Robert Vansittart, he eldest of three sons among the six children of Captain Robert Arnold Vansittart (1851–1938), army officer, and his wife, Alice Blane Vansittart (1854–1919), was born at Wilton House, Farnham, on 25th June 1881. Five years after Vansittart's birth, his father unexpectedly inherited an estate of some 2,000 acres atFoots Cray.
At the age of seven Vansittart was sent to St Neot's, a preparatory school nearWinchfield. In 1893 he arrived at Eton College. He had a special talent for foreign languages and in 1899 he was awarded both the French and German prince consort prizes. He was a keen member of the debating society and according to the Eton College Chronicle, he "held the audience spellbound by the vibrating earnestness of his voice".
According to Norman Rose, the author of Vansittart: Study of a Diplomat (1978) : "Bent on a diplomatic career, Vansittart travelled the continent for over two years improving his proficiency in French and German. In Germany he encountered an intense anti-British hysteria, engendered by the ramifications of the South African War. On one occasion he was challenged to a duel, a predicament from which he escaped by revealing an admirable diplomatic technique. His early experiences in Germany perhaps laid the foundation for his subsequent attitude towards the Germans, and that led him, eventually, with growing experience, to promulgate the doctrine of ‘original German sin’ in international relations; conversely, the warmth of his reception in Paris won him over as an inveterate Francophile. These were to be the twin leitmotifs of his future European policy."
In March 1903 Vansittart sat for the diplomatic examination and passed out top of the list. Later that year he was appointed to the Paris embassy, where he was promoted third secretary in March 1905, passed on examination in public law in December 1905, and was appointed Member of the Royal Victorian Order (MVO) in April 1906. In April 1907 he was transferred to Tehran. He was promoted second secretary in December 1908, and transferred toCairo in January 1909.
In August 1911 he was sent to the Foreign Office, where he was to spend the remainder of his career. He greatly admired his immediate boss, Eyre Crowe. He was greatly influenced by his ideas on the German menace and urged resistance to this fast-growing power. Crowe argued that the government should never give in to Germany's demands: "To give way to the blackmailer's menaces enriches him, but it has long been proved by uniform experience that, although this may secure for the victim temporary peace, it is certain to lead to renewed molestation and higher demands after ever-shortening periods of amicable forbearance.... The blackmailer's trade is generally ruined by the first resolute stand made against his exactions and the determination rather to face all risks of a possibly disagreeable situation than to continue in the path of endless concessions."
Charles Higham has described Vansittart as: "Tall, broad-shouldered, ruggedly athletic, exuding decency and warm common sense, Vansittart succeeded the very able Sir Ronald Lindsay as permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office in 1930. He was arguably the most daring, free-thinking, brilliant and piercingly perceptive political figure of his time. John Connell, the author of The Office: A study of British Foreign Policy and its Makers (1958) has pointed out: "He was capable of swiftness of analysis... linked indissolubly to an equivalent swiftness in his desire for action. He was impatient if the action which he believed to be obviously necessary did not immediately and resolutely follow upon the assessment of a situation which he had made or the advice which he had offered. This caused more timorous and less decisive men to regard him as imprudent and injudicious."
Vansittart's biographer, Norman Rose, has argued: "Incisive of thought, diligent, and energetic, possessed of a forceful character and the necessary social graces, Vansittart was soon earmarked as a high-flyer. But not only his routine work brought Vansittart to the attention of his peers and masters. Since his days at Eton, Vansittart had harboured literary ambitions. Occasionally, he contemplated abandoning diplomacy for the profession of a full-time writer. While in Paris he wrote a play in French, Les parias, that ran for six weeks at the Théâtre Molière, a singular feat for a young unpaid attaché, and one that augmented his reputation for brilliance. It marked the beginning of a parallel calling as a dramatist, poet, and novelist."
On the outbreak of the First World War he was appointed head of the Swedish section of the contraband department. In 1916 he was assigned to direct the prisoners of war department under Thomas Legh. This work provided him with conclusive proof of German barbarism. He believed that the Germans were committing atrocities on a massive scale. His attitude towards the Germans got worse after the death of his younger brother, Arnold Vansittart at Ypres. He later wrote: "The personal element should not affect policy, but one cannot prevent experience from confirming conclusions already reached. Why ask for strength to reverse them?"
Robert Vansittart was the first secretary, in the British delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference. At the conference Vansittart dealt mainly with the Turkish settlement. Impressed with Vansittart's competence and diplomatic skills, George Curzon appointed him as his private secretary in December 1920. Now holding the rank of assistant secretary, Vansittart worked under Curzon until he lost office in January 1924.
Vansittart returned to the Foreign Office as head of the American department. In February 1928 he was promoted to assistant under-secretary and joined the staff at 10 Downing Street, where he acted as private secretary to prime ministers Stanley Baldwin and Ramsay MacDonald. At the age of only forty-eight, Vansittart was appointed permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office.
