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Robert Hudson, 1st Viscount Hudson

October 23, 2023

Robert Spear Hudson, 1st Viscount Hudson, CH, PC (15 August 1886 – 2 February 1957) was a British Conservative Party politician who held a number of ministerial posts during World War II.

Robert Hudson, 1st Viscount Hudson

Diplomatic career Edit

He was the eldest son of Robert William Hudson who had inherited the substantial family soap business and sold it, and Gerda Frances Marion Bushell. The wealth he inherited from the soap business ensured that Hudson always had a very privileged and well off existence.[1] Hudson was educated at Eton College and Magdalen College, Oxford.[1] He entered the Diplomatic Service in 1911, becoming an attaché and First Secretary at the British embassy in Washington.[2] Hudson afterwards served as a diplomat in Russia.[2] On 1 December 1918, he married a wealthy American woman, Hannah Randolph of Philadelphia, whom he had met during his time as a diplomat in Washington. He had a particular interest in farming and was a member of the council of the Royal Agricultural Society.

MP Edit

Hudson was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Whitehaven in 1924 and served there until losing in 1929.[3] In 1931 he was returned for Southport.[3] He served in several ministerial posts, becoming a Privy Counsellor in 1938. From 1937 to 1940, Hudson served as Secretary for Overseas Trade. Hudson was on the right-wing of the Conservative party, being opposed to the "one nation" Conservatives such as Neville Chamberlain.[4] He greatly disliked the coalition National government and frequently advocated that the Conservatives dispose of their National Liberal and National Labour allies to create all Tory government.[4] Hudson had a particular dislike of the National Liberal War Secretary Leslie Hore-Belisha whom he intrigued against endlessly as he very much wanted to see Hore-Belisha out of the cabinet.[4] Besides for the coalition National government, Hudson resented the dominance of the "provincial" lawyers and businessmen who made up the majority of the Conservative backbenchers whom he felt lacked the necessary vision for Britain's future.[4] The British historian D.C. Watt wrote: "Normally a mere parliamentary undersecretary is the lowest, the most cribbed and confined of political figures, whose role is merely to deputise for his minister in answering the less controversial of parliamentary questions...But the Department of Overseas Trade...was unique, a hybrid sub-department nominally responsible to, yet in fact independent of, the Board of Trade and the Foreign Office. In practice, this meant that Hudson was his own master".[4]

In October-November 1938, Hudson was involved in talks to improve Anglo-German trade.[5] The main issue in the talks, which broke down, were centered around proposals for joint Anglo-German investment in central Africa.[5] However, the British cabinet, which was starting to become concerned with the increasing German economic domination of eastern Europe, were not willing to accept the German demand that the Balkans and Turkey be assigned to the exclusive economic sphere of influence for the Reich.[5] At the same time, Hudson was the lead British negotiator for the Anglo-American trade agreement of 1938.[5] The purpose of the agreement was to reduce the effects of the long Anglo-American trade war that had been started by the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. The State Department had a strong distrust and dislike of Hudson.[6] Jay Pierrepont Moffat, the chief of the State Department's Western European bureau, wrote that Hudson was "unfriendly to American interests or at least...unwilling to subordinate immediate British interests with a view of obtaining a broader agreement with us in world trade...he has certainly encouraged the Prime Minister to seek cartel agreements with Germany. He is ready to sacrifice people to pounds sterling".[6] In Britain, the Anglo-American trade agreement was felt to be unsatisfactory as the Americans reduced their tariffs on British goods only by 20 cents, but given the tensions in Europe and Asia, the agreement was felt to be necessary in order to improve relations with the United States.[5]

 
Robert Hudson and his wife Hannah on a vacation, 1922.

Between 15-18 November 1938, King Carol II of Romania paid a state visit to Britain.[7] Carol met his cousin, King George VI along with Chamberlain and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax. During his visit, the king warned that Romania was steadily falling into the German economic sphere of influence, and that he wanted British help to keep Romania out of the German sphere.[7] Carol's request for a £30 million pound sterling loan for Romania was refused by Chamberlain, and all the king obtained was a British promise to buy 200,000 tons of Romanian wheat annually with an option to buy 400, 000 more tons of wheat and for an Anglo-Romanian committee to be set up to examine ways to improve Anglo-Romanian trade.[7] Carol's visit led to an extended debate in the House of Commons, during which Hudson broke with the government and spoke in favour of closer economic ties with Romania.[7] Hudson argued along with Oliver Stanley, the President of the Board of Trade, that Britain had a vested interest in keeping the Balkans from falling into the German sphere of influence, and that Britain should had done more to take up Carol's request for closer Anglo-Romanian economic relations.[7] Reflecting both the financial realities imposed by the costs of rearmament and the order of priorities, the Chamberlain government introduced a bill that was signed into law in February 1939 that committed H.M. government to spend over the next year £10 million pounds in government-backed trade credits to subsidise China; £3 million pounds in trade credits for Iraq and Afghanistan; £1 million pounds in trade credits for Portugal and another £1 million pounds in trade credits for Egypt.[7] The largest sum was allocated to China whose economy had been badly strained by the war with Japan. From the British perspective, subsidising China was in their best interest because as long as Japan was bogged down in the war against China, it was less likely that Japan would try to seize Britain's Asian colonies. For the Balkans, £2 million pounds in trade credits were allocated for Greece (the location of Greece aside the main shipping lane to the Suez canal made it crucial from the British viewpoint) and only £1 million pounds in trade credits were allocated for Romania.[7]

Mission to Moscow Edit

In early 1939, it was announced that Hudson would visit Moscow on a high-profile visit to Moscow to negotiate a trade treaty.[8] At the same time, the government made an effort to improve the often strained Anglo-Soviet relations. Lord Halifax, a devout Anglican who normally did little to disguise his discomfort with atheist Soviet Russia, had dinner on 20 February 1939 at the Soviet embassy with Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to the court of St. James.[8] On 1 March 1939, Chamberlain along with four cabinet ministers attended a reception at the Soviet embassy hosted by Maisky to honor the 22nd anniversary of the February revolution of 1917.[8]

On 8 March 1939, Hudson met with Maisky.[9] Hudson expressed a wish for better Anglo-Soviet relations and assured Maisky that Anglo-Germans relations were deteriorating. [8] Hudson in his account of his meeting wrote that Maisky had told him that he was "quite convinced that we, the British empire, were unable to stand up against German aggression, even with the assistance of France, unless we had the collaboration and help of Russia".[9] Hudson replied that he did not share that assessment, saying that he believed that Britain and France were capable of defeating Germany on their own and did not need the help of the Soviet Union.[9] Maisky in his account of the meeting stated that Hudson had told him that the Chamberlain had "firmly decided to maintain the empire and its position as a great power".[9] Maisky had Hudson saying that Britain wanted allies and that: "Here in London, however, many people assured him [Hudson] that the USSR now did not want collaboration with the Western democracies, that it is inclined more and more to a policy of isolation, and that therefore it was pointless to seek a common language with Moscow".[9] Maisky wrote that Hudson had told him that his upcoming visit to Moscow was meant to clarify "do we [the Soviets] want or do we not want a rapprochement and collaboration with London".[10] Maisky concluded: "Hence, Hudson's visit to Moscow could play a large role...Personally, Hudson would desire very much that this orientation moved on the line London-Paris-Moscow".[11] Maisky concluded that Hudson was a very ambitious politician who wanted to be prime minister one day, "but I do not think Hudson could take the general line which he developed in today's discussion without the sanction of Chamberlain".[11] Hudson-whom Watt called an "ambitious and driving young Conservative hopeful"-was hoping to achieve some sort of political success during his visit to Moscow that would link better economic relations to closer political ties.[12] Hudson spoke frankly with Sefton Delmer, the foreign correspondent with the Daily Express newspaper about his ambitions to achieve some sort of an agreement in Moscow that would improve his chances of being promoted into the cabinet proper.[13] In March 1939, Hudson was scheduled to visit Germany to discuss improving Anglo-German trade, but in protest against the German violation of the Munich Agreement by occupying the Czech of Czecho-Slovakia on 15 March 1939, the visit was cancelled.[14] Hudson was an appeaser who believed that improving Anglo-German economic relations was the key to saving the peace had very much looking forward to his visit to the Reich.[15]

On 23 March 1939, Hudson arrived in Moscow, ostensibly to negotiate an Anglo-Soviet trade treaty, but in fact to seek to improve Anglo-Soviet relations in light of the Danzig crisis.[16] As was usually the case with foreign visitors, Hudson was not allowed to see Joseph Stalin in the Kremlin, and instead negotiated with Maxim Litvinov, the Commissar for Foreign Affairs.[16] Hudson was one of the few ministers in the cabinet who spoke fluent Russian.[2] After meeting him, Litvinov wrote to Stalin: "In view of the rejection of all our previous offers, we have no intention of making any new offers and it is up to others to take the initiative...In particular, we are ready now as we always have been, to co-operate with Britain. We are prepared to look at concrete suggestions".[16] Hudson told Litvinov that the Munich Agreement had occurred because of British rearmament was still not complete, but that Britain was now far more advanced in its rearmament than it been in September 1938 as Hudson stated: "There will not be a second Munich".[17] Litvinov stated that his government had been working for a policy of collective security under the banner of the League of Nations since 1934, and hinted that Stalin was losing interest in this policy.[18] However, Litvinov told Hudson that his government "would be prepared to consult with H.M. Government and other governments regarding all suitable measures of resistance whether diplomatic or military or economic. He made it clear that he had in mind the possibility of resistance by force of arms".[18] Litvinov went on to accuse the French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet of wanting to leave Eastern Europe into the German sphere of influence as the price of keeping France out of another world war as Litvinov expressed much rage at Bonnet to Hudson.[19]

