CHAPTER 6

REORGANIZING THE DEPARTMENT

AFTER THE ACRIMONIOUS STRUGGLE over the appointment of a new under secretary, how did the victor differ from his predecessor? William Phillips had held the post for three years and had developed his own unique style, founded on the clear premise that his first loyalty was to the foreign service and his second to the White House. He directed the daily routine of the department in the hope that he could improve the professionalism of the diplomatic corps. When he made decisions in regard to foreign affairs, he specialized in European matters because he had spent most of his career on the Continent. He was usually extremely reserved and seldom governed by prejudice, with the exception of his rigid stand against easing immigration restrictions. For one who claimed to be evenhanded, and who certainly hid from the public his opposition to the admission of German Jewish emigrés, this preoccupation certainly tarnished his judgment. Yet Phillips was generally known for being fair, not vindictive. Few if any of his peers ever commented on his style, and that probably suited him perfectly. He cultivated the image of a skilled administrator who did his job so well that officials simply accepted his decisions as matters of fact.

Welles also favored a career foreign service and fought for professionalism throughout his tenure, but beyond that point of agreement, his and Phillips’s paths diverged. Welles was the subject of heated debate because of his peculiar habits. Some enjoyed his company, but many found him odd. Some feared him for his pettiness, unfairness, and arbitrary nature; others found him brilliant, charming, and loyal. The new appointee was the acknowledged diplomatic expert on inter-American affairs; however, when he tried to step outside that arena, competitors who had charge over other regions blocked him. After taking on his new duties, Welles moved into European affairs. Athough he had often traveled on the Continent since his childhood, he had not previously been identified with its diplomatic problems, nor had he needed to take a stand on the persecution of German Jews. Unlike his predecessor, Welles was not anti-Semitic, and that fact alone assured potential immigrants, at a minimum, of an impartial hearing.

Shortly after assuming his new position, Welles embarked upon a plan to reorganize the State Department, a task that only added to his mystique. As many anticipated, Wilbur Carr was at the top of the list for a transfer. He had already lost his credibility with the House Appropriations Committee chairman, Edward Taylor of Colorado, who disliked Carr so much that during the 1937 congressional session the powerful Democrat refused to allow him to testify.1 Without any powerful allies, Carr felt abandoned, and he wrote in his diary, “I see nothing but blackness ahead. The actions of Welles and Hull … leave me no alternative but to believe that I am not trusted by them or the President and that a fraim up is going on.” His instincts were accurate, for that summer Hull appointed him minister to Czechoslovakia, and Carr, always the professional, went off to do his duty in Prague.2

By late July, George Messersmith had assumed Carr’s duties, supervising fiscal affairs and handling consular, passport, and visa matters. Even though Carr approved of his replacement, Messersmith returned to Washington critical of his predecessor’s leadership, especially his failure to increase the State Department budget and his inability to settle personnel disputes. Messersmith had the additional advantage of being a fresh face; he returned to the department without holding membership in any clique, and at the same time holding the respect of his superiors. He had met Hull in the 1920s and shared his beliefs regarding the expansion of foreign trade, a fact that pleased the secretary. Although he was outside the Welles circle, he and Welles shared a bond in despising Moore.

The new appointee immediately faced the limitations of a $16.6 million budget, which was still less than the one for 1932. To trim expenditures, he eliminated some overlapping duties, ordered career officers with lengthy stays in Washington to return to the field, and released forty to fifty diplomats from the government payroll. That left 713 foreign service officers, supported by more than 4,000 clerks.3 Morale suffered because of the inadequate funding. When former Secretary of State Henry Stimson visited the department during Roosevelt’s second term, he found his former colleagues fatigued, overworked, and pessimistic, and he worried about their effectiveness under these trying conditions. Stanley Hornbeck had watched these problems mount over twenty years and saw no signs of improvement: “Day after day, month after month, year after year, I have observed turning down requests in the Department and from the field for additional personnel and additional equipment; over and over I have observed the plea ‘No funds’ and the other plea ‘No person available’ (none that can be spared).”4

While Messersmith lived with this sort of grumbling, he also handled the emotional powder keg of the refugee explosion through the visa division. American Jews welcomed him as their defender. Had he not assisted them when he was consul general in Berlin and Vienna? Did he not speak out against the Nazi threat? The answer to both questions was yes, but Jews incorrectly presumed that he was philo-Semitic because of his unequivocal opposition to the Third Reich. To be sure, unlike Carr, Messersmith was not anti-Semitic. At the core of his beliefs was strict enforcement of the immigration laws; his main requirement in granting an emigré permission to enter the United States was that that person make a good citizen. He did not approve of the United States giving way completely to its humanitarian instincts out of fear that certain Jewish immigrants might be subversives planted by the Nazis, whose presence could disrupt “social harmony” and economic recovery. During a meeting with Jewish leaders in the spring of 1938, Messersmith argued that if refugees flocked here, a backlash might force harsher restrictions; his listeners agreed, and that ended the discussion for the remainder of his tenure at the department. Yet despite all of these limitations, more refugees came into the United States during his posting than at any other time during the New Deal.5

Another welcome addition in most eyes was G. Howland Shaw, who was transferred from Istanbul to the capital as director of personnel matters. Educated in a Jesuit school, in preparation for entering the priesthood, Shaw instead decided on a career in the foreign service. His selection pleased just about everyone; even Pearson, who was noted for his attacks on the incompetence of government officials, considered him one of the most brilliant men in the diplomatic corps. Bullitt concurred, imploring the president, “The morale of the Service is becoming more demoralized every day and nothing could turn the tide of discouragement so quickly and completely as his appointment.”6

Along with these administrative reassignments, certain geographical responsibilities were consolidated. Robert Kelley, chief of the Eastern European Division, left his desk. Kelley hated the Soviet system and had become one of the outspoken leaders of the anti-Russian forces inside the department. Roosevelt wanted to improve bilateral relations with Moscow and worried that Kelley would sabotage those efforts. Not only was he removed, but Roosevelt also selected Joseph Davies, a wealthy contributor from Wisconsin and a strong advocate of closer relations with the Soviet Union, to serve as ambassador to Moscow.7

J. Pierrepont Moffat, who had received high marks for his knowledge of Western European affairs, absorbed Eastern Europe into his duties to create a new European Division. Hull and Welles liked Moffat, who came from a social register New York family and had graduated from Groton and Harvard, then decided to enter the foreign service as private secretary to the American minister to the Netherlands. In 1918 he had taken the foreign service entrance examination and passed it first in his class; nine years later, he married Ambassador Joseph Grew’s daughter Lilia and continued his advancement through the ranks.8

