by Siân Evans
By 1937 von Ribbentrop was no longer an ardent Anglophile. His wife disliked the London posting, objecting to the damp and foggy climate, and resenting having to curtsy to royalty at formal occasions. Her husband was now frequently ridiculed for his gaffes; he had been christened ‘Herr Brickendrop’ by the cartoonist David Low. The final straw occurred during the lengthy preamble to the coronation service in Westminster Abbey. The von Ribbentrops had been told that any prestigious guest needing the loo should raise a hand and attract the attention of the Westminster schoolboys acting as ushers, to be escorted to the facilities. But the boys enacted a subtle revenge on their classmate Rudolf von Ribbentrop (who, like his father, was also notorious for giving the ‘Hitlergrüss’ on inappropriate occasions) by responding to any hand gestures from his parents with Nazi salutes, and otherwise ignoring them.
Von Ribbentrop was recalled to Germany by Hitler to become Foreign Minister in February 1938, and left London in March, just as Hitler annexed Austria. He had spent at least ten months of his twenty-month ambassadorship in Germany, and was returning to his beloved Führer’s inner circle. He was now anxious to have revenge on a country that he felt had humiliated him. Von Ribbentrop reported back to Hitler on Anglo-German relations; he was smarting from his less than successful mission to London, but he nevertheless reported that Lord Lothian and the ‘Astorgruppe’ still desired a positive relationship with Germany.
The ‘Astorgruppe’ was Ribbentrop’s term for the loose agglomeration of British politicians who were broadly pro-appeasement, and Cliveden was seen as their spiritual home.
The 1930s was the last decade in which country house politics were to have a major influence on national and international events. Cliveden had always been a forum where politicians and power-brokers discussed the issues of the day, and the subject of a resurgent Germany was much on the guests’ minds. Nancy Astor had always advocated peace, urging the governments of Britain and America to support the League of Nations, to advance international understanding and so avoid another disastrous European war. Many of Nancy’s circle were keen to appease the various demands of Nazi Germany, especially her great friend Philip Kerr, Lord Lothian. Important British politicians were frequent visitors to Cliveden, where the issue of appeasing Germany was hotly debated by politicians such as Lord Halifax, Sir John Simon and Neville Chamberlain. Joachim von Ribbentrop visited Cliveden and St James’s Place to try to impress opinion-formers, though Nancy had limited tolerance for his more bombastic moments; when he greeted her with the Nazi salute, she told him, ‘Stop that nonsense with me.’ But it was at Rest Harrow, the Astors’ seaside holiday home, that secret discussions had been conducted over the possibility of Prime Minister Baldwin meeting Hitler. Lord Lothian claimed that Hitler ‘left me cold’, but as late as 1937 he was willing to go to Germany to talk to the Führer and Goebbels. By contrast, Nancy’s son David Astor was repelled by the Third Reich and wanted nothing to do with the new regime, having witnessed a Nazi parade when he visited Heidelberg.
The Astor-owned newspapers, The Times and the Observer, tended to concur with the general British view that German demands should be accommodated. In May 1937 Neville Chamberlain replaced Baldwin as Prime Minister, and the appeasement of Germany became government policy. Some sections of the media questioned Chamberlain’s assumption that Hitler was sincere in his stated desire for peace. There was also growing disquiet that wealthy and privileged people might be making decisions to appease the Third Reich without using the official diplomatic channels and professional civil service expertise.
The type of power cluster that alarmed commentators occurred at Cliveden on the weekend of 24 and 25 October 1937. The Astors had invited, among others, the newly appointed British Ambassador to Berlin, Sir Nevile Henderson, Geoffrey Dawson, the editor of The Times, the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and Lord Lothian, as well as Alec Cadogan, a senior official at the Foreign Office. The international situation was debated, along with Hitler’s behaviour and the need for Britain’s rapid rearmament. Details were leaked to Claud Cockburn, editor of The Week. His magazine, small in circulation but widely read in Parliamentary and press circles, focused on the group around the Astors, though it was another publication, the left-wing Reynolds News, which first coined the phrase the ‘Cliveden set’. The Astors and their supporters, as well as other powerful people like the Londonderrys, were thought to be operating clandestinely to allow Nazi Germany a free hand in Europe so that it could act as a bulwark against Communism. A cartoon by David Low appeared in the Evening Standard in 1938 satirising the ‘Cliveden set’ for their apparent pro-appeasement stance. Nancy Astor in a military uniform, her right arm raised in a ‘Hitlergrüss’ salute, is standing on the steps of Cliveden, backed by a banner bearing a portrait of Ribbentrop and the slogan ‘To Nancy, sweet memories from Joe Ribbentrop’.
