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

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There are 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.

Londonderry played an interesting role in Britain's relations with Germany. A descendant of Lord Castlereagh, the architect of the settlement at the Congress of Vienna, Londonderry inherited incredible wealth. Londonderry believed that he was born to rule and lacked nothing but talent. His wealth and connections led to his appointment as secretary of state for air in 1931 by Ramsay MacDonald. Londonderry was a strong proponent of the air force and promoted the development of Hurricanes and Spitfire, the aircraft that later served Britain well in the Battle of Britain. He was pro-German and anti-French by inclination but believed that this friendship should be backed by a strong military. This was not an irrational position and if Londonderry had stuck to this position he legacy may have been considerably stronger.

However, he was an inept administrator and subject to embarrassing mistakes. During a period in which pacifism was a strong political force his speech supporting the use of bombers as a means of policing the Empire (including, ironically the British controlled oil-fields in Iraq) caused a great deal of embarrassment for the British government. Londonderry was sacked by Stanley Baldwin after he succeed MacDonald as Prime Minister. Devastated, Londonderry embarked on well-publicized private campaign to save Britain from the professionals in the foreign office. Critically, he forgot his earlier argument that military strength should form the underpinning of Britain's relationship with Germany, and assiduously sought out the friendship of the Nazi leadership. Even absent a strong military, Londonderry believed he could charm Hitler into good relations.

If the successive governments of MacDonald, Baldwin, and then Chamberlain can be thought of as proponents of appeasement, the forces of Londonderry and many of his well-born peers can be thought of as proponents of `appeasement-plus'. In essence, MacDonald, Baldwin, and then Chamberlain took something of a middle road. It is clear from the source material used by Kershaw that at least from 1935 or 1936 the British government had few delusions about Hitler's intentions. However, they were constrained severely by their low level of military preparedness and a general unwillingness of the British population to take any steps to confront Hitler that might bring the parties to war.

Kershaw does an admirable job in exploring the social,political, and economic forces that helped shape 'appeasement'. Kershaw points out that critical decisions concerning disarmament and the economic pressures that resulted in dramatic reductions in military spending up through 1936 or 1937 rendered a forceful response to Hitler (in the absence of concord with France) little more than a bluff. Kershaw also shows that the British government(s) was buffeted not only by Churchill but also by Londonderry and those fellow travelers who felt that Hitler was something of an anti-Bolshevik savior.

Making Friends with Hitler is an academic piece of writing and is meticulously annotated and footnoted. However, the writing style is fluid and unpretentious. It can be enjoyed by a reader seeking a popular history as much as by someone with an academic interest.

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.

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 endemic to Britain's conservatives and aristocrats, but he was baffled by the Nazis making race a central part of their creed, and he knew that the brutal treatment of Jews could do nothing to help the German cause and his own. There were fascists like Oswald Mosley within Britain, but Londonderry had nothing to do with them. Kershaw writes that he was an anachronism, that even in dealing with Nazis, Londonderry was so idealistic as to presume that politics "were determined by goodwill, moral objectives, the gentleman's code of honour, the preservation of legal order".

Hitler's appetite for conquest eventually made clear, however, even to Londonderry that Hitler did not want peace. Once the war began, Londonderry showed impeccable patriotism, although he never stopped trying to vindicate himself as one whose views, if they had been followed, would have prevented the war. He had little insight about why he became a political pariah. It was even rumored that the government of Churchill (who at one point referred to his cousin as "that half-wit Charlie Londonderry") had locked him up for the duration of the war, a rumor that made Londonderry furious. Londonderry died in 1949, realizing that "I had backed the wrong horse," but also sure that he would be fully vindicated, even if the vindication was posthumous. There is little vindication in this volume. Kershaw does show that Londonderry's views drew from what was conventional political wisdom, and the details here put them in a useful and illuminating context.

An intrinsically important and engaging subject treated by Ian Kershaw
in quirky prose and in a numbingly repetitious fashion. Historians,
of course, do a lot of research but they don't have to stuff it all into
one book. A terser narrative perhaps one half the size would have
done the trick beautifully. I read the whole thing but some of it
(especially the overly-detailed figures on Britain's preparations for
airwar under Londonderry's ministry in the '30's) was a slog.
Also, my hardcover edition was full of typos.

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

The career of Lord Londonderry and other prominent British appeasers has been grist for numerous mills. Though not actually a Nazi or a follower of British Fascist leader Oswald Mosley, Londonderry went to great lengths to promote close ties between Britain and Nazi Germany, motivated by contempt for socialism and a hatred of both communists and Jews (who he saw little difference between). The Nazis were, in Londonderry's mind meant to be a bulwark for tradition and against Bolshevism and it made sense to Londonderry to make friends with them.

In hands other than Ian Kershaw, this singular failure to understand the true nature of Hitler and Nazi Germany might have degenerated into a kind of one-dimensional portrait of a British aristocrat really out of his depth. However Kershaw, as the biographer of what is considered the definitive biography of Hitler displays a real understanding of Londonderry's many flaws and how in many ways his rise and fall represented the last act of the British aristocracy playing a role of real influence in the running of the country and probably a good thing too if Londonderry was a fair representative of his class.

