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The Link was established in July 1937 as an "independent non-party organisation to promote Anglo-German friendship".[ citation needed ] It generally operated as a cultural organisation, although its journal, the Anglo-German Review, reflected the pro-Nazi views of Barry Domvile, and particularly in London it attracted a number of antisemites and pro-Nazis. At its height the membership numbered around 4,300. [1]
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The Anglo-German Fellowship had been founded as an elitist group by Joachim von Ribbentrop in 1935 as an unabashedly elitist organisation intended to bring together German and British elites. One of the members of the executive board of the Fellowship was the retired Admiral Domvile who was quite outspoken about his beliefs about a Jewish-Masonic conspiracy to take over the world. [2] The Fellowship at least nominally presented itself as an apolitical group that existed only to foster Anglo-German friendship, through the pro-Nazi message of the Fellowship was slightly disguised. [3] Domvile, displeased with the façade that the Fellowship was apolitical, broke away in 1937 to found The Link as an openly pro-Nazi group which as its name suggested was to serve as a link with the Nazi Party, the NSDAP. [4] In a press release, Domvile announced that the purpose of The Link was "to foster the mutual knowledge and understanding that ought to exist between the British and German peoples" and to counter the "flood of lies" written about Nazi Germany by allegedly Jewish-controlled British media. [4]
The national council of The Link comprised Admiral Domvile, the retired Colonel Sir John Brown of the British Legion, Cola Ernest Carroll, the chemist Arthur Pillans Laurie, Susan Fass of the Anglo-German Kameradschaft and the historian Raymond Beazley. [1] As The Link grew in numbers, other prominent people who joined its national council included 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; Lord Sempill; Councilor W.J. Bassett-Lowke of the Northampton city council; A.E.R Dyer; Archibald Crawford and Hubert Marddocks. [1] A notable late addition to The Link's national council who joined in the summer of 1939 was the Duke of Westminster, the landlord who owned much of London and was one of the richest men in the world. [1] 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. [1] Bassett-Lowke, the president of the Northampton chapter; Maddocks, the president of the Southend chapter; and Beazley, the president of the Birmingham chapter were included on The Link's national council because their chapters were the largest chapters. [1] In March 1938, The Link had 1,800 members and risen to 2,400 by July 1938. [5] By June 1939, The Link had 4,300 members. [1] The majority of the chapters of The Link were located in the London area and in the Midlands through there were also large chapters in the West Country; "service towns" such as Bromley and Portsmouth; and Northern Ireland. [6] The majority of the members of The Link were middle class and the group drew strong support from members of municipal councils with aldermen and councilors being well represented in its ranks. [7] Presumably because Domvile was a retired admiral, some of the chapters tended to be dominated by retired members of the Royal Navy. [7] The chapters in the West Country differed from the other chapters in being dominated by former Army officers and the gentry. [8] Despite the organisation's stated purpose of being a link to the Nazi Party, the majority of its members seemed unaware of this. [9] 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". [9]
The Southend chapter seems to have been typical of The Link with the majority of its activities devoted to parties, dances and film nights. [9] However, both Domvile and Laurie gave explicitly political speeches at the Southend chapter on the subject of seeking closer relations with Nazi Germany. [10] A German professor Dr. Otto Wagner, gave a speech at the Southend chapter on 7 April 1938 on "the aims of German foreign policy". [11] Finally, 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. [11] The Croydon chapter had an Anglican churchman give a speech on "peace through friendship" with Germany and sent the children of its members off to a trip to Hamburg to spend the summer of 1938 as guests of the Hitler Youth. [11] 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. [12] The most overtly fascistic of The Link's chapters were the Belfast, Acton and Ealing, and Central London chapters. [13] The Central London chapter, which was founded in January 1939, was the most clearly anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi of The Link's chapters whose president, Margaret Bothamley, was an outspoken anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist. [13] In one of her speeches given in May 1939, Bothamley stated: "the Jewish question was behind the determination to assert the "independence" of Austria". [13] 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 party 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". [14]