The so-called ‘Cliveden set’ did not operate secretly; they had no need to, as they were the establishment, but they were in favour of accommodating Hitler in order to avoid a future conflict. Nancy saw Chamberlain’s personal approach to Hitler and the Munich Agreement as a triumph, as did many people. Winston Churchill described Munich as a defeat, but Nancy responded ‘Nonsense!’ When she went to America shortly after Munich, she pronounced, ‘I abhor Hitler and Hitlerism’, but she still believed that war could be avoided by negotiating with Hitler.
Despite his wife’s support of the pro-appeasers, Waldorf seems to have been more prescient about the way in which events in Europe were going. In September 1938, just as Chamberlain was trumpeting the Munich Agreement, Waldorf moved his most important paintings from their London house in St James’s Square to Cliveden in leafy Buckinghamshire.
The Anschluss (annexation) of Austria by Germany on 12 March 1938 gave many observers pause for thought, but they saw it as Hitler’s desire to reunite the German-speaking peoples, and therefore not as a causus belli. However, when Germany began to menace Czechoslovakia, alarm bells rang.
In September 1938, Hitler claimed that the people in part of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, were ethnically German and that the land should be seceded to the Fatherland. Chamberlain was anxious to avoid conflict with Germany and so pressured Czechoslovakia to comply. The situation was tense; Czech troops massed on the border with Germany, and the British fleet was put on alert. On 28 September Hitler invited Prime Minister Daladier of France, Signor Mussolini of Italy and Neville Chamberlain of Britain to meet him to discuss the situation, and Chamberlain flew to Germany for close negotiations at Berchtesgaden. He returned with a signed agreement that seemed to end the crisis by agreeing to the peaceful acquisition by Germany of the Sudetenland. It included the phrase: ‘We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo–German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.’
A few British people saw the Munich Agreement as a betrayal of the Czechs, and as acquiescence in the face of Hitler; most were relieved that the threat of war seemed to have been averted. It was only twenty years since the end of the Great War, and even those who had been too young to fight in it were aware of the devastation it had wrought on a generation. There were also other vested interests in ‘coming to an arrangement’ with Germany; politicians were wary, the Liberals recalling how they had lost credibility during the last conflict, and the Tories resentful about the consequent rise of Labour. For the wealthy, the Great War had been a financial disaster. Top rate taxes had risen to 50 per cent, the pound dropped to half its value in just four years, and families lost land and estates through paying death duties.
The spectre of Bolshevism continued to haunt the upper classes in the late 1930s; Communism might overturn the existing order, wipe out the ruling families, seize and collectivise all assets. Stalin the Bogeyman, with his purges, his five-year plans and his famines, seemed far more threatening than one of those new dictators busy reviving their moribund economies, getting their populace back to work and making the trains r
un on time. In addition, the new totalitarian regimes were represented in seductive and stirring propaganda coups, such as the Berlin Olympics, with floodlights, neo-classical backdrops and endless high-stepping extras.
In short, the pro-appeasement lobby in Britain wanted to believe that the expansionist aims of Hitler were reasonable, and need not encroach on the interests of the home islands or the Empire. They were therefore inclined to accept successive initiatives and assurances, colluding in obscurantism, until it was almost too late.
