Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG The Most Noble Order of the Garter is an order of chivalry, or knighthood, originating in medieval England, and presently bestowed on recipients in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms; it is the pinnacle of the honours system in the United Kingdom. Membership in the order is limited to the sovereign, the Prince of Wales, and no more, MC The Military Cross is the third level military decoration awarded to officers and (since 1993) other ranks of the British Armed Forces and formerly also to officers of other Commonwealth countries, PC Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council is a body of advisors to the British Sovereign. Its members are largely senior politicians, who were or are members of either the House of Commons or House of Lords of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (12 June 1897 – 14 January 1977) was a British Traditionally Christianity, mostly Protestantism, but also Roman Catholicism. Other religions include Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Sikhism. Agnosticism and atheism are also prevailent Conservative The Conservative and Unionist Party, more commonly known as the Conservatives, or the Conservative Party, is a conservative political party in the United Kingdom. Founded in its present form during the early 19th century, it has historically been the principal party of the right, though in the modern day the party and its voters are more politician A political leader is an individual who is involved in influencing public decision making through the influence of politics or a person who influences the way a society is governed. This includes people who hold decision-making positions in government, and people who seek those positions, whether by means of election, coup d'état, appointment,, who was Foreign Secretary The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, commonly referred to as the Foreign Secretary, is a member of the Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom heading the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and responsible for relations with foreign countries, matters pertaining to the Commonwealth of Nations and the UK's overseas for three periods between 1935 and 1955, including during World War II World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all of the great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. The war involved the mobilization of over 100 million military personnel, making it the most widespread war in history. He was Prime Minister The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the political leader of the United Kingdom and the Head of Her Majesty's Government. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party, and ultimately to the electorate from 1955 to 1957.

Eden's worldwide reputation as an opponent of appeasement Appeasement has been the subject of debate for eighty years among academics and politicians. The historian's assessment of Chamberlain has ranged from condemnation to the judgment that he had no alternative and acted in Britain's best interests. At the time, these concessions were widely seen as positive, and the Munich Pact among Germany, Great, a 'Man of Peace', and a skilled diplomat was overshadowed in the second year of his premiership by his handling of the Suez Crisis The Suez Canal was opened in 1869, having been financed by the French and Egyptian governments. Technically, the area surrounding the canal proper was sovereign Egyptian territory, and the operating company, the Universal Company of the Suez Maritime Canal was an Egyptian-chartered company of 1956, which critics across party lines regarded as a historic setback for British foreign policy The foreign relations of the United Kingdom is the relationships and policies that the United Kingdom maintains with other countries and is implemented by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Throughout history the U.K. has wielded significant influence against other nations through control of her empire and until the late 1940s was considered a, signalling the end of British predominance in the Middle East The Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, southeastern Europe and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East. The term "Middle East" was popularized around 1900 in the United Kingdom. The corresponding adjective to Middle East is Middle-Eastern and the.[1]

In the post-war years, Eden was a protagonist of the change in British policy on war criminal Similar concepts, such as perfidy, have existed for many centuries as customary law between civilized countries. Many of these customary laws were clarified in the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. The modern concept of war crime was further developed under the auspices of the Nuremberg Trials based on the definition in the London Charter that trials,[2] which was perhaps best symbolised by his signature under the pardon conceded to the German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring Albert Kesselring was a Luftwaffe Generalfeldmarschall during World War II. Nicknamed "Smiling Albert" by the Allies and "Uncle Albert" by his troops, he was one of the most popular generals of World War II with the rank and file, and one of the most skilful generals of Nazi Germany on 24 October 1952.

He is generally ranked among the least successful British Prime Ministers of the twentieth century,[3][4] although two broadly sympathetic biographies (in 1986 and 2003) have gone some way to redressing the balance of opinion.[5]

