Alan Brooke, First Viscount Alanbrooke

British military leader

• Born: July 23, 1883
• Birthplace: Bagnères de Bigorre, France
• Died: June 17, 1963
• Place of death: Hartley Wintney, Hampshire, England

Brooke became the chief spokesman for British strategic priorities during World War II. More than any other English military leader, he helped to shape the strategy that brought victory to the Western Allies in the war.

Early Life

First Viscount Alanbrooke was born Alan Francis Brooke, the sixth son of Sir Victor Brooke and Alice Bellingham Brooke. Both of his parents belonged to the Protestant Ascendancy class in Ireland. This class, and his family, the fighting Brookes of Colebrooke, County Fermanagh, had a long tradition of military service to the British crown. That Brooke was born and grew up in France was a consequence of his mother’s preference for the sun of southern France over the Irish climate. Privately educated, young Brooke spoke fluent French and German, while his English matured more slowly.

At age eighteen, Brooke entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, to prepare for the traditional family vocation. With a fine mind for mathematics, he was well suited for the Royal Field Artillery, into which he was commissioned in 1902. In 1909, he was accepted into the prestigious Royal Horse Artillery.

In 1914, Brooke married Jane Richardson, daughter of Colonel John Richardson, and the marriage produced a son and a daughter. Jane Richardson Brooke died following an auto accident in 1925. Four years later, Brooke married Benita Lees, daughter of Sir Harold Pelly and widow of Sir Thomas Lees, who had died of wounds in World War I. The second marriage also produced one son and one daughter. Brooke had his full share of personal tragedy, his younger daughter dying from a riding accident in 1961 when he was in old age. Brooke’s second wife brought a calming influence to his finely strung temperament, however, and the marriage was a constant, vital source of strength to him throughout his most strenuous years of service.

During World War I, Brooke served on the main front in France. His work in handling artillery was rated outstanding, and when war ended in 1918 he was a brevet lieutenant colonel and had been awarded the Distinguished Service Order and bar. His interwar appointments testified to his growing reputation as a thoughtful professional soldier. He was selected for the first postwar Army Staff College course in 1919, and he returned as an instructor in 1923. He was also an early student at the new Imperial Defense College, which stressed interservice and political-military relationships in wartime. There, too, he later returned as an instructor. He was appointed Commandant of the School of Artillery in 1929. In the 1930’s, Brooke commanded an infantry brigade and later Great Britain’s only mobile division, forerunner of the armored divisions of World War II. In August, 1939, he was appointed commander in chief, Southern Command. His command was transformed on the outbreak of war into the Second Army Corps of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), which was sent to the Continent to stand beside the French army, as in 1914.

In September, 1939, Brooke was a fifty-six-year-old corps commander who had added to his expertise as a gunner the experience of commanding infantry and armored units. His staff and defense college studies had allowed him to examine closely, and to think carefully about, the business of war. Brooke was a man of medium build, with dark features; his eyes, set off by his prominent nose, had a quizzical look and gave to his face an owl-like appearance that was not misleading, for the owl is a traditional symbol of wisdom. Many found Brooke’s austere professionalism somewhat forbidding. In fact, he was a rather shy, private man of highly strung temperament. The discipline of military command did not allow him the luxury of easy comradeship. He was, and all who knew him sensed that he was, a master of his chosen craft.

Life’s Work

The main German offensive in the west came in May, 1940, and it quickly isolated the Allied forces in northern France and Belgium from the bulk of the Allied armies to the south of the Somme River. These northern forces, including the bulk of the BEF, fell back toward the sea around the port of Dunkirk. Brooke commanded the Second Army Corps with distinction during the difficult withdrawal into the Dunkirk perimeter, successfully coping with the crisis on the BEF’s northern flank created by the Belgian army’s surrender. Only when he was ordered back to England did Brooke’s composure momentarily fail him: He turned over command of his corps on the beach at La Panne with tears streaming down his cheeks.