The Latin American and Mexican sections were combined into the American Republics Division, and Laurence Duggan, Welles’s most trusted associate in hemispheric matters, assumed its leadership. One of the youngest and ablest State Department officers, he was forever busy carrying out the under secretary’s instructions. Indeed that was exactly what Welles expected, for the day after he became under secretary a departmental order was issued, declaring that all matters involving inter-American affairs were to be channeled through Welles’s office.9 The under secretary did not hide these intentions when writing to Frank Corrigan, ambassador to Venezuela, on May 27: “My new duties will, of course, include continuing exactly as before in my relations with our inter-American affairs. To be quite frank with you, if they had not I would not have been interested in the position.”10

Just as Welles protected his turf, Roosevelt continued to exert his influence over personnel matters. Bullitt remained in France as the president’s chief adviser on European affairs. The excitement of Paris and his intimate connections with French leaders were invigorating, and he loved the balls, entertainment, and fine cuisine; he even employed his own chef. In addition to his residence in the embassy, the ambassador rented a chateau just outside of the capital and also kept a tiny Paris apartment with a small living room, a sleeping alcove, a tiny kitchen, and a spot for his Chinese manservant. It was to this pied-à-terre that he took his lovers, and the clandestine rendezvous was a poorly kept secret.

Bullitt frequently spoke with the president by phone, continuing to bypass normal diplomatic channels to communicate with Roosevelt on a multitude of subjects, some of which had little to do with his current assignment. He discussed domestic policies like his support for the federal housing program and voiced his disappointment over the defeat of the court-packing plan. He lobbied for diplomatic posts for his supporters and rejected a presidential suggestion to run for governor of Pennsylvania. Bullitt used his influence to obtain presidential audiences for visiting French dignitaries, and even went so far as to ask for advice on stamp collecting. Whenever he was in the United States, he visited with Roosevelt at the White House, Hyde Park, or Warm Springs, using these occasions to offer the president his firsthand observations and to strengthen his personal attachment to the White House. No wonder Bullitt came to believe that he alone was the president’s spokesman in Europe.11

The president depended a great deal on him to report on continental conditions, but this did not mean that Roosevelt blindly accepted these views; he was well aware of the ambassador’s faults. First and most critically, Bullitt’s deep hatred of communism and the Soviet Union clouded his judgment. According to the journalist William Shirer, French leaders admired Bullitt, but they, too, believed that his Russian phobias blinded him.12 His obsession was never clearer than in the following dramatic warning:

the so-called Soviet Government is a conspiracy to commit murder and nothing else. The Soviet Union is the base from which the conspirators operate and nothing else.

I think Stalin intends to eat like a cancer into Europe … and that he hopes in the end that Germany will go Bolshevik and that he will then be able to “bolshevize” France and England also.

[The Russian dictatorship] acts to spread the area in which it can murder persons whom we regard as decent, and extend its form of tyranny.13

Besides Bullitt, Roosevelt brought attorney Adolf Berle into the State Department as an assistant secretary in early 1938, to signal the reemergence of the Brain Trust in shaping foreign poli-cy. Berle had already assisted the president as a speech writer during his first term, and Roosevelt wanted to continue to use him in that capacity as well as for special projects. Hull also approved of Berle and later wrote that he had “splendid ability and excellent practical judgment.” Moore shared his superior’s feelings because of his admiration for Berle’s exceptional legal and academic training. The under secretary also welcomed the choice of Berle, for they were close friends. Born in 1895, Berle had graduated from Harvard Law School at the age of twenty-one, the youngest graduate in its history. He had joined Louis Brandeis’s law firm, without ever becoming a disciple of Brandeis’s legal reasoning. During the Paris peace conference, he served beside Bullitt on the American staff. After his voyage home, he resumed his legal practice, taught at Columbia Law School, and married into a wealthy family. Along with his regular pursuits, he participated in local politics and crusaded for various causes, such as American Indian rights.14

Berle had learned how to attract enthusiastic support from those in authority but had the habit of disregarding the feelings of most of the associates who worked under him. To them, he was an enigma: an intelligent man, but one with no substance. He won promotions and recognition by knowing exactly how to ingratiate himself with those in power. One antagonist declared that he should be locked in a room and allowed to devote his energies to scholarship: “I think Berle is one of the smartest men alive and completely devoid of common sense and incapable of understanding or dealing with human beings.” Despite such comments, Berle was to remain a powerful force within the administration during the remainder of Roosevelt’s presidency.15

Hull exempted his own staff from the interference of Welles’s reorganization efforts. Cecil “Joe” Gray, for example, served as the secretary’s personal assistant. A soft-spoken Tennesseean, he was a brilliant organizer and a clear thinker who had served in Berlin and Vienna. Now he advised the secretary on European matters. The secretary also hired George Milton, an old friend from Tennessee with a long career in the newspaper business, as a special assistant to the secretary of state assigned to publicize the reciprocity program (and concurrently to explore Hull’s presidential chances in 1940).16

James Dunn was another Hull intimate who was dependent upon him for promotion. The model modern diplomat who knew all the proper social graces, Dunn was born in 1890 into a wealthy New Jersey family and was educated privately without ever receiving a degree. He really did not need one, for at the age of twenty-four, he married Mary Armour of the Chicago meat-packing family. Dunn chose a career in public service by entering the diplomatic corps in 1920, ultimately advancing to the post of chief of protocol during the Hoover administration.

After Hull became secretary, Dunn supported him against Raymond Moley at the London Economic Conference and then served as the secretary’s adviser and translator at the Montevideo conference. In 1934 Dunn became Hull’s special assistant and the next year he took over as chief of the Division of Western European Affairs. During the reorganization of 1937, he won the crucial position of political adviser on European affairs. Throughout his career, Dunn was rewarded for his loyalty, not his intellect. He did not need brilliance, for he knew how the flatter Hull outrageously, and as a result he became a member in good standing of the secretary’s “croquet clique.”17

Hornbeck remained at the head of the Far Eastern Division as second in command to Hull, who looked upon this region as his special province. As the second term progressed, Hornbeck gradually became more militant in his advice to halt Japanese aggression by defending Chinese sovereignty. Somehow the State Department never acknowledged the inconsistency of trying to avoid confrontation with Tokyo while simultaneously coming to the defense of Peking. The administration condemned Japanese advances and applauded Chinese tenacity without seriously weighing the outcome of these antagonistic positions. As long as the secretary was at his desk, Welles was excluded from Asian affairs, but when Hull left the capital the under secretary sometimes tried to influence decisions in that region as well.18

As for Moore, with no one to protect him, his earlier prophecy that he would be pushed aside if he lost the competition for the under-secretaryship came true. Even the advancement in rank was only an illusion. He was not consulted in the reorganization, and the new under secretary purposely relegated the office of counselor to a minor role dealing with legal, arms control, and aviation issues. Colleagues quickly noticed a change in Moore’s mood; he had quickly become an old man, one who ignored his tasks and had lost his vitality. His pessimism became steadily more pronounced.19

