Mussolin: A Study in Power

First edition. 726, [2] p. : illus., ports., maps, Genealogical tables. 24 cm. Endpaper map. Occasional footnotes. Notes. Biographical and Explanatory Notes. Bibliography. Index. From Wikipedia: "Sir Ivone Augustine Kirkpatrick GCB, GCMG (1897 25 May 1964) was a British diplomat who served as the British High Commissioner in Germany after the war, and as the Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (the highest-ranking civil servant in the Foreign Office) Kirkpatrick was born on 3 February 1897 in Wellington, India, the elder son of Colonel Ivone Kirkpatrick(1860 1936) of the South Staffordshire Regiment, and his wife, Mary (d. 1931), daughter of General Sir Arthur Edward Hardinge, later Commander-in-Chief, Bombay army, and Governor of Gibraltar. His father was a descendant of a Scottish family which settled in Ireland during the eighteenth century. His mother was former maid of honour to Queen Victoria, and her grandfather Henry Hardinge, first Viscount Hardinge of Lahore, served in the cabinets of Wellington and Peel, and was later governor-general of India in 1844 8. Her first cousin, Charles Hardinge, Baron Hardinge of Penshurst, was Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office in 1906 10 and 1916 20, and Viceroy of India in 1910 16. Being a Roman Catholic, Kirkpatrick was sent to Downside School to be educated between 1907 to 1914. Kirkpatrick volunteered for active service on the outbreak of the First World War and was commissioned in November 1914 in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. Severely wounded in action against the Turks in August 1915, he was accepted by Balliol College, Oxford, in October, but chose to resume his war service early in 1916 when he was employed in propaganda and intelligence activities. During the last year of the war he was stationed in the Netherlands from where he worked as a Spymaster, running a network of British agents operating in German-occupied territory. He entered the diplomatic service in July 1919. He was firstly posted to Brazil for one year, returning to London in August 1920 to take up a post in the Western Department of the Foreign Office. He was promoted second secretary in December 1920 and first secretary in October 1928. On 10 January 1929 he married Violet Caulfield, daughter of Colonel Reginald James Cope Cottell, army surgeon, of 7 Phillimore Terrace, London; they had one son, Ivone Peter (1930-2013), and one daughter, Cecilia Sybil (1932-Unknown). Kirkpatrick was then posted to the British Embassy at Rome from 1930 to 1932; charge d'affaires at the Vatican in 1932-33; and first secretary at the British Embassy at Berlin from 1933 to 1938. It was during this time that he got firsthand experience of dealing with the emerging European dictatorships. During the Second World War Kirkpatrick was once again employed in the propaganda and information work which he had so relished twenty-five years earlier. Appointed Director of the Foreign Division of the Ministry of Information in April 1940, he became Controller of the European services of the BBC in October 1941. During this time, he made a major contribution which included the task of interviewing Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, following Hess's flight to Scotland in May 1941. His report on Hess was shown only to the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, Lord Privy Seal Clement Attlee and Minister of Aircraft Production Lord Beaverbrook. In September 1944 Kirkpatrick was appointed to organize the British element of the Allied Control Commission for Germany, and following the end of the war he served at Supreme Allied Headquarters as British political adviser to General Eisenhower until that organization's disbandment. After the war, he became Permanent Under-Secretary for the German Section at the Foreign Office in 1949. In June 1950, Kirkpatrick was appointed by King George VI as British High Commissioner for Germany. As one of the three joint sovereigns of western Germany, Kirkpat.…