F. A. Voigt
Encyclopedia
Frederick Augustus Voigt (1892-1957), British
journalist
and author
of German
descent, most famous for his work with the Manchester Guardian and his opposition to dictatorship
and totalitarianism
on the Europe
an Continent.
, London
, on 9 May 1892, the fourth child of Ludwig Voigt (a wine merchant) and his wife Helene Hoffmann. Both his parents had been born in Germany
, but became naturalised British subjects before his birth. He therefore grew up in a multi-lingual household, spent summer holidays in France
and Germany
and became fluent in both French
and German
.
Voigt was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School
and Birkbeck College
, London, where he at first studied biology
before abandoning the natural sciences for literature and modern languages. In 1915 he graduated with a first-class honours degree in old and modern Germanic languages
from King's College London
, and he worked briefly as a schoolmaster, teaching German, French, botany
and zoology
at the “New School”, Abbotsholme, Derbyshire
.
In 1916 Voigt was called up for military service
in the First World War and spent nearly three years in the British Army
, two of them on the Western Front
. Out of this experience came his first published work, a book of memoirs of his war service based on his diaries and letters home from the front, entitled Combed Out (1920).
In May 1919 Voigt joined the advertising department of the Manchester Guardian and the following year was dispatched by the editor, C. P. Scott
, to act as assistant to the newspaper's Berlin Correspondent, J. G. Hamilton. From 1920 until 1933 Voigt was the Manchester Guardian’s correspondent in Germany, reporting on political, social and economic conditions under the Weimar Republic
. He threw himself wholeheartedly into the vibrant cultural and social scene of Weimar Germany and developed valuable contacts at all levels of German society and particularly on the left of German politics. In 1926 he scored a journalistic coup with his disclosures about the secret collaboration of the Reichswehr
and the Soviet military authorities in direct contravention of the military clauses of the Treaty of Versailles
, disclosures that sparked a major domestic and diplomatic crisis for the German Government.
Although based in Berlin
, Voigt travelled widely throughout Germany, reporting on political and social conditions in the provinces and also ventured further afield in Central
and Eastern Europe
, taking a particular interest in the political conditions within Poland
. His particular interest was in the exposure of political repression and state terror and he caused a sensation with his reports on Polish attacks on the Ukrainian
minority in eastern Poland
.
Voigt was among the first British journalists to bring attention to the threat to Germany and Europe posed by the nascent National Socialist (Nazi
) movement and from 1930 he was an implacable opponent of Hitler and the Nazis. Nevertheless, like many British intellectuals, he failed to predict the Nazi seizure of power, confidently predicting as late as December 1932 that the German left would never allow the Nazis to take power.
Voigt was transferred from Berlin
to Paris
in the first months of 1933 and then moved back to London in September 1934 where he took up the position of diplomatic correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, a post specially created for him. However, he continued to write on Central and Eastern Europe throughout the 1930s and with the help of German émigrés and a Swiss
agent named Wolf he built up a confidential news network that made him one of the few reliable sources of information about what was really happening within Germany under the Nazi regime.
Between 1935 and 1939 Voigt broadcast fortnightly talks on foreign affairs for the BBC
and from 1938 to 1946 he was editor of The Nineteenth Century and After, and from January to June 1939 he edited a newsletter called The Arrow. His assessment of the totalitarian dictatorships, Unto Caesar, was published in 1938 and marked a shift in Voigt’s political thinking. In January 1940 he left the Manchester Guardian to join the Department of Propaganda in Enemy Countries, where he worked as German advisor to the British psychological warfare
department.
At that time, Voigt used his contacts in the Secret Intelligence Service
to help his Polish
friend Krystyna Skarbek
(subsequently also known by the nom de guerre, Christine Granville) overcome British official skepticism about her wish to help the war effort. She eventually entered upon a wartime undercover career with the Special Operations Executive
, winning fame with her exploits in Hungary, Poland and France.
After the Second World War, Voigt devoted himself to writing and published several books on foreign affairs and European politics, including Pax Britannica (1949) and The Greek Sedition (1949).
Despite not being conventionally good-looking with his thinning hair and thick glasses
, Voigt seems to have been something of a "ladies' man" and was married
three times. He married his fellow journalist, the American Margaret Goldsmith (with whom he collaborated on a biography of Paul von Hindenburg
in 1930) in 1926, but she divorced him in 1935. The same year he married Hungarian
violin
ist Janka Radnitz, with whom he had a daughter, Evelyn Elizabeth, but the marriage was eventually dissolved. In 1944 he married Annie Rachel Bennett.
