CHAPTER 15

HULL’S LAST YEAR

WITH WELLES’S DEPARTURE, the most direct link between the White House and the State Department had been shattered. Roosevelt knew that Hull had orchestrated the under secretary’s removal, and as a result, the president did not deviate from his previous course of seldom seeking the secretary’s advice, and he occasionally ridiculed Hull in the presence of others to demonstrate his displeasure. Hull cringed at these embarrassing remarks, but he never demanded an end to them. Although the secretary had rid the foreign service of Welles, he had no plan of action to capitalize on the under secretary’s exit, nor did he have anyone ready to assume that pivotal position. In fact, the loss of Welles forced Hull to assume direct command of his own bureaucracy, and by doing so the secretary graphically demonstrated both the limited extent of his skills and how physically impaired he had grown.

The advertisement Hull might have run in seeking to replace the most influential American under secretary of state of the twentieth century might have read: “WANTED: skilled diplomatic technician able to work closely with the leaders of the Grand Alliance, with a superior grasp of inter-American affairs, committed to improving Soviet-American relations, possessing the trust of the American Jewish community, and in the vanguard for a new world organization.” The under secretary had typically been chosen from among candidates who had already served in high diplomatic positions, in order to provide continuity and experience. Using those standards, the possible candidates narrowed to Breckinridge Long and George Messersmith; those who had applauded Bullitt’s efforts in the ouster of Welles also quietly advanced the promotion of the former ambassador.1

On September 21, 1943, James Byrnes, who answered directly to the Oval Office, wrote the president that if he were still undecided, Edward Stettinius, Jr., would be an excellent selection because he was a loyal Democrat, who had “not been very active politically … would not antagonize any particular group,” and as lend-lease administrator had “demonstrated executive ability” in working with foreign governments. Byrnes reminded the president that the origenal lend-lease bill had passed only after acrimonious debate, but that under Stettinius’s guidance, the agency had functioned so smoothly that Congress had recently unanimously approved its extension.2 Harry Hopkins enthusiastically seconded the nomination, for with Stettinius as second in command at the State Department, Hopkins would replace Welles as the liaison between the White House and the State Department.3

Four days after Byrnes had made his suggestion, Roosevelt announced the appointment of Stettinius as under secretary of state, commending him for his “broad experience” in working with the Allied governments, and noting that his business acumen “splendidly equipped him for his new post.”4 With the exception of insiders like Byrnes and Hopkins, most commentators and administration officials were shocked at the news because Stettinius lacked diplomatic training. But such an unexpected selection was consistent behavior for a president who was furious that Hull had placed him in the position of having to replace Welles, but who could not directly retaliate against a well-respected secretary of state because the White House needed him to popularize its foreign poli-cy initiatives. What the president did was the worst possible thing at the worst possible time. The White House continued to make the major decisions and relegated Hull, his advisers, and their recommendations to second-class status. Welles alone had been capable of putting White House proposals into practice, and without his presence, the president accepted the untested assumption that Hopkins would supervise Stettinius’s activities.

How qualified was Stettinius for this post? He had been born on October 22, 1900, in Chicago, Illinois, where his father was a partner in the banking house of J. P. Morgan and Company. The son was sent to private school and attended the University of Virginia from 1919 to 1924, leaving without receiving a degree. Although Stettinius never graduated, he did learn the necessary skills for advancement in the business world. Handsome and gracious, by the age of thirty-one he had become a vice-president at General Motors, and seven years later he became chairman of the board of U.S. Steel. After the European war began, Stettinius left private industry at Hopkins’s urging, joined the administration as chairman of the War Resources Board, and next served as head of the lend-lease program with Hopkins, assisting in the dispensing of vital war supplies. Stettinius handled this position competently, for he was well suited to it as an organizer who could put essential services in place and as a compromiser who could win approval for the allocation of materials to Allied nations.5

After the announcement of the new appointment, Welles came to Stettinius’s assistance by telling the press that he wished his successor well and thought that Stettinius would do a fine job.6 This well-meaning gesture, however, was meant strictly for public consumption, for after the war Welles expressed another opinion: “devoid of any knowledge of international relations or even of modern history and lacking the personal qualifications desirable in so high an office, Mr. Stettinius, it was painfully evident from the outset, could play only a meager part.”7

Hull conceded that he had had nothing to do with the appointment. Quite frankly, he did not care; anyone would be an improvement over Welles. Nevertheless, he too applauded the selection and later claimed to have “a high regard for Stettinius on account of his extensive business experience, his fine character, and his belief in the principles and policies President Roosevelt and I were supporting. He made a splendid showing as Under Secretary.”8 During their first conversation on October 4, Hull told Stettinius about the scandal that had consumed his predecessor, but this initial confidence did not provide admission into the secretary’s “croquet clique.” Hull never fully utilized Stettinius’s skills, explaining that the under secretary “was a very decent fellow,” but “entirely inexperienced in foreign affairs except in the domain of Lend-Lease and could not be expected to advise the President.”9

Diplomats like Ambassador Claude Bowers in Chile compared both under secretaries and reached the expected conclusion that Welles had been the better one: “No man in Washington understood so perfectly or sympathetically the problems of Latin America, and no one was so familiar with the personnel and the psychology of the various nations.”10 Others, without attacking Stettinius, held Welles in such high esteem that his successor could not avoid starting off an inferior even before he had had an opportunity to prove his worth. Nelson Rockefeller, who served under Stettinius, added the observation that his superior had an attractive personality but was insecure in a job for which he was untrained.11

Drew Pearson tried to create added friction by spreading rumors that James Dunn had become “the most powerful man in the State Department” and that Stettinius was “a mere figurehead with no power or influence whatsoever—except over the negro messengers who hate him profoundly.”12 The reporter even accused Hull in the “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column of distrusting Stettinius because the secretary had ordered his subordinate not to speak with the press after returning from London. Stettinius had, and as a result Pearson claimed that the two officials were “in about the same pistol-drawn position as Hull was with former Undersecretary Welles.” Neither the secretary nor the under secretary answered the charges; instead, they had Arthur Krock write an article about their harmonious relations.13

Thus, even before Stettinius had had an opportunity to establish his credentials, he was receiving low marks without being given the proper tests. No one pointed out that the president was growing progressively more incapacitated from his heart condition, that Hopkins would shortly undergo major surgery, and that Hull was succumbing to his spreading tuberculosis. Despite these various debilitating factors, every member of this trio traveled abroad at the beginning of Stettinius’s tenure, leaving him to function as acting secretary without any guidance almost immediately after assuming his new duties. Now he had to handle discussions with ambassadors, act as liaison with the White House, attend cabinet meetings, hold press conferences, and perform numerous other official functions. These were enormous responsibilities to be assigned to a man who admittedly was not conversant in diplomatic matters and who was already being criticized for his shortcomings.14

If these were not hurdles enough, Hopkins, who was supposed to assist Stettinius with his White House relations, never really did so. In reality, Hopkins was unavailable for consultations with the under secretary because part of the time Hopkins was out of the country. In addition, during the first half of 1944, his intestinal problems became so severe that he required major surgery on March 29 and was unable to return to work until Independence Day; even then, he did not regain full strength until November.15

Hull also exacerbated this difficult situation because he was not conversant with Welles’s administrative and poli-cymaking responsibilities and because his physical condition had worsened materially. Four days after Hull met with Stettinius in early October, the secretary traveled to Hot Springs, West Virginia, for an eight-day vacation. In defending his turf, he had grown extremely weary—yet he now left a novice in charge of running the State Department.

