Alfred Knox

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the British general and politician. For the British codebreaker and classical scholar, see Dilly Knox.

First World War
Russian Civil War
AwardsMentioned in dispatches
Other workMember of Parliament

Major-General Sir Alfred William Fortescue Knox (30 October 1870 – 9 March 1964) was a career British military officer and later a Conservative Party
politician.

Military career

Born in

mentioned in despatches.[2]

In 1911 Knox was appointed the British Military Attaché in then

Bolsheviks' taking of the Winter Palace
on 7 November (25 October Old Style) 1917.

He wrote:[4]

The garrison of the Winter Palace originally consisted of about 2,000 all told, including detachments from junker and ensign schools, three squadrons of Cossacks, a company of volunteers and a company from the Women's Battalion. It had six guns and one armoured car, the crew of which, however, declared that it had only come "to guard the art treasures of the Palace and was otherwise neutral"!

The garrison had dwindled owing to desertions, for there were no provisions and it had been practically starved for two days. There was no strong man to take command and to enforce discipline. No one had any stomach for fighting; and some of the ensigns even borrowed great coats of soldier pattern from the women to enable them to escape unobserved.

The greater part of the junkers of the Mikhail Artillery School returned to their school, taking with them four out of their six guns. Then the Cossacks left, declaring themselves opposed to bloodshed! At 10 p.m. a large part of the ensigns left, leaving few defenders except the ensigns of the Engineering School and the company of women.

During the Russian Civil War, he was the head of the British Mission (Britmis) and notional Chef d'Arrière of the White Army in Siberia under

Admiral Kolchak. He barely intervened in the combat operations, as Kolchak was unwilling to listen to his advice and to accept demands about a Russian Constituent Assembly after the war.[5]

In 1921 Knox published his memoirs, With the Russian Army: 1914–1917. In this book he also tells the story of heroine Elsa Brändström.

Political career

At the

Hitler as well as the rearmament of Britain during the interwar period. Knox remained a strong opponent of Communism throughout his career and following the 1939 Soviet invasion of Finland during World War II, he campaigned to give military support to the Finns.[9]

He died on 9 March 1964.

In fiction

Knox is depicted in the book

General Samsonov attempts to lead his army through East Prussia.[10]

References

  1. ^ Hart′s Army list, 1902
  2. ^ "No. 27499". The London Gazette. 28 November 1902. p. 8254.
  3. ^ Neal Ascherson, "After Seven Hundred Years," London Review of Books (24 May 2012), p. 8.
  4. ^ Knox, Alfred. With the Russian Army, 1914-1917. Hutchinson & co. p. 709.
  5. ^ Smele, Jonathan (2017). The "Russian" Civil Wars, 1916–1926. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 111–112.
  6. ^ "No. 33508". The London Gazette. 21 June 1929. pp. 4106–4107.
  7. ^ This was a major political issue of the early 1930s. Following the Round Table Conferences of 1930-32, the National Government had produced a White Paper on the constitutional future of India in March 1933. After a further year and a half of debate, legislation was introduced, which became the Government of India Act 1935, creating elected provincial governments in India.
  8. ISBN 9788170225379
    (p. 379).
  9. ISBN 0415349710
    (p. 92)
  10. ISBN 9780820331867
    (p.70)

External links
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Wycombe
1924–1945 		Succeeded by
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