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The Professional Diplomat and His Problems, 1919–1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Gordon A. Craig
Gordon A. Craig
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

One of the recurring themes in those books on the diplomatic prehistory of the second World War which have come to us from the former enemy countries is the plight of the professional diplomat, whose training and knowledge convinced him that the policy of his government was leading straight to disaster but whose advice was seldom solicited and never followed. The memoirs of Erich Kordt, of Herbert von Dirksen, and of Rudolf Rahn, the books of Elisabetta Cerruti, Mario Donosti, and Filippo Anfuso include abundant and circumstantial evidence of the lack of influence exercised in matters of high policy by the permanent staffs of the Foreign Offices of Germany and Italy and by their agents in the field.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , January 1952 , pp. 145 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1952

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References

1 Kordt, Erich, Nicht aus den Akten, Stuttgart, 1950Google Scholar; Dirksen, Herbert von, Moskau, Tokio, London: Erinnerungen und Betrachtungen zu 20 Jahre deutscher Aussenpolitik, 1919–1939, Stuttgart, 1949Google Scholar; Rahn, Rudolf, Ruheloses Leben, Düsseldorf, 1950Google Scholar; Cerruti, Elisabetta, Visti da vicino, Milan, 1951Google Scholar; Donosti, Mario, Mussolini e l'Europa: la politica estera fascista, Milan, 1945Google Scholar; Anfuso, Filippo, Roma Berlino Salò, Milan, 1950.Google Scholar

2 Toscano, Mario, Le origini del Patto d'Acciaio, Florence, 1948, especially pp. 170–80.Google Scholar

3 The Memoirs of Ernst von Weizsäcker, Chicago, 1951, p. 106.

4 Nicolson, Harold, Curzon: The Last Phase, 1919–1925, New York, 1939, p. 54.Google Scholar

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6 Cambon, Jules, Le diplomate, Paris, 1926, pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

7 Parliamentary Debates: Commons, CIV (1918), 846.

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9 Kennedy, , Old Diplomacy, pp. 364–65.Google Scholar

10 If this seems an exaggeration, it should be remembered that, even in such an important matter as the treaty in which Great Britain and the United States guaranteed to come to France's aid in the event of future German aggression, the Foreign Secretary was not consulted. Only after the Treaty of Guarantee had been drafted in accordance with Lloyd George's personal instructions and been approved by Wilson and Clemenceau was Mr. Balfour informed of it.—Hardinge, Lord of Penshurst, , Old Diplomacy, London, 1947, p. 241.Google Scholar

11 See, for instance, “Is There a New Diplomacy?”, Fortnightly Review, CXI (1922), 711. Formula-making became a characteristic feature of Lloyd George's diplomacy. His latest biographer says: “Failure to reach agreement or to do no more than expose divergencies to the world could, as a rule and for the moment, be veiled in intentional obscurity by drafting a dextrous formula, an art in which his secretaries became proficient.”—Jones, Thomas, Lloyd George, Cambridge, Mass., 1951, p. 180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Riddell, Lord, Intimate Diary of the Peace Conference and After, London, 1933, p. 206.Google Scholar

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14 Nicolson, , Curzon, p. 245.Google Scholar

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16 Butler, R. D. and Woodward, E. L., eds., Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939, second series, III, 123, 517 n.Google Scholar

17 See, for instance, Curzon's views on this in Nicolson, Curzon, p. 60 n.

18 The word “realism,” with all its variants, was used with remarkable frequency by Chamberlain and by other British officials who associated themselves with his policy, often to differentiate their views and objectives from those of Eden, Vansittart, and others who had no faith in the policy of appeasement. The Germans and Italians were quick to realize that the word possessed persuasive, if not magic, qualities when introduced into conversations with the British, and they came to rely upon it heavily, as the diplomatic correspondence of the period shows. See, for instance, Documents on British Foreign Policy, third series, I, 22, 28, 49, 109, 257, 273, 307, 345, II, 133, 385; Documents on German Foreign Policy: From the Archives of the German Foreign Ministry, Washington, 1949, and continuing, series D, I, 221, 264. See also Chamberlain's letter of 16 January 1938 to Mrs. Morton Price in which he says: “As a realist, I must do what I can to make this country safe.”—Feiling, Keith, Life of Neville Chamberlain, London, 1946, p. 323.Google Scholar The German ambassador in Paris spoke in July 1938 of French anxiety over “the dreaded realism of the British.”—Documents on German Foreign Policy, series D, I, 1168.

19 See Ciano, Galeazzo, L'Europa verso la catastrofe, Verona, 1948, pp. 249Google Scholaret seq.

20 Feiling, , Chamberlain, p. 327.Google Scholar According to a German memorandum of 11 October 1938, a “confidential agent of Neville Chamberlain” informed a member of the Dienststelle Ribbentrop in London that “in all future moves [i.e., negotiations between Britain and Germany] it was important that all major questions should be dealt with direct, thus bypassing the Foreign Office.”—Documents on German Foreign Policy, series D, IV, 306. Since February 1938, Lord Vansittart, formerly permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, had held the office of Diplomatic Adviser to His Majesty's Government. The title had little meaning, and Vansittart once said, in a private interview: “Nobody asks my advice and, when it is tendered, it is ignored.”

21 Riddell, , Intimate Diary, p. 219.Google Scholar

22 Commission d'Enquête parlementaire sur les événements survenus en France de 1933 à 1945: Rapport de Charles Serre, M., député au nom de la Commission d'Enquête parlementaire, Paris, 1951, p. 86.Google Scholar

23 Weizsäcker, , Memoirs, p. 69.Google Scholar

24 Géraud, André, “Diplomacy, Old and New,” Foreign Affairs, XXIII (1944–1945), 267.Google Scholar

25 Namier, L. B., Europe in Decay: A Study in Disintegration, 1936–1940, London, 1950, p. 17.Google Scholar See also Paul-Boncour, Joseph, Entre les deux guerres: souvenirs sur la IIIe république, Paris, 1945–1946, III, 14–16.Google Scholar

26 Rumbold, Sir Horace speaks of “this age of rapid communication, of what I would call the telegraphic demoralization of those who formerly had to act for themselves and are now content to be at the end of a wire.”—Recollections of a Diplomatist, London, 1902, I, 111–12.Google Scholar See also Cambon, , Le diplomate, pp. 13, 118–19.Google Scholar

27 Commission d'Enquête parlementaire: Rapport, pp. 86–87.Google Scholar See also the testimony of Dobler, JeanGoogle Scholar, ibid., Témoignages et documents recueillis, II.

28 Coulondre, Robert, De Staline à Hitler, Paris, 1950, p. 165.Google Scholar

29 “In 1913, the number of dispatches &c. received at the Foreign Office was 68, 119. The figures for the years 1935–38 were 169, 248 in 1935, 187, 878 in 1936, 201, 323 in 1937, 223, 879 in 1938.”—Documents on British Foreign Policy, first series, I, iii.

30 Commission d'Enquête parlementaire: Rapport, pp. 86–87.

31 Morgan, J. H., Assize of Arms: The Disarmament of Germany and Her Rearmament, 1919–1939, New York, 1946, pp. xvi–xvii.Google Scholar

32 Coulondre, , De Staline à Hitler, pp. 126–27, 129.Google Scholar

33 Géraud, in Foreign Affairs, XXIII, 267.Google Scholar

34 “The Makers of Munich,” Times Literary Supplement (London), 29 September 1950, p. 607.

35 Service, John S., “‘… pertinent excerpts …’,” Foreign Service Journal (October 1951).Google Scholar

36 Parliamentary Debates: Commons, CIV (1918), 876.Google Scholar