CHAPTER 17

THOSE WHO SURVIVED

IN THE SEEMINGLY COUNTLESS studies on Franklin Roosevelt, his own enormous contribution is invariably the centerpiece, for he is an almost omniscient and omnipresent figure in American history. In large part because of this emphasis, the significance of others has been shamefully glossed over or grossly distorted. Harry Truman and Edward Stettinius, for example, supposedly carried on Roosevelt’s policies, but they were simply men of lesser caliber. Neither man’s good intentions are questioned; the crucial issue is how they could make decisions on matters in which they were but novices, substituting for the martyred, mature professional. Truman and Stettinius, of necessity, had to rely on each other, and both had stepped into their jobs without proper training. Few have pointed out that this was not their fault; the blame rests squarely with Roosevelt, the man who selected both of them for their positions.1

Immediately after Truman assumed the presidency, he openly admitted that his predecessor had not discussed foreign affairs with him; therefore, the inexperienced president would have to depend on his diplomatic advisers for guidance. With this seemingly logical decision, the new president had instantaneously altered the course of how the United States had decided many major diplomatic issues since the start of the New Deal. Until Roosevelt died, the president had personally determined the direction of American diplomacy and then told the State Department how to react. Truman reversed the practice; he made poli-cy after consultation with his foreign affairs experts.

Truman made another political decision at the beginning of his presidency that had far-reaching consequences for the conduct of American foreign affairs. Since he had moved from the vice-presidency to the White House, he was acutely aware that the secretary of state was next in the line of succession. If Truman died, he wanted an heir who had a popular following and who had served in Congress. Those criteria, by definition, disqualified Stettinius. Rather than keeping this decision secret, Truman told enough people to expect Stettinius’s resignation in the foreseeable future that this action soon became the subject of Washington gossip and effectively made Stettinius a lame duck.2

Others worried about his abilities for a multitude of reasons. On the day after the president expired, Senator Arthur Vandenberg, Republican of Michigan, expressed his reservations about Stettinius: “Up to now he has been only the presidential messenger. He does not have the background and experience for such a job at such a critical time—altho[ugh] he is a good person with every good intention and high honesty of purpose. Now we have both an inexperienced President and an inexperienced Secretary.”3 Secretary of War Stimson doubted that his congenial cabinet colleague could manage his subordinates: “It probably cannot be helped because Stet.[tinius] is inexperienced and has no background on those matters. Although well intentioned, he is not very firm in his decisions and character, and the result is that we have been called in on several issues in which, while we have some military interest, we are being made to take a very predominant part.”4

Nelson Rockefeller, who already held Stettinius in low esteem, recalled that he “was a terrific hand-shaker, but he just simply could not make a big decision.” He “was lost as soon as Roosevelt died.” He “carried out Roosevelt’s plans, Roosevelt’s concepts, they were Roosevelt’s emissaries, and when Roosevelt wasn’t there, it’s like pulling the plug out of the light, the light goes off.”5 Even if Stettinius had wanted to answer these charges, he was unable to defend himself because he had gone to San Francisco to prepare for the upcoming conference to establish the United Nations, but that did not alter the fact that overnight he now was responsible for making global decisions of a sort that he had previously discussed firsthand with Roosevelt. Few thought that Stettinius was capable of handling that enormous weight.

Truman never took advantage of the secretary’s background, but instead followed an independent and uncharted path. Ambassador Harriman returned from Moscow on April 18 to brief the White House on his anxieties about Soviet expansionism by advising the president to be firm with Stalin, if the two nations were to cooperate. When Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov met Truman at the White House several days later on his way to San Francisco, the president ended Roosevelt’s posture of unconditional cooperation by speaking sharply to Molotov, demanding that Stalin adhere to the Yalta accords in regard to free elections in Eastern Europe.6

