Horatio Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

Early life

Kitchener was born at Gunsborough Villa, north of Listowel, County Kerry, in Ireland, son of army officer Henry Horatio Kitchener (1805–1894) and Frances Anne Chevallier (1826–1864); daughter of John Chevallier, a clergyman, of Aspall Hall, and his third wife, Elizabeth (née Cole).

Both sides of Kitchener's family were from Suffolk, and could trace their descent to the reign of William III; his mother's family was of French Huguenot descent. His father had only recently sold his commission and bought land in Ireland, under the Incumbered Estates (Ireland) Act 1849 designed to encourage investment into Ireland after the Irish Famine. In later life Kitchener only once revisited his childhood home, in the summer of 1910 at the invitation of Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne; he astonished the estate's owners by recalling the Irish names of many of the fields. Although sometimes labeled by military historians as Irish or Anglo-Irish (a group which provided a disproportionate number of senior British officers – see Irish military diaspora), Kitchener did not regard himself as such and was known to quote the saying misattributed to the Duke of Wellington that "a man may be born in a stable, but that does not make him a horse".

In 1864 the family moved to Switzerland, where the young Kitchener was educated at Montreux, then at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Pro-French and eager to see action, he joined a French field ambulance unit in the Franco-Prussian War. His father took him back to Britain after he caught pneumonia while ascending in a balloon to see the French Army of the Loire in action.

Commissioned into the Royal Engineers on 4 January 1871, Kitchener was reprimanded by the Duke of Cambridge, the commander-in-chief, as his service in France had violated British neutrality. He served in Palestine, Egypt and Cyprus as a surveyor, learned Arabic, and prepared detailed topographical maps of the areas. His brother, Lt. Gen. Sir Walter Kitchener, had also entered the army and was Governor of Bermuda from 1908 to 1912.

Survey of western Palestine

In 1874, aged 24, Kitchener was assigned by the Palestine Exploration Fund to a mapping-survey of the Holy Land, replacing Charles Tyrwhitt-Drake, who had died of malaria. By then an officer in the Royal Engineers, Kitchener joined fellow officer Claude R. Conder; between 1874 and 1877 they surveyed Palestine, returning to England only briefly in 1875 after an attack by locals at Safed, in Galilee.

Conder and Kitchener's expedition became known as the Survey of Western Palestine because it was largely confined to the area west of the Jordan River. The survey collected data on the topography and toponymy of the area, as well as local flora and fauna.

The results of the survey were published in an eight-volume series, with Kitchener's contribution in the first three tomes (Conder and Kitchener 1881–1885). This survey has had a lasting effect on the Middle East for several reasons:

It serves as the basis for the grid system used in the modern maps of Israel and Palestine;

The data compiled by Conder and Kitchener are still consulted by archaeologists and geographers working in the southern Levant;

The survey itself effectively delineated and defined the political borders of the southern Levant. For example, the modern border between Israel and Lebanon is established at the point in upper Galilee where Conder and Kitchener's survey stopped.

In 1878, having completed the survey of western Palestine, Kitchener was sent to Cyprus to undertake a survey of that newly acquired British protectorate. He became vice-consul in Anatolia in 1879.

Egypt

On 4 January 1883 Kitchener was promoted to captain, given the Turkish rank binbasi (major), and dispatched to Egypt, where he took part in the reconstruction of the Egyptian Army.

Egypt had recently become a British puppet state, its army led by British officers, although still nominally under the sovereignty of the Khedive (Egyptian viceroy) and his nominal overlord the Ottoman sultan. Kitchener became second-in-command of an Egyptian cavalry regiment in February 1883, and then took part in the failed Nile Expedition to relieve Charles George Gordon in the Sudan in late 1884.

Fluent in Arabic, Kitchener preferred the company of the Egyptians over the British, and the company of no-one over the Egyptians, writing in 1884 that: "I have become such a solitary bird that I often think I were happier alone". Kitchener spoke Arabic so well that he was able to effortlessly adopt the dialects of the different Bedouin tribes of Egypt and the Sudan.

Promoted to brevet major on 8 October 1884 and to brevet lieutenant-colonel on 15 June 1885, he became the British member of the Zanzibar boundary commission in July 1885. He became Governor of the Egyptian Provinces of Eastern Sudan and Red Sea Littoral (which in practice consisted of little more than the Port of Suakin) in September 1886, also Pasha the same year, and led his forces in action against the followers of the Mahdi at Handub in January 1888, when he was injured in the jaw.

