Field Marshal The 1st Earl Kitchener of Khartoum, KG - Fritz Joubert Duquesne

Hi Drummon. I have been asked by Robert Sydney Blake to add him to the project, after he had read the book of Emily Hobhouse.
But if any of you other feel it is unfit, we can explain it here and gladly take it away again.
Sharon Doubell you are the curator there. Please let me know your feelings. It is due to his cruelty in the concentration camps. Sydney have added the part of the book on Kitchener's profile in the about section.

Private User very intersting piece indeed. I love all the history coming to light.
Private User that one is your profile. Any feedback.
Juds

Personally, I think Kitchener was a reprehensible psychopath, but I'd say that a sentence and a link to Emily Hobhouse and Duquesne would be more appropriate than to reproduce her or Duquesne's biographies on Kitchener's profile page.
I'll see what I can do and report back.

Putting those altogether is more logical on a project page, as you say, Judi. I would definitely link his name to the Concentration Camp projects, Judi.

I mean, link his 'profile'.

Perhaps Kitchener was a reprehensible psychopath, but I am not sure that he is what people had in mind for the "Ambassadors of Darkness" project (where he had been linked and which Judi was referring to) - we could flood that project otherwise!

Lol - I didn't realise she was referring to that project :-) https://www.geni.com/projects/Ambassadors-of-Darkness/2729. But If anyone fits the bill for an Ambassador of Darkness - Kitchner does. I see Adolf Hitler is included for his concentration camp solution to his 'Jewish problem'; since Kitchener's concentration camp solution to his 'Boer problem' killed 27 thousand boer women and children - I think he fits the bill perfectly.
Being responsible for deliberately wiping out 27 thousand civilians doesn't seem to me to be so common an occurrence as to flood the project.

indeed - point taken!

http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/anglo-boer-war-2-kitchener-...

I was just wondering where we draw the line? There are so many people in history who have been responsible for terrible consequences - the American Native Indians and the loss of Aboriginal life in Australia for instance - should those responsible for the legislation that brought about such terrible loss of life be tagged as Ambassadors of Darkness? Wherre does the buck stop?

Kitchener was responsible for the legislation and the implementation of this policy, which was largely his idea, too. 80% of the 27 thousand civilians who died in his concentration camps were children - in a war where the British were the aggressors. If the buck doesn't include Kitchener before it stops, then we need to query what makes Hitler so personally culpable.
This is not a small issue for South Africans - as you can imagine, we feel very strongly about it.

If I recall correctly, Herman Goering makes this point to the British too.

I have let this simmer on the back burner for a while. I am wondering whether INTENTION is a key word. Can we say that it was his intention to kill those people? Hitler had no doubt that he was killing the people - I don't think we can say that Kitchener thought he would implement the legislation in order to kill thousands of people?

I understand completely about it being an issue - my family lost 3 children in one of the camps and my grandmother was resentful all her life. My grandfather was born in one as well.

Sharon as I understand your comment above, you feel that there should only be a one sentence comment about Kitcheners role in the scorched earth tactic in the ABW and then a link to Emily's profile. I must say I really can't agree with this approach. Emily was the one who exposed his cruelty. Without this as part of his profile a visitor to his profile will never know what kind of person he was. In other words it is the heritage he left behind and therefore a more complete version should be part of his profile.

I'm not sure what you'd say it was, if it wasn't intentional? Accidental?!

If somebody had deliberately killed 27 000 British civilians in concentration camps in their own country in the 20th Century simply because they wanted your gold, you'd have been taught about it in your schools, and you'd have vilified them with Hitler.

Of course he knew he was killing people:
- It was his policy.
- He was there implementing it.
- He knew how many kids were dying in his camps and he still continued to do it. - 27 000 women & children trapped under your control, and dying horrible deaths of starvation under your nose in the space of about 18 months is difficult to miss, especially if it 's being advertised in the British press and debated in the British parliament!

He ignored it because it was expedient. The boers had discovered gold and the British were losing the war to take it from them. Killing their kids in concentration camps was the only way they could hope to win. He said as much on paper. His career depended on it.
And he was well rewarded for doing it!

This isn't an historical grey area. http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/second-anglo-boer-war-1899-1902
It's not something you let simmer to decide culpability.

=I don't think we can say that Kitchener thought he would implement the legislation in order to kill thousands of people?= Yet, when he realised he was killing tens of thousands of children, HE CONTINUED TO DO IT?!

=I understand completely about it being an issue - my family lost 3 children in one of the camps and my grandmother was resentful all her life= But you're arguing that this man isn't personally culpable?! I don't understand, and I'm married to a British national, so I do understand what is left out of the British History syllabus; but it isn't hard to research the factual details about KItchener's concentration camps now.

It's been simmering on the back burner of the entire history of the South African Republic that it created!

Robert Sydney Blake, perhaps, after all, you are correct. I've been taking it for granted that Kitchener's role in the concentration camps is a well known fact. Perhaps it is has been far more effectively hidden, because - unlike Hitler - he won the war by perpetrating the concentration camps; and the victors tell the history.

