Sir Ronald Lindsay and Britain's Relations with Germany, 1926–1928

Abstract

Of the five diplomats who held the post of British ambassador to Berlin during the interwar period, the two-year embassy of Sir Ronald Lindsay, 1926–1928, has received least attention by historians. This article charts three main aspects of Lindsay's career in Berlin. The first of these is his relationship with the Foreign Office, which is consistently good although Treasury comments on his reports about Germany's continuing financial problems expose some of the friction within the British government about how best to deal with the German reparation problem. The second area explored by the article examines Lindsay's views on the “German question,” and suggests that the post-Locarno period did not witness a significant growth of trust between Britain, France and Germany on questions concerning international security. Finally, the article examines how Lindsay's thinking about German affairs compares to his predecessor and his successors and explores Lindsay's views about the likely trajectories of German foreign policy.