Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, (; 24 June 1850 – 5 June 1916), was a senior British Army officer and colonial administrator who won notoriety for his imperial campaigns, most especially his scorched earth policy against the Boers and his establishment of concentration camps during the Second Boer War, and later played a central role in the early part of the First World War. Kitchener was credited in 1898 for winning the Battle of Omdurman and securing control of the Sudan for which he was made Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, becoming a
History of the United Kingdom during the First World War World War because of its blood ties to the ruling family of Germany, Britain's prime adversary in the war. Before the war, the British royal family had been known as the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. In 1910, George V became King on the death of his father, King Edward VII, and remained king throughout the war. He was the first cousin of the German Kaiser Wilhelm II, who came to symbolise all the horrors of the war. Queen Mary, although British like her mother, was the daughter of the Duke of Teck, a descendant of the German Royal House