Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke
Field Marshal Alan Francis Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke, KG, GCB, OM, GCVO, DSO & Bar (23 July 1883 – 17 June 1963), was a senior officer of the British Army. He was Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), the professional head of the British Army, during the Second World War, and was promoted to field marshal on 1 January 1944.[4] As chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, Brooke was the foremost military advisor to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and had the role of co-ordinator of the British military efforts in the Allies' victory in 1945. After retiring from the British Army, he served as Lord High Constable of England during the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. His war diaries attracted attention for their criticism of Churchill and for Brooke's forthright views on other leading figures of the war.
"Alan Brooke" and "General Brooke" redirect here. For other uses, see Alan Brooke (disambiguation) and General Brooke (disambiguation).
The Viscount Alanbrooke
17 June 1963 (aged 79)
Hartley Wintney, Hampshire, England
United Kingdom
1902–1946
Chief of the Imperial General Staff (1941–1946)
Home Forces (1940–1941)
II Corps (1939–1940)
Southern Command (1939)
Mobile Division (1937)
8th Infantry Brigade (1934–1935)
School of Artillery (1929–1932)
Background and early life[edit]
Alan Brooke was born on 23 July 1883 at Bagnères-de-Bigorre, Hautes-Pyrénées, to a prominent Anglo-Irish family from West Ulster. The Brookes had a long military tradition as the "Fighting Brookes of Colebrooke", with a history of service in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and World War I.[5] He was the seventh and youngest child of Sir Victor Brooke, 3rd Baronet, of Colebrooke Park, Brookeborough, County Fermanagh, and the former Alice Bellingham, second daughter of Sir Alan Bellingham, 3rd Baronet, of Castle Bellingham in County Louth.[6] Brooke's father died when he was just eight years old.[5][7]
Brooke was educated at a day school in Pau, France, where he lived until the age of 16; he was bi-lingual in French (which he spoke with a heavy Gascon accent and spoke as a first language as a result of his upbringing in the French Pyrenees)[5] and English.[8] He spoke both French and English very fast, leading some Americans later in life to distrust a "fast-talking Limey."[9] He was also fluent in German, and had learnt Urdu and Persian.[10][11]
Brooke, desiring a military career, "only just" qualified for the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in 1900, coming sixty-fifth out of seventy-two in the entrance exam, but passed out at seventeenth. Had he done any better he would have qualified for a commission in the Royal Engineers, as was his initial intention, and possibly would not have ended up on the General Staff after the Great War.[12]
Brooke was commissioned into the Royal Regiment of Artillery as a second lieutenant on 24 December 1902.[13] Due to his high placing at Woolwich Brooke was allowed to choose which branch of the Royal Artillery to join. His choice was the Royal Field Artillery, with which he served in Ireland and India in the years leading up to the outbreak of the First World War in the summer of 1914. He also received his "jacket"[a] upon being selected to join the Royal Horse Artillery.[11]
Between the wars[edit]
During the interwar period, Brooke attended the first post-war course at the Staff College, Camberley in 1919. He managed to impress both his fellow students and the college's instructors during the relatively brief time he was there.[24] He then served as a staff officer with the 50th Division from 1920 to 1923.[25][1] Brooke then returned to Camberley, this time as an instructor, before attending the Imperial Defence College. He was later appointed as an instructor at the college,[25][1] and while there he became acquainted with most of the officers who became leading British commanders of the Second World War. From 1929 onwards Brooke held a number of important appointments: Inspector of Artillery, Director of Military Training and then General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the Mobile Division (later the 1st Armoured Division) in 1935.[26] In 1938, on promotion to lieutenant-general, he took command of the Anti-Aircraft Corps (renamed Anti-Aircraft Command in April 1939) and built a strong relationship with Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, the AOC-in-C of Fighter Command, which laid a vital basis of co-operation between the two commands during the Battle of Britain the following year. In July 1939 Brooke moved to command Southern Command. By the outbreak of the Second World War, Brooke was already seen as one of the British Army's foremost generals.[27][24]
War diaries[edit]
Brooke kept a diary during the whole of the Second World War.[70] Originally intended for his wife, Benita, the diaries were later expanded on by Brooke in the 1950s. They contain descriptions on the day-to-day running of the British war effort (including some indiscreet references to top secret interceptions of German radio traffic),[71] Brooke's thoughts on strategy, as well as frequent anecdotes from the many meetings he had with the Allied leadership during the war.[70]