Hudson's insistence that he was in Moscow primarily to discuss economic matters and his refusal to discuss Litvinov's suggestions of a military alliance doomed his visit to failure.[16] Hudson told Litvinov that he was not convinced that an Anglo-Soviet military alliance was necessary and at one point angered Litvinov when he told him that Britain could do very well without trade with the Soviet Union.[19] Litvinov accused Hudson of being a bully, saying that such threats to cease trade worked with small powers, and that the Soviet Union was a great power.[19] In regard to the trade treaty, Hudson negotiated with Anastas Mikoyan, the Armenian Communist in charge of economic matters under Stalin..[20] As Hudson spoke no Armenian while Mikoyan spoke no English, the two spoke in Russian, their only common language. No agreement was struck as both men sought the best possible economic treaty for their respective nations.[20] Mikoyan mentioned to Hudson that the Soviet Union might be willing to repay the debts owning to British investors that the Soviet regime had rejected in 1918 in return for a "political advantage".[13] Hudson also talked with Vladimir Potemkin, the deputy foreign commissar, where he spoke in general about a wish for an Anglo-French-Soviet alliance meant to deter Germany from choosing war.[20] Hudson told Potemkin the lie that Britain was capable of sending 19 British Army divisions to France at once to face the Wehrmacht (in fact the British Army could only send 2 divisions to France in March 1939).[20]

Potemkin wrote the Hudson mission was a failure because it "began without serious preparations".[20] Potemkin compared Hudson to the character of Khlestakov, the protagonist of The Inspector-General, an 1836 play by Nikolai Gogol.[20] Potemkin wrote that just as Khlestakov was a vain, lightweight man who persuaded people in a provincial Russian town that he was really the dreaded inspector-general of the Emperor Nicholas I whose task was to root all corruption and inefficiency in the Russian empire, only to be finally exposed at the end as the unimportant man that he really was, that likewise Hudson was just a hack politician who had no real authority to say anything important or even interesting on behalf of London who pretended to be someone important.[20] Much to his disappointment, Hudson was not allowed to see Stalin in the Kremlin as he had hoped, and instead had to settle for posing for a photograph with Litvinov, Mikoyan and the premier Vyacheslav Molotov.[21] A joint communique to the press had prepared which mentioned that Hudson had discussed political and economic matters, but which Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax. vetoed at the last moment for having mentioned political discussions, which he felt would strain relations with Germany.[13] The communique was released anyhow, but the effort of Sir William Seeds, the British ambassador in Moscow, to prevent the communique from being released caused much ill-will in Moscow, where it was seen as a sign that Britain did not want better relations with the Soviet Union.[13]

Upon his return to London, Hudson offered a bleak assessment of the Soviet Union in a memo dated 4 April 1939 to Lord Halifax[22] Hudson wrote that "except where those [Soviet] interests happen to coincide with ours, that they are likely a Government to prove an unreliable ally".[22] Through not an expert in military matters, Hudson stated that he talked at length with the British military, air and naval attaches at the embassy in Moscow whose unanimous opinion was that the Soviet Union had an abysmally weak military and that "the Russians would be unable to wage an offensive without the regime breaking down".[22] Hudson criticised the plans for better Anglo-Soviet relations to create a counterweight to Germany as unfeasible, which led him to argue that appeasement of the Reich was the only realistic solution to the present problems in Europe..[23]

The Danzig crisis Edit

On 17 July 1939, Helmuth Wohlthat, Hermann Göring's right-hand man in the Four Year Plan organisation, visited London to attend the meeting of the International Whaling Conference as part of the German delegation.[24] The next day, he and the German ambassador Herbert von Dirksen met Sir Horace Wilson, the Chief Industrial Adviser to the Government and one of the closest friends of Neville Chamberlain to discuss the Danzig crisis.[24] Wohlthat's presence in London as part of the International Whaling Conference was merely a cover to meet Wilson, a civil servant widely acknowledged to have the power to discuss confidential matters on behalf of Chamberlain.[24] Misled by the reports of Sir Nevile Henderson, the British ambassador in Berlin, who considered Göring to be his best friend, Chamberlain and the rest of his cabinet had invested much hope that Göring was the principle "moderate" Nazi leader who could restrain Hitler. The Wilson-Wohlthat meetings in London were intended to open a back channel between the Chamberlain government and Göring as Henderson was having some difficulty in seeing the Reichmarshal during the crisis.[24] Hudson attended the meetings as an aide to Wilson.[24]

On 20 July 1939, Hudson visited the German embassy to meet Dirksen and Wohlthat, acting on his own.[25] Hudson, an extremely ambitious man who loved intrigue, was hoping to score a great success that would help his otherwise stalled career.[25] Hudson kept detailed notes of his meeting at the German embassy with Wohlthat and Dirksen, where accordingly to him, he proposed a solution to the Danzig crisis.[25] Hudson's notes have him saying that in exchange for a German promise not to invade Poland and ending the Anglo-German arms race, there would be a plan for the industrialists running the heavy industry of Germany, Britain and the United States to work together in a consortium for the economic development of China, Eastern Europe and Africa; of a loan in sum of hundreds of millions for Germany to be floated in the City and on Wall Street; and some sort of plan for the "international governance" of Africa, by which he meant that Germany would given a role in the ruling of the African colonies of the European nations.[25] At the time, it was widely accepted that colonies in Africa were necessary to allow the economies of European nations to function, and a major theme of Nazi propaganda was that it was "unjust" that the Treaty of Versailles had deprived the Reich of its African colonies. The repeated German demands for the return of the former German African colonies were a major issue in Anglo-German relations as the British government had no intention of returning the former German colonies. Wohlthat's account of the meeting had Hudson offering a British loan to the Reichsbank, a debt settlement for Germany, and a resolution of the question of the undervalued Reichmark versus the British pound sterling, none of which appears in Hudson's account of the meeting.[26] Hudson ended his account by saying that if only Hitler would just learn to think in economic terms that much was possible.[25]

After his meeting at the German embassy, Hudson was by all accounts in a state of euphoria, and he asked a group of journalists to come to his house to tell them "off-the-record" about what he had done.[25] A preening Hudson-who believed that he had more or less single-handedly saved the world from the threat of another world war with his visit to the German Embassy-showed his notes of his visit to the embassy to the journalists, telling them it was he who just ended the Danzig crisis with his bold proposals for Anglo-German economic co-operation as Wohlthat was definitely interested in what he had to say.[25] Hudson asked the journalists not to publish this story yet, saying more time was needed for his plan to work as Wohlthat had to return to Germany to report on his offer to Göring, who presumably would convince Hitler to accept it.[25] Two of the journalists present took the view that this was not "off-the-record" and decided to publish the story.[25] Hudson who was described by another Conservative MP as "looks as through he just inherited a fortune and has been celebrating in a hot bath" boasted much about what he just done at a dinner party, speaking very loudly about his "peace-saving" plan.[27]

On 22 July 1939, The Daily Telegraph and the News Chronicle both broke the story on their front-pages that Britain just had offered Germany a loan worth hundreds of millions of pound sterling in exchange for not attacking Poland.[25] The public reaction to this story was highly negative with much of the press calling Hudson's proposed loan "Danegeld".[25] In order to stop the raids of the Vikings, the kings of England had paid the "Danegeld" ("Dane money") to bribe the Danes not to attack. The term "paying the Danegeld" in England implies weakness and cowardice, that someone would rather bribe an enemy rather than stand up for himself, not the least because the Vikings would sometimes attack England even after the Danegeld had been paid. Hudson's offer of a loan to the Reich was felt to be rewarding Germany for threatening Poland, hence the "paying the Danegeld" references to his plan. Much to Hudson's humiliation, Chamberlain told the House of Commons that no such loan was being considered and that Hudson was speaking for himself.[25] Chamberlain labelled Hudson in a letter to his sister a "conceited" junior minister "with a very bad reputation as a disloyal colleague who is always trying to advance his own interests".[28] However, in the same letter Chamberlain wrote Hudson had a tendency "to take ideas on which other people have been working on for years and put them forward as his own".[29] Chamberlain wrote that all of Hudson's ideas put forward to Wohlthat except for the loan offer were those that his government had been considering for the last two years.[29] Chamberlain noted that the plan for the "international governance" of the African colonies of the European nations as a compromise solution for the Nazi demand for the restoration of the lost German colonial empire in Africa that Hudson mentioned had already been offered to Hitler by Henderson at a meeting at the Reich Chancellery on 9 March 1938.[29] The British offer had been rejected as Hitler insisted that he wanted all of the former German African colonies to "go home to the Reich" at once without preconditions.

he Hudson loan offer proved to be greatly damaging to the image of the Chamberlain government both at home and abroad, especially when it emerged that Wilson had met in secret with Wohlthat, which gave the Hudson-Wohlthat meeting a "demi-semi-official air" as Chamberlain put it.[28] Chamberlain wrote in a letter to his sister about the Hudson affair "all the busybodies in London, Paris, and Burgos have put two & two together and triumphantly made five".[28] However, Hudson was able to sell exclusive to the Daily Express newspaper owned by Lord Beaverbrook his account of the loan talks, which were published under the title: "I Planned the Peace Loan to Germany".[30] Gladwyn Jebb, the private secretary to Sir Alexander Cadogan, the Permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign Office, wrote in a furious memo that Hudson's loan offer was "super-appeasement" as he declared that the publication of the plan: "would arose all the suspicions of the Bolsheviks, dishearten the Poles, and encourage the Germans into thinking that we are prepared to buy peace...I must say I doubt whatever such folly could be pushed to a further extreme".[26]