Contents

Early career

Eden was born in at Windlestone Hall, County Durham County Durham is a ceremonial county and (smaller) unitary district in North East England. The county town is Durham.The largest settlement in the ceremonial county (in the unitary Borough of Darlington) is the town of Darlington. The county has an industrial heritage and its economy was historically based on coal and iron mining. It is an area of, England, into a very conservative landed gentry family, and attended Eton Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent boarding school for boys aged approx. 13 to 19. It was founded in 1441 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor", where he won a Divinity prize and excelled at cricket, rugby and rowing, winning House colours Color or colour is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, yellow, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light (distribution of light energy versus wavelength) interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors. Color categories and physical specifications of in the latter.[6] He was a younger son of Sir William Eden, baronet A baronet or the rare female equivalent, a baronetess (abbreviation Btss), is the holder of a hereditary title awarded by the British Crown known as a baronetcy. The current practice of awarding baronetcies was originally introduced in England and Ireland by James I of England in 1611 in order to raise funds, from an old titled family. His mother, Sybil Frances Grey, was a member of the famous Grey family of Northumberland Northumberland is a ceremonial county and unitary district in the North East of England. It borders Cumbria to the west, County Durham to the south and Tyne and Wear to the south east, as well as having a border with the Scottish Borders council area to the north, and nearly eighty miles of North Sea coastline. Since the creation of Tyne and Wear (see below). This was perhaps the meaning of Rab Butler Richard Austen Butler, Baron Butler of Saffron Walden, KG CH DL PC , who invariably signed his name R. A. Butler and was familiarly known as Rab, was a British Conservative politician. Butler was one of the few British politicians to have served in the three posts of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary, but never's later gibe that Eden - in later life a handsome but ill-tempered man - was "half mad baronet, half beautiful woman". He had an elder brother called Timothy and a younger brother, Nicholas, who was killed when the battlecruiser Battlecruisers were large warships in the first half of the 20th century that were first introduced by the Royal Navy. The battlecruiser was developed as the successor to the armoured cruisers, but their evolution was more closely linked to that of the dreadnought battleships. The first such ship, the Invincible, was originally designated a " HMS Indefatigable blew up and sank at the Battle of Jutland The Battle of Jutland (German: Skagerrakschlacht ; Danish: Søslaget ved Jylland / Søslaget om Skagerrak) was the largest naval battle of World War I and the only full-scale clash of battleships in that war. It was only the second major fleet action between steel battleships in any war, following the Battle of Tsushima in 1905, but was also the in 1916.

During the First World War World War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict that embroiled most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Entente and the Central Powers. Over 70 million military personnel were mobilized in one of the largest wars in history. The main, Eden served with the 21st (Yeoman Rifles) Battalion of the King's Royal Rifle Corps, and reached the rank of captain Captain is a junior officer rank of the British Army and Royal Marines. It ranks above Lieutenant and below Major and has a NATO ranking code of OF-2. The rank is equivalent to a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and to a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force. The rank of Captain in the Royal Navy is considerably more senior and the two ranks should. He received a Military Cross The Military Cross is the third level military decoration awarded to officers and (since 1993) other ranks of the British Armed Forces and formerly also to officers of other Commonwealth countries, and at the age of twenty-one became the youngest brigade-major in the British Army. At a conference in the early 1930s, he and Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, abbreviated NSDAP), popularly known as the Nazi Party. He was the ruler of Germany from 1933 to 1945, serving as chancellor from 1933 to 1945 and as head of state (Führer und observed that they had probably fought on opposite sides of the trenches in the Ypres Ypres ; West Flemish Yper; German Ypern) is a Belgian municipality located in the Flemish province of West Flanders. The municipality comprises the city of Ypres and the villages of Boezinge, Brielen, Dikkebus, Elverdinge, Hollebeke, Sint-Jan, Vlamertinge, Voormezele, Zillebeke, and Zuidschote. Together, they count some 34.900 inhabitants sector. After the war he studied at Christ Church, Oxford This article is about the Oxford college. For other uses, see Christ Church or Christchurch (disambiguation), where he graduated in Oriental Languages. He was fluent in French, German and Persian Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Bahrain and has official-language status in the first three countries under different names. Persian is a pluricentric language. The Persian language has been a medium for literary and, and also spoke Russian and Arabic Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Syriac. In terms of speakers, Arabic is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as a first language and by 250 million more as a second language. Most native speakers live. After fighting a hopeless seat in the November 1922 General Election, Captain Eden, as he was still known, was elected Member of Parliament A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a parliament. In many countries the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a unique title, such as senate, and thus also have unique titles for its members, such as senators. Members of parliament tend to form parliamentary parties with members for Warwick and Leamington in the December 1923 General Election, as a Conservative The Conservative and Unionist Party, more commonly known as the Conservatives, or the Conservative Party, is a conservative political party in the United Kingdom. Founded in its present form during the early 19th century, it has historically been the principal party of the right, though in the modern day the party and its voters are more. Also in that year he married Beatrice Beckett. They had two sons (as well as a third who died in infancy), but the marriage was not a success and later broke up under the strain of a son missing in action.

