Thesis Focuses on the Role Played by American Foreign Service Officers in Italy, Mostly from the Fascist Era to the Cold War (1929-1953)

Università degli Studi di Cagliari DOTTORATO DI RICERCA In Storia, Beni Culturali e Studi Internazionali Ciclo XXX The U.S. Foreign Service in Italy and the Byington Family Consular Dynasty in Naples (1897-1973) Dipartimento di Storia, Beni Culturali e Territorio Presentata da: Brendan Connors Coordinatore Dottorato: Prof.ssa Cecilia Tasca Tutor/Relatore: Prof. Marco Pignotti Table of Contents Page Introduction 5 Prologue: The Professionalization of American Diplomacy 8 Chapter One - The Foreign Service Prior to World War II, 1897-1938 14 1.1 The Byington Family’s Neapolitan Vocation - 1897-1929 14 1.2 Homer M. Byington I: Foreign Service Chief of Personnel, 1929-1933 26 1.3 FDR and the Foreign Service, 1933-1937 29 1.4 Ambassador John W. Garrett, 1929-1933 38 1.5 Ambassador Breckinridge Long, 1933-1936 45 1.6 The Naples Consulate General, 1931-1936 53 1.7 Ambassador William Phillips, 1936-1937 62 1.8 Roosevelt Speaks Out 67 1.9 The Naples Consulate General, 1937-1939 70 Chapter Two: From Munich to the June 2 Referendum, 1938-1946 84 2.1 A Planned Coup d’État against Mussolini in 1938? 84 2.2 The Rome Embassy and the Declaration of War 99 2.3 Roosevelt and the Foreign Service During World War II 106 2.4 Relations Renewed 111 2.5 Post-War Naples 118 2.6 Ambassador Alexander Kirk, 1945-1946 127 2.7 Freemasonry in Naples and the Crisis of the Parri Government 138 2.8 Monarchy or Republic? June 2, 1946 145 2.9 The Foreign Service Act of 1946 159 Chapter Three: The Cold War, 1947-1973 162 3.1 The Truman Doctrine and Secretary of State Marshall, 1947 162 3.2 Ambassador James Dunn, 1947-1952 166 3.3 Contacts with the Far Right, 1947-1950 182 3.4 The Italian Foreign Office, 1947-1950 190 3.5 Political Reports from Naples, 1947-1949 204 3.6 The State Department and the Red Scare 230 3.7 Homer M. Byington Jr., Director of Western European Affairs, 1950-1953 236 3.8 The Spanish Connection, 1953-1957 248 3.9 The Final Battles, 1960-1973 255 Conclusion 289 Appendix 293 Bibliography 310 “In all of his relations with the government to which he has been accredited the envoy must bear in mind constantly that the principal object of his mission is the maintenance of cordial relations between the two states.”1 - Graham H. Stuart 1 G.H. Stuart, American Diplomatic and Consular Practice, New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1952, p. 192. Introduction The American Foreign Service officers, (career diplomats and consuls), who specialized in Italian affairs in the middle third of the Twentieth Century have largely been relegated to the status of a historical footnote in studies of the relations between the United States and Italy.2 The few works that have touched upon their activities have tended to focus on the Italian elections of 1948 such as Roberto Faenza and Marco Fini (1976) and more recently, Deborah Kisatsky (2005), while Kaeten Mistry (2009) has termed the activities of Ambassador James Dunn as “political warfare”.3 In addition, Emanuele Bernardi (2006) has analyzed the differences of opinion inside the Rome embassy in the late 1940s with regard to agrarian reform while Gentiloni-Silveri (1998) and Nuti (1999) have commented on the role played by Foreign Service officers in the years leading up to the socialist participation in Aldo Moro’s first government formed in December 1963.4 Still, the vital characteristics of American 2 Some of the many fundamental works on the relations between the United States and Italy in the post-World War II period are: A. Brogi L’Italia e l’egemonia americana nel mediterraneo, Florence, La Nuova Italia, 1996; M. Del Pero, L’Alleato Scomodo: Gli Stati Uniti e la Democrazia Cristiana negli anni del centrismo, 1948-1955, Rome, Carocci, 2001; E. Di Nolfo, “Italia e Stati Uniti: un’alleanza diseguale”, Storia delle relazioni internazionali, a. VI, n.1, 1990; A. Giovagnoli, L’Italia nel nuovo ordine mondiale: politica ed economica dal 1945 al 1947, Milan, Vita e Pensiero, 2000; J.L. Harper, L’America e la ricostruzione dell’Italia (1945-1948), Bologna, Il Mulino, 1987; J. Miller, The United States and Italy, 1940-1950: The Politics and Diplomacy of Stabilization, Chapel Hill, North Carolina University Press, 1984; L. Wollemborg, Stelle, Strisce e tricolore: Trent’anni di vicende politiche fra Roma e Washington, Milan, Mondadori, 1983. 3 R. Faenza, M. Fini, Gli Americani in Italia, Milan, Feltrinelli, 1976; D. Kisatsky, The United States and the European Right 1945-1955, Ohio State University Press, 2005; K. Mistry, The United States, Italy, and the Origins of Cold War: Waging Political Warfare 1945-1950, Cambridge University Press, 2014; K. Mistry, “The Dynamics of Postwar US-Italian Relations, American Interventionism and the role of James C. Dunn” in Ricerche di storia politica, 2/2009. 