George Ogilvie-Forbes
[3] In 2008, his name was included on a plaque in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London commemorating seven British diplomats "who by their personal endeavours helped to rescue victims of Nazi racial policy".
[12] The Spanish Foreign Minister, the Socialist Julio Álvarez del Vayo later recalled in his exile that 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.
[16] The historian Tom Buchanan wrote of Ogilvie-Forbes: "He had no interest in the competing ideologies in Spain … and never lost sight of the fact that the conflict represented above all, private suffering on an immense scale which it was within his power – in however small a way – to mitigate.
"[14] As the face of Britain in war-torn Madrid, many journalists met him and came to like the "jovial, compassionate, bag-pipe playing Scotsman, who kept the embassy against the odds, and who refused to serve a full Christmas dinner while madrileños went hungry".
[17] Towards the end of 1936 the Foreign Office was keen for Ogilvie-Forbes to close the embassy in Madrid, whilst acknowledging "that in the present welter of agony he feels a personal call to continue as long as possible his work of mercy, and that he cannot leave without doing violence to his conscience.
[26] On 14 September 1938, Ogilvie-Forbes warned Ernst von Weizsäcker, the State Secretary of the Auswärtiges 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.
[28] 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.
"[30] On 11 October 1938, in one of his last instructions before he left Berlin, Henderson ordered Ogilvie-Forbes to accept the German definition of where the new German-Czechoslovak frontier should be, adding in that he hoped "that the Slovaks [would] stick it to the Czechs".
[26] By 26 October 1938, Ogilvie-Forbes had counted over 300 violations of the Munich Agreement as the Germans sought to claim districts of the Sudetenland that were, in fact, majority Czech with the aim of making Czecho-Slovakia economically nonviable.
[31] On 21 October 1938, Ogilvie-Forbes attended a speech by the Propaganda minister Josef Goebbels in Hamburg, which he summarised as: "filled with a glorification of force and of its successful employment by the Nationalist-Socialist leadership.
"[32] It has been argued by the Canadian historian Bruce Strang, that during the time of Henderson's absence, Ogilvie-Forbes, was able to have a significant effect on British Foreign policy, as he wrote: "It was not a coincidence that the decisive turn in the Cabinet's perception of Hitler occurred while Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes temporarily headed the Berlin Embassy, as he helped to undermine Chamberlain's often inaccurate views, and to create the climate of moral revulsion and the heightened sense of danger in which the Cabinet operated.
[38] When Hitler gave the departing French ambassador André François-Poncet a medal at their last meeting in October 1938 for his work in improving Franco-German relations, Ogilvie-Forbes saw sinister implications in this.
[42] The information from K. about the purported plan to raze London had more impact on British policy with Sir Alexander Cadogan writing in his diary about Chamberlain's reaction: "Glad he takes it seriously.
[44] In a dispatch to London on 6 December 1938, Ogilvie-Forbes quoted from Mein Kampf to argue that for Hitler Germany could not obtain "world power status" without first winning Lebensraum ("living space") in Russia.
[29] Ogilvie-Forbes argued that with the Reich rearmed and in possession of Austria and the Sudetenland, what he was hearing from sources in Berlin was "that Herr Hitler is about to embark on the third stage of his programme, namely expansion beyond the boundaries of the territories inhabited by Germans.
[29] Some sources were telling Ogilvie-Forbes that Hitler was planning to attack the Soviet Union in 1939 to establish "an independent Russian Ukraine under German tutelage", and afterwards Germany would expand into the Balkans and seek an "outlet on the Mediterranean via Italy".
[29] He wrote that his sources were telling him that Hitler had wished he had taken a "stronger line" at the Munich conference, was now "abusing his moderate counselors for their pusillanimity" and had "dubbed all his generals cowards" for advising him not to attack Czechoslovakia in September 1938.
[46] Mason-MacFarlane wrote he believed that given the current political and economic problems faced by the Reich, Hitler would almost certainly resort to "some foreign excursion" as the way out and that the German economy and military were on "full throttle" for war.
[44] On 3 January 1939, Ogilvie-Forbes engaged in what Ascher called an act of personal appeasement towards Henderson, when he wrote in a dispatch that the Wehrmacht was so overwhelmingly powerful that there was now nothing Britain could do to stop Germany from dominating Eastern Europe, and that British diplomats should make more efforts "to cultivate Field Marshal Göring and the moderate Nazis with a view to their exercising a restraining influence on the extremists such as Ribbentrop, Goebbels, and Himmler who at present have the ear of Hitler".
[4] A New Zealand man, John Schellenberg in a letter of 14 March 2004 to the British historian Sir Martin Gilbert stated that Ogilive-Forbes assisted the efforts of his parents to leave Germany.
There is no doubt in my mind that Forbes must have arranged the New Zealand documentation through Foley and I have in my possession the original of a letter approving our entry into this country, written by the responsible Government authority.
Britain announced a "guarantee" of France, the Low Countries and Switzerland in February 1939, warning that any German aggression against those states would automatically lead to war with the United Kingdom.
Shortly after 1:30 am on the night of 27–28 August 1939, Ogilvie-Forbes was woken up by the Swedish businessman Birger Dahlerus who was acting as a self-appointed peace-maker with a message that he had a peace plan from Hermann Göring to prevent the Danzig crisis from turning into a war.
On 31 August, Ogilive-Forbes phoned Dahlerus to tell him that he heard that Ribbentrop had told Hitler that Britain would do nothing if the Reich invaded Poland, an assessment that he felt made war more likely than not.
[62] Lipski expressed his belief that the best way of stopping the Danzig crisis from turning into a war was a "united front" of Britain, France and Poland to deter Germany, and the British should not be talking to somebody like Dahlerus, who clearly was an amateur diplomat operating way beyond his level of competence.
[69] The editor of Diario de la Marina, José Rivero, was an admirer of General Franco, and like other supporters of the Nationalist cause regarded any sort of assistance to the "Red Republicans", even refugees, as a sign of lack of a proper Catholicism.
[69] 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 Ogilvie-Forbes had competed against.
[83] 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.
El Trienio Adeco saw the first attempt to ensure that the pardo (mixed race) majority of the Venezuelans received some benefits from the oil industry like establishing a mass educational system, measures that Ogilvie-Forbes approved of.
They have undertaken the formidable task of cleaning up in a few months the corruption of centuries, and while they will probably not have entire success, they are present honest and are deserving of sympathy in their attempt to improve the living condition of the Venezuelan people.