In the 1924-1929 Conservative Government, Eden was first Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Home Secretary, Sir William Joynson Hicks, and then in 1926 to the Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain Sir Joseph Austen Chamberlain, KG was a British statesman and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1931 he held his first ministerial office as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs Foreign Policy is a bimonthly American magazine founded in 1970 by Samuel P. Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel. Under the stewardship of editor in chief Moises Naim, Foreign Policy evolved from an academic quarterly in the 1990s to a bimonthly glossy, winning the 2009, 2007, and 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. It is. In 1934 he was appointed Lord Privy Seal The Lord Privy Seal or Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal is the fifth of the Great Officers of State in the United Kingdom, ranking beneath the Lord President of the Council and above the Lord Great Chamberlain. The office is one of the traditional sinecure offices of state. Originally, its holder was responsible for the monarch's personal seal (as and Minister for the League of Nations The League of Nations was an inter-governmental organization founded as a result of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919–1920. At its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members. The League's goals included upholding the new found Rights of Man such as right of non whites, rights of women, rights of soldiers, in Stanley Baldwin Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, KG, PC was a British Conservative politician, statesman, and major figure on the political scene in the interwar years. He served three terms as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; first from 1923-24 then 1924-29 and again from 1935-37's Government. Like many of his generation who had served in the First World War, Eden was strongly anti-war The term anti-war usually refers to the opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many activists distinguish between anti-war movements and peace, and strove to work through the League of Nations to preserve European peace. However, he was among the first to recognise that peace could not be maintained by appeasement Appeasement has been the subject of debate for eighty years among academics and politicians. The historian's assessment of Chamberlain has ranged from condemnation to the judgment that he had no alternative and acted in Britain's best interests. At the time, these concessions were widely seen as positive, and the Munich Pact among Germany, Great of Nazi Germany Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are the colloquial English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich (Drittes Reich, ‘Third Reich’) refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German Empire of 187 and fascist Fascism, pronounced /ˈfæʃɪzəm/, comprises a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology and a corporatist economic ideology Italy. He privately opposed the policy of the Foreign Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, of trying to appease Italy during its invasion of Abyssinia The Second Italo–Abyssinian War was a brief colonial war that started in October 1935 and ended in May 1936. The war was fought between the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy (Regno d'Italia) and the armed forces of the Ethiopian Empire (also known as Abyssinia). The war resulted in the military occupation of Ethiopia and its annexation into (Ethiopia Ethiopia (Ge'ez: ኢትዮጵያ ʾĪtyōṗṗyā) , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an estimated) in 1935. When Hoare resigned after the failure of the Hoare-Laval Pact, Eden succeeded him as Foreign Secretary.

At this stage in his career Eden was considered as something of a leader of fashion. He regularly wore a Homburg hat (similar to a trilby but more rigid), which became known in Britain as an "Anthony Eden An "Anthony Eden" hat, or simply an "Anthony Eden", was a silk-brimmed, black felt Homburg of the kind favoured in the 1930s by Anthony Eden, later 1st Earl of Avon . Eden was a Cabinet Minister in the British National Government, holding the offices of Lord Privy Seal from 1934-35 and Foreign Secretary 1935 to 1938. He was".

Foreign secretary and resignation (1935-38)

Eden became Foreign Secretary at a time when Britain was having to adjust its foreign policy Foreign Policy is a bimonthly American magazine founded in 1970 by Samuel P. Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel. Under the stewardship of editor in chief Moises Naim, Foreign Policy evolved from an academic quarterly in the 1990s to a bimonthly glossy, winning the 2009, 2007, and 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. It is to face the rise of the fascist powers. He supported the policy of non-interference in the Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War was a major conflict that devastated Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939. It began after an attempted coup d'état against the government of the Second Spanish Republic, then under the leadership of president Manuel Azaña, by a group of Spanish Army generals, supported by the conservative Spanish Confederation of the, and supported prime minister Neville Chamberlain Arthur Neville Chamberlain was a British Conservative politician and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1937 to 1940. Chamberlain is best known for appeasement foreign policy, in particular regarding his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany, and for his "containment" in his efforts to preserve peace through reasonable concessions to Germany. He did not protest when Britain and France failed to oppose Hitler's Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, abbreviated NSDAP), popularly known as the Nazi Party. He was the ruler of Germany from 1933 to 1945, serving as chancellor from 1933 to 1945 and as head of state (Führer und reoccupation of the Rhineland The Remilitarization of the Rhineland by the German Army took place on 7 March 1936 when German forces entered the Rhineland in 1936. His resignation in February 1938 was largely attributed to growing dissatisfaction with Chamberlain`s policy of Appeasement. That is, however, disputed by new research; it was not the question if there should be negotiations with Italy, but only when they should start and how far they should be carried.[1] Similarly, he at no point registered his dissatisfaction with the appeasement policy directed towards Nazi Germany in his period as Foreign Secretary. He became a Conservative dissenter leading a group conservative whip David Margesson called the "Glamour Boys," and a leading anti-appeaser like Winston Churchill who led a similar group called "The Old Guard."[7] Although Churchill claimed to have lost sleep the night of Eden's resignation (later recounted in his wartime memoirs (The Gathering Storm, 1948), they were not allies, and did not see eye to eye until Churchill became Prime Minister. There was much speculation that Eden would become a rallying point for all the disparate opponents of Neville Chamberlain, but instead he maintained a low profile, avoiding confrontation, though he opposed the Munich Agreement and abstained in the vote on it in the House of Commons. As a result, Eden's position declined heavily amongst politicians, though he remained popular in the country at large; in later years he was often wrongly supposed to have resigned in protest at the Munich Agreement.

