TRINITY | Alumni Weekend

JT Marlin (L) and Owen Murphy. Photo by
Alice Tepper Marlin. Chris Oakley, far left.

At the annual Trinity Oxford alum dinner, I was seated next to Dr. Owen Murphy, a fellow economist.

Owen grew up in Monaghan (one of the three counties in Ulster Province that is not part of the UK, the other two being Donegal and Cavan) and worked on economic development issues all his life.

We discovered a number of mutual friends, including the late Neal Kearney, a much-respected labor negotiator and director of a large international labor union in the apparel sector. He was also on the Board of Social Accountability International, founded by Alice Tepper Marlin, who took this photo.

Owen was interested in the fact that my father worked for William J. ("Wild Bill") Donovan (1883-1959), director of the O.S.S. during WW2. My Dad was in Dublin and London. We talked about Irish neutrality and found out that we both had a connection to Dr. T. Ryle Dwyer, a important expert on British-Irish relations during World War II.

Dwyer wrote an eight-column obituary of my father in The Irish Times, in December 1994. I have looked up what Dwyer wrote subsequently, based on his book, Behind the Green Curtain. [Added based on queries in comment: In the following excerpt from a review, he is critiquing a book by John J. Turi accusing Éamon de Valera of being a spy for the British, or something like that. Turn is a retired US naval officer and historian from Princeton, New Jersey. He developed an interest in Irish history through his Irish-born wife.
Here is a link to information about Turi's book: http://www.theirishstory.com/2010/03/26/book-review-england%E2%80%99s-greatest-spy-%E2%80%93-eamonn-de-valera-john-j-turi/#.WcBWK0pSwfE.]

I argue that de Valera could not have provided more help to the Allies during World War II. But he was acting as head of government and certainly not as a spy.
He authorised Irish diplomats to be used as American spies on the continent. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the wartime forerunner of the CIA, formulated questions that were given to the Department of External Affairs in Dublin. These were sent to the diplomats in Berlin, Rome and Vichy, and Dublin forwarded the replies to the OSS.
This was handled by Joe Walshe, secretary of the Department of External Affairs, in cooperation with Ervin Marlin of the OSS. De Valera was helping the Allies because he believed that the defeat of fascism was in Ireland’s interest.
If he were a British spy, why would Churchill try to help the United States in ensuring that de Valera was discredited in American eyes in order to undermine his influence in there? During various interviews in recent days Turi seemed to be jumping to conclusions as a result of what he did not find, rather than what he actually found.
For instance, he states that there is no record of de Valera being tried by the British in 1916. Given the chaos in Dublin in the aftermath of the Easter Rebellion, one should not attach that much significance to the fact that such records have not been preserved.
Turi seems to think it was sinister that de Valera survived and, worse still, that at the moment of truth the Long Fellow [nickname for de Valera] had no desire to die for Ireland? He had a pregnant wife and three children, and one should be asking questions about his sanity if he had been anxious to be executed.
There was never any suggestion that de Valera’s trial took more than a matter of minutes in the midst of the confusion of the week after the rebellion, and he was the second last commandant to surrender. The last was Thomas Ashe, arguably the most successful commandant, but the British did not execute him either. The main reason has always been that London asked for the executions to be stopped.
While reading a book on Churchill, Turi initially developed an interest in Michael Collins. "I turned to books about him and became totally smitten with this wonderful person."
The more he read about Collins the more de Valera kept coming up. "Every time he came up it was a disaster for Ireland," Turi told the Irish Post. He therefore decided to write about the Long Fellow [de Valera] "because everything he touched was to the detriment of Ireland."
Was de Valera’s seminal role in enlisting the support of the hierarchy against the conscription campaign in Britain’s interest? The British had to abandon their plans for conscription in Ireland.
De Valera "initiated the civil war," Turi told John Green. Nobody has suggested that de Valera had anything to do with the murder of Field Marshall Sir Henry Wilson whose death sparked Lloyd George and Churchill to insist on the attack on the Four Courts. Moreover, it was Collins who ordered the attack on the Four Courts, not de Valera.
If de Valera was a British spy, why did they try to undermine his new government in 1932? He insisted that Ireland did not owe land annuities to Britain. Neville Chamberlain, the British chancellor of the exchequer, warned cabinet colleagues that de Valera had a good case and Britain might lose if they submitted the case to international arbitration.
Cumann na nGaedheal pleaded with the British not to give in to de Valera, or they would be undermined, so the British initiated the Economic War. This was clearly to undermine the man that Turi would have us believe was England’s greatest spy.
I cannot remember ever hearing anything about Michael Collins in primary or secondary school. I became interested in him while at university in Texas in 1966. I wrote a master’s thesis on the Anglo-Irish Treaty and could hardly have been more critical of de Valera. 

