John Wheeler-Bennett

John Wheeler-Bennett

Sir John Wheeler Wheeler-Bennett (13 October 1902 – 9 December 1975), Royal Victoria Order (GCVO), Order of St Michael and St George (CMG), Order of the British Empire (OBE), Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) was a conservative English historian of German and diplomatic history, and the official biographer of King George VI.

Early career

Wheeler-Bennett was born in Keston, Kent, England, the son of a wealthy importer. He was educated in Westgate-on-Sea and then at Malvern College. In the 1920s, Wheeler-Bennett worked as an aide to General Sir Neil Malcolm in the Middle East and Berlin.

After leaving Malcolm's employment, Wheeler-Bennett served in the publicity department of the League of Nations in 1923-1924 in Geneva. Afterwards, Wheeler-Bennett worked as the director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs' information department in London. Wheeler-Bennett also worked as the editor of the Bulletin of International News between 1924-1932.

Germany

He lived in Germany between 1927–1934 and witnessed the demise of the Weimar Republic and the rise of National Socialist Germany. During his time living in Berlin, he enjoyed some success as a horse-breeder. During this period, he became an unofficial agent and advisor to London on international events.

In 1933, Wheeler-Bennett told the Royal Institute of International Affairs that:

"Hitler, I am convinced, does not want a war. He is susceptible to reason in matters of foreign policy. He is greatly anxious to make Germany self-respecting and is himself anxious to be respectable. He may be described as the most moderate member of his party."

Wheeler-Bennett's biography of Paul von Hindenburg created his reputation as a historian. Another great success was his book on the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, still regarded as the standard historical study of the subject.

After the Second World War, Wheeler-Bennett became a critic of Appeasement and a decade after the Munich Agreement wrote a book condemning it.

In the pre-1939 period, Wheeler-Bennett befriended or was at least on speaking terms with a number of well-known people all over Europe. Some of the people he had some contact with included French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou, Heinrich Brüning, Basil Liddell Hart, Franz von Papen, John Buchan, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, Leon Trotsky, Generals Hans von Seeckt and Max Hoffmann, Lewis Bernstein Namier, Italian Leader Benito Mussolini, secret agent Robert Bruce Lockhart, the Jewish Bolshevik Karl Radek, the notoriously anti-German Sir Robert Vansittart, General Kurt von Schleicher, the Czech nationalist Tomáš Masaryk, Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, the former Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, the 1944 bomb plot traitor Adam von Trott zu Solz (executed), Philip Kerr, 11th Marquess of Lothian, Winston Churchill, and the notorious Edvard Beneš.

World War Two

In 1939, he went to the United States to serve as a lecturer on international relations at the University of Virginia. Wheeler-Bennett was strongly pro-American and always considered the American South to be his favourite part.

From 1940 onwards, he worked with the British Information Service in New York City, an agency charged with trying to persuade the United States to enter the war on the Allied side.

Returning to London in 1942, Wheeler-Bennett worked in the Political Warfare department of the British Foreign Office. After he joined the FO, he became an opponent of the so-called German Resistance. Wheeler-Bennett gained his reward, being promoted to the Assistant Director General of Political Intelligence Department before going on to serve in the Political Adviser's Department in SHAEF in 1944-1945. In 1945-1946, Wheeler-Bennett assisted the British Prosecution team at the Nuremberg Show Trials.

Wheeler-Bennett's views on the German Resistance

As a member of the Foreign Office Political Intelligence Department, he wrote on 25 July 1944 that:

"It may now be said with some definiteness that we are better off with things as they are today than if the plot of July 20th had succeeded and Hitler had been assassinated... By the failure of the plot we have been spared the embarrassments, both at home and in the United States, which might have resulted from such a move, and, moreover, the present purge [by the Gestapo] is presumably removing from the scene numerous individuals which might have caused us difficulty, not only had the plot succeeded, but also after the defeat of National Socialist Germany... The Gestapo and the SS have done us an appreciable service in removing a selection of those who would undoubtedly have posed as 'good' Germans after the war... It is to our advantage therefore that the purge should continue, since the killing of Germans by Germans will save us from future embarrassment of many kinds."

Wheeler-Bennett's views on Germany and the German Resistance caused unease to some of his wartime colleagues, an internal February 1944 paper of his being condemned by Professor Thomas Marshall - of the Foreign Office Research Department - as a "vitriolic little paper" and "hardly worthy of its distinguished author."

After the Second World War, Wheeler-Bennett was the British editor-in-chief of the German Foreign Ministry's archives and oversaw the early publications of the German Documents on Foreign Affairs from 1946-1948. From 1948-1956, he served as the Historical Adviser to the Foreign Office Project for publishing the German Foreign Ministry Archives.

