Ross made his last visit to the branch in 2023 to give his talk on The Origins of the Schlieffen Plan and has kindly agreed to return to give another talk on a subject of particular interest to him. This time, his talk will look at William Robertson.
Robertson was the creator of the modern position of Chief of the Imperial General Staff, who imposed a strategy on a reluctant Cabinet and then resolutely defended it against all comers. That strategy ended the chaos of 1915 and focused all conceivable energy on the Western Front as the only place to defeat Germany. But was he really just Haig’s ‘man of business’, in London because the commander of the BEF preferred to be surrounded by gentlemen in France, and tasked with merely acting as a buffer to protect Haig’s freedom of action?