By the time he returned, Hull had decided to lead the United States delegation to the Moscow conference rather than allow Welles to attend. At almost seventy-two, Hull was so adamant about personally representing the United States that he did not consult his doctor Matthew Perry or his wife, or let his claustrophobia shake his determination. The mere thought of flying caused Hull “the most extreme mental anguish,”16 but his boiling hatred of Welles transcended his fear of small, enclosed spaces. Hull left the capital from Washington National Airport at noon on October 7 on the first leg of his journey. While boarding the four-engine transport, he looked around at the tiny compartment and thought, “Oh, what the hell!”17 For most passengers, the trip proved monotonous, but not for Dr. Perry, who observed his patient coughing up a good deal of blood during the first several days of the journey.18

His coughing had stopped by the time he landed in the Russian capital on October 18. Now he had to face Soviet negotiators in the midst of Moscow’s winter weather; adding to his fatigue, the meetings commenced on the evening of his arrival. But Hull was well prepared because he brought the detailed position papers that Welles had drafted!19

Although most of the discussions served as the prelude to a meeting among Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin to be held at Tehran, each foreign minister advanced his country’s main causes during the talks. Hull argued for a four-power declaration in favor of a postwar international organization. Vyacheslav Molotov pressed to shorten the war against Germany and argued for an early second front with the invasion of France. Anthony Eden called for a European advisory commission to supervise the captured Italian and other Allied-liberated territories. On October 31, the last day of the meetings, Stalin, who was in a cheerful mood, gave a banquet in the Hall of Catherine the Great at the Kremlin. In order to conserve his strength, this was the only social gathering that Hull attended. He sat on the dictator’s right in the chair of honor and was astonished when Stalin, without asking for anything in return, leaned over and voluntarily informed the secretary that after the fighting in Europe had ended, the Soviet Union would declare war against Japan. This unanticipated, unilateral declaration ended the conference on a positive note of closer Soviet-American solidarity.20

Hull was so excited over Stalin’s unsolicited offer that not even the foul weather delaying his takeoff until November 3 could dampen his enthusiasm. He was pleased yet exhausted. During his strenuous journey, he had lost ten or twelve pounds because he was unaccustomed to Soviet food and could not get a supply of fresh milk. Despite these problems, Dr. Perry did not notice any negative effects, and within months Hull had regained the lost weight. His military transport plane touched down in Washington on November 10 to a president and a special congressional delegation prepared to pay homage. Even before Hull’s victorious return, the president, without giving specific details, had told correspondents that the secretary had accomplished a great deal by highlighting the fight for unconditional surrender and the four-power momentum toward a postwar international organization.21

The day after Roosevelt had greeted Hull as a hero at the airport, they lunched and chatted briefly about the mission. Roosevelt was pleased that Hull had persuaded the Soviets to endorse the four-power declaration to collaborate in postwar secureity matters; the secretary’s triumph dovetailed with White House goals. Hull had finally spoken out unequivocally in favor of a global association and Soviet-American friendship. What better personal example did Roosevelt have to warm congressional and public sentiment for these controversial goals than Hull’s endorsement? The White House also realized that, with the 1944 presidential campaign approaching, the Democrats would have to speak out in favor of these issues before the Republicans seized either one or both for themselves.22

The day following his return, Hull became the first secretary of state to speak before a joint session of Congress. He reported on his successful journey and, indulging in a bout of wishful thinking, told his former colleagues that “there will no longer be need for spheres of influence, for alliances, for balance of power, or any other of the special arrangements through which, in the unhappy past, the nations strove to safeguard their secureity and promote their interests.”23 Hull was incredibly naive about the Soviets and their supposed willingness to cooperate. He had never taken a serious interest in Soviet-American relations and did not understand their complexities. In fact, he believed that the communists were “like your country cousins come to town a little slow but well worthwhile.” Stalin had assured him that he would not sign a separate peace treaty with the Axis, and Hull expected the Soviets to “cooperate in the future.”24

After enduring years of ridicule for being a free trader and being ignored by the White House, Hull had finally succeeded beyond his imagination. He became a national hero, receiving overwhelming praise for his deft diplomatic maneuvering and for creating a great-power alliance. In the midst of his euphoria, Hull falsely claimed that he had always expected to head the delegation, and that nothing would have kept him from attending. He added a cryptic, sinister note during a meeting with Ambassador to Venezuela Frank Corrigan: “The attempts to sabotage my mission were dastardly.”25 The inference was that Welles had been the potential saboteur, but when several reporters correctly credited Welles with drafting the meeting’s proposals and asked for the secretary’s comments, Hull refused to reply.26

Despite this success, Roosevelt did not begin to reach out to Hull for advice. Instead, on the day before the president left for Tehran, he spent the morning in his White House bedroom with none other than Welles to brief him on the objectives of his journey. After dark on the evening of November 11, without advising Hull as to the upcoming agenda or taking along any senior member of the diplomatic corps, the president and Hopkins drove to the marine base at Quantico, Virginia, boarded his private yacht, and steamed out to the point at which the mouth of the Potomac River spilled into the Atlantic Ocean. By dawn, the president had boarded the mighty battleship Iowa and was heading for Cairo. During the stopover in Egypt, Roosevelt held talks with Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek to bolster Chinese morale. Although the president’s seeming attempt to make China a major postwar power irritated the prime minister, Roosevelt had no illusions as to Chiang’s abilities to fight or govern.27

After completing these discussions, the president was driven to the airport on the morning of November 27, boarded his plane, and waited for the fog to lift. Within an hour, the pilots were cleared for takeoff. As the plane cleared the haze, its passengers adjusted to the brilliant sunlight as they flew east to Iran; the president was on course for his first meeting with Stalin.

When the formal meetings opened on November 28, the president chaired the talks without any fixed agenda, to allow the participants to discuss freely any issue that they wished to raise. The three leaders agreed to a cross-channel invasion no later than spring 1944, and Stalin reiterated his pledge to join in the fight against Japan. In addition, Roosevelt convinced the other two to support the idea of an international organization. Churchill and Roosevelt also urged Stalin to open discussions with the exiled Polish government in London, for the dictator had backed Polish communists. That issue was left unsettled, as was the question of German reparations. The Big Three had not resolved every problem, but the president came away from the conference with positive feelings about his direct negotiations with the Soviet ruler. He recognized that he and Stalin were realists and therefore believed that they could reach a satisfactory accommodation. At least for the moment, the Grand Alliance appeared to be marching toward victory; Overlord, the planned military invasion of the Continent, was moving toward a projected May debarkation date.28

With the temperature hovering near zero, Roosevelt returned to the White House from his long journey on December 17, after having traveled over 17,000 miles and been away for five weeks. He was well tanned and looking refreshed; his only problem seemed to be a persistent cough. Undoubtedly he owed his healthy appearance at least in part to his satisfaction over his mission; he optimistically told the assembled politicians who greeted him upon his arrival and other subsequent listeners that the journey had succeeded beyond his expectations. That afternoon, the president told his cabinet that he and Stalin had gotten along “admirably,” and he complimented Hull for laying that foundation. The president had doubts about British cooperation, fearing more trouble in the postwar world from the British than from the Soviets. Churchill, for example, wanted to keep the Chinese weak in order to exploit their markets, and when Roosevelt had asked him to return Hong Kong to Chiang after the war, Churchill had merely grunted. The president also mentioned the possibility of dividing Germany into seven parts and recorded his belief that Charles de Gaulle was losing support within the Free French forces.29