Second World War (1939-45)

Eden meeting Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Quebec Conference in 1943 Eden in 1945 Potsdam Conference: The Foreign Ministers Vyacheslav Molotov, James F. Byrnes and Anthony Eden, July 1945.

In September 1939, on the outbreak of war, Eden, who had briefly rejoined the army with the rank of major, returned to Chamberlain's government as Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, but was not in the War Cabinet. As a result, he was not a candidate for the Premiership when Chamberlain resigned after Germany invaded France in May 1940 and Churchill became Prime Minister. Churchill appointed Eden Secretary of State for War.

At the end of 1940 Eden returned to the Foreign Office, and in this role became a member of the executive committee of the Political Warfare Executive in 1941. Although he was one of Churchill's closest confidants, his role in wartime was restricted because Churchill conducted the most important negotiations, with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, himself, but Eden served loyally as Churchill's lieutenant. Nevertheless he was in charge of handling much of the relations between Britain and de Gaulle during the last years of the war. Eden was often critical of the emphasis Churchill put on the Special Relationship with the United States, and was often disappointed by their treatment of their British allies[1].

In 1942 Eden was given the additional job of Leader of the House of Commons. He was considered for various other major jobs during and after the war, including Commander-in-Chief Middle East in 1942 (this would have been a very unusual appointment as Eden was a civilian; General Harold Alexander was in fact appointed), Viceroy of India in 1943 (General Archibald Wavell was appointed to this job), or Secretary-General of the newly-formed United Nations Organisation in 1945. In 1943 with the revelation of the Katyn Massacre Eden refused to help the Polish Government in Exile. In 1944 Eden went to Moscow to negotiate with the Soviet Union at the Tolstoy Conference. Eden also opposed the Morgenthau Plan to deindustrialize Germany.

Eden's eldest son, Simon Eden, went missing in action, later declared deceased, while serving as a pilot with the RAF in Burma in the latter days of the Second World War. There was a close bond between Anthony and Simon, and Simon's death was a great personal shock to his father, who nevertheless accepted it. Lady Eden reportedly reacted differently to her son's loss, and this led to a breakdown in the marriage. De Gaulle wrote him a personal letter of condolence in French.

Post-war

Opposition (1945-51)

After the Labour Party won the 1945 elections, Eden went into opposition as Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party. Many felt that Churchill should have retired and allowed Eden to become party leader, but Churchill refused to consider this, and Eden was too loyal to press him. He was in any case depressed during this period by the break-up of his first marriage and the death of his eldest son. Churchill was in many ways only "part-time Leader of the Opposition"[1], given his many journeys abroad and his literary work, and left the day-to-day-work largely to Eden. Eden was largely regarded as lacking sense of party politics and contact with the common man [8]. In these opposition years, however, he developed some knowledge about domestic affairs and created the idea of a "property-owning-democracy", which was only realized by the Thatcher government decades later. His domestic agenda is overall considered centre-left [1].

Anthony Eden is the great-great-grandnephew of author Emily Eden and wrote an introduction to her 1860 novel The Semi-Detached Couple in 1947.[9]

Return to government (1951-55)

In 1951, the Conservatives returned to office and Eden became Foreign Secretary for a third time. Churchill was largely a figurehead in this government, and Eden had an effective control of British foreign policy for the first time, as the Cold War grew more intense. He dealt effectively with the various crises of the period, although Britain was no longer the world power it had been before the war. The success of the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indo-China ranks as his outstanding achievement of his third term in the Foreign Office. In 1950 he and Beatrice Eden were finally divorced, and in 1952 he married Churchill's niece, Clarissa Spencer-Churchill (b. 1920), a nominal Roman Catholic who was fiercely criticised by Catholic writer Evelyn Waugh for marrying a divorced man. This second marriage was much more successful than his first had been. In 1954 he was made a Knight of the Garter and became Sir Anthony Eden.

