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Hector Davies: A Liberal at War
Author(s) -
JEFFREYSJONES RHODRI
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.12
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1468-229X
pISSN - 0018-2648
DOI - 10.1111/1468-229x.12372
Subject(s) - politics , diplomacy , german , memoir , economic history , spanish civil war , left wing politics , world war ii , law , political science , history , archaeology
Extrapolating from a particular case, the article argues that experience of the Second World War was capable of broadening combatants’ minds, and of helping to shape their post‐war attitudes. Before the war, Hector Davies was a Bank of England official. From 1940 he served in Nigeria and Chad, where he was responsible for British military liaison with the Free French Equatorial commander, Jacques Leclerc. After a period in Gaza and Cairo, he joined the French division of SOE's mission near Algiers, and was infiltrated into the Tarn in 1944, there receiving accolades for his diplomacy and bravery. His mainly unpublished and hitherto unexploited memoirs and scrapbook help especially to rectify an evidential gap created by the incineration of official SOE/Massingham/France records. In 1945, he moved to Austria and Germany to help with economic reconstruction, and after the war was active in Liberal Party politics. Davies shared some common prejudices at the outset of the war. In the course of the conflict, he came to support the idea of African federal autonomy, and defended the record of the maquis including its leftist component. After the war and at a time of semi‐racial prejudice against the defeated powers, he promoted the principle of German economic reconstruction.