Robert Rothschild

Baron Robert Rothschild (16 December 1911, in Brussels – 3 December 1998, in London) was a Belgian diplomat. He helped to draft the Treaty of Rome of 1957, the foundation of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1958. Biography His father, a businessman of German-Jewish descent, descended from Moses Amschel Bauer, of Frankfurt am Main, whose son Mayer Amschel Rothschild, together with his five sons, founded the Rothschild banking dynasty. Robert decided to become a diplomat. His father was a friend of Paul Spaak, whose son Paul-Henri Spaak became foreign minister of Belgium in 1936. Robert passed the diplomatic service examination in 1936, and joined the private office of Paul-Henri Spaak in April 1937. As an officer in the Belgian army reserve on the outbreak of World War II, Robert Rothschild returned to his regiment and his brother Marcel started his service at the Brigade Piron. In May 1940, he was captured by the Germans and sent to Colditz Castle as a Prisoner of war (POW). In 1941, he was sent back to Brussels and released. With the help of underground organisations and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) he escaped to Vichy France. He obtained an exit visa from a pro-Belgian French official and travelled to neutral Spain. He made his way to London to join the Belgian government in exile of Hubert Pierlot, which posted him to the diplomatic legation in Lisbon (Portugal). Lisbon was crawling with spies, all of whom knew one another's identity. They lunched at the same restaurants, peering at one another over their menus. Robert remained in Lisbon until 1944, when he was sent, at his request to China. He became first secretary at the Belgian embassy in Chungking, the headquarters of Chiang Kai-shek's government. During the Japanese occupation, there was a lull in the Chinese civil war. The Communists of Mao Zedong even had an envoy in Chungking in the person of Zhou Enlai, whom he grew to like. After the Japanese surrender, he flew to Shanghai, where, in 1946, he was appointed consul general. The Chinese civil war revived and in 1949 the Communists entered Shanghai. Under pressure from the French, who hoped to protect their interests in Indochina, Belgium declined to recognise the People's Republic of China for the next 20 years. He considered this a political mistake and regretted the failure to comprehend the rivalry between Soviet and Chinese Communism.