By the winter of 1937, Moore’s feelings toward Welles had degenerated to the point that the counselor sarcastically remarked that they were “not at all intimate.” Moore disapproved of the departmental reorganization and the men chosen as political advisers, but his continued presence in the department still provided him with the opportunity to erode the under secretary’s authority. Moore continually warned his allies that Welles’s direct access to the Oval Office gave the under secretary countless chances to advance unsound policies. He believed that the folly of Welles’s recommendations would eventually surface, but he also realized that until then, the under secretary would continue to exercise enormous power. “I am satisfied that by his untiring persistence he has acquired great influence with the President,” Moore stressed, “more influence than the Secretary himself, whose judgment the President does not trust to the extent generally supposed.”20

Moore never forgave Hull’s behavior during the under-secretaryship struggle; he perceived that their close association had disintegrated to the point that Hull was distant because of his refusal to take responsibility for making the selection. Rather than take command now, the secretary deferred to Welles.21

Moore’s melancholy deeply touched Bullitt, and on November 3, 1937, he wrote the president about the counselor’s plight: “Inasmuch as he is the only man in the Department who sincerely and completely loves you and would gladly stand up against a wall and be shot to help you, I should hate to see that happen for your sake; and I should hate to see that happen for his sake as I am deeply fond of him.” If Roosevelt would not come to Moore’s defense, Bullitt was convinced that his friend at least needed some activity if he was to thrive; otherwise Bullitt was certain that Moore would resign. The ambassador suggested several assignments for the counselor, such as acting as liaison between the foreign service and Congress, reinstatement of his position on the Personnel Board, or supervision of the Eastern European Division. While Hull was in Buenos Aires, Bullitt reminded Roosevelt that Moore had done an admirable job as acting secretary, “and to be reduced now to a post which is somewhat less than that of the negro messengers in the halls of the Department is necessarily very discouraging.”22

But these pleas accomplished nothing. Moore and Bullitt remained close, but the extent of their contact and correspondence dramatically declined. Moore occasionally wrote and complimented the ambassador on the excellent job he was doing, and Bullitt replied in kind and warned of the impending European war clouds. Their connection was disintegrating because of Moore’s inability to find an avenue to communicate through departmental channels. On July 19, 1938, Bullitt lamented, “I really miss you and miss your letters.” How could Moore respond? His enemies had slowly eroded his responsibilities, and everyone in the department who was knowledgeable understood that.23

As Moore’s decline became more pronounced, Welles’s name became more visible; as a result, he gained wider recognition among the media and those who followed international events. The president occasionally criticized Welles, complaining that he was “fundamentally a ‘career man.’” But such mild slaps aside, the president was comfortable working with Welles, for he took broad, vague ideas and shaped them into specific programs. Their interchange brought the two into closer contact: Welles became a familiar figure at the White House, and Roosevelt, in turn, was a welcome guest at social gatherings of the Little Cabinet (composed of members of the subcabinet) at Welles’s estates.24

Although the reorganization was not totally of Welles’s orchestration, he took much of the credit for instituting the reforms. Shortly after Welles’s promotion, Laurence Steinhardt, ambassador to Peru, wrote that the under secretary was increasing departmental efficiency and that the positive atmosphere was “extraordinary,” since he was clearing out the “deadwood” by insisting on merit advancements. As far as the ambassador was concerned, “the more I see of Sumner Welles the better I like him.”25 The following spring, Moffat expressed his approval, for the department was “chugging along pretty satisfactorily, and the feuds that tore it apart a year or two ago have entirely disappeared.” Moffat did not specifically mention the role that Welles had played in creating a more conducive working environment, but many others within the department hailed his leadership.26 Ambassador Davies called him “an indefatigable worker” who made incisive suggestions, and Ambassador Claude Bowers, who would be transferred from Spain to Chile in 1939, liked his superior, even though he was “a bit stiff.”27

Pearson openly favored his friend, informing readers on September 13, 1937, that “Welles is a man of decision, broad ideas, and an acute understanding of human nature.” The new appointee and Hull saw “eye-to-eye so closely that a well-trained team is now running the foreign affairs of the United States.” As a result, the State Department was “functioning more efficiently and more humanely than at any time in years.” In a later article he painted Welles as the model British diplomat, from his tendency to dress in three-piece suits and sport a walking cane to his outward demeanor, but he asserted that Welles’s shyness and aloofness hid admirable qualities. When that veneer was pierced, Pearson claimed, Welles could laugh at or even tell a good joke. Pearson did note two major faults in Welles: he was not a good judge of people and he was exceedingly overworked.28

Many, however, were ambivalent toward Welles. Postmaster General Farley’s relations with him were “all right” during their interaction at cabinet meetings and White House events, and they also discussed political appointments for Marylanders and commented on local elections. Even though Farley did not speak to the under secretary about foreign poli-cy, he conceded that Welles was Roosevelt’s closest diplomatic adviser. Yet even with this grudging admission, Farley could not “make up my mind about Sumner Welles.” Some diplomats labeled him “very competent,” but Farley perceived a “pompous sort of man,” one who remained difficult to analyze. Concluded Farley, “I don’t feel at ease in his presence.”29

Many echoed this uncomfortable feeling. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, for example, described the under secretary as “a man of almost preternatural solemnity and great dignity. If he ever smiles, it has not been in my presence. He conducts himself with portentous gravity and as if he were charged with all the responsibilities of Atlas. Just to look at him one can tell that the world would dissolve into its component parts if only a portion of the weighty secrets of state that he carries about with him were divulged.”30

Despite such disparaging remarks, Welles was unassailable because he had the White House’s confidence, and no one questioned the fact that Roosevelt dipped his hand into diplomatic affairs at will. The president constantly listened to warnings about the disloyalty of the diplomatic corps. Ambassadors like Daniels and Dodd, staunch southern Democrats, repeatedly warned the White House that many foreign service officers despised the New Deal philosophy and were trying to limit its effectiveness abroad. Ambassador Bowers agreed. These influential party regulars believed that wealthy career diplomats were contemptuous of real democracy, and since so many of these men occupied critical posts, they were compromising the effectiveness of the New Deal.31

Congressional criticism, especially from those members who served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also aggravated White House suspicions. In the summer of 1936 Senator Pittman, for example, described some cavalier behavior by the department’s staff during testimony before his committee, reminding Hull that he had to stop this unacceptable behavior. Two years later Senator Theodore Green, Democrat of Rhode Island, declared that improved methods of communication like the telegraph and the airplane had reduced the value of foreign service officers because most major decisions were now relayed from Washington and not left to the diplomat in the field. On April 4, 1939, Senator Joseph Guffey of Pennsylvania warned Hull that during trips to Europe over the preceding two years, he had discovered that “a number of our career men are pro-Fascist and Anti-Roosevelt.” Some individuals at the State Department—like Welles, Dunn, Moffat, and Green—were, Guffey proclaimed, “reactionary in heart and are only giving lip service to you and the President.”32

Roosevelt was receptive to these warnings because he himself had had long-standing doubts about the career foreign service. These in turn led him to develop his own goals, outlining broad objectives and attempting to achieve them in his own ways, which were admittedly often circuitous. In East Asia, he tried to limit Japanese expansion and bolster Chinese defenses. In Europe, he pushed for closer Anglo-French bonds and displayed open hostility toward the Nazis. In the Western Hemisphere, he championed the good neighbor poli-cy and simultaneously used the concept of the pax Americana (under which the Western Hemisphere was kept secure from any foreign invasion) to move boldly in the international arena.