Kitchener was promoted to brevet colonel on 11 April 1888 and to the substantive rank of major on 20 July 1889 and led the Egyptian cavalry at the Battle of Toski in August 1889. At the beginning of 1890 he was appointed inspector general of the Egyptian police 1888–92 before moving to the position of Adjutant-General of the Egyptian Army in December of the same year and Sirdar (commander-in-chief) of the Egyptian Army with the local rank of brigadier in April 1892.

Kitchener was worried that, although his moustache was bleached white by the sun, his blond hair refused to turn grey, making it harder for Egyptians to take him seriously. His appearance added to his mystique: his long legs made him appear taller, whilst a cast in his eye made people feel he was looking right through them. Kitchener, at 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m), towered over most of his contemporaries.

Sudan and Khartoum

In 1896, the British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, was concerned with keeping France out of the Horn of Africa. A French expedition under the command of Jean-Baptiste Marchand had left Dakar in March 1896 with the aim of conquering the Sudan, seizing control of the Nile as it flowed into Egypt, and forcing the British out of Egypt; thus restoring Egypt to the place within the French sphere of influence that it had had prior to 1882. Salisbury feared that if the British did not conquer the Sudan, the French would. He had supported Italy's ambitions to conquer Ethiopia in the hope that the Italians would keep the French out of Ethiopia. The Italian attempt to conquer Ethiopia, however, was going very badly by early 1896, and ended with the Italians being annihilated at the Battle of Adowa in March 1896. In March 1896, with the Italians visibly failing and the Mahdist State threatening to conquer Italian Eritrea, Salisbury ordered Kitchener to invade northern Sudan, ostensibly for the purpose of distracting the Ansar (whom the British called "Dervishes") from attacking the Italians.

Kitchener won victories at the Battle of Ferkeh in June 1896 and the Battle of Hafir in September 1896, earning him national fame in the United Kingdom and promotion to major general on 25 September 1896, "for distinguished service in the field, in recognition of his services during the recent operations on the Nile". Kitchener's cold personality and his tendency to drive his men hard made him widely disliked by his fellow officers. One officer wrote about Kitchener in September 1896: "He was always inclined to bully his own entourage, as some men are rude to their wives. He was inclined to let off his spleen on those around him. He was often morose and silent for hours together ... he was even morbidly afraid of showing any feeling or enthusiasm, and he preferred to be misunderstood rather than be suspected of human feeling." Kitchener had served on the Wolseley expedition to rescue General Charles George Gordon at Khartoum, and was convinced that the expedition failed because Wolseley had used boats coming up the Nile to bring his supplies. Kitchener wanted to build a railway to supply the Anglo-Egyptian army, and assigned the task of constructing the Sudan Military Railway to a Canadian railway builder, Percy Girouard, for whom he had specifically asked.

Kitchener achieved further successes at the Battle of Atbara in April 1898, and then the Battle of Omdurman in September 1898. After marching to the walls of Khartoum, he placed his army into a crescent shape with the Nile to the rear, together with the gunboats in support. This enabled him to bring overwhelming firepower against any attack of the Ansar from any direction, though with the disadvantage of having his men spread out thinly, with hardly any forces in reserve. Such an arrangement could have proven disastrous if the Ansar had broken through the thin khaki line. At about 5 a.m. on 2 September 1898, a huge force of Ansar, under the command of the Khalifa himself, came out of the fort at Omdurman, marching under their black banners inscribed with Koranic quotations in Arabic; this led Bennet Burleigh, the Sudan correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, to write: "It was not alone the reverberation of the tread of horses and men's feet I heard and seemed to feel as well as hear, but a voiced continuous shouting and chanting-the Dervish invocation and battle challenge "Allah e Allah Rasool Allah el Mahdi!" they reiterated in vociferous rising measure, as they swept over the intervening ground". Kitchener had the ground carefully studied so that his officers would know the best angle of fire, and had his army open fire on the Ansar first with artillery, then machine guns and finally rifles as the enemy advanced. A young Winston Churchill, serving as an army officer, wrote of what he saw: "A ragged line of men were coming on desperately, struggling forward in the face of the pitiless fire – black banners tossing and collapsing; white figures subsiding in dozens to the ground ... valiant men were struggling on through a hell of whistling metal, exploding shells, and spurting dust – suffering, despairing, dying". By about 8:30 am, much of the Dervish army was dead; Kitchener ordered his men to advance, fearing that the Khalifa might escape with what was left of his army to the fort of Omdurman, forcing Kitchener to lay siege to it.

