Hastings Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hastings Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay

Hastings Lionel Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay , KG , GCB , CH , DSO (born June 21, 1887 in Naini Tal , Uttar Pradesh , India , † December 17, 1965 in Broadway , Worcestershire ) was a British politician , diplomat and general .

biography

After training at Charterhouse and Sandhurst , Ismay joined the British Army in 1905 . He then served in India and Somaliland, where he fought the dervish revolt under Mohammed Abdullah Hassan .

In 1926 Ismay, who had meanwhile reached the rank of major general, was accepted into the Committee of Imperial Defense ("Committee for Reich Defense"). From 1931 to 1933 he served on the staff of the Viceroy of India Freeman Freeman-Thomas, 1st Marquess of Willingdon . From 1933 to 1940 he held numerous high offices in the War Office , most recently (from 1938) he was State Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defense. From May 1940 he served as the personal chief of staff of Prime Minister Winston Churchill (in his role as Secretary of Defense) and accompanied him on numerous trips to war zones and to conferences. In 1946 he retired from the army with the rank of general and became chief of staff of the then Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten . In January 1947, he was appointed as Baron Ismay , of Wormington in the County of Gloucester , in the hereditary nobility raised. From October 28, 1951 to March 12, 1952 he was Minister for Commonwealth Affairs in Churchill's second cabinet, from 1952 to 1957 NATO's first Secretary General . In 1960 his memoirs were published.

About the role of NATO

Ismay made the statement regarding the function of NATO for Europe “ to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down ”, which developed into a common short description for the alliance. US documents from the 1960s show that the loose phrase corresponded to the actual intention.

Operation Unthinkable

Ismay was instrumental in the planning of Operation Unthinkable , a plan of attack against the Soviet Union commissioned by Winston Churchill at the end of the Second World War .

Web links

swell

  1. ^ The London Gazette : No. 37860, p. 411 , January 21, 1947.
  2. ↑ Josef Joffe: NATO: Soldiering On , TIME, March 19, 2009
  3. ^ Daniel Schorr: With No Clear Mission, NATO Has Little Power , TIME, April 1, 2009
  4. ↑ klw: NATO in the 1960s: Fear of the Germans. In: Spiegel Online . January 5, 2019, accessed April 13, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Bob Fenton: The secret strategy to launch attack on Red Army Daily Telegraph, Issue 1124, October 1, 1998
personal data
SURNAME Ismay, Hastings, 1st Baron Ismay
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ismay, Hastings Lionel Ismay, 1st Baron (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician, diplomat and general
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Naini Valley , Uttar Pradesh , India
DATE OF DEATH December 17, 1965
Place of death Broadway , Worcestershire