The Link opposed war between Britain and Germany, and because of this attracted the support of some British pacifists. [15] When The Link and the Anglo-German Review were included among peace organisations across the political spectrum in the Peace Service Handbook (a publication put out by the Peace Pledge Union), The Daily Telegraph and the News Chronicle published articles accusing the PPU of supporting Nazism. [15] In response, PPU member Stuart Morris wrote to the papers stating there was no connection between the PPU and The Link, and that the former organisation did not support the German demand for colonies or peace at the expense of smaller nations. [15] The PPU also sent a letter to its group leaders dissociating The Link from the PPU, and ceased publishing the Peace Service Handbook. [15]
On 12 October 1938, a letter to The Times that came to be known as "The Link letter" was published.. [16] The letter read: "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. We believe the Munich Agreement was nothing more than the rectification of one of the most flagrant injustices of the Peace Treaties. It took nothing from Czechoslovakia to which that country could rightly lay claim and gave nothing to Germany which could have been rightfully withheld. We see in the policy so courageously pursued by the Prime Minister the end of a long period of lost opportunities and the promise of a new era compared to which the tragic years that have gone since the War will seem like a bad dream." [16] Not all who signed the letter were members of The Link, and for this reason the letter is often seen as a sign of The Link's influence. [17] Of the signatures who were members of The Link included Admiral Domvile, C.E. Carroll, Raymond Beazley; A.E.R. Dyer; Lord Redesdale and Arthur Laurie. [18] People who were not members of The Link at the time who signed the letter included the Conservative MP Archibald Ramsay; Admiral Wilmot Nicholson; George Pitt-Rivers; Nesta Webster; Lord Londonderry; Lord Mount Temple; William Harbutt Dawson; the politician Lord Arnold; the Conservative MP John Smedley Crooke; the journalist Douglas Jerrold; the former Viceroy of India Lord Hardinge of Penhurst; Lord Fairfax; Sir John Latta; Bernard Acworth; Arthur Solly-Flood; Arthur Rogers; Vincent Molteno; and Admiral Edward Inglefield. [18]
William J. Basset-Lowke, the president of the Northampton chapter was a member of the Labour Party. [19] 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. He was a natural sucker for The Link". [19] In the summer of 1939, there was some discussion about whatever Bassett-Lowke could be a member of both the Labour Party and The Link at the same time, and there were demands made by some Labour Party activists that Bassett-Lowke be expelled if he continued to serve as the president of The Link's Northampton chapter. [19] The Labour Party was badly divided in the 1930s between a pacifistic faction opposed to all war in general along with rearmament vs. a faction that was willing to support a war provided it was done so under the auspices of the League of Nations to resist aggression. [20] The Sudetenland crisis of 1938 caused much internal tension in the Labour Party between its anti-war vs anti-fascist wings with some Labour MPs stating that it would amoral for Britain to go to war against Germany under the grounds that all wars were evil while other Labour MPs argued that Britain had a moral duty to defend Czechoslovakia should Germany invade. [20] By the time of the Danzig crisis in 1939, the anti-fascist wing of the Labour Party was in ascendency as Labour accepted the imposition of peacetime conscription by the Chamberlain government in May 1939 despite having previously vowed to oppose such a policy and urged the government to create the "peace front" to unite Britain, France, and the Soviet Union in an alliance meant to deter Germany from invading Poland. [21] The decision by the Labour National Executive to essentially ignore the question of whatever Basset-Lowke should be expelled from the Labout Party represented a concession to the anti-war wing of the Labour Party, which Basset-Lowke was associated with. [19] Basset-Lowke presented himself not as a fascist, but merely a man of peace who was trying to prevent a world war by seeking better understanding between the British and German peoples. [19]
The organisation was investigated by Maxwell Knight, head of counter-subversion in MI5. Of all the various British fascist groups, The Link was the one most suspect to British officials because of its ties to the NSDAP. In the summer of 1939, Domvile's phone was tapped by MI5, which revealed that he making regular phone calls to George Ward Price, the "extra-special correspondent" of the Daily Mail newspaper, urging him to write articles calling for Britain to abandon the "guarantee" of Poland. [22] The organisation closed shortly after the start of World War II in 1939.
Barry Domvile was interned in 1940 under Defence Regulation 18B, as someone who might be "prejudicial to the public safety or the defence of the realm".
According to Anthony Masters, the Link was allegedly 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. [23]