Anglo-Boer War

During the Second Boer War, Kitchener arrived in South Africa with Field Marshal Lord Roberts on the RMS Dunottar Castle along with massive British reinforcements in December 1899. Officially holding the title of chief of staff, he was in practice a second-in-command and was present at the relief of Kimberley before leading an unsuccessful frontal assault at the Battle of Paardeberg in February 1900. Kitchener was mentioned in despatches from Roberts several times during the early part of the war; in a despatch from March 1900 Roberts wrote how he was "greatly indebted to him for his counsel and cordial support on all occasions".

Following the defeat of the conventional Boer forces, Kitchener succeeded Roberts as overall commander in November 1900. He was also promoted to lieutenant-general on 29 November 1900 and to local general on 12 December 1900. He subsequently inherited and expanded the successful strategies devised by Roberts to force the Boer commandos to submit, including concentration camps and the burning of farms. Conditions in the concentration camps, which had been conceived by Roberts as a form of control of the families whose farms he had destroyed, began to degenerate rapidly as the large influx of Boers outstripped the ability of the minuscule British force to cope. The camps lacked space, food, sanitation, medicine, and medical care, leading to rampant disease and a very high death rate for those Boers who entered. Eventually 26,370 women and children (81% were children) died in the concentration camps. The biggest critic of the camps was the English humanitarian and welfare worker Emily Hobhouse. She published a prominent report that highlighted atrocities committed by Kitchener's soldiers and administration, creating considerable debate in London about the war. Kitchener blocked Hobhouse from returning to South Africa by invoking martial law provisions.

Historian Caroline Elkins characterised Kitchener's conduct of the war as a "scorched earth policy", as his forces razed homesteads, poisoned wells and implemented concentration camps, as well as turned women and children into targets in the war.

The Treaty of Vereeniging ending the war was signed in May 1902 following a tense six months. During this period Kitchener struggled against the governor of the Cape Colony (Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner), and against the British government. Milner was a hard-line conservative and wanted to Anglicise the Afrikaans-speaking people (the Boers) by force, and both Milner and the British government wanted to assert victory by forcing the Boers to sign a humiliating peace treaty; Kitchener wanted a more generous compromise peace treaty that would recognise certain rights for the Afrikaners and promise them future self-government. He even entertained a peace treaty proposed by Louis Botha and the other Boer leaders, although he knew the British government would reject the offer; their proposal would have maintained the sovereignty of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State while requiring them to sign a perpetual treaty of alliance with the UK and grant major concessions to the British, such as equal language rights for English with Dutch in their countries, voting rights for Uitlanders, and a customs and railway union with the Cape Colony and the Natal. During Kitchener's posting in South Africa, Kitchener became acting High Commissioner for Southern Africa.

Court-martial of Breaker Morant

In the Breaker Morant case, five Australian officers and one English officer of an irregular unit, the Bushveldt Carbineers, were court-martialled for summarily executing twelve Boer prisoners, and also for the murder of a German missionary believed to be a Boer sympathiser, all allegedly under orders approved by Kitchener. The celebrated horseman and bush poet Lt. Harry "Breaker" Morant and Lt. Peter Handcock were found guilty, sentenced to death, and shot by firing squad at Pietersburg on 27 February 1902. Their death warrants were personally signed by Kitchener. He reprieved a third soldier, Lt. George Witton, who served 32 months before being released.

India

In late 1902 Kitchener was appointed Commander-in-Chief, India, and arrived there to take up the position in November, in time to be in charge during the January 1903 Delhi Durbar. He immediately began the task of reorganising the Indian Army. Kitchener's plan "The Reorganisation and Redistribution of the Army in India" recommended preparing the Indian Army for any potential war by reducing the size of fixed garrisons and reorganising it into two armies, to be commanded by Generals Sir Bindon Blood and George Luck.

