Making Friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry, the Nazis, and the Road to War

This piece of excellent scholarship uses Lord Londonderry as the foil with which to see appeasement and the road to war in Europe in the 1930s. An entire generation is understood through this lens, particularly the world of the appeasers and the Nazi elite. For the first time many new pieces of the puzzle are woven together. For instance we learn that the same right wing people like Lord Beaverbrook, who supported appeasement also supported massive rearmament while the Labour politicians were lost in a pacifist dream trying to outlaw bombers on the eve of war and trusting agreements. We finally understand the psychology of appeasement. We see how some right wing politicians misunderstood fascism and that only Winston Churchill alone conceived the threat as it truly was, daring to fight verbally against the Nazi racial laws, which so many on the left and right ignored in favour of economic interpretations. We see here the fear of Bolshevism that led some into the hands of Hitler. Most remarkable for our own time is the famous call by Londonderry to `understand German needs and policies' in much the same way that we are told today to `understand the root causes of terrorism'. The appeasers in 1938 were asking the world to `understand' Nazism, when the only true course was no understand, no agreements, but only rearmament and the big stick approach. This is excellent scholarship at the highest level, woven with literary talent, showing that history can be truly poetic in its analysis. Through one man we are given a glimpse of an entire world gone mad. Seth J. Frantzman

Ian Kershaw continues to add to his list of extraordinarily valuable books on Nazi-era Germany in this volume focusing on Lord Londonderry's activities prior to the World War II. Londonderry (ironically, a cousin of Churchill) took the lead in attempting to improve relations between Britain and Hitler's Germany and, thereby, head off war. By focusing on Londonderry (1878-1949), the reader can come to understand the various reasons why appeasement appealed to so many British politicans and the general public. Of course, the interesting question is why did Londonderry so embrace the German point of view that he ended up publicly disgraced? Certainly some personal motives played a role, most directly his desire for vindication after being removed from the Cabinet as Air Minister (not to mention his failure to be named Viceroy for India) and generally being humiliated for his visits to Germany (Goering in particular), return visits from Nazi luminaries like Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, and very public pro-German activities and writings. Kershaw suggests that like many in his aristocratic class, facing increased dimnishment of their wealth and power, Hitler was seen as a helpful bulwark against "Bolshevism" and domestic socialist movements. In exchange for a free hand in Europe, Hitler would protect the prerogatives of the 0.1% of the population that owned 1/3 of Britain's wealth. Kershaw argues that Hitler was quite masterful in his manipulation of British public opinion--and one can hardly disagree. He also successfully exploited a split in the positions of France and Britain. Through Kershaw's skillful analysis, the genesis and appeal of the appeasement movement become evident. It is no wonder that Chamberlin fell into the trap. For Londonderry and this group, the agreement at Munich was a triumph, because it avoided war and insured a valid sphere of control for Germany. It took both "Krystalnacht" and Hitler's blatant invasion of the remainder of Czechoslovakia before Londonderry began to get the picture. Perhaps the rapid slide downward of the aristocracy after the war is, in part, attributable to the fact that many members shared Londonderry's perspective--and the rest of British society knew it. As is to be expected, superb research and invaluable notes are part of the package. Like all of Kershaw's volumes, it is well written and easy even for us Yanks to follow as he maneuvers through the ins and out of British politics of the 1930's. The bottom line: the whole appeasement movement (which in hindsight seems somewhat inexplicable) becomes quite understandable after reading this book. That is its greatest contribution.