IT WAS initially because I was so critical of de Valera that I became interested in the American ambassador’s assessment of him in 1940. David Gray wrote then that de Valera was "probably the most adroit politician in Europe and he honestly believes that all he does is for the good of the country. He has the qualities of martyr, fanatic and Machiavelli. No one can outwit him, frighten or brandish him. Remember that he is not pro-German nor personally anti-British but only pro-de Valera."
While writing a doctoral dissertation on US relations with Ireland during the war, I came across Gray’s manuscript for a book that ran to more than 700 pages in typescript. It was a diatribe against de Valera with little historical merit, other than as an insight into Gray’s own twisted thinking.
Turi has been exhibiting the same approach with his unsupported allegations in his interviews. "I list literally dozens of instances in my book where De Valera’s activities benefited England," Turi told the Irish Post. "Yet I could not find one major decision of his that benefited Ireland."
There have always been people who were unwilling to give de Valera any credit for anything, such as those Irish people who essentially invited the British to wage the Economic War in order to undermine the Long Fellow in the 1930s.
For all his failings, and he had many, he made a major contribution to Irish life in taking the gun out of 26-County politics and asserting the country’s political independence.
Moreover, he did a magnificent job in keeping Ireland out of the Second World War.
This story was in the Irish Examiner Saturday, October 31, 2009 (http://www.irishexaminer.com/archives/2009/1031/opinion...vMc9N).

While looking around for the sources of the the above quote, I ran across the papers of Colonel Dan Brown, which are in the University College Dublin archives. (The full catalog of Dan Brown's papers is here:  http://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/p0071-bryan-dan-descriptive-catalogue.pdf.)
The following numbered items in the collection bear on the activities of the O.S.S. and the issue of Irish neutrality. 

#102 

1 October 1983- Office of Strategic Studies Operations,15 December 1984 in Ireland 1939-47 Manuscript research notes, draft entitled ‘Possible Project’ and correspondence to Dan Bryan relating to his interest in Irish-American relations during the period. Includes quotations taken from David Gray Papers by Deirdre McMahon in her letter dated 1 October 1983 and letter from E R “Spike” Marlin to Dan Bryan dated 15 December 1984 which discusses P71/ Colonel Dan Bryan Papers.

#115 

November 1970- Letters from Thomas Ryle Dwyer, September 1975 49 St Brendan’s Park, Tralee, County Kerry, to Dan Bryan on the subject of Irish-American intelligence co-operation during the Emergency period. Includes photocopies of letters from J Russell Forgan, Deputy Chief of O.S.S. for Europe to Dwyer dated 6 November 1970 and answers by E R Marlin to questions posed by Dwyer on same. In letter from Forgan to Dwyer he states that most of the spies operating in Ireland were ‘doubled. By that I mean that they worked for us and sent their so-called superiors news which we fed them. In that respect they were very helpful to our cause’.

#147 

26 June 1985 Cutting from letters to the editor of The Irish Times titled ‘Colonel Dan Bryan’ by E R Marlin, 8 Castle Hill, Berkhamsted, Herts in which he draws the attention of the editor to errors in Nigel West’s books MI5 and MI6. He also takes the opportunity to ‘express my thanks  and appreciation to Col Dan Bryan for the outstanding service he and his organisation rendered his country and mine during World War II by preventing Ireland from being used as a source of information that might have had disastrous effects on the Allies’ conduct of the war’. See also P71/#175, P71/#182.

#175 

19 November 1983- M16: 1909-45. 19 December 1986 Manuscript research notes by Dan Bryan and correspondence with Nigel West concerning a book review by Dan Bryan of ‘MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations 1909-1945’ Nigel West. Weidenfeld and Nicolson [the Irish Times 19 November 1983]. See also P71/#147, P71/#182.

#182

Photocopy of book review from The Irish Times in which Dan Bryan reviews MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations 1909-1945 by Nigel West. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. See also P71/#147, P71/#175.

ALICE BORN | 150 Years Old—the Book

It's the 150th Anniversary of the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

The author was a Christ Church don who signed himself Lewis Carroll.

A few hours ago I had the pleasure of attending - with Alice Tepper Marlin and my nephew Chris Oakley - the Choral Evensong at Christ Church Cathedral.

It was an occasion of some historical importance.

First, there was an exhibition within the cathedral in honor of Alice in Wonderland.

Second, the Evensong itself was a glorious hour and a half of choral music and congregational singing, with a newly instituted girls' (ages 7-24) choir - the Frideswide Voices, based at Worcester College. I was told that the choir is so named after a medieval girls' choir and that today was the first time in 1300 years that a female choir has sung in Christ Church Cathedral.

The Worcester Senior Organ Scholar, Benjamin Cunningham, played the organ. The Frideswide Voices choir was conducted by Will Dawes.

One of the original illustrations of Alice 
by John Tenniel.

The communal hymns were "Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones," "By All Your Saints Still Striving," and "All My Hope on God Is Founded".