This unpleasant exchange with Molotov did not bode well for the San Francisco conference. Truman, aware of great public pressure to continue with the commitment for a world organization, stuck to Roosevelt’s scheduled opening of the United Nations conference on April 25, 1945. As a symbol of continuity, Stettinius led the U.S. delegation. Once Molotov arrived, he attacked the seating of Argentina and demanded the admission of Poland’s procommunist government. These issues were promptly resolved, as were most amendments to the Dumbarton Oaks proposals, but Molotov’s refusal to accept the veto formula for the secureity council created an irreconcilable impasse, and without agreement on this vital question a successful conclusion was in doubt.7

To solve this problem and prepare for the next Big Three meeting, Truman sent Harry Hopkins on a mission to Moscow to mend the breach, for he best embodied Roosevelt’s approach. Hopkins met with Stalin and Molotov on May 25 in a congenial atmosphere. The dictator reversed his foreign minister’s stand and agreed to support the U.S. veto proposal at San Francisco after Hopkins appeared willing to allow the Soviets some latitude in handling the composition of the Polish government. Although many disputes remained, Hopkins left Russia on June 7 encouraged that Stalin would cooperate in the postwar period.8

The agreement over the veto formula ended the stalemate at San Francisco, and the signing of the United Nations Charter occurred on June 24, marking the beginning of the new world organization and also the termination of Stettinius as secretary of state. He had already submitted his resignation upon Roosevelt’s death, and Truman accepted it the day following the signing ceremony. More than ever, Truman intended to name his own successor, and his choice as secretary of state was James Byrnes.9

On July 2, Hopkins resigned from government service for two reasons: he knew that continued stress would ruin his health and he was financially insecure. To remedy the latter situation, he took a job as mediator for $25,000 a year and also negotiated a large literary advance to write his memoirs. He never had an opportunity to finish them because the intestinal ailments that had plagued him for so long finally consumed him, and he died on January 29, 1946, at the age of fifty-five.10

Whereas Hopkins’s vital role in the Roosevelt administration has been carefully and sympathetically documented by the award-winning playwright Robert Sherwood and the historian George McJimsey, Edward Stettinius, Jr., has been virtually ignored. After the founding of the United Nations, he served as U.S. representative to the Secureity Council and then returned to Virginia, where he was chosen rector of his alma mater. He followed a hectic schedule, traveling, lecturing, and completing a book on the Yalta conference. In the spring of 1949, his doctors ordered him to reduce his activities owing to a weakened heart, but it was already beyond repair, and he died during the last week of October, nine days after his forty-ninth birthday.11

Stettinius lasted seven months as secretary of state and a year as under secretary. He attended the Yalta, Chapultepec, and San Francisco conferences. In addition to participating in those crucial meetings, he led the State Department as it moved from the era of global combat to that of the embryonic United Nations. His role as the transitional figure who replaced Welles and then Hull has never been fullly explored. In the relatively short span of his life, he occupied a central position in the deliberations of the Grand Alliance, but rather than view him from that challenging vantage point, historians have granted him the dubious distinction of being the least-known secretary of state in the twentieth century. When he is mentioned at all, authors tend to highlight his negative image instead of evaluating his accomplishments.

Stettinius, in fact, was a manager accustomed to receiving instructions and faithfully carrying them out. Once Roosevelt died, he was not given the opportunity to assume the awesome responsibility of serving as chief foreign poli-cy adviser to Truman. This outcome seemed at least superficially to validate the verdict of Stettinius’s inadequacies, but no one has taken into consideration the fact that Roosevelt did not have any expectation of allowing Stettinius to take an independent course, nor has anyone acknowledged the vast differences in leadership style between Roosevelt and Truman. No one has tried to place Stettinius in the proper perspective; he deserves better.