Voigt died peacefully in hospital in Guildford
, Surrey
, on 8 January 1957, aged 64. At the time of his death he was working on a follow up to Unto Caesar, to be entitled In the Beginning.
”, and, as befitted the German Correspondent of a left-leaning liberal, if non-partisan, newspaper, Voigt was a champion of individual liberty
and democracy
. He worked closely with many on the left of German and Eastern European politics in the 1920s and 1930s, was a supporter of the Weimar Republic
and broadly opposed to the post-war peace settlement, which he regarded as unfair and too harsh. He was a staunch and implacable opponent of injustice and the use of coercion
and state terrorism
, a crusading journalist determined to expose the cruelty and injustice meted out to the oppressed peoples and minorities of Central and Eastern Europe. He was also sceptical about the ability of the League of Nations
to solve international disputes.
However, after the Nazi
seizure of power, Voigt became disillusioned with the German left, which he believed had ignominiously given up in the face of Nazi pressure. He came to regard the two dominant totalitarian ideologies
as being the abiding evils and threats to European civilization of the day and moved away from his former scientific
materialism
and returned to the Anglicanism
of his youth. He came to regard both Fascism
/Nazism and Communism
as pseudo-religious
ideologies that seriously threatened the essentially Christian
civilization of Europe, and could only be opposed if the Western democracies committed to defend that civilization.
After World War II
he became a leading exponent of what George Orwell
termed “neo-toryism”, regarding the maintenance of British imperial power
as an invaluable bulwark against Communism
and as being indispensable to the creation and continuation of international peace and political stability.
during the interwar years, Voigt published a number of books, including a volume of war memoirs, translations of works on German politics and foreign affairs and The Greek Sedition, a study of the international situation based on the visits he made to post-war Greece
between 1946 and 1950. However, his two major works—key to understanding his late political views—are Unto Caesar (1938) and Pax Britannica (1949).
The central thesis of Unto Caesar is that Communism and National Socialism were “revolutionary secular religions arising from the arrogant endeavour of man to transform religious promises directly into worldly reality” (Markus Huttner). Voigt argues that such ‘secular religions’ pose a threat to the fundamentals of European civilization by seeking to “render to Caesar what is God’s” and can only be defeated if the western democracies, particularly Britain, stand up and actively defend Christianity and Civilization against the totalitarian onslaught.
In Pax Britannica, Voigt set out his views as to how the post-war
world should be ordered, placing particular emphasis on the role that Britain should play in the new world order. He argued that the continuance of British imperial power was essential to stem the tide of Communist revolution and maintain peace and stability in what was termed the Third World
. Furthermore, he believed a strong Britain and a rehabilitated Germany were essential to prevent Soviet expansion in Europe, and that British foreign policy should have three main principles: the maintenance of the balance of power
in Europe
, ensuring the independence of all her neighbours and “armed strength, and readiness, upon just cause, to fight”.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
of German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
descent, most famous for his work with the Manchester Guardian and his opposition to dictatorship
Dictatorship
A dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual, the dictator. It has three possible meanings:...
and totalitarianism
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
on the Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an Continent.
Life
Voigt was born in HampsteadHampstead
Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, on 9 May 1892, the fourth child of Ludwig Voigt (a wine merchant) and his wife Helene Hoffmann. Both his parents had been born in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, but became naturalised British subjects before his birth. He therefore grew up in a multi-lingual household, spent summer holidays in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and became fluent in both French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
.
Voigt was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School
Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School
The Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School is a British independent school for boys aged 4–19. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference and of the Haileybury Group....
and Birkbeck College
Birkbeck, University of London
Birkbeck, University of London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It offers many Master's and Bachelor's degree programmes that can be studied either part-time or full-time, though nearly all teaching is...
, London, where he at first studied biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
before abandoning the natural sciences for literature and modern languages. In 1915 he graduated with a first-class honours degree in old and modern Germanic languages
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
from King's College London
King's College London
King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...
, and he worked briefly as a schoolmaster, teaching German, French, botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
and zoology
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...
at the “New School”, Abbotsholme, Derbyshire
Derbyshire
Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...
.
