Robert Vansittart

Robert Gilbert Vansittart, 1st Baron Vansittart, (25 June 1881 – 14 February 1957), known as Sir Robert Vansittart between 1929 and 1941, was a senior British diplomat in the period before and during the Second World War.

Vansittart entered the Foreign Office in 1902, starting as a clerk in the Eastern Department, where he was a specialist on Aegean Islands affairs.

He was an attaché at the British Embassy in Paris between 1903 and 1905, when he became Third Secretary.

He then served at the embassies in Tehran between 1907 and 1909 and Cairo between 1909 and 1911.

From 1911, he was attached to the Foreign Office.

During the First World War he was joint head of the contraband department and then head of the Prisoner of War Department under Lord Newton.

He took part in the Paris Peace Conference and became an Assistant Secretary at the Foreign Office in 1920.

From that year to 1924, he was private secretary to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon.

He was Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister from 1928 to 1930 and Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office from 1930 to 1938 and later served as Chief Diplomatic Adviser to the British Government.

He is best remembered for his opposition to appeasement and his strong stance against Germany during and after the Second World War.

Vansittart was also a published poet, novelist and playwright.

Vansittart was born at Wilton House, Farnham, Surrey, the eldest of the three sons of Robert Arnold Vansittart, of Foots Cray Place, Kent, a Captain in the 7th Dragoon Guards, by his wife Susan Alice Blane, third daughter of Gilbert James Blane, landowner, of Foliejon Park, Berkshire.

His younger brother Guy Nicholas (Nick) Vansittart had a successful career with General Motors before and after the war.

From 1928 to 1930, he was Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin and then Ramsay MacDonald.

He was recruited into "Z" Network during the 1930s and served in Special Operations Executive during World War II.

Cognatically (patrilineally) the family is of Dutch descent; ancestors included Arthur Vansittart, Member of Parliament (MP) for Windsor, and the Colonel of the same name, MP for Berkshire.

Henry Vansittart, Robert Vansittart and Lord Bexley were in the other branches.

A female-line ancestor was Lord Auckland.

Vansittart was also a second cousin of T. E. Lawrence (better known as Lawrence of Arabia).

Widely nicknamed Van, he was educated at St Neot's Preparatory School and Eton College, where he was a member of the exclusive Eton Society (also called Pop) and Captain of the Oppidans.

He then travelled in Europe for two years to improve his French and German, where his experiences and study of the political systems prevailing may have contributed to his Germanophobia and Francophilia.

In January 1930 he was appointed Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, where he supervised the work of Britain's diplomatic service.

Vansittart was suspicious of Adolf Hitler from the start and claimed that what Hitler said was "for foreign consumption".

He thought Hitler would start another European war as soon as he "felt strong enough".

Vansittart supported revising the Versailles Treaty in Germany's favour but only after Hitler was no longer in power.

Vansittart believed that Britain should be firm with Germany, with an alliance between France and the Soviet Union against Germany essential.

Vansittart also urgently advocated rearmament.

At the Foreign Office in the 1930s, Vansittart was a major figure in the loose group of officials and politicians opposed to appeasement of Germany.

Eden and Vansittart had already clashed during the Abyssinia Crisis with Eden supporting sanctions against Italy while Vansittart wanted Italy as an ally against Germany.

Vansittart argued that there was no prospect of a "general settlement" with Hitler, and the best that could be done was to strengthen ties with the French in order to confront Germany.

Vansittart had supported Eden's efforts to defuse the Rhineland crisis as British rearmament had only just begun, but Vansittart urged the government to use the crisis as a chance to begin forming a military alliance with France against Germany.

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.

He thought that satisfying Hitler's "land hunger" at Soviet expense would be immoral and regarded the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance as non-negotiable.

It was because he believed that Germany had gained equality in Europe that Vansittart favoured facilitating German expansion in Africa.

He thought that Hitler was exploiting fears of a "Bolshevist menace" as a cover for "expansion in Central and South-Eastern Europe".

Like Sir Maurice Hankey, Vansittart thought in power politics terms.

He thought Hitler could not decide whether to follow Joseph Goebbels and Alfred von Tirpitz in viewing Britain as "the ultimate enemy" or on the other hand adopting the Joachim von Ribbentrop policy of appeasing Britain in order to engage in military expansion in the East.

Vansittart thought that in either case time should be "bought for rearmament" by an economic agreement with Germany and by appeasing every "genuine grievance" about colonies.

Vansittart wanted to detach Benito Mussolini from Hitler and thought that the British Empire was an "Incubus" and that Continental Europe was the central British national interest, but he doubted whether agreement could be had there.

That was because he feared that German attention, if turned eastwards, would result in a military empire between the Baltic Sea, the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea.