Lord Lothian was convinced of Hitler’s peaceable intentions early on. He later emerged as an almost forgotten hero of W.W. II.

Some Strings Attached

The little-known story of a wartime British ambassador who appeased Adolf Hitler but saw the error of his ways

By Charles Spicer

Among the amateur diplomats I researched for my book, Coffee with Hitler: The Story of the Amateur Spies Who Tried to Civilize the Nazis, one Liberal politician and journalist emerged as an almost forgotten hero.

Philip Kerr, the Marquess of Lothian, had first visited Hitler in January of 1935, returning home convinced of the German leader’s peaceable intentions and urging the British government to make concessions to his regime. Soon after, having admitted his misjudgment of the National Socialists (later shortened to “Nazis”), he was appointed as Britain’s ambassador to Washington, to the irritation of the Foreign Office mandarins who distrusted him as an appeaser and an amateur.