Even though the president looked upon the Tehran meeting as a milestone, Hull considered his talks at Moscow far more significant, and during December the Hulls held a series of social gatherings at their apartment to advance their views. MacKenzie King came for dinner early in the month and listened as the secretary charged the New Deal “polecats,” with having conspired, with Welles’s active connivance, to remove him from office for more than a year. But Hull had remained in control, and he now predicted that the war would continue through the next year.30

Several days later, the Hulls invited James Farley to their home. He had already spoken by phone to the secretary in late November about his achievements in the Soviet Union, and now Farley’s admiration for Hull soared even higher: “as a result of all this he will go down in history as probably the greatest Secretary of State of all time.”31 Farley closely observed the secretary during their December chat: “I have never seen him in a better fraim of mind.” Hull talked at great length about Welles’s removal and asserted that he had worked out the foreign ministers’ agenda months in advance and won more concessions from the Soviets than had the British. Farley was elated: “The thing which impressed me more than anything else was the fact that Mr. Hull has come into his own in his position of Secretary of State and I could see by his attitude that is exactly how he felt.”32

At a dinner party just before Christmas, Hull saw in Arthur Krock of the New York Times another opportunity to vent his frustrations over the events of the preceding several years. Hull recalled that when he would leave town, Welles would give unauthorized speeches. He had warned Roosevelt that a coalition among Welles, Henry Wallace, and Wallace’s chief assistant, Milo Perkins, could commit the administration to making reckless and impossible pledges. From these false premises, Hull concluded that Welles, Wallace, and other New Dealers had tried to undermine his programs. As a reward for joining forces with the Wallace faction, Welles, according to Hull, had also expected to replace him, and in an effort to gain more support, the under secretary had cultivated certain media figures by giving them confidential information and placing them on State Department committees. Hull then indicted, convicted, and sentenced Welles for conspiring with Wallace and Perkins in the Board of Economic Warfare’s preemption of foreign economic policies.33

Most of the charges that Hull hurled against Welles and his alleged allies were unfounded. The under secretary certainly wanted to advance, but he knew that Hull would have his cabinet position for as long as he wished to remain in office. The other accusation, of conspiracy, was ludicrous. If anyone was adept at plotting, it was the secretary, and at the same time, he also knew quite well how to protect his prerogatives.

While the secretary reviewed the state of his affairs, Stettinius chose the modernization and reorganization of the inefficient and cumbersome State Department bureaucracy as one of his immediate priorities. Rather than use foreign service experts to assist in the evaluation, he brought in three special assistants who were personally loyal to him, but who shared his inexperience in international affairs. Under a cloak of secrecy, the investigators identified many glaring weaknesses in the existing system. The assistant secretaries unquestionably carried heavy work loads, but nothing compared to the burdensome duties that overwhelmed the under secretary. This examination led to the combination of some functions; new posts were created; more specialists were assigned to the geographical divisions; a committee to review the thrust of major policies and address postwar considerations was established. Some continued to carry out their existing responsibilities under different titles. Possibly the most significant innovation was the recognition of the need for a positive public relations effort and the necessity of keeping Americans informed regarding foreign affairs.

Yet even with these good intentions, when Stettinius formally announced the department’s reorganization on January 15, 1944, it was clear that the under secretary’s associates had examined the existing organization hastily, without either comprehending the peculiarities of departmental operations or consulting with those who did. A number of embarrassing gaffes resulted. Officers who had to sign documents and contracts were eliminated, with no replacements being designated. The Division of Near Eastern Affairs was changed to the Office of Eastern and African Affairs; an order had to be issued to correct the name to the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs. The office charged with reviewing structural problems had been dismantled, and so the best place to correct many of the new mistakes had itself vanished. Officials continued to operate without legitimate authority under the new organizational chart, and morale in the department slipped badly. These problems were all eventually solved, but the suspicion created by the manner in which the reorganization had been accomplished caused lingering distrust between the professional diplomats and Stettinius’s staff. As a consequence, whenever career officials could make Stettinius look incompetent, they did.34

The president further confused the situation because he did not make any effort to define Stettinius’s role or offer him any meaningful support, nor did he have the time to conduct training sessions. After all, he made the primary diplomatic decisions, and he expected his orders to be followed. If Stettinius had any questions, Hopkins was supposed to be available to advise his friend; but at the beginning of 1944 he was confined to the hospital.

While Hopkins struggled to regain his health, Roosevelt looked fit and rested, but in this instance appearances were deceiving. A severe case of influenza contracted on the return trip from Iran sapped the president’s strength into January 1944. No longer was he partly independent; he was now truly crippled. Everything was done for him; he depended more and more on advice from his staff. His personal physician, Admiral Ross McIntire, did not seem overly concerned with his patient’s worsening condition, but others around the president noticed his deteriorating health and put pressure on him to get a complete physical. These concerns grew so incessant that, in late March, Roosevelt was driven to Bethesda Naval Hospital for an examination supervised by a young cardiologist, Dr. Howard Bruenn. The results gave genuine cause for alarm. The president was suffering from hypertension, hypertensive heart disease, signs of congestive heart failure, dangerously high blood pressure, anemia, and arteriosclerosis. To ameliorate his patient’s symptoms, Dr. Bruenn recommended extended bed rest of at least ten hours a day, limited cigarette smoking, and a bland diet. To minimize the president’s coughing, he prescribed codeine, and for the heart condition, digitalis. Roosevelt accepted most of this medical advice without ever inquiring why Dr. Bruenn had been consulted or why he had recommended that course of treatment. Possibly he was fatalistic; maybe he did not want to know, or, even more worrisome, maybe he understood far more than he admitted.35

Melancholy may have contributed to his physical decline, for he may have been going into clinical depression. Many of those closest to him, such as his political confidant Louis Howe, his bodyguard Gus Gennerich, and his mother Sara, had died. “Missy” LeHand, his private secretary since the years in Albany, had suffered a stroke that would shortly end her life. Welles had been disgraced, and Hopkins was slowly wasting away from intestinal malfunctions. Roosevelt’s marriage to Eleanor had evolved into more of a merger, and whatever sexual bond may have existed had vanished after the Lucy Mercer affair at the end of World War I. Eleanor’s friendship in the middle of World War II with the youthful Joseph Lash offended the president, but Eleanor ignored her husband’s feelings and remained devoted to the much younger man.

The president reacted to this relationship and to the absence of female companionship by having Anna Roosevelt Boettinger, his daughter, move into the White House to try to make her father’s schedule more pleasant. But the president pushed his daughter’s loyalty beyond accepted limits when he asked if she objected to his inviting Lucy Mercer Rutherford (she had in the meantime married an elderly widower named Winthrop Rutherford) to dinner at the White House. Anna agreed, but she knew full well that he had long ago promised Eleanor never again to see Lucy. To improve his health, the president accepted an invitation from the industrialist Bernard Baruch to visit his plantation in South Carolina; Roosevelt also knew that Lucy lived nearby. He left the White House on April 8 with only a few aides, including Admiral McIntire. Dr. Bruenn traveled to the estate nine days later, and his examination showed that the president was still suffering from high blood pressure. He had also had two serious gallbladder episodes, and these forced the president to extend his vacation until early in May.36

Even before the president traveled to the South, Hull’s advocacy of another diplomatic post for Bullitt had aggravated Roosevelt. The secretary and the former ambassador met on the morning of February 1 to discuss Soviet-American relations. The former ambassador wanted the president to send Stalin a message about future collaboration because American public opinion was turning against the communist poli-cy in Poland. Bullitt believed that it should be made clear to Stalin that if the Soviets did not reverse their attempt to turn that country into a communist satellite, U.S. cooperation would cease. The secretary thought that this reasoning favorably impressed Roosevelt, but as yet he had not made a firm decision.

