‘A Particularly Anglo-Saxon Institution’: The British General Staff in the Era of Two World Wars

In 1920, the American military attaché in London, Colonel L.O.Solbert, prefaced a description of the institution he had been sent across the Atlantic to observe and report on with the warning that ‘there is probably no more complex and complicated organization in the world than the British Army’. ¹ The uniqueness to which he drew attention applied as much to the General Staff as it did to the regimental system, the social composition and outlook of the officer corps, and the equipment and functions of the army of which it was a part. Its place in the army, its character and make-up, its functions and its influence were determined at least as much by its location in the machinery of government as by its purpose, giving it a unique complexion which made it in many respects dissimilar to any of the continental staffs with which it shared the superficial similarity of a title. ²