British Aristocrats who were taken in by the Nazis 15/1/23
While in Belfast the author visited Mount Stewart the Londonderry Family home and found a statue of a SS helmeted man carrying a Nazi flag, it had been presented to Londonderry by Joachim von Ribbentrop who was later convicted by the Nuremberg and hanged in 1946. Lady Londonderry loathed Ribbentrop. The King called Londonderry "Charley "and he was a cousin of Churchills.
1928 The Anglo German association was promoting pro German feeling in Britain long before the Nazi takeover. The Jewish Lord Reading was the chairman till 1933 when it became Nazified. It now became a Nazi propaganda arm in Britain and had support of wealthy business men.
1931 Londonderry was appointed Secretary of State for Air under Ramsey Mc Donald. He was wealthy through property and coal mines and had 5 children. He entertained a lot and "Catered he way into the Cabinet. Experts agreed that air power would be decisive in the next war.
1933Hitler was a puzzle and that is how he was appointed Chancellor of German by a calamitous misjudgment .He turned Germany into a huge prison and yet later everyone was prepared to give Hitler a chance. It took a while to realize that Hitler was there to stay and that his anti-Semitic policy was not a propaganda ploy. The foreign office dealt with other countries through as system of trust, not here
1933 He withdrew Germany from the Disarmament convention in Geneva and the League of Nations. This the British should have taken rearmament seriously. The Labour party led a pacifist campaign in the elections.
1934 Britain was still interested in a disarmament agreement, but the talks were effectively dead.
1935 The Versailles Treaty limited the German army to 100,000 and he announced he was increasing it to 550,000. and by then he had reached parity with Britain in armaments. France could not take action against Germany without British support. Britain's interest lay in protecting her empire and not interfering in Europe. Anyone who had read Mein Kampf had Hitlers aims clearly stated. Some thought that Nazism was preferable to Communism. In China the Japanese were invading Manchuria.
At his height Oswald Mosely had only 50,000 supporters. Churchill was powerless but insisted that the Germans were catching up to British armaments'. S. Africa talked of neutrality while Australia and Canada wanted to avoid oversea commitment. Only New Zeeland pledged support. Germany's air budget was 5 times what it had been before Hitler.
The French national assembly announced that conscription would be lengthened from a year to 2 years and this gave Hitler an excuse to reintroduce conscription. When Eden visited Germany Hitler mentioned that their airforce already had parity with the British.
It was under Londonderry that Hurricanes and Spitfires started being build as well as bombers. Londonderry was replaced by Lord Halifax and Baldwin did not like his appeasement outlook. Even out of power the Germans treated Londonderry as an influential statesman Castlereagh who negotiations in 1815 was an ancestor of Londonderry and he felt that he was capable of solving the conflict like him.
Londonderry was not an anti-Semite and his wife helped Jewish refugees but he did swollow anti-Semitic tropes.
1936 Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland. Edward VIII abdication was a blow to the Nazi hopes.
The French government was very left wing tended towards communism. Vansittart was centre of British foreign policy and was very much against Germany.
1937 Hitler's antagonism to the German churches both Catholic and Protestant and involvement in the Spanish Civil war where they bombed Guernica drove another wedge between the countries. Mussolini's state visit to Germany underlined their close relations. Ribbentrop replaced von Neurath as Hitler's foreign minister.
The Anslusch and with Hitler going to Vienna and being welcomed by crowds at the Heldenplatz was orchestrated by the Nazi's
1938 The British public had hardly heard about the Sudetenland till now, but its aim was the destruction of Czechoslovakia. Which had a large armaments industry ripe for the pickings. There was Nazi propaganda about the need to end German oppressions there. Now both Japan and Italy were aligned with Germany. Hitler's unlimited intension of conquest was now realized, the foreign office had noted this as early as 1933.
Munich had shown Hitler how weak the allies were and from now the Nazi openly showed their anti Jewish pogrom's with Kristallnacht.
1939 March Hitler's entry into Prague. This marked a definite shift in British public opinion of appeasement. Now it was finally realized that Hitler's exact aims had been laid down in Myn Kamf.
The last letter to Goring, Londonderry recognized that negotiation had reached an end.
Hitler delayed the invasion of Poland hoping that there would be a Munich to the Polish crises. British assessment was that Poland could only hold out a few weeks.
During the "phoney" war there was activity at sea the passenger liner Athenia was sunk by a German U-boat, the loss of the aircraft carrier Courageous and the Royal Oak was torpedoed.
Churchill was a Francophile but Londonderry view of the French as poor allies proved correct. Once Churchill became PM there were finally no more initiates to seek peace with Hitler.
Now Londonderry worked to vindicate himself in books he wrote. He wrote that there were only 2 possible courses to take, either to become friends of Germany or to rearm, we did neither. He owed his political career till 1935 to patronage , he was not a democrat that took note of public opinion
After the war the coal mines of Londonderry's wealth were nationalized by the Labour Government.
1976 Mount Steward was handed over to the National Trust.
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