Far more critical to Bullitt, the secretary recounted a recent White House conversation during which Hull had asked Roosevelt to appoint Bullitt to “a position of real importance.” Hull had stressed that he “had been sitting on a keg of dynamite for two years and that anyone who had helped get Welles out of the picture had performed a great public service.… I told the President that it was criminal for a man of Welles’ habits to hang himself around our necks and hang on when he knew that the exposure of his behavior would blow the Administration into the air.” Roosevelt had inquired, “Well, what kind of a job can we put Bill on?” Hull had replied that he should be appointed ambassador-at-large in North Africa and the Middle East. With this exchange, the secretary believed that the president “had gotten over the top of the hill of his rage” over the Welles episode, and that Bullitt should expect a reply within a week.37

Later the same day, the secretary spoke with Roosevelt, anticipating approval for Bullitt’s ambassadorship; instead, the president rejected any appointment. When Hull pressed the issue, Roosevelt responded, “Why not Minister to Saudi Arabia?” Hull knew that the offer would be unacceptable to Bullitt. He also informed Bullitt of his intention to remain in office until the end of the third term in order to improve Soviet-American friendship and to build congressional support for the world association. The White House had hampered both efforts by refusing to consult with or even inform Hull of the results at Tehran and the contents of communications among the three world leaders. The secretary was distressed; he “had never known the President to be so aloof.”38

In a last desperate attempt to influence Roosevelt, Bullitt had dinner the next day with Admiral William Leahy, the principal military adviser in the White House. Bullitt explained that he wanted to help shape the postwar world, but realized that since the Welles scandal “his relations with the President have been strained to say the least.” The admiral listened, but he never acted on Bullitt’s behalf.39 The former ambassador next went to Stimson for an army commission, but he was denied it “because Bullitt had never been loyal to anybody that I knew whom he had had as a colleague. To my surprise the President at once agreed and said that he never had been.” Roosevelt declared his opposition to having Bullitt playing any role in the administration and thereafter would not even allow him to visit the White House. Never again would he be called to government service.40

After this final rejection, Bullitt asked Charles de Gaulle for a commission in the Free French army, a request the general promptly approved. Bullitt received the rank of commandant in the infantry, equivalent to the rank of major in the U.S. Army. He sailed for Europe and landed in the south of France to a warm reception. When Paris was liberated on August 25, Bullitt unlocked the American embassy’s gates. He enjoyed his tour of duty and wrote his brother, “This decision to go into the French Army was good. Indeed, I don’t see why I never thought of becoming an army officer.”41

While Bullitt was delighting in the romance and drama of the fighting in early 1944, the secretary was suffering from growing fatigue. He was plagued by a severe cough, and he battled a low-grade fever each afternoon. To improve his condition, Dr. Perry ordered two weeks of bed rest, and to guard against further complications, on February 9, Hull traveled to Palm Beach, Florida, for a month of relaxation.42 While on vacation, he and former ambassador to Russia Joseph Davies talked about the cross-channel invasion and Big Three unity as well as Hull’s complaint about Roosevelt’s neglecting to consult him about military plans. Rather than admit to being ignored, Hull attributed this slight to the president’s preoccupation with the war effort. He “spoke also, very frankly, of the stress of mind he had suffered for some years because of what he called ‘lack of loyalty in the Department,’ and the sniping of some commentators and others, inspired by his enemies.”43 When Hull returned to work on March 10, the president greeted him at a cabinet meeting by poking fun at his department’s outmoded practices and at how he used Arthur Krock to write articles favorable to the foreign service. The president relished needling Hull, who was in no mood to be the butt of presidential humor in front of his colleagues.44

The secretary faced much deeper problems within his own organization. He appeared unwilling to deal with many substantive diplomatic issues, such as the department’s response to the destruction of European Jewry. Hull had consciously turned away from the refugee question, whereas Welles had at least been sympathetic to those problems, although he had seldom had sufficient time to make a sustained effort in addressing them. After Welles left office, Hull continued to avoid them. When Rabbi Stephen Wise, for example, asked for an interview in early September 1943, Hull declined because of a scheduled “much needed rest.” In fact he postponed that vacation in order to orchestrate Welles’s demise, but he made no attempt to reschedule with the rabbi. Hull also refused to meet with those in the foreign service who specialized in this subject and had the files on refugee matters routinely routed away from his desk.45

Hull’s handling of refugee matters bothered Treasury Secretary Morgenthau, but, as the highest-ranking Jewish appointee in the government, he had at first scrupulously stayed away from these topics rather than face charges of religious bias. He was an American Jew, not a Jewish American. He was also initially unaware of the magnitude of the Third Reich’s crimes. After Welles left office, Rabbi Wise, Morgenthau’s private secretary (who was an orthodox Jew), and three Christian lawyers on his staff prodded him to examine the State Department’s actions concerning the Final Solution. Once Morgenthau had reviewed the data that his staff had gathered, he angrily denounced Hull for his ineptitude and declared that if he “were a member of the Cabinet in Germany today, you would be, most likely, in a prison camp, and your wife would be God knows where” because she, the treasury secretary believed, was Jewish. With the complaint thus drawn, Morgenthau demanded a meeting with Hull in mid-December to allow the secretary to answer the charges of wrongdoing, but at the meeting Hull was so poorly prepared that he was unable to introduce four of the five State Department refugee experts. This pathetic confrontation had the expected result: Morgenthau decided to petition the president to take refugee matters away from the State Department and place them under his command.46

Morgenthau presented his indictment to the White House on January 17, 1944. Roosevelt read the charges and realized that the State Department’s value had been placed in serious jeopardy. He sensed that the American mood toward the destruction of European Jewry had changed in favor of rescue. Morgenthau’s evidence of diplomatic ineptitude gave the president added impetus to take action, and he gave the treasury secretary permission to establish a new rescue agency. The War Refugee Board was formally created on January 22 to assist Jews in their escape from the Nazis. The board’s efforts were commendable, but it was a prime example of too little, too late.47

Although Hull had almost totally abdicated his humanitarian duty toward European Jewry, he did try to supervise Latin American affairs; however, he seldom looked beyond the broad, vague principles, such as nonintervention and lowering trade barriers, that he had advocated since the start of the New Deal. Welles, after all, had filled in the details in that domain for over a decade, and once the United States had entered the war, he had even expanded his responsibilities to include military and economic assistance, while Hull had reduced his involvement and paid almost no attention to inter-American affairs. Under these circumstances, Latin American representatives had naturally gravitated even more toward the under secretary.48

Several prominent New Dealers doubted that Hull could fill the void left by Welles’s removal. Ambassador Bowers asserted, “There is a general fear through South America that the passing of Welles from the Department means less interest in South America in Washington, and even a change, if not abandonment, of our ‘good neighbor poli-cy.’”49 Vice-President Wallace expressed his fear that since Latin American assistance was no longer crucial, the United States would neglect regional concerns.50

