Nevile Henderson

• 1. Introduction

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  Nevile Henderson wore a red carnation every day of his diplomatic career, and Adolf Hitler had a name for him because of it. Hitler called him "the man with the carnation" but privately found Henderson too superior in his manners and actually despised him. On the morning of the 3rd of September 1939, Henderson delivered Britain's final ultimatum to the German Foreign Ministry. Germany did not respond, and Chamberlain declared war at 11:15 that morning.

  Henderson had spent two years in Berlin trying to prevent exactly that outcome. What kind of upbringing and career shaped the man at that desk? And what happened when events stripped his convictions away, one crisis at a time?

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• 2. Sedgwick and the Diplomatic Service

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  Sedgwick Park, near Horsham in Sussex, was the landscape that shaped Henderson more than anywhere else. When his mother died in 1931 and the estate was sold by his elder brother's wife, Henderson wrote that "something went out of my life which nothing can replace." Every time he returned to England from abroad, the white cliffs of Dover meant Sedgwick to him.

  His mother Emma was central to that feeling. After Henderson's father Robert died in 1895, Emma managed the estate alone and developed its gardens to such a standard that Country Life magazine photographed them in 1901. Henderson called her "the presiding genius of Sedgwick," a "wonderful and masterful woman if ever there was one." His biographer Peter Neville later connected the snobbishness others noted in Henderson directly to her death.

  His family carried one distinction worth noting: his uncle Reginald Hargreaves had married Alice Liddell, the original of Alice in Wonderland. Henderson was educated at Eton and entered the Diplomatic Service in 1905. Those who knew him described him as happiest when out on the hunt. He was regarded as one of the best-dressed men in the Foreign Office, always in the most expensive Savile Row suits, his obsession with proper fashion extending even to long-distance rail journeys. His love of hunting, fine clothing, and social etiquette formed part of a carefully cultivated image as a polished Edwardian gentleman.

  That love of hunting would open an unexpected door in his next posting, drawing him into a friendship that set a revealing pattern for everything that followed.

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• 3. Belgrade and Hero Worship

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  Henderson never wanted the posting in Belgrade. He had lobbied for Paris instead and, after moving to Yugoslavia in 1929, continued to pay rent on his Paris apartment, expecting to return soon. The British legation in Belgrade was considered unglamorous compared to the more coveted postings he had long set his sights on.

  What he found instead was King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, a fellow enthusiast for hunting and guns. In January 1929, having been a constitutional monarch, Alexander staged a self-coup, abolished democracy, and made himself dictator of Yugoslavia. Henderson's dispatches from Belgrade took on a notably pro-Yugoslav tone from that point. One historian noted that Henderson had a fascination with militaristic authority figures, a tendency toward hero worship that would follow him from posting to posting.

  In October 1934, Alexander was shot dead in Marseille. Henderson wrote: "I felt more emotion at King Alexander's funeral than I felt at any other except my mother's." In a 1935 letter to a friend, Henderson described his sixth winter in what he called "the Belgrade trenches" as the worst of all. He had also grown close to Prince Paul, the regent for Alexander's young son Peter II. By January 1935, Permanent Under-Secretary Sir Robert Vansittart had rebuked Henderson sharply. Henderson had written to Paul strongly supporting Yugoslavia's complaints against Italy and claiming Italian government involvement in Alexander's assassination.

  That capacity for devotion to powerful leaders, and the diplomatic indiscretions it produced, would reassert itself far more consequentially when Henderson arrived in Berlin.

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• 4. Appointment to Berlin

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  Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden appointed Henderson ambassador in Berlin on the 28th of May 1937. Vansittart had given Eden a list of three diplomats with a "strong partiality towards autocratic leaders": Henderson, Sir Percy Loraine, and Sir Miles Lampson. In his 1956 memoirs, The Mist Procession, Vansittart wrote about the appointment. Henderson had made "such a hit with the dictator by his skill at shooting that he was ultimately picked for Berlin. All know the consequences."

  The promotion from Buenos Aires to Berlin was a major boost to Henderson's ego. Henderson wrote of having been "specially selected by Providence for the definite mission of, I trusted, helping to preserve the peace of the world."

  Crossing the Atlantic on a ship back to Britain, Henderson read Mein Kampf in the original German. He wrote later that he was determined "to see the good side of the Nazi regime as well as the bad." In London, Henderson met Neville Chamberlain, then Chancellor of the Exchequer and about to replace Stanley Baldwin as prime minister. Henderson wrote in his memoir that Chamberlain had outlined his views on policy toward Germany. He followed that general line, Henderson wrote, "to the last and bitter end."

