Charles Corbin
André Charles Corbin was a French diplomat who served as French ambassador to the United Kingdom before and during the early part of the Second World War from 1933 to 27 June 1940.
Early life
He was born in Paris on 4 December 1881. He was the son of Paul Corbin, an industrialist. He studied at the Collège Stanislas de Paris, a private Catholic school in which the father of Charles de Gaulle taught. He continued his education at the Faculté des Lettres at the Sorbonne.Diplomatic career
Early roles
Corbin began his diplomatic career as an attaché in 1906. He was a protégé of Alexis St. Léger, the Secretary-General of the Quai d'Orsay from 1932 to 1940. Corbin was part of an elite group of diplomats whose careers were sponsored by St. Léger that also included René Massigli, Robert Coulondre, Émile Naggiar and François Charles-Roux. From 1906 to 1912, he was stationed in Rome, Italy. In 1920, he was appointed head of the press bureau of the French Foreign Ministry at the Quai d'Orsay, in Paris. He made many British friends; he spoke English fluently and had a profound sympathy for Britain and British ways. In 1923, he was stationed in Madrid, Spain as a counsellor. From 1924 to 1929, he held various senior roles within the French Foreign Ministry.Image:1929-12-24, La Voz, Monsieur Corbin, Sancha.jpg|thumb|An illustration of Corbin in 1929, during his posting as French ambassador to Spain|right
Corbin served as the French ambassador to Spain from 1929 to 1931. On 17 April 1931, he communicated France's recognition of the newly pronounced Second Spanish Republic to the Provisional Government, helping legitimise the new regime and prompting a wave of recognition by other countries.
Corbin served as French ambassador to Belgium from 1931 to 1933. David Owen Kieft described him as "a good example of French condescension towards Belgium", noting that "whenever the Belgians asked questions about their obligations to France , Corbin wrote them off as a response to Flemish agitation and failed to recognize that they reflected also the genuine misgivings of professional diplomats and soldiers". Belgium ultimately withdrew from the Accord and adopted a policy of neutrality in October 1936.
Ambassador in London
Chasing the "continental commitment"
Corbin was assigned to London as ambassador in 1933. He arrived in London on 13 March 1933 and presented his credentials as the ambassador of the republic to King George V at Buckingham Palace the same day. Corbin was a very close friend of St. Léger and shared his anti-appeasement views. Corbin's knowledge of economic affairs enabled him to arrange and preside skillfully over meetings of French and British civil servants between 1934 and 1939, while the two nations were preparing for war with Germany. The main purpose of Corbin's ambassadorship was to secure the "continental commitment", which was the phrase used to describe having a British commitment to defend France from Germany by sending another expeditionary force on the same scale as in the First World War. In turn, the French desire for the "continental commitment" was due to Germany's greater population, which led to the French to look towards the British empire as a way to even the odds. In the event of war, Germany could mobilise 17 million young men for war while the France could only mobilise 6 million young men. It was generally accepted by the French that France needed the "continental commitment" to have a chance of defeating the Reich. The "continental commitment" was the opposite of the "limited liability" defense policy that formed the basis of British rearmament until 1939. Under the "limited liability" doctrine, the majority of the defence budget went to the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy while the British Army was to be kept so small as to rule out the "continental commitment" ever being made again. Under the "limited liability" doctrine, the British Army was to be an all-volunteer force intended to serve as a glorified colonial police force that would be strong enough to put down any uprisings in the colonies, but not to fight a major war with a nation like Germany.The first major crisis in Anglo-French relations occurred in June 1934, when French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou attempted to create an "Eastern Locarno", a counterpart to the Locarno Treaties of 1925-26 guaranteeing the borders of Western Europe for Eastern Europe with the intent of deter Adolf Hitler from aggression in Eastern Europe. The real purpose of the "Eastern Locarno" was to bring the Soviet Union into a front meant to deter Germany; Barthou frankly told Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinov at a meeting in Geneva on 18 May 1934 that if Germany refused to join the "Eastern Locarno" as expected, France would sign a military alliance with the Soviet Union. Barthou's plans to enlist the Soviet Union as an ally against Germany was extremely unpopular in Britain with Corbin reporting that most British newspapers portrayed the Soviets as a menace and Barthou as reckless and irresponsible for wanting to bring the Soviet Union into an anti-German front. On 14 June 1934, Corbin met the Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon, who was openly hostile to the French plan for an "Eastern Locarno" and the Permanent Undersecretary, Sir Robert "Van" Vansittart, who was mostly silent during the meeting.
A major dilemma for French decisionmakers in the 1930s was that it was felt in Paris that France could not defeat Germany in another war without Britain, but at the same time, Britain until 1939 was opposed to security commitments in Eastern Europe, where France had a number of allies. The issue of the "Eastern Locarno" was considered so important that on 9–10 July 1934 a French delegation consisting of Barthou, Corbin, the Secretary-General of the Quai d'Orsay Alexis St. Léger, the Political Director René Massigli, and Roland de Margerie met in London with Simon, Vansittart, Sir Anthony Eden, Orme Sargent and Lord Stanhope. The meeting went badly with Simon stating his belief that Hitler was a man of peace and wanted only to revise the "unjust" Treaty of Versailles, and once that was achieved, would live in harmony with all his neighbors. Simon ridiculed French fears of the Third Reich, and when Barthou said an "Eastern Locarno" was necessary to protect France and its allies in Eastern Europe, Simon incredulously replied, "To protect yourselves from Germany?" Barthou, known as one of the more tougher French politicians, refused to yield to Simon's objections while St. Léger and Corbin were more conciliatory. St. Léger spoke of the "fundamental importance that France attached to her friendship with England. She does not want to do anything against Great Britain. Better still, the French government does not wish to get into anything without Great Britain".
