The Anglo-German Fellowship was a membership organisation that existed from 1935 to 1939, and aimed to build up friendship between the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
and
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
. It was widely perceived as being allied to
Nazism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
. Previous groups in Britain with the same aims had been wound up when
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
came to power.
Origins
In a 1935 speech, the Prince of Wales (later
Edward VIII
Edward VIII (Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David; 23 June 1894 – 28 May 1972), later known as the Duke of Windsor, was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Empire and Emperor of India from 20 January 19 ...
) had called for a closer understanding of Germany in order to safeguard peace in Europe, and in response
Sir Thomas Moore, a
Conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...
Member of Parliament
A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...
, suggested setting up a study group of pro-German MPs. From that idea emerged the AGF, established in September 1935 with
Lord Mount Temple as chairman, and historian Philip Conwell-Evans and merchant banker
Ernest Tennant
Ernest William Dalrymple Tennant OBE (5 May 1887 – 31 July 1962)Charles Mosley (ed.), ''Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage'', 107th edition, 3 volumes. Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003.p. 15 ...
as secretaries.
[Martin Pugh, ''"Hurrah For the Blackshirts!" Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the War'', Pimlico, 2006, p. 269] Tennant was a friend of
Joachim von Ribbentrop
Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop (; 30 April 1893 – 16 October 1946) was a German politician and diplomat who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nazi Germany from 1938 to 1945.
Ribbentrop first came to Adolf Hitler's not ...
, German Ambassador to Britain. The group's stated aims were to foster political, professional, commercial and sporting links with Germany, but Mount Temple stated publicly that membership of the society did not assume support for Nazism or anti-Semitism.
An application was made to the
Board of Trade
The Board of Trade is a British government body concerned with commerce and industry, currently within the Department for International Trade. Its full title is The Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council appointed for the consideration of ...
on 26 July 1935 for "a licence directing an association about to be formed under the name of The Anglo-German Fellowship". The objectives of the proposed association were given as:
Membership
The organisation was aimed at the influential in society, and the membership was dominated by businessmen keen to promote commercial links. Members included
Bank of England
The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker, and still one of the bankers for the Government of ...
director
Frank Cyril Tiarks
Frank Cyril Tiarks OBE (also known as F. C. Tiarks) (9 July 1874 – 7 April 1952) was an English banker.
Family
He was son of Henry Frederick Tiarks (23 December 1832 - 18 October 1911), banker, partner in J. Henry Schröder & Co. in Lond ...
,
Admiral Sir Barry Domvile,
Prince von Bismarck,
Governor of the Bank of England
The governor of the Bank of England is the most senior position in the Bank of England. It is nominally a civil service post, but the appointment tends to be from within the bank, with the incumbent grooming their successor. The governor of the Ba ...
Montagu Norman
Montagu Collet Norman, 1st Baron Norman DSO PC (6 September 1871 – 4 February 1950) was an English banker, best known for his role as the Governor of the Bank of England from 1920 to 1944.
Norman led the bank during the toughest period in m ...
,
Geoffrey Dawson
George Geoffrey Dawson (25 October 1874 – 7 November 1944) was editor of ''The Times'' from 1912 to 1919 and again from 1923 until 1941. His original last name was Robinson, but he changed it in 1917. He married Hon. Margaret Cecilia Lawley, ...
editor of ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
''. "Corporate membership" was also available for leading companies who wished to show their support for co-operation with Germany and this was taken out by such leading organisations as
Price Waterhouse
PricewaterhouseCoopers is an international professional services brand of firms, operating as partnerships under the PwC brand. It is the second-largest professional services network in the world and is considered one of the Big Four accounting ...
,
Unilever
Unilever plc is a British multinational consumer goods company with headquarters in London, England. Unilever products include food, condiments, bottled water, baby food, soft drink, ice cream, instant coffee, cleaning agents, energy drink, t ...
,
Dunlop Rubber
Dunlop Ltd. (formerly Dunlop Rubber) was a British multinational company involved in the manufacture of various natural rubber goods. Its business was founded in 1889 by Harvey du Cros and he involved John Boyd Dunlop who had re-invented and d ...
,
Thomas Cook & Son
Thomas Cook & Son, originally simply Thomas Cook, was a company founded by Thomas Cook, a cabinet-maker, in 1841 to carry temperance supporters by railway between the cities of Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Birmingham. In 1851, Cook arranged ...
, the
Midland Bank
Midland Bank Plc was one of the Big Four banking groups in the United Kingdom for most of the 20th century. It is now part of HSBC. The bank was founded as the Birmingham and Midland Bank in Union Street, Birmingham, England in August 1836. It ...
and
Lazard Brothers
Lazard Ltd (formerly known as Lazard Frères & Co.) is a financial advisory and asset management firm that engages in investment banking, asset management and other financial services, primarily with institutional clients. It is the world's la ...
amongst others.
[Pugh, ''"Hurrah For the Blackshirts!"'', p. 270]
Several Members of Parliament, mostly from the Conservative Party, joined the group: they included
Sir Peter Agnew,
Lawrence Dundas, 2nd Marquess of Zetland
Lawrence John Lumley Dundas, 2nd Marquess of Zetland, (11 June 1876 – 6 February 1961), styled Lord Dundas until 1892 and Earl of Ronaldshay between 1892 and 1929, was a British Conservative politician. An expert on India, he served as Secreta ...
