Kitchener of
Khartoum And of Aspall, and (from 1902) Viscount Kitchener Of Khartoum, of The Vaal, And
of Aspall.
Kitchener was a British field marshal and an
imperial administrator. He was the son of a protestant family. He was educated at the
Royal Military Academy. He voluntarily joined to the Franco-German war and fought on the
French side. In January 1871, he began to work as a government official. Between 1874-82,
he worked for the British intelligence service in Palestine, Anatolia, and Cyprus. In the
beginning of 1883, he was appointed to a Cavalry Division in Cairo and he participated in
the failed operation to save General C. G. Gordon, in Nile. After this failure, he went to
Zanzibar. In 1886 he was appointed governor (at Suakin [Sawakin], Sudan) of the British
Red Sea territories and subsequently was assigned to Egypt as adjutant general in Cairo.
Prime Minister Lord Salisbury’s favour led to his appointment as commander in chief of
the Egyptian army in 1892.
Kitchener never married. His duty was always came
first. His friends and him commenced the war in Sudan, in 1896. They massacred the Arabs
in Omdurman, on 2 September 1898. This slaughter in Britain named as a victory and created
Kitchener Baron. The British parliament awarded Kitchener with a large amount of money, in
June of 1899.
His reputation in Great Britain was enhanced by his
firm, tactful, and successful handling of an explosive situation at Fashoda (now Kodok),
where Jean-Baptiste Marchand's expeditionary force was trying to establish French
sovereignty over parts of the Sudan. After this achievement, he stayed in Sudan as the
governor for one year.
After a year as governor-general of the Sudan,
Kitchener entered the South African War (Boer War) in December 1899 as chief of staff to
Field Marshal Sir Frederick Sleigh Roberts, whom he succeeded as commander in chief in
November 1900. During the last 18 months of the war, Kitchener combated guerrilla
resistance by such methods as burning Boer farms and herding Boer women and children into
disease-ridden concentration camps. These ruthless measures, and Kitchener's strategic
construction of a network of blockhouses across the country to localise and isolate the
Boers' forces, steadily weakened their resistance.
On returning to England after the British victory in
the war, he was created Viscount Kitchener (July 1902) and was sent as commander in chief
to India, where he reorganised the army in order to meet possible external aggression
rather than internal rebellion, which previously had been the primary concern. His quarrel
with the viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, over control of the army in India ended in 1905
when the British cabinet upheld Kitchener and Curzon resigned. Remaining in India until
1909, Kitchener was bitterly disappointed at not being appointed viceroy. In September
1911, he accepted the proconsulship of Egypt, and until August 1914, he ruled that country
and the Sudan.
Kitchener, who was on leave in England and had just
received an earldom and another viscountcy and barony (June 1914), reluctantly accepted an
appointment to the cabinet as secretary of state for war and was promoted to field
marshal. He warned his colleagues, most of whom expected a short war, that the conflict
would be decided by the last 1,000,000 men that Great Britain could throw into battle.
Quickly enlisting a great number of volunteers, he had them trained as professional
soldiers for a succession of entirely new "Kitchener armies." By the end of
1915, he was convinced of the need for military conscription, but he never publicly
advocated it, in deference to Prime Minister Herbert H. Asquith's belief that conscription
was not yet politically practicable. In his recruitment of soldiers, planning of strategy,
and mobilisation of industry, Kitchener was handicapped by British governmental processes
and by his own distaste for teamwork and delegation of responsibility. His cabinet
associates, who did not share in the public idolatry of Kitchener, relieved him of
responsibility first for industrial mobilisation and later for strategy, but he refused to
quit the cabinet. His career was ended suddenly, by drowning, when the cruiser HMS
Hampshire, bearing him on a mission to Russia, was sunk by a German mine.