While many of the Kitchener Reforms were supported by the viceroy, Lord Curzon of Kedleston, who had originally lobbied for Kitchener's appointment, the two men eventually came into conflict. Curzon wrote to Kitchener advising him that signing himself "Kitchener of Khartoum" took up too much time and space – Kitchener commented on the pettiness of this (Curzon simply signed himself "Curzon" as a hereditary peer, although he later took to signing himself "Curzon of Kedleston"). They also clashed over the question of military administration, as Kitchener objected to the system whereby transport and logistics were controlled by a "Military Member" of the Viceroy's Council. After what Curzon's most recent biographer described as "prolonged intrigue" and "deceitful methods", including correspondence which Kitchener asked the recipients to destroy after reading, the commander-in-chief won the crucial support of the government in London, and the viceroy had no option but to resign.

Later events proved Curzon was right in opposing Kitchener's attempts to concentrate all military decision-making power in his own office. Although the offices of Commander-in-Chief and Military Member were now held by a single individual, senior officers could approach only the Commander-in-Chief directly. In order to deal with the Military Member, a request had to be made through the Army Secretary, who reported to the Indian Government and had right of access to the Viceroy. There were even instances when the two separate bureaucracies produced different answers to a problem, with the Commander-in-Chief disagreeing with himself as Military Member. This became known as "the canonisation of duality". Kitchener's successor, General Sir Garrett O'Moore Creagh, was nicknamed "no More K", and concentrated on establishing good relations with the viceroy, Lord Hardinge.

Kitchener presided over the Rawalpindi Parade in 1905 to honour the Prince and Princess of Wales's visit to India. That same year Kitchener founded the Indian Staff College at Quetta (now the Pakistan Command and Staff College), where his portrait still hangs. His term of office as commander-in-chief, India, was extended by two years in 1907. In April 1906 he was appointed colonel commandant of the Royal Engineers.

Return to Egypt

In June 1911, Kitchener then returned to Egypt as British agent and consul-general in Egypt during the formal reign of Abbas Hilmi II as Khedive.

At the time of the Agadir Crisis (summer 1911), Kitchener told the Committee of Imperial Defence that he expected the Germans to walk through the French "like partridges" and he informed Lord Esher "that if they imagined that he was going to command the Army in France he would see them damned first".

He was created Earl Kitchener, of Khartoum and of Broome in the County of Kent, on 29 June 1914.

During this period he became a proponent of Scouting and coined the phrase "once a Scout, always a Scout".

First World War

1914

At the outset of the First World War, the prime minister, Asquith, quickly had Kitchener appointed secretary of state for war; Asquith had been filling the job himself as a stopgap following the resignation of Colonel Seely over the Curragh Incident earlier in 1914. Kitchener was in Britain on his annual summer leave, between 23 June and 3 August 1914, and had boarded a cross-Channel steamer to commence his return trip to Cairo when he was recalled to London to meet with Asquith. War was declared at 11pm the next day.

Against cabinet opinion, Kitchener correctly predicted a long war that would last at least three years, require huge new armies to defeat Germany, and cause huge casualties before the end would come. Kitchener stated that the conflict would plumb the depths of manpower "to the last million". A massive recruitment campaign began, which soon featured a distinctive poster of Kitchener, taken from a magazine front cover. It may have encouraged large numbers of volunteers, and has proven to be one of the most enduring images of the war, having been copied and parodied many times since. Kitchener built up the "New Armies" as separate units because he distrusted the Territorials from what he had seen with the French Army in 1870. This may have been a mistaken judgement. The British reservists of 1914 tended to be much younger and fitter than their French equivalents a generation earlier.

Cabinet Secretary Maurice Hankey wrote of Kitchener:

The great outstanding fact is that within eighteen months of the outbreak of the war, when he had found a people reliant on sea-power, and essentially non-military in their outlook, he had conceived and brought into being, completely equipped in every way, a national army capable of holding its own against the armies of the greatest military Power the world had ever seen.

However, Ian Hamilton later wrote of Kitchener "he hated organisations; he smashed organisations ... he was a Master of Expedients".

At the War Council (5 August) Kitchener and Lieutenant General Sir Douglas Haig argued that the BEF should be deployed at Amiens, where it could deliver a vigorous counterattack once the route of German advance was known. Kitchener argued that the deployment of the BEF in Belgium would result in having to retreat and abandon much of its supplies almost immediately, because the Belgian Army would be unable to hold its ground against the Germans; Kitchener was proved right but, given the belief in fortresses common at the time, it is not surprising that the War Council disagreed with him.

