ABSTRACT
With the publication of Edmonds’ final volume on Third Ypres in 1948 the 33-year long process of compiling the Official Military Histories of the Great War came to an end. Founded on the objective of the government to ‘place before the public an absolutely reliable and impartial account’ of that conflict, the Historical Section and its authors encountered many obstacles on the path to completing their task.1 Their work remained constantly at the mercy of the Treasury and prey to financial considerations which hampered progress and, on occasions, threatened to destroy the project altogether. Their volumes of Official History, as Hankey had correctly predicted, had regularly to ‘run the gauntlet of departmental criticism’ on their way to publication.2 However, Hankey was wrong on a number of counts. Far from emasculating them and depriving them of half their interest, two works were notably able to resist pressure from both the War Office and Foreign Office for major revision. Aspinall’s Gallipoli volume and Edmonds’ Somme volume emerged unchanged from persistent governmental attempts to protect the reputations of Haig and Hamilton by softening the tone of their criticisms. In so doing, these volumes not only testified to the literary independence of their authors but revealed that the ultimate authority for the content of these official works rested not with any political or service faction but with the Cabinet itself. As Aspinall pointed out, the Official Histories were not General Staff publications.