Monty Python had a sketch of a contest to find the greatest British upper-class twit of the year. Any such competition was a redundancy, for it should have been retired upon the death of Charles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-Stewart, the 7th Marquess of Londonderry. He had more than enough trappings of his descent from one of Britain's grandest families, he was a pillar of the Conservative Party, the King called him "Charley," his house in London was the center for grand parties, he was cousin to Winston Churchill, and he was appointed Air Minister in 1931. However, he was instinctively pro-German. In _Making Friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry, The Nazis, and the Road to War_ (The Penguin Press), Ian Kershaw writes that Londonderry, "having attracted much obloquy in his lifetime, has passed into near historical oblivion." This is, of course, because Londonderry was a minor character and favored the wrong policy until World War II started. Kershaw, who has written a well-regarded and massive biography of Hitler, has turned to the topic of an infamous but minor character from the years when the rest of Europe was trying to understand Hitler and what to do with him. An objection could be made that Londonderry simply was not worth a biography of this length, depth, and obviously careful research, but Kershaw draws a full picture of the times and demonstrates that we see Londonderry as out of step only through hindsight; for years he represented a view held by many Britons, including members of the peerage. He was wrong, and was a silly little man, but his views were not a complete anomaly, and Kershaw's useful biography is fine at describing the confusion of the years before the war. Like aristocrats of the time, Londonderry felt himself entitled to political power, and to his credit he had an eagerness to serve. He was a pilot, and was glad to be appointed Air Minister in 1931. He was not enough of a fighter, however, to muster financial resources for his ministry, and was sacked in 1935. Still, he insisted on having a role to play afterwards, as an activist private citizen. Unfortunately, he was impressed by the strides Mussolini was making in Italy and was even more impressed by how Hitler had achieved and held power. He went on to hobnob with Goering, Hess, and Hitler, and had Ribbentrop come to a hunting party at his place near Ulster. He wrote a book in 1938, _Ourselves and Germany_, which he hoped would influence the opinions of the British public and politicians, but he mailed it out also to his German pals. The one he sent to Hitler, he inscribed: "To the Fuhrer with my best wishes and my earnest hopes for a better and lasting understanding between our two countries." Eventually, when they realized that Londonderry really had no power, the Nazis stopped writing him back. Kershaw bends over backward to be fair to this gullible and flawed subject. He was no Nazi. He had the garden-variety anti-Semitic prejudice that was end

There is no shortage of biographies of people who are "larger than life". Less abundant are the stories of history's lesser players who, when all is said and done, are smaller than life. The much hyphenated Charles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-Stewart, the seventh Marquess of Londonderry was one such smaller than life figure. Kershaw, in his "Making Friends With Hitler" has devoted an entire book to Lord Londonderry and has managed to set it out in an informative and entertaining fashion. Londonderry was not intelligent, perceptive, politically astute, or charismatic. Winston Churchill, a cousin, referred to him as "that half-wit Charlie Londonderry." He was known in the press as the Londonderry Herr due to his pro-German, if not pro-Nazi, proclivities and for his well-known desire to become a private statesman and make friends with Hitler and his ilk in order to keep Britain out of war. Kershaw uses Londonderry as a vehicle through which to re-examine Britain's relations with Germany from Hitler's accession to power through the commencement of WWII. The simple picture usually painted is one of the British political establishment conducting its ill-thought out policy of appeasement while Churchill stood alone crying in the wilderness. The situation was far more complex than that. Kershaw uses the antics of Lord Londonderry to set out Britain's foreign policy in the context of the day. Kershaw does not `excuse' Britain's foreign policy makers for the steps that led invariably to war with Hitler. He does, however, provide a detailed description of the many reasons why, by 1936 or so, Britain had no viable option other than to appease Hitler and hope for the best. Irresolvable conflicts of interest between France and Britain rendered a unified approach to an emerging Germany impossible. France's primary interest in the years after WWI was in its own security. The idea of making concessions from the admittedly ill-conceived Treaty of Versailles did not find fertile ground in France, particularly those that involved disarmament. Britain's goal was multilateral disarmament. Disarmament was almost universally supported in Britain by all political parties. Popular support for disarmament was fueled by revulsion towards the horrors and carnage of WWI. Political support for disarmament was fueled by a worldwide depression that made cutbacks in military spending both politically expedient and economically wise. There was a strong feeling in Britain that German antipathy to the Versailles Treaty was understandable. British government suggestions with regard to revisions to Versailles were inextricably linked, however, to disarmament proposals. France opposed any such linkage and stalemates ensued. Hitler played this difference in national aspirations like a maestro. He managed to rearm, re-occupy the Rhineland, eviscerate the Versailles Treaty, and then annex Austria while France and England failed to craft a unified, coherent, response. Lond

We live in a time where Hitler is considered the ultimate evil. (Perhaps he was, but there are certainly other candidates, Stalin, several of the African leaders, but I digress.) But before the war, a time of depression, it must have seemed that democracy was in trouble. In the United States this was the time of the peak of communist ferver, and Charles Lindberg flirted with admiration of the Nazi's. (You may want to look at Philip Roth's new novel, The Plot Against America.) In England, Lord Londonderry became a member of the cabinet as Secretary of State for Air - just when the RAF was grasping for new equipment powerful enough to take on Germany's. At the same time, he became friends with Herr Hitler. This was a time when appeasement was the order of the day to avoid a war at nearly any cost. This was a time when the 'final solution' was inconceivable. But life then was not just the desire to avoid war, even if the flower of a whole generation had been wasted in the first World War. This is the first book I've seen that goes into depth as to what was happening during this fateful time. Combine this fascinating story with an excellent writing style and you get quite a book.