During the first half of the 1930s the Londonderrys had political influence and a sense of mission; in the latter half they were increasingly out of step. The couple had made their first visits to Nazi Germany in December 1935 and January 1936, had met Hitler and Goering and been very impressed. Charley wrote, ‘I discussed many political questions with Herr Hitler and found him most forthcoming and agreeable, and most anxious to make me fully acquainted with his political opinions. We had a conversation of nearly two hours, and on many points I found myself in agreement with him. I was much impressed, too, by his popularity.’1
However, the Londonderrys’ next visit to Nazi Germany was in September 1937, by which time relations between Britain and Germany had deteriorated notably; following the Berlin Olympics, repressive measures were once again introduced against Jews in Germany, ham-fisted von Ribbentrop had succeeded von Hoesch as ambassador in London, and Germany had become involved in the Spanish Civil War. General and Frau Goering had been invited to stay with the Londonderrys to attend the coronation in May 1937 but had declined, claiming in a letter to have received offensive messages and insults that deterred them. Nevertheless the Londonderrys went to stay with the Goerings in Germany again. This time Charley noticed a marked decline in the German high command’s welcome, and a mood of impatience. His host impressed upon him that Germany was looking elsewhere for allies, hence the rapprochement with Japan and Italy.
When Ramsay MacDonald was Prime Minister, he had appointed Charley to the Air Ministry in 1931, probably because of his regard for Edith. Charley’s efforts to try to influence Nazi Germany had started with his experience as the Secretary of State for Air. His old mentor, who had been forced into retirement in 1935, was ailing. MacDonald had a breakdown in 1936 and saw a lot less of Lady Londonderry. Disillusioned, out of office, in poor health and lovesick, in November 1937 MacDonald set off on a cruise to South America with his daughter in the hopes that a holiday might help him recuperate. He wrote to Edith just before he left, asking her not to forget him entirely. Two days into the voyage, he died of heart failure, aged seventy-one.
Charley Londonderry’s final visit to Germany was in late June 1938, and this time he had no quasi-official status; he was merely the Vice-President of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. On this visit he attempted to raise the issue of the treatment of Jews in Germany with people he met, not on humanitarian grounds but because it was doing ‘untold harm and prejudicing the case which Germany is seeking to present as to their peaceful intentions and the desire to co-operate in harmony with other nations’.
Alarmed by the deteriorating relationship between Britain and Germany, Charley wrote a book entitled Ourselves and Germany. Just before it was due to be published, in March 1938, Germany annexed Austria. Charley updated the manuscript, adding a swift postscript, defending the Anschluss on the grounds that the majority of Austrians had wanted it. The book was then republished by Penguin in October 1938, incorporating further comments on the Munich Agreement. The publishers described it as ‘the clearest exposition so far of the policy of rapprochement with Nazi Germany and a plea for a more sympathetic understanding of Herr Hitler’s point of view’. Londonderry called for Britain to ‘extend the hand of true friendship to the Third Reich […] on our mutual goodwill, I am convinced, depends the assurance of peace in the years that lie ahead’2. Rather naively, in the book Charley related part of Hitler’s 1936 conversation with him. The Führer had condemned Russia’s admission to the League of Nations, comparing it to a German folk tale about cunning Reynard the Fox, who acted humble to fool the other creatures of the Animals League. The animals let the fox into their circle, and once admitted, Reynard was able to murder them one after another, because they had abandoned their previous unanimous decision to exclude him. This is a telling moral tale, because Reynard’s tactics were those adopted by the Third Reich to divide and dominate Europe, picking off smaller countries through guile and lies.
At the same time as Charley, in October 1938, just after Munich, Edith Londonderry published her own book, Retrospect, which is rather more biographical in tone. In a sweeping statement that came back to haunt her, she reiterated her suspicion of the left: ‘The more positive “isms” are taboo, like Nazi-ism or Fascism, because they imply doing something; but a pink form of Communism finds a great deal of support.’3 She also commended the Munich Agreement, and expressed the view that any Socialist tendencies in Britain would be transient: ‘in less than a decade [England] will mostly likely be laughing at herself for her pink thoughts and her pink boys; and all will be marching along, armed to the teeth, in the cause of peace […] on this note I end these reflections, in the month of October, 1938.’
