William Stewart Roddie

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William Stewart Roddie (* 1878 in Inverness ; † January 22, 1961 ) was a British officer.

Life and activity

Roddie grew up in Inverness. He was trained at the Royal Academy in Inverness. Before the First World War he lived in Leipzig and Berlin for a few years . From 1914 to 1918 he took part in the First World War. In the final year of the war he was transferred to the British Information Department . In 1919 he joined then in the news department of the then by Winston Churchill led the War Department .

A few months after the conclusion of the Versailles Treaty , Roddie - now with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel - was assigned to the Inter-Allied Military Control Commission in Germany, which was responsible for monitoring compliance with the disarmament provisions of the Versailles Treaty. In this capacity he lived in Berlin from 1920 to 1927 and during these years came into close contact with numerous leading German politicians, the military and aristocrats such as Friedrich Ebert , Gustav Noske , Walther Rathenau , Erich Ludendorff , Hans von Seeckt and Wilhelm Groener . During the Kapp putsch of March 1920, Roddie tried to influence the head of government installed by the putschists, Wolfgang Kapp , to rehabilitate the legal government.

After 1927, Roddie undertook various financial missions in the Far East and the United States on behalf of the British government. He also went on lecture tours in which he gave lectures on Germany and Central Europe and published two books on this subject.

At the end of the 1930s, the police in Nazi Germany classified Roddie as an important target: In the spring of 1940, the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people whom the Nazi surveillance apparatus considered particularly dangerous or important, which is why they were In the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht, special SS commandos that followed the occupation troops should be located and arrested with special priority.

In 1944 Roddie was assigned to the Special Service of the British Admiralty.

Fonts

  • Peace Patrol , New York 1933
  • History of Post-War Germany.

literature

  • Randolph Spencer Churchill / Martin Gilbert: Winston S. Churchill , Vol. 5, p. 501.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lothar Steinbach: Revision or fulfillment: the Versailles Treaty as a factor in German-British diplomatic relations 1920-1921 , 1972, p. 47.
  2. ^ Entry on Roddie on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London).
personal data
SURNAME Roddie, William Stewart
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British officer
DATE OF BIRTH 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Inverness
DATE OF DEATH January 22, 1961