Personally I don't think Duquesne is relevant to Kitchener besides as a novelty interest.

Re: the Ambassadors of Evil project, I'm not convinced he is on the quite as par as the others. I don't believe the camps were designed to kill, but kill they certainly did, and not nearly enough was done to stop the dying. Therefore Kitchener is as guilty as sin.

Make a new heading and add him, I would...

More deaths can be directly attributed to this man in about 18 months than to the whole sick system of apartheid.

17 June 1901: David Lloyd-George in England warns, "A barrier of dead children's bodies will rise between the British and Boer races in South Africa." http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/women-children-white-concentratio...

1 November1901. Emily Hobhouse, under deportation orders that had involved physically removing her onto a departing ship - writes to Lord Kitchener: "...To carry out orders such as these is a degradation both to the office and the manhood of your soldiers. I feel ashamed to own you as a fellow-countryman."And to Lord Milner: "Your brutal orders have been carried out and thus I hope you will be satisfied. Your narrow incompetency to see the real issues of this great struggle is leading you to such acts as this and many others, staining your own name and the reputation of England..
u

7 December 1901, In a letter to Chamberlain, Lord Milner writes: "... The black spot - the one very black spot - in the picture is the frightful mortality in the Concentration Camps ... It was not until 6 weeks or 2 months ago that it dawned on me personally ... that the enormous mortality was not incidental to the first formation of the camps and the sudden inrush of people already starving, but was going to continue. The fact that it continues is no doubt a condemnation of the camp system.

I am/was trying to be objective in an effort to define or understand what qualified a person to be an "Ambassador of Darkness" - Scrolling through the people added to that project is very interesting as is seeing who appears on this list of 100 people - http://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-all-time-worst-people-in... - I particularly like Albert Einstein's quote at http://www.historyandheadlines.com/evil-people-history/

There is no doubt that the actions of the British with their scorched land policy and the camps were heinous and that the legacy lives on - as do the decisions of the Verwoerd government in the 1950's. There are many who could be considered to fit the bill from all walks of life and nationalities. Not everyone would agree all the time - depending on their own experiences, conditioning etc. etc. etc. see also https://25mostevil.wordpress.com/

Thank goodness there are also good people in the world

Yes, I understand that we are looking for objective parameters to distinguish Kitchener's actions from 'carrying out orders' or a 'war strategy' - and perhaps this discussion should be moved to that project for that reason.

You are trying to say that his actions fit under the title of evil done by groups - where no one person can be singled out to blame, or is done as part of an overall war strategy, which legitimate its intentions, or at least puts them out of the project parameters.

I'm saying that the scorched earth policy was a war strategy- used many times in human history; but inventing and maintaining the Concentration Camps was a war crime, and can be largely attributed to one man - the way we blame Hitler for the Nazi camps. The fact that no world Court tried him for it has allowed the British to look the other way too , but that doesn't mean he doesn't exist as a person whose particular invention, and administration of it fits the same criteria as we use to hold Hitler personally responsible for his camps and add him to the project for it.

No argument there Sharon.

June, Kitchener was losing the war. The scorched earth tactic was his way of hitting the boers were it hurt most - burn theirfarms and deprive them of their livelyhood , go for their families and break their spirit. Woman and children were given half rations if their husbands/father kept on fighting. Lizzie van Zyl, whose picture you can see in the about section under Kitcheners profile, is a glaring example of this. This was done intentionaly so Kitchener deserves his place under the worst war criminals of history.
I am sure you would agree with this

As far as Kitcheners intension goes - he cannot hide behind 'I did not know'. Emily informed him about conditions. He then prevented her from visiting the concentration camps by jailing her and sending her herback to England.
If somebody starts a project 'Angels on Earth' Emily Hobhòuse should be there right alongside Mother Theresa !

Great article here: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/cecil-rhodes-protest-on...

Charlie Gilmour states:

On the other side of the parade is a hero, at last. Field Marshal Earl Kitchener of Khartoum was one of the truly great men of the British Empire – so much so that his image was famously used for recruitment purposes during the First World War: "Your country needs you!" But it wasn't just Britain's youth that he ushered into an early grave. During the Second Boer War, in response to the guerrilla tactics of the Afrikaners, he vastly expanded the use of a new tactic: the concentration camp.

Tens of thousands were interred in filthy, under-supplied and exposed camps. Emily Hobhouse, a campaigner who made it her mission to expose conditions, wrote that "the whole talk [in the camps] was of death – who died yesterday, who lay dying today and who would be dead tomorrow". The reward for her efforts was an attack piece in the Daily Mail, written by that great author of Empire, Edgar Wallace (Sanders of the River, King Kong and scores more). It was headlined, simply, "Woman – The Enemy".

By the end of the war, 28,000 Boers, mostly women and children, had perished in the camps. The black victims of the policy went uncounted. Years later, when the British Ambassador to Germany expressed concerns about Nazi use of concentration camps, Hermann Goering reached for his encyclopaedia: "First used by the British in South Africa," he announced. It's hard to imagine a more inappropriate figure for us to place on a pedestal – yet there he stands.

Good article.