The choir sang Psalm 119, the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis (both from St. Luke), and "How Beautiful Are the Feet" (Handel). I was surprised that on the feast of St. Matthew, none of the readings was from St. Matthew.

The exhibit honoring Alice - and especially the Mad Hatter character in the book - is of sculptures by Peter Eugene Ball.

The sculpture that Ball is holding is a tribute to the illustrator of the original Alice in Wonderland, John Tenniel.

One of the nearby sculptures by Ball is in the Merton College Chapel. It is is of "Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom" and was commissioned in 2014.

I was especially interested in that because there is a college in Barry's Bay, Ontario, Canada called Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom Academy.

My niece Christine Schintgen is a dean at the college. Christine, this post is for you!

VICE CHANCELLOR: Andrew Hamilton to Head NYU

Madrid, April 26, 2013. Trinity College Dinner, Real Gran Pena Club. L to R:
Andrew Moore, reunion organizer. Andrew Hamilton, Vice Chancellor,
Oxford University. Sir Ivor Roberts, President of Trinity. Alice Tepper Marlin,
President of SAI. Sir Roger Fry, founder, schools in Spain. Photo: JT Marlin. 

According to The N.Y. Times today, March 19, Oxford Vice Chancellor Andrew Hamilton will be taking over the reins in January 2016 from John Sexton as the 16th President of New York University.

N.Y.U. has a modest endowment relative to other large private universities with global scope and aspirations.

Dr. Hamilton said that he would continue teaching and conducting research. Dr. Hamilton is 62 and has been Vice-Chancellor of Oxford since 2009. He was previously Provost at Yale University and Professor of Chemistry and Molecular Biophysics.

At Oxford, seeking to recover from cuts in government financing of universities initiated by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and continued by subsequent administrations, he was effective in raising the level of fund-raising. He led what Oxford has described as the largest fund-raising campaign in European university history.

Dr. Hamilton is likely to be paid more than at Oxford, where he earned £442,000, or $660,000. Dr. Sexton earned $1.5 million in total compensation in the 2012-13 school year, according to publicly available tax returns.

N.Y.U. picked Dr. Hamilton from more than 200 nominees. It did not disclose the other candidates, another candidate was reportedly Michael Lynton, chief executive of Sony Entertainment.

HITLER: Why Didn't He Bomb Oxford? (27K Views, Aug 2020)

Felicity Tholstrup, our guide, tells Oxford alums in New College that Hitler gave orders
 not to bomb Oxford. (Alice Tepper Marlin is 4th from right.) Photo by JTMarlin, 2012.

June 8, 2013–As the anniversary of D-Day approaches, I have been thinking over a tour of New College that my wife Alice Tepper Marlin and I took during the Oxford Alumni Weekend last year.

Our knowledgable tour guide, Felicity Tholstrup, noted that not one Oxford building was damaged in World War II. Hitler did not bomb Oxford.

I have been wondering–why not? Why didn't Hitler bomb Oxford? Historians don't credit him with much empathy for British civilians or cultural centers.

For Eight Months Hitler Bombed British Cities, But Not Oxford

After Hitler won the Battle of France on June 17, 1940, he attempted to invade Britain on July 10, 1940. The effort was repelled during the next three months by the Royal Air Force, at great cost. Both the RAF and the Luftwaffe lost approximately one-fifth of their planes every month for three months. Hitler gave up the idea of an invasion. The "Battle of Britain" was won.

Instead, Hitler sought to break British morale by ordering the Luftwaffe to engage in savage bombing of British cities (the "Blitz"), starting on September 7, 1940. During the first ten weeks, attacks were directed at London. Only one night was free of bombing, with an average of 160 bombers flying over England each night.

Thereafter, London was attacked less intensely while the Luftwaffe spread out to other British cities. The bombing continued for eight months, until May 10, 1941, when planes were diverted to the European Continent for an attack on the Soviet Union.

German maps for the invasion of many British cities were recovered in Berlin after the war. A copy is at the Bodleian Library. Another is at the New York Public Library. The city maps included a map of Oxford. The postcards of targets included ones of Oxford's railway bridges and of a factory in nearby Abingdon.

Oxford suffered little damage. Unlike the other maps, the Oxford map did not include any military targets other than bridges.

Little Damage to the City of Oxford

Oxfordshire was hit many times, but not the City of Oxford.

• In Oxfordshire county, 3,831 German bombs were dropped, killing 20 people, injuring 60 others, and killing 65 head of cattle. The bombs also killed 65 head of cattle and damaged more than 300 houses as well as other buildings and utilities (http://www.sofo.org.uk/files/bombtotals.pdf). Witney was bombed early on, in November 1940, but it is 12 miles west of Oxford
• One unexploded bomb was found in the Cowley area, on the outskirts of Oxford, where the important Morris Motors factory is located–a valid military target, but quite a distance from the university.
• A six year-old boy who had been evacuated from London's East End was killed in bed when a dummy bomb fell from an RAF plane and crashed through the roof of his temporary home in Stanway Road, Oxford.