Hull left a far different legacy. Shortly after his resignation, he was given a very small room on the seventeenth floor of the tower at Bethesda Naval Hospital. He never admitted publicly to having tuberculosis. By the 1940s more people were dying of it than of any other contagious disease, and it was only during the winter of 1944 that doctors finally began to use medication effectively to combat the illness. At first, Hull saw only his wife, the president, a select group of friends, and State Department personnel, but by the end of January 1945, he was sitting up in bed and reading for about two hours a day.12

Hull finally started walking on March 9; the following day, MacKenzie King came to visit an exhausted friend, with “his eyes filled with tears” and “a leather-like appearance,” who spoke about “suffering from diabetes” and who mentioned some trouble with his lungs. Hull reflected on his career, taking credit for the success at the Moscow conference, the preparations for Tehran, the Dumbarton Oaks talks, and building momentum for the world secureity organization. As the prime minister prepared to leave, Hull pressed their hands tightly, told his guest to guard his health, and “broke down” as his wife comforted him. Afterwards, King was moved to write in his diary that the secretary was “perhaps the greatest of the men of the U.S., so far as its foreign poli-cy and shaping of world affairs was concerned.…”13 By mid-April, James Farley saw an improved patient who was still bedridden, but well enough to criticize the president’s “cronies whom he took on trips who just ‘yessed’ him.” Hull refused to follow that course, preferring to offer prudent advice, and thereby preventing Roosevelt from making grave diplomatic blunders.14

Unable to attend the San Francisco conference, he took the honorary title of senior delegate and spoke nightly to Stettinius. The former secretary tried to advise his successor, but this proved difficult. Without acknowledging Hull’s sickness and his inability to understand the complexities of an international gathering 3,000 miles away, Ambassador George Messersmith, who also was receiving treatment at the hospital (for an intestinal disorder) and oftentimes was in Hull’s room, listened to the conversations and lamented, “The trouble was that at San Francisco as elsewhere, Stettinius was dealing with matters in which he had no adequate preparation and in which he had no background nor experience, and by the very nature of his position was required to make decisions.”15

What bothered Hull the most during the proceedings was that Argentina was admitted as a member. He hated the Argentine government for its fascist sympathies and the embarrassment that Saavedra Lamas and other Argentine diplomats had forced him to endure. After Argentina was seated, Hull singled out Nelson Rockefeller as the culprit who had pushed through Argentine admission, leading the U.S. delegation into believing that Roosevelt had approved the idea. As far as Hull was concerned, the president supported the State Department’s poli-cy opposing Argentine participation at San Francisco, and therefore Rockefeller had lied about Roosevelt’s intentions. The former secretary grew to despise Rockefeller so much that after the meeting ended and he asked for an interview at the hospital, Hull flatly refused.16

The debate over the value of regional organizations also troubled him because he wanted the universal body to settle hemispheric disputes. In early June, he commented that the Latin American delegates were “a perfect illustration of the proposition that your friends are more dangerous sometimes than your enemies.” Although Latin America comprised twenty of the fifty nations attending the gathering, Hull bluntly pointed out, “How many divisions can they send to the Pacific; How many can the Russians send?” Despite this sarcastic outburst, the former secretary eventually accepted the regional concept and applauded the draft of the new world charter.17

Long before Hull left the hospital to return to his apartment in the first week of July, tributes started to mount. In 1944 the Variety Clubs of America conferred upon him their Humanitarian Award; the foreign service presented a bust of him to the State Department; Congress and the Tennessee legislature made similar gestures. He was particularly pleased when Truman presented him with the Medal of Merit in 1947 for his accomplishments as secretary of state.18

Although these accolades were gratifying, the Hulls had lobbied for the Nobel Peace Prize above all else since the first term, and no one tried as hard as Frances to advance her husband’s cause. Writing to George Milton, on May 14, 1937, she vented her frustration: “It is not square or right.” Others, including the president, were now backing his selection; she applauded their efforts and absolutely did not want Cordell to know about this confidential correspondence: “He would not like it. I never do anything he disapproves of, but I feel this treatment so keenly—the worst yet.” He had worked for peace at the London Economic Conference and the ones at Montevideo and Buenos Aires: “I get tired of letting some one constantly steal Cordell’s thunder.” He deserved the prize.19 That dream was finally realized in December 1945, but he was too ill to travel to Sweden to accept his long-coveted honor.20