The release of war criminals

Upon regaining office, Winston Churchill and Eden moved for the release of the German war criminals still in British custody [10], following a policy focused on Anti-Communism and the emerging Cold War. This policy had been discreetly pursued since at least 1947, when Churchill and Harold Alexander had pressured Clement Attlee to commute the death sentence on the German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, which had been handed down by a British Military Court in Venice on 6 May 1947. Kesselring had been called to account for atrocities perpetrated in Italy during the Second World War, such as the massacre of more than 1,400 innocent civilians in a series of violent reprisals, including the Ardeatine massacre.

In December 1951 Eden introduced to the Cabinet a cleverly drafted policy, according to which pre-trial custody should be counted against sentences inflicted upon war criminals, effectively reducing them. The policy, which apparently aimed only to promote an equitable principle, exploited a loophole which in certain instances was effectively used to double a prison reduction already in effect, as for example, in the case of the German Field Marshal Erich von Manstein.

Von Manstein was mainly accused of orders equating Partisans to Jews, thus aiming at their indiscriminate extermination. Churchill donated money to von Manstein's defence, and openly branded the trial against the German Field Marshal as yet another effort by the then ruling Attlee government to appease the Soviets.

Anticipating an extensive interpretation of the pre-trial custody reduction, the Tribunal that condemned von Manstein on 19 December 1949 explicitly stated in its ruling that "The period during which the accused has been in custody has been taken into account". Nevertheless, Eden pushed ahead with the idea that it was legitimate to subtract the pre-trial custody time from the period decreed by judicial decision even in cases such as von Manstein's.

The pressure on Eden and the government to resolve the war criminals issue as quickly as possible increased during the summer of 1952, coinciding with the looming question of the ratification of the European Defence Community Treaty by West Germany. A lobby that included Harold Alexander (then Minister of Defence) and Basil Liddell Hart strove to this end, echoing the calls in the same direction coming from the German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, and the press campaign orchestrated in West Germany for the pardoning of most war criminals. Alexander in particular had gone to considerable lengths to justify their release in one way or another, tactically and falsely emphasising health issues and, almost incredibly, the "melancholy" experienced by jailed war criminals.[11]

Under Eden, who as Foreign Minister had taken over responsibility after the withdrawal of the British High Commission from the International Military Tribunal, with the clear approval of Churchill, and based on the tactics suggested by Alexander, which included adequately priming prison doctors of which medical aspects to emphasise, both Kesselring (July) and Manstein (August) were released from prison under medical pretexts during the summer of 1952, allegedly because they needed urgent hospitalization for treating, respectively, an "exploratory operation" on a throat cancer, and cataracts. Following their operations, both were conveniently left in liberty for an indefinite convalescence period, and were not to set foot again in jail.[12][13].

Ivone Kirkpatrick swiftly suggested that Adenauer propose the application of the same principal to the US High Commission, which helped West Germany not to misunderstand the real significance of the "medical" release of the Field Marshals, and the policy pursued by both the British and the US governments.[14]

However, to make the path taken by the British government towards the war criminals clear to German public opinion, a more explicit gesture was deemed to be necessary. Therefore, on 24 October 1952 Eden signed an act of clemency in favour of the German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring. Kesselring, who was pardoned in consideration of his allegedly cancerous throat, addressed a rally of veterans immediately after his release, calling for the wholesale liberation of all war criminals.

Afterwards Kesselring lived an active public life for another eight years, mostly rallying far right veterans as leader of the organisation Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten, a post to which he had been elected while still in prison.[15]

Thus Eden, albeit with some reluctance and attention for legal stricture, had put his signature upon a policy commenced by Churchill which, by means of a broad campaign of rehabilitation of German military personalities, was aimed at re-establishing a strong army in what was then West Germany, as a central part of the NATO front line at the height of Cold War.

When Churchill took over the Foreign Office due to Eden's serious health problems in 1953, the plan for liberating the war criminals was brought to its logical conclusion. Selwyn Lloyd, the Minister of State in the Foreign Office with responsibility for German Affairs, was given carte-blanche to resolve the issue of war criminals, now seen as no more than embarrassing. On 6 May 1953 Manstein was pardoned, and in 1956 he returned to service upon Adenauer's call, assuming an important official role in the resurrection of the German Army.

