Sir George Arthur Drostan Ogilvie-Forbes was a British diplomat who held two key postings in the years leading up to the Second World War, as charge d'affaires in Madrid and Valencia 1936 to 1937 and as counsellor and charge d'affaires in Berlin from 1937 to 1939.
53 Facts About George Ogilvie-Forbes
1.
2.
George Ogilvie-Forbes was known for his humanitarian efforts in both positions.
3.
George Ogilvie-Forbes was educated at The Oratory School, Beaumont College, Bonn University and New College, Oxford.
4.
At Bonn, George Ogilvie-Forbes studied modern languages, becoming fluent in French and German.
5.
George Ogilvie-Forbes joined HM Diplomatic Service in 1919 and early postings included Denmark, Finland, Yugoslavia and Mexico.
6.
George Ogilvie-Forbes served as the charge d'affaires to the Holy See and then as Counsellor to Embassy in Baghdad.
7.
George Ogilvie-Forbes was appointed charge d'affaires in Madrid, which was then a war zone governed by the Republicans.
8.
George Ogilvie-Forbes was on vacation in Scotland when the war began, but he chose to return to Madrid, and as the most senior British diplomat took charge of the embassy.
9.
In contrast to this, George Ogilvie-Forbes set out firstly to be as impartial as possible, and secondly to cultivate good relations with the differing factions within the Republican side because of the opportunity it provided for humanitarian aid and assistance to refugees from both sides of the conflict.
10.
The appointment of the devout Roman Catholic George Ogilvie-Forbes led to charges by left-wing journalists that he was pro-Nationalist, but his impartiality and humanitarianism soon silenced these claims.
11.
The Spanish Foreign Minister, the Socialist Julio Alvarez del Vayo later recalled in his exile that George Ogilvie-Forbes was intelligent man with "strong human kindness", who despite the fact that Roman Catholic Church had blessed Franco's "crusade against Communism", did his best to be neutral.
12.
George Ogilvie-Forbes witnessed first hand the terror waged by Spanish Communists and anarchists against the right in Madrid, but predicted if the Spanish Nationalists won the civil war, then the terror from the right against the left would be even worse.
13.
George Ogilvie-Forbes thought the order to move the embassy from Madrid to Valencia was "cowardly and dishonourable".
14.
When George Ogilvie-Forbes received his KCMG in May 1937 for his services in Spain, he pointed out in a letter to Anthony Eden that it was in recognition of all his colleagues who had helped him in Spain "often in terribly cruel circumstances".
15.
George Ogilvie-Forbes was appointed Counsellor to the Embassy in Berlin in early April 1937.
16.
From August 1937 onward, in the power struggle that developed between Henderson and Vansittart, George Ogilvie-Forbes tended to back the latter, which made relations with the former very difficult.
17.
On 14 September 1938, George Ogilvie-Forbes warned Ernst von Weizsacker, the State Secretary of the Auswartiges Amt, that the proposal of Neville Chamberlain to allow the Sudetenland to be incorporated into the Reich showed how far Britain was willing to go to save the peace, but if Germany kept up its current negative attitude, then the result would be war.
18.
In speaking to Weizsacker, George Ogilvie-Forbes was saying essentially the same thing as Henderson, but in far stronger and blunter language.
19.
George Ogilvie-Forbes had a much more pessimistic view of Hitler than Henderson and this was reflected in his dispatches back to the Foreign Office.
20.
George Ogilvie-Forbes shared the widespread feeling in Britain that the Treaty of Versailles had been too harsh on Germany and he had supported the Munich Agreement on the grounds that the Sudetenland should never had been included in Czechoslovakia in the first place.
21.
However, unlike Henderson, George Ogilvie-Forbes believed that the Nazi regime had foreign policy goals that went well beyond revising the Treaty of Versailles and were aimed at winning Germany the "world power status" that she had sought in the First World War.
22.
George Ogilvie-Forbes complained that the frontier claimed by the Germans was "cunningly" drawn to cause economic chaos as "almost all of the main arteries of Bohemia and Moravia must now traverse territory occupied by the Germans".
23.
George Ogilvie-Forbes wrote that to agree to this "would appear to be truckling to an unreasonable demand and out of accord with the terms and the spirit of the Munich agreement" while writing "to refuse would be regarded by the Germans as contrary to His Majesty's Government's policy of Anglo-German rapprochement as recorded at Munich".
24.
On 13 November 1938, George Ogilvie-Forbes reported after Kristallnacht many German Jews "are wandering about in the streets and parks afraid to return to their homes".
25.
George Ogilvie-Forbes reported with disgust that none of the perpetrators of the Kristallnacht were going to be punished and that the Reich government had imposed a 1 billion Reichsmark fine on the entire Jewish community in Germany to punish the Jews for the violence inflicted on them.
26.
Since most of the Jewish homes and businesses had been destroyed in the Kristallnacht, George Ogilvie-Forbes predicted the 1 billion Reichsmark fine was going to drive the German Jewish community into utter destitution.
27.
George Ogilvie-Forbes was in contact with members of the German opposition, who provided intelligence such as a copy of Hitler's secret speech to a group of 200 German journalists on 10 November 1938 saying he wanted more bellicose media coverage to prepare Germany for war.