Post-1945

In 1945, Wheeler-Bennett married an American, Ruth Risher, and settled after the war at Garsington Manor, Oxfordshire. Despite never attending a university (like Churchill) his reputation as a historian and archivist led to his appointment as a lecturer in International Relations at St. Antony's College and at New College at Oxford University after World War II, from 1946-1950.

He was appointed as official biographer of King George VI, after the King's death in 1952, producing a biography which appeared in 1958.

The Nemesis of Power

Wheeler-Bennett was best known for his book The Nemesis of Power which documented the German Army's involvement in politics and reiterated Wheeler-Bennet's hostile views on the German Resistance. Foreign Office files, now in the British National Archives, reveal that Wheeler-Bennett attempted to prevent access, by other historians, to papers which did not support the views he expressed in The Nemesis of Power.

His thesis was that under General von Seeckt's leadership during the Weimar period, the Reichswehr formed a "State within the State" that largely preserved its autonomy from the politicians in Berlin, but that it did not, however, play an active role in day-to-day politics.

After von Seeckt's retirement in 1926, which had been engineered by Kurt von Schleicher, the Reichswehr became increasingly engaged in political intrigues. In Wheeler-Bennett's personal view, von Schleicher was the "Gravedigger of the Weimar Republic" who succeeded in undermining democracy, but failed completely to build any sort of stable structure in its place. Thus by a mixture of cunning, intrigue and inept manoeuvres, von Schleicher inadvertently paved the way for Adolf Hitler. (This opinion is shown to be false in the Memoirs of Franz von Papen).

In the revised 1964 edition of The Nemesis of Power, Wheeler-Bennett continued his story right up to the 20 July plot of 1944. He contended that under the leadership of Generals Werner von Blomberg and Werner von Fritsch, the German Army chose to acquiesce in the National Socialist regime as the kind of government best able to achieve what the Army wanted; namely a militarized society that would ensure in the next war that there would be no repeat of the "stab in the back".

He continued that by agreeing to support the National Socialist rule, the Army tolerated a government that quietly and gradually dismantled the 'State within the state'. After the fall of both von Blomberg and Fritsch in 1938, the Army increasingly became just a tool of the government rather than the independent actor that it had been under Weimar. Overall, he concluded that the conservative opposition within the Wehrmacht had done too little, too late if they were to overthrow the National Socialists.

Final decades

An Anglican, he enjoyed his life in the English countryside. From 1959 until his death, he worked as the Historical Adviser for the Royal Archives. He became founding chairman of the Ditchley Foundation, the Anglo-American conference group, in 1958. In 1972, he was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy.

He was a follower of the 'Great Man school of history' and his writings usually explained historical events in terms of the leading personalities of the period under study. This view of history together with his own personal outlook led him, sadly, to make Churchill the principal hero of his writings.

Sir John Wheeler-Bennett died of cancer, in London, aged 73.

He was very well-known in his lifetime and his interpretation of the role of the German Army influenced some British historians.

References

• Cull, Nicholas Selling War : The British Propaganda Against American 'Neutrality' In World War II, New York : Oxford University Press, 1995.
• Roberts, Frank (editor) Obituaries From The Times 1971-1975, Meckler Books, 1978.
• Foreign Office files in the British National Archives

Work

• Information On The Reduction Of Armaments, with an introduction by Major-General Sir Neil L. Malcolm, 1925.
• Information On The Renunciation Of War, 1927-1928 with an introduction by Philip H. Kerr, 1928.
• The Wreck Of Reparations, Being The Political Background Of The Lausanne Agreement, 1932, 1932.
• Disarmament And Security Since Locarno 1925-1931; Being The Political And Technical Background Of The General Disarmament Conference, 1932, 1933.
• Hindenburg: The Wooden Titan, 1936.
• Brest-Litovsk : The Forgotten Peace, March 1918, 1938, reprinted 1939, 1956, 1963 and 1966.
• Munich : Prologue To Tragedy, 1948.
• The Nemesis Of Power : The German Army In Politics, 1918-1945, 1953, revised edition 1964.
• King George VI, His Life And Reign, 1958.
• John Anderson, Viscount Waverley, 1962.
• A Wreath To Clio: Studies In British, American and German Affairs, 1967.
• Action This Day; Working With Churchill. Memoirs by Lord Norman Brook (And Others), edited with an introduction by Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, 1968.
• The Pipe Dream Of Peace; The Story Of The Collapse Of Disarmament, 1971.
• The Semblance Of Peace : The Political Settlement After The Second World War, co-written by J. Wheeler-Bennett and Anthony Nicholls, 1972.
• The History Makers; Leaders And Statesmen Of The 20th century, edited by Lord Longford & Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, Chronologies and editorial assistance by Christine Nicholls, 1973.
• Knaves, Fools And Heroes In Europe Between The Wars, 1974.
• Special Relationships : America In Peace And War, 1975.
• Friends, Enemies, And Sovereigns, 1976