Prime minister (1955-57)

In April 1955 Churchill finally retired, and Eden succeeded him as Prime Minister. He was a very popular figure, as a result of his long wartime service and his famous good looks and charm. His famous words "Peace comes first, always" added to his already substantial popularity.

On taking office he immediately called a general election, at which the Conservatives were returned with an increased majority. But Eden had never held a domestic portfolio and had little experience in economic matters. He left these areas to his lieutenants such as Rab Butler, and concentrated largely on foreign policy, forming a close alliance with U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower.

Suez (1956)

Further information: Suez Crisis

This alliance proved not universal, however, when in 1956 Eden, in conjunction with France, tried to prevent Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of Egypt, from nationalising the Suez Canal built in the 19th century by the Suez Canal Company through a concession from the viceroy of Egypt, but later owned by its British and French shareholders. Eden, drawing on his experience in the 1930s, saw Nasser as another Mussolini, considering the two men aggressive nationalist socialists determined to invade other countries. Eden even responded by plotting to assassinate Nasser by enlisting Miles Copeland's assistance, since he was apparently a close friend of Nasser's. Others believed that Nasser was acting from legitimate patriotic concerns.

In October 1956, after months of negotiation and attempts at mediation had failed to dissuade Nasser, Britain and France, in conjunction with Israel, invaded Egypt and occupied the Suez Canal Zone. But Eisenhower was an advocate of decolonisation, and he immediately and strongly opposed the invasion. Eden, who faced domestic pressure from his party to take action, as well as stopping the decline of British influence in the Middle East[1], had ignored Britain's financial dependence on the U.S. in the wake of World War II, and had overestimated US loyalty towards its closest ally. Eden was finally forced to bow to American pressure to withdraw. The Suez Crisis is widely taken as marking the end of Britain's status as a superpower.

The Suez fiasco ruined, in many eyes, Eden's reputation for statesmanship and led to a breakdown in his health. He went on vacation to Ian Fleming's estate on Jamaica in November 1956, at a time when he was still determined to soldier on as Prime Minister. His health, however, did not improve and during his absence from London, his Chancellor Harold Macmillan and Rab Butler worked to manoeuvre him out of office. Eden resigned 9 Jan 1957. Macmillan, despite having himself been one of the architects of Suez, succeeded him as Prime Minister in January 1957. Eden retained some of his personal popularity and was made Earl of Avon in 1961.

Suez in retrospect

His official biographer Robert Rhodes James re-evaluated sympathetically Eden's stance over Suez in 1986[16] and, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, asked, "who can now claim that Eden was wrong?"[17]. Such arguments turn mostly on whether, as a matter of policy, the Suez operation was fundamentally flawed or whether, as such "revisionists" thought, the lack of American support conveyed the impression that the West was divided and weak. Anthony Nutting, who resigned as a Foreign Office Minister over Suez, expressed the former view in 1967, the year of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, when he wrote that 'we had sown the wind of bitterness and we were to reap the whirlwind of revenge and rebellion'.[18] Conversely, D. R. Thorpe, another of Eden's biographers, suggests that had the Suez venture succeeded, 'there would almost certainly have been no Middle East war in 1967, and probably no Yom Kippur War in 1973 also'.[19]

Health issues

A medical mishap would change the course of Eden’s life forever. During an operation in 1953 to remove gallstones, the surgeon damaged his bile duct. This blunder made Eden vulnerable to recurrent infections and attacks of violent pain and fevers. To overcome this weakness Eden was prescribed Benzedrine, the wonder drug of the 1950s. Regarded by doctors in the 1950s as a harmless stimulant, it belongs to the family of drugs called amphetamines. During this time amphetamines were prescribed and used in a very casual way. Among the side effects of Benzedrine are Insomnia, restlessness and mood swings, all of which Eden actually suffered during the Suez Crisis. His health condition is now commonly agreed to have been a part of the reason for the Prime Minister's ill judgment[1].

Rejected plan for union between Britain and France

British Government cabinet papers from September 1956, during Eden's term as Prime Minister, have shown that French Prime Minister Guy Mollet approached the British Government suggesting the idea of an economic and political union between France and Great Britain.[20] This was a similar offer, in reverse, to that made by Churchill (drawing on a plan devised by Leo Amery [21]) in June 1940 [22]. The offer by Guy Mollet was referred to by Sir John Colville, Churchill's former private secretary, in his collected diaries, The Fringes of Power (1985), his having gleaned the information in 1957 from Air Chief Marshal Sir William Dickson during an air flight (and, according to Colville, after several whiskies and soda) [23]. Mollet's request for Union with Britain was rejected by Eden, but the additional possibility of France joining the British Commonwealth was considered, although similarly rejected. Colville noted, in respect of Suez, that Eden and his Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd "felt still more beholden to the French on account of this offer" [23].