On his return to England, Brooke was asked to build up a new BEF south of the Somme in France. This was the desire of the United Kingdom’s new prime minister, Winston Churchill, who saw it as necessary to bolster the French will to resist. Brooke, on return to France, quickly saw that the French will to go on was itself gone. He urged withdrawal of what British troops remained in France before it was too late. Churchill, with his indomitable will and perseverance, was reluctant to accept Brooke’s advice. The first encounter of the two men was thus a telephone conversation between Le Mans and London, and it set the tone for their future relationship. The prime minister’s inspired leadership at times ran beyond what it was possible to accomplish, and Brooke’s professional judgment and powers of lucid argument would be required to save Churchill from himself. The prime minister yielded to Brooke’s persuasion, and nearly 140,000 British troops got back home in this second evacuation.

In July, 1940, Brooke was appointed commander in chief of the home forces and was thus entrusted with the task of defeating the anticipated German invasion of England. It never came, but Brooke’s appointment signified the confidence placed in him. In late 1941, Churchill asked Brooke to become Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) in succession to his close friend, Field Marshal Sir John Dill. The latter had found the task of working with the prime minister an exhausting chore that disintegrated too often into unproductive argument. The heart of the problem was that in Churchill’s strength there lay potential weaknesses. His great courage, formidable willpower, and inexhaustible energy inspired Great Britain’s whole war effort but also tended to outrun military resources; the soldiers could not do the impossible. The prime minister took all restraint badly. He expected the military to turn every post into a winning post and was upset when they did not. He could not resist poking and prodding field commanders to act, even against their better judgment. Sometimes the prime minister was right to do so, but as a rule it was asking for trouble. One task of the CIGS was to stand between the prime minister and field commanders and interpret each to the other. Brooke took up the post understanding what lay ahead for him in working with Churchill: “I have the greatest respect for him and a real affection for him so that I hope I may be able to stand the storms of abuse which I may well have to bear frequently!” When the United States entered the war in December, 1941, Brooke persuaded Churchill to take Field Marshal Dill with him to Washington, where the prime minister sought to forge a common strategy with the Americans and to leave Dill there as head of the British Military Mission. This was inspired advice, for Dill quickly gained the trust and respect of the Americans and helped smooth out many Allied difficulties.

In March, 1942, Brooke became chair of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, where he sat with his navy and air force colleagues to formulate British military strategy in conjunction with the prime minister, who was also minister of defense. In effect, Brooke became Great Britain’s leading military spokesperson, both to his own government and to Great Britain’s allies. Neither of these relationships was an easy one. Brooke and Churchill at times each found the other hard to work with, but in combination they produced a strategy that was equally inspired by the prime minister’s vision and grasp of the largest issues and disciplined by the CIGS’s professional realism.

With his American allies, Brooke could agree on the goal of bringing the German army to battle on a large scale as necessary for victory in Europe. The Allies differed, however, on the issues of time and place. The Americans wanted to attack directly from Great Britain onto the Continent as early as the autumn of 1942 and no later than the summer of 1943. Brooke believed that before such an invasion could succeed, the German army would have to be weakened and the Anglo-American armies strengthened. The British wanted a campaign in the Mediterranean to clear Africa of enemy forces and to drive Italy out of the war, thus stretching and wearing down German resources, even while the Allies were gaining in strength. The Americans feared that a Mediterranean campaign would funnel off Allied resources on such a scale that an invasion of northwest Europe would be postponed until 1944. This was what happened: Anglo-American forces entered northwest Africa in late 1942, invaded Sicily and then Italy in 1943, and landed in northwest Europe only in June, 1944. As the German army proved hard enough to defeat in the campaign of 1944-1945, Brooke’s strategic judgment must be respected.

