Directorate of Military Intelligence (United Kingdom)

Department of the War Office (1873–1964)

The Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) was a department of the British War Office. Over its lifetime the Directorate underwent a number of organisational changes, absorbing and shedding sections over time.

The first instance of an organisation which would later become the DMI was the Department of Topography & Statistics, formed by Major Thomas Best Jervis, late of the Bombay Engineer Corps, in 1854 in the early stages of the Crimean War. In 1873 the Intelligence Branch was created within the Quartermaster General's Department with an initial staff of seven officers. Initially the Intelligence Branch was solely concerned with collecting intelligence, but under the leadership of Henry Brackenbury, a protege of influential Adjutant General Lord Wolseley, it was increasingly concerned with planning. However despite these steps towards a nascent general staff, the Intelligence Branch remained a purely advisory body, something that sharply limited its influence. The Branch was transferred to the Adjutant General's Department in 1888 and Brackenbury's title was changed to Director of Military Intelligence. After Wolseley's appointment as Commander in Chief of the Forces in 1895, he made the Director of Military Intelligence directly responsible to him. At the outbreak of the Second Boer War in 1899 the Intelligence Branch had 13 officers. Prior to the war it produced a highly accurate summary of the Boer republics' military potential and was the only part of the War Office to escape criticism in the resulting Royal Commission. In the immediate aftermath of the Boer War the Intelligence Branch was enlarged and its head elevated to Director General of Mobilisation and Military Intelligence. Following the Esher Report in 1904 the War Office was dramatically reorganized. The post of Commander in Chief was abolished and replaced by the Chief of the General Staff. Planning and intelligence would be the responsibility of the Directorate of Military Operations. When the War Office was subsumed into the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in 1964, the DMI was absorbed into the Defence Intelligence Staff.