Pride and a desire to hold on to his personal fortune were the primary factors that really drove Lord Londonderry. The 1926 General Strike emerging initially from the coal miners union heighted the British aristocrat's distrust of the working class particularly given that his personal wealth came from the very mines these men were striking against. Londonderry hated unions and were he around today he would probably be on Fox News telling everyone how much he hated them.

This desire to fight the unions and socialism made the idea of the Nazis that much more attractive to Londonderry. Far from being fearful of Hitler's rise, he saw it is a way to fight communism.

However what really made Londonderry seek closer ties between Germany and Britain in the thirties came following his removal from Stanley Baldwin's government, first as minister of the air and second as Lord Privy Seal. That a scrap metal dealer such as Baldwin, which is how he was dismissed as by grand members of the Tory Party, could remove Londonderry from office and responsibility was a huge blow. Private diplomatic initiatives with the Germans were thought to be a way back to the power that he craved. His behavior during the 1930s underscored just how much of Britain's national interest he was willing to put aside for personal ambition.

Contrasting another Tory figure who was also both a cousin of Londonderry's and out of office, Winston Churchill, is a technique that Kershaw relies upon repeatedly. Londonderry would later claim that he and Churchill were in sync for much of the 30s, an odd claim to make when Churchill focused on Britain's lack of military preparedness and Londonderry received Christmas cards from Hitler and Goering.

In the final analysis, Londonderry was correct that a second war with Germany would mean the end of his world, literally in fact since one of the war's casualties was his splendid London townhouse. The reputation of the great appeasers in the Tory party was enough to deliver Labour a massive victory at the end of the war and industry became nationalized. In seeking to gain Germany's friendship Londonderry and men of a similar attitude only ensured a future which they had sought to avoid. Such is the fate of those who are unable to understand the nature of the times in which they lived.

Very rarely does one come across a tightly focused biographical work that is so effective and yet readable in arguing its primary point. Often times the storyteller rambles or loses focus describing issues on the periphery of the story. Other times the author will so narrowly focus on the task at hand that readability suffers chronically from an over emphasis on minutia which contributes little to the overall narrative. Ian Kershaw's story of Lord Londonderry suffers from none of these flaws I am pleased to say.

The historiographical context of 'Making Friends with Hitler' is simply this; to provide a window into the story of appeasement that all to often is muddled and has, in any case grown stale, and to do so by focusing on one of its greatest proponents in Britain in the mid 1930s. As such Kershaw's work is an unqualified success.

Kershaw succeeds in a number of areas: first and foremost of these is the focus on how the limitations of inter war politics in Britain hamstrung any serious means of heading off the Nazi threat until relatively late, chronologically and far too late diplomatically. The general mood in Britain in the early to mid 30s was by no means tolerant of either rearmament or pre emptive military action against a rearming Germany. Neither was it capable of forming a coalition to impose sanctions through the pathetically weak League of Nations. Lastly, the necessary understanding of what the Nazis stood for was critically lacking. Few had any true idea of what Hitler really stood for and many initially respected many of his conservative anti-communist stances as similar to their own.

Once Londonderry, representative of many if not a majority of the aristocracy, due to a number of factors was forced to realize the hopelessness of the first of these options and was subsequently forced from high office, he chose a different option; attempt to come to an arrangement with the leadership of the Nazis. This is where the story takes a life of its own and truly achieves what other books on the appeasers come up a bit short. Through an amazing and comprehensive collection of primary documents, including a treasure trove of letters by Londonderry himself, Kershaw tells an epic story of the fall of one of the great houses in Britain through a number of gaffes and miscalculations.

A second and equally fascinating area in which the author succeeds is in telling the story of how amongst the failing attempts to reach an understanding with Hitler in the late 30s, another group within the aristocracy was able to just barely stave off the potential disaster through a forceful rearmament program. The painful slowness of this effort is driven home in the later pages of the book and give the reader a feel for the 'buying time' that occured as war became ever more inevitable. In this, it is fascinating just how lonely a voice Churchill's was nearly up to the commencing of hostilities.

In final analysis, Kershaw's book fills an important gap in the historiography of inter war Britain. Through a huge selection of primary documents he clearly shows the confusion over what could and should be done about the enigma of Hitler in the early years of the Nazi regime and trepidation over how they could avoid a likely war once Germany had grown too strong for Britain to effectively intervene in the numerous international crises. This the author has done through allowing the reader to view these crises and various 'opportunities' to avoid war as they happened through the eyes of Lord Londonderry. Quite simply but Kershaw allows the reader an unprecedented opportunity to understand the terrible tragedy of a war that needn't have been.

Ian Kershaw, who--I believe--has written the best two volume work on Hitler, here brings his very deep talents to the pre-World War II life of a secondary English aristocrat. Londonderry's story serves to illustrate the ambiguities existing in the broad sweep of British poltical life in the face of a rising and aggresive post-World War I Germany. All the policy options in the 1930s were not as clear cut as they appear to be today with our full knowledge of the horror brought about by the Nazis. This book also shows the dying out of a way of life for the social/ political class represented by Lord Londonderry. A very good book to help one understand the 1930s in the U.K.

This is a good book on how certain people in Britain came to support the Nazis. Its written very well. It uses the story of Lord Londonderry to tell the overall story of the pro-Nazi element in England. It shows how naive and foolish people can quickly become people serving evil.