1915

In January 1915, Field Marshal French, with the concurrence of other senior commanders (e.g. General Sir Douglas Haig), wanted the New Armies incorporated into existing divisions as battalions rather than sent out as entire divisions. French felt (wrongly) that the war would be over by the summer before the New Army divisions were deployed because Germany had recently redeployed some divisions to the east. French took the step of appealing to the prime minister, Asquith, over Kitchener's head, but Asquith refused to overrule Kitchener. This further damaged relations between French and Kitchener, who had travelled to France in September 1914 during the First Battle of the Marne to order French to resume his place in the Allied line.

Kitchener warned French in January 1915 that the Western Front was a siege line that could not be breached, in the context of Cabinet discussions about amphibious landings on the Baltic or North Sea Coast, or against Turkey. In an effort to find a way to relieve pressure on the Western front, Kitchener proposed an invasion of Alexandretta in Turkey with Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), New Army, and Indian troops. Alexandretta was an area with a large Christian population and was the strategic centre of the Ottoman Empire's railway network – its capture would have cut the empire in two. Yet he was instead eventually persuaded to support Winston Churchill's disastrous Gallipoli Campaign in 1915–1916. (Churchill's responsibility for the failure of this campaign is debated; for more information see David Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace.) As late as mid-October 1915, however, Kitchener told a parliamentary committee that withdrawal from the peninsula would be "the most disastrous event in the history of the empire". The eventual failure, combined with the Shell Crisis of 1915 – amidst press publicity engineered by Sir John French – dealt Kitchener's political reputation a heavy blow; Kitchener was popular with the public, so Asquith retained him in office in the new coalition government, but responsibility for munitions was moved to a new ministry headed by David Lloyd George. He was a sceptic about the tank, which is why it was developed under the auspices of Churchill's Admiralty.

With the Russians being pushed back from Poland, Kitchener thought the transfer of German troops west and a possible invasion of Britain were increasingly likely. He told the War Council (14 May) that he was not willing to send the New Armies overseas. He wired French (16 May 1915) that he would send no more reinforcements to France until he was clear the German line could be broken but sent two divisions at the end of May to please Joffre, not because he thought a breakthrough possible. He had wanted to conserve his New Armies to strike a knockout blow in 1916–17, but by the summer of 1915 realised that high casualties and a major commitment to France were inescapable. "Unfortunately we have to make war as we must, and not as we should like" as he told the Dardanelles Committee on 20 August 1915.

1916

Early in 1916 Kitchener visited Douglas Haig, newly appointed commander-in-chief of the BEF in France. Kitchener had been a key figure in the removal of Haig's predecessor Sir John French, with whom he had a poor relationship. Haig differed with Kitchener over the importance of Mediterranean efforts and wanted to see a strong General Staff in London, but nonetheless valued Kitchener as a military voice against the "folly" of civilians such as Churchill. However, he thought Kitchener "pinched, tired, and much aged", and thought it sad that his mind was "losing its comprehension" as the time for decisive victory on the Western Front (as Haig and Robertson saw it) approached. Kitchener was somewhat doubtful of Haig's plan to win decisive victory in 1916, and would have preferred smaller and purely attritional attacks, but sided with Robertson in telling the Cabinet that the planned Anglo-French offensive on the Somme should go ahead.

By 29 March 1916, Kitchener was under pressure from French prime minister Aristide Briand for the British to attack on the Western Front to help relieve the pressure of the German attack at Verdun. The French refused to bring troops home from Salonika, which Kitchener thought a ploy for the increase of French power in the Mediterranean.

On 2 June 1916, Kitchener personally answered questions asked by politicians about his running of the war effort; at the start of hostilities Kitchener had ordered two million rifles from various US arms manufacturers. Only 480 of these rifles had arrived in the UK by 4 June 1916. The number of shells supplied was no less paltry. Kitchener explained the efforts he had made to secure alternative supplies. He received a resounding vote of thanks from the 200 Members of Parliament (MPs) who had arrived to question him, both for his candour and for his efforts to keep the troops armed; Sir Ivor Herbert, who, a week before, had introduced the failed vote of censure in the House of Commons against Kitchener's running of the War Office, personally seconded the motion.

