Charles Bewley

Charles Henry Bewley,GCSG(12 July 1888 – 1969) was an Irish diplomat.

Charles Bewley

Raised in a famous DublinQuakerbusiness family, he embracedIrish Republicanismand Roman Catholicism. He was the IrishenvoytoBerlinwho reportedly thwarted efforts to obtainvisasforJewswanting to leaveNazi Germanyin the 1930s and to move to the safety of theIrish Free State.

Family and early life

Bewley was born inDublin,Ireland, into a wealthy privileged family, the eldest of four brothers. His mother was Elizabeth Eveleen Pim, whose family owned a largedepartment storein George's Street,Dublin.His father wasphysicianDr. Henry Theodore Bewley (1860-1945), related to the family that operated the successful "Bewley's cafés"chain ofcoffee housesin Dublin that is still famous today. His parents were bothQuakers,and Charles and his brothers were raised in that tradition.

He was educated at Park House, a boarding school in England. In 1901, he won a scholarship toWinchester College,where he became the LibraryPrefect.That honour was withdrawn when he declared in adebatethat "England is not a musical nation" and ridiculed theanthem"God save the King".He proceeded toNew College, Oxford,where he read Law. In 1910, he won theNewdigate Prizefor poetry.He completed his training as a barrister atKing's Inns,Dublin, and in 1914 he wascalled to the bar.

Charles' brother Kenneth also attended Oxford University. Kenneth was a career civil servant inH.M. Treasury.His younger brothers, Geoffrey and Maurice, studiedmedicineatTrinity College Dublin.

Charles Bewley was seen as an "enfant terrible". He rejected hisAnglo-Irishheritage and embracedCeltic mythologyof the kind popularised byW. B. Yeats.He spoke against the "evils of Anglicization", supported theBoersinSouth Africa,and converted toRoman Catholicism.He rejectedUnionist politicsand supported theHome Rulemovement.

Career

At the outbreak ofthe Great Warin 1914, he was in Ireland, acting as a defending barrister for many nationalists and republicans. He wroteSeán Mac Eoin's death-sentence speech. In the1918 general election,he stood, unsuccessfully, as aSinn Féincandidate. During theIrish Civil War,he took the pro-Treaty side. As a barrister, he prosecuted many anti-Treaty prisoners. At the1923 general election,he was aCumann na nGaedhealcandidate in theMayo South constituency,but he was not elected.

Between the truce in theIrish War of Independenceand theAnglo-Irish Treatybeing signed, he was Irish consul inBerlinwith responsibility for trade. He was appointed Irish ambassador to theVatican(resident minister to theHoly See) in 1929. At that time, Irish diplomatic appointments were meant to be made by the British King, but Bewley frequently flouted the diplomatic niceties by ignoring the implications of that. If anything, the complaints ofH.J. Chilton,the British representative, and ofSir Robert Clive,his successor, improved Bewley's reputation in Ireland.

In July 1933, the British Foreign Office became annoyed when thePope of Rome,Pius XI,knighted Bewley into theOrder of the Grand Cross of St Gregory the Great,because the King's agreement had not been sought. Bewley was told, with no effect, that, as a King's representative, he was not entitled to wear the decoration without royal permission.

However, the constant bickering between the Irish and British representatives to the Vatican pleased neither Dublin nor London. It paved the way for Bewley to obtain the appointment he really wanted, and he went toBerlinin July 1933. ThePresident of Germany,Hindenburg,praised his impeccable German.

Bewley's reports fromBerlinenthusiastically praisedNational SocialismandChancellorHitler.He gave interviews to German papers which were anti-British, and annoyed the British embassy in Berlin, ignoring theSilver Jubilee of George Vin 1935. With the ending of theAnglo-Irish Trade Warand the return of thetreaty ports,good relations were established between Ireland and Britain. Bewley was frequently reprimanded by Dublin, which was no longer tolerant of his anti-British jibes.