Within weeks of their books’ publication dates, both Lord and Lady Londonderry were proved to have been wholly misguided. Those who had previously believed in Germany’s good intentions were shaken to the core on the night of 9–10 November 1938. Across Germany, 20,000 Jews were arrested, businesses looted and 191 synagogues burned down by the Nazis in what came to be known as Kristallnacht. Lord Londonderry immediately wrote an angry letter to Goering, demanding an explanation:
I am completely at a loss to understand your policy towards the Jews […] I profoundly disagree with your claim that this is a matter of internal politics […] I do not want to dwell on the grievous disappointment which I have had to undergo. I was able for so long to reply to any arguments put forward by those who have never had any belief that Germany had any desire to become a helpful partner in the comity of nations, but in relation to your treatment of the Jews I have no reply whatsoever, and all I can do is remain silent and take no further part in these matters, in which most people in this country are thinking my opinions have been wrong from the beginning.4
Goering did not reply, and this was Charley’s last correspondence with Germany’s leaders. When German forces occupied Prague in March 1939, Charley’s disillusionment was complete. He had attempted for years to bring about Anglo–German understanding but it was all a chimera, and they had been duped. Galvanised, he now threw himself into running the Civil Air Guard, training men and women to fly so they could support the RAF in case of war.
On 14 March 1939 the German army invaded Czechoslovakia, despite the Munich Agreement, and this was the turning point for many who had tried to accommodate Germany. Nancy Astor and her fellow appeasers finally changed their minds, but it was too late for her reputation. She spoke in the House of Commons on 16 March, asking ‘Will the Prime Minister lose no time in letting the German Government know with what horror the whole of this country regards Germany’s action?’ A fellow Tory MP, Vyvyan Adams, interjected, ‘You caused it yourself.’ In hindsight, it is easy to criticise the pro-appeasement lobby for their naivety, but they were taken in by successive declarations of sincerity issued by various members of the Nazi high command. It seems not to have occurred to them that the people they were dealing with could lie.
These were difficult years for Nancy personally; her brother Buck had died in 1937, and her favourite sister Phyllis in 1938. She was starting to lose her debating abilities, and her speeches tended to become repetitive and poorly structured. Nevertheless she continued to entertain the great and the good of the era, the aristocrats, politicians and celebrities. In April 1938, at the age of fifty-nine, she gave a grand and glittering dinner party at her London house in honour of the new Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax; the guest list included the Duke of Kent, the American Ambass
ador, Joseph Kennedy, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Italian Ambassador, Count Grandi. All of them were broadly in favour of Britain’s continuing appeasement of the dictators.
Nancy was also inclined to take a characteristically high-minded attitude to issues of personal morality; she had lent a villa in Deauville to Lloyd George and Frances Stevenson, his secretary, unaware that the pair were lovers. When she discovered the truth, she tackled him about it. Lloyd George said, ‘What were you doing with my secretary Philip Kerr?’ ‘Absolutely nothing!’ blazed back Lady Astor. ‘Then,’ said Lloyd George, ‘you ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
Mrs Greville had abandoned her early enthusiasm for Nazi Germany; her final visit to the country was in August 1937, when she set out again for Munich, planning to spend three weeks visiting various friends. She had also quickly tired of von Ribbentrop as a personality; her records show that she only hosted him for two dinners, in London, in 1932 and 1934. She asked Frau von Ribbentrop to dine on 26 November 1936 and 23 June 1937, but they were never invited to her country house, where she entertained the people she genuinely liked. By contrast, the German ambassadors who preceded von Ribbentrop, von Neurath and von Hoesch, appear on thirteen occasions in her visitors’ books. The French Ambassador features on fourteen occasions between 1928 and 1940; the Belgian eleven times and the Italian Ambassador fifteen times. The Spanish Ambassador managed thirty-six social occasions, and the Brazilian Ambassador, H. E. De Oliveira, and his family clocked up an impressive forty-one appearances in a decade, including Christmases with her at Polesden Lacey. The meagre two occasions she hosted von Ribbentrop are indicative of what she thought of his company, although she was a regular guest at German Embassy receptions, and inevitably encountered him at other social events.