Death

Russian mission

In the midst of his other political and military concerns, Kitchener had devoted personal attention to the deteriorating situation on the Eastern Front. This included the provision of extensive stocks of war material for the Imperial Russian Army, which had been under increasing pressure since mid-1915. In May 1916, the chancellor of the exchequer Reginald McKenna suggested that Kitchener head a special and confidential mission to Russia to discuss munition shortages, military strategy and financial difficulties with the Imperial Russian Government and the Stavka (military high command), which was now under the personal command of Tsar Nicholas II. Both Kitchener and the Russians were in favour of face to face talks, and a formal invitation from the Tsar was received on 14 May. Kitchener left London by train for Scotland on the evening of 4 June with a party of officials, military aides and personal servants.

Lost at sea

Kitchener sailed from Scrabster to Scapa Flow on 5 June 1916 aboard HMS Oak. He had lunch with Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, commander-in-chief of the Grand Fleet, on board his flagship HMS Iron Duke; Kitchener was keen to discuss the recent Battle of Jutland and stated that he was looking forward to his three-week diplomatic mission to Russia as a break from domestic pressures. He then set out for Russia on board the armoured cruiser HMS Hampshire. At the last minute Jellicoe changed Hampshire's route on the basis of a mis-reading of the weather forecast and ignoring (or not being aware of) recent intelligence and sightings of German U-boat activity in the vicinity of the amended route. Shortly before 7:30 pm that same day, while steaming for the Russian port of Arkhangelsk during a force 9 gale, Hampshire struck a mine laid by the newly launched German U-boat U-75 (commanded by Kurt Beitzen) and sank west of the Orkney Islands. Recent research has set the death toll of those aboard Hampshire at 737. Only twelve men survived. Among the dead were all ten members of Kitchener's entourage. Kitchener himself was seen standing on the quarterdeck during the approximately twenty minutes that it took the ship to sink. His body was never recovered.

The news of Kitchener's death was received with shock all over the British Empire. A man in Yorkshire committed suicide at the news; a sergeant on the Western Front was heard to exclaim "Now we've lost the war. Now we've lost the war"; and a nurse wrote home to her family that she knew Britain would win as long as Kitchener lived, and now that he was gone: "How awful it is – a far worse blow than many German victories. So long as he was with us we knew even if things were gloomy that his guiding hand was at the helm."

General Douglas Haig commanding the British Armies on the Western Front remarked on first receiving the news of Kitchener's death via a German radio signal intercepted by the British Army, "How shall we get on without him". King George V wrote in his diary: "It is indeed a heavy blow to me and a great loss to the nation and the allies." He ordered army officers to wear black armbands for a week.

C. P. Scott, editor of The Manchester Guardian, is said to have remarked that "as for the old man, he could not have done better than to have gone down, as he was a great impediment lately".

Conspiracy theories

Kitchener's great fame, the suddenness of his death, and its apparently convenient timing for a number of parties gave almost immediate rise to a number of conspiracy theories about his death. One in particular was posited by Lord Alfred Douglas (of Oscar Wilde fame), suggesting a connection between Kitchener's death, the recent naval Battle of Jutland, Winston Churchill, and a Jewish conspiracy. Churchill successfully sued Douglas in what proved to be the last successful case of criminal libel in British legal history, and the latter spent six months in prison. Another claimed that Hampshire did not strike a mine at all, but was sunk by explosives secreted in the vessel by Irish Republicans.

General Erich Ludendorff, Generalquartiermeister and joint head (with Paul von Hindenburg) of Germany's war effort stated in the 1920s that Russian anti-Tsarists had betrayed the plan to visit the Russians to the German command:His mysterious death was the work neither of a German mine nor a German torpedo, but of the power which would not permit the Russian Army to recover with the help of Lord Kitchener because the destruction of Czarist Russia had been determined upon. Lord Kitchener's death was caused by his ability. In 1926, a hoaxer named Frank Power claimed in the Sunday Referee newspaper that Kitchener's body had been found by a Norwegian fisherman. Power brought a coffin back from Norway and prepared it for burial in St Paul's Cathedral. At this point, however, the authorities intervened, and the coffin was opened in the presence of police and a distinguished pathologist. The box was found to contain only tar for weight. There was widespread public outrage at Power, but he was never prosecuted.