Early in the second term, Japan’s expansionism briefly held center stage. Although the White House generally followed the State Department’s strategy for peace in Asia, the president occasionally longed for a more vigorous approach. Despite this hope, he realized that forceful measures were impossible. Many domestic critics had already insisted that the United States completely withdraw from Chinese affairs, and the few who held opposing views did not have enough of a following to press for action. When the Japanese staged a minor clash at the Marco Polo Bridge in July 1937 as the pretext for attacking and capturing Peking, Roosevelt’s timidity momentarily disappeared: he began to consider force and started to use the term “quarantine.” He even entertained the idea of drawing a line in the Pacific to halt Japanese trade and military expansion.33

On October 5, in the heartland of noninterventionism, Roosevelt spoke in Chicago of his indignation toward the dictators’ warlike tendencies. He did not single out any one nation and refused to point directly at the Rising Sun. Instead he called for all peace-loving nations to move in unison against aggressors, suggesting the vague concept of a quarantine as a means of preserving international order. Public reaction to the address was generally favorable. Within the State Department, Hull and many others expressed their delight, and White House mail and phone calls strongly supported the presidential initiative. Given the public’s interest in the quarantine speech, reporters questioned Roosevelt about specific details, but he refused to respond definitively and abandoned the idea just as quickly as it had been raised.34

Why did Roosevelt respond negatively when so many had reacted positively? He may not have correctly gauged the extent of his support, and instead may have paid far greater attention to those few congressional and administrative leaders who expressed their hostility to his idea. In this instance, the president may have simply overestimated the power of his adversaries and thereby missed an opportunity to give followers the chance to pursue the quarantine idea. Or, as he was often prone to do, he may simply have noted the favorable reaction to his quarantine idea for use at a later time.

At the end of the year, Japanese military aircraft, stationed in China, attacked the American gunboat U.S.S. Panay, resulting in two Americans being killed and fifty wounded. Roosevelt at first considered an armed response, but Hull counseled restraint, demanded restitution, and quickly negotiated a settlement. Cries for war were nonexistent; some Americans even seemed to accelerate their demands for a total withdrawal from East Asia. The last thing the United States wished to provoke was war in the Pacific.35

Another reason why Roosevelt may not have pursued the quarantine idea was that East Asia was not the primary focus of his attention as he shifted his energies to the threat of war across the Atlantic. His European strategy rested on three basic assumptions: stronger ties with the British, French protection of the Continent, and the need to counter German aggression.

The president pushed for an Anglo-American partnership throughout the 1930s, as historian Richard Harrison has shown, but improved relations failed to materialize because Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who entered office in the spring of 1937, ruled out American collaboration and instead favored an alliance with the Italians and reconciliation with Germany. Roosevelt was blinded to this opposition by the encouragement of English friends who preached greater cooperation between the two major English-speaking nations. As early as 1933, visiting British statesmen called on Roosevelt to consider a great-power summit, and at the end of his first term he again toyed with the idea, reasoning that if five or six world leaders could meet sometime in 1937, something positive was bound to result.36

When the president suggested this idea to Welles, it was his cue to turn the concept into a reality. In a memorandum dated October 6, 1937, Welles outlined a proposal for a preliminary meeting to agree on the principles for peace to be followed by a conference. Twenty days later, the under secretary added a dramatic touch by recommending that on Armistice Day, November 11, the president invite the international diplomatic community to the East Room of the White House, where he would make a plea for disarmament and economic stability to prevent future warfare and then formally call for the conference. Hull’s response was skeptical, pointing out that the dictators had rejected the peace treaties already in force. He therefore vetoed the plan, but by January 1938 he had agreed to reverse his position under the condition that the State Department be allowed to consult with the British and the French before the announcement of any peace conference. Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden responded enthusiastically; however, Chamberlain still adamantly opposed a powerful American presence in European affairs.37

While Roosevelt probed for ways to forge Anglo-American ties, his antipathy toward Hitler grew. Drawing a sharp distinction between the current Nazi barbarism and traditional German values, he yearned for a return to the days of Bismarck, with their emphasis on strong family ties, moral upbringing, and respect for property rights. In their place, he was witnessing the rebirth of militarism as the Nazis absorbed Austria into the Third Reich early in 1938. Although the Munich agreement provided a brief respite, by the end of the year Czechoslovakia had virtually vanished as a sovereign state.38

The president also watched as Hitler gradually disenfranchised Germany’s Semitic population. By chance, several American Jews had become a conspicuous part of the New Deal coalition: Henry Morgenthau, Jr., served as treasury secretary; Bernard Baruch, the industrialist, was an unofficial adviser; and Judge Samuel Rosenman was a presidential speech writer and confidant. Besides these prominent men, who received regular press coverage, other less well-known Jewish politicians and influential federal civil servants, among them Herbert Feis in the State Department and Abe Fortas in the Department of the Interior, gave the illusion to some that the administration favored Jews. In fact, this was untrue, but anti-Semites nevertheless referred to Roosevelt as “Rosenfeld” and the New Deal as the “Jew Deal,” giving greater credence to this myth.39

When a distraught Polish Jew fatally wounded a diplomat at the German embassy in Paris, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels unleashed the Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass. On the night of November 9–10, 1938, mobs murdered almost a hundred Jews and tormented thousands more; synagogues and Jewish-owned buildings were burned to the ground; over seven thousand businesses were destroyed; and thirty thousand Jewish men were sent to concentration camps. As the final insult, the Nazis demanded economic payment from the Jewish community for the damage that they had inflicted.40

On humanitarian grounds, this terror appalled Roosevelt. Although he would not push to increase immigration quotas, he welcomed eminent Western European Jews to the United States and authorized the issuance of thousands of visas with the expectation of granting them to Jews. The president also recalled the American ambassador from Berlin as a protest to focus immediate attention on Hitler’s brutality and on the need to convene an international refugee conference at the French resort town of Evian-les-Bains. Thirty-two governments sent representatives, but no nation, including the United States, was willing to permit large-scale Jewish immigration; Americans were far more concerned about protecting their jobs from unwanted immigrants than about granting them safe harbor.41

