Sumner Welles, Postwar Planning and the Quest for a New World Order 1937-1943
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Sumner Welles, Postwar Planning and the Quest for a New World Order 1937-1943 by Chris O'Sullivan London School of Economics International History UMI Number: U615579 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U615579 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 £ 77i3 t- asf I ' 7 lij-9 H-J Throughout the early years of the Second World War no official better expressed the U.S. desire to reconfigure international politics than Sumner Welles. He had known Franklin Roosevelt since childhood, and entered the diplomatic corps, with Roosevelt's assistance, just prior to American entry into World War One. During the early years of Roosevelt's presidency, Welles served as ambassador to Cuba and assistant secretary of state for Latin America, helping to design the Good Neighbor policy, which he believed essential to his aim of politically and economically integrating Latin America under U.S. hegemony. As under secretary after 1937 Welles became Roosevelt's closest foreign affairs adviser. His 1937 peace program, also known as the Welles plan, represented one of America's most significant international endeavors of the decade, while his 1940 mission to Europe, where he met with Hitler and Mussolini, was Roosevelt's most serious attempt to achieve a negotiated solution to the war. In August of 1941, at the peak of his influence, Welles helped draft the Atlantic Charter, which he sought to define as a declaration extending the Four Freedoms to the entire world. Welles's most significant contribution to American diplomacy came after U.S. entry in the war, when he led the administration's postwar planning program. He dominated efforts to design a new world order, evaluating America's burgeoning interests around the world. He helped shape relations with the exile governments and sought to design detailed plans for the postwar reconstruction of Italy, Japan and Germany. He led the effort to create a new world organization, which he hoped would feature regional bodies and a military component to promote collective security. He sought to provide a response to the increasing nationalism in colonial areas, and promoted an elaborate system of international trusteeship to aid in the transition toward independence. He also shaped U.S. relations with the Soviet Union and sought to create an East European federation to protect the nations of the region from the future ambitions of U.S.S.R. Paying particular attention to Welles's leadership of postwar planning, this account utilizes the recently opened Sumner Welles papers, along with the state department's extensive postwar planning records, to present an analysis of Welles's unique contribution to U.S. postwar planning during the Second World War. 2 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 4 CHAPTER 1 The Making of a Wilsonian Internationalists Early Life and Career, 1892-1937 15 CHAPTER 2 Under Secretary of State: The Welles Plan and Reorganizing the Department: 1937-1938 35 CHAPTER 3 Creating War and Peace Aims: The Welles Mission, the Atlantic Conference and the Origins of Postwar Planning, 1939-1941 52 CHAPTER 4 Creating a New League: Sumner Welles and the Postwar Planning Process, 1941-1943 83 CHAPTER 5 The Quest for a New World Order: Postwar Planning and the Great Powers, 1942-1943 119 CHAPTER 6 The War Within the War: Sumner Welles and American Anticolonialism 165 CHAPTER 7 The Limits of Universalism: American Postwar Planning for Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R. 1941-1943 212 CHAPTER 8 Resignation 262 CONCLUSION 278 BIBLIOGRAPHY 285 3 INTRODUCTION In the middle of August 1941, less than four months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Sumner Welles stood at the pinnacle of a remarkable diplomatic career. He had just helped draft the Atlantic Charter, which he hoped would define America's entry into the war as a crusade for a new world order replacing the militarism, colonialism, spheres of influence and balance of power he believed had characterized the past. He had recently delivered a stirring address before hundreds of Washington dignitaries at the site of the future Norwegian Legation, offering a thorough exposition of America's war aims, and pledging the United States to restore liberty to those nations subjugated in the war. A Time cover story on Welles's address called him the "chief administrative officer of U.S. foreign policy," hinting that his elevation to secretary of state was a mere formality, while a feature profile in the New York Times predicted that his views would dominate America's efforts to win the peace.i Welles was a formidable force in wartime Washington, due to his intimate ties to President Roosevelt and the First Lady, his alliances with some of the most powerful members of Congress, his support in the press corps and the public at large and his role as the administration's chief public spokesman on foreign affairs. In short, he was one of the most important officials in Washington, a man whose vision of what the U.S. would become after the war made him a key figure in America's wartime transformation from a major power to a superpower, an architect of the coming "American Century." But, as events would reveal, he was also a figure of immense contradictions, a deeply troubled man who wore different faces for different occasions and different people. His relationships with others, as well as his career, would suffer for it. "Your name will be written large in the record of these times when history is able to assess the great constructive work you have performed," former U.S. Ambassador to Japan 1 Time. August 8,1941; New York Times Magazine. August 2,1941. 4 Joseph Grew predicted in a wartime letter to Welles. Indeed, when Welles died in 1961 his eulogists praised his long career, but one would hardly have surmised from such accounts that he had once influenced his generation like few public officials before or since. President Kennedy wrote upon Welles's death that "his career will have an enduring place in the history of American diplomacy and public life," and an editorial in the New York Times added that "few Americans were better known or more highly regarded in the chanceries of the world than he. There is no fear that he will be forgotten, for he made his mark on the history of the twentieth century. "2 But rarely have such prophecies been proven so false so soon, as this once dynamic public figure faded from memory within only a few years. In the years since his death his role in wartime diplomacy had been diminished, in large part due to the lurid nature of the real reasons behind his abrupt resignation in August 1943. At the time, many assumed that Welles had resigned due to longtime differences with Secretary of State Cordell Hull. The real causes of Welles' s demise were much more complex and controversial, however, and involved more than Welles's rivalry with Hull, or, as some charged, a conservative conspiracy to purge progressives and New Dealers. During the early years of the war, numerous stories circulated about Welles's conduct on a train returning from the Alabama funeral of Speaker of the House William Bankhead in September 1940. According to most accounts, an intoxicated Welles propositioned several black male porters whom he had summoned to his private compartment. On a second train trip later that month Welles allegedly solicited porters on a train bound for Cleveland.3 The secret service warned President Roosevelt that the railroad company was considering legal action. Homosexuality was still grounds for criminal 2 Joseph C. Grew to Sumner Welles, September 21, 1943, box 94, folder 5, Welles papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library [FDRL]; John F. Kennedy to Harriette Welles, September 25,1961, box 22, folder 5, Welles papers, FDRL; New York Times. September 25,1961. 3 A detailed account of the scandal can be found in a recent biography of Sumner Welles by his son. See Benjamin Welles, Sumner Welles: FDR's Global Strategist (New York: S t Martin's Press, 1997), 1-3, 342-346. Another useful account is Irwin F. Gellman. Secret Affairs: Franklin Roosevelt. Cordell Hull and Sumner Welles (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 219-220, 237-238. 5 prosecution in the 1940s and many assumed it would make an official of Welles's standing susceptible to blackmail, particularly in wartime. Shortly after the first train incident, one porter filed a formal complaint with his employer, the Southern Railway Company, which had its headquarters in Philadelphia, home of William C. Bullitt, Roosevelt’s ambassador to Moscow and Paris, and a longtime rival of Welles for the president's favor. When Bullitt learned of the indiscretion he realized at once that he possessed a weapon of sufficient strength to destroy Welles.4 President Roosevelt, with the aid of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, orchestrated a three-year cover-up to protect Welles. But Bullitt and Hull pushed to bring the allegations to the attention of the press and Congress and, by the summer of 1943, they succeeded when revelations about Welles's conduct became known to the senate foreign relations committee.