Frederick Joubert Duquesne, a Boer soldier and spy, claimed that he had assassinated Kitchener after an earlier attempt to kill him in Cape Town failed. He was arrested and court-martialled in Cape Town and sent to the penal colony of Bermuda, but managed to escape to the U.S. MI5 confirmed that Duquesne was "a German intelligence officer ... involved in a series of acts of sabotage against British shipping in South American waters during the [First World] war"; he was wanted for: "murder on the high seas, the sinking and burning of British ships, the burning of military stores, warehouses, coaling stations, conspiracy, and the falsification of Admiralty documents".

Duquesne's unverified story was that he returned to Europe, posed as the Russian Duke Boris Zakrevsky in 1916, and joined Kitchener in Scotland. While on board HMS Hampshire with Kitchener, Duquesne claimed to have signalled a German submarine that then sank the cruiser, and was rescued by the submarine, later being awarded the Iron Cross for his efforts. Duquesne was later apprehended and tried by the authorities in the U.S. for insurance fraud, but managed to escape again. However, there are "numerous improbabilities", in Duquesne's story, and "no records" to corroborate any part of it.

Legacy

Kitchener is officially remembered in a chapel on the northwest corner of St Paul's Cathedral in London, near the main entrance, where a memorial service was held in his honour.

In Canada, the city of Berlin, Ontario, named in respect to a large German immigrant settler population, was renamed Kitchener following a 1916 referendum.

Since 1970, the opening of new records has led historians to rehabilitate Kitchener's reputation to some extent. Robin Neillands, for instance, notes that Kitchener consistently rose in ability as he was promoted. Some historians now praise his strategic vision in the First World War, especially his laying the groundwork for the expansion of munitions production and his central role in the raising of the British army in 1914 and 1915, providing a force capable of meeting Britain's continental commitment.

His commanding image, appearing on recruiting posters demanding "Your country needs you!", remains recognised and parodied in popular culture.

In the 1972 movie Young Winston, Kitchener is portrayed by John Mills.

In the 2021 movie The King's Man, Kitchener is portrayed by Charles Dance.

Kitchener figures significantly in Lucy Maud Montgomery's 1921 novel Rilla of Ingleside, the eighth book in the Anne of Green Gables series. The titular character, Rilla Blythe, takes in an abandoned infant whom she names James Kitchener Anderson. His middle name is chosen at the behest of Susan, her family's housekeeper, who is an ardent follower of Kitchener and refuses to call the child anything but "Little Kitchener".

Memorials

As a British Army officer who was lost at sea in the First World War and has no known grave, Kitchener has his name commemorated on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's Hollybrook Memorial at Hollybrook Cemetery, located at Southampton, Hampshire.

Blue plaques have been erected to mark where Kitchener lived in Carlton Gardens, Westminster and at Broome Park near Canterbury.

The NW chapel of All Souls at St Paul's Cathedral, London, re-dedicated as the Kitchener Memorial in 1925, though normally closed to visitors, remains clearly visible from the main entrance lobby. The recumbent white-marble figure was designed by Detmar Blow. The figure, plus the statues of Saint George and Saint Michael and the Pieta in the chapel were sculpted by William Reid Dick.

A month after Kitchener's death the Lord Mayor of London established the Lord Kitchener National Memorial Fund to honour his memory. The Fund aided casualties of the war, both practically and financially; following the war's end it enabled university educations for soldiers, ex-soldiers, and their sons and daughters, a function it continues to perform. A Memorial Book of tributes and remembrances from Kitchener's peers, edited by Sir Hedley Le Bas, was printed to benefit the fund.

The Lord Kitchener Memorial Homes in Chatham, Kent, were built with funds from public subscription following Kitchener's death. A small terrace of cottages, they are used to provide affordable rented accommodation for servicemen and women who have seen active service or for their widows and widowers.

A statue of Kitchener mounted on his favourite charger, Democrat, stands on Khartoum Road (near Fort Amherst) in Chatham, Kent. Erected in Khartoum in 1920, it was moved to the UK in 1959 after Sudan became independent in 1956. It was unveiled at this site by the secretary of state for war, Christopher Soames. The statue was designed by the Hull-born sculptor Sydney March.

The Kitchener Memorial on Mainland, Orkney, stands on the cliff edge at Marwick Head (HY2325), near the spot where Kitchener died at sea. It is a square, crenellated stone tower with the inscription: "This tower was raised by the people of Orkney in memory of Field Marshal Earl Kitchener of Khartoum on that corner of his country which he had served so faithfully nearest to the place where he died on duty. He and his staff perished along with the officers and nearly all the men of HMS Hampshire on 5 June 1916."

