Ronald Wingate
Sir Ronald Wingate Tripartite Gold Commission |
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Sir Ronald Evelyn Leslie Wingate, 2nd Baronet,
During the First World War, Wingate was given a special assignment with the
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Wingate served with the Ministry of Economic Warfare in Africa and Southeast Asia. Then, in 1942, he joined the
After the war, Wingate served as the British delegate on the
Early life
Wingate was the son of
Wingate left Bradfield and entered
In 1913, Wingate began his ICS career as an Assistant Commissioner in
First World War
At the beginning of the First World War, Wingate immediately volunteered to serve in Europe, but like most other members of the ICS, he was turned down.
In addition to his work in traditional political matters, Wingate worked with Percy Cox, Gertrude Bell and other British agents on several special operations. Most notably, he helped to bribe a Turkish army officer who had cut off a British force near Kut and helped keep the Ottomans out of Najaf.[18] Wingate also helped to foil a plot by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) to promote an uprising in Najaf by ordering one of his aides to get the CUP agent drunk, leading him to reveal the details of the plot.[23]
First term as Consul to Oman
After the war, in 1919, Wingate was appointed British Consul in
Wingate initially found the Sultan,
Having acquired the power to negotiate with the Imam and the tribesmen, Wingate needed to reassert the power of the Sultanate and find some leverage to force the Imam into negotiations. He began by collecting unpaid customs duties in order to raise more revenue for the Sultan, and sent emissaries to Isa Bin Salih, the Imam's chief deputy.
Wingate agreed to the negotiations, and scheduled a meeting at the coastal town of
Kashmir and second term in Oman
In July 1921, Wingate contracted malaria and was given six weeks of medical leave, which he decided to spend in Kashmir. While in Kashmir, Wingate visited Joe Windham, the British Resident, who offered to find him a job in India.[41] Wingate went back to Oman, but returned to Kashmir in November as a special assistant to the Resident.[42]
In Kashmir, Wingate first served in Poonch, but the post of Assistant Resident in Poonch was abolished in December.[43] Wingate then was moved to an assignment in Srinagar. Srinagar was the site of a large club for British military officers and civil servants, and Wingate, finding that he had "a minimum of work", spent much of his time socializing and playing golf.[44] In January 1923, Wingate was ordered back to Oman to serve as Consul a second time.[11][45]
Wingate's second term as consul was relatively uneventful and lasted only until October when he again contracted malaria.[42][45] The only major event came when the citizens of the town of Sur refused to pay their customs duties. In order to coerce the town into payment, Wingate sent a detachment of 50 soldiers with machine guns to the town. Under the cover of darkness, the soldiers landed on the narrow spit of land connecting Sur to the mainland, cutting the town off from its water supply. The people of the town made no attempt to resist militarily and after two days without water, they paid the customs dues.[46]
Rajputana and Baluchistan
Wingate left Oman after contracting malaria in October and returned to England for medical care. After several weeks in a nursing home, Wingate had recovered sufficiently to visit St. Moritz for New Years,[47] but he spent nearly a year on leave much of it golfing at Muirfield.[48] Then, in September 1924, he returned to India to serve as secretary to the agent of the Governor-General of Rajputana, the chief British official in Rajputana.[11][49] In that capacity, Wingate accompanied the agent on all of his state visits, and encountered for the first time what he considered "real India," rather than the frontier regions in which he had previously served.[50]
In 1927, Wingate moved to the same position in Baluchistan.[11] Soon thereafter, in 1928, he was appointed the Deputy Commissioner and Political Agent in Quetta and Pishin.[11][51] Wingate would later call his years in Quetta, "the happiest time that [he] spent in India," and greatly enjoyed the autonomy and respect he was granted there.[52] While serving in Quetta, Wingate established a new water supply to the city,[52] and frequently became involved in matters relating to security and criminal justice.[53]
While in Quetta, Wingate ordered the arrest of several leaders of the
Indian government
In 1932, Wingate was appointed the Deputy Secretary of the Foreign and Political Department of the Indian government. As India was in the middle of reforms aimed at eventual independence, the result of the report of the Simon Commission, Wingate found the period a very interesting time to be in the high levels of the government. His first job was to help integrate the princely states into federation with the rest of India in preparation for independence.[58] A particular challenge in the process involved determining how many representatives each of the states would have in the Constituent Assembly of India. Wingate proposed "a scheme based upon permutations and combinations of the number of guns which were fired to salute the categories of Indian princes".[59] The idea was acclaimed "as a stroke of genius" and adopted by the government.[59]
In May 1935, Wingate was granted a year's leave and went to Vichy for a much needed vacation with his wife. While in Vichy, Wingate heard of the terrible 1935 Quetta earthquake and returned immediately to England to see if his services were required by the government.[60] Because of his loyalty to Quetta, Wingate volunteered to return there immediately. He was not asked to return immediately, but in October (after less than half of his promised leave), Wingate was ordered to return to India and become the Revenue Commissioner of Baluchistan.[11][61]
Upon returning to Quetta, Wingate was saddened to find that most of his friends and acquaintances in the city had been killed by earthquake, and he spent the first six weeks of his time in the city helping to remove "four hundred smashed and disintegrating corpses a day" from the ruins of the city.
