Horace Wilson (civil servant)

Sir Horace John Wilson GCB GCMG CBE (23 August 1882 – 19 May 1972) was a British top government official who had a key role in the appeasement-orientated ministry of Neville Chamberlain just prior to World War II.

Wilson was born and educated in Bournemouth. He joined the British Civil Service in 1898, as a boy clerk, and attended the London School of Economics as a night student.

He rose rapidly through the Civil Service, serving in the Patent Office, War Office, and the Board of Trade. At the Board of Trade he became particularly involved in industrial relations, and moved to the Ministry of Labour in 1916. He was made CBE in 1918, CB in 1920, KCB in 1924, GCMG in 1933, and finally GCB in 1937.

His highest posts included:

In late September 1938, during the "Sudetenland crisis", Chamberlain sent Wilson as emissary to German leader Adolf Hitler. Wilson was charged with communicating to Hitler that the British Cabinet, France, and Czechoslovakia rejected Hitler's demands to annex the largely ethnic-German Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. In the course of speaking with Hitler, it was Wilson who also delivered the most significant diplomatic communication between Germany and Britain since the close of World War I: that should Germany invade Czechoslovakia and France declare war against Germany, Britain would go to war against Germany alongside France. However, Britain did not stick to this resolute stance, and instead accepted the break-up of Czechoslovakia under the Munich Agreement, damaging the historical reputation of both Chamberlain and Wilson.

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