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The Man Who Shouted at Hitler: Sir Nevile Henderson in Berlin
| UN peacekeeper | 03/02/26 |
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Date: March 2nd, 2026 4:22 AM Author: UN peacekeeper At nine a.m. on Sunday 3 September 1939, the British Ambassador in Berlin, Sir Nevile Meyrick Henderson, went to the German Foreign Ministry building in Berlin. He had done this on many occasions in the past, but this time his message was especially ominous. Unless the German Government withdrew its troops from Poland or began that process by eleven a.m. that day, a state of war would exist between Britain and Germany. Henderson was not greeted by Hitler's inept Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, but by his interpreter, Paul Schmidt. The two men exchanged pleasantries and Schmidt expressed his regret about the circumstances surrounding their interview as he had 'always had the highest regard for the British ambassador'. Henderson returned to his Embassy, but no reply was ever received to the British ultimatum. Two hours later, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was telling the British people on the radio that Britain and Germany were at war. It was a bitter personal blow for Nevile Henderson who entitled his memoir about his time in Berlin Failure of A Mission. The war marked the end of his diplomatic career. Henderson the Scapegoat Henderson has had a very bad press in the years since the Second World War. This was partly because, in the immediate postwar years, appeasement was a dirty word and Henderson, like Chamberlain, was closely associated with the failed attempt to prevent war by reaching some sort of accommodation with Nazi Germany. An anti-appeasement historian, Lewis Namier, called Henderson an 'ill-starred man' and the 'Beau Brummel of Diplomacy' in the late 40s, and in the early 60s the historians Gilbert and Gott were still calling Henderson 'our Nazi Ambassador in Berlin'. Little changed in the years that followed. Why then did Henderson attract such animosity and was it justified? The Emergent Diplomat Henderson was an unusual early twentieth-century diplomat in that he didn't go to Oxbridge, or indeed any university. He joined the Foreign Office in 1905 after a spell abroad and 'cramming' foreign languages in London private schools. Thereafter Henderson progressed in steady, if unspectacular, steps up the ranks of the Foreign and Diplomatic Service. As he himself observed in his memoirs, between 1905 when he became a diplomat and 1939 when he left Berlin, he spent very little time on his native soil at all. He was sent to places as far apart as St Petersburg and Tokyo and ultimately to Belgrade. Here between 1929 and 1935, he hit it off famously with the authoritarian King Alexander. Clearly it was Henderson's success in Belgrade which secured his selection as British Ambassador in Berlin in 1937. He had impressed the redoubtable Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Robert Vansittart, who told him that he deserved a chance 'in the First Eleven'. It was 'Van', as he was commonly known in the Foreign Office, who backed Henderson's appointment since the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, had never met him before he went to Berlin. Henderson and the Germans A key part of Henderson's job was his relationship with the German leadership, and here he had big problems. He loathed the Foreign Minister, von Ribbentrop, and the feeling was mutual. Ribbentrop did his best to restrict Henderson's access to Hitler, who was irritated by his upper-class British manner, referring to him contemptuously as 'the man with the carnation' (Henderson always had one in his buttonhole). Henderson's critics have never quite managed to explain how his influence in Berlin was so malign when he was despised by both Hitler and Ribbentrop. With Göring, it was a different matter. A whole chapter of Failure of A Mission is devoted to Göring, and Henderson confessed to having 'a real personal liking for him'. He regarded Göring as a 'moderate', one of those Germans who could be used to rein in Hitler's excesses. What he, and others, failed to recognise was that Hitler was the greatest extremist of them all. Henderson failed also to pick up the ideological imperative, based on extreme racism, which underlay everything Hitler did. But he was not alone in his hope that Hitler was an aggrieved nationalist who could be cured by kindness. Britain's ambassador was far from being the naïve incompetent portrayed by his critics: he recognised that Hitler was abnormal and that he might well have 'crossed the borderline into insanity'. Conversely, Henderson's scepticism about the anti-Nazi German opposition was well justified. The British Government understandably had difficulty