28.
George Ogilvie-Forbes noted that in the secret speech Hitler called for Britain to be presented as "public enemy number one" and he kept hearing rumours that Hitler was planning to renounce the Anglo-German Naval Agreement.
29.
When Hitler gave the departing French ambassador Andre Francois-Poncet a medal at their last meeting in October 1938 for his work in improving Franco-German relations, George Ogilvie-Forbes saw sinister implications in this.
30.
George Ogilvie-Forbes quoted one German official as saying to him that Hitler was still undecided whether to turn west or east in 1939, but "it is the profound conviction of almost every thinking German that the tiger [Hitler] will jump soon".
31.
George Ogilvie-Forbes further reported that Hitler regarded the Munich Agreement as a diplomatic defeat as what he wanted was a war to "smash" Czechoslovakia, not an agreement to hand over the Sudetenland.
32.
George Ogilvie-Forbes supported Mason-MacFarlane's conclusion that another war was imminent even if he could not predict for certain what Hitler would do in 1939 "what is certain is that the military and civilian resources of the country are prepared for an emergency".
33.
George Ogilvie-Forbes endorsed Mason-MacFarlane conclusion that Halifax should work to strengthen Anglo-French ties and to encourage the French to improve their ties with their allies in Eastern Europe, saying that a combination of Britain and France was the only thing that could deter Hitler from choosing war.
34.
Finally, George Ogilvie-Forbes approved of Mason-MacFarlane's warning that Hitler would probably strike one of the states of Eastern Europe, such as Czecho-Slovakia, Poland or the Soviet Union in order to exploit their natural resources and people before turning west to strike at France and Great Britain.
35.
George Ogilvie-Forbes was keen to point out that Nazi anti-Semitism was symptomatic of Hitler's frame of mind; that it was Hitler who was personally conducting the campaign against the Jews.
36.
Unlike Henderson, George Ogilvie-Forbes attached far greater significance to Nazi antisemitism.
37.
George Ogilvie-Forbes wrote that antisemitism in Germany was "not a national, but a world problem, which if neglected, contains the seeds of a terrible vengeance".
38.
On 22 August 1939, Loucher contacted George Ogilvie-Forbes and gave him the text of the Obersalzberg speech, which he reported back to London the same day.
39.
George Ogilvie-Forbes agreed with Lipski that Henderson should not had been talking to Dahlerus, but Ogilive-Forbes was as the historian Donald Cameron Watt called him a "dyed-in-the-wool professional diplomat", indeed so professional that he did not criticise his chief in front of a foreign diplomat.
40.
George Ogilvie-Forbes noted that the Cuban economy revolved mainly upon selling sugar abroad, especially to the United States, and he expressed worries that a fall in the world sugar price would cause "an internal revolution ending in some form of Communism".
41.
In December 1941, Cuba under strong American pressure declared war on the Axis powers, which led to the closing of the German and Italian legations whose diplomats George Ogilvie-Forbes had competed against.
42.
In June 1942, George Ogilvie-Forbes negotiated an agreement that led the Royal Air Force use the air base at San Antonio de los Banos to conduct anti-submarine patrols over the Caribbean Sea.
43.
George Ogilvie-Forbes reported that officials from the American embassy had told him that Cuba was America's "stepchild" and that Britain should "KEEP OUT from nosing into Cuban affairs".
44.
The war caused a massive increase in the price of sugar, and George Ogilvie-Forbes predicated that the war-time prosperity had put off "the day of reckoning" for Cuba at least for some time.
45.
When Britain upgraded relations with Venezuela from the legation to the embassy level, George Ogilvie-Forbes became the first British ambassador in Caracas.
46.
At the San Francisco conference, which founded the United Nations, the Venezuelan Foreign Minister, Caracciolo Parra Perez, announced that the Venezuela did not recognize the border with British Guiana, leading George Ogilvie-Forbes to predict to Eden a return to the long running border dispute, which had been supposedly settled for good in 1899.
47.
George Ogilvie-Forbes described Betancourt as a firebrand nationalist who greatly resented the power of the oil companies in his country who had once belonged to the Venezuelan Communist Party, but who was now friendly with the British press attache in Caracas.
48.
George Ogilvie-Forbes was very much a supporter of the Accion Democratica government, writing in December 1945 about the Venezuelan delegation to the newly founded United Nations that "they are as good as be expected from this well meaning revolutionary government".
49.
George Ogilvie-Forbes tried to defend Betancourt by arguing that his speech had been promoted by Arevalo and did not reflect his true feelings towards Britain.
50.
In June 1946, one of the oil companies operating in Venezuela, the Royal Dutch Shell company, requested that George Ogilvie-Forbes have a warship sent to Venezuelan waters for "its calming effect on the European staff", a request that was refused.
51.
On retirement George Ogilvie-Forbes farmed his estate of Boyndlie, Aberdeenshire, was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant for Aberdeenshire, and became actively involved in various local charities and cultural organisations.
52.
George Ogilvie-Forbes was a member of the Scottish Council for Development and Industry and the Catholic Council of Great Britain.
53.
George Ogilvie-Forbes died of a heart attack in 1954 at the age of 63.