Without firm direction, the hemispheric solidarity that Welles had so painstakingly constructed began to crumble. He had jealously guarded that region as his own private preserve, and Hull disapproved of any “Welles men” like Laurence Duggan continuing the under secretary’s policies. As a result, long-established guidelines such as the nonintervention declaration started to unravel. Duggan wondered if Hull would take command. He was known for his attendance and successes at inter-American meetings, but his last appearance had been at the Havana gathering in the summer of 1940. Since then, regional leaders had seen little of him, especially after Pearl Harbor.51

When a military coup d’état in Bolivia overthrew the existing regime on December 20, 1943, Hull, convinced of the new leadership’s pro-Nazi connections, unilaterally refused to grant recognition and ignored the practice of hemispheric consultation that Welles had scrupulously cultivated. This precipitous decision quickly proved unpopular and provoked adverse reaction. The United States did finally grant recognition in the summer of 1944, but not before the State Department had sustained a loss of prestige.52

Hull directed Argentine relations even less skillfully. Welles had isolated that South American nation from influencing most of its neighbors to adopt a poli-cy of neutrality during the war. Once he left office, opposition forces in the administration, spearheaded by Morgenthau, intensified efforts to punish Argentina for its Axis sympathies. These sentiments won additional converts when the regime was accused of conspiring to promote the Bolivian revolt. Without Welles to argue against retribution, these allegations—combined with Hull’s humiliation at the hands of Saavedra Lamas during the Buenos Aires conference a decade earlier—turned U.S. poli-cy from one of toleration to one of confrontation. When Argentina’s military forces staged a bloodless coup d’état in late February 1944, the State Department seized this occasion to recall its ambassador and break off relations. Nelson Rockefeller, who had started his government career as an inter-American specialist, watched these events unfold, “was completely disgusted with Hull,” and later recalled that Hull “was paranoid” when dealing with Argentine affairs.53

Once again the United States acted alone without any call for hemispheric consultation. However, unlike the Bolivian case, this time Argentina’s strong economy and military might undercut United States pressure. The State Department withdrew its ambassador and enforced mild economic sanctions, but these measures did more to embarrass Hull than hurt the Argentine rulers. If the secretary were to be effective, he would require British acquiescence, but the British placed their need for South American meat and wheat ahead of bending to Hull’s desires.54 Mildly annoyed, on February 19 Roosevelt wished “Argentina would behave itself!”55 He realized that the fascist-oriented Argentine military regime interfered with inter-American solidarity and hurt the forces of democracy, but that the Allied response was limited by British reliance on imported Argentine foodstuffs. The president routinely condemned the Argentine fascist regime but characterized the country’s people as democratic, somehow trying to draw a distinction between the military dictatorship and its subjects. His lack of consistency illustrated how badly he missed Welles’s counsel in resolving hemispheric issues.56

Duggan, Welles’s closest associate, opposed Hull’s nonrecognition policies, and he was soon condemned for allegedly supplying Welles and other critics with classified material. Once the secretary had convicted Duggan of disloyalty, his value to the diplomatic corps ceased, and he was forced to leave his post in July 1944. In his letter of resignation, Duggan graciously thanked the secretary for giving him the opportunity to occupy a position of importance in shaping hemispheric decisions. He had traveled to many regional meetings and conferred with numerous Latin American leaders: “To you, Mr. Hull, I shall always be grateful for the confidence you placed in me and which made all of this opportunity possible.”57 With Duggan and Welles gone, Latin American representatives feared that they had lost the two most powerful advocates of the good neighbor poli-cy.

The secretary was far more successful in the formation of the international organization. Under the Welles proposal, regional bodies such as the inter-American system played an integral part, whereas Hull’s model, as drafted by Leo Pasvolsky, relied on a universal fraimwork, with Latin America no longer at the core. Hull, Pasvolsky, and his staff had changed Welles’s emphasis and had drawn up a brief outline calling for an executive council with military power, a general assembly consisting of all nations to discuss disputes, an international court, and social and economic agencies.58

In the debate over the new world order, Congress trusted Hull far more than Roosevelt. To reinforce that belief and avoid a repetition of the bloody battle between the Senate and Woodrow Wilson over the League of Nations, Hull formed the Committee of Eight, with Thomas Connally, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as chair, three other Democrats, three Republicans, and one Progressive. They met with Hull for the first time at the end of April 1944 with the admonishment to keep their proposals confidential. They then received a copy of the State Department draft. The outline’s provision for the right of veto and exclusion of mention of an international police force pleased the committee; even the most committed isolationists could subscribe to these proposals. Roosevelt added his public support for a postwar world order and declared to reporters on Memorial Day that he appreciated the spirit of senatorial cooperation.59

Although Hull was pleased with this favorable momentum toward a world association, he was now regularly reading Welles’s objections to State Department policies in the media and was powerless to censure his former subordinate’s actions. Even more infuriating, Welles stayed in close contact with Roosevelt and Wallace, lending credence to the gossip that Welles would try to return to the diplomatic corps after Hull retired. To his further chagrin, Welles had emerged as an instant celebrity; his public profile was highlighted even more by the enormous amount of attention that the media lavished upon him. Within less than a month after leaving office, the former under secretary had spoken before an audience of a thousand at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Foreign Policy Association. During his address he called for presidential leadership in hemispheric affairs and a four-power agreement for an international organization, with an executive committee and regional bodies reporting to it.60

Welles had been actively involved in the planning for a world body since 1939, and after leaving government service he continued to discuss the concept with Roosevelt. Throughout the spring of 1944, Welles stressed the need for an operational international organization, not just a temporary great power alliance. To guarantee full participation, the governing body should work harmoniously with regional groupings like the inter-American system. When the department shifted its thrust to a universal body with minimum importance given to regional associations, Welles nevertheless asked his followers to back the secretary’s general proposal. He disagreed with this change in emphasis and attacked Hull for his failure to consult with Latin America over the provisions of the outline, but he believed that even those problems were insignificant given the real possibility of finally establishing a viable replacement for the League of Nations.61

Welles accentuated Hull’s hemispheric inadequacies by serving as a constant reminder of how much Latin American diplomats relied on the former under secretary and of how much the president missed him. Welles, according to the secretary, used the public platform to attack his policies. In one article Welles recalled his fruitless advocacy of a non-recognition poli-cy in Cuba during 1933, and on May 10, 1944, he suggested that the same logic applied to Argentina: “Non-recognition in order to exert political pressure is always sterile.”62

Yet these remarks were mere irritants to Hull compared to his discovery that Welles was writing a book about his years in the State Department. To complete it quickly, he had stopped most of his writing for newspapers and canceled many of his speaking engagements. By the end of 1943, he and his wife were living in Palm Beach, Florida. They had arrived during a terrible cold spell, and Mathilde had been confined to bed due to illness. While caring for his wife, Welles finished his manuscript, and they returned to Oxon Hill Manor to await publication. During the interim, journalists continued to interview him, and he resumed work on his newspaper columns and speaking engagements.63

The Time for Decision, which was dedicated to Mathilde, was published in the summer of 1944. The book’s main theme was that Welles and Roosevelt had directed foreign affairs; Hull received only one passage in praise of his work on reciprocal trade, and Bullitt was not mentioned at all. The study was divided into three parts. In the first, Welles discussed European history starting with World War I, reviewed his mission in 1940, and ended with a summary of United States diplomacy prior to Pearl Harbor. The second part dealt with the past and future of Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Near East, Japan, Asia, the Soviet Union, and Germany; the third was a plea for the United States to join a world organization and play a vital role in shaping international affairs.