Hudson's meeting with Wohlthat did much damage to the image of the Chamberlain government in Moscow as the Soviet government did not believe that Hudson was acting on his own.[31] At the time, Britain was along with France engaged in talks with the Soviet Union for a "peace front" to deter Germany from invading Poland. The fact that Hudson mentioned that the loan to Germany was to be floated in the City and on Wall Street along with an Anglo-American-German industrial consortium created the impression in Moscow of an Anglo-American capitalist conspiracy to buy off Germany at the expense of the Soviet Union.[31] At the same time, Chamberlain had decided to end the Tientsin incident in China by seeking a compromise solution with Japan instead of executing the Singapore strategy.[31] Through the decision to not execute the Singapore strategy was taken because of the Danzig crisis, Soviet diplomats accused Chamberlain of a "capitulation" to Japan.[31] Jakob Suritz, the Soviet ambassador in Paris, reported to Moscow that while France might be a worthwhile Soviet ally, but not Great Britain as he wrote that the Hudson affair and the Chamberlain's "capitulation" to end the Tientsin crisis proved that the British were not to be trusted.[31] Maisky was not as extreme as Suritz in his reports to Moscow, but Maisky's tendency to put the worse possible gloss on everything Chamberlain did and said gave substance to Suritz's charges.[31] Both the Hudson affair and the Tientsin crisis gave the impression in Moscow that the Chamberlain government was not to be trusted, that Chamberlain would rather make a deal with the Axis powers such as Japan and Germany instead of opposing them.[31] Émile Naggiar, the French ambassador in Moscow, in a dispatch to Paris reported that based on his contacts in the Narkomindel that there was "a recrudescence of lack of confidence in Neville Chamberlain's intentions" in Moscow.[32] The feeling that the United Kingdom was not to be trusted led Joseph Stalin to place more interest in the alternative diplomatic strategy of seeking an understanding with Germany at the expense of Poland.[33]

Despite the humiliation, Hudson remained convinced that "another Munich" to save the peace was still possible under which the Free City of Danzig (modern Gdańsk) would "go home to the Reich" in exchange for Germany not invading Poland.[34] Hudson kept saying that all he needed was "a little more time" to save the peace.[34] Hudson was unaware of the Y-day for the beginning of Fall Weiss ("Case White"), the codename for the invasion of Poland, had been set for 26 August 1939 (later pushed back to 1 September 1939), and that time to save the peace was rapidly running out as Y-day approached. Watt described Hudson as an opportunist who altered between supporting vs. opposing appeasement depending upon what option he felt was best for his career. Watt wrote that Hudson engaged in "criminal pieces of freelancing" in diplomacy that did much damage to Britain's reputation during the Danzig crisis.[35]

Watt argued that Hudson along with the other amateur diplomats in the Danzig crisis such as the Australian pilot and MI6 spy, Sidney Cotton; the professional pacifist Corder Catchpool; the German Rhodes scholar and diplomat Adam von Trott zu Solz; the "press lord" Lord Kemsley; Helmut Wohlthat; the civil servant Sir Joseph Ball; and the Kordt brothers, Erich and Theo, all "...combined to create and confuse the efforts made by Chamberlain and Halifax to convince Britain's potential allies and enemies alike that Munich would not be repeated; that this time they and their country were resolved. That resolve was an essential element in their strategy to preserve peace".[36] Watt maintained that the Kordt brothers, Wohlthat, and Trott all gave British officials a highly misleading picture of the political situation in Germany and seriously downplayed Hitler's intention to invade Poland while Hudson, Catchpool, Ball, Lord Kemsley, and Cotton in their turn made it seem to the Germans that a deal was possible under which Britain would abandon the "guarantee" to defend Poland.[36] Watt noted the German amateur diplomats gave British decision-makers the misconception that Danzig was the main issue in the crisis and promoted the thesis that Hitler was merely considering invading Poland if Danzig was not returned to Germany while in fact Hitler had firmly decided on war against Poland. Likewise, the British amateur gave German decision-makers the impression that Britain would not go to war for Poland and that Britain was very open for a deal to leave Poland to its fate. Watt argued that Hudson was one of the more pernicious of the "interlopers in diplomacy" as he gave the impression to Hitler that Britain was prepared to buy peace in the Danzig while also giving the impression to Stalin that Britain was engaged in secret talks with Germany against the Soviet Union during the tense talks for the "peace front" meant to deter Germany from invading Poland.[36]

Minister Edit

In April 1940, Hudson was briefly appointed the Minister of Shipping, before on 14 May becoming Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, in the Churchill war ministry, a post he would hold until the 1945 election. In the opinion of Edward Turnour, 6th Earl Winterton, Hudson "was by far the best of Ministers of Agriculture in either war...he was determined to see that farmers and landowners alike utilised every acre of soil to help keep the nation from starvation".[37] Churchill was dissatisfied with the current agriculture minister, Reginald Dorman-Smith, who was very close to the farmers' lobby, and replaced him with Hudson, who was an advocate of a "scientific" approach to agriculture.[38] Hudson favoured using the latest scientific methods to improve agricultural productivity with no regard for traditional farming methods, an approach that Dorman-Smith was opposed to.[38] Hudson, besides for his advocacy of a "scientific" approach, also favoured a "nutritional" approach under enough food which would be produced to supply essential nutrion, a plan that Dorman-Smith opposed.[38] Dorman-Smith had once been the president of the National Farmers Union, and in common with many British farmers resented the idea of university-educated experts telling farmers how to best manage their farms.[38] Dorman-Smith disliked the "nutritional" approach, saying "once we fall into the nutrition trap we are sunk".[38] For an example, Dorman-Smith was opposed to pasteurised milk under the grounds that British people had drunk unpasteurised milk for thousands of years, and he saw no reason for any change.[38]In the winter of 1939-1940, Dorman-Smith had "different conclusions" about agriculture with Winston Churchill, who was serving as the First Lord of Admiralty, and upon becoming prime minister on 10 May 1940, Churchill sacked Dorman-Smith on 14 May.[38] Hudson's career had benefitted from his friendship with Robert Boothby who had once served as Churchill's parliamentary secretary and who recommended him as Agriculture minister to Churchill.[39]

A major problem for Britain in World War Two was the number of British people vastly exceeded the agricultural capacity of British farms, which thus required Britain to import food to prevent a famine.[40] In 1938, 70% of all the food consumed in Britain came from abroad while only 30% of the food came from British farms.[40] A major aim for Germany in the Second World just as in the First World War was to have the U-boats sink enough shipping to cut off Britain and induce a famine that would force the British to sue for peace.[40] On 28 June 1940, a Scientific Committee appointed by Hudson recommended "a basal diet" as the "foundation of food policy" in view of the possibility of an U-boat-caused famine.[41] The Committee advised that a diet of 2, 000 calories per day for every British person would be sufficient to keep the population alive and allow war production to continue.[41] The "basal diet" advised was a mixture of vegetables (especially potatoes), bread, fats (butter and cooking fats), milk and oatmeal.[41] The "basal diet" that was imposed was made possible by extensive rationing.[41]

As Agriculture minister, Hudson strove to make British farming more productive to make up for the food shortages caused by the U-boat campaign.[40] One of Hudson's first acts as minister was to appoint 12 leading farmers as his personal deputies with each assigned to a particular region of Britain.[42] In a controversial move, Hudson established in June 1940 a private corporation, Fyfield Estates Limited, of which he and his wife were the leading shareholders, which purchased a number of farms across Britain.[42] By 1945, Fyfield Estates owned 2, 000 acres of farmland while Hannah Hudson had purchased a farm in Oxfordshire, where her husband was often seen.[42] Presented as a symbol of Hudson's love of agriculture, Fyfield Estates generated controversy as a source of a potential conflict of interest as Hudson was engaged in agriculture while also serving as the minister of agriculture.[42]

In April 1939, Britain had imposed peacetime conscription for the first time ever in British history, and to make up for the farmers conscripted, the Women's Land Army had been created in June 1939. Upon becoming Agriculture Minister, Hudson played a major role in expanding the Women's Land Army to send thousands of "Land Girls" to the countryside to work the farms.[43] Many of the "Land Girls" as women serving in the Women's Land Army were called complained that their efforts were not being taken seriously and that the male civil servants of the Ministry of Agriculture treated them in a very patronising fashion.[43] The stories of the contempt that the "Land Girls" were being shown drove down the number of women willing to join the Women's Land Army. Hudson argued that with many British farmers and farmhands serving in the military that the "Land Girls" were essential to provide the necessary workers to expand the productivity of British agriculture and ordered his civil servants to be more respectful of the "Land Girls".[43]

Besides for the "Land Girls", Hudson had German and Italian POWs; Jewish refugees; serviceman on furlough who had been farmers before the war; conscientious objectors; and volunteers from the cities all put to work on British farms.[44] Hudson especially favoured the use of Italian POWs as rural labourers because many of the many Italian servicemen taken prisoner came from the rural areas of Italy and were experienced farmers.[45] Owing to the disinclination of many Italians to fight for the Fascist regime and serious morale problems in the Italian military, by 1943 British forces had captured over half million Italians, making the Italians easily the largest group of Axis POWs in British custody, vastly outnumbering the German and Japanese POWs.[46] Starting in 1941, Italians captured in the campaigns in North Africa and East Africa were shipped to the United Kingdom to serve as rural labour and by 1944, there were 150,000 Italian POWs working on British farms.[47] Besides the fact that many of the Italian POWs came from rural areas, it was believed by British officials that the Italian POWs were less likely to cause problems with the British rural communities than the German POWs.[47]

In 1941-1942, Hudson was involved in difficult talks with the United States regarding the American demand for the end of the Imperial Preference tariff system and for Britain to commit to signing a trade agreement that would force Britain to buy a certain amount of American wheat annually at a fixed price.[48] Hudson regarded the American advocacy of multilateralism as the basis of the post-war order as "the height of hypocrisy" as he accused the Roosevelt administration of attempting to use the lend-lease military aid as a leverage to impose an unfavorable economic agreement that would benefit American farmers at the expense of British farmers.[48] During the war, the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt championed what was known at the time as "economic multilateralism" and is today known as "economic globalisation". As the basis of a post-war economic order, Roosevelt called for the lowering of tariffs, the end of currency exchange regimes, the end of trade quotas and international bodies to arbitrate trade disputes.[49] Roosevelt believed that it was the division into rival economic blocs that were the ultimate cause of both World War One and especially World War Two and that only an "open" economic system uniting the world after the war could prevent another world war.[49] Hudson was one of the leading opponents of "economic multilateralism" in the British cabinet.[50] Hudson maintained that a laissez-faire approach and a free trade system would bankrupt most British farmers who would not be able to compete against a flood of cheap American butter, milk, cheese, beef and wheat pouring into the British market.[51] Hudson argued that a system of tariffs would be needed to ensure the survival of British agriculture after the war.[51] Hudson favoured a system of massive subsidies for British farmers and felt that Britain should sign commodity agreements with nations that were weaker than the United Kingdom, which would allow the British to impose economic agreements that would be at their expense.[52] Along with Lord Beaverbrook, the minister of aircraft production and Leo Amery, the India secretary, Hudson was one the principle advocates in the Churchill cabinet who favoured the continuation of the sterling area and the Imperial preference tariffs after the war as being necessary for the economic "survival" of the United Kingdom as a great power.[50]