in seeing how their territorial demands (for the Polish Corridor, for example) differed from those of the Nazis. Even Vansittart came to share this view, and saw that it was not the job of the Foreign Office to stir up treason in a foreign state, however odious. Attempts by historians like Patricia Meehan to suggest otherwise fail to convince. The Prime Minister's Man Henderson had a somewhat messianic view of his new role in Berlin. He believed that he had been 'specially selected by Providence for the definite mission of, as I trusted, helping to preserve the peace of the world'. More important was, in fact, an interview which he had with the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain, in April 1937 before he went to Berlin. No written account survives of what was said, but Henderson wrote later of how Chamberlain had 'outlined his views' on policy towards Germany. The line advocated was the appeasement of Nazi Germany, listening to German grievances and making concessions to secure future good behaviour and avoid war. By May 1937, Chamberlain was Prime Minister and Henderson saw himself as the agent of Chamberlain's policy in Germany. The story of Henderson's mission in Berlin is the story of an increasingly desperate attempt to save the peace in a hopeless environment. But no one could have tried harder than Henderson to prevent the war which he so dreaded. He was a revisionist who thought that Versailles had been unjust, and he was unsympathetic to states like Czechoslovakia and Poland which contained large minorities of ethnic Germans. But he did not, as his critics allege, favour the union of Austria and Germany by force or the fragmentation of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Henderson also supported rearmament, as he was well aware of Britain's military deficiencies. Thus he supported the 1938 Munich Agreement giving Hitler the Sudetenland, knowing on military intelligence that Britain and France would lose if they took Hitler on. Throughout he supported the Prime Minister's policy. The Failure of Appeasement The policy with which Henderson was closely associated was shown to have failed on 15 March 1939 when Hitler's forces entered Prague. No longer could the Führer pretend that he only wanted to bring ethnic Germans into the Reich. Thereafter, Chamberlain was forced reluctantly to adopt a policy of collective security. Henderson seemed to have no place in the new dispensation. Amazingly, however, he was kept in post and loyally tried to warn Hitler and Ribbentrop of the consequences of future aggression. He had by now been diagnosed as suffering from throat cancer which made his retention even more bizarre. Quite why a seriously sick man was retained in such a key post is one of the major mysteries of the period. The Last Days in Berlin All the evidence suggests that Henderson loyally carried out his brief. He persistently warned the Germans about what would happen if they invaded Poland, and had a major row with Hitler on 29 August. Henderson reported that the German dictator became abusive and shouted, whereupon he himself 'outshouted Hitler', declaring that 'I and His Majesty's Government did not give a row of pins whether Germans were slaughtered or not'. A Foreign Office colleague minuted that Henderson 'was probably quite right to shout'. It did no good of course, Hitler's mind was made up. Within a week Henderson was asking for his diplomatic passport and was on his way back to Britain. Conclusion It is the contention of this article that Henderson has been unfairly treated by historians and contemporaries alike. One of his problems has been that, unlike some of his contemporaries who developed convenient amnesia about appeasement in the postwar years, Henderson failed to repent in his 1940 book. He also died in 1942, not being around to defend himself when appeasement was being castigated later. Henderson, a mere ambassador, has been credited with vastly more influence than he really had. What in reality did it amount to? Henderson can be credited with influencing Chamberlain's decision not to warn off an enraged Hitler before the Party Rally, and not to visit him in the middle of it in September 1938, but with precious little else. Chamberlain after all liked to circumvent the Foreign Office and use intermediaries like Runciman who was sent to the Sudetenland in 1938. And solid German witnesses, like the dissident ex-diplomat von Hassell, are on record as saying that Henderson did warn Hitler of the danger of war in 1938-9, contrary to what critics say. Ultimately Henderson offers a prime example of shooting the messenger when the message had been decided upon elsewhere. He has been an easy historical target when, in reality, he was an honourable man trying to do his duty in very onerous circumstances. |