  Henderson claimed that Chamberlain had authorised him to commit "calculated indiscretions" in pursuit of peace. The German-born American historian Abraham Ascher found no evidence to support the claim. T. Philip Conwell-Evans, a British historian who had taught German history at Konigsberg University, said Henderson had told him that Chamberlain made him his personal envoy to Germany, bypassing Vansittart entirely.

  Ascher also argued that Henderson's desire to avoid war was rooted not in idealism but in a desire to uphold white supremacy. In a dispatch to Eden on the 26th of January 1938, Henderson warned that another Anglo-German war would be "absolutely disastrous." He added that such a war would only serve "the purposes of inferior races."

  Harold Macmillan wrote in his 1966 memoirs that Eden's choice was "difficult to understand." Henderson had "proved a complete disaster; hysterical, self-opinionated and unreliable." That verdict came with the benefit of hindsight. In 1937, Henderson's first priority was to identify who in the Nazi leadership could be worked with. He found his answer almost immediately.

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• 5. Goring and the Moderates

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  Henderson first met Hermann Goring on the 24th of May 1937 and admitted to having "a real personal liking" for him. Goring became Henderson's main diplomatic source and a personal acquaintance. They went on frequent hunting trips together to discuss Anglo-German relations. The same tendency toward hero worship that had driven his friendship with King Alexander now reasserted itself with Goring, who also prized militaristic authority.

  Goring was, in Henderson's telling, the leader of a "moderate" faction within the Nazi regime. The moderates also included Wehrmacht officers, Reichsbank officials, and professional diplomats of the Foreign Ministry. The "extremists," by contrast, were Ribbentrop, Josef Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler. Henderson believed that if Britain revised the Versailles order in Germany's favour, the moderates would grow stronger and war would be avoided. This was, historians later noted, Henderson's greatest mistake. He fundamentally misunderstood that Hitler himself was the most extreme figure of all.

  In contrast to his friendship with Goring, Henderson's relationship with Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop was extremely antagonistic. Henderson wrote to King George VI that Ribbentrop was "eaten up with conceit." Their mutual dislike would culminate in a near-physical confrontation two years later.

  Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King visited Berlin in June 1937. Mackenzie King told Henderson that Hitler had said "they all liked him and felt he had a good understanding of German problems." The remark, Henderson admitted, appealed much to his vanity. Eden criticised Henderson for not challenging Goring's claim that closer Anglo-German ties were needed, a statement that implied British foreign policy was anti-German. Henderson also broke the unwritten Foreign Office rule against criticising predecessors. He told Goring that Sir Eric Phipps, his predecessor in Berlin, had been "too insensitive towards German concerns."

  In September 1937, Henderson accepted Goring's invitation to attend the Nuremberg Rally without consulting the Foreign Office. Vansittart was furious. Henderson replied that since "Nazism could not be wished away," being discourteous to Hitler would serve no purpose. He called the rally, held on the 10th and the 11th of September, "a most impressive event attended by some 140,000 Germans." He described the labour camps for young people and the "Strength Through Joy" movement as showing the "beneficial" aspects of Hitler's rule. From Nuremberg, Henderson reported to London on the threat. "A machine is being built up in Germany," he wrote, "which in the course of this generation, if it succeeds unchecked... will be extraordinarily formidable." Yet in the same reports he saw "no reason for alarm." He believed Germany was entering "the quieter phase of Nazism."

  Henderson's belief that Hitler's primary interest was the African colonies, not expansion in Europe, would be tested severely the following spring.

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• 6. The Sudetenland Crisis

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  On the 16th of March 1938, Henderson wrote to Lord Halifax to set out his position on the Sudeten question. Czechoslovakia must give the fullest possible equality to its Sudeten German minority, he argued, if British interests and morality were to be combined. In the months that followed, he allied privately with Basil Newton, the British minister in Prague, to push London into taking Germany's side. Newton replied to one letter from Henderson on the 19th of May 1938 by expressing hope that Henderson "would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."

  During the crisis of May 1938, Henderson formed a secret group with three other ambassadors. They were Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, State Secretary of the German Foreign Ministry, and the French and Italian ambassadors, Andre Francois-Poncet and Baron Bernardo Attolico. Acting independently of their own governments, the four met in French to share information and devise strategies. They aimed both to prevent Hitler and Ribbentrop from attacking Czechoslovakia and to ensure the Sudetenland was peacefully transferred to Germany. Weizsacker and Henderson spoke of a "chemical dissolution of Czechoslovakia," as opposed to the "mechanical dissolution" of military conquest.

  Henderson wrote to Halifax on the 22nd of August 1938 that "the Teuton and the Slav are irreconcilable." He cited a remark from Mackenzie King that Slavs in Canada "never assimilated with the people and never became good citizens." By September 1938, Henderson was among the few officials aware of Chamberlain's Plan Z. This was a secret plan for the Prime Minister to fly to Germany and meet Hitler personally.