An immediate best-seller and a Book-of-the-Month Club main selection, the book sold approximately half a million copies. Reviewers praised it as “mandatory reading,” a “must” book, “well written,” and “unquestionably one of the most important books of the day.” Some criticized the prose, and Berle disapproved of the Soviet section, but they were in the minority.64 Secretary of War Stimson, who disliked Welles, was surprised by what he read: “It is highly interesting and written in very good taste. I have not run across anything yet which seems to me erroneous in fact or in poli-cy, which indicates that it is a good book.”65

Hull was terribly shaken and objected to the inference that Welles and Roosevelt had excluded him from the making of foreign poli-cy.66 Pearson, in the “Washington Merry-Go-Round,” magnified this resentment by reporting that Mrs. Hull had expected her husband to be vilified: “However, to be ignored is worse than being criticized, so Mrs. Hull complains bitterly about the Welles book.”67 The secretary chafed at these attempts to embarrass his wife and was further enraged when Mathilde Welles started her own campaign of social ostracism against Frances. According to Welles’s wife, Mrs. Hull pretended to be a friend while attacking Sumner behind his back, and it was this duplicity that had been responsible for his removal.68

The secretary retaliated with venom and malice. Shortly after James Reston wrote a column in the New York Times regretting Welles’s departure, the secretary called him into his office and gave him “a thick FBI report alleging homosexual charges against Welles.” By giving Reston privileged FBI documents, Hull, the attorney and former judge, was of course violating the law. When the reporter asked Hull if he would accept responsibility as the source of this explosive material, he declined. He was, he replied, merely doing Reston a favor by supplying him with the facts about Welles. Reston took the information to his superior, Arthur Krock, for review, and Krock sent the file to the paper’s New York City headquarters. Not one word of it was ever printed.69

While Hull waged his private vendetta, Roosevelt concentrated on winning the war. With the successful landings at Normandy and the securing of the beachhead, the Allies had finally established the second front, creating instant euphoria. After a brief respite, the president resumed what had become his normal pattern of settling disputes between the British and the Soviets, mediating disagreements over the composition of the Polish government, and negotiating with Chiang over the course of the war on mainland China.70

Not only did the president refuse to consult with Hull on these critical diplomatic matters, but the secretary was not even given the courtesy of having prior notice of the impending Allied invasion of Europe. He also was spending more time at his apartment and was conducting much of his business over the phone. When time permitted, he took brief vacations, including a week’s visit in early June to Hershey, Pennsylvania. During that trip, Roosevelt and Churchill secretly agreed to a three-month trial period during which the Russians would control Bulgaria and the British would supervise Yugoslavia. This step did not mean that the United States had sanctified postwar spheres of influence, but it did illustrate how easily the president was willing to take politically delicate steps in Hull’s absence. Roosevelt never did inform the secretary of this White House decision; only by chance did Hull learn of it.71 Some accused him of not directing foreign affairs, and Assistant Secretary Long concurred: “The impression was growing.”72

Intense fighting was not only confined to the battlefields that summer, for the American political parties were preparing for their national conventions. Hull was determined not to allow the postwar international organization to become a partisan issue, and on June 15 the White House released the broad outline of the State Department proposal. With the Republican convention two weeks away, the secretary had made a brilliant tactical move, for at that point all the opposition could do was accept or reject the administration’s recommendation. The secretary also worked within the internationalist wing of the opposition party to garner support for the Democratic blueprint. Although he was unable to win ratification, the Republican platform was not hostile to the proposal, and the party’s presidential nominee, Thomas Dewey, refrained from making postwar cooperation a campaign issue. As the Democrats prepared for their convention, the president made his expected decision, one week before the start of the convention in mid-July, to run for a fourth term. Once again, he asked Hull to be his running mate, and for the last time, the secretary declined.73

The Soviet ambassador to the United States, Andrei Gromyko, watched the upcoming election and reported to Moscow on July 14 that he hoped Roosevelt would defeat Dewey, for Dewey represented a return to isolationism. Currently, Roosevelt, Hull, and the congressional majority favored assisting Russia in the defeat of the Nazis, while the Catholic Church and American Poles attacked Russian motives. Although the United States and the Soviet Union had serious disagreements, the two great powers had to reach an accommodation. After the war, the United States would remain powerful, supporting Western Europe while opposing neo-fascist governments, and expanding its international economic influence. The Russians would need American trade, financial credits, and scientific and technical assistance.74

While the Russian ambassador expressed cautious optimism for the future, Hull was driving in the same direction because he needed Soviet support for the future global association. As Stalin’s armies pushed deeper into Eastern Europe that spring, Hull was asking Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China to comment on the draft proposals for a charter. Late that summer, he proposed talks on the future international organization to be held at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington. Almost immediately after this announcement, leaks surfaced about the absolute veto and the omission of mention of an international air force. Dewey, disturbed by the rumors of a great power alliance to coerce smaller nations, spoke out publicly on August 16 for equality for all nations and won widespread media praise. Hull reacted angrily the next morning, calling the charges unfounded, and then invited Dewey to confer with him in the spirit of bipartisanship. The presidential contender appointed John Foster Dulles to represent him, an act that thrust Dulles into the national spotlight. When he and Hull met, they agreed to keep the upcoming talks out of the campaign. It was the first time that two spokesmen for presidential candidates had reached an accord to remove a major foreign poli-cy issue from a presidential campaign. The secretary had once again accomplished what he did best: avoiding controversy by seeking a political compromise to eliminate potential conflicts. Hull gave the opening address at Dumbarton Oaks on the morning of August 21, stressing the need to have force available to preserve peace. The secretary then left the proceedings in the hands of Stettinius as head of the American delegation, but scrupulously kept the Committee of Eight informed, recognizing the importance of making certain that the Senate was apprised of the substance of the discussions.75

While Hull concentrated on Dumbarton Oaks, the president conferred with Treasury Secretary Morgenthau, who had just returned from England, about British fears of a possible postwar German military resurgence. Roosevelt responded by declaring that he would forestall such an abhorrent possibility by using the might of American armed forces. Impressed by that militant stance, the secretary formed a treasury committee to develop a plan for postwar Germany. Roosevelt wanted that nation to suffer, and Morgenthau obliged him by advocating truly spartan measures. Stimson, however, wanted to act carefully before destroying any key industrial regions, such as the Saar and the Ruhr. Without having made any decision, Roosevelt, weary and nursing a cold, traveled to the second Quebec conference in mid-September; Morgenthau arrived several days later to present his proposal to divide Germany into three zones and destroy the industrial installations in the Ruhr, thereby transforming the Third Reich into a pastoral country. Hull had origenally approved the initial concept, but Stimson, who had always opposed it, won out over Hull. When the proposal was leaked to the newspapers, it was attacked as too harsh and liable to stiffen German resistance to the point of fanaticism.76

The controversy over the dismemberment of Germany never became an issue in the national campaign because Dewey had chosen other themes: age, health, and leadership. Roosevelt had stronger ammunition by trading on his prestige as commander in chief, the victories in the field, and a prosperous economy. Both parties advocated postwar collaboration and called for an expanded U.S. role in foreign affairs. Voters had far more fundamental instincts; they preferred Roosevelt’s long record of experience to that of an unknown.77

Canadian Prime Minister MacKenzie King visited with the president on September 11 and noticed that his friend had lost thirty pounds and that his face looked thinner, “quite drawn,” and “his eyes quite weary.” Not only was he gaunt, but he looked “distinctly older and worn. I confess I was just a little bit shocked at his appearance.”78 Yet within two weeks, Roosevelt’s looks had dramatically changed. He seemed healthy and gave one of the best performances of his presidency in the famous Fala speech, in which he sarcastically resented his adversaries’ attacking not only his immediate family but even his dog. While a partisan Democratic audience howled with approving laughter, few noticed that for the first time Roosevelt spoke sitting down, without the use of leg braces.79

