Robert Vansittart, 1st Baron Vansittart

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Robert Gilbert Vansittart, 1st Baron Vansittart (1881 - 1957) was the head of the British diplomatic service.

He was educated at Eton College and from 1902 was employed in the diplomatic service, including Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister from 1928 to 1930 and Permanent Under-Secretary from 1930 to 1938 and then Chief Diplomatic Adviser to the Government.

Vansittart was suspicious of Hitler from the start; anything Hitler said, he claimed, was "for foreign consumption" and thought he would start another European war as soon as he "felt strong enough".^[1] Vansittart believed in revising the Versailles Treaty in Germany's favour but not whilst Hitler was in power. An alliance between France and Russia against Germany was in Vansittart's view essential and that Britain should be firm with Germany. Vansittart also urgently advocated rearmament.^[2]

In the summer of 1936 Vansittart visited Germany and claimed that he found a climate that "the ghost of Barthou would hardly have recognised" and that Britain should negotiate with Germany.^[3] He thought that satisfying Hitler's "land hunger" at Russia's expense would be immoral and regarded the Franco-Russian alliance as non-negotiable. It was because he believed Germany had gained equality in Europe that Vansittart favoured facilitating German expansion in Africa.^[4] He thought that Hitler was exploiting fears of a "Bolshevist menance" as a cover for "expansion in Central and South-Eastern Europe".^[5]

In a similar way to Maurice Hankey, Vansittart thought in power politics terms. He thought Hitler could not decide whether to follow Goebbels and Tirpitz in viewing Britain as "the ultimate enemy" or on the other hand adopting the Ribbentrop policy of appeasing Britain in order to engage in military expansion in the East.^[6] Vansittart thought that in either case time should be "bought for rearmament" by an economic agreement with Germany and by appeasing "genuine grievance[s]" about colonies.^[7]

Vansittart wanted to detach Mussolini from Hitler and thought that the British Empire was an "Incubus" and that the Continent was the central British national interest but he had a doubt whether agreement could be had there.^[8] This doubt rested on his fear that German attention, if turned Eastwards, would result in a military empire between the Baltic, the Adriatic and the Black Sea.^[9]

In the years before World War II, in the Foreign Office, he was a major figure in the unorganised group of anti-appeasement officials and politicians; and also involved in intelligence work. He thought along the same lines as Churchill in terms of anti-appeasement.

[edit] Notes

^ Quoted in Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Hitler. British Policy and British Politics 1933-1940 (Chicago University Press, 1977), p. 156.
^ Ibid.
^ Quoted in Ibid, p. 157.
^ Quoted in Ibid.
^ Quoted in Ibid, p. 158.
^ Quoted in Ibid.
^ Quoted in Ibid.
^ Quoted in Ibid., pp. 158-159.
^ Ibid, p. 159.