William Seeds

Sir William Seeds

Sir William Seeds KCMG (born June 27, 1882 in Dublin , † November 2, 1973 in London ) was a British diplomat .

Life

Seeds studied in rugby. From September 1899 to June 1900 he spent in Saint Petersburg and studied Russian. William Seeds joined the Foreign Service in 1904 and was accredited at the Washington, DC Embassy . He worked in the embassies in Beijing, Stockholm, Athens and Lisbon. From 1919 to 1920 Seeds was a British charge d'affaires in Berlin. From November 1920 to August 1923 William Seeds was British Consul General for Bavaria in Munich .

In 1923 Seeds became British Ambassador to Colombia, and later to Venezuela, Albania and Brazil. In March 1935, Seeds called in sick, which is why he was not appointed ambassador to Lisbon for three years , and moved back to his country home in Fairfield near Lymington . Since Aretas Akers-Douglas, 2nd Viscount Chilston , had started his last ambassadorial post in Moscow in 1933 , Seeds hoped to be appointed as his successor after his retirement and took Russian lessons. On April 2, 1938, Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax , offered Seeds the ambassadorial post in Moscow, and Seeds accepted immediately. On January 28, 1939, Seeds presented its accreditation letter to Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin and Maxim Maximovich Litvinov . He stayed in office until 1940, when he retired.

literature

• Sir William Seeds, 1943

Individual evidence

1. ^ L'Angleterre et le coup d'État de Hitler in Francia , German Historical Institute Paris . Federal Ministry of Education and Science, Thorbecke, 1984
2. ↑ Sidney Aster, William Seeds: The Diplomat as Scapegoat? in Leadership and Responsibility in the Second World War

predecessor	Office	successor
Lord Herbert Hervey	British Ambassador to Colombia 1923 to 1926	Edmund Monson
Andrew Percy Bennett	British ambassador to Venezuela from 1925 to 1926	William Edmund O'Reilly
Sir Robert Hodgson	British envoy in Durrës 1926 to 1928	William Edmund O'Reilly
Victor Hay, 21st Earl of Erroll	British High Commissioner in the Rhineland May 1928 to January 1930	James Herbertson
Sir Beilby Alston	British ambassador to Brazil from 1930 to 1935	Sir Hugh Gurney
The Rt Hon. Viscount Chilston	British Ambassador to the Soviet Union January 1939 to January 1940	Richard Stafford Cripps