Sir Eyre Alexander Barby Wichart Crowe GCB GCMG (30 July 1864 – 28 April 1925) was a British diplomat, an expert on Germany in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

He is best known for his vehement warning, in 1907, that Germany's expansionism was motivated by animosity towards Britain and should provoke a closer Entente Cordiale between the British Empire and France.

His success led to his appointment as senior clerk in the Western Department in 1906, and in January 1907 he produced an unsolicited Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany for the Foreign Office.

Crowe opposed appeasement of Germany because: To give way to the blackmailer's menaces enriches him, but it has long been proved by uniform experience that, although this may secure for the victim temporary peace, it is certain to lead to renewed molestation and higher demands after ever-shortening periods of amicable forbearance.

[3]Crowe further argued Britain should never give in to Germany's demands since: The blackmailer's trade is generally ruined by the first resolute stand made against his exactions and the determination rather to face all risks of a possibly disagreeable situation than to continue in the path of endless concessions.Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary United Kingdom, said he found Crowe's memorandum "most valuable".

[5] During the July Crisis of 1914 Crowe wrote Grey a memorandum: "The argument that there is no written bond binding us to France is strictly correct.

But the Entente has been made, strengthened, put to the test and celebrated in a manner justifying the belief that a moral bond was being forged ... our duty and our interest will be seen to lie in standing by France ...

[6] During the First World War, Crowe served in the Contraband Department and at the start of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference he was Assistant Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; by June 1919 he was head of the political section of the British Delegation there.

Crowe thought that the balance of power and the considerations of national interest would determine how individual states decided their future actions.

Crowe argued that boycotts and blockades, as advocated by the League of Nations, would not be of any use: "It is all a question of real military preponderance" in numbers, cohesion, efficiency and geographical location of each state.

In 1903, Crowe married his widowed maternal first cousin Clema Gerhardt, a niece of Henning von Holtzendorff, who was to become the Chief of the German Naval Staff in the First World War.

Due to being half-German and having other German connections, Crowe was often attacked in the press during the First World War, especially by Christabel Pankhurst and William le Queux.

With ruthless logic and in a forthright manner, he opposed every effort to come to terms with Berlin... A prodigious worker, Crowe's knowledge and skill earned him a very special place in the Foreign Office hierarchy and his comments were read with attention if not always with approval".

[14][15] Crowe is depicted as a competent and shrewd administrator but one who is exasperated and confused by the Foreign Secretary's (Sir Edward Grey; portrayed by Ian McDiarmid) superior diplomatic prowess.

[16] The narrator of the series, a Second Division Clerk in the Foreign Office (portrayed by actor James McArdle), also describes Crowe as: "German born, educated in Berlin, but...more British than any one of us".