,
Ernest Bennett,
Sir Robert Bird,
Robert Tatton Bower
Commander Robert Tatton Bower (9 June 1894 – 5 July 1975) was a Royal Navy officer and a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom.
Early life
Bower was the only son- with two sisters- of Major Sir Robert Lister Bower, KBE, CMG, o ...
,
Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, Marquess of Clydesdale,
Robert Vaughan Gower
Sir Robert Vaughan Gower (10 November 1880 – 6 March 1953) was a British solicitor and Conservative Party politician from Kent. He sat in the House of Commons from 1924 to 1945. He was most remembered for his work on behalf of animals; he ...
,
Thomas "Loel" Guinness
Group Captain Thomas Loel Evelyn Bulkeley Guinness, (9 June 1906 – 31 December 1988) was a British Conservative politician, Member of Parliament (MP) for Bath (1931–1945), business magnate and philanthropist. Guinness also financed the ...
,
Norman Hulbert
Wing Commander Sir Norman John Hulbert, DL (5 June 1903 – 1 June 1972) was a British company director, Royal Air Force officer and politician who served as a member of parliament for the Conservative Party for nearly thirty years. Early in his ...
,
Archibald James
Wing Commander Sir Archibald William Henry James, MC (September 1893 – 5 May 1980) was a British Conservative Party politician and Royal Air Force pioneer.
Born in Paddington, London, the son of H. A. James of Hurstmonceux Place, East Sussex, ...
,
Alfred Knox
Major-General Sir Alfred William Fortescue Knox (30 October 1870 – 9 March 1964) was a career British military officer and later a Conservative Party politician.
Military career
Born in Ulster, Knox joined the British Army when he attended th ...
,
John Macnamara
Colonel John Robert Jermain Macnamara (11 October 1905 – 22 December 1944) was a British Conservative Party politician and officer of the British Army who was killed while fighting in Italy during the Second World War. He was the last sittin ...
,
Sir Thomas Moore,
Assheton Pownall
Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Assheton Pownall (3 October 1877 – 29 October 1953) was a British Conservative Party politician who served as Member of Parliament for Lewisham East from 1918 to 1945.
Pownall was born in Warwick, Warwickshire, the so ...
,
Frank Sanderson
Sir Frank Bernard Sanderson, 1st Baronet (4 October 1880 – 18 July 1965) was a British Conservative Party politician and public servant.
During the First World War, Sanderson was Controller of Trench Warfare, National Shell Filling Factories an ...
,
Duncan Sandys
Edwin Duncan Sandys, Baron Duncan-Sandys (; 24 January 1908 – 26 November 1987), was a British politician and minister in successive Conservative governments in the 1950s and 1960s. He was a son-in-law of Winston Churchill and played a key ro ...
, Admiral
Murray Sueter
Rear-Admiral Sir Murray Fraser Sueter (6 September 1872 – 3 February 1960) was a Royal Naval officer who was noted as a pioneer of naval aviation and later became a Member of Parliament (MP).
Naval career
Sueter was born in Alverstoke. Comi ...
,
Charles Taylor and
Ronald Tree
Arthur Ronald Lambert Field Tree (26 September 1897 – 14 July 1976) was a British Conservative Party politician, journalist and investor who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Harborough constituency in Leicestershire from 1933 to ...
.
Members of the
House of Lords
The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the ...
to hold membership included
Lord Brocket
Baron Brocket, of Brocket Hall in the County of Hertford, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 19 January 1933 for the businessman Charles Nall-Cain, 1st Baron Brocket, Sir Charles Nall-Cain, 1st Baronet. He was chair ...
,
Lord Galloway, the
Earl of Glasgow
Earl of Glasgow is a title in the Peerage of Scotland. It was created in 1703 for David Boyle, Lord Boyle.
The first earl was subsequently one of the commissioners who negotiated the Treaty of Union uniting the Kingdom of England and the Kingd ...
,
Lord Mount Temple,
Lord Londonderry
Marquess of Londonderry, of the County of Londonderry ( ), is a title in the Peerage of Ireland.
History
The title was created in 1816 for Robert Stewart, 1st Earl of Londonderry. He had earlier represented County Down in the Irish House of ...
,
Lord Nuffield
William Richard Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield, (10 October 1877 – 22 August 1963) was an English motor manufacturer and philanthropist. He was the founder of Morris Motors Limited and is remembered as the founder of the Nuffield Foundation, ...
,
Lord Redesdale
Baron Redesdale, of Redesdale in the County of Northumberland, is a title that has been created twice, both times in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was firstly created in 1802 for lawyer and politician Sir John Mitford (later Freeman-Mi ...
,
Lord Rennell and the
Duke of Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, (1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852) was an Anglo-Irish soldier and Tory statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain, serving twice as prime minister of ...
.
By 1937, the group seems to have had 347 members.
