100 years of Chatham House: Top ten articles from the 1940s
Editorial Team
Continuing our exploration of the International Affairs archive, in April we look at the 1940s. At the outset of the Second World War, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, along with its 20-tonne library collection, relocated to Balliol College, Oxford, although lunchtime events were still held at the institute’s London premises from January 1940. Chatham House contributed to the war effort in a number of ways: providing training for British military officers; creating the foreign research press service; convening a postwar reconstruction committee; and creating a research facility for allied and refugee scholars.
After the war, Chatham House’s position as a centre for British postwar planning saw the institute visited by figures who played a key role during the conflict itself, and in the establishment of the postwar international order.
1) Ivison Macadam on Canada and the Commonwealth
Who was he?
Ivison Macadam (1894–1974) was the first Director-General of Chatham House. He served with the British Army during the First World War, and in 1919 was awarded an OBE for his actions. In 1922, he became the first President of the National Union of Students and after stepping down that year was made honorary secretary of the organisation until 1929. Macadam was also the first Director-General of Chatham House from 1927–1955, and helped to establish numerous institutes of international affairs across the Commonwealth.
In 1944 Macadam gave an address to Chatham House members about the future of Canada’s relationship to the UK and the Commonwealth.
From the article:
Many, too, are inclined to oversimplify the issue by suggesting that the choice before the countries of the Commonwealth is whether they should adopt what has been described as ‘the Commonwealth approach,’ or ‘the international approach,’ in their efforts to lay the foundations of an ordered, world after the war. The question is not as simple as that, and I think we can rule out any idea that the British countries will present to the world the features of an automatic bloc.
2) Morris Ginsberg on individualism in international relations theory
Who was he?
Morris Ginsberg (1889–1970) was a British sociologist and philosopher. Born to a Lithuanian–Jewish family inside the Russian Empire, Ginsberg moved to the UK with his family in 1910. As an academic he worked alongside liberal theorist L. T. Hobhouse, becoming Martin White Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics in 1930. Ginsberg was the founding chair of the British Sociological Association and was elected as its first president in 1951. In 1950, he was one of a number of contributors to the UNESCO statement on the ‘The race question’, a moral condemnation of racism in response to the actions of Nazi Germany.
In 1944, Ginsberg gave a lecture at Chatham House on the persistence of individualism in international relations theory, and the implications for the development of a free and equal international system.
From the article:
Here, too, it is gradually realized that freedom and equality are closely related, that effective freedom rests on social control and that a socialized international law must aim at removing hidden as well as open coercion of States by each other.
3) Bertha L. Bracey on displaced populations in post-war Europe
Who was she?
Bertha Bracey (1893–1989) was a British Quaker aid worker and teacher. In 1938 she played a crucial role in persuading the British Home Secretary to accept Jewish refugee children as part of the Kindertransport. Throughout the war, Bracey continued efforts to evacuate child refugees and, as head of the Central Department for Interned Refugees, supported those already interned by the British government from 1940 onwards. In the aftermath of war, she worked as a member of the Allied Control Commission in Germany, responsible particularly for women’s affairs in the British and American Zones of Occupation.
In 1945, Bracey addressed Chatham House on the problems faced by displaced people throughout Europe in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.
From the article:
The nation that can conceive and build the Mulberry, the nation that has the vivid and constructive imagination to carry out the nine days’ wonder of Dunkirk, has an inestimable and vital contribution to make to the problem involving the lives and welfare of tens of millions of Europeans. It is just those qualities of elasticity in administration, constructive imagination in execution, which are essential to the solution of the problems of relocation.
4) Elizabeth Wiskemann on the collapse of fascism in Italy
Who was she?
Elizabeth Wiskemann (1899–1971) was an English journalist and historian. As a journalist, Wiskemann was an ardent critic of the Nazi government in Germany throughout the 1930s, until she was arrested by the Gestapo and expelled from Germany in July 1936. During the war she was based in Switzerland, where she gathered non-military intelligence from Germany for the British government, and is credited with disrupting the deportation of Hungarian Jews in 1944. She later developed a prodigious reputation as an academic historian specializing in the Axis countries during wartime.
In 1946, Wiskemann addressed Chatham House on Italian anti-fascist resistance and the collapse of relations between Italy and Germany from 1943.
From the article:
A typical scene in any North Italian city at this time was the cordoning-off of a street by some neo-fascist brigade and the arrest of nearly all the men, who would then be deported to Germany either to work or to be trained as Italian S.S. or neo-fascist soldiers. When these soldiers were brought back to Italy, as the Monte Rosa or some other new battalion, they nearly all deserted and joined the Partisan.
5) Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence on the Nuremburg trials
Who was he?
Justice Geoffrey Lawrence (1880–1971) was the most senior British judge at the Nuremberg trials. Having initially trained as a lawyer, Lawrence served in the Royal Artillery during the First World War. His legal career continued after the war, becoming Lord Justice of Appeal by 1944. At the end of the Second World War he was selected to head up the British delegation to the Nuremberg trials and was subsequently elected President of the trial’s International Judicial Group.
In 1947, Lawrence addressed members of Chatham House on his experiences at Nuremberg, in an event chaired by then-Prime Minister Clement Attlee.
