The Link was a British pro-Nazi, independent, non-party organisation to promote Anglo-German friendship established in July 1937 and terminated by the outbreak of World War II in September 1939.
Shortly before Britain entered World War II, the organisation was investigated by MI5 and the British Home Secretary confirmed that The Link had acted as an instrument of the German propaganda service.
[1] One of the antisemitic members of the executive board of the Fellowship was the retired Admiral Barry Domvile who was quite outspoken about his beliefs about a Jewish-Masonic conspiracy to take over the world.
[7] As The Link grew in numbers, other prominent people who joined its national council included the father of the Mitford Sisters, Lord Redesdale; the Conservative MP, Sir Albert Lambert Ward; the war hero, Captain Edward Unwin, who won a Victoria Cross at the Battle of Gallipoli; the aviation pioneer and later traitor, Lord Sempill; Councilor Wenman J. Bassett-Lowke of the Northampton city council; A.E.R.
[7] A notable late addition to The Link's national council who joined in the summer of 1939 was the Duke of Westminster, a landlord who owned much of London and was one of the richest men in the world.
[7] Of the members of the national council, Domvile, Carroll and Laurie were the most active while Ward, Unwin, Redesdale and Semphill merely lent their names to add prestige to the group.
[12] The British historian Richard Griffiths wrote: "The members were perfectly ordinary people, drawn to Anglo-German friendship, who seem to have been almost unaware of the political implications of membership".
[12] However, both Barry Domvile and Arthur Pillans Laurie gave explicitly political speeches at the Southend chapter on the subject of seeking closer relations with Nazi Germany.
[14] Finally, Hubert Maddocks gave a speech at the Southend chapter that complained that the British newspapers were trying to sabotage Anglo-German friendship by giving undue attention to the persecution of the Jews in Germany.
[15] Other speakers at the Central London chapter in 1939 included Philip Spranklin, formerly of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) who was now working as a spokesman for the Foreign Press Office of the German Ministry of Propaganda; General J. F. C. Fuller, the defense correspondent of the Daily Mail and the military adviser to the BUF who just returned from attending Hitler's 50th birthday in Berlin on 20 April 1939; and the Conservative MP, Archibald Ramsay who gave a speech in June 1939 on "The Secret Forces Working for War".
[16] The Link was closely associated with the monthly glossy magazine The Anglo-German Review, known for its pro-German, anti-French stances[17] and its flattering cover images and features for Nazi Party officials such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and Hermann Göring.
[20] The letter read:[20] We, the undersigned, who believe that real friendship and co-operation between Great Britain and Germany are essential to the establishment of enduring peace not only in Western Europe, but throughout the whole world, strongly deprecate the attempt which is being made to sabotage an Anglo-German rapprochement by distorting the facts of the Czechoslovak settlement.
[23] Lord Paget in a letter of 17 September 1976 wrote: "Bill Bassett-Lowke was a model manufacturer, a Fabian Socialist; an internationalist, as good as gold, and as soft as a mop.
[23] The national executive of the Labour Party dithered over the question of expelling Bassett-Lowke and the matter had still not been resolved by September 1939, when the United Kingdom entered World War II.
[35] Anthony Masters has alleged that the Link was resurrected in 1940 by Ian Fleming, then working in the Department of Naval Intelligence, in order to successfully lure Rudolf Hess (deputy party leader and third in leadership of Germany, after Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring) to Britain in May 1941.