William Robertson becomes Chief of the Imperial General Staff

On 23 December 1915 Lieutenant-General Sir William Robertson took up office in London as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, the most important military adviser to the British government. At the same time he received the temporary rank of general. He replaced General Archibald Murray, who had stepped down the day before. For almost a year Robertson had been Chief of Staff of the British Expeditionary Force in France, since January 1915, and his place there was taken by General Launcelot Kiggell. The son of a village tailor, who had begun his service as a private in a lancer regiment, now stood at the head of the entire British Army.

Robertson’s conditions

Robertson did not accept the post without reservations. For months he had believed that the war was being badly directed in London. Lord Herbert Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, was in practice his own chief of staff. He drew up plans of operations himself or with a few trusted officers, and successive chiefs of staff had little say. According to Robertson, this was why the government had allowed itself to be drawn into ill-considered campaigns at the Dardanelles, in Mesopotamia and at Salonika without asking the General Staff to assess whether they had any chance of success at all.

When the Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith offered him the post, Robertson declared that he would not take it if Kitchener continued to be his own chief of staff. He did not, however, want the departure of the minister, who enjoyed enormous authority in the country. Asquith told the two men to come to an understanding. At the beginning of December in Paris they exchanged several drafts and reached an agreement. Robertson was to be the government’s sole adviser on matters of strategy and to present his assessments directly to its War Committee, and orders concerning operations were to be issued by him. Kitchener retained responsibility for recruiting, equipping and supplying the army. In January 1916 this division of powers was confirmed by an Order in Council.

Robertson brought his closest collaborators with him from France. General Frederick Maurice became Director of Military Operations, and George Macdonogh Director of Military Intelligence at the War Office. General Robert Whigham became Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

The first day

Robertson set to work at once. On 23 December he attended a meeting of the War Committee for the first time. The committee had before it Murray’s memorandum of 16 December, which called for all forces to be concentrated on the Western Front. Robertson declared that he agreed with it entirely, and demanded a clear decision from the politicians. The same day the committee decided to recommend to the cabinet the immediate evacuation of Cape Helles, the last British foothold on Gallipoli, although the Admiralty wanted to hold on to it. Robertson also demanded that the campaign in Mesopotamia should henceforth be defensive. On 28 December the War Committee recognised France and Flanders as the main theatre of operations, where in the spring of 1916 the British Army was to strike together with its allies with the greatest possible force.

Robertson was Chief of the Imperial General Staff for more than two years. Together with Douglas Haig he defended the strategy of concentrating forces in France, which led him into ever sharper disputes with David Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War from 1916 and later Prime Minister. In February 1918 he had to step down. In 1920 he became the only soldier in the history of the British Army who had started as a private to receive a field marshal’s baton.