Was there a reason Oxford was spared? The Luftwaffe does appear to have been ordered to avoid the City of Oxford. Was this based on some agreement?

Did Hitler Agree to Avoid Oxford?

Could there have been an agreement—explicit or implied—that the Allies and Axis would not bomb some university towns with cultural treasures of international significance?

If so, the Allies did not honor it in the case of the ancient Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy, even though as we now know it was not being used at all as a military center when the Allies started bombing on January 17, 1944.

The German university city of Heidelberg was spared by the Allies; possibly this was part of an agreement, but more likely Heidelberg just did not have any military significance. Oxford did—starting in 1937, the Morris Motors factory produced the de Havilland Tiger Moth training airplane. The factory also repaired damaged aircraft, using salvage including the remains of crashed Luftwaffe planes.

There could not have been a general agreement to avoid university towns because the Nazis bombed many UK cities with major universities in them, including Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Coventry, Glasgow, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Sheffield and Southampton.

The Allies, for their part, bombed Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin and other cities with universities.

So the exemption from Nazi bombing, if there was one, was restricted to Oxford and perhaps one or two other university towns. Oxford-born Cambridge don Stephen Hawking in Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays (New York: Bantam, 1993, 1-2) says that being a child in Oxford during World War II was to be in a safe place because:

The Germans had an agreement that they would not bomb Oxford and Cambridge, in return for the British not bombing Heidelberg and Göttingen.

Snopes finds no evidence for such an agreement and classifies Hawking's statement as an "urban legend". However, the legend has had a leg among the military. A 2015 commentator on this 2013 post (scroll down below), an American who was at a U.S. Army base in Germany in the 1960s, said his fellow soldiers believed Allied bombers avoided Heidelberg and Wiesbaden as a trade for the Nazis not bombing Oxford and Cambridge. Another former soldier has suggested it was Göttingen, as Hawking states, rather than Wiesbaden.

Was Hitler Planning to Make Oxford His British Capital?

However, no agreement was necessary for Hitler to decide to spare Oxford. He could well have decided to spare Oxford because he intended to use it for his own purposes after the war, assuming he was victorious:

• The City of Oxford website lists as Fun Fact #4 that Hitler intended to use Oxford as the capital of a subjugated Britain. That would suffice as Hitler's reason for not bombing the city. The reference originally given by the City of Oxford (it has been removed since I first posted this) was James Morris, Oxford (London: Faber and Faber, 1965). When I looked for the book I found it under the same title with the author Jan Morris (Oxford University Press paperback, 1978). The OUP book (p. 7) cites the story prefaced by "It is said that...". The explanation of the name change is that James Morris pioneered in 1972 having surgery to enhance his feminine side.
• The Bodleian has published a translation of, Hitler's plans for the invasion of Britain. I have seen some of the German maps at the Bodleian and at the New York Public Library. Most show targets of military significance. (The David Rumsey Map Collection at the Bodleian has now made the Oxford map available online; thanks to Nicola O'Toole at the Bodleian's Weston Library for this tip.) This suggests to me that Hitler planned to move troops into Oxford and that the purpose might have been as a seat of government in Britain, going back to the days when Charles I ruled from Christ Church, Oxford.
• Another possibility is that Hitler thought of Oxford as a possible communications center for controlling a conquered Britain.

Why would Hitler want to use Oxford as his UK capital or communictaions center?

I claim no special insight into the mind of the mad Führer. However, I can think of three reasons for Hitler wanting to locate in the Oxford area:

1. Hitler deeply admired England and especially Oxford.  Hitler's second book, written in 1928, was My New Order. According to his first wife Ivana, Donald Trump had a copy of this book by his bed, given to him by a friend. Chapter 3 includes this tribute by Hitler to England in the context of the need of Germany's Volk for military training to stiffen its spine:

[O]ur Folk ... in its racial fragmentation so very much lacks qualities which, for example, characterize the English–a determined sticking together in time of danger. 

Hitler was impressed with the British Empire and with the vision that Cecil Rhodes had of an Oxford as a school for world leaders. Rhodes included Germans in his design for the Rhodes Scholarships to Oxford. He envisioned Oxford as a world-wide educational center for future world leaders from the British Commonwealth, the United States and Germany. Hitler may have taken from this a special relationship between Oxford and the Third Reich. He took a personal interest in the Rhodes Scholarships.

At New College, Magdalen College and other colleges at Oxford, memorials to alumni and staff who died in World War I even-handedly include German alumni who fought for the Kaiser. Germans were included among the Rhodes Scholars:

• Germans were included starting in 1903, until 1913, when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia and therefore Britain. 
• No Rhodes Scholarships were given to Germans during the years 1914-29.
• During the years 1930-38, Germans were again awarded Rhodes Scholarships. 
• In 1938, Hitler gave a personal order to Erich Vermehren, who had been selected for a Rhodes, not to accept it, on the grounds that Vermehren had refused to join Hitler Youth. This might have been sufficient reason to end the Rhodes Scholarships to Germans in 1939. An even stronger reason for ending them was that meanwhile Hitler had invaded Poland. 
• It would be another 31 years before Rhodes Scholars again included Germans. As of 2014, 180 Rhodes Scholarships have been awarded to German students.

