- James Edward Edmonds
Brigadier General James Edward Edmonds CB, CMG (1861–1956) was a British First World War officer of theRoyal Engineers who in the role of British official historian was responsible for the post-war compilation of the 28-volume "History of the Great War ". Edmonds himself wrote nearly half the volumes, including eleven of the 14 volumes dealing with the Western Front ("Military Operations, France and Belgium"). His task was not completed until the final volume was published in 1949.Edmonds was educated at
King's College School , London and theRoyal Military Academy, Woolwich . He was commissioned in the Royal Engineers in 1881. Edmonds possessed a considerable intellect and was fluent in manyEurope an andAsia n languages. In 1896 he entered the Staff College atCamberley , achieving the highest score of his class on the entrance exam, double that of classmate Douglas Haig who would later become commander-in-chief of theBritish Expeditionary Force (BEF) during the First World War. Also in the 1896 class wasEdmund Allenby , who would lead British forces inPalestine during 1917–18, andWilliam Robertson who becameChief of the Imperial General Staff in 1916. Edmonds passed the two-year staff course at the top of his class. He was understandably marked for work inmilitary intelligence and in 1904 was involved in the establishment ofMI5 , the British Secret Service.At the outbreak of the war, Edmonds was chief-of-staff of the British 4th Division but the strain of the retreat following the
Battle of Mons led to his replacement in September 1914, within a month of the opening of hostilies. He spent the remainder of the war as a staff officer atGHQ of the BEF during which time he gathered documents to be used in the Official History. Edmonds needed to demonstrate greatdiplomacy to obtain his information. He told hisAustralia n counterpart,C.E.W. Bean ::I was on terms of friendship with all the British generals from Haig downwards. I never belonged to any party and since I was not competing for promotion, I enjoyed confidences I otherwise might not have had.
The Official History produced by Edmonds has been subsequently criticised as
propaganda for being too lenient on the British generalship. It has been suggested that Edmonds' favourable portrayal of Haig was a counterpoint to the scathing criticism delivered by formerBritish Prime Minister ,David Lloyd George in his memoirs. In 1991, British historianDenis Winter , a staunch critic of Haig, acknowledged Edmonds' comprehensive understanding of British operations during the war but said "Only a profoundly knowledgeable man could have produced an Official History so misleading and yet with that ring of plausibility which has led to a general acceptance for so long."External links
* [http://www.firstworldwar.bham.ac.uk/donkey/edmonds.htm Centre for First World War Studies: James Edward Edmonds]
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