Sir John Wheeler Wheeler-Bennett (13 October 1902 – 9 December 1975) was a conservative English historian of German and diplomatic history, and the official biographer of King George VI. He was well known in his lifetime, and his interpretation of the role of the German Army influenced a number of British historians. Early life Wheeler-Bennett was born in Kent, the son of the prosperous importer John Wheeler-Bennett and his Canadian-born wife, Christine ( McNutt). He was educated at Wellington House school in Westgate on Sea and then at Malvern College and did not regard his youth as a happy one. His health was poor; he did not attend university or join the military. In the early 1920s he worked as an aide to Major-General Sir Neill Malcolm in the Middle East and Berlin, then from 1923-24 was in the publicity department of the League of Nations in Geneva. After that, he was appointed as director of the information department of the Royal Institute of International Affairs and was editor of its Bulletin of International News between 1924 and 1932. Wheeler-Bennett and Pre-War Nazi Germany Wheeler-Bennett lived in Germany between 1927 and 1934 and witnessed at first-hand the final years of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazi Germany. During his time in Berlin, he became an unofficial agent and advisor to the British government on international events. He also enjoyed some success as a horse-breeder. In 1933, Wheeler-Bennett told the Royal Institute of International Affairs: Wheeler-Bennett abandoned this view after reading Mein Kampf, which caused him to recognize that Hitler had more radical goals. He published a biography of Generalfeldmarschall Paul von Hindenburg, and his book The Forgotten Peace was a study of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In the years before the Second World War, Wheeler-Bennett befriended or was on speaking terms with a number of significant people in Europe. He had contact with Heinrich Brüning, Basil Liddell Hart, Franz von Papen, Lord Tweedsmuir, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, Leon Trotsky, Hans von Seeckt, Max Hoffmann, Lewis Bernstein Namier, Benito Mussolini, Robert Bruce Lockhart, Karl Radek, Sir Robert Vansittart, Kurt von Schleicher, Isaiah Berlin, Tomáš Masaryk, Engelbert Dollfuss, the former Kaiser Wilhelm II, Adam von Trott zu Solz, Louis Barthou, Lord Lothian, Winston Churchill, and Dr Edvard Beneš. After the war, Wheeler-Bennett was a critic of Appeasement, and ten years after the Munich Agreement he wrote a book condemning it. Wartime