Beaverbrook, Hudson and Amery were described by the American historian Randall Woods as "the most strident opponents of multilateralism in all of Britain"-were opposed by another pro-multilateralism group within the cabinet that consisted of Lord Cherwell, Sir Richard Law and Sir John Anderson.[53] The protectionist, sterling area approach favored by Hudson, Beaverbrook and Amery who argued that bilateral trade agreements would be "self-righting" met with much criticism from the economist John Maynard Keynes who serving as a senior civil servant with the Treasury.[54] Keynes wrote: "You exaggerate the extent to which payments agreements are, as such, self-righting or productive of autonomic equilibrium. In the absence of government trading both ways, it is far from the case of being self-righting. For one thing, the initiative to make them lies with the creditor rather than with the debtor country, yet the potential importers and creditor country have no particular motive to discriminate in favour of the goods of the debtor country".[54] Keynes used as an example the Anglo-Argentine economic agreement of 1933 which increased the exports of Argentine beef and wheat to Britain and led to Argentina being awash in pound sterling, but did not led to Argentines importing more British cotton and textiles as the supporters of the agreement had hoped it would.[54] Keynes admitted that economic multilateralism presented problems for Britain, but he argued that it would be a better economic system after the war than the approach advocated by Beaverbrook, Hudson and Amery.[54]

In April 1942, Hudson purchased the Manner Farm in Manningford from George Oldum..[42] Oldum, a leading Canadian agricultural expert had played a key role in developing the tobacco industry in Southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe) for the British South Africa Company, and then worked in Honduras and Kenya as a plantation manager.[42] Oldum had brought the Manner Farm in 1926, where he became renowned for his "scientific" farming as he sought to use the latest methods to improve crop yields and produce cattle whose milk was disease-free.[55] In August 1943, a team of 26 journalists visited the Manner Farm and were told that the farm was in a "very poor condition" when Hudson had purchased it the previous year, and the current flourishing state of the Manner Farm was all the work of "farmer Hudson".[56] Oldum at first threatened to sue for libel unless the offending statement about the Manner Farm being "in a very poor condition" at the time that Hudson brought it, which appeared in a number of British newspapers, was withdrawn.[56] Oldum had won several awards for his efficiency as a farmer, and felt that the statement that the Manner Farm being in a "very poor condition" suggested that the modern farming techniques being employed were all the work of Hudson. When the statement was not withdrawn, Oldum sued Hudson for libel in February 1944.[57]

In 1943, Hudson's work together with Lord Woolton and Lord Leathers was lauded by the Canadian journalist Robert Thurlow as a "success story".[2] Thurlow wrote: "This is the story of three men who supply, and operate, what is probably the world's biggest store".[2] From 1939 to 1943, the amount of arable acreage in Britain increased from 12 million acres to 18 million acres.[2] More importantly, by 1943, 60% of the food consumed in the United Kingdom came from British farms, which lessened the dependence on imported food while freeing up shipping to bring in other supplies.[2]

The Oldum Libel suit Edit

The libel suit that Oldum launched in 1944 finally came to trial on 21 June 1946.[58] Hudson testified at the trial that the Manner Farm was indeed in "poor condition" when he purchased it in 1942 as he maintained that the farm yields were sub-par and that Oldum had apologised to him in person for his poor farming skills.[59] Oldum by contrast testified that Hudson had expressed much admiration for the condition of the Manner Farm when he inspected it before buying the property.[59] Oldum introduced as evidence the bill of sale that showed that Hudson had paid £19, 000 pounds for the cattle and farm machinery that went with the Manner Farm, which contradicted Hudson's account that the farm was delict and the cattle were understrength.[59] Hudson claimed that he had paid a high price for the Manner Farm and only discovered later in 1942 that it was in dismal condition.[60] A key moment occurred when Hudson testified that a potato field on the Manner Farm was wasteland when he purchased it, only for Oldum to introduce as evidence a photograph that he had taken of the said field shortly before he sold the farm to Hudson that showed it was already a potato field.[56] The evidence in favor of Oldum was overwhelming and he won the case, being awarded £500 pounds for the damage done to his reputation by Hudson.[56] The Hudson-Oldum libel trial attracted much media attention, and the verdict in favor of Oldum is generally believed to have effectively finished Hudson's political career.[57]

Hudson was created Viscount Hudson in 1952.

Books Edit

  • Bouverie, Tim (2020). Appeasement Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War. London: Crown. ISBN 9780451499851.
  • Carley, Michael Jabara (1999). 1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. ISBN 9781461699385.
  • Martin, John (April 2007). "George Odlum, the Ministry of Agriculture and 'Farmer Hudson'". The Agricultural History Review. 55 (2): 229–250.
  • McDonough, Frank (1998). Neville Chamberlain, appeasement, and the British road to war. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 9780719048326.
  • Moore, Robert; Fedorowich, Kent (2002). The British Empire and Its Italian Prisoners of War, 1940–1947. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230512146.
  • Neilson, Keith (2022). The Foreign Office's War, 1939-41 British Strategic Foreign Policy and the Major Neutral Powers. London: Boydell Press. ISBN 9781783277056.
  • Peden, Charles (2022). Churchill, Chamberlain and Appeasement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781009201988.
  • Self, Robert (2017). Neville Chamberlain A Biography. London: Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781351915168.
  • Smetana, Vít (2008). In the Shadow of Munich British Policy Towards Czechslovakia from the Endorsement to the Renunciation of the Munich Agreement (1938-1942). Prague: Charles University Press. ISBN 9788024613734.
  • Steiner, Zara (2011). The Triumph of the Dark European International History 1933-1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191613555.
  • Twinch, Carol (2021). Women on the Land Their Story During Two World Wars. London: Lutterworth Press. ISBN 9780718845414.
  • Watt, Donald Cameron (1989). How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938-1939. London: Parthenon.
  • Wilt, Alan F. (2001). Food for War Agriculture and Rearmament in Britain Before the Second World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191543340.
  • Woods, Randall (1990). A Changing of the Guard Anglo-American Relations, 1941-1946. Durham: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9780807818770.

References Edit

  1. ^ a b Martin 2007, p. 235.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Thurlow, David (15 November 1943). "They Feed Britain". Maclean's. Retrieved 22 November 2022.
  3. ^ a b Craig, F. W. S. (1983) [1969]. British Parliamentary Election Results 1918–1949 (3rd ed.). Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. pp. 246, 317. ISBN 0-900178-06-X.
  4. ^ a b c d e Watt 1989, p. 219.
  5. ^ a b c d e Watt 1989, p. 128.
  6. ^ a b Watt 1989, p. 139.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g Watt 1989, p. 90.
  8. ^ a b c d Watt 1989, p. 119.
  9. ^ a b c d e Carley 1999, p. 96.
  10. ^ Carley 1999, p. 96-97.
  11. ^ a b Carley 1999, p. 97.
  12. ^ Watt 1989, p. 219-220.
  13. ^ a b c d Watt 1989, p. 220.
  14. ^ Smetana 2008, p. 111.
  15. ^ Smetana 2008, p. 106.
  16. ^ a b c d Steiner 2011, p. 750.
  17. ^ Carley 1999, p. 108-109.
  18. ^ a b Carley 1999, p. 109.
  19. ^ a b c Carley 1999, p. 110.
  20. ^ a b c d e f g Carley 1999, p. 111.
  21. ^ Watt 1989, p. 229.
  22. ^ a b c Neilson 2022, p. 43.
  23. ^ Neilson 2022, p. 43-44.
  24. ^ a b c d e Watt 1989, p. 399.
  25. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Watt 1989, p. 400.
  26. ^ a b Peden 2022, p. 269.
  27. ^ Bouverie 2020, p. 344.
  28. ^ a b c Self 2017, p. 40.
  29. ^ a b c Carley 1999, p. 180.
  30. ^ McDonough 1998, p. 149.
  31. ^ a b c d e f g Watt 1989, p. 380.
  32. ^ Watt 1989, p. 381.
  33. ^ Watt 1989, p. 380-381.
  34. ^ a b Bouverie 2020, p. 386.
  35. ^ Watt 1989, p. 616.
  36. ^ a b c Watt 1989, p. 614.
  37. ^ The Rt. Hon. Earl Winterton P.C., Orders of the Day (London: Cassell, 1953), p. 272.
  38. ^ a b c d e f g Wilt 2001, p. 212.
  39. ^ Wilt 2001, p. 217-218.
  40. ^ a b c d Martin 2007, p. 229.
  41. ^ a b c d Wilt 2001, p. 219.
  42. ^ a b c d e f Martin 2007, p. 236.
  43. ^ a b c Twinch 2021, p. 77.
  44. ^ Wilt 2001, p. 225.
  45. ^ Moore & Fedorowich 2002, p. 241.
  46. ^ Moore & Fedorowich 2002, p. 3.
  47. ^ a b Moore & Fedorowich 2002, p. 10.
  48. ^ a b Woods 1990, p. 36.
  49. ^ a b Woods 1990, p. 1-2.
  50. ^ a b Woods 1990, p. 35.
  51. ^ a b Woods 1990, p. 36-37.
  52. ^ Woods 1990, p. 37.
  53. ^ Woods 1990, p. 336.
  54. ^ a b c d Woods 1990, p. 49.
  55. ^ Martin 2007, p. 236-240.
  56. ^ a b c d Martin 2007, p. 246.
  57. ^ a b Martin 2007, p. 247.
  58. ^ Martin 2007, p. 243.
  59. ^ a b c Martin 2007, p. 245.
  60. ^ Martin 2007, p. 245-246.

