The Link was a British pro-Nazi, independent, non-party organisation to promote Anglo-German friendship established in July 1937 and terminated by the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. At its height, its membership numbered around 4,300 in 35 chapters. It was founded by Admiral Barry Domvile as an explicitly pro-Nazi alternative to the less overtly pro-Nazi Anglo-German Fellowship. The Link generally operated as a cultural organisation hosting parties, dances, and film nights, although its magazine, The Anglo-German Review, reflected pro-Nazi views, and its chapters often hosted antisemitic and pro-Nazi speeches in addition to other cultural activities. It attracted a number of antisemites and pro-Nazis, particularly in its London and Belfast chapters, while also attracting some anti-war pacifists including the Labour Party member Wenman J. Bassett-Lowke.
Shortly before Britain entered World War II, the organisation was investigated by MI5 and the Home Secretary confirmed that The Link had acted as an instrument of the German propaganda service. During the war its founder, Domvile, was interned under Defence Regulation 18B, after being implicated in a fascist plot against the British government in 1940.
Origins
A prior organisation with similar aims, the Anglo-German Fellowship, had been founded in 1935 by Ernest Tennant with the aid of Joachim von Ribbentrop as an unabashedly elitist organisation intended to bring together German and British elites. It had a complementary organisation in Berlin, the Deutsch-Englische Gesellschaft. The Fellowship was pro-German, but internally divided over the question of Nazi antisemitism.
One of the antisemitic members of the executive board of the Fellowship was the retired Admiral Barry Domvile who was quite outspoken about his beliefs about a Jewish-Masonic conspiracy to take over the world. Domvile was displeased with Fellowship's refusal to directly endorse Nazi antisemitism and with its elitism. He broke away in 1937 to found The Link as an openly pro-Nazi and antisemitic group that, as its name suggested, was to serve as a link with the Nazi Party, on a suggestion from the editor of The Anglo-German Review, Cola Ernest Carroll. Domvile established The Link in July 1937 as an "independent non-party organisation to promote Anglo-German friendship". In a press release, Domvile announced that the purpose of The Link was "to foster the mutual knowledge and understanding that ought to exist between the British and German peoples" and to counter the "flood of lies" written about Nazi Germany by allegedly Jewish-controlled British media.
Organisation
The national council of The Link comprised Barry Domvile, John Brown of the British Legion, Anglo-German Review editor Cola Ernest Carroll, the chemist Arthur Pillans Laurie, Susan Fass of the Anglo-German Kameradschaft and the historian Raymond Beazley. As The Link grew in numbers, other prominent people who joined its national council included the father of the Mitford Sisters, Lord Redesdale; the Conservative MP, Sir Albert Lambert Ward; the war hero, Captain Edward Unwin, who won a Victoria Cross at the Battle of Gallipoli; the aviation pioneer and later traitor, Lord Sempill; Councillor Wenman J. Bassett-Lowke of Northampton county borough council; A.E.R. Dyer; Archibald Crawford and Hubert Maddocks. A notable late addition to The Link's national council, who joined in the summer of 1939,was the Duke of Westminster, a landlord who owned much of London and was one of the richest men in the world.
Of the members of the national council, Domvile, Carroll and Laurie were the most active while Ward, Unwin, Redesdale and Semphill merely lent their names to add prestige to the group. Bassett-Lowke, the president of the Northampton chapter; Maddocks, the president of the Southend chapter; and Beazley, the president of the Birmingham chapter were included on The Link's national council because their chapters were the largest chapters.
In March 1938, The Link had 1,800 members and it had 2,400 by July 1938. By June 1939, The Link had 4,300 members and 35 branches.
The Link was not so pro-Nazi as to be overtly anti-British, and it closed immediately after the United Kingdom's entry into World War II against Germany on 3 September 1939. Domvile put out a statement in The Times on 7 September 1939 to the effect that, with war declared, “the King’s enemies became our enemies. We had done our best for better Anglo-German relations ... and there was no more to be done.”
Nonetheless, Domvile was interned in 1940 under Defence Regulation 18B, as someone who might be "prejudicial to the public safety or the defence of the realm". He had been recently implicated in a fascist plot against the British government.
Anthony Masters has alleged that the Link was resurrected in 1940 by Ian Fleming, then working in the Department of Naval Intelligence, in order to successfully lure Rudolf Hess (deputy party leader and third in leadership of Germany, after Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring) to Britain in May 1941.
See also
- Anglo-German Fellowship
- British Union of Fascists
- Appeasement