Macdonogh appointed adjutant-general

On 11 September 1918 Major-General Sir George Macdonogh, since early 1916 Director of Military Intelligence at the War Office, was appointed Adjutant-General of the British Army. He replaced General Nevil Macready, who had left at the beginning of September to take command of the Metropolitan Police after the London police strike. With the new post Macdonogh received the temporary rank of lieutenant-general and a seat on the Army Council, where as Adjutant-General he was responsible for the reinforcements, discipline and personnel matters of the whole army.

The fifty-three-year-old Macdonogh had begun his career in the Royal Engineers. At the Staff College at Camberley he was considered, together with James Edmonds, later the author of the British official history, the ablest student of his year, and in his spare time he qualified as a barrister. In August 1914 he went to France as head of intelligence on the staff of the British Expeditionary Force. That autumn he correctly predicted the movements of the German corps at Ypres. In January 1916, when William Robertson moved to London as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, he brought him to the War Office as Director of Military Intelligence.

In London Macdonogh built an efficient machine for assessing German strength, and his department also developed propaganda aimed at the Germans. His sober estimates often clashed with the optimism of General Headquarters in France. In the autumn of 1917 he presented the War Cabinet with figures showing that Germany’s manpower reserves were by no means running out, contrary to the assurances of Douglas Haig and his intelligence chief John Charteris. Haig then noted in his diary that Macdonogh was a Catholic and might be influenced by information from “tainted”, Catholic sources. Macdonogh, who in his youth had converted from Methodism to Catholicism, nevertheless correctly predicted the time and place of the German offensive of March 1918.

As Director of Military Intelligence he was succeeded by General William Thwaites. Macdonogh remained Adjutant-General until 1922. During that time his office had to deal with, among other things, the demobilisation of an army of several million men after the end of the war.