Maurice Hankey, 1st Baron Hankey

Maurice Hankey, William Orpen , 1919

Maurice Pascal Alers Hankey, 1st Baron Hankey , GCB , GCMG , GCVO , PC (born April 1, 1877 in Biarritz , † January 26, 1963 in London ) was a British civil servant who, among other things, served as secretary of the National Defense Council ( Committee of Imperial Defense ) and is one of the inventors of the armored weapon alongside Ernest Swinton .

biography

Early years

Hankey was educated in rugby boarding school ( Rugby College ). As a young man, he entered the Royal Navy and went through the officer career. 1895-1901 he served as an officer in the Royal Marine Artillery. In 1902 he was recruited by the naval intelligence service. In 1908, at the suggestion of a superior, he was entrusted with the post of naval secretary in the National Defense Council , to whose secretary he was promoted in 1912. He held this position until 1938.

First World War

Tank development

In November 1914, when the war between the Allies and the Central Powers finally froze on mainland Europe, which had previously been assumed to be decided within a few weeks in favor of one of the two sides and making a return to diplomacy inevitable, one As trench warfare began to emerge, Hankey was also appointed secretary of the Council of War, whose permanent institutionalization was now essential. Because of the situation in the European theater of war, Hankey and his friend Colonel Ernest Swinton came to believe that it was necessary to develop an armored vehicle to counteract the military innovation of the machine gun . With the state of the art at the time, the machine gun as a weapon reinforced the absolute superiority of the defensive over the offensive and thus caused the fronts to be de-dynamized and gave the war as an event the character of a protracted mutual wear and tear with horrific human and material losses. After Swinton's proposals were rejected by General John French , the commander-in-chief of the British armed forces in France, and his scientific advisors, Hankey submitted them to the then Secretary of the Navy, Winston Churchill , who had the idea of ​​a "land battleship" modeled on the English dreadnought Capital ships enthusiastically took up. The result of efforts sponsored by Churchill was the development of the combat vehicles later known as tanks , the first armored vehicles . After various imprudent uses (including in the Somme Offensive ), which made many Allied decision-makers doubt their military value, the tanks finally played a key role in the allied 1918 summer offensive, which was decisive for the war. Today, many historians consider the tanks to be the allies' victory-based innovation.

secretary

In December 1916, the newly appointed Acting Prime Minister David Lloyd George Hankey secretary of the British War Cabinet (War Cabinet). In addition, he served as secretary of the Imperial War Cabinet , in which the representatives of the governments of the British colonies and Dominions were represented as a kind of empire-encompassing counterpart to the purely British war cabinet. In this role, Hankey earned a reputation as a highly competent organizer and coordinator. Accordingly, its secretariat was retained in its existing form even after the cabinet reorganization at the end of the war in 1919. From then on, however, he operated under the title of Cabinet Secretary .

Interwar period

Maurice Hankey (1921)

In 1923, Hankey's responsibilities were expanded to include the office of chief executive of the Privy Council . While in this office he served many times as Secretary of the British Delegation at international conferences and as Secretary General of many internal Empire conferences. He held office uninterruptedly under Prime Ministers David Lloyd George (1916–1922), Andrew Bonar Law (1922–1923), Stanley Baldwin (1923, 1924–1929 and 1935–1937), Ramsay MacDonald (1923–1924 and 1929–1935) ) and Arthur Neville Chamberlain (1937–1940).

In August 1938, Hankey retired from the British government and became British Government Director of the Suez Canal Company . In recognition of his services, he was raised to the nobility in December 1939 as Baron Hankey of the Chart.

Second World War

During the Second World War, Hankey was an advisor to many British ministers. B. in August 1939 Arthur Neville Chamberlain to form a war cabinet. In September Chamberlain appointed Hankey, despite his unease, in the government, in which he served initially as Minister without Portfolio and a member of the War Cabinet.

In May 1940, when Winston Churchill succeeded Chamberlain as Prime Minister, Hankey was entrusted with the minor cabinet post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster . However, he was excluded from the inner circle of the war cabinet. In July 1941, Hankey was appointed paymaster general , and in 1942 he finally resigned from government.

He bequeathed the title of Baron Hankey to his son Robert Hankey when he died in 1963.

Significance for historical research

For historical research, Hankey's memoirs from the time of the First World War are of particular importance, which provide an insight into the cabinet and government structures of the period before 1914 and allow conclusions to be drawn about the mentality and political calculations as well as the foreign policy expectations of the British government at the time . His notes play an important role in the controversy surrounding the question of the avoidability of the First World War (thesis of the collective slipping [Lloyd George] of the European powers into war).

Fonts

Hankey's publications include:

• Government Control in War , 1945
• Diplomacy by Conference , 1946
• Politics, trials and errors , 1950
• The Supreme Command, 1914-1918 , 1961
• The supreme control at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919: A commentary , 1963

Background literature

• John F. Naylor: A Man and an Institution: Sir Maurice Hankey, the Cabinet Secretariat and the Custody of Cabinet Secrecy , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-52109-3-477

Web links

• Written estate, curriculum vitae in tabular form at the Churchill Archives Center in Cambridge (English)
• Newspaper article about Maurice Hankey, 1st Baron Hankey in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Reviews in History

predecessor	Office	successor
New title created	Baron Hankey 1939-1963	Robert Hankey