Talk:Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry

Deletion of "The Most Honourable"

Inferring from use of honorifics the encyclopedic use of styles doesn't seem to be proper. All hail to the res publica wicipedica. --tickle me 09:54, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I have restored his correct appellation which is right and proper for him. Just because you don't approve of these things is irrelevant. Encyclopaedias are about facts, not opinions. 81.131.0.49 19:42, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Vane Tempest Room, Durham Students Union

I thought this was named Vane Tempest after the mine, rather than CVTS. Paulleake 00:28, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Ian Kershaw's work

Although Ian Kershaw's 2004 book is cited here as a reference, it appears to have not been used at all as a source. In fact, this very sympathetic piece makes almost no use of references. Im surprised it has not been more vigorously edited! I might have a tinker when I finish with Kershaw's bookNickm57 (talk) 10:01, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

If may make a suggestion, besides for Kershaw's excellent book, one use should Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933-1939 by Richard Griffiths, which is the best study for the subject of "enthusiasts" for the Third Reich. The following terminology is Griffins's, not mine. Griffins makes an important distinction between appeasers and enthusiasts, which I believe would benefit from being used around here.

Appeasers refers to people in the British government who believed in the appeasement of the Axis powers for a variety of reasons, many tended to be pragmatic. For an example, in the 1930s, Japan was taking an aggressive stance, claiming all of China and increasingly all of the Far East was within its exclusive sphere of influence, and moreover was action to enforce this claim, which led to a war breaking between China and Japan in 1937. There was a real fear within the Chamberlain government that if Britain became involved in a war with Germany, that the Japanese might want to take advantage of this to make good their claims to domination of the Far East by seizing Britain's Asian colonies together with Australia and New Zealand. Moreover, there were concerns that the Royal Navy would not be able to fight the Kriegsmarine in the Atlantic, the Regia Marina in the Mediterranean, and the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Indian-Pacific oceans all at once. From the viewpoint of the Chamberlain government, trying to reduce the number of potential enemies was quite rational. The First Sea Lord, Admiral Earle Chatfield, a hero of the First World War, recommended to the government in 1938 that the United Kingdom not go to war for Czechoslovakia for this reason. Leaving the question of the means and ways that the Chamberlain government tried accomplish this goal, this is very far from being in sympathy with Nazi Germany.

"Enthusiasts" as defined by Griffiths refers to people in Britain who were individuals not in the government (through quite a few like Lord Londonderry were members of the House of Lords) who tried to improve relations between Britain and Germany. What is striking about these amateur diplomats is that most of them came from upper-class background and most if not fascists at least thought that National Socialism was an admirable ideology and Britain would to well to start copying aspects of the Third Reich. Lord Londonderry was very much an "enthusiast" for Nazi Germany. Like the other "enthusiast", he made the pilgrimage to Germany to meet Hitler to discuss how to draw Germany and Britain closer together. Both Hitler and even more so Ribbentrop had a lot of trouble understanding that after June 1935, Lord Londonderry was speaking as a private citizen, not on behalf of the British government. To be fair, Londonderry kept going on about how he wanted better Anglo-German relations and would use all his influence towards to achieve that, which is unintentionally confused the Nazis. Likewise, Londonderry was partly motivated by a sincere fear of another war, but like the "enthusiasts", he definitely liked and admired Nazi Germany. What is interesting is what attracted Londonderry to the Third Reich. Londonderry shared the snobbish antisemitism that was common in the Establishment at the time, but doesn't explain his attraction to the Third Reich. Romania had a violently antisemitic prime minister in the form of Octavian Goga, whose short-lived government in 1938 stripped Romania's Jews of practically all their rights, but Londonderry was quite indifferent to Romania.

Londondery gave as his reasons for admiring the Third Reich was that this was a regime that ended had united the German people by ending class conflict; put an end to socialism and communism in Germany; made all Germans patriotic and proud of their country; and made the Reich a great military power again.  If this was applied to Britain as Londonderry suggested it should be, this suggests a man who wanted an ideology that would unite all of the British people together as one, to be create a British version of the volksgemeinschaft ("people's community"). Londonderry was from Northern Ireland, so he must had been painfully aware of the sectarian divisions in Ulster, but other "enthusiasts" from England said much the same thing, so this go beyond the specific circumstances of Londonderry's background. Fascism may well had been a revolutionary movement as a great many scholars contend today, but Londonderry like the other "enthusiasts" profiled in Griffins's book saw National Socialism as a conservative movement that while making very radical changes was preserving the best in German society, and felt something was needed in Britain. Furthermore, there is also a very strong anti-French feelings to Londonderry's statements. France was a nation he clearly didn't like very much, and he tended to sympathise with the German claim that the Treaty of Versailles was a vindictive, French-created "Carthaginian peace". I don't have access to Griffins's book right now, but this article would do well to use it as a source. In particular, Londonderry should be characterised as as an "enthusiast" for Nazi Germany instead of an appeaser.--A.S. Brown (talk) 03:54, 7 May 2020 (UTC)      

gas in 1914 ?

@Centenier

There is a sentence "He saw in 1915 for the first time the horrific effects of gas attack upon human beings when visiting soldiers gassed at the first Battle of Ypres.(footnote: Montgomery Hyde, p. 122"

Afaik, the article first Battle of Ypres (19 October – 22 November 1914) doesn't say anything about gas.

Chemical warfare#Technology 1914: Chlorine, Chloropicrin, Phosgene and Sulfur mustard (but does not say where they were used).

Chemical weapon ... nothing. History of chemical warfare#World War I :

One of Germany's earliest uses of chemical weapons occurred on October 27, 1914, when shells containing the irritant dianisidine chlorosulfonate were fired at British troops near Neuve-Chapelle, France.[3]

Did Charles VTS see victims of that gas attack ?

Chemical warfare#Dispersion says

The Germans [..] tried to increase the effect of 10.5 cm shrapnel shells by adding an irritant – dianisidine chlorosulfonate. Its use went unnoticed by the British when it was used against them at Neuve Chapelle in October 1914.

--Präziser (talk) 20:52, 15 February 2021 (UTC)