The diaries have become famous mostly because of the frequent remarks on and criticisms of Churchill. Although the diaries contain passages expressing admiration of Churchill, they also served as a vent for Brooke's frustration with working with the Prime Minister. The diaries also give sharp opinions on several of the top Allied leaders. The American generals Eisenhower and Marshall, for example, are described as poor strategists and Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander as unintelligent. Among the few individuals of whom Brooke seems to have kept consistently positive opinions, from a military standpoint, were General of the Army Douglas MacArthur,[72] Field Marshal Sir John Dill, and Joseph Stalin. Brooke admired Stalin for his quick brain and grasp of military strategy. Otherwise he had no illusions about the man, describing Stalin thus: "He has got an unpleasantly cold, crafty, dead face, and whenever I look at him I can imagine his sending off people to their doom without ever turning a hair."[73]
The first (abridged and censored) version published in the 1950s was edited by the distinguished historian Sir Arthur Bryant: 1957 (The Turn of the Tide[74]) and 1959 (Triumph in the West). Originally Brooke intended that the diaries were never to be published but one reason that he changed his mind was the lack of credit to him and the Chiefs of Staff in Churchill's own war memoirs, which essentially presented their ideas and innovations as the Prime Minister's own. Although censorship and libel laws accounted for numerous suppressions of what Brooke had originally written concerning persons who were still alive, the Bryant books became controversial even in their truncated state, mainly as a result of the comments on Churchill, Marshall, Eisenhower, Gort, and others. Churchill himself did not appreciate the books.[75][70] In 1952 both Churchill and Beaverbrook threatened legal action against a biography of Stanley Baldwin by G. M. Young, and a settlement was reached by lawyer Arnold Goodman to remove the offending sentences. Publisher Rupert Hart-Davis had the "hideously expensive" job of removing and replacing seven leaves from 7,580 copies of the biography.[76] Diary entries also refer to intercepts of German signals decrypted at Bletchley Park (which Brooke visited twice), which were secret until 1974.[77]
In 2001, Alex Danchev of Keele University and Daniel Todman of Cambridge University published an unexpurgated version of the Brooke Diaries including original critical remarks that Brooke made at various times that had been suppressed in the Bryant versions. Danchev and Todman also criticised Bryant's editing, but this is balanced by an assessment by Dr Christopher Harmon, advisor to the Churchill Centre and Professor at the US Marine Corps University. Bryant was inhibited by Brooke's desire not to publish in full his critical diary entries about people who were still alive when Bryant's books were published.[78][79]
Post-war career[edit]
Following the Second World War and his retirement from the regular army, Lord Alanbrooke, as he was now, who could have chosen almost any honorary position he wanted, chose to be the Colonel Commandant of the Honourable Artillery Company. He held this position from 1946 to 1954. In addition, he served on the boards of several companies, both in industry and in banking. He was director of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the Midland Bank, the National Discount Company and the Belfast Banking Company. Alanbrooke was particularly fond of being a director of the Hudson's Bay Company where he served for eleven years from 1948.[80]
According to historian A. Sangster there was a reason for his choice to work in the private sector - i.e. not to stay in the military. Brooke ended the Second World War not well off: he had to move from his house and publishing his memoirs helped because such books sold well at that time.[81]
Private life and ornithology[edit]
Alan Brooke was married twice. After six years of engagement he married Jane Richardson in 1914, a neighbour in County Fermanagh in Ulster. Six days into their honeymoon, the then Alan Brooke was recalled to active duty when the First World War started. The couple had one daughter and one son, Rosemary and Thomas. Jane Brooke died of complications from an operation to repair a broken vertebra following a car accident in 1925 in which her husband was at the steering wheel. Jane's death deeply affected Brooke, who blamed himself for the accident and felt guilt over it for the rest of his life.[26][82]
He married Benita Lees (1892–1968), daughter of Sir Harold Pelly, 4th Bt., and the widow of Sir Thomas Lees, 2nd Bt., in 1929. The marriage was very happy for the uxorious Brooke and resulted in one daughter and one son, Kathleen and Victor.[83] During the war the couple lived in Hartley Wintney in Hampshire. After the war, the Brookes' financial situation forced the couple to move into the gardener's cottage of their former home, where they lived for the rest of their lives. Their last years were darkened by the death of their daughter, Kathleen, in a riding accident in 1961.[84]
Alan Brooke had a love of nature. Hunting and fishing were among his great interests. His foremost passion, however, was birds. He was a noted ornithologist, especially in bird photography. In 1944, he ordered the RAF not to use an island off the coast of Norfolk as a bombing range because of its significance to nesting roseate terns.[26] He was president of the Zoological Society of London between 1950 and 1954 and vice-president of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds between 1949 and 1961.[85][86] He was an honorary member of the Royal Photographic Society from February 1954 until his death.[87]
Honours[edit]
United Kingdom[edit]
Brooke was created Baron Alanbrooke, of Brookeborough in the County of Fermanagh, in 1945,[88] and Viscount Alanbrooke in 1946.[89][90] Other awards included:
Memorials[edit]
Welbeck College[120] and the Duke of York's Royal Military School named one of their houses after him.[121]
Several military barracks are named after him, such as Alanbrooke Barracks in Paderborn Garrison, Germany,[122] and Alanbrooke Barracks in Topcliffe, North Yorkshire.[123]