Eric Phipps Totally Explained

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Sir Eric Clare Edmund Phipps PC, GCB, GCMG, GCVO (October 27, 1875–August 13, 1945), was a British diplomat. Phipps was the son of Sir Constantine Edmund Henry Phipps, British Ambassador to Belgium, and Maria Jane Miller-Mundy. Henry Phipps, 1st Earl of Mulgrave, was his great-grandfather, and he was also a great-grandson of Lieutenant-General Sir Colin Campbell (politician), who was present at the Battle of Waterloo and of Rear-Admiral Sir John Hindmarsh, who was a Lieutenant on HMS Phoebe at the Battle of Trafalgar - making him probably the first person to be descended from officers who fought at both battles. He was educated at King's College, Cambridge. He then passed the competitive examination in 1899 and held a number of secretaryships to British ambassadors in Petrograd, Madrid and Paris. He was British Secretary to the Paris Peace Conference, 1919. He was also British ambassador to Berlin from 1933 to 1937 and then ambassador to Paris from 1937 until 1939. He held the Grand Cross of the Legion d'Honneur and was a commander of the Order of Leopold II of Belgium.
Phipps, in his despatches whilst ambassador to Berlin, warned the British Government about the character of Adolf Hitler's régime. On 31 January, 1934 Phipps wrote to the British Foreign Secretary, John Simon:

[Hitler's] policy is simple and straightforward. If his neighbours allow him, he'll become strong by the simplest and most direct methods. There mere fact that he's making himself unpopular abroad won't deter him, for, as he said in a recent speech, it's better to be respected and feared than to be weak and liked. If he finds that he arouses no real opposition, the tempo of his advance will increase. On the other hand, if he's vigorously opposed, he's unlikely at this stage to risk a break.

Phipps gave a further warning to Simon on 1 April, 1935:

Let us hope our pacifists at home may at length realise that the rapidly-growing monster of German militarism won't be placated by mere cooings, but will only be restrained from recourse to its ultima ratio by the knowledge that the Powers who desire peace are also strong enough to enforce it.

. During his time as Ambassador in Paris, Phipps strongly identified himself with French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet, and most of his dispatches to London reflected Bonnet's influence. On September 24, 1938 at the height of the great crisis over Czechoslovakia that was to culminate in the Munich Agreement, Phipps reported back to London "all that's best in France is against war, almost at any price" being opposed only by a a "small, but noisy and corrupt, war group".
Phipps married, firstly, Yvonne de Louvencourt, in 1907. After her death in 1909 he married, secondly, Frances Ward, daughter of Herbert Ward, in 1911. He died in August 1945, aged 69. He had six children, all by his second wife:

Lieutenant-Colonel Mervyn Phipps (1912-1983),
Lieutenant (RN) Alan Phipps, (born 1915, killed in action on Leros, 1943), whose son is Brigadier Jeremy Phipps,
Mary Phipps (1923-), married to Bonar Sykes, son of Sir Frederick Sykes and his wife, a daughter of a former British Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law,
Margaret Phipps (1925-), married to George Cary, son of the Irish novelist Joyce Cary,
John-Francis Phipps (1933-) and
William Phipps (1936-), who married Henrietta Frances Lamb (b. 1931), elder daughter of the painter Henry Lamb and his wife Lady (Margaret) Pansy Lamb (née Pakenham), sister of the 6th and 7th Earls of Longford.

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