Anti-Semitism

The first indication that Bewley wasanti-Semiticcame in Berlin in 1921, where Bewley was the Irish consul for trade. The new Irish state was not yet formally recognised, and the Irish leader,Michael Collins,askedRobert Briscoe,an IRA quartermaster, to buy guns. In time, Briscoe would play an important political role and would be the first JewishLord Mayor of Dublin.Bewley and Briscoe went to a Jewish-owned music hall in theTauenzien Palast,but, after Briscoe left, it was reported that Bewley insulted Judaism and was thrown out, resulting in a drunken brawl.John Chartres,the head of the Irish Bureau, was going to take action, but theIrish Civil Warbroke out. Briscoe took the losing anti-Treaty side, while Bewley returned to Dublin, took the pro-Treaty side, and prosecuted anti-Treaty prisoners in the courts.

In March 1922,George Gavan Duffywrote toErnest Blytheopposing Bewley's appointment as an Irish envoy to Germany: "...there is a great objection to appointing him to such a post in Germany, because his semitic [sic] convictions are so pronounced that it would be very difficult for him to deal properly with all the persons and questions within the scope of an Envoy to Berlin, where the Jewish element is very strong." Gavan Duffy suggested instead thatMunichorViennamight be more suitable, "... as the same considerations would not arise in those places".

It is believed Bewley's hatred of Jews was partly influenced by the controversial teachings of Irish Catholic priestDenis Fahey.While he was serving as an envoy to Berlin, Bewley once referred to Fahey's pamphletThe Rulers of Russiawhen being interviewed by the permanent secretary of the Irish Ministry for External AffairsJoseph Walshe.

Envoy to Berlin

Bewley was the "Irish Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary" in Berlin in the crucial years from 1933 to 1939. Reading his reports to Dublin during the 1930s gives the impression that German Jews were not threatened, and that they were involved in pornography, abortion and "the international white slave traffic". That from a man responsible for processing visa applications from Jews wishing to leave Germany for Ireland. His explanation of the Nuremberg Laws was: "As the Chancellor pointed out, it amounts to the making of the Jews into a national minority; and as they themselves claim to be a separate race, they should have nothing to complain of." He reported that he had no knowledge of any "deliberate cruelty on the part of the [German] Government... towards the Jews", and criticised Irish refugee policy as "inordinately liberal, and facilitating the entry of the wrong class of people" (meaning Jews). The Irish legation in Berlin consisted of two people, Bewley and a German secretary called Frau Kamberg. She appeared more sympathetic to the Jews than Bewley.Fewer than a hundred Jews obtained Irish visas between 1933 and 1939. Bewley was dismissed from his position in 1939.

Later years

Bewley was dismissed just asWorld War IIwas breaking out, and never received a pension. However,Joseph Goebbelsgave him a job writing propaganda. For a time, Bewley worked for a Swedish news agency, which was part of Goebbels' propaganda machine.

At the end of the War he was held by British troops, having been picked up inMerano,Northern Italy, in May 1945 and held inTerni.He was carrying Irish diplomatic papers identifying him as the Irish minister to Berlin and to the Vatican.Joseph Walshe,Secretary of the Department of External Affairs, andSir John Maffey,the British diplomatic representative in independent Ireland, decided on a solution that would undermine Bewley's ego.

At that time, passports required the identification of the holder's trade or profession. Bewley was issued with a new Irish passport which had for that entry, "a person of no importance".At the end of the war, checkpoints were frequent, where was passports would be checked. Bewley never produced that passport. He was released in Rome, and apparently never left. He wrote some newspaper articles, and a biography ofHermann Göringin 1956.

In his final years, he andMonsignorHugh O'Flaherty,"the Vatican Pimpernel", who had rescued thousands of Jews and escaped POWs from the Nazis, became great friends.Charles Henry Bewley died unmarried in Rome in 1969.

Further reading

• C. Bewley,Memoirs of a Wild Goose,edited by W.J. McCormack, Dublin 1989,
• D. Keogh,Jews in 20th-Century Ireland: Refugees, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust,Cork 1998,
• Mervyn O'DriscollIreland, Germany and the Nazis: politics and diplomacy, 1919–1939Four Courts Press, Dublin 2004
• Robert Tracy,The Jews of IrelandJudaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought. Summer, 1999
• Andreas Roth,Mr Bewley in Berlin – Aspects of the Career of an Irish Diplomat, 1933–1939Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2000
• Lost report reveals our man in Berlin was Nazi apologist –Sunday Independentnewspaper article by Andrew Bushe, 26 November 2006