External links Edit

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Whitehaven
1924 – 1929 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Southport
1931 – 1952 		Succeeded by
Political offices
Preceded by Minister of Pensions
1935–1936 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Secretary for Overseas Trade
1937–1940 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Minister of Shipping
1940 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries
1940–1945 		Succeeded by
Peerage of the United Kingdom
New creation Viscount Hudson
1952–1957 		Succeeded by
Robert William Hudson

October 23, 2023
robert, hudson, viscount, hudson, this, article, needs, additional, citations, verification, please, help, improve, this, article, adding, citations, reliable, sources, unsourced, material, challenged, removed, find, sources, news, newspapers, books, scholar, . This article needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Robert Hudson 1st Viscount Hudson news newspapers books scholar JSTOR April 2009 Learn how and when to remove this template message Robert Spear Hudson 1st Viscount Hudson CH PC 15 August 1886 2 February 1957 was a British Conservative Party politician who held a number of ministerial posts during World War II Robert Hudson 1st Viscount Hudson Contents 1 Diplomatic career 2 MP 3 Mission to Moscow 4 The Danzig crisis 5 Minister 6 The Oldum Libel suit 7 Books 8 References 9 External linksDiplomatic career EditHe was the eldest son of Robert William Hudson who had inherited the substantial family soap business and sold it and Gerda Frances Marion Bushell The wealth he inherited from the soap business ensured that Hudson always had a very privileged and well off existence 1 Hudson was educated at Eton College and Magdalen College Oxford 1 He entered the Diplomatic Service in 1911 becoming an attache and First Secretary at the British embassy in Washington 2 Hudson afterwards served as a diplomat in Russia 2 On 1 December 1918 he married a wealthy American woman Hannah Randolph of Philadelphia whom he had met during his time as a diplomat in Washington He had a particular interest in farming and was a member of the council of the Royal Agricultural Society MP EditHudson was elected as Member of Parliament MP for Whitehaven in 1924 and served there until losing in 1929 3 In 1931 he was returned for Southport 3 He served in several ministerial posts becoming a Privy Counsellor in 1938 From 1937 to 1940 Hudson served as Secretary for Overseas Trade Hudson was on the right wing of the Conservative party being opposed to the one nation Conservatives such as Neville Chamberlain 4 He greatly disliked the coalition National government and frequently advocated that the Conservatives dispose of their National Liberal and National Labour allies to create all Tory government 4 Hudson had a particular dislike of the National Liberal War Secretary Leslie Hore Belisha whom he intrigued against endlessly as he very much wanted to see Hore Belisha out of the cabinet 4 Besides for the coalition National government Hudson resented the dominance of the provincial lawyers and businessmen who made up the majority of the Conservative backbenchers whom he felt lacked the necessary vision for Britain s future 4 The British historian D C Watt wrote Normally a mere parliamentary undersecretary is the lowest the most cribbed and confined of political figures whose role is merely to deputise for his minister in answering the less controversial of parliamentary questions But the Department of Overseas Trade was unique a hybrid sub department nominally responsible to yet in fact independent of the Board of Trade and the Foreign Office In practice this meant that Hudson was his own master 4 In October November 1938 Hudson was involved in talks to improve Anglo German trade 5 The main issue in the talks which broke down were centered around proposals for joint Anglo German investment in central Africa 5 However the British cabinet which was starting to become concerned with the increasing German economic domination of eastern Europe were not willing to accept the German demand that the Balkans and Turkey be assigned to the exclusive economic sphere of influence for the Reich 5 At the same time Hudson was the lead British negotiator for the Anglo American trade agreement of 1938 5 The purpose of the agreement was to reduce the effects of the long Anglo American trade war that had been started by the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 The State Department had a strong distrust and dislike of Hudson 6 Jay Pierrepont Moffat the chief of the State Department s Western European bureau wrote that Hudson was unfriendly to American interests or at least unwilling to subordinate immediate British interests with a view of obtaining a broader agreement with us in world trade he has certainly encouraged the Prime Minister to seek cartel agreements with Germany He is ready to sacrifice people to pounds sterling 6 In Britain the Anglo American trade agreement was felt to be unsatisfactory as the Americans reduced their tariffs on British goods only by 20 cents but given the tensions in Europe and Asia the agreement was felt to be necessary in order to improve relations with the United States 5 nbsp Robert Hudson and his wife Hannah on a vacation 1922 Between 15 18 November 1938 King Carol II of Romania paid a state visit to Britain 7 Carol met his cousin King George VI along with Chamberlain and the Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax During his visit the king warned that Romania was steadily falling into the German economic sphere of influence and that he wanted British help to keep Romania out of the German sphere 7 Carol s request for a 30 million pound sterling loan for Romania was refused by Chamberlain and all the king obtained was a British promise to buy 200 000 tons of Romanian wheat annually with an option to buy 400 000 more tons of wheat and for an Anglo Romanian committee to be set up to examine ways to improve Anglo Romanian trade 7 Carol s visit led to an extended debate in the House of Commons during which Hudson broke with the government and spoke in favour of closer economic ties with Romania 7 Hudson argued along with Oliver Stanley the President of the Board of Trade that Britain had a vested interest in keeping the Balkans from falling into the German sphere of influence and that Britain should had done more to take up Carol s request for closer Anglo Romanian economic relations 7 Reflecting both the financial realities imposed by the costs of rearmament and the order of priorities the Chamberlain government introduced a bill that was signed into law in February 1939 that committed H M government to spend over the next year 10 million pounds in government backed trade credits to subsidise China 3 million pounds in trade credits for Iraq and Afghanistan 1 million pounds in trade credits for Portugal and another 1 million pounds in trade credits for Egypt 7 The largest sum was allocated to China whose economy had been badly strained by the war with Japan From the British perspective subsidising China was in their best interest because as long as Japan was bogged down in the war against China it was less likely that Japan would try to seize Britain s Asian colonies For the Balkans 2 million pounds in trade credits were allocated for Greece the location of Greece aside the main shipping lane to the Suez canal made it crucial from the British viewpoint and only 1 million pounds in trade credits were allocated for Romania 7 Mission to Moscow EditIn early 1939 it was announced that Hudson would visit Moscow on a high profile visit to Moscow to negotiate a trade treaty 8 At the same time the government made an effort to improve the often strained Anglo Soviet relations Lord Halifax a devout Anglican who normally did little to disguise his discomfort with atheist Soviet Russia had dinner on 20 February 1939 at the Soviet embassy with Ivan Maisky the Soviet ambassador to the court of St James 8 On 1 March 1939 Chamberlain along with four cabinet ministers attended a reception at the Soviet embassy hosted by Maisky to honor the 22nd anniversary of the February revolution of 1917 8 On 8 March 1939 Hudson met with Maisky 9 Hudson expressed a wish for better Anglo Soviet relations and assured Maisky that Anglo Germans relations were deteriorating 8 Hudson in his account of his meeting wrote that Maisky had told him that he was quite convinced that we the British empire were unable to stand up against German aggression even with the assistance of France unless we had the collaboration and help of Russia 9 Hudson replied that he did not share that assessment saying that he believed that Britain and France were capable of defeating Germany on their own and did not need the help of the Soviet Union 9 Maisky in his account of the meeting stated that Hudson had told him that the Chamberlain had firmly decided to maintain the empire and its position as a great power 9 Maisky had Hudson saying that Britain wanted allies and that Here in London however many people assured him Hudson that the USSR now did not want collaboration with the Western democracies that it is inclined more and more to a policy of isolation and that therefore it was pointless to seek a common language with Moscow 9 Maisky wrote that Hudson had told him that his upcoming visit to Moscow was meant to clarify do we the Soviets want or do we not want a rapprochement and collaboration with London 10 Maisky concluded Hence Hudson s visit to Moscow could play a large role Personally Hudson would desire very much that this orientation moved on the line London Paris Moscow 11 Maisky concluded that Hudson was a very ambitious politician who wanted to be prime minister one day but I do not think Hudson could take the general line which he developed in today s discussion without the sanction of Chamberlain 11 Hudson whom Watt called an ambitious and driving young Conservative hopeful was hoping to achieve some sort of political success during his visit to Moscow that would link better economic relations to closer political ties 12 Hudson spoke frankly with Sefton Delmer the foreign correspondent with the Daily Express newspaper about his ambitions to achieve some sort of an agreement in Moscow that would improve his chances of being promoted into the cabinet proper 13 In March 1939 Hudson was scheduled to visit Germany to discuss improving Anglo German trade but in protest against the German violation of the Munich Agreement by occupying the Czech of Czecho Slovakia on 15 March 1939 the visit was cancelled 14 Hudson was an appeaser who believed that improving Anglo German economic relations was the key to saving the peace had very much looking forward to his visit to the Reich 15 On 23 March 1939 Hudson arrived in Moscow ostensibly to negotiate an Anglo Soviet trade treaty but in fact to seek to improve Anglo Soviet relations in light of the Danzig crisis 16 As was usually the case with foreign visitors Hudson was not allowed to see Joseph Stalin in the Kremlin and instead negotiated with Maxim Litvinov the Commissar for Foreign Affairs 16 Hudson was one of the few ministers in the cabinet who spoke fluent Russian 2 After meeting him Litvinov wrote to Stalin In view of the rejection of all our previous offers we have no intention of making any new offers and it is up to others to take the initiative In particular we are ready now as we always have been to co operate with Britain We are prepared to look at concrete suggestions 16 Hudson told Litvinov that the Munich Agreement had occurred because of British rearmament was still not complete but that Britain was now far more advanced in its rearmament than it been in