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Hugh Legat

Hugh Legat (born 1909) was a British civil servant who worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and as private secretary to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain during the 1930s.

Biography[]

Hugh Legat was born in England in 1909, and he graduated from the University of Oxford in 1932, having befriended the German student Paul von Hartmann. Both friends went on to become civil servants for their respective countries, with Legat joining the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and being seconded to serve as Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's private secretary during the Sudeten crisis of 1938; he also married Pamela Legat in 1937. During the Sudeten crisis, Sir Alexander Cadogan and Sir Stewart Menzies of MI6 had Legat accompany Neville to Munich to rendezvous with Hartmann - who had secretly joined the Oster conspiracy - and retrieve an incriminating document which revealed Hitler's expansionist designs and his intention to conquer lands beyond the Sudetenland. Legat was able to retrieve the document from Hartmann, and the typist Joan Menzies hid it to prevent it from falling in the hands of SS officer Franz Sauer. However, the document came into British hands too late to dissuade Chamberlain from signing the Munich Agreement; this prevented the opposition faction in the Wehrmacht from winning internal support for a coup against Nazi Germany, and made World War II inevitable. Afterwards, Legat decided to leave the civil service for the Royal Air Force.

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