When the French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval and the Premier Pierre-Étienne Flandin visited London in February 1935 to discuss the issue of the increasing open German violations of the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles, the duo left Paris with no agenda beyond producing an agreement that would not cause the Flandin government to lose a vote of no-confidence in the Assemblée nationale. Concerned that Laval and Flandin were taking too short term of a view, Corbin rushed out to meet them when they landed in Dover and told them that the British public were terrified of the potential of strategic bombing to destroy entire cities. Corbin argued that given the fear of strategic bombing in Britain that a French offer to impose limitations on air forces might compel the British government to agree, which would thus lead to a common Anglo-French front against Germany, which was barely trying to hide the existence of the Luftwaffe. Laval and Flandin took up Corbin's suggestion for an "air pact" to ban strategic bombing, only to find that the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald was a man whose mental capacity had seriously declined as he proved incapable of focusing his thoughts on any issue for a sustained period of time. MacDonald approved of the idea of an "air pact", but by this time was no longer mentally capable of deciding just what he precisely he wanted. On 17 March 1935, Hitler finally dropped the pretense and admitted in public the existence of the Luftwaffe as he stated that his government no longer intended to abide by the Treaty of Versailles. Simon sent off a formal protest to Berlin against this violation of the Treaty of Versailles without consulting the French. Simon gave two different explanations for his actions, telling Laval in a letter that he needed to consult Parliament while telling Corbin that he thought he would look weak as Foreign Secretary if he were seen consulting with allies.
Making friends in London
A man of great charm, distinguished appearance and elegant manners who was fluent in English, Corbin was a favorite of the British Establishment and a dinner invitation with him was a great and much sought after honor. Corbin was such an Anglophile that within the Quai d'Orsay he was known as "the English ambassador to the Court of St. James". Corbin in his dispatches to Paris made clear his personal preference for anti-appeasement Conservative MPs by often favorably mentioning Winston Churchill, Leo Amery, Alfred Duff Cooper, General Edward Spears, and Sir Anthony Eden together with the Francophile National Labour MP Harold Nicolson. Corbin noted in his dispatches to Paris a connection between Francophilia and an anti-appeasement stance by commenting that those MPs most inclined to be Francophiles like Churchill, Duff Cooper, Spears, Amery and Nicolson were the ones most likely to be opposed to appeasement. Through Nicolson and his wife, the novelist Lady Vita Sackville-West, Corbin was well connected to the British aristocracy, but Corbin found the bohemian Sackville-West not to match his idea about what a British aristocrat should be like. The French historian Jean-Baptiste Duroselle wrote that Corbin's dispatches from London were not of the same literary quality as those of André François-Poncet, the French ambassador in Berlin from 1931 to 1938, whose dispatches are regarded as classics of French writing as he produced a memorably laced-in-acid picture of German society, but Corbin's dispatches were still models of elegant, precise French favored by the Quai d'Orsay, and there was much to be learned about British politics and high society from 1933 to 1940 from reading Corbin's dispatches. Duroselle described Corbin as a man with a very legalistic mind, who favored precise language and was a stickler for details.The British official that Corbin was most close to was Sir Robert "Van" Vansittart, the francophile Permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign Office between 1930 and 1937, whom Corbin called a true friend of France. Vansittart sometimes leaked material to Corbin in attempts to sabotage his government's policies. Corbin during his time in London was usually frustrated by the widespread attitude in Britain that the Treaty of Versailles was a French-designed "Carthaginian peace" that was far too harsh on Germany and that it was the French who were the principle trouble-makers in Europe by seeking to uphold the treaty. He founded his Anglophilia severely tested by the anti-Versailles and anti-French views held by much of the British people and Establishment.
In his private conversations with Vansittart, Corbin often vented his frustration with the tendency of so many in Britain to see Germany as the wronged nation, the "victim of Versailles" that Britain should help. In the same way, Corbin with his love of precision was exasperated by the usually vague assurances of British politicians and officials, who told him that Britain wanted to be a friend of France, was opposed to any nation dominating Europe and wanted to avoid another war and that aspects of the international system created by the Treaty of Versailles needed to be revised in the favor of Germany. For his part, Corbin in his usual polite and gentlemanly way made clear his disagreement with the direction of British foreign policy and that he supported an Anglo-French alliance to uphold the system created by the Treaty of Versailles against efforts of Germany to challenge the system. When the Spanish Civil War began, the Socialist French premier Léon Blum allowed French military aid to the Spanish Republic. Corbin advised Blum against aid for the Spanish Republic, arguing that Britain was solidly against aid to Spain and France could not afford a rift with Britain.