Alexander Cadogan - Permanent Under-Secretary

Permanent Under-Secretary

In 1938 Cadogan replaced Sir Robert Vansittart as Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office. He considered his predecessor's style to be emotional and disordered, compared to Cadogan's terse and efficient manner. There were no significant divergences in policy, although Vansittart's detestation of the dictators was more publicly known. Cadogan served in this capacity from 1938 to 1946, and represented Britain at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in 1944, where he became well acquainted with Edward Stettinius and Andrei Gromyko. His work there was greatly respected. Winston Churchill told Parliament, "His Majesty's Government could have had no abler representative that Sir Alexander Cadogan and there is no doubt that a most valuable task has been discharged."

In preparation for the Yalta Conference, Cadogan expended a great deal of effort attempting to bring the "London Poles" under Stanislaw Mikolajczyk around to the idea of losing their eastern territories to the Soviet Union. He was also involved in discussions about the composition of provisional governments in Yugoslavia and Greece. Cadogan then accompanied the British delegation to the Yalta Conference in 1945. David Dilks, the editor of his published diaries, notes that "He looked on Yalta much as he had looked at Munich. Both agreements entailed serious injury to the rights of states which could not defend themselves against large and predatory neighbours; both reflected the military and geographical facts; neither was a matter for pride or for fierce self-reproach, since it hardly lay in British power at the material time to do other; both looked better on signature than in the hard after-light."