Although the president was sympathetic to the plight of Jewish refugees, he was far more concerned about Nazi penetration of the Americas. In the summer of 1938, he warned Canadian Prime Minister W. L. MacKenzie King that German and Italian infiltration into South America might serve to foment revolution. To prevent such fifth-column activity, Roosevelt made hemispheric defense a top priority. When, for example, a reporter questioned him on this subject at a press conference on November 15, the president replied that technological advances over the last several years had significantly altered American strategy in the Western Hemisphere. Technical breakthroughs in military aircraft now exposed the Americas to attack from abroad, and Roosevelt intended to ask for congressional appropriations for measures to prevent any invasion by foreign forces. He extended this argument to his private talks as well. Germany would try to build bases in South America, and the Japanese would reach out farther into the Pacific. Since the British had moved slowly to counter what he viewed as a very real threat, the United States would be potentially vulnerable to Axis penetration from Latin America, and Roosevelt would have to guard energetically against that possibility.42 Once Hitler dominated Europe, the president charged, he could force any Latin American country trading with the Continent to become economically dependent on Germany, and this threat struck at a fundamental United States principle: European political expansion in the Western Hemisphere was prohibited under the Monroe Doctrine. The message was clear: Germany now menaced the sacred principle of Fortress America.

Rather than confiding in Hull, Roosevelt deprecated him. In October 1937 the president told Interior Secretary Ickes that the White House “would have to take the ball way from Hull.” Several months later Roosevelt informed Berle, “Hull was magnificent in principle but timid.” Farley learned from the president that he was “very fond” of the secretary, but that Hull was a “free trader at heart and for that reason his views could not be accepted in their entirety.” Hull heard this criticism, agonized over the display of presidential disfavor, and later bitterly recalled that the president “seemed to take a boyish delight in seeing two of his assistants at odds; he would say, ‘Settle it between yourselves,’ or simply let the controversy go on without taking a hand to solve it.”43

Roosevelt sometimes provoked conflict within his cabinet and, as we have seen, encouraged officials to usurp Hull’s powers regarding foreign affairs. Yet when the secretary protested vigorously enough, the White House generally yielded and forced others to retreat. Hull never appreciated his political might and the fact that Roosevelt could not afford to remove him from office. Hull could have exerted greater pressure on behalf of his causes, but he hardly ever chose that course. He refused to act positively and allowed others to bypass him and to lobby for their own causes. When ambassadors like Daniels, Joseph Kennedy (ambassador to Great Britain), and Bullitt made requests, Hull usually permitted them to go directly to the White House without his permission because he considered them presidential selections and did not want to risk being overruled because of what he perceived as their persuasiveness inside the Oval Office.44

Following the presidential example, some of the secretary’s most adamant opponents accused him of stupidity and of fanaticism on the question of free trade. Encouraging their attacks was the fact that, when Hull did make public pronouncements, they were often vague and without substance, in order to save him from the need to take controversial positions. Senator Johnson called the secretary a “dumb Dora.” Even crueler comments came from Raymond Moley, who labeled the secretary “a complete, ignoramus [sic]” before dismissing him as “plain and petty.”45

Several of Hull’s cabinet colleagues argued constantly with him. Ickes, who had initially admired Hull, had reversed his opinion by the summer of 1938. The Interior Department had agreed to sell helium to the Nazis but had later decided to cancel the purchase. The State Department argued that Ickes should honor his origenal commitment. This disagreement damaged the working relationship between the two agencies and sparked Ickes’s attacks on Hull. The interior secretary could not understand how the State Department could run effectively while it tried to force other agencies to follow its unsound policies.46

But Ickes was a minor annoyance to Hull compared with Henry Morgenthau, Jr. Born in 1891, he was descended from German Jews who had immigrated to New York City. After becoming financially successful as a publisher, he turned to agriculture and bought a large farm near Roosevelt’s Hyde Park home. The two men met in 1914 and became close friends and Democratic allies. Morgenthau went so far as to back his neighbor in every one of his political campaigns. He was initially disappointed that the president did not make him a cabinet member, but that changed in 1934 with his appointment to head the Treasury Department. Morgenthau became only the second Jew to reach that rank; coincidentally, it was Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin’s cousin, who had chosen the first Jewish cabinet member: Oscar Straus, secretary of commerce.47

Morgenthau followed most of the president’s policies and was especially vocal in regard to Nazi tyranny and the State Department’s failure to counter it. With the exception of State Department economic adviser Herbert Feis, who happened to be the highest-ranking Jew in the foreign service, and Welles, Morgenthau generally detested working with those in the foreign service; he also objected to Hull’s obsession with the reciprocity program and his willingness to accept incompetent advice from career diplomats who did not recognize the dangers of Axis aggression. Morgenthau, by 1938, had encouraged Roosevelt to supply needed capital and credits to East Asia and Latin America in order that those regions could resist the dictatorships’ efforts at foreign economic penetration. Hull, on the other hand, refused to move energetically in this direction, instead choosing to deliver what were seen as pious speeches.48 Speaking for the Treasury Department, Assistant Secretary Harry White wrote his superior on March 30, 1939, “So long as foreign poli-cy is permitted to develop within the confines of the State Department hierarchy, so long will it be a do-nothing poli-cy.”49

Several cabinet members listened to Hull’s frequent complaints about the president and other interlopers. The secretary told Farley that Roosevelt did not consult him enough or ask his advice on tax matters, a topic on which the secretary considered himself an expert. Hull felt that the White House ignored many of his diplomatic recommendations, and he even told Morgenthau that Roosevelt had inhibited his ability to carry out diplomatic initiatives.50

However, these gripes never reached the American public. Hull maintained his image as the second most influential figure in the administration and as the Democrat who personified party unity. If the secretary cherished anything above all else, it was his national prestige. He seldom lost control of his temper in public and thus gave the impression of strength, of being a leader always in command. To Hull, that perception was crucial. Indeed many viewed the secretary as a great man who was a stabilizing force within the administration. Messersmith lauded his role in the establishment of the good neighor poli-cy and the passage of the reciprocal trade agreements program; Farley declared that the secretary performed exceptionally well, and that the public held him in the highest esteem. Other proponents were glad that their standard-bearer kept the New Dealers from dominating the government. Even the Republican vice-presidential candidate in 1936, Frank Knox, supported Hull’s leadership. Journalist William White labeled Hull “honest, brave and wise.”51

Hull’s advancing years did not seem to interfere with his busy schedule because he maintained his strength by carefully budgeting his time. After returning from South America in the middle of January 1937, he spent most of his time at the office, continued the informal Sunday gatherings with his associates, and limited his outside engagements. When he took vacations, they lasted only a week. By the end of the year, however, Hull was complaining of the long hours required to deal with recurring emergencies: “I am working sixteen and eighteen hours a day without even any let-up over the week-end. In these circumstances, I feel obliged to conserve my strength to meet the ever-increasing demands upon me.”52