Debate on Kitchener's sexuality

Kitchener was a lifelong bachelor. From his time in Egypt in 1892, he gathered around him a cadre of eager young and unmarried officers nicknamed "Kitchener's band of boys", who included Captain Oswald Fitzgerald, his aide-de-camp and "constant and inseparable companion", who died with him on their voyage to Russia. Rumour sometimes circulated that Kitchener was homosexual. Egyptian campaign and Boer War veteran Major A. E. Wearne, who was a strong critic of Kitchener, stated in 1909 that he had the "failing acquired by most of the Egyptian officers, a taste for buggery". In 2001 it was revealed that Lady Astor's son Robert Gould Shaw III told David Somerset, 11th Duke of Beaufort that Kitchener had been his first seducer. An elderly source told an identical story to historian Peter King, while several other sources, including Lady Diana Cooper, stated similar.

Since Kitchener's death a number of biographers have suggested or hinted that he was latent or active homosexual. Later scholars who made the case for his homosexuality include H. Montgomery Hyde, Ronald Hyam (who commented on his avoidance of interviews with women, his keen interest in the Boy Scout movement, and his decorating his rose garden with four pairs of sculptured bronze boys. According to Hyam, "there is no evidence that he ever loved a woman"), Denis Judd and Frank Richardson. Philip Magnus hints at homosexuality, though Lady Winifred Renshaw said that Magnus later said "I know I've got the man wrong, too many people have told me so."

More recently biographer C. Brad Faught acknowledged Kitchener's "vestigial femininity" in collecting porcelain and organising dinner parties, plus emotional repression typical of his class and time, but concluded that the absence of evidence either way leaves "an issue about which historians can say almost nothing useful", while biographer George H. Cassar argued that Kitchener's letters to his sister include evidence of heterosexual attraction and that if there were any credible evidence that Kitchener was homosexual, it would have been used by his many opponents during his lifetime.

Honours and arms

Orders

Kitchener received numerous campaign and commemorative decorations from the British government, as well as several medals from allied nations.

His other decorations included:

British

Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter (KG) – 3 June 1915

Knight of the Order of St Patrick (KP) – 19 June 1911

Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) – 15 November 1898 (KCB – 17 November 1896; CB – 8 November 1889)

Member of the Order of Merit (OM) – 12 July 1902

Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Star of India (GCSI) – 25 June 1909

Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG) – 29 November 1900 (KCMG – 12 February 1894; CMG – 6 August 1886)

Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire (GCIE) – 1 January 1908

Foreign

Order of Osmanieh, Ottoman Empire first class – 7 December 1896 (second class – 30 April 1894; third class – 11 June 1885)

Order of the Medjidie, Ottoman Empire first class – 18 November 1893 (second class – 18 June 1888)

Grand Cordon with Paulownia Flowers of the Order of the Rising Sun, Empire of Japan – 11 November 1909

Order of Karađorđe's Star with swords, Kingdom of Serbia – 1918

Medal Bar (as worn at time of death)

Two medals were given as souvenirs, and Kitchener never wore them. Great War medals were issued posthumously.

Honorary regimental appointments

Honorary Colonel, Scottish Command Telegraph Companies (Army Troops, Royal Engineers) – 1898

Honorary Colonel, East Anglian Divisional Engineers, Royal Engineers – 1901

Honorary Colonel, 5th (7th Royal Lancashire Militia) Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers – 11 June 1902; later 3rd (Reserve) Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers

Honorary Colonel, 4th, later 6th Battalion, Royal Scots – 1905

Colonel Commandant, Royal Engineers – 1906

Honorary Colonel, 7th Gurkha Rifles – 1908

Honorary Colonel, 1st County of London Yeomanry – 1910

Colonel-in-Chief, Corps of New Zealand Engineers – 1911

Regimental Colonel, Irish Guards – 1914

Honorary degrees and offices

Freedom of the borough, Southampton, 12 July 1902

Freedom of the borough, Ipswich, 22 September 1902

Freedom of the city, Sheffield, 30 September 1902.

Freedom of the borough, Chatham, 4 October 1902

Honorary Freedom of the City of Liverpool, 11 October 1902

Honorary Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers

Honorary Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Grocers, 1 August 1902.