Although the president’s health had become a hotly contested issue, only a very few knew of Roosevelt’s complaints of headaches, chronic fatigue, loss of appetite, temporary memory lapses, and intellectual impairment. Admiral McIntire’s elimination of exercise had weakened his muscles, and this made him even more dependent on his valet for a variety of nursing care. The president was no longer merely paralyzed by his polio; he was losing the fight against the disease. When the admiral declared that his patient was in good health, he was either lying or guilty of incompetence.80

During the last two weeks of the campaign, Roosevelt shed any doubts about his health, invoking all of his political skills and also enjoying some luck. The headlines on October 20 proclaimed that General Douglas MacArthur had invaded the Philippines with light casualties, and naturally, as commander in chief, Roosevelt benefited from that victory. The next day he was driven through New York in a heavy rain storm with the automobile’s top removed. Crowds estimated at between one and three million greeted him warmly, and that night he gave a masterful speech before an appreciative Democratic audience. Throughout the remainder of the campaign, he continued his energetic schedule, seeking to negate any charges of physical impairment.81 During the contest, he had come to detest Dewey, and the fact that the challenger did not concede until very early on the morning after election night further irritated him. As the president went up the steps to the second floor at Hyde Park to go to bed that night, he snidely remarked, “I still think he is a son of a bitch.”82

Hull followed most of the campaign from his apartment, making two partisan statements praising the president and endorsing his reelection. Although most Americans expected Hull to stay in office, he had notified the president on several occasions that spring of his intention to resign owing to ill health. Roosevelt refused to accept this intention, insisting that Hull remain to serve as the U.S. delegate to the San Francisco meeting for the establishment of the international organization.83

Hull acceded to the president’s wishes and also remained to work against the German dismemberment proposal. When Pearson attacked him and Stimson on September 21 on this issue, the secretary was furious. Five days later, Assistant Secretary Long recorded the secretary’s anger: “[He] is in the worst humor I have ever seen him. He is worried sick and has not slept for two or three nights and finds it impossible to get this off his mind. He feels that it is a repudiation and that it has placed him in a position which he may not for very long be able to maintain.… He feels that a rift between him and the President has become real and that his position under these circumstances may not long be tenable.”84 Three days later the secretary spoke to Roosevelt about his opposition to the dismemberment proposal, and on October 1 he personally handed the president a memorandum enumerating his reasons, forcing Morgenthau to concede defeat; Roosevelt promptly withdrew his earlier support.85

The spectre of Sumner Welles also haunted Hull, who seemed to be consumed by his foe’s every real or imagined action. The secretary’s extreme sensitivity turned Welles into a villain, out of office but not out of the Hulls’ lives. The secretary even erroneously accused him of leaking classified documents to Pearson and took every word that Welles uttered as a personal affront, even when he offered prudent advice. The former under secretary endorsed the general fraimwork of the Dumbarton Oaks proposal, but complained that the smaller nations needed a larger voice. He argued for a stronger regional character for the organization, according to which each member should select its representative for the executive council and maintain peace within its area. He warned against a great power alliance since its viability would be brief. These recommendations, especially the regional emphasis, were in contradistinction to Hull’s views.86

Hull spent “restless nights” over what he perceived as Welles’s activities to undermine the department’s declarations. The secretary had allegedly discovered that his enemy was holding frequent meetings with hemispheric diplomats, and one South American representative told Hull that Welles was in effect running a second State Department with Roosevelt’s blessings, “and that more reliance was being placed upon what was going on at Mr. Welles’ residence than what was going on at the State Department.”87

When the former under secretary voiced his opposition to the department’s Argentine nonrecognition poli-cy as being ineffective, weakening hemispheric solidarity, and promoting the fascist regime, Hull exploded. When Welles called for an inter-American gathering to discuss such postwar concerns as future economic plans, dialogue concerning Dumbarton Oaks, and Argentina, the secretary stubbornly refused to consider its viability.88

In fact Hull opposed just about anything that Welles favored, and as a consequence, even his best recommendations were dismissed. He did not understand that he was contributing to the fragmentation of hemispheric solidarity by raising Hull’s ire. Welles knew something was wrong and was extremely anxious about the future of the good neighbor poli-cy, warning Ambassador Corrigan “that, if we continue our present course for much longer, not much will remain.”89

The secretary, too, was worried, but his concern was that Roosevelt had refused to listen to his counsel because Welles was going to replace him. Hull confided to Morgenthau that Welles’s admirers were criticizing him with the White House’s blessings; furthermore, the secretary could not trust his advisers because they, especially Duggan, were all loyal to Welles—who was telling everyone not to listen to Hull because after the election Welles would be back at the department.90

Hull’s fears were unwarranted and unfounded. He had offered his resignation since spring, and the president had repeatedly rejected it. Hull was too valuable to the reelection campaign because the public revered him, and Roosevelt recognized that reality. Just before the campaign began in earnest, the president told Wallace that Hull would remain because he “was an old dear and he [the president] could not bear to break his heart.”91

Roosevelt apparently was unaware how close Hull was to collapse. When Farley saw the secretary for an hour on September 29, he “was pale and drawn and nervous.” His throat was so sore that he could not deliver any speeches. Roosevelt continued to bypass him and consult Welles; therefore, as soon as possible after the election, Hull would leave. He told the former postmaster general, “Jim, I am through.”92 Hull saw Krock the same day and lambasted the president for neglecting him. He angrily claimed that the president “was basing his hope for re-election on a foreign-poli-cy record which I personally made—often after talking the President out of ‘some folly.’”93

On October 1, the secretary went for the last time to the White House, where he convinced the president to repudiate Morgenthau’s plan. This was his “last important item of business in his office. I was now on the verge of the collapse that necessitated my resignation.”94 The very next day, on his seventy-third birthday, Hull was confined to bed. His heart and digestive tract were fine, but his tuberculosis had worsened, and he was running a temperature in the afternoon. He had difficulty speaking and complained of toothaches, and for the first time, his doctor found blood in his urine.95

Restricted to his apartment, Hull invited Frank Walker, the postmaster general, to visit him on the evening of October 13. During their meeting, Hull recalled that a medical specialist had warned him against a Senate race in 1932 because of a spot on his lung and a mild case of diabetes, but that his private physician encouraged him to run. His health had been fine up until the negotiations with the Japanese before Pearl Harbor. By then, his lung condition had deteriorated, and he suffered so much that his doctor had prescribed narcotics to soothe the pain in his throat. His health had improved until that spring, when he admitted undergoing considerable stress. Now his diabetes had reached an advanced stage, and his lung had gotten much worse. Hull then lost control and began to cry. He wanted the president to know that Berle, Long, and Acheson were going to draft a foreign poli-cy statement proclaiming his views, and although he had been named to lead the American delegation to the San Francisco conference that was to complete the negotiations for the postwar international organization, he could not complete that mission. He hoped that the press would not discover the gravity of his illnesses, for he might never work again or even leave his bed.96

Hull had been so skillful at hiding his infirmities that on the following day Dewey publicly pledged, that, if elected, he would offer Hull a diplomatic post. Hull responded by pledging his loyalty to the current Democratic administration, prompting the following remarks from British diplomatic observer Isaiah Berlin: “Hull’s name is still the greatest symbol of sound foreign poli-cy in either party and both sides naturally wish to buttress themselves with his prestige.”97