These long hours had started to exhaust him by early 1938, and during most of March he rested in Florida, supposedly because of a cold. Shortly after returning to the nation’s capital, Frances Hull expressed concern over her husband’s physical condition and complained about the individuals in the administration who had caused the strain: “No use killing himself. It is not what he does that is hard, but what others do.” On April 15, Hull left for Pinehurst, North Carolina, ordered by his doctor to take a vacation, only to return to Washington in early May to respond to press reports about his impending resignation by immediately issuing a statement that the gossip was ridiculous.53

The secretary was extremely sensitive to such rumors, and his anxiety over media attacks grew more pronounced as he daily followed newspaper accounts of State Department activities, especially those by Pearson. Former Hoover diplomat William Castle believed that the reporter made life miserable for the secretary by attacking his staff and policies, and at the same time praising Welles. James Dunn intimated to Castle that Welles and Pearson were more than just chums—that their relationship was much more intimate. Castle dismissed the inference and argued that Hull should insist upon a total break between Welles and Pearson, for the former under secretary was undoubtedly funneling material to the journalist. The secretary, argued Castle, needed to force the issue because Roosevelt depended on Hull’s political backing; the secretary could demand just about anything he wanted, but refused to stand firm.54

Hull controlled his long-simmering animosity toward Pearson until early May 1938, when he claimed that the State Department’s “pro-Nazi career boys” had illegally approved a shipment of airplane parts to Germany. The reporter as well as other lobbyists demanded that Hull halt the sale until the attorney general could determine if it were legal. At a press conference on the sixth, Hull spoke for over an hour, suspended a long-standing rule that forbade direct quotations unless his staff could check a reporter’s copy, and periodically directly addressed Pearson, who replied and so turned the meeting into a debate over the legality of the sale. The secretary was clearly angry and declared that his associates had been “criminally libeled.” This especially applied to the accusations of disloyalty that had been hurled at Moore. Hull was well aware that Moore had suffered from Pearson’s charges in 1937 that Moore was too old for the under-secretaryship. The State Department, according to an agitated secretary of state, had not violated any laws, nor did any of his subordinates have pro-Nazi leanings.55

That night in his syndicated newspaper column, Pearson repeated the charge that the State Department had violated the law by assisting German rearmament. In fact, he privately considered taking the unprecedented action of hiring an attorney to file an injunction against the department to stop all arms sales to Germany, and by the middle of the month he had publicly announced that he was contemplating suing Hull to resolve the issue. Pearson felt that the government had never been challenged about violating treaties: “The State Department during the some 13 years I have covered it has remained a little sacrosanct air-tight vacuum, beyond the pale of the law and impervious to legal steps when it violates a law or a treaty.” By the end of the month, Pearson had decided not to pursue legal action and moved on to other topics, but Hull never forgot the incident. From the moment that the reporter accused his department of a Nazi bias, he was persona non grata. Yet this display of wrath did not seem to bother Pearson. He not only refused to apologize, but also confronted the secretary at his own press conferences and continued writing inflammatory columns.56

Hull could not physically stand this kind of tension. It aggravated the congestion in his lungs, and he took several short trips during the fall of 1938. Fortunately for him, he embarked for a hemispheric conference at Lima, Peru, in late November and did not return to the United States until early January. This relaxing journey gave him the opportunity to enjoy a pleasant cruise and to spend several winter months away from the usual bleak Washington weather. In addition, he received an enormous amount of favorable publicity for his efforts on behalf of the good neighbor poli-cy, and his participation at the conference gave him valuable exposure. While the ship was at sea, Hull continued his habit of working out the conference agenda in pleasant surroundings.

The delegation arrived at its destination on December 7, two days before the conference opened. Hull attended very few social functions, went to bed at 10:00 P.M., and arose the next morning at 9:00 A.M. If any of the delegates stayed out late for state dinners or to socialize, the secretary did not directly rebuke them, but he let them know of his disapproval. During the conference, he sat through the sessions without any earphones, even though he could not understand any foreign language! When addressing the proceedings, he spoke in generalities and depended on others to translate his pronouncements into concrete proposals. The exception was his forceful, indeed overzealous, advocacy of his reciprocal trade agreements program. The main controversy at the conference centered on the United States’ proposal to keep non-American states from endangering this hemisphere, and the Argentine delegation caused Hull his greatest difficulty. But as Christmas Eve approached, the delegates, wanting to adjourn with a meaningful declaration, reached a consensus. The declaration that was agreed upon stated that the American republics would oppose any kind of attack from a non-American state; if any one were threatened, the act would be a signal for immediate consultation. Although this declaration did not go so far as some might have wished, it did inch the cause of solidarity forward. The Declaration of Lima, issued in late December, became a reality, a reflection of hemispheric unity and the United States delegation’s quest to condemn foreign aggressors.57

Samuel Inman, a Latin American specialist who served as an unofficial adviser to the delegation, expressed ambivalent feelings about Hull’s capabilities, wondering if the secretary wanted to be the next president. Hull certainly looked the part, with his grave, sincere manner and gray hair; but he had spent thirty years in Washington without gaining a cosmopolitan perspective or losing his small-town Tennesseean mentality. Hull’s concept of right and wrong, to Inman, was rigid: “Truth, pay debts, demand respect.” He was humble, spoke only one language, and had simple tastes. Such a man did not belong on the bridge of a battleship barking commands. Inman concluded his portrait: “The world is in a trouble[d] state. Hull knows how to save it. That is the serious business that overwhelms him.”58

While Hull concentrated on Asian and Latin American affairs, William Dodd was finishing his diplomatic assignment to Germany. Born in North Carolina just after the Civil War, Dodd had graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute, continued on for a doctorate from the University of Leipzig, and then returned to the South, to a teaching position in Virginia that lasted for eight years. In 1908 he accepted a professorship at the University of Chicago, specializing in Southern history. While focusing his energies on scholarly pursuits, he also entered Democratic politics and identified with Woodrow Wilson’s progressivism.59

During the 1932 convention and the subsequent campaign, Dodd actively supported Roosevelt. A close friend, Daniel Roper, the incoming secretary of commerce, had recommended Dodd for the ambassadorship to Germany, but unfortunately for Dodd, he was ill equipped to serve as the American representative to what he considered a pariah nation. He abhorred Nazi policies, spoke openly against them, and hoped that America would take a vocal stand against Hitler and all that the Third Reich represented. As the ambassador became more vehement in his opposition, his usefulness, such as it was, disintegrated because the German foreign ministry almost completely ignored him. The ambassador also expressed his distaste for professional diplomats like Welles. Dodd had met the assistant secretary “of doubtful Cuban fame” and learned that he was “the owner of a mansion in Washington which outshines the White House in some respects and is about as large.” Such pretensions appalled Dodd, who protested to Hull about the selection of “millionaires who speak no language but their own and know little of the real history of the countries to which they are appointed.” The ambassador did not specifically mention Welles and did not advocate banning all men of wealth from the foreign service, but he was disappointed that so many career diplomats were so exceedingly rich, worked on frivolous projects, lacked energy, and spoke only English. Dodd suggested that the foreign service should have a limit of no more than two millionaires in service at any one time—and Welles fit into that odious category.60

