Conservative viceroy of India and foreign secretary who gave his name to the Curzon Line and led the Allies at Lausanne
Born into an aristocratic Derbyshire family and educated at Eton and Oxford, he entered Parliament in 1885 and wrote travel books warning of a Russian threat to India. As Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905 he pursued administrative reform, but his 1905 partition of Bengal was criticised as an attempt to divide Bengali nationalism, and a major famine coincided with his tenure. In the First World War he served in Lloyd George’s war cabinet; appointed Foreign Secretary in October 1919, he gave his name to the proposed Soviet-Polish boundary, the Curzon Line. He designed the Treaty of Sèvres and, as chief Allied negotiator at Lausanne in 1922, settled the borders of Turkey. Passed over for prime minister in 1923, he died in 1925.
The appeasement architect whose bid to avoid war helped open the way to it
Returning from Munich in 1938, he declared the agreement to mean “peace for our time.”
Neville Chamberlain was a British Conservative politician whose career combined domestic administrative reform with finance before he became prime minister. Seeking to avoid another European war and gain time for rearmament, he pursued appeasement, but the strategy failed to restrain Nazi Germany's expansion. His government's acceptance of the Munich settlement in 1938, and its limited response to Soviet proposals for collective security, formed part of the international conditions surrounding the 1939 crisis and the Nazi-Soviet Pact. After declaring war on Germany following the invasion of Poland, he resigned in 1940 amid criticism of the Norway campaign.
Career timeline
1911–1915Birmingham city councillor; chair of the Town Planning Committee
1915Lord Mayor of Birmingham
1916–1917Director of National Service
1923–1924Minister of Health; Chancellor of the Exchequer
1924–1929Minister of Health
1931–1937Chancellor of the Exchequer
1937–1940Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1938–1939Led the Munich settlement and appeasement policy toward Germany
Britain's wartime prime minister who divided Europe with Stalin on a half-sheet of paper
Churchill's memoir account of the October 1944 Moscow meeting: 'I wrote on a half-sheet: Romania, Russia 90%… I pushed this across to Stalin. He took his blue pencil, made a large tick, and passed it back.' Soviet authorities denied in 1958 that Stalin accepted such a proposal.
A British statesman, army officer and writer, Churchill was born in 1874 at Blenheim Palace into the wealthy aristocratic Spencer family, of mixed English and American parentage. After army service in India, Sudan and the Boer War he entered Parliament in 1900. As a Liberal minister he was President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary, and First Lord of the Admiralty, where he oversaw the failed Gallipoli campaign; in 1924–1929 he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. Prime minister from May 1940, he led Britain through the Second World War, warned in 1946 of an 'iron curtain', and held office again in 1951–1955. An imperialist, anti-communist and opponent of Indian self-government, he remains a contested figure; he died in 1965.
At the 1945 San Francisco Conference, the foreign ministers of the four sponsoring Allied powers took turns chairing the plenary sessions, with Eden among them.
Anthony Eden was a British Conservative statesman whose First World War service reinforced his commitment to the League of Nations and collective security. He served three times as foreign secretary amid the rise of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and during the Second World War acted as Winston Churchill’s principal diplomatic lieutenant in negotiations with the Soviet Union and the other Allies over the postwar order. Representing Britain at Yalta and at the 1945 San Francisco Conference, he helped shape the emerging international institutions, yet as prime minister he pursued the Suez invasion, exposing both the limits of British imperial power and Britain’s dependence on the United States.
Career timeline
1915–1919British Army officer, Western Front
1923–1957MP for Warwick and Leamington
1931–1934Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs
1935–1938Foreign Secretary
1940–1945Foreign Secretary and War Cabinet minister
1945British representative at Yalta and the San Francisco Conference
1951–1955Foreign Secretary
1955–1957Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Conservative Party leader
A Greece expert at the boundary of resistance and empire
After the 1942 Gorgopotamos operation, he stayed in Greece rather than evacuating, building the mission that linked the resistance to Cairo.
Christopher Montague Woodhouse was a British army officer, SOE and MI6 operative, and historian of Greek politics. In occupied Greece he helped establish and later led the British Military Mission, maintaining contact with ELAS and EDES while linking the resistance to Allied strategy. His work also reveals the tension between military cooperation with a broad resistance and Britain's effort to restore the monarchy and preserve its influence after liberation. He later served as an MP and wrote extensively on modern Greece.
Career timeline
1939Enlisted in the Royal Artillery
1941Served on an SOE mission to organize resistance in Crete
1942Second-in-command of the Harling Force in Operation Harling
1942–1943Maintained liaison with ELAS and EDES through the British Military Mission
1943–1945Commanded the Allied Military Mission in Greece
1945–1946Second Secretary at the British Embassy in Athens
1959–1974MP for Oxford and ministerial office in Conservative governments