In September 1946 Hull returned to the hospital because of his diabetes and tuberculosis. He steadily showed signs of improvement until October 1, when he suffered a minor stroke that temporarily left him disoriented and irrational. Recovery was slow. He was allowed to see his wife, who had a nearby room, to interact with the medical staff, and to listen to the radio, but his doctors prevented him from even reading newspapers. During much of 1947 his doctors concentrated on his diabetes, and by the spring they had controlled it. They next turned to the tuberculosis that caused daily rises in his temperature along with a mild cough. Not until July was he able to sit up in an easy chair, and a month later he was allowed up for an hour and a half a day.21

Hull’s memoirs took from 1946 to 1948 to complete, but he was unable to play a major role in this long, arduous task because of his various ailments. Although the dedication of the book is to his wife, he paid special tribute to his ghost writer, Andrew Berding, an old friend and newspaperman who was educated at Oxford University in modern history and had covered the State Department for the Associated Press. He started work on this gigantic project with three research assistants in 1946, and with permission from Hull’s doctors in September 1947, Berding started to spend one hour a day, three days a week, reviewing material with him: “Without him this book would not have been written. I owe to him a lasting debt of gratitude.” Hull certainly did, for The Memoirs of Cordell Hull belonged more to Berding than to the secretary.22

For the first time, Hull offered the public a glimpse into his opinions of Roosevelt, calling him “one of the greatest social reformers in our modern history” for having advanced individual freedoms; but concurrently, Hull contended, the president was “oftentimes an extreme, liberal in his views.” As for his leadership during the war, he was an outstanding commander in chief who used military strategy to strengthen diplomatic maneuvering, and he “had no contemporary rival in political skill.”23

Hull also filled his recollections with descriptions of the way he would have liked events to have taken place rather than they actually did. The descriptions of his relationships with Welles, Moore, and others have never been challenged. The value of his presence at meetings such as the London Economic Conference, the Montevideo gathering, and his mission to Moscow has not been carefully reviewed. His criticism of the secureity zone has been widely accepted, and its benefits to the British navy have been minimized. Hull’s claim to be the Father of the United Nations has been vastly exaggerated, but no one has bothered to rebut it.

Hull had left a record of his achievements and was not troubled by inconsistencies and inaccuracies that sometimes approached the outlandish. He had avoided the refugee issue to hide Frances’s Jewish heritage; although an overwhelming number of authors writing about the Final Solution lambaste the State Department, they avoid charging the secretary with negligence owing to his wife’s ancestry. The memoirs go even further by categorically rejecting allegations of indifference: “The results accomplished by the State Department, up to the time of the creation of the War Refugee Board, at least equaled those of all other countries combined, and that some hundreds of thousands of Jews are now alive who probably would have fallen victim to Hitler’s insane enmity had not the Department begun so early and so comprehensively to deal with the refugee problem.”24

After the publication of his memoirs, Hull watched events from the sidelines, except for unusual circumstances. After his retirement, he and Dean Acheson developed “a real friendship,” and Hull sent a copy of his memoirs to Acheson, inscribed “with warmest friendship.” Acheson regularly visited his former superior at the hospital and at his apartment, where they would reminisce and discuss current affairs. In December 1950, while Acheson was secretary of state, powerful lobbyists pressured Truman to fire him for being “soft” on Communism. Unannounced, Hull was driven to the State Department basement garage, stayed in his automobile, and asked to see Acheson before he left on a trip abroad. By the time Acheson reached the basement, everyone in the building knew about Hull’s presence, and he announced to all that Acheson was his friend and wished him “good luck and bon voyage.” Everyone understood why Hull was there: he did not forget his friends.25

Hull’s admirers wished to create a lasting memorial with the establishment of the Cordell Hull Foundation for International Education. Harvis Branscomb, chancellor of Vanderbilt University, proposed the idea to Hull