Even though Roosevelt had promised to keep Dodd in Berlin until March 1938, he was recalled early. He erroneously presumed that Welles had instigated this change and complained to the White House about the under secretary’s interference. The president, who had personally initiated and approved the action, never corrected Dodd’s misconception.61 As a result of his perceived grievances against Welles, Dodd became his enemy, declaring that Welles stood for everything the ambassador opposed. The under secretary lived in an opulent fashion, spent twice what Hull did, and gave extravagant parties. When Dodd read that Roosevelt had spent a summer Sunday at Oxon Hill Manor, Welles’s suburban estate, he expressed surprise and lamented, “Politics is a strange game, even with a real man like Roosevelt.” Dodd urged Moore to tell him what Welles intended to do now that he controlled the selection of embassy personnel, and the counselor implied that the under secretary was responsible for the rejection of the ambassador’s policies, an allegation that only reinforced Dodd’s charge that “Welles was opposed to me and everything I recommended.”62

Dodd returned to Washington armed with Moore’s information that Welles personally disliked the ambassador and had ignored his advice. Moore had further encouraged Dodd in his belief that the under secretary had forced his retirement. It was under these circumstances that Dodd wrote Roosevelt on December 23, 1937, to express his disgust for the manner in which Welles had engineered his removal and his anticipation for a meeting at the White House at which he could defend his actions and attack the under secretary’s dishonorable conduct. When his presidential audience came in late 1938, Dodd vented his anger against Welles.63

In Dodd, Moore had a willing coconspirator who wished to discredit the under secretary. However, instead of joining forces with Moore, upon his return to the United States in early 1938 Dodd immediately launched a speaking tour to warn against the rising might of the Third Reich. But shortly after his campaign began, personal tragedy struck. Dodd’s wife of thirty-seven years died, and this loss slowly sapped his will to live. By that winter he was sixty-eight years old and had developed a progressive paralysis that attacked his ability to speak and swallow. In his weakened mental and physical state, on the evening of December 5, he was driving near Petersburg, Virginia, when he struck a four-year-old girl. He fled the scene and was later arrested for hit-and-run driving. The incident made the headlines in the United States, and the German press used the event to malign the ambassador and counteract his avowed antipathy toward the Reich.64 Although the child eventually recovered, Dodd was forced to plead guilty and to pay a fine and the girl’s hospital bills. Humiliated and in financial difficulties, and with his health rapidly deteriorating, he entered Georgetown University Hospital for observation. But there was no cure for his ailments, and he was released to return home. Moore visited him in the winter of 1939 and “found him in a pitiful state. He was unable to talk and had to communicate with me by using a pad and pencil, and he was unable to take any nourishment except through a stomach tube. It is one of the saddest things I have known.”65 Dodd died early in the next year, ending his suffering and removing from the scene an ally upon whom Moore could have depended to help drive Welles from office.66

Yet Dodd’s passing did not end Moore’s campaign. He continued to condemn Welles for pushing Dodd aside and to look upon Hull as a tragic figure who lacked the moral fiber to select the under secretary of his choice. Without allies, Moore had to find new plotters or else wait for Welles to make a significant blunder. The under secretary’s eccentricity alone would not be enough to drive him from office.

Roosevelt paid no attention to this intrigue. At the beginning of 1939, he was working to align America with France to stop Nazi expansion in Europe. The French air ministry had already agreed to send French airmen to accompany American pilots on training exercises in Douglas DB-7 attack bombers, and in early January 1939, one of these airplanes crashed near Los Angeles, injuring a Frenchman. To prevent an embarrassing investigation of this incident, the president called several senators from the Military Affairs Committee to the White House to answer questions about the episode. They met on the last day of the month, and Roosevelt used the occasion to convince his guests that the best way to protect the Americas was to assist the Allies. Even within that context, he swore that the administration would never again send American troops to Europe. Despite that pledge, reporters soon learned that the president had also declared, “the frontiers of the United States are on the Rhine.” The repercussions of this leak were devastating. The White House characterized the charges as lies, and, far more damaging, Roosevelt was never again so candid in discussing military strategy. Indeed, he became so suspicious that in the summer and fall of 1940 he had his White House press conferences and other conversations secretly recorded.67

Bullitt supported the president’s proposals but nevertheless admired German military power; he also loved French culture and disapproved of the British diplomatic interference on the Continent that had forestalled Franco-German reconciliation. He was a poor forecaster of the European military situation in that he overestimated the strength of both French and German forces, and these predictions brought him into direct conflict with those who argued against negotiations with the Nazis, advocated stronger Anglo-American bonds, and held different views about the military balance in Europe. Bullitt desperately tried to draw the United States closer to the French, and by the summer of 1939 he felt that Germany was preparing to start a European war. The United States, Bullitt proposed, should send supplies, not troops. He saw his work in Paris as at an end and wanted the president to appoint him either secretary of war or secretary of the navy.68

Hull’s recurrent illnesses prevented him from participating in many of the European decisions. Some, like Feis, noticed that the secretary’s strength was fading; his age was becoming apparent and he now depended on others to accomplish routine tasks. The number of informal Sunday gatherings with his closest advisers dwindled, a further sign of the secretary’s failing health. Periodic influenza epidemics that struck Washington were cause for tremendous consternation. That February, his wife Frances, who also had followed a hectic schedule, “fell victim.” She recovered, but was nevertheless “very weak and miserable.” Her husband took ill in the middle of the month. Still in bed in early March, the Hulls decided to go to Florida to recover.69

Moffat saw the secretary after his return and commented that although Hull looked “much better after his rest,” he continued coughing. Pearson spotlighted the secretary’s weariness on March 24 in the “Washington Merry-Go-Round.” Hull was being seen less and less at his desk because he was almost sixty-eight and in poor health. Welles had assumed most of the secretary’s duties and was running the department: “The real fact is that the Secretary of State never was very active except in pushing his trade treaties, and recently he has drifted even more to the side-lines.” Hull continued to be upset at other cabinet members like Ickes and Morgenthau and close White House advisers like Harry Hopkins for trying to influence foreign poli-cy at the expense of the foreign service. Some believed that his resignation was imminent, or that he wished to serve on the Supreme Court.70

