Did Kitchener Influence WWI for Better or Worse as Secretary of War?

[Nytram01]

In this poll I ask people to judge the man purely on contibution to the First World War and nothing else.

When hostilities broke out in WWI Herbert Horatio Kitchener was assigned to the office of Secretary of War. In this role he was in a position to exert significant influence on the British War effort until his death . The question then is, did he help better prepare and supply Britain for the needs of the war? Did his influence over campaigns prove helpful or detrimental? Was his contibution to the British War effort positive or negative?

 

[Nytram01]

Any opinions to go with those votes?

 

[jsb]

I don't know much about it but from the quotes I have read he was one of the few who thought about a long war (and since he died he cant have made them up post war ).

So positive if not massively so.

JSB

 

[tallthinkev]

He was quicker to react to tactics used by the Central Powers than some. Also, he did see the need for aircraft. But as he died less than two years in to the war it's difficult to know how his ideas would have worked out.

 

[Salamander]

Positive...... if you support the Allies, that is.

 

[Bee]

Unlike almost everyone else in the government (or elsewhere in Europe), Kitchener foresaw from the onset of the war that it would be a long war of attrition that would require a huge army. Accordingly he put a conscription and training system in place so that this army was created in time.