From the article:
One frequently meets ignorant or prejudiced people who do not believe it still. But the major war criminals tried at Nuremberg did not deny it and one would think that no German in the future will have the face to deny it.
6) Denis Healey on the formation of the Cominform
Who was he?
Denis Healey (1917–2015) was a British Labour Party politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary of Defence and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. After graduating from university, Healey served in the Second World War with the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers. He was the military landing officer for the British forces at the Battle of Anzio. As a Labour MP Healey represented the constituency of Leeds East from 1955–1992 and held several high-ranking positions in the Labour Party and the UK government.
Healey was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain from 1937 to 1940, and in 1948 he addressed Chatham House on the formation of Cominform, the alliance of communist parties in Europe, and the consolidation of Soviet power over European communist parties.
From the article:
Opposition to the Soviet Union has always been most firmly rooted in the belief that she is planning and supporting a world-wide revolutionary movement. The Comintern was dissolved mainly in order to destroy the popular ground for that belief. By founding the Cominform, however blameless and nugatory its real activities, the Communists have resurrected the old spectre at the very moment when it can do most damage to themselves.
7) Johan Willem Beyen on the creation of the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development
Who was he?
Johan Willem Beyen (1897–1955) was a Dutch businessman and politician who played a founding role in the establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC). He represented the Dutch Government at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, where the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development (now the World Bank) were founded. Beyen was Foreign Minister of the Netherlands 1952–1956 and was behind the proposal of a customs union within the European Coal and Steel Community that laid the groundwork for formal formation of the EEC in 1958.
In 1948, Beyen spoke at Chatham House, reflecting on the formation of the IBRD in the context of the scale of devastation caused by the Second World War.
From the article:
The Bank’s task, seen originally as divided in a temporary part, reconstruction, and a permanent one, development, can now be defined as an indivisible one: the enlistment of surplus productive capacity, wherever to be found in the world, for the further development of the world’s productive resources.
8) Doreen Warriner on economic reconstruction in post-war Eastern Europe
Who was she?
Doreen Warriner (1904–1972) was a British development economist, best known for her role in helping refugees escape Czechoslovakia after the 1938 Munich Agreement and subsequent German annexation of the Sudetenland. From the autumn of 1938 Warriner worked to secure safe passage of refugees out of Czechoslovakia, becoming the Head of the British Commission for Refugees before being forced to leave the country by the Gestapo in April 1939. As an academic, Warriner was attached to Chatham House at the same time as Elizabeth Wiskemann (mentioned above) and specialised in the economics of peasant farming.
In 1948, Warriner addressed Chatham House on the prospects for postwar economic reconstruction in eastern Europe.
From the article:
Is it really possible for these devastated countries to recover so quickly, and is it possible for poor countries to invest at such a high rate? […] If a plan is to be put into effect it must be more than a blueprint. It must be a pattern for reshaping society; its success depends on whether or not the Government can direct the national economy towards the targets-and on whether they have got the people behind them.
9) Kathleen D. Courtney on the implications of the Cold War for the United Nations
Who was she?
Kathleen Courtney (1878–1974) was a British suffragist and peace campaigner. Courtney held senior positions in both British and international suffragist and women’s rights organisations and was a key figure in achieving votes for women in the UK. She was a leading peace activist throughout the First World War, and later became heavily involved in international organisations. She was a member of the League of Nations Union executive from 1928, and from 1949 held the joint positions of President and Chair of the United Nations Association’s executive committee. Courtney was also present at the 1945 San Francisco conference that resulted in the creation of the UN Charter.
In 1949, Courtney addressed Chatham House on the implications of the developing Cold War for the work of the fledgling United Nations.
From the article:
It is a very good thing that we have it, but it shows how poor is the measure of the effective results of the United Nations if we have to make such a fuss about the Human Rights Declaration. That declaration will mean nothing unless it is implemented; it will stand on record as a vague aspiration. Until it is implemented, I do not think we can say how splendid it is to have it.
10) Seán MacBride on the future of Anglo-Irish relations
Who was he?
Seán MacBride (1904–1988) was an Irish politician, lawyer and human rights activist. His father was executed by the British government for participating in the 1916 Easter Rising, and MacBride fought in the Irish War of Independence as part of the IRA, remaining a key member of the organisation until 1937. He later entered politics and served as Irish Minister for External Affairs 1948–1951. MacBride was a co-founder and eventual chair of Amnesty International, and he also occupied numerous senior positions within the United Nations System, notably as President of the General Assembly and an Assistant Secretary-General. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.
In 1949, MacBride spoke at Chatham House on the future of Anglo-Irish relations:
From the article:
To the average Englishman, whose knowledge of Anglo-Irish history is superficial, any reference to Irish history from the Irish viewpoint comes as a shock. He immediately feels that we are having a dig at him and at Britain in general. Because it is an unpleasant history, he thinks that it should be forgotten, not realizing that no national group of people will ever forget their history––except those portions of it which may be discreditable or unpleasant to themselves.
We hope you enjoyed this third post in our series, ‘100 years of Chatham House’. Every month throughout 2020, the editorial team of International Affairs will be publishing some of the highlights from each decade since the founding of the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
Read more from the series here.
Find out more about the Chatham House Centenary here.