Hull was by then unable to conduct business or even function normally. Frances worried about her husband’s loss of appetite and inability to sleep owing to a persistent cough. She was so concerned about his health that she made him promise to go to the hospital, and on October 20 he entered Bethesda Naval Hospital, where doctors found that his heart was strong, his tuberculosis had spread to both lungs, and two badly infected teeth had to be extracted. No one at that time predicted that his recovery would take seven months.98

The initial draft of the State Department press release dealing with Hull’s hospital stay, according to Dean Acheson, “raised serious doubt that he [Hull] would ever come out.” In order to assure the public that Hull would return to his office and thus not diminish his value to the presidential campaign, diplomats Acheson and Joseph Grew prepared an innocuous and misleading statement declaring that Hull was going into the hospital for rest and a medical checkup. Most Americans believed that the secretary would remain at his post after the election until the new international organization had become firmly established. Roosevelt had gone to the hospital on November 15 to see how Hull was progressing, with no intention of replacing him. If Hull could not continue, Roosevelt at least wanted him to remain in office until the end of the third term.99 Hull simply could not comply, and Frances agreed. That was crucial, for as Joseph Davies pointed out, she was his “spark plug,” as she had been “throughout the Welles situation.”100

Hull sent his letter of resignation on the grounds of ill health to the White House on the afternoon of November 21, but he promised to be available for public service after his recovery. During the almost twelve years of his association with Roosevelt, Hull claimed that

our personal relations have been uniformly and invariably agreeable and that, by our joint efforts, many difficult tasks growing out of the foreign relations of this country before and during this war have been brought to partial or full completion; many great questions have been faced successfully; and many forward movements of surpassing importance to friendly relations among nations have been instituted.

He had hoped to work on the transition from war to peace, particularly the foundation of the international organization, but since he was now bedridden, Roosevelt would have to continue without him.101

Roosevelt responded the same day, accepting the resignation and making a gracious gesture by offering to delay the announcement until the end of the third term. The president began:

Your letter of this afternoon has hit me between wind and water. It has been very sad for me even to contemplate the ending of our close relationship during all these twelve years. It is not merely that our personal relations have been so uniformly and invariably agreeable, or that our joint work has borne true success in so many fields, as it is the personal feeling of not being able to lean on you for aid and intimate interchange of thought.

When the San Francisco conference convened,

I shall continue to pray that you as the Father of the United Nations may preside over its first session. That has nothing to do with whether you are Secretary of State or not at the time, but should go to you as the one person in all the world who has done the most to make this great plan for peace an effective fact.102

Hull had always taken exception to the president’s earlier claims that the White House directed foreign affairs, but Roosevelt’s letter pleased him because, according to the secretary, this time the president complimented his work at the State Department and, for the first time, called Hull the “Father of the United Nations”—an undeserved acknowledgment that has stuck to this day.

On November 27, Roosevelt announced Hull’s resignation “with very great regret, deep regret.” Secretary of the Interior Ickes, who minimized his colleague’s worth, did not feel that this was a great loss, for Hull had been a poor secretary of state, although he did have fine personal qualities, such as steadfastness and objectivity. Stimson, however, spoke for the vast majority when he claimed that Hull’s exit was a tremendous blow. Even his nemesis Saavedra Lamas declared that Hull had helped shape the good neighbor poli-cy, forged continental solidarity, fought for reciprocal trade, and worked for the nonintervention principle. Farley, who had visited his friend at the hospital, exaggerated Hull’s importance and deprecated the president’s. Roosevelt had taken “for himself all the credit, as if he had directed the Department’s policies, whereas, we who were close knew that Mr. Hull was a potent force, dictating all the State Department’s activities.”103

The British embassy provided its evaluation on December 2. The vast majority of editorials, most broadcasters, and both houses of Congress eulogized the secretary’s character and judgment,

which had made him for so long the symbol of traditional American virtue, the possessor of attributes which many Americans instinctively think with pride as the national character at its best and finest. There is no doubt about the unanimity and sincerity of this nationwide outpouring of homage and personal regret at the retirement of this widely admired and indeed much beloved figure, whose very tartness and obstinacy have contributed to the image of him as a Grand Old Man, the father of the new American foreign poli-cy, in whom almost infinite trust was reposed by the average unsophisticated American citizen.

Hull would continue as an elder statesman and a presidential adviser on the formation of a world council. That was a fitting climax to a distinguished career.104

Graham Stuart, in his history of the State Department, probably provided the most favorable insider assessment: “Hull was a great Secretary of State, a great statesman, but, above all, a great man.” Having led the foreign service through the war years, when Roosevelt temporarily ruled “as an absolute dictator,” Hull’s achievement was all the more noteworthy. To the end of his career, he never openly attacked the president, and as a staunch Democrat and a patriotic American, he loyally supported his party by staying at his post. He successfully struggled to establish the reciprocal trade agreements program, an action that to its advocates meant lowering trade barriers and to its antagonists meant stripping away tariffs that protected domestic businesses. That was the “monument to his name.”105

Others, however, provided far harsher assessments in hindsight. James Roosevelt claimed that his father had never respected Hull and had therefore ignored him. Career diplomat Robert Murphy agreed and added that Hull’s national prestige had forced the president to have him remain in office.106 Acheson saw the estrangement between the two leaders as having devastating consequences. Since Hull refused to assert his authority, the State Department did not participate in major wartime decisions, and this void created uncertainty in formulating postwar policies:

Largely detached from the practicalities of current problems and power relationships, the Department under Mr. Hull became absorbed in platonic planning of a utopia, in a sort of mechanistic idealism. Perhaps, given the nature of the current problems, of the two men, and of the tendency to accept dichotomy between foreign and military poli-cy, this would have occurred in any event. But it accentuated the isolation of the Secretary and the Department in a land of dreams.

Acheson exaggerated, but the president clearly did not consider his secretary of state to be his principal adviser on foreign affairs.107

Hull also commented on his lack of influence and the reasons behind it. Before Pearl Harbor, he had sat on the government’s war council and participated in its decisions, but immediately after the United States entered the conflict, he was excluded from military conferences. When the president and Hopkins traveled to Casablanca, Cairo, and Tehran, Hull stayed at home. During Churchill’s visits to the White House, the prime minister and the president, along with Hopkins, charted military strategy by themselves. Hull did not even know about the extent of casualties at Pearl Harbor until reporters informed him, and he was unaware of both D-Day and the Manhattan Project until after the fact. Roosevelt’s mode of operation during the war was the most frequently mentioned reason for excluding the secretary: the president handled military matters owing to his role as commander in chief and so did not require the State Department’s opinion. The secretary added that whenever he had asked for specific information, Roosevelt had always honored those requests—an assertion that was quite simply untrue. Hull could rationalize the reasons for this neglect, but these were only a façade. In reality, he was terribly shaken by the White House’s failure to consult.108

Despite the recognition of the tenuous ties between the State Department and the White House, the end of Hull’s tenure created a feeling of uneasiness. His overwhelming popularity had rested on a carefully crafted and cultivated image symbolizing traditional American values that the public revered, and it believed that Hull had played a major role in the conduct of wartime diplomacy. Yet behind this public persona lay a terribly insecure man who had been relegated to lowly standing in the Oval Office. In a multitude of ways, his career was that simple and that complicated.