September 1938 as Hudson stated There will not be a second Munich 17 Litvinov stated that his government had been working for a policy of collective security under the banner of the League of Nations since 1934 and hinted that Stalin was losing interest in this policy 18 However Litvinov told Hudson that his government would be prepared to consult with H M Government and other governments regarding all suitable measures of resistance whether diplomatic or military or economic He made it clear that he had in mind the possibility of resistance by force of arms 18 Litvinov went on to accuse the French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet of wanting to leave Eastern Europe into the German sphere of influence as the price of keeping France out of another world war as Litvinov expressed much rage at Bonnet to Hudson 19 Hudson s insistence that he was in Moscow primarily to discuss economic matters and his refusal to discuss Litvinov s suggestions of a military alliance doomed his visit to failure 16 Hudson told Litvinov that he was not convinced that an Anglo Soviet military alliance was necessary and at one point angered Litvinov when he told him that Britain could do very well without trade with the Soviet Union 19 Litvinov accused Hudson of being a bully saying that such threats to cease trade worked with small powers and that the Soviet Union was a great power 19 In regard to the trade treaty Hudson negotiated with Anastas Mikoyan the Armenian Communist in charge of economic matters under Stalin 20 As Hudson spoke no Armenian while Mikoyan spoke no English the two spoke in Russian their only common language No agreement was struck as both men sought the best possible economic treaty for their respective nations 20 Mikoyan mentioned to Hudson that the Soviet Union might be willing to repay the debts owning to British investors that the Soviet regime had rejected in 1918 in return for a political advantage 13 Hudson also talked with Vladimir Potemkin the deputy foreign commissar where he spoke in general about a wish for an Anglo French Soviet alliance meant to deter Germany from choosing war 20 Hudson told Potemkin the lie that Britain was capable of sending 19 British Army divisions to France at once to face the Wehrmacht in fact the British Army could only send 2 divisions to France in March 1939 20 Potemkin wrote the Hudson mission was a failure because it began without serious preparations 20 Potemkin compared Hudson to the character of Khlestakov the protagonist of The Inspector General an 1836 play by Nikolai Gogol 20 Potemkin wrote that just as Khlestakov was a vain lightweight man who persuaded people in a provincial Russian town that he was really the dreaded inspector general of the Emperor Nicholas I whose task was to root all corruption and inefficiency in the Russian empire only to be finally exposed at the end as the unimportant man that he really was that likewise Hudson was just a hack politician who had no real authority to say anything important or even interesting on behalf of London who pretended to be someone important 20 Much to his disappointment Hudson was not allowed to see Stalin in the Kremlin as he had hoped and instead had to settle for posing for a photograph with Litvinov Mikoyan and the premier Vyacheslav Molotov 21 A joint communique to the press had prepared which mentioned that Hudson had discussed political and economic matters but which Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax vetoed at the last moment for having mentioned political discussions which he felt would strain relations with Germany 13 The communique was released anyhow but the effort of Sir William Seeds the British ambassador in Moscow to prevent the communique from being released caused much ill will in Moscow where it was seen as a sign that Britain did not want better relations with the Soviet Union 13 Upon his return to London Hudson offered a bleak assessment of the Soviet Union in a memo dated 4 April 1939 to Lord Halifax 22 Hudson wrote that except where those Soviet interests happen to coincide with ours that they are likely a Government to prove an unreliable ally 22 Through not an expert in military matters Hudson stated that he talked at length with the British military air and naval attaches at the embassy in Moscow whose unanimous opinion was that the Soviet Union had an abysmally weak military and that the Russians would be unable to wage an offensive without the regime breaking down 22 Hudson criticised the plans for better Anglo Soviet relations to create a counterweight to Germany as unfeasible which led him to argue that appeasement of the Reich was the only realistic solution to the present problems in Europe 23 The Danzig crisis EditOn 17 July 1939 Helmuth Wohlthat Hermann Goring s right hand man in the Four Year Plan organisation visited London to attend the meeting of the International Whaling Conference as part of the German delegation 24 The next day he and the German ambassador Herbert von Dirksen met Sir Horace Wilson the Chief Industrial Adviser to the Government and one of the closest friends of Neville Chamberlain to discuss the Danzig crisis 24 Wohlthat s presence in London as part of the International Whaling Conference was merely a cover to meet Wilson a civil servant widely acknowledged to have the power to discuss confidential matters on behalf of Chamberlain 24 Misled by the reports of Sir Nevile Henderson the British ambassador in Berlin who considered Goring to be his best friend Chamberlain and the rest of his cabinet had invested much hope that Goring was the principle moderate Nazi leader who could restrain Hitler The Wilson Wohlthat meetings in London were intended to open a back channel between the Chamberlain government and Goring as Henderson was having some difficulty in seeing the Reichmarshal during the crisis 24 Hudson attended the meetings as an aide to Wilson 24 On 20 July 1939 Hudson visited the German embassy to meet Dirksen and Wohlthat acting on his own 25 Hudson an extremely ambitious man who loved intrigue was hoping to score a great success that would help his otherwise stalled career 25 Hudson kept detailed notes of his meeting at the German embassy with Wohlthat and Dirksen where accordingly to him he proposed a solution to the Danzig crisis 25 Hudson s notes have him saying that in exchange for a German promise not to invade Poland and ending the Anglo German arms race there would be a plan for the industrialists running the heavy industry of Germany Britain and the United States to work together in a consortium for the economic development of China Eastern Europe and Africa of a loan in sum of hundreds of millions for Germany to be floated in the City and on Wall Street and some sort of plan for the international governance of Africa by which he meant that Germany would given a role in the ruling of the African colonies of the European nations 25 At the time it was widely accepted that colonies in Africa were necessary to allow the economies of European nations to function and a major theme of Nazi propaganda was that it was unjust that the Treaty of Versailles had deprived the Reich of its African colonies The repeated German demands for the return of the former German African colonies were a major issue in Anglo German relations as the British government had no intention of returning the former German colonies Wohlthat s account of the meeting had Hudson offering a British loan to the Reichsbank a debt settlement for Germany and a resolution of the question of the undervalued Reichmark versus the British pound sterling none of which appears in Hudson s account of the meeting 26 Hudson ended his account by saying that if only Hitler would just learn to think in economic terms that much was possible 25 After his meeting at the German embassy Hudson was by all accounts in a state of euphoria and he asked a group of journalists to come to his house to tell them off the record about what he had done 25 A preening Hudson who believed that he had more or less single handedly saved the world from the threat of another world war with his visit to the German Embassy showed his notes of his visit to the embassy to the journalists telling them it was he who just ended the Danzig crisis with his bold proposals for Anglo German economic co operation as Wohlthat was definitely interested in what he had to say 25 Hudson asked the journalists not to publish this story yet saying more time was needed for his plan to work as Wohlthat had to return to Germany to report on his offer to Goring who presumably would convince Hitler to accept it 25 Two of the journalists present took the view that this was not off the record and decided to publish the story 25 Hudson who was described by another Conservative MP as looks as through he just inherited a fortune and has been celebrating in a hot bath boasted much about what he just done at a dinner party speaking very loudly about his peace saving plan 27 On 22 July 1939 The Daily Telegraph and the News Chronicle both broke the story on their front pages that Britain just had offered Germany a loan worth hundreds of millions of pound sterling in exchange for not attacking Poland 25 The public reaction to this story was highly negative with much of the press calling Hudson s proposed loan Danegeld 25 In order to stop the raids of the Vikings the kings of England had paid the Danegeld Dane money to bribe the Danes not to attack The term paying the Danegeld in England implies weakness and cowardice that someone would rather bribe an enemy rather than stand up for himself not the least because the Vikings would sometimes attack England even after the Danegeld had been paid Hudson s offer of a loan to the Reich was felt to be rewarding Germany for threatening Poland hence the paying the Danegeld references to his plan Much to Hudson s humiliation Chamberlain told the House of Commons that no such loan was being considered and that Hudson was speaking for himself 25 Chamberlain labelled Hudson in a letter to his sister a conceited junior minister with a very bad reputation as a disloyal colleague who is always trying to advance his own interests 28 However in the same letter Chamberlain wrote Hudson had a tendency to take ideas on which other people have been working on for years and put them forward as his own 29 Chamberlain wrote that all of Hudson s ideas put forward to Wohlthat except for the loan offer were those that his government had been considering for the last two years 29 Chamberlain noted that the plan for the international governance of the African colonies of the European nations as a compromise solution for the Nazi demand for the restoration of the lost German colonial empire in Africa that Hudson mentioned had already been offered to Hitler by Henderson at a meeting at the Reich Chancellery on 9 March 1938 29 The British offer had been rejected as Hitler insisted that he wanted all of the former German African colonies to go home to the Reich at once without preconditions he Hudson loan offer proved to be greatly damaging to the image of the Chamberlain government both at home and abroad especially when it emerged that Wilson had met in secret with Wohlthat which gave the Hudson Wohlthat meeting a demi semi official air as Chamberlain put it 28 Chamberlain wrote in a letter to his sister about the Hudson affair all the busybodies in London Paris and Burgos have put two amp two together and triumphantly made five 28 However Hudson was able to sell exclusive to the Daily Express newspaper owned by Lord Beaverbrook his account of the loan talks which were published under the title I Planned the Peace Loan to Germany 30 Gladwyn Jebb the private secretary to Sir Alexander Cadogan the Permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign Office wrote in a furious memo that Hudson s loan offer was super appeasement as he declared that the publication of the plan would arose all the suspicions of the Bolsheviks dishearten the Poles and encourage the Germans into thinking that we are prepared to buy peace I must say I doubt whatever such folly could be pushed to a further extreme 26 Hudson s meeting with Wohlthat did much damage to the image of the Chamberlain government in Moscow as the Soviet government did not believe that Hudson was acting on his own 31 At the time Britain was along with France engaged in talks with the Soviet Union for a peace front to deter Germany from invading Poland The fact that Hudson mentioned that the loan to Germany was to be floated in the City and on Wall Street along with an Anglo American German industrial consortium created the impression in Moscow of an Anglo American capitalist conspiracy to buy off Germany at the expense of the Soviet Union 31 At the same time Chamberlain had decided to end the Tientsin incident in China by seeking a compromise solution with Japan instead of executing the Singapore strategy 31 Through the decision to not execute the Singapore strategy was taken because of the Danzig crisis Soviet diplomats accused Chamberlain of a capitulation to Japan 31 Jakob Suritz the Soviet ambassador in Paris reported to Moscow that while France might be a worthwhile Soviet ally but not Great Britain as he wrote that the Hudson affair and the Chamberlain s capitulation to end the Tientsin crisis proved that the British were not to be trusted 31 Maisky was not as extreme as Suritz in his reports to Moscow but Maisky s tendency to put the worse possible gloss on everything Chamberlain did and said gave substance to Suritz s charges 31 Both the Hudson affair and the Tientsin crisis gave the impression in Moscow that the Chamberlain government was not to be trusted that Chamberlain would rather make a deal with the Axis powers such as Japan and Germany instead of opposing them 31 Emile Naggiar the French ambassador in Moscow in a dispatch to Paris reported that based on his contacts in the Narkomindel that there was a recrudescence of lack of confidence in Neville Chamberlain s intentions in Moscow 32 The feeling that the United Kingdom was not to be trusted led Joseph Stalin to place more interest in the alternative diplomatic strategy of seeking an understanding with Germany at the expense of Poland 33 Despite the humiliation Hudson remained convinced that another Munich to save the peace was still possible under which the Free City of Danzig modern Gdansk would go home to the Reich in exchange for Germany not invading Poland 34 Hudson kept saying that all he needed was a little more time to save the peace 34 Hudson was unaware of the Y day for the beginning of Fall Weiss Case White the codename for the invasion of Poland had been set for 26 August 1939 later pushed back to 1 September 1939 and that time to save the peace was rapidly running out as Y day approached Watt described Hudson as an opportunist who altered between supporting vs opposing appeasement depending upon what option he felt was best for his career Watt wrote that Hudson engaged in criminal pieces of freelancing in diplomacy that did much damage to Britain s reputation during the Danzig crisis 35 Watt argued that Hudson along with the other amateur diplomats in the Danzig crisis such as the Australian pilot and MI6 spy Sidney Cotton the professional pacifist Corder Catchpool the German Rhodes scholar and diplomat Adam von Trott zu Solz the press lord Lord Kemsley Helmut Wohlthat the civil servant Sir Joseph Ball and the Kordt brothers Erich and Theo all combined to create and confuse the efforts made by Chamberlain and Halifax to convince Britain s potential allies and enemies alike that Munich would not be repeated that this time they and their country were resolved That resolve was an essential element in their strategy to preserve peace 36 Watt maintained that the Kordt brothers Wohlthat and Trott all gave British officials a highly misleading picture of the political situation in Germany and seriously downplayed Hitler s intention to invade Poland while Hudson Catchpool Ball Lord Kemsley and Cotton in their turn made it seem to the Germans that a deal was possible under which Britain would abandon the guarantee to defend Poland 36 Watt noted the German amateur diplomats gave British decision makers the misconception that Danzig was the main issue in the crisis and promoted the thesis that Hitler was merely considering invading Poland if Danzig was not returned to Germany while in fact Hitler had firmly decided on war against Poland Likewise the British amateur gave German decision makers the impression that Britain would not go to war for Poland and that Britain was very open for a deal to leave Poland to its fate Watt argued that Hudson was one of the more pernicious of the interlopers in diplomacy as he gave the impression to Hitler that Britain was prepared to buy peace in the Danzig while also giving the impression to Stalin that Britain was engaged in secret talks with Germany against the Soviet Union during the tense talks for the peace front meant to deter Germany from invading Poland 36 Minister EditIn April 1940 Hudson was briefly appointed the Minister of Shipping before on 14 May becoming Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries in the Churchill war ministry a post he would hold until the 1945 election In the opinion of Edward Turnour 6th Earl Winterton Hudson was by far the best of Ministers of Agriculture in either war he was determined to see that farmers and landowners alike utilised every acre of soil to help keep the nation from starvation 37 Churchill was dissatisfied with the current agriculture minister Reginald Dorman Smith who was very close to the farmers lobby and replaced him with Hudson who was an advocate of a scientific approach to agriculture 38 Hudson favoured using the latest scientific methods to improve agricultural productivity with no regard for traditional farming methods an approach that Dorman Smith was opposed to 38 Hudson besides for his advocacy of a scientific approach also favoured a nutritional approach under enough food which would be produced to supply essential nutrion a plan that Dorman Smith opposed 38 Dorman Smith had once been the president of the National Farmers Union and in common with many British farmers resented the idea of university educated experts telling farmers how to best manage their farms 38 Dorman Smith disliked the nutritional approach saying once we fall into the nutrition trap we are sunk 38 For an example Dorman Smith was opposed to pasteurised milk under the grounds that British people had drunk unpasteurised milk for thousands of years and he saw no reason for any change 38 In the winter of 1939 1940 Dorman Smith had different conclusions about agriculture with Winston Churchill who was serving as the First Lord of Admiralty and upon becoming prime minister on 10 May 1940 Churchill sacked Dorman Smith on 14 May 38 Hudson s career had benefitted from his friendship with Robert Boothby who had once served as Churchill s parliamentary secretary and who recommended him as Agriculture minister to Churchill 39 A major problem for Britain in World War Two was the number of British people vastly exceeded the agricultural capacity of British farms which thus required Britain to import food to prevent a famine 40 In 1938 70 of all the food consumed in Britain came from abroad while only 30 of the food came from British farms 40 A major aim for Germany in the Second World just as in the First World War was to have the U boats sink enough shipping to cut off Britain and induce a famine that would force the British to sue for peace 40 On 28 June 1940 a Scientific Committee appointed by Hudson recommended a basal diet as the foundation of food policy in view of the possibility of an U boat caused famine 41 The Committee advised that a diet of 2 000 calories per day for every British person would be sufficient to keep the population alive and allow war production to continue 41 The basal diet advised was a mixture of vegetables especially potatoes bread fats butter and cooking fats milk and oatmeal 41 The basal diet that was imposed was made possible by extensive rationing 41 As Agriculture minister Hudson strove to make British farming more productive to make up for the food shortages caused by the U boat campaign 40 One of Hudson s first acts as minister was to appoint 12 leading farmers as his personal deputies with each assigned to a particular region of Britain 42 In a controversial move Hudson established in June 1940 a private corporation Fyfield Estates Limited of which he and his wife were the leading shareholders which purchased a number of farms across Britain 42 By 1945 Fyfield Estates owned 2 000 acres of farmland while Hannah Hudson had purchased a farm in Oxfordshire where her husband was often seen 42 Presented as a symbol of Hudson s love of agriculture Fyfield Estates generated controversy as a source of a potential conflict of interest as Hudson was engaged in agriculture while also serving as the minister of agriculture 42 In April 1939 Britain had imposed peacetime conscription for the first time ever in British history and to make up for the farmers conscripted the Women s Land Army had been created in June 1939 Upon becoming Agriculture Minister Hudson played a major role in expanding the Women s Land Army to send thousands of Land Girls to the countryside to work the farms 43 Many of the Land Girls as women serving in the Women s Land Army were called complained that their efforts were not being taken seriously and that the male civil servants of the Ministry of Agriculture treated them in a very patronising fashion 43 The stories of the contempt that the Land Girls were being shown drove down the number of women willing to join the Women s Land Army Hudson argued that with many British farmers and farmhands serving in the military that the Land Girls were essential to provide the necessary workers to expand the productivity of British agriculture and ordered his civil servants to be more respectful of the Land Girls 43 Besides for the Land Girls Hudson had German and Italian POWs Jewish refugees serviceman on furlough who had been farmers before the war conscientious objectors and volunteers from the cities all put to work on British farms 44 Hudson especially favoured the use of Italian POWs as rural labourers because many of the many Italian servicemen taken prisoner came from the rural areas of Italy and were experienced farmers 45 Owing to the disinclination of many Italians to fight for the Fascist regime and serious morale problems in the Italian military by 1943 British forces had captured over half million Italians making the Italians easily the largest group of Axis POWs in British custody vastly outnumbering the German and Japanese POWs 46 Starting in 1941 Italians captured in the campaigns in North Africa and East Africa were shipped to the United Kingdom to serve as rural labour and by 1944 there were 150 000 Italian POWs working on British farms 47 Besides the fact that many of the Italian POWs came from rural areas it was believed by British officials that the Italian POWs were less likely to cause problems with the British rural communities than the German POWs 47 In 1941 1942 Hudson was involved in difficult talks with the United States regarding the American demand for the end of the Imperial Preference tariff system and for Britain to commit to signing a trade agreement that would force Britain to buy a certain amount of American wheat annually