Activities
The AGF's sister organization in Berlin was the ''
Deutsch-Englische Gesellschaft The ''Deutsch-Englische Gesellschaft'' (German-English Society) was the German sister organization of the Anglo-German Fellowship. It was formed in Berlin, Germany, around 1935, under support of the . The ''Dienststelle Ribbentrop'' was created by J ...
''. Neither group had an avowed mission to Nazify Britain. Instead, the two groups would unite, to host grand dinners at which leading German figures noted for their Anglophilia or their familial links to the United Kingdom, such as
Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Walter Richard Hess (Heß in German; 26 April 1894 – 17 August 1987) was a German politician and a leading member of the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Appointed Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler in 1933, Hess held that position unt ...
, von Ribbentrop, General
Werner von Blomberg
Werner Eduard Fritz von Blomberg (2 September 1878 – 13 March 1946) was a German General Staff officer and the first Minister of War in Adolf Hitler's government. After serving on the Western Front in World War I, Blomberg was appointed chi ...
, the
Duke of Brunswick
Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they are ranke ...
and the
Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (german: Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha), or Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (german: Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha, links=no ), was an Ernestine, Thuringian duchy ruled by a branch of the House of Wettin, consisting of territories in the present-d ...
, would be guests of honour.
However, the organisation did have a pro-Nazi leaning, as well as a number of
fascist
Fascism is a far-right, Authoritarianism, authoritarian, ultranationalism, ultra-nationalist political Political ideology, ideology and Political movement, movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and pol ...
members. The spies
Guy Burgess
Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess (16 April 1911 – 30 August 1963) was a British diplomat and Soviet agent, and a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring that operated from the mid-1930s to the early years of the Cold War era. His defection in 1951 ...
and
Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 191211 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963 he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring which had divulged British secr ...
, seeking to disguise their Communist affiliations, joined the AGF in the knowledge that it was widely perceived as allied to the far right.
Reaction to Nazi antisemitism
Lord Mount Temple resigned in November 1938 as chairman of the AGF because of the treatment of the
German Jews
The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (''circa'' 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish ...
by the Nazis. Following his resignation he told the press:
The Council of the Anglo-German Fellowship met in London and released a statement:
Closure
At the time of the
Munich Crisis
The Munich Agreement ( cs, Mnichovská dohoda; sk, Mníchovská dohoda; german: Münchner Abkommen) was an agreement concluded at Munich on 30 September 1938, by Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. It provided "cession to Germany ...
in 1938 Ernest Tennant recorded that the feeling in the organisation was that they should close. However, they approached the
UK Foreign Office
The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) is a department of the Government of the United Kingdom. Equivalent to other countries' ministries of foreign affairs, it was created on 2 September 2020 through the merger of the Foreign ...
for advice. Tennant reported that
Lord Vansittart recommended their staying active, which they did until the outbreak of the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
However, this claim was later refuted by Vansittart. He responded that he queried the claim with the intermediary between the Fellowship and the Foreign Office, Conwell Evans, who reported that he had met with
Lord Halifax
Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax, (16 April 1881 – 23 December 1959), known as The Lord Irwin from 1925 until 1934 and The Viscount Halifax from 1934 until 1944, was a senior British Conservative politician of the 19 ...
on the matter.
In the House of Commons on 7 September 1939
Vyvyan Adams MP asked the
Home Secretary
The secretary of state for the Home Department, otherwise known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom. The home secretary leads the Home Office, and is responsible for all national ...
what the Government is doing to "deal with" organisations such as the Fellowship. To this,
Sir John Anderson
John Anderson, 1st Viscount Waverley, (8 July 1882 – 4 January 1958) was a Scottish civil servant and politician who is best known for his service in the War Cabinet during the Second World War, for which he was nicknamed the "Home Front Pr ...
reported to the house that "the Anglo-German Fellowship has entirely suspended its activities".
See also
*
Germany–United Kingdom relations
Germany–United Kingdom relations are the bilateral relations between Germany and the United Kingdom.
Relations were very strong in the Late Middle Ages when the German cities of the Hanseatic League traded with England and Scotland.
Before th ...
*''
Deutsch-Englische Gesellschaft The ''Deutsch-Englische Gesellschaft'' (German-English Society) was the German sister organization of the Anglo-German Fellowship. It was formed in Berlin, Germany, around 1935, under support of the . The ''Dienststelle Ribbentrop'' was created by J ...
''
*
The Link (UK organization)
The Link was established in July 1937 as an "independent non-party organisation to promote Anglo-German friendship". It generally operated as a cultural organisation, although its journal, the ''Anglo-German Review'', reflected the pro-Nazi view ...
*
Anglo-German Friendship Committee The Anglo-German Friendship Committee was a London-based association founded in 1905 to promote the improvement of cordial relations between Great Britain and Germany.
The Committee was launched on 1 December 1905 at a meeting in Caxton Hall, Londo ...
, founded 1905
References
{{Authority control
Organizations established in 1935
Organizations disestablished in 1939
Germany–United Kingdom relations
Far-right politics in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom friendship associations
Germany friendship associations
1935 establishments in Germany
1939 disestablishments in Germany
1935 establishments in the United Kingdom
1939 disestablishments in the United Kingdom