat. On the night of August 26-27, at the beginning of the Battle of Le Cateau , he collapsed from exhaustion. Afterwards he was a staff officer at the headquarters of the BEF and collected material for the planned official history of the First World War. He had to exercise great diplomatic skill in order not to get into a party dispute within the general staff and to get his material. He benefited from the fact that he had no ambitions for promotion.

Officially, he was a staff officer at the headquarters of the Engineer-in-Chief (pioneers) and then a liaison officer between the staff of engineers and the general staff. In 1918 he became Deputy Engineer-in-Chief of the BEF.

He escaped the delegation to the Paris Peace Conference by going to the History Department of the Committee of Imperial Defense (CID). From 1919 to 1949 he was the senior officer of the Military Department of the Historical Section, responsible for drawing up the official military history of the First World War. He wrote 11 of the 14 volumes on the Western Front, the last in 1948 at a very old age. He devoted his full labor to the work for 29 years, three months at a time, seven days a week, interrupted by a break of only 10 days before continuing. In 1951 he published a shorter history of the First World War.

Later his official history of the First World War was criticized, among other things, as being too benevolent towards Douglas Haig, whom he tried to defend against the criticism and one-sided representation in the memoirs of David Lloyd George after the war. The dry portrayal was also criticized, but the story was primarily intended for training in British staff schools. In addition to the official story, in which he always had to find an objective balance, he also helped other historians such as Basil Liddell Hart to get "unofficial" information through extensive correspondence .

In 1928 he was ennobled. In 1939 he became Secretary in the History Department of the British Chancellery (Cabinet Office). He died at his home in Sherborne.

He was CB and CMG . He was an Honorary Doctor of Oxford (Hon. D. Litt.).

literature

• Andrew Green Writing the Great War: Sir James Edmonds and the Official Histories 1915–1948 , London: Frank Cass 2003
• The Memoirs of Sir James Edmonds, Tom Donovan Editions 2013 (autobiography)

Fonts

In addition to the official history of the First World War:

• Editor and co-author: Military Operations, France and Belgium, 14 volumes, HMSO, London 1922–1948
• with Henry Rudolph Davies: Military Operations, Italy, HMSO, London 1949

he published:

• Handbook of the German Army , HMSO 1900
• with Lassa Francis Lawrence Oppenheim: Land warfare: an exposition of the laws and usages of war on land for the guidance of officers of His Majesty's Army , War Office publication, 1912
• A short history of world war I , Oxford University Press 1951, Greenwood Press 1968
• with W. Birkbeck Wood: A history of the Civil War in the United States, 1861-65 , London: Methuen, New York, Putnam 1905 (preface by Henry Spencer Wilkinson ), Archive
• The Occupation of the Rhineland 1918-1929 ; HMSO, London 1944 ( Allied occupation of the Rhineland ).

Web links

• Introduction to The Memoirs of Sir James Edmonds , Tom Donovan Editions
• biography
• Biography in firstworldwar