at a fixed price 48 Hudson regarded the American advocacy of multilateralism as the basis of the post war order as the height of hypocrisy as he accused the Roosevelt administration of attempting to use the lend lease military aid as a leverage to impose an unfavorable economic agreement that would benefit American farmers at the expense of British farmers 48 During the war the U S President Franklin D Roosevelt championed what was known at the time as economic multilateralism and is today known as economic globalisation As the basis of a post war economic order Roosevelt called for the lowering of tariffs the end of currency exchange regimes the end of trade quotas and international bodies to arbitrate trade disputes 49 Roosevelt believed that it was the division into rival economic blocs that were the ultimate cause of both World War One and especially World War Two and that only an open economic system uniting the world after the war could prevent another world war 49 Hudson was one of the leading opponents of economic multilateralism in the British cabinet 50 Hudson maintained that a laissez faire approach and a free trade system would bankrupt most British farmers who would not be able to compete against a flood of cheap American butter milk cheese beef and wheat pouring into the British market 51 Hudson argued that a system of tariffs would be needed to ensure the survival of British agriculture after the war 51 Hudson favoured a system of massive subsidies for British farmers and felt that Britain should sign commodity agreements with nations that were weaker than the United Kingdom which would allow the British to impose economic agreements that would be at their expense 52 Along with Lord Beaverbrook the minister of aircraft production and Leo Amery the India secretary Hudson was one the principle advocates in the Churchill cabinet who favoured the continuation of the sterling area and the Imperial preference tariffs after the war as being necessary for the economic survival of the United Kingdom as a great power 50 Beaverbrook Hudson and Amery were described by the American historian Randall Woods as the most strident opponents of multilateralism in all of Britain were opposed by another pro multilateralism group within the cabinet that consisted of Lord Cherwell Sir Richard Law and Sir John Anderson 53 The protectionist sterling area approach favored by Hudson Beaverbrook and Amery who argued that bilateral trade agreements would be self righting met with much criticism from the economist John Maynard Keynes who serving as a senior civil servant with the Treasury 54 Keynes wrote You exaggerate the extent to which payments agreements are as such self righting or productive of autonomic equilibrium In the absence of government trading both ways it is far from the case of being self righting For one thing the initiative to make them lies with the creditor rather than with the debtor country yet the potential importers and creditor country have no particular motive to discriminate in favour of the goods of the debtor country 54 Keynes used as an example the Anglo Argentine economic agreement of 1933 which increased the exports of Argentine beef and wheat to Britain and led to Argentina being awash in pound sterling but did not led to Argentines importing more British cotton and textiles as the supporters of the agreement had hoped it would 54 Keynes admitted that economic multilateralism presented problems for Britain but he argued that it would be a better economic system after the war than the approach advocated by Beaverbrook Hudson and Amery 54 In April 1942 Hudson purchased the Manner Farm in Manningford from George Oldum 42 Oldum a leading Canadian agricultural expert had played a key role in developing the tobacco industry in Southern Rhodesia modern Zimbabwe for the British South Africa Company and then worked in Honduras and Kenya as a plantation manager 42 Oldum had brought the Manner Farm in 1926 where he became renowned for his scientific farming as he sought to use the latest methods to improve crop yields and produce cattle whose milk was disease free 55 In August 1943 a team of 26 journalists visited the Manner Farm and were told that the farm was in a very poor condition when Hudson had purchased it the previous year and the current flourishing state of the Manner Farm was all the work of farmer Hudson 56 Oldum at first threatened to sue for libel unless the offending statement about the Manner Farm being in a very poor condition at the time that Hudson brought it which appeared in a number of British newspapers was withdrawn 56 Oldum had won several awards for his efficiency as a farmer and felt that the statement that the Manner Farm being in a very poor condition suggested that the modern farming techniques being employed were all the work of Hudson When the statement was not withdrawn Oldum sued Hudson for libel in February 1944 57 In 1943 Hudson s work together with Lord Woolton and Lord Leathers was lauded by the Canadian journalist Robert Thurlow as a success story 2 Thurlow wrote This is the story of three men who supply and operate what is probably the world s biggest store 2 From 1939 to 1943 the amount of arable acreage in Britain increased from 12 million acres to 18 million acres 2 More importantly by 1943 60 of the food consumed in the United Kingdom came from British farms which lessened the dependence on imported food while freeing up shipping to bring in other supplies 2 The Oldum Libel suit EditThe libel suit that Oldum launched in 1944 finally came to trial on 21 June 1946 58 Hudson testified at the trial that the Manner Farm was indeed in poor condition when he purchased it in 1942 as he maintained that the farm yields were sub par and that Oldum had apologised to him in person for his poor farming skills 59 Oldum by contrast testified that Hudson had expressed much admiration for the condition of the Manner Farm when he inspected it before buying the property 59 Oldum introduced as evidence the bill of sale that showed that Hudson had paid 19 000 pounds for the cattle and farm machinery that went with the Manner Farm which contradicted Hudson s account that the farm was delict and the cattle were understrength 59 Hudson claimed that he had paid a high price for the Manner Farm and only discovered later in 1942 that it was in dismal condition 60 A key moment occurred when Hudson testified that a potato field on the Manner Farm was wasteland when he purchased it only for Oldum to introduce as evidence a photograph that he had taken of the said field shortly before he sold the farm to Hudson that showed it was already a potato field 56 The evidence in favor of Oldum was overwhelming and he won the case being awarded 500 pounds for the damage done to his reputation by Hudson 56 The Hudson Oldum libel trial attracted much media attention and the verdict in favor of Oldum is generally believed to have effectively finished Hudson s political career 57 Hudson was created Viscount Hudson in 1952 Books EditBouverie Tim 2020 Appeasement Chamberlain Hitler Churchill and the Road to War London Crown ISBN 9780451499851 Carley Michael Jabara 1999 1939 The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II Chicago Ivan R Dee ISBN 9781461699385 Martin John April 2007 George Odlum the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer Hudson The Agricultural History Review 55 2 229 250 McDonough Frank 1998 Neville Chamberlain appeasement and the British road to war Manchester Manchester University Press ISBN 9780719048326 Moore Robert Fedorowich Kent 2002 The British Empire and Its Italian Prisoners of War 1940 1947 London Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 9780230512146 Neilson Keith 2022 The Foreign Office s War 1939 41 British Strategic Foreign Policy and the Major Neutral Powers London Boydell Press ISBN 9781783277056 Peden Charles 2022 Churchill Chamberlain and Appeasement Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 9781009201988 Self Robert 2017 Neville Chamberlain A Biography London Taylor amp Francis ISBN 9781351915168 Smetana Vit 2008 In the Shadow of Munich British Policy Towards Czechslovakia from the Endorsement to the Renunciation of the Munich Agreement 1938 1942 Prague Charles University Press ISBN 9788024613734 Steiner Zara 2011 The Triumph of the Dark European International History 1933 1939 Oxford Oxford University Press ISBN 9780191613555 Twinch Carol 2021 Women on the Land Their Story During Two World Wars London Lutterworth Press ISBN 9780718845414 Watt Donald Cameron 1989 How War Came The Immediate Origins of the Second World War 1938 1939 London Parthenon Wilt Alan F 2001 Food for War Agriculture and Rearmament in Britain Before the Second World War Oxford Oxford University Press ISBN 9780191543340 Woods Randall 1990 A Changing of the Guard Anglo American Relations 1941 1946 Durham University of North Carolina Press ISBN 9780807818770 References Edit a b Martin 2007 p 235 a b c d e f g Thurlow David 15 November 1943 They Feed Britain Maclean s Retrieved 22 November 2022 a b Craig F W S 1983 1969 British Parliamentary Election Results 1918 1949 3rd ed Chichester Parliamentary Research Services pp 246 317 ISBN 0 900178 06 X a b c d e Watt 1989 p 219 a b c d e Watt 1989 p 128 a b Watt 1989 p 139 a b c d e f g Watt 1989 p 90 a b c d Watt 1989 p 119 a b c d e Carley 1999 p 96 Carley 1999 p 96 97 a b Carley 1999 p 97 Watt 1989 p 219 220 a b c d Watt 1989 p 220 Smetana 2008 p 111 Smetana 2008 p 106 a b c d Steiner 2011 p 750 Carley 1999 p 108 109 a b Carley 1999 p 109 a b c Carley 1999 p 110 a b c d e f g Carley 1999 p 111 Watt 1989 p 229 a b c Neilson 2022 p 43 Neilson 2022 p 43 44 a b c d e Watt 1989 p 399 a b c d e f g h i j k l Watt 1989 p 400 a b Peden 2022 p 269 Bouverie 2020 p 344 a b c Self 2017 p 40 a b c Carley 1999 p 180 McDonough 1998 p 149 a b c d e f g Watt 1989 p 380 Watt 1989 p 381 Watt 1989 p 380 381 a b Bouverie 2020 p 386 Watt 1989 p 616 a b c Watt 1989 p 614 The Rt Hon Earl Winterton P C Orders of the Day London Cassell 1953 p 272 a b c d e f g Wilt 2001 p 212 Wilt 2001 p 217 218 a b c d Martin 2007 p 229 a b c d Wilt 2001 p 219 a b c d e f Martin 2007 p 236 a b c Twinch 2021 p 77 Wilt 2001 p 225 Moore amp Fedorowich 2002 p 241 Moore amp Fedorowich 2002 p 3 a b Moore amp Fedorowich 2002 p 10 a b Woods 1990 p 36 a b Woods 1990 p 1 2 a b Woods 1990 p 35 a b Woods 1990 p 36 37 Woods 1990 p 37 Woods 1990 p 336 a b c d Woods 1990 p 49 Martin 2007 p 236 240 a b c d Martin 2007 p 246 a b Martin 2007 p 247 Martin 2007 p 243 a b c Martin 2007 p 245 Martin 2007 p 245 246 External links EditHansard 1803 2005 contributions in Parliament by Robert Hudson Newspaper clippings about Robert Hudson 1st Viscount Hudson in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBWParliament of the United KingdomPreceded byThomas Gavan Duffy Member of Parliament for Whitehaven1924 1929 Succeeded byM Philips PricePreceded byGodfrey Dalrymple White Member of Parliament for Southport1931 1952 Succeeded byRoger Fleetwood HeskethPolitical officesPreceded byGeorge Tryon Minister of Pensions1935 1936 Succeeded byHerwald RamsbothamPreceded byEuan Wallace Secretary for Overseas Trade1937 1940 Succeeded byGeoffrey ShakespearePreceded bySir John Gilmour Minister of Shipping1940 Succeeded byRonald CrossPreceded bySir Reginald Dorman Smith Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries1940 1945 Succeeded byTom WilliamsPeerage of the United KingdomNew creation Viscount Hudson1952 1957 Succeeded byRobert William Hudson Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Robert Hudson 1st Viscount Hudson amp oldid 1180866497, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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