The success of Brooke’s strategy was at a personal cost. Churchill in early 1943 had promised him command of the invasion of northwest Europe, but as it became clear over time that the American contribution to that campaign would be preponderant, so inevitably there would have to be an American commander. Brooke took this hard when the prime minister broke it to him. With military victory came promotion and honors. Brooke was raised to the rank of field marshal in 1944 and was created Baron Alanbrooke in 1945 and Viscount Alanbrooke in 1946. The same year, he was created a Knight of the Garter and admitted to the Order of Merit. The most distinguished member of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, Alanbrooke became Master Gunner of St. James’s Park in 1946. A dedicated and skilled ornithologist, he served as president of the London Zoological Society from 1950 to 1954. He died at his home in Hartley Wintney, Hampshire, on June 17, 1963.

Significance

Most military men are remembered for the great battles they won or for the extraordinary feats of heroism they performed. Alanbrooke falls into neither category. His service was unique because he was called on to work with a statesman of unique genius who did not conform to the normal rules of military-political relationships in wartime. Churchill was the driving dynamo that energized Great Britain’s entire war effort. His great energy, however, needed to be kept flowing along productive lines. His most inspired conceptions needed sound professional execution, and his less inspired ideas required reasoned resistance. This last was not achieved without some sparks flying. Churchill found in Alanbrooke the completely professional soldier. Indeed, Churchill’s chief staff officer, General Sir Hastings Ismay, who spent nearly two decades in close contact with soldiers and statesmen at the highest levels and observed the work of eight Chiefs of the Imperial General Staff, concluded that Brooke was the best of them all.

Bibliography

Alanbrooke, First Viscount. War Diaries, 1939-1945: Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke. Edited by Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. The publication of Alanbrooke’s entire wartime diaries, which he began keeping in September, 1939, amplifies the information contained in the two books by Arthur Bryant, which were based on diary excerpts. The complete diary provides an added view of Alanbrooke’s frustration in trying to carry out the Allied war strategy and his despair over what he believed was Winston Churchill’s failure to understand that strategy.

Bryant, Arthur. The Turn of the Tide, 1939-1943: A Study Based on the Diaries and Autobiographical Notes of Field Marshal the Viscount Alanbrooke, K.G., O.M. London: Collins, 1957. Throughout World War II, Alanbrooke kept a diary (intended for his wife’s eyes), into which he wrote about his feelings and reactions to the events of each day. An outlet for the stress of his exacting duties, the diary entries give readers a false view of Alanbrooke, for it is only the inner strains that are recorded and not the professional skill he displayed in coping with his arduous duties.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Triumph in the West, 1943-1946: A Study Based on the Diaries and Autobiographical Notes of Field Marshal the Viscount Alanbrooke, K.G., O.M. London: Collins, 1959. The material quoted by Bryant from the diaries made graphically clear how difficult a master Winston Churchill could be at times. Churchill himself was deeply upset by their publication, which in turn distressed Alanbrooke. It is their successful partnership, to which these two volumes also testify, that needs to be remembered amid all the controversy.

Butler, J. R. M., ed. Grand Strategy. 6 vols. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1956-1972. Volumes 3-6 in this official series give a clear picture of the strategic options, discussions, and decisions that occurred from the invasion of the Soviet Union in June, 1941, to V-J Day in August, 1945. While the emphasis is British, the views of the United States and the Soviet Union are also covered.

Calvocoressi, Peter, and Guy Wint. Total War. New York: Penguin Books, 1972. This volume gives a good overview of the course of World War II and provides a context in which to place the strategic debates that took up so much of Brooke’s time and energy.

Fraser, David. Alanbrooke. New York: Atheneum, 1982. A biography that is outstanding in its portrait of Alanbrooke. General Sir David Fraser, a distinguished soldier and former Vice Chief of the General Staff, was ideally equipped to understand his subject and the milieu in which he worked.

Pogue, Forrest C. George C. Marshall. 3 vols. New York: Viking Press, 1963-1973. Marshall was Brooke’s opposite on the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the chief American strategic spokesman. Volumes 2 and 3 give the U.S. perspective on the issues that sometimes separated the two allies in what remains the outstanding example of two sovereign nations working effectively together in wartime.