Alexander Cadogan

Who was Alexander Cadogan?

Sir Alexander George Montagu Cadogan, OM, GCMG, KCB, PC was a British diplomat and civil servant. He was Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs from 1938 to 1946. His long tenure of the Permanent Secretary's office makes him one of the central figures of British policy before and during the Second World War. His diaries are a source of great value and give a sharp sense of the man and his life. Like most senior officials at the Foreign Office he was bitterly critical of the appeasement policies of the 1930s, whilst accepting that until British rearmament was better advanced, there were few other options. In particular he stressed that without an American commitment to joint defence against Japan, Britain would be torn between the eastern and western spheres. Conflict with Germany would automatically expose Britain's Asian Empire to Japanese aggression.