Retirement (1957-77)

Eden soon retired and lived quietly with his second wife Clarissa, formerly Clarissa Spencer-Churchill, niece of Sir Winston, in 'Rose Bower' by the banks of the River Ebble in Broad Chalke, Wiltshire. He published a highly acclaimed personal memoir, Another World (1976), as well as several volumes of political memoirs, in which he, however, denied that there had been any collusion with France and Israel. In his view, American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, whom he particularly disliked, was responsible for the ill fate of the Suez adventure. This and other untruths further diminished his standing. His main concern in his later years was trying to rebuild his reputation that was destroyed by the Suez fiasco, often taking legal actions against authors who didn't share his point of view [1]. He sat for extensive interviews for the famed multi-part Thames Television production, The World at War, which was broadcast in 1974. He also featured frequently in Marcel Ophüls' 1969 documentary Le chagrin et la pitié, discussing the occupation of France in a wider geopolitical context. He spoke impeccable, if accented, French.[24] From 1945–1973, Eden was Chancellor of the University of Birmingham, England.

On a trip to the United States in 1976-1977 to spend Christmas and New Year with Averell and Pamela Harriman, his health rapidly deteriorated. At his family's request, James Callaghan arranged for an RAF plane that was already in America to divert to Miami to fly him home. The Earl of Avon died from liver cancer in Salisbury in January 1977 at the age of 79. Born in the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, he thus died in the year of Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee.

Anthony Eden is buried in the country churchyard at Alvediston, just 3 miles upstream from 'Rose Bower' at the source of the River Ebble. Eden's papers are housed at the University of Birmingham Special Collections[25]

Eden's surviving son, Nicholas Eden (1930–1985), known as Viscount Eden until 1977, was also a politician and a minister in the Thatcher government until his premature death from AIDS at the age of 54.

Character and speaking style

Anthony Eden always made a particularly cultured appearance, well-mannered and good-looking. This gave him huge popular support throughout his political life, but some contemporaries felt that he was merely a superficial person lacking any deeper convictions. That view was enforced by his very pragmatic approach to politics. Sir Oswald Mosley, for example, said that he never understood why Eden was so strongly pushed by the Tory party, while he felt that Eden's abilities were very much inferior to those of Harold Macmillan and Oliver Stanley.[26] Also, Secretary of State Dean Acheson regarded him as a quite old-fashioned amateur in politics typical of the British Establishment.[1] However, recent biographies put more emphasis on Eden's achievements in foreign policy, and perceive him to have held deep convictions regarding world peace and security as well as a strong social conscience.[5]

Eden was for all his abilities not a very effective public speaker. Too often in his career, for instance in the late 1930s, following his resignation from Chamberlain's government, his parliamentary performances disappointed many of his followers. Churchill once even commented on an Eden speech that the latter had used every cliché except "God is love."[8]. His inability to express himself clearly is often attributed to shyness and lack of self-confidence. Eden is known to have been much more direct in meeting with his secretaries and advisors than in Cabinet meetings and public speeches, sometimes tending to become enraged and behaving "like a child" [27] only to regain his temper within a few minutes [1].

Eden in popular culture

As Secretary of State for War in 1940, Eden authorised the setting-up of the Local Defence Volunteers (soon renamed the Home Guard). In the film of the TV sitcom Dad's Army, the (fictional) Walmington-on-Sea platoon is formed in response to Eden's radio broadcast. The debonair Sergeant Wilson is often said to resemble Eden, something he takes enormous pride in.

Eden is mentioned by Ed Norton on The Honeymooners saying that because of the residency requirements that Anthony Eden could never be a member of The Racoon Lodge.

Eden is also mentioned in a song by The Kinks, "She's Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina" from the 1969 album Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire).

Eden is mentioned in the 1993 film The Remains of the Day when Anthony Hopkins´s character mentions that Eden has also been a guest at Darlington Hall.

Eden appears as a character in the 2008 play Never So Good – portrayed as a hysterical, pill-addicted wreck, spying on members of his own Cabinet by ordering government chauffeurs to report on their comings and goings. He is shown being overwhelmed by the chaos of the Suez Crisis and eventually forced out of office by his Conservative Party colleagues, at the urging of the American government.