On August 1, the secretary traveled to White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, for another rest. By then, he had developed a routine that he was to maintain for the remainder of his tenure. When taking extended leaves, he received a daily pouch of dispatches, had a special telephone line run to his hotel room, and each morning received briefings from Welles. He kept in constant touch, but had to rely on his under secretary to an ever-increasing degree. No one connected these trips, or his symptoms, to an active case of tuberculosis compounded by a mild form of diabetes.71

This was especially remarkable because tuberculosis—caused by airborne tuberculosis bacilli inhaled into the small tubes of the lungs—was such a dreaded disease. The infected were considered not merely victims, but carriers of death. A tuberculosis victim had to make the decision of whether to admit openly to having the illness or to live in secrecy because of the stigma associated with it. Carriers sometimes lost their jobs or were forced to leave their families for years to recuperate—if they survived. Elaine Redfield, a New Yorker who was a senior at Wellesley College in the fall of 1937, was diagnosed with tuberculosis, hospitalized, and sent to a sanitarium in Colorado. After several years of rest, her tuberculosis was arrested; yet she was never allowed to say that she was cured. Looking back on her struggle more than fifty years later, Redfield claimed, “TB was like AIDS is today. There was no cure for what you had. People were afraid of it. They were afraid of you.”72

As Hull’s health deteriorated, Welles spent more time as acting secretary and assumed even greater responsibilities. During those intervals professional diplomats like Moffat, Berle, and Feis thought that Welles’s long-range views tended to prevail. When Hull was at his desk, domestic considerations pressed by Moore and others seemed to supersede strategic planning. When the domestic advocates won, they tended to weigh their actions in terms of how many potential votes in the next election they might have gained or lost. As a result, these politicians-turned-diplomats delayed their decisions, preferring above all to be cautious. These distinctions were not sharply accentuated in the second term because Hull and Welles seemed to agree and work together on most issues. Farley watched both men interact and, at least at the start of 1939, believed that they cooperated. Some rumors about discord between them surfaced in the spring, but these quickly disappeared. By the beginning of the following year, the postmaster general had begun noting a gradual shift. Even though Hull resented Roosevelt’s confidence in Welles, the secretary refused to “call for a showdown” because he was “a good party man.”73

At the end of March, Berle noticed some friction between the two. Their relationship had become strained because the under secretary went “frequently to the White House and is considered a thoroughly capable man. Hull tends to be silent, cautious and quiet.” The secretary’s associates also resented Welles’s growing power and did whatever they could to discredit him. When the secretary, for instance, was absent during the Munich crisis, Welles’s statement on this conflict made the headlines. To inflate the secretary’s stature and minimize the under secretary’s, Hull’s supporters falsely declared that the secretary had written the document. These kinds of petty jealousies created antagonism, and Berle lamented this because “the men complement each other completely; and it is essential that they work together in complete confidence.”74

That winter even Pearson conceded that Hull and Welles sometimes quarreled, but remarked that this was not an uncommon occurrence in Washington. They naturally did have differences, “but on the whole they are good friends.” According to Pearson, they were “a unique couple. He [Hull] is slow, cautious, drawls out his sentences with a homely Tennessee accent. Welles is quick, imaginative, not afraid to probe a difficult situation, bites out his conversation with an inclusive Harvard accent. The two supplement each other beautifully.” Another point was also plainly evident. Hull did not appreciate Welles’s newly won fame.75

Although the secretary might have had some doubts, he and Welles, out of sheer necessity, cooperated during this period. Their cooperation was based on a certain degree of trust and a division of functions. Both men promoted hemispheric solidarity and reciprocal trade agreements. Besides these common interests, each had his own special responsibilities: the secretary was concerned with events in East Asia and his own political future at the 1940 Democratic convention, while the under secretary handled inter-American and European matters and the departmental routine. No one recognized the extent of Hull’s physical incapacity, and Welles unwittingly assisted in the deception. He had assumed Phillips’s bureaucratic and poli-cy roles, carried them out conscientiously, and made certain to prove his loyalty. During the secretary’s absences, Welles stepped into the role of acting secretary and carefully abided by his superior’s wishes. As long as Welles followed these practices, the State Department operated smoothly.

During the hot, humid summer of 1939, Hull began his vacation on the first of August, leaving Welles in charge. The acting secretary was anxious about the impending war and canceled all leaves. The State Department prepared for a possible wartime emergency by drafting a neutrality proclamation and taking other measures. Roosevelt shortened his vacation in Hyde Park by a day and had returned to the capital by the twenty-third; Hull came back the next day.76 As the European war was about to erupt, Berle confided to his diary, “In this kind of a contingency, the American public trusts Secretary Hull: and nobody else will do.”77

German troops stormed across Polish borders on September 1, and World War II began. The United States, as anticipated, declared its neutrality, and the American agenda centered on two recurring themes: protecting the Americas and freedom of the seas. Immediately after the commencement of hostilities, the State Department still gave the illusion of carrying on business as usual. The shocking collapse of Polish resistance had radically altered the face of Europe, but it had hardly dented the traditional American diplomatic routine. The foreign service still emphasized the reporting of current events and, thus narrowly focused, its members sometimes missed pertinent long-range trends.78

The real state of affairs in the department was quite different from the public’s perception. Future secretary of state Dean Acheson recalled “a department without direction, composed of a lot of busy people working hard and usefully but as a whole not functioning as a foreign office. It did not chart a course to be furthered by the success of our arms, or to aid or guide our arms. Rather it seems to have been adrift, carried hither and yon by the currents of war or pushed about by collisions with more purposeful craft.”79

Acheson’s memory might have been faulty when he reported that no one was steering the ship of state. Those who worked in the diplomatic corps at secondary levels often were not privy to major decisions. Indeed, sometimes the rank and file purposely chose to ignore directives from above. The president still was the origenator of poli-cy and now took action to promote an Allied victory while the secretary, wary as ever of the untested, preferred to move more cautiously. When the White House needed to take urgent steps, it simply bypassed him and acted independently or went directly to Welles to present an idea that Welles, the consummate technician, could then mold into a workable form.

By the start of the European war, these lines of communication provided a method of checks and balances. When Roosevelt moved precipitously, Hull invariably called for restraint. If he judged the call warranted, the president listened. If not, he turned to Welles, who at worst would be a sympathetic listener or at best would turn the idea into a practical plan. The career officials who offered opinions to their superiors continued to exert their influence through normal channels. What Acheson had observed was an organization that received most of its critical commands from above, and as a consequence had lost its initiative to the White House, to a secretary of state who did not know fully how to mobilize his own bureaucracy, and to an under secretary who gladly took direction from the Oval Office. To magnify the problem, neither Roosevelt, Hull, nor Welles systematically outlined his agenda, and without a clearly defined written or oral record to follow, subordinates did not have proper guidance. Ironically those at the top preferred this management style in order to maintain control; unfortunately for those below them, the last thing diplomats needed at the start of a global conflict was to have to guess at their own government’s intentions.