Wartime and Post-war Career As A Government Official
In 1939, he went to the United States to serve as a lecturer on international relations at the University of Virginia. Wheeler-Bennett was strongly pro-American and always considered the American South to be his favourite part of the American republic.
From 1940 onwards, he worked with the British Information Service in New York City, an agency charged with trying to persuade the United States to enter the war on the Allied side. Whilst here, he was a supporter of the German Resistance to Hitler and became friendly with Adam von Trott zu Solz.
Starting in 1942, Wheeler-Bennett worked in the Political Warfare department of the British Foreign Office in London. After he joined the Foreign Office, he switched to being an opponent of the German Resistance, his change being described by the biographer Anthony Howard, in the New Statesman, as "one of the most nimble political somersaults the corridors of power can ever have seen". Wheeler-Bennett gained his reward, being promoted to the Assistant Director General of Political Intelligence Department before going on to serve in the Political Adviser's Department in SHAEF in 1944-1945. In 1945-1946, Wheeler-Bennett assisted the British Prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials.
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