In 1916 Voigt was called up for military service
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
in the First World War and spent nearly three years in the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
, two of them on the Western Front
Western Front (World War I)
Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...
. Out of this experience came his first published work, a book of memoirs of his war service based on his diaries and letters home from the front, entitled Combed Out (1920).
In May 1919 Voigt joined the advertising department of the Manchester Guardian and the following year was dispatched by the editor, C. P. Scott
C. P. Scott
Charles Prestwich Scott was a British journalist, publisher and politician. Born in Bath, Somerset, he was the editor of the Manchester Guardian from 1872 until 1929 and its owner from 1907 until his death...
, to act as assistant to the newspaper's Berlin Correspondent, J. G. Hamilton. From 1920 until 1933 Voigt was the Manchester Guardian’s correspondent in Germany, reporting on political, social and economic conditions under the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
. He threw himself wholeheartedly into the vibrant cultural and social scene of Weimar Germany and developed valuable contacts at all levels of German society and particularly on the left of German politics. In 1926 he scored a journalistic coup with his disclosures about the secret collaboration of the Reichswehr
Reichswehr
The Reichswehr formed the military organisation of Germany from 1919 until 1935, when it was renamed the Wehrmacht ....
and the Soviet military authorities in direct contravention of the military clauses of the Treaty of Versailles
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...
, disclosures that sparked a major domestic and diplomatic crisis for the German Government.
Although based in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Voigt travelled widely throughout Germany, reporting on political and social conditions in the provinces and also ventured further afield in Central
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
and Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
, taking a particular interest in the political conditions within Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. His particular interest was in the exposure of political repression and state terror and he caused a sensation with his reports on Polish attacks on the Ukrainian
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
minority in eastern Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
.
Voigt was among the first British journalists to bring attention to the threat to Germany and Europe posed by the nascent National Socialist (Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
) movement and from 1930 he was an implacable opponent of Hitler and the Nazis. Nevertheless, like many British intellectuals, he failed to predict the Nazi seizure of power, confidently predicting as late as December 1932 that the German left would never allow the Nazis to take power.
Voigt was transferred from Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in the first months of 1933 and then moved back to London in September 1934 where he took up the position of diplomatic correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, a post specially created for him. However, he continued to write on Central and Eastern Europe throughout the 1930s and with the help of German émigrés and a Swiss
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
agent named Wolf he built up a confidential news network that made him one of the few reliable sources of information about what was really happening within Germany under the Nazi regime.
Between 1935 and 1939 Voigt broadcast fortnightly talks on foreign affairs for the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
and from 1938 to 1946 he was editor of The Nineteenth Century and After, and from January to June 1939 he edited a newsletter called The Arrow. His assessment of the totalitarian dictatorships, Unto Caesar, was published in 1938 and marked a shift in Voigt’s political thinking. In January 1940 he left the Manchester Guardian to join the Department of Propaganda in Enemy Countries, where he worked as German advisor to the British psychological warfare
Psychological warfare
Psychological warfare , or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations , have been known by many other names or terms, including Psy Ops, Political Warfare, “Hearts and Minds,” and Propaganda...
department.
At that time, Voigt used his contacts in the Secret Intelligence Service
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
to help his Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
friend Krystyna Skarbek
Krystyna Skarbek
Krystyna Skarbek, GM, OBE, Croix de guerre was a Polish Special Operations Executive agent. She became celebrated especially for her daring exploits in intelligence and irregular-warfare missions in Nazi-occupied Poland and France....
(subsequently also known by the nom de guerre, Christine Granville) overcome British official skepticism about her wish to help the war effort. She eventually entered upon a wartime undercover career with the Special Operations Executive
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...
, winning fame with her exploits in Hungary, Poland and France.
After the Second World War, Voigt devoted himself to writing and published several books on foreign affairs and European politics, including Pax Britannica (1949) and The Greek Sedition (1949).
Despite not being conventionally good-looking with his thinning hair and thick glasses
Glasses
Glasses, also known as eyeglasses , spectacles or simply specs , are frames bearing lenses worn in front of the eyes. They are normally used for vision correction or eye protection. Safety glasses are a kind of eye protection against flying debris or against visible and near visible light or...
