Ralph Wigram - German Re-armament and Churchill

German Re-armament and Churchill

Wigram helped raise the alarm about German re-armament under Adolf Hitler during the period prior to the Second World War. In part, he did this by providing intelligence information about German re-armament to Winston Churchill, at a point in time when Churchill did not hold any position in the government of Stanley Baldwin; Churchill used the information to publicly attack the policies of Stanley Baldwin. Wigram's superior in the Foreign Office, Permanent Under-Secretary Sir Robert Vansittart had been quite alarmed about the German situation for several years, and when Wigram came on board they soon came to share deep concern about the situation. Churchill's biographer William Manchester described one of Wigram's memos from this period as having "a sagacity and vision seldom matched in Britain's archives". In the beginning, they tried to raise the alarm with their political masters in the government, to no avail; in desperation, they then turned to other means. Wigram did make at least one attempt at direct publicity – at the time of the Occupation of the Rhineland in early 1936, he arranged a press conference for French Minister of Foreign Affairs Flandin, but it had little effect. His efforts in another direction were far more successful.

Wigram had begun passing information to Churchill in late 1934, apparently with the knowledge and support of Vansittart. The original path was via Major Desmond Morton, but from early 1935 Wigram began to interact directly with Churchill. From then on Wigram and Churchill were in close contact; starting on 7 April 1935, the Wigrams often spent weekends with Churchill at Chartwell, his country house and Churchill also visited their London home. The information seems to have been primarily about the German air force, although more general material about German rearmament, and Hitler's character and likely aims, was included as well.

Wigram was one of many people passing information to Churchill; Churchill's biographer, Martin Gilbert, estimated that there were more than twenty (although he credited Wigram as one of the three main players in this). The film Gathering Storm, however, focuses on Wigram; the film's director, Richard Loncraine, said that "in reality there were four 'Wigrams' – two Army officers and two civil servants. It would be cinematographically inept to have four people doing the same thing. What we did was leave out the other three characters." Wigram and Churchill did disagree over the Anglo-German Naval Agreement; Wigram supported it as a means to escape the strictures of disarmament, whereas Churchill felt it condoned German treaty-breaking.

There is some confusion as to the legality of Wigram's passing of documents to Churchill. Although it seems to have been carried out in a manner that implied it was illegal, Churchill was at the time a Privy Counsellor, and as such would have legally been allowed access to the papers. Baldwin's government certainly did not like the passing of information to Churchill; Walter Runciman, the President of the Board of Trade, was sent to see Wigram's wife Ava when Wigram was not at home, to try to convince her to stop her husband from passing information to Churchill.