On 29th July, 1931, he married for a second time. His first wife, Gladys Heppenheimer had had tragically died in July 1928. A daughter, Cynthia, had been born in 1922. His bride, Sarita Enriqueta, was the widow of Vansittart's late colleague, Sir Colville Adrian de Rune Barclay. Vansittart himself had little private income, but Sarita was a considerable heiress (her income at the time was estimated at £40,000 per annum) and her money enabled them to live in splendour. They acquired Denham Place, a magnificent manor house in Buckinghamshire, standing in almost 100 acres of gardens, where they employed a staff of twelve servants and five gardeners. When in London, they lived at 44 Park Street, Grosvenor Square. His biographer states that their union was one of "conjugal bliss".
When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor on 30th January 1933, Vansittart: Study of a Diplomat (1978) became his leading opponent in the Foreign Office. He wrote on 6th May: "The present regime in Germany will, on past and present form, loose off another European war just so soon as it feels strong enough … we are considering very crude people, who have very few ideas in their noddles but brute force and militarism." The author of Norman Rosehas argued: "But how would he combat the German menace? First, by redefining the aims of British strategy, by isolating Germany as Britain's most immediate danger, and then by boosting the British defence programme to meet this changed order of priorities. Well out of the public eye as a member of high-powered government committees, Vansittart laboured ceaselessly to realize these aims."
Vansittart worked very closely with Admiral Hugh Sinclair, the head of MI6, and Vernon Kell, the head of MI5. According to Christopher Andrew, the author of The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (2009): "Robert Vansittart, permanent under secretary at the Foreign Office, was much more interested in intelligence than his political masters were... He dined regularly with Sinclair, was also in (less frequent) touch with Kell, and built up what became known as his own private detective agency collecting German intelligence. More than any other Whitehall mandarin, Vansittart stood for rearmament and opposition to appeasement."
which was nominally run by - Admiral Hugh Sinclair. Higham argues that he received information from the Russian secret agent Anatoly Baykalov, that Wallis Simpson was was a Nazi collaborator. Baykalov had obtained this information, while posing as a White Russian, in the group that included Anna Wolkoff (she was Wallis's dressmaker). Vansittart had two reliable plants in the German embassy who could inform him when any material arrived for transmission to Germany in the diplomatic bags. The First Secretary Wolfgang zu Putlitz and the German press attaché Jona von Ustinov, father of the actor and playwright Peter Ustinov.
Vansittart was also concerned about the political views of the Prince of Wales. In July 1933 Vansittart recounted in his diary that at a party where there was much discussion about the implications of Hitler's rise to power. "The Prince of Wales was quite pro-Hitler and said it was no business of ours to interfere in Germany's internal affairs either re- the Jews or anyone else, and added that dictators are very popular these days and we might want one in England."
In 1936 Vansittart was involved in talks with Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German Ambassador to Britain. Ribbentrop soon identified Vansittart as the major problem and told Berlin that his mission in London would be very difficult. He later commented: "Never was a conversation so barren, never did I find so little response... One thing was clear, an Anglo-German understanding with Vansittart in office was out of the question." He then talked toGeoffrey Dawson about the possibility of meeting Stanley Baldwin. Dawson told him that he saw no prospect of a meeting with Hitler before July or August.
Neville Chamberlain became prime minister in May 1937. Vansittart strongly disagreed with his policy of appeasement. According to Norman Rose: "Vansittart's techniques also worked against him. His memoranda, drafted in a convoluted, epigrammatic style, faintly condescending in tone, warning of terrible dangers if his advice went unheeded, all too often irritated his political masters... In some quarters, his anti-Germanism was viewed as excessive, even paranoid.... In January 1938 Vansittart was 'kicked upstairs', assuming the high-sounding, but politically meaningless, title of chief diplomatic adviser to the government".
Vansittart passed information to the anti-appeasement M.P. Robert Boothby: "In 1938 I took Vansittart, who had been kicked upstairs at the Foreign Office by Chamberlain, to lunch... He came down the steps of his hotel to greet us, a picturesque figure in a black cape, with the wind blowing through his white locks, his face wreathed in smiles. At lunch he was highly critical of President Roosevelt for his failure to check the economic recession in the United States, and for his failure to rearm... He was far more critical of the British government." Vansittart told Boothby: "They (the British government) have now succeeded in quarrelling simultaneously with Germany, Japan and Italy; in alienating Russia; and in being at least two years behindhand with armaments."
Vansittart caused considerable controversy when he published Black Record: Germans Past and Present (1941). Hostile questions were raised in parliament. His critics suggested that a civil servant should not be allowed to air such controversial issues in public. In July 1941 Vansittart decided to resign from the service. In recognition of his long public service, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Vansittart of Denham. In the House of Lords, he continuing his campaign against Nazi Germany. He also published an autobiography, Lessons of My Life (1943).
Robert Vansittart died on 14th February 1957. His autobiography, The Mist Procession: The Autobiography of Lord Vansittart, was published posthumously in 1958. Vansittart's final sentence in the book was striking: "Mine is a story of failure, but it throws light on my time which failed too".
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