, Voigt seems to have been something of a "ladies' man" and was married
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
three times. He married his fellow journalist, the American Margaret Goldsmith (with whom he collaborated on a biography of Paul von Hindenburg
Paul von Hindenburg
Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg , known universally as Paul von Hindenburg was a Prussian-German field marshal, statesman, and politician, and served as the second President of Germany from 1925 to 1934....
in 1930) in 1926, but she divorced him in 1935. The same year he married Hungarian
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
ist Janka Radnitz, with whom he had a daughter, Evelyn Elizabeth, but the marriage was eventually dissolved. In 1944 he married Annie Rachel Bennett.
Voigt died peacefully in hospital in Guildford
Guildford
Guildford is the county town of Surrey. England, as well as the seat for the borough of Guildford and the administrative headquarters of the South East England region...
, Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
, on 8 January 1957, aged 64. At the time of his death he was working on a follow up to Unto Caesar, to be entitled In the Beginning.
Politics
Voigt was described by his former tutor in 1919 as “a first-rate and rather old-fashioned liberalLiberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
”, and, as befitted the German Correspondent of a left-leaning liberal, if non-partisan, newspaper, Voigt was a champion of individual liberty
Liberty
Liberty is a moral and political principle, or Right, that identifies the condition in which human beings are able to govern themselves, to behave according to their own free will, and take responsibility for their actions...
and democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
. He worked closely with many on the left of German and Eastern European politics in the 1920s and 1930s, was a supporter of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
and broadly opposed to the post-war peace settlement, which he regarded as unfair and too harsh. He was a staunch and implacable opponent of injustice and the use of coercion
Coercion
Coercion is the practice of forcing another party to behave in an involuntary manner by use of threats or intimidation or some other form of pressure or force. In law, coercion is codified as the duress crime. Such actions are used as leverage, to force the victim to act in the desired way...
and state terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
, a crusading journalist determined to expose the cruelty and injustice meted out to the oppressed peoples and minorities of Central and Eastern Europe. He was also sceptical about the ability of the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
to solve international disputes.
However, after the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
seizure of power, Voigt became disillusioned with the German left, which he believed had ignominiously given up in the face of Nazi pressure. He came to regard the two dominant totalitarian ideologies
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
as being the abiding evils and threats to European civilization of the day and moved away from his former scientific
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
and returned to the Anglicanism
Anglicanism
Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures. The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the English...
of his youth. He came to regard both Fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
/Nazism and Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
as pseudo-religious
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
ideologies that seriously threatened the essentially Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
civilization of Europe, and could only be opposed if the Western democracies committed to defend that civilization.
After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
he became a leading exponent of what George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
termed “neo-toryism”, regarding the maintenance of British imperial power
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
as an invaluable bulwark against Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
and as being indispensable to the creation and continuation of international peace and political stability.
Major works
In addition to his prolific journalismJournalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
during the interwar years, Voigt published a number of books, including a volume of war memoirs, translations of works on German politics and foreign affairs and The Greek Sedition, a study of the international situation based on the visits he made to post-war Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
between 1946 and 1950. However, his two major works—key to understanding his late political views—are Unto Caesar (1938) and Pax Britannica (1949).
The central thesis of Unto Caesar is that Communism and National Socialism were “revolutionary secular religions arising from the arrogant endeavour of man to transform religious promises directly into worldly reality” (Markus Huttner). Voigt argues that such ‘secular religions’ pose a threat to the fundamentals of European civilization by seeking to “render to Caesar what is God’s” and can only be defeated if the western democracies, particularly Britain, stand up and actively defend Christianity and Civilization against the totalitarian onslaught.
In Pax Britannica, Voigt set out his views as to how the post-war
Post-war
A post-war period or postwar period is the interval immediately following the ending of a war and enduring as long as war does not resume. A post-war period can become an interwar period or interbellum when a war between the same parties resumes at a later date...
world should be ordered, placing particular emphasis on the role that Britain should play in the new world order. He argued that the continuance of British imperial power was essential to stem the tide of Communist revolution and maintain peace and stability in what was termed the Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
. Furthermore, he believed a strong Britain and a rehabilitated Germany were essential to prevent Soviet expansion in Europe, and that British foreign policy should have three main principles: the maintenance of the balance of power
Balance of power in international relations
In international relations, a balance of power exists when there is parity or stability between competing forces. The concept describes a state of affairs in the international system and explains the behavior of states in that system...
in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, ensuring the independence of all her neighbours and “armed strength, and readiness, upon just cause, to fight”.