Wingate spent the next year traveling throughout Europe, and in early 1939, he rented a flat on the Chelsea Embankment, where he planned to live with his wife. He spent his time exploring London and soon began planning to run for a seat in House of Commons as the member from his constituency was planning to retire. After the outbreak of the Second World War, however, the member of parliament decided not to retire, and Wingate abandoned his hopes at politics, deciding that he would "have been quite useless as a Member of Parliament."[65]
Second World War
With the outbreak of the Second World War, Wingate was assigned to the Ministry of Economic Warfare, working in Southeast Asia and Africa and granted the rank of
Early in 1943, Wingate and Bevan devised
Wingate participated in the planning for many deceptions, including Operation Mincemeat's sister, codenamed
The Germans couldn't fail to notice Allied plans for an invasion of France. So Wingate devised a deception to mirror Overlord codenamed Royal Flush, which recommended that they approach three neutral countries: Spain, Sweden and Turkey to ask for their assistance with landings in Southern France. The Allies hoped that the Spanish in particular would pass this information along to the Germans, who would then expect landings in southern France, rather than in Normandy. The plan proved greatly successful; the Spanish passed the information to the Germans and even agreed to provide humanitarian aid for soldiers wounded in the landings. After the Normandy landings, the British used the Spanish for further deception by replying that they no longer needed Spanish assistance as the Normandy landings had been so successful that the plans for the south of France had been canceled. The Spanish reported this information to the Germans, helping to deceive them about the actual landings in the South of France in August 1944.[75] On his at back from D Division[a] [clarification needed]
From India he flew into Cairo Rear HQ with
At the end of the war, Wingate was chosen by the Combined Chiefs of Staff to write an official history of Allied deception during the war. The report, which has been described as "urbane, literate and readable" dealt more with the British than the Americans, but provided an excellent reference and was approved by a conference in London in June 1947.[77] Like other reports of the Allied deception strategies, the report was kept secret for many years as Wingate explained: "We wanted no articles in the Reader's Digest about how the Allies had outwitted the German General Staff. It was felt we might have to take on the Russian General Staff."[78]
Later life and publications
After the war, Wingate served on the British delegation to the
In his later life, Wingate also wrote several books, beginning with Wingate of the Sudan, a biography of his father published in 1955. Next, Wingate wrote his own memoirs, Not in the Limelight, published in 1959. Finally, in 1970, he wrote Lord Ismay, a biography of
Wingate of the Sudan was a fairly short biography, primarily based on private correspondence and diaries, to which Wingate naturally had access.
Wingate named his memoirs, Not in the Limelight, as a reference to his own career, perpetually around significant events but rarely playing a central role in them. Olaf Caroe wrote that the book was "engaging" with "flashes of shrewdness" and "a sense of wit". Caroe and others also praised the various intriguing details which Wingate revealed about both colonial India and the Second World War, for example Wingate's revelations about the Treaty of Seeb.[86]
Wingate's final book, Lord Ismay: A Biography was released in 1970. The book was "an adulatory biography" which made Wingate's personal respect for Ismay quite clear.[14] As such, the book stood in contrast to Ismay's own memoirs which were "modest and discreet." The book was well received, and Brian Porter wrote in International Affairs that it was a "welcome contribution to recent history."[87]
Wingate died on August 31, 1978, at the age of 88.[14]
Notes
- SACSEA- 14 Mar 1945 to 4 Jun 1945.
- ^ Brown, p. 8
- ^ Wingate, p. 14
- ^ Wingate, p. 13
- ^ Wingate, p. 15
- ^ Wingate, pp. 15–16
- ^ Namier, p. 91
- ISBN 0-312-87746-3.
- ^ Wingate, p. 22
- ^ Wingate, p. 27
- ^ Wingate, p. 31
- ^ ISBN 0-313-29232-9.