Eden appears as a character in James P. Hogan's science-fiction novel The Proteus Operation.

The Eden Government

Changes

Eden's initial cabinet is remarkable for the fact that 10 out of the original 18 members were Old Etonians: Eden, Salisbury, Crookshank, Macmillan, Home, Stuart, Thorneycroft, Heathcoat Amory, Sandys and Peake were all educated at Eton.

The Grey-Eden connection

Charles Grey, 1st Earl Grey = Elizabeth Grey
|
------------------------------------------
| |
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey William Grey
Prime Minister = Maria Shireff
|
Georgina Plowden = Sir William Grey
|
Sir William Eden = Sybil Grey
|
Anthony Eden
Prime Minister
|
Leticia Eden = Henry
|
Anthony Peet Eden

Partial Bibliography

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j David Dutton: Anthony Eden. A Life and Reputation (London, Arnold, 1997).
  2. ^ Churchill had been a major founder of the War Criminal Trials policy, by drafting the Statement on Atrocities of the Moscow Declaration, signed on 30 October 1943 which, under the emergence of the Cold War, he most notably started to undermine since 1947, when he successfully urged the Attlee government to obtain the commuting in a life sentence the death penalty inflicted upon Albert Kesselring by a British Military Court.
  3. ^ Rating British Prime Ministers 29 November 2004
  4. ^ Churchill 'greatest PM of 20th Century' 4 January 2000
  5. ^ a b Robert Rhodes James (1986) Anthony Eden; D.R. Thorpe (2003) Eden
  6. ^ Alan Campbell-Johanson, Eden - The Making of a Statesman, Read Books, 2007, p. 9 ISBN 9781406764512
  7. ^ Oxford DNB theme: Glamour boys
  8. ^ a b Sir Anthony Eden: The Man Who Waited - TIME
  9. ^ "Not new but fresh", Time Magazine, June 23, 1947
  10. ^ Birmingham University Archives, hereafter, 'BUA',FO 800/846, fo. 2, Churchill to Eden, 29 Nov. 1951; fo. 12, Churchill to Eden 8 June 1952, cited in Donald Bloxham, Genocide on Trial - War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 168 ISBN 0-19-925904-6.
  11. ^ Donald Bloxham, Genocide on Trial - War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 169 ISBN 0-19-925904-6, based on LHCMA, Liddell Hart 11/1952/8, Liddell Hart's notes on London visit 1-3 July 1952.
  12. ^ PRO, FO, 371/104159, CW 1663/17, Roberts to Strang, 30 April 1953, as cited in Donald Bloxham, Genocide on Trial - War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 169 ISBN 0-19-925904-6.
  13. ^ (German) Kerstin von Lingen, Kesselrings letzte Schlacht. Kriegsverbrecherprozesse, Vergangenheitspolitik und Wiederbewaffnung: der Fall Kesselring, Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 2004, ISBN 3-506-71749-9.
  14. ^ Adenauer, Memoirs, p. 447.
  15. ^ Donald Bloxham, Genocide on Trial - War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 170 ISBN 0-19-925904-6.
  16. ^ Robert Rhodes James (1986) Anthony Eden
  17. ^ Letter, Daily Telegraph, 7 August 1990.
  18. ^ Anthony Nutting (1967) No End of a Lesson
  19. ^ D. R. Thorpe (2003) Eden
  20. ^ When Britain and France nearly married 15 January 2007
  21. ^ See David Faber (2005) Speaking for England
  22. ^ See, for example, Julian Jackson (2003) The Fall of France
  23. ^ a b "Postscript to Suez", recording conversation of 9 April 1957: John Colville (1985) The Fringes of Power, Volume Two
  24. ^ We would have done the same under Nazi occupation Tuesday 25 April 2006
  25. ^ Special Collections
  26. ^ Sir Oswald Mosley. My Life London, 1968
  27. ^ Evelyn Shuckburgh: Descent to Suez. Diaries 1951-1956. London, 1986
Books
Biographies
Jay, Peter. Review of the above The Guardian 22 March 2003.

External links

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Persondata
NAME Eden, Anthony
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 1st Earl of Avon
SHORT DESCRIPTION British politician & Conservative prime minister
DATE OF BIRTH 12 June 1897)
PLACE OF BIRTH West Auckland, County Durham, England
DATE OF DEATH 14 January 1977
PLACE OF DEATH Alvediston, Salisbury, Wiltshire, England

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