  Henderson attended the 1938 Nuremberg rally and heard Hitler's keynote speech on the 12th of September. Hitler demanded that Benes allow the Sudetenland to join Germany or face invasion. Henderson reported to London that Hitler "may have crossed the borderline into insanity," driven by megalomania. Yet Henderson also wrote of Hitler's "sublime faith in his own mission and that of Germany in the world." He called Hitler "a constructive genius, a builder and no mere demagogue." Halifax's Principal Private Secretary, Sir Oliver Harvey, wrote that Henderson's "very presence here is a danger as he infects the Cabinet with his gibber."

  Henderson counselled Chamberlain to sign the Munich Agreement. Shortly after, in October 1938, he was diagnosed with cancer and returned to London. Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes, a member of the Scottish gentry and a protege of Vansittart, took charge as charge d'affaires. In December 1938, Ogilvie-Forbes wrote that Hitler would start a war in 1939. Hitler gave his "Prophecy Speech" to the Reichstag on the 30th of January 1939. Ogilvie-Forbes predicted afterward that the "extermination" of Jews in Germany "can only be a matter of time." During his London stay, Henderson met the German ambassador Herbert von Dirksen. He suggested that the persecution of German Jews be "regularized in an orderly and systematic manner" to reduce offence to British public opinion.

  Henderson's dispatches from this period also named "Jews and Communists" as the principal warmongers and blamed British Jews for Germanophobia in Britain. It was not a view he would moderate on returning to Berlin.

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• 7. War and Its Aftermath

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  Henderson returned to Berlin in ill health on the 13th of February 1939. His first act was to call a meeting of the embassy's senior staff and castigate Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes for his dispatches during the five-month absence. Henderson announced that all future dispatches would have to conform to his views. Any diplomat who reported otherwise would be removed from the Foreign Office, he warned.

  On the 18th of February, Henderson cabled London that Hitler "does not contemplate any adventures at the moment." He added that "all stories and rumours to the contrary are completely without foundation." On the 6th of March 1939, Henderson sent Halifax a lengthy dispatch attacking almost everything Ogilvie-Forbes had written in his absence. He also demanded that the Chamberlain government impose censorship on the British press to end negative coverage of Nazi Germany. He wrote: "If a free press is allowed to run riot without guidance from higher authority, the damage which it may do is unlimited." Even war, he added, "may be one of its consequences."

  Wehrmacht troops occupied the remaining territory of Czechoslovakia on the 15th and the 16th of March 1939, violating the Munich Agreement. Chamberlain spoke of a betrayal of confidence, and Henderson handed over a British protest note. By late March 1939, there was a feeling in the cabinet that Henderson could no longer effectively represent Britain in Berlin. Plans to send him to Washington were blocked by the US State Department, which made clear that Henderson would be an embarrassment there.

  The French ambassador in Berlin, Robert Coulondre, reported to Paris in April 1939 on Henderson's state of mind. Coulondre found Henderson still convinced that "Great Britain and Germany could divide the world between them." But learning of the Munich breach had "wounded him in his pride," Coulondre wrote.

  The signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on the 23rd of August 1939 made war imminent. On the night of the 30th of August, Henderson met Ribbentrop to receive Germany's final offer to Poland at midnight. When Ribbentrop refused to give Henderson a copy of the German demands, the two almost came to blows. Gerhard Weinberg, an American historian, later wrote that Henderson "had long advocated concessions to Germany." Yet Henderson recognised in that midnight meeting "a deliberately conceived alibi the German government had prepared for a war it was determined to start." Germany staged the Gleiwitz incident and invaded Poland on the 1st of September. Henderson and his staff were briefly interned by the Gestapo before returning to Britain on the 7th of September.

  Back in London, Henderson asked for another ambassadorship but was denied. He wrote Failure of a Mission: Berlin 1937-1939, published in 1940 while staying at South Rauceby Hall, his aunt's home in Lincolnshire. He spoke highly of Goring in its pages but not of Ribbentrop. The historian A. L. Rowse described the book as "an appalling revelation of fatuity in high place." On the 30th of December 1942, Henderson died of cancer at the Dorchester Hotel in London. Informed by doctors that he had around six months to live, he had written a second memoir, Water Under the Bridges, published posthumously in 1945. Its final chapter defended the Munich Agreement, arguing Britain had been too weak militarily in 1938 to resist Hitler. It also praised Chamberlain as "an honest and brave man."

  Water Under the Bridges noted that Ataturk's expulsion of Greeks "perhaps suggested to Hitler that he should do the same in Germany with the Jews." Historians have since compared that observation to Hitler's own alleged remarks about the annihilation of the Armenians.

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