2. Hitler took heart from the Oxford Oath, the Union's "King and Country" vote. The Oxford Union in 1933 passed the motion that "This House would not in any circumstances fight for King and Country". Winston Churchill, an alumnus of the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, dissed the vote, calling it "abject, squalid, shameless" and "nauseating". Joseph Alsop, in a syndicated column, "Blundering in to War–By Being Anti-War," St. Petersburg Times (May 11, 1970), said that Hitler referred often to the Oxford Oath and Union vote. Hitler may have been forgiven for concluding that Britain's young men had no stomach for another war. When Hitler spoke of "wringing the neck of the English chicken" in May 1941, he may have been thinking of the outcome of the 1933 debate. The Oxford Oath was imitated in thousands of American colleges.

3. He imagined parading into Oxford like William the Conqueror to spite Churchill. Hitler might have looked forward to riding into Oxford to rule Britain, just as William the Conqueror in 1066 rode to Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire to accept the fealty of Saxon nobles. There is not much left today of Berkhamsted Castle, viewable from trains on the Euston lines to Tring and Northampton–not because it was bombed, but because it crumbled from age and is being restored at a snail's pace. Hitler would doubtless have relished moving his Reichskommissar for Britain into a Nazi HQ in Blenheim Palace, a 30-minute ride from Oxford, throwing out Malvern College boys that first used the building, or the War Office, which then took it over. That would have been a poke in the eye to Hitler's arch-enemy Winston Churchill, who was born in Blenheim.

How Did Hitler Get It Wrong? Count the Ways 

Hitler's faith that he would be riding into Oxford victorious was based on at least three misconceptions about Oxford (as well as failing to understand the vulnerability of the German military's supply chain and the impact of U.S. entry into the war):

1. Hitler was misled by the Oxford Union vote as an indicator of likely behavior in wartime. A writer for Churchill College, Cambridge notes that the thinking of Oxford undergraduates would hardly be representative of the nation.

The debate cannot be taken as evidence of what people of all classes were thinking. Oxford undergraduates were hardly typical... They came largely from wealthy upper- or middle-class families ... [Y]oung people often like to take stand or an extreme position precisely because they know it will provoke a strong reaction... 

The Trinity College war memorial. Each 
Oxford college lost dozens or even hundreds of 
alumni to the wars. Photo by JTMarlin.

The Oxford Union vote is based on both the content of the motion and the quality of the arguments. The vote therefore may reflect less the views of the audience and more their appreciation of the debaters. In fact, from the moment war broke out, Britain's youth turned out in force. As Winston Churchill said in Ottawa in 1942:  "Some chicken. Some neck." Again, a generation of young men,  including many Oxford alumni,  died in battle.

2. Hitler didn't understand how little support the Nazis would get globally.  The extent of Hitler's evil was not widely understood in 1933. Although Hitler had published his views in Mein Kampf, his book was not immediately translated into English. Whatever public opinion in Britain was in 1933, it was radically changed when Hitler started invading other European countries and the extent of the Holocaust began to be revealed. He did not expect the Dutch to be so opposed to German rule; he had little resistance from the Austrians.

With the possible exception of senior officers thought to be hostile to Hitler, like "Desert Fox" Erwin Rommel, Hitler's Wehrmacht did not get the same respect after  World War II that the Kaiser's Army did in the Great War. Whereas German alumni are listed in Memorials to Oxford dead in the Great War, I could find only one German alumnus listed for World War II, on a Magdalen College board, identified as "W'cht" [Wehrmacht]. It took another 25 years after World War II for Rhodes Scholarships to be resumed for German students.

3. Several prominent German Rhodes Scholars sought to overthrow Hitler. Hitler's overthrow was sought by at least three aristocratic Germans named as Rhodes Scholars. An alumnus of Trinity, Oxford was one. He selected another German who attended Balliol. Both gave their lives to resisting Hitler.

Albrecht von Bernstorff,
Germany and Trinity, 1909.

Count Albrecht von Bernstorff (Germany and Trinity, 1909) was the nephew of Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, who served as German Ambassador to the United States during the First World War. He was a close friend of Otto Kiep and Hannah Solf, who were at the center of a German conspiracy to overthrow Hitler. Unfortunately, a member of the circle was a Gestapo informer. Albrecht von Bernstorff was arrested and imprisoned in Ravensbrück together with Frau Solf. They were tortured and shot in April 1945 on orders of Nazi Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop.

Adam von Trott zu Solz,
Germany and Balliol, 1931.