4 See E. Bernardi, La riforma agraria in Italia e gli Stati Uniti: Guerra fredda, Piano Marshall e interventi per il Mezzogiorno negli anni del centrismo degasperiano, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2006; U. Gentiloni-Silveri, L’Italia e la nuova frontiera: Stati Uniti e centro-sinistra (1958-1965), Bologna, Il Mulino, 1998; L. Nuti, Gli Stati Uniti e l’apertura a sinistra: Importanza e limiti della presenza americana in Italia, Rome, Laterza, 1999. !5 diplomatic representation as identified by Heinrichs (1966), Weil (1978), and De Santis (1980) have been ignored in the Italian context.5 This thesis focuses on the role played by American Foreign Service officers in Italy, mostly from the Fascist era to the Cold War (1929-1953). Of particular note is the Byington family dynasty at the U.S. Consulate General in Naples which lasted, with interruptions, from 1897 to 1973. More specifically, due to a particular cultural and social formation which both reflected and differed from that of his colleagues, Homer M. Byington Jr., (1908-1987) became the Foreign Service’s foremost expert on Italy in the Cold War, serving an astounding 21 years in that country.6 This remarkable continuity allowed Byington to establish a vast network of social and political contacts in both Italian government and military circles and the concomitant Roman and Neapolitan aristocracies. This thesis will demonstrate that these ties led to his involvement in several of the most important moments of contemporary Italian history such as the lead-up to the Munich Conference of 1938, the institutional referendum of June 2, 1946, the elections of April 18, 1948, and almost assuredly the aborted 1970 coup d’état led by Prince Junio Valerio Borghese. The role played by the Rome embassy in the post-World War II armistice regime as one element in the complex overlapping triangle of Allied authorities on Italian territory is a significant theme present in the work. In this context, the figure of Admiral Ellery Stone as 5 De Santis provides a detailed analysis of American diplomatic representation to the Soviet Union in the same time period covered by this thesis: H. De Santis, The Diplomacy of Silence: The American Foreign Service, The Soviet Union, and the Cold War, 1933-1947. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980. 6 In the United States there are relatively few works of history, or books of general interest, that have American diplomats as their protagonists.The research of Italian scholars has touched upon the American diplomats as actors in a particular context but has largely neglected their social and cultural formation. For the pre-World War II period see: M. Weil, A Pretty Good Club, the Founding Fathers of the U.S. Foreign Service, New York, Norton, 1978; W. Heinrichs, American Ambassador: Joseph Grew and the Development of United States Diplomatic Tradition, Boston, Little Brown & Company, 1966; J. Moskin, American Statecraft: The Story of the U.S. Foreign Service, New York, Thomas Dunne Books, 2013. For the post-war period see: K. Weisbrode. The Atlantic Century: Four Generations of Extraordinary Diplomats who Forged America’s Vital Alliance with Europe, Boston, Da Capo Press, 2009; E. Thomas e W. Isaacson, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2012. Other useful references are G.H. Stuart, American Diplomatic and Consular Practice, Second Ed.,New York, Appleton-Century Crofts, 1952; G.H. Stuart, The Department of State: A History of its Organization, Procedure, and Personnel, New York, MacMillan, 1949; S.F. Bemis, The American Secretaries of State and their Diplomacy, New York, Cooper Square Publishers, 1970. !6 President of the Allied Commission is analyzed. Lastly, the changing relationship between the embassy and the Naples Consulate General, the two key elements of American representation in Italy, will be analyzed. The dispatches sent from Rome and Naples to the State Department constitute a crucial source of official information. Still, a thorough consultation of additional sources is necessary in order to read between the lines of government documents.7 In addition to the diaries and correspondence of American Ambassadors Breckinridge Long and William Phillips, newspaper archives on both sides of the Atlantic document the social milieu inhabited by the diplomats. A biography of the Foreign Service officer Homer M. Byington Jr., The Sum of Perishable Things, documents his worldview and facilitates the reconstruction of his social and official networks in Italy from 1934 to 1973.8 Similarly, the unpublished manuscript biography of Coert Du Bois, American Consul General in Naples is fundamental in determining the image of the Fascist regime created by the supervisor of all American consulates in Italy from 1931-1936. Finally, oral interviews available at Columbia University and the Library of Congress (the latter group largely conducted by the retired Foreign Service officer Charles Stuart Kennedy), provide further insight into the diplomats’ interpretation of both fascism and the post-war Italian Republic.9 The author would like to express his gratitude to Homer M.

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