Alexander Cadogan

Sir Alexander George Montagu Cadogan OM GCMG KCB PC (25 November 1884–9 July 1968) was a British civil servant. He was Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs from 1938 to 1946.

Cadogan was the eighth son and youngest child of George Cadogan, 5th Earl Cadogan, and his first wife Lady Beatrix Jane Craven, and was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. He served in the Diplomatic Service from 1908 to 1950 and was Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office from 1938 to 1946, representative to the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in 1944, Britain's representative to the United Nations from 1946 to 1950. He was admitted to the Privy Council in 1946 and was later Chairman of Board of Governors of the BBC from 1952 to 1957.

Cadogan is known to have been in frequent conflict with Sir Neville Meyrick Henderson, British Ambassador to Germany, throughout 1939 over the proper stance Britain should take toward the Nazi regime, and played a significant part in the negotiations between Great Britain and Germany mediated in part by the amateur Swedish diplomat Birger Dahlerus in late August and early September, 1939. At a meeting on 27 August 1939 between Dahlerus and Neville Chamberlain, Lord Halifax, Sir Horace Wilson and Cadogan a set of proposals from Hitler were presented to the British Government, recorded by Cadogan. [Foreign Office Papers, Vol VII, Third series] Dahlerus was sent back to Berlin, re-appearing on 30 August 1939 before the same four people. Dahlerus found them highly mistrustful of Hitler's latest proposals. [Birger Dahlerus, Nuremberg testimony] Cadogan, a permanent Foreign Office official, had always been impervious to Hitler's rhetoric.

Shortly after the German attack on Poland, Dahlerus telephoned the Foreign Office with a further peace proposal, and was put through to Cadogan, who told him that nothing could now be done. Dahlerus insisted that the Cabinet be informed of his proposal; when he phoned back he was told by Cadogan that mediation while German troops were on Polish soil was out of the question. [DBrFP VII, pp474-475]

Cadogan married Lady Theodosia Louisa, daughter of Archibald Acheson, 4th Earl of Gosford, in 1912. They had one son and three daughters. He died in July 1968, aged 83.

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