Londonderry Charles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-Stewart - Making friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry, the Nazis and the road to World War II

Praise for Ian Kershaws

Making Friends with Hitler

Brilliant Kershaw, one of the finest scholars of the Nazi era at work today, plunges us into a frightfully murky world of diplomatic jockeying and tragic miscalculation.

The Boston Globe

Ian Kershaw, a historian and biographer of Hitler, turns Londonderrys limitations to advantage. In the hands of the right author, failures can be as interesting as successes. Out of Londonderrys downfall, Kershaw creates an intriguing and remarkably topical essay on the failure by Britains politicians to find durable ways to meet the Nazi threat.

Los Angeles Times

[A] marvelous portrait of Lord Londonderry and appeasement Absorbing, meticulously researched.

The Times (London)

[Making Friends with Hitler] casts light on the mentalities and political structures that shaped British foreign policy during the 1930s. It is also an elegy on the decline and fall of the British aristocracy. Needless to say, Kershaws account of all this is scholarly and meticulous. It is based on a wealth of original sources and a comprehensive understanding of the period An impressive feat.

The Guardian (London)

PENGUIN BOOKS

MAKING FRIENDS WITH HITLER

Ian Kershaw is Professor of Modern History at the University of Sheffield and one of the worlds leading authorities on Hitler. For services to history he was given the German award of the Federal Cross of Merit in 1994 and knighted in 2002, and he was awarded the Norton Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association in 2004. He was the historical adviser to two BBC series, the prizewinning The Nazis: A Warning from History and War of the Century. He is the author of The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 193345, and The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation.

Hitler 18891936: Hubris was shortlisted for the 1998 Whitbread Biography Award and the first Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. Hitler 19361945: Nemesis received the Wolfson Literary Award for History, the Bruno Kreisky Award in Austria for the Political Book of the Year, was jointly awarded the inaugural British Academy Book Prize and was shortlisted for the 2000 Whitbread Biography Award.

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First published in the United States of America by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2004

Published in Penguin Books 2005

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Copyright Ian Kershaw, 2004

All rights reserved

Illustration credits appear on

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

Kershaw, Ian.

Making friends with Hitler : Lord Londonderry, the Nazis and the road to war / Ian Kershaw.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN: 978-1-101-56798-2

1. World War, 19391945Diplomatic history. 2. Londonderry, Charles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Marquess, 18781949. 3. Great BritainForeign relationsGermany. 4. GermanyForeign relationsGreat Britain. 5. Great BritainForeign relations19361945. 6. GermanyForeign relations19331945. I. Title

D750.K49 2004

941.084092dc22

[B] 2004040145

Printed in the United States of America

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Lord Londonderry about 1915 (PRONI)

Lady Londonderry during the First World War (PRONI)

Mount Stewart (Lady Mairi Bury)

Lady Londonderry at a Londonderry House reception (PRONI)

The grand staircase at Londonderry House (PRONI)

Lord Londonderry and Winston Churchill in 1919 (PRONI)

Ramsay MacDonald (Lucien Aigner/Corbis)

Stanley Baldwin (Bettmann/Corbis)

Lord Londonderry speaking at Croydon aerodrome (Bettmann/Corbis)

Lord Londonderry as aeroplane pilot (PRONI)

Eden, Simon and Hitler (Ullstein Bild, Berlin)

Londonderry, Hitler and Ribbentrop (Ullstein Bild, Berlin)

The reoccupation of the Rhineland (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)

Ribbentrops plane on arrival in Northern Ireland (Lady Mairi Bury)

The Londonderrys and Ribbentrops at Mount Stewart (Lady Mairi Bury)

The Mount Stewart house party (Lady Mairi Bury)

The Mount Stewart guestbook (Lady Mairi Bury)

Lord Londonderry and Ribbentrop out shooting at Wynyard (AKG Photo)

Viscount Rothermere and Hitler (Ullstein Bild, Berlin)

Henderson and Gring (PRONI)

Lord and Lady Londonderry on their way to an Order of the Garter ceremony (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)

Hermann Gring (PRONI)

Lord Londonderry with Gring (PRONI)

Lord Londonderry having coffee with Gring (PRONI)

Hitler parading through Vienna at the Anschluss (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)

Hitler receives the ovation of the Reichstag following the Anschluss (Corbis)

Chamberlain with Hitler at Bad Godesberg (Bettmann/Corbis)

Chamberlain and Ribbentrop in Munich (Corbis)

Chamberlain waving to crowds in Munich (Sddeutscher Verlag Bilderdienst, Munich)

The cover of Ourselves and Germany (Penguin Books)

The German occupation of the Sudetenland (Bettmann/Corbis)

The German occupation of Prague (Bettmann/Corbis)

The Stormtrooper (Lady Mairi Bury)

Images courtesy of Lady Mairi Bury and from PRONI were taken by Esler Crawford.