Neill Malcolm
Sir Neill Malcolm | |
---|---|
Born | 8 October 1869 London, United Kingdom |
Died | 21 December 1953 London, United Kingdom | (aged 84)
Allegiance | Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath Distinguished Service Order |
Military career
Educated at
After his return to the United Kingdom, he was made Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General at Army Headquarters in 1906 and Secretary of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1908 before becoming a General Staff Officer at the Staff College, Camberley in 1912.[2]
He served in the
After the war he was Chief of the British Military Mission to Berlin from 1919 and then GOV Troops in the Straits Settlements in 1921 before retiring in 1924.[2]
It has been suggested that Malcolm, while in Berlin, provided the origin of the phrase 'stabbed in the back' to describe the reason for the German defeat. In the autumn of 1919, when Erich Ludendorff was dining with Malcolm, Malcolm asked Ludendorff why he thought Germany lost the war. Ludendorff replied with a list of excuses, including that the home front failed the army.[6]
Malcolm asked him: "Do you mean, General, that you were stabbed in the back?" Ludendorff's eyes lit up and he leapt upon the phrase like a dog on a bone. "Stabbed in the back?" he repeated. "Yes, that's it, exactly, we were stabbed in the back." And thus was born a legend which has never entirely perished.
Later life
In retirement he was President of the North Borneo Chartered Company from 1926 to 1946 and High Commissioner for German refugees from 1936 to 1938.[2]
Family
In May 1907 he married his cousin, Angela Malcolm; they had a daughter and two sons, one of whom was the British diplomat Dugald Malcolm.[1][7]
References
- ^ a b Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- ^ a b c d e f g "Malcolm, Neill". Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives. Archived from the original on 31 July 2007.
- JSTOR 1773509.
- ^ Hart's Army list, 1901
- ^ "The War – Casualties". The Times. No. 36079. London. 2 March 1900. p. 7.
- ^ John W. Wheeler-Bennett (Spring 1938). "Ludendorff: The Soldier and the Politician". The Virginia Quarterly Review. 14 (2): 187–202.
- ISBN 978-0-19-954089-1. Retrieved 6 September 2022.
Bibliography
- Davies, Frank (1997). Bloody Red Tabs: General Officer Casualties of the Great War 1914–1918. London: Pen & Sword Books. ISBN 978-0-85052-463-5.