Adam von Trott zu Solz (Germany and Balliol, 1931) was picked by a Rhodes selection committee that included Albrecht von Bernstorff, and the two remained friends for their brief lives. At Balliol, von Trott was a close friend of David Astor and visited the United States, where he had a connection as the great-great-grandson of John Jay, the first U.S. Chief Justice. He became a member of the Kreisau Circle and was a leader of the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler. Trott was hanged a month later. His wife Clarita lived on, dying in Berlin at 95 in 2013. The story of von Trott (or perhaps a composite of him and the other two German Rhodes Scholars) is told fictionally in a highly praised novel that I have been reading, The Song Before It Is Sung, by Justin Cartwright (Bloomsbury, 2007).

Dr Erich Vermehren de Saventhem and his wife,
Elisabeth, Countess von Plettenburg, in the 1940s.

Erich Vermehren (Germany, 1938) was a Hamburg lawyer, elected to a Rhodes Scholarship in 1938. He received a personal order from Hitler not to accept the scholarship because Vermehren had refused to join Hitler Youth, and was therefore never assigned a college at Oxford. Rejected for military service because of an injury from his childhood, he was sent to the Istanbul branch of the Abwehr (military intelligence), where he became a part of a wide network of anti-Nazi dissidents that included his cousin Adam von Trott. When Otto Kiep was arrested, the Vermehrens were ordered to Berlin for interrogation by the Gestapo. Despite dogged pursuit, they escaped to England in February 1944 with British help. In England, they stayed, ironically, with the mother of double-agent Kim Philby, who would later defect to the Soviet Union. Vermehren's cousin, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, was dismissed by Hitler, and the Abwehr was placed under Himmler and the SS, who were apparently less effective than Canaris at using military intelligence right before D-Day. Vermehren, who after the war was known as Erich Vermehren de Saventhem, died in 2005.

Conclusion

My take on the story is that Hitler spared Oxford because in his mind he believed that Britain would fall as easily as other countries had before and that he would set up his government there like Charles I, probably in Blenheim Palace to spite Churchill. He overestimated the reluctance of British young men to fight. He underestimated the ability of the British to sustain the bombs of the Luftwaffe on the ground and oppose it in the air. The stories of the attempts of Oxford-educated Germans to resist Hitler are worth revisiting in the context of new demagogues in several countries seeking political dominance.

Personal Note

I have a personal interest in D-Day. In the early morning of June 10, 1944 my bomber-pilot uncle Willem van Stockum was shot down over Laval, France on his sixth mission from the RAF 10th Squadron base at Melbourne, Yorks. during the 10-day period around D-Day. The town of Laval has honored both the graves and crash sites of the 7-man crews on the two planes downed that cloudy moonlit night. The French noted gratefully that both pilots steered their plunging planes away from the farmers' houses, toward the fields. My uncle's flaming Handley Halifax crashed in a pear orchard. Robert Wack has written a gripping book about him. I have met the relatives of some of the crews on the two planes–including two sons of airmen and a great-niece of another who is now with the Canadian Air Force–as well as elderly French farmers who were children at the time.

This post, like others on this blog site, is © 2013-2017 by John Tepper Marlin. Permission to reprint? Send to jtmarlin@post.harvard.edu. The above post has been viewed 24,000 times as of Sept. 2017. Thank you for reading!

Sources: 

Cartwright, Justin, The Song Before It Is Sung (Bloomsbury, 2007).

Graham, Malcolm, Oxfordshire at War 1939-1945 (Sutton, 1994).

Hawking, Stephen. Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays (New York: Bantam, 1993).

Library of Congress, World War II Military Intelligence Maps—American, British and German.

Oxfordshire County, Bomb Totals, 1940-45.

Rumsey, David, Map Collection at the Bodleian: City of Oxford. Original copies of the German invasion maps are available in Oxford at the Bodleian, and at the New York Public Library (since 1951). Nicola O'Toole was extremely helpful at the Weston Library of the Bodleian.

Wack, Robert, Time Bomber (New York: Boissevain Books, 2014).

Also See My Book on Oxford College Arms: https://www.amazon.com/Oxford-College-Arms-Intriguing-Stories/dp/0984523235

...And these Posts on the Arms of Oxford Colleges & PPHs: Original Article in Oxford Today . Heraldry as Branding . Heraldry as Fun .  Coat of Arms vs. Crest . Sinister Questions . Visit to the College of Arms . Windsor Herald Talks to New Yorkers . Shaming of Harvard Law Crest . Coats of Arms in the Oxford Shop :: Rapid Expansion of Oxford's Colleges and Halls . Oxford Stars

Related Posts: Oxford Birthdays . Baedeker Bombing of Britain . Election of Nazi Party . Woodstock, Home of Blenheim Palace . Why Didn't Hitler Invade Britain after Dunkirk?