- ^ Wingate, p. 33
- ^ Wingate, p. 35
- ^ a b c d "Sir Ronald Wingate". The Times. 2 September 1978. p. 14f.
- ^ a b Wingate, p. 38
- ^ Wingate, p. 39
- ^ a b Wingate, p. 40
- ^ a b Brown, pp. 271–272
- ^ Wingate, p. 48
- ^ Wingate, p. 57
- ^ Wingate, pp.59–60
- ^ a b Holt, p. 194
- ^ Wingate, p. 67
- ^ Owtram, p. 49
- ^ Wingate, p. 78
- ^ Wingate, p. 81
- ^ Wingate, p. 83
- ^ Peterson, p. 76
- ^ Wingate, pp. 86–87
- ^ Wingate, p. 84
- ^ Wingate, p. 86
- ^ Owtram, p. 50
- ^ a b Wingate, p. 87
- ^ Wingate, p. 88
- ^ Wingate, p. 89
- ^ Wingate, p. 90
- ^ Carty, p. 95
- ^ Townsend, p. 50
- ^ Whelan, p. 128
- ^ Wingate, p. 92
- ^ Wingate, pp. 104–105
- ^ a b Wingate, p. 105
- ^ Wingate, p. 109–110
- ^ Wingate, p. 111
- ^ a b Wingate, p. 112
- ^ Wingate, pp. 105 – 106
- ^ Wingate, pp. 112–113
- ^ Wingate, p. 113 – 114
- ^ Wingate, p. 114
- ^ Wingate, p. 115
- ^ Wingate, p. 127
- ^ a b Wingate, p. 128
- ^ Wingate, pp. 128–129
- ^ Wingate, p. 129
- ^ Wingate, p. 130
- ^ Wingate, pp. 130–131
- ^ Wingate, p. 135
- ^ Wingate, p. 139
- ^ a b Wingate, p. 141
- ^ Wingate, pp. 142 – 143
- ^ Wingate, p. 143
- ^ Wingate, p. 144
- ^ a b c Wingate, p. 145
- ISBN 0-19-821574-6.
- ^ Wingate, p. 154
- ^ "No. 34931". The London Gazette (Supplement). 23 August 1940. p. 5211.
- ^ Brown, p. 269
- ^ Crowdy, p. 150
- ^ a b Brown, p. 274
- ^ Russell, p. 195
- ^ Brown, p. 437
- ^ Brown, p. 436
- ^ Crowdy, p. 203
- ^ Crowdy, pp. 226 – 227
- ^ Crowdy, pp. 289–290
- ^ Holt, pp.553, 640, 647.
- ^ Holt, p. 784
- ^ Brown, p. 804
- ^ The National Archives of Britain. "Series details T 294". Retrieved 29 May 2009.
- ^ "News in Brief". The Times. 22 November 1958. p. 8D.
- ^ "No. 41589". The London Gazette (Supplement). 30 December 1958. p. 3.
- ^ "Imperial Continental Gas Association". The Times. 4 July 1953. p. 10D.
- ^ "Imperial Continental Gas Association". The Times. 1 July 1967. p. 18A.
- JSTOR 557856.
- JSTOR 4322858.
- JSTOR 2609344.
- JSTOR 2614717.
References
- Brown, Anthony Cave (1975). Bodyguard of Lies. New York: Harper and Row. ISBN 0-06-010551-8.
- Carty, Anthony (2009). "The Practice of International Law". In Armstrong, David; Brunée, Jutta (eds.). Routledge Handbook of International Law. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0-415-41876-3.
- Crowdy, Terry (2008). Deceiving Hitler. Oxford: Osprey. ISBN 978-1-84603-135-9.
- Holt, Thaddeus (2007). The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War. Skyhorse Publishing. ISBN 1-60239-142-4.
- Namier, Julia (1971). Lewis Namier: A Biography. London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-211706-8.
- Owtram, Francis (2004). A Modern History of Oman. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 1-86064-617-4.
- Peterson, J.E. (1978). Oman in the Twentieth Century. London: Croom Helm. ISBN 0-85664-629-6.
- Russell, Francis (1981). The Secret War. Time Life Books. ISBN 0-8094-2547-5.
- Townsend, John (1977). Oman: The Making of the Modern State. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0-85664-446-3.
- Whelan, John (1984). Oman: a MEED practical guide. Taylor and Francis. ISBN 0-946510-02-4.
- Wingate, Ronald (1959). Not in the Limelight. London: Hutchinson of London.