R.I.P.: Peter V. Darrow (1950-2013)

Peter V. Darrow (1950-2013)

Peter V. Darrow of New York City and Sag Harbor, NY died on May 19, 2013, after a long battle with cancer. 

He was a partner in DLA Piper's Finance practice in New York City. He traveled frequently for the firm to Mexico and other Central and South American countries to handle complex financial transactions for large companies in Latin America. 

Mr. Darrow was born in Detroit to Charlotte Noble Felheim and Peter P. Darrow on Sept. 7, 1950, Mr. Darrow grew up in Ann Arbor. 

He graduated from Columbia College, having been President of the Columbia College chapter of Alpha Delta Phi fraternity ("AD"). He led the effort by the chapter's alumni group to acquire the AD house from Columbia in the 1990's.  

He received a B.Phil. degree from Trinity College, Oxford in 1974 and remained active in alumni affairs, incorporating Trinity Society USA as a charity. 

With friends from Trinity, starting in 2005, he has helped expand the Cambodia Trust, a charity that maintains rural clinics in Cambodia that provide free artificial limbs to those maimed by land mines. At the time of his death, Peter was chairman of the board of the Cambodia Trust.

He was also a board member of Everyone Wins, a national childhood literacy and mentoring nonprofit organization. Once a week he used to read to elementary school children during his lunch period.

He graduated from Michigan Law School in 1978, where he was a member of the Law Review. Prior to joining DLA Piper, Mr. Darrow was a partner at Mayer Brown & Platt in its New York Office.

Peter Darrow with his wife Denise Seegal in c. 2011.

Mr. Darrow was a highly experienced finance and securities lawyer who focused on capital markets financing, acquisition and leveraged financing, structured financing, project and infrastructure financing, debt restructuring and liability management transactions, particularly in Latin America and other emerging markets.

Chambers Latin America 2009 describes Mr. Darrow as "an extremely smart guy who's always a pleasure to work with." Chambers Banking and Finance in Latin America 2009 calls him "the standout partner for debt capital markets in Brazil and Mexico." Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business lists him for his Latin American Investment practice. In 2010 it noted he "is highly regarded for his expertise in representing underwriters in high-yield bonds transactions; he also handles a steady flow of M&A and securities work". 

In 2011, Chambers said, "Clients look to him as a trusted, commercially minded adviser", and in 2012, Chambers said of his Latin America work: "He understands the region and has very strong credentials." Mr. Darrow is also listed in the Legal 500 Latin America 2012, in Guide to the World's Leading Capital Market Lawyers and in The International Who's Who of Capital Markets Lawyers.

He was admitted to the New York bar and was a member of the American Bar Association, Section of Corporation, Business and Banking Law.

His publications include A Greek Odyssey: Greece's sovereign debt restructuring and its impact on holders of Greek bonds and  Will 2012 Bring More Debt Restructuring for Latin American Companies?, He was co-author of "US Equity Markets for Foreign Issuers: Public Offerings and Rule 144A Placements of American Depositary Receipts," a Merrill Corp. publication, 2008; Co-author, "The US High Yield Bond Market," International Business Transactions with Brazil, 2008; "Restructuring Corporate Debt in Latin America," and "How to Restructure Debt in Latin America," International Financial Law Review, 2003; Co-author, "Private Equity Investment in Latin America," Latin American Law and Business Report, 2000; Co-author, "Restructuring Strategies for Mexican Eurobond Debt," Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business, 1995. 

Mr. Darrow was an avid rower. He began rowing with Columbia's lightweight rowing team in 1968. Thirty years later, he organized a reunion of the team to compete in the Head of the Charles Regatta in Cambridge, Mass., a tradition they maintained for several years. He enthusiastically supported the small Sag Harbor rowing club. Last year, he raised funds to purchase a new rowing shell for Columbia's women's crew team. He christened it the "Denise V. Seegal" in honor of his wife.

Denise, his wife of five years, survives him. (Peter and his previous wife of 20 years, Leni Darrow, divorced in 2003.) Denise is a fashion executive with more than 30 years in the industry. He is survived as well by his two children from his prior marriage - a daughter, Meredith, who works as an art adviser in Los Angeles and New York City, and his son Peter Jr., who is an MBA student in Boston.

He is also survived by his brother Duncan Darrow and Duncan's wife Wendy. After their mother died of cancer in 2001, Peter and his brother established Fighting Chance, a free-of-charge cancer resource center for residents on the East End of Long Island. In lieu of flowers, the family has requested donations be made to Fighting Chance - Free Cancer Counseling Center, Box 1358, Sag Harbor, NY 11963.

A memorial service was held at All Souls Unitarian Church, 1157 Lexington Ave.,at 80th Street, New York City, at 4 pm on Wednesday, May 29.

Comment: Peter took over from me the job of bringing Trinity College alumni in the USA together for fun and funds. I met Denise Seegal through my wife Alice Tepper Marlin, who is like Denise a member of Women's Forum in New York. We were all attending a viewing of the installation of Christo's "Gates" project in February 2005 (7,503 orange "gates" stretching up through Central Park) from an apartment on Central Park South. We introduced Peter to Denise not long afterwards and they were married soon after that.

More Oxonian Obits

OXFORD: European Reunion, Madrid–Trinity Dinner

Trinity College Dinner, Madrid, April 26, 2013. Real Gran Pena Club. L to R:
Andrew Moore, reunion organizer. Andrew Hamilton, Vice Chancellor of
Oxford. Sir Ivor Roberts, President of Trinity. Alice Tepper Marlin. Sir
Roger Fry, founder of many schools in Spain. Photo by JT Marlin.

MADRID, April 27 - Alice and I are attending the European Reunion of the Oxford University Society. 

Trinity College sponsored a dinner for its alumni yesterday, with its President presiding. Other colleges that did not have their own dinners were invited to Trinity's. 

So Paul Lewis, long-time New York Times correspondent, attended the dinner -  with his global-finance columnist wife Vivian - even though he is a Balliol man. Balliol has other things on its mind - its 750th birthday party.

The dinner was held at the Real Gran Pena Club. The club building is a fine example of traditional Spanish magnificence. One of the lectures this weekend was on the Spanish Golden Era, which was viewed as both a time of artistic exflorescence and a period of decline, as an opulent mentality grew up alongside the flow of silver from Spain's Latin American colonies. The Gran Pena is the club of both the Royalist fan club and the Loyalists. As it was explained to me:

The Loyalists would have been Royalists, if the person next in line for the throne wasn't such a darn lefty. 

This was in practical terms extremely important because the Loyalists included Spain's  military leaders, who supported Francisco Franco against the Republicans in 1936 because the growing influence of Moscow (Stalin) terrified the Spanish establishment. 

Franco and the army prevailed after a tragic three-year civil war encapsulated in Picasso's 1937 painting "Guernica" about the bombing of a rebellious Basque village by German and Italian planes, acting they said at the request of their ally Spain.

After its civil war was over -  according to my history sherpas - Spain effectively became neutral country that was a haven for people escaping from Vichy France. Franco played both sides and eventually went to the Allies. He did the same thing after the war, buying support from the left and the right - corrupting the rich with tax havens and corrupting workers (in the view of my sherpa) with workplace benefits.

He died in a hospital bed in 1975 and was described to me as dying "in his bed" because he successfully made concessions to both labor and business.

Private conversations at the Reunion suggest that Europeans view that today's problems in Spain are the result of (1) the long-time easy life in Spain created by the country's control of mineral resources overseas, exemplified by the previously mentioned centuries-long stream of silver to Seville, and (2) the Easy Street culture that Franco helped create in the process of maintaining control.

To make peace with workers, Franco's postwar Spain instituted generous policies that allow workers to build up a seniority that prevents employers from firing or laying them off without onerous penalties. Comment by a Brit who has worked in Spain for years:

Business owners burdened with a bigger payroll than their revenues can support may find it easier to shut down an entire facility than lay off a single employee.

These concessions, of course, have been made in different degrees all over Europe, as a conscious choice has been made in Europe to trade quality of working life for some loss in economic growth. But elsewhere in Europe concessions were made in a more democratic environment, with more business input.

In Spain, Franco matched the concession to workers with loopholes to facilitate non-payment of taxes by companies and executives. These loopholes go beyond the business tax concessions demanded by lobbyists in Washington. They amount to institutionalized corruption. Another memorable comment of the day:

Japan has political and civil service corruption as well. But usually when the politicians are corrupt, the civil service exposes them, and when the civil service is corrupt, the politicians expose them. In Spain both sides are in on it.

After Franco died, the progressive King Juan Carlos I took over and soon became one of Europe's most popular monarchs. His reputation, however, has necessarily been seriously tarnished by Spanish unemployment's reaching a new peak of 27.2 percent in the first quarter of 2013. 

Among Spaniards younger than 25, unemployment is reported as rising to 57.2 percent. But a Spanish friend said this was an exaggeration because the official figures include students as unemployed people. I don't know enough about the Spanish labor figures to comment on this. 

The country meanwhile is gripped with an unusual level of self-doubt. The estimated proportion of the Spanish economy that is "off the books" is 30 percent. The so-called "black economy" and fear of bank failures are cited as the reason for the Spanish people hoarding 500-euro notes, with more of them in Spain relative to population than any other country. 

Some Spaniards are becoming self-critical, blaming their economic problems on their  cultural traditions. The fear is that the European Union may end up wrecked on the rocks of Europe's finest treasures - its glorious history and the many cultures created by this history. 

The biggest shock for some people at the gathering of mostly European Oxford graduates was that Lord Patten, Oxford's Chancellor and a long-time supporter of the European Union, expressed public doubts about the future of the euro and the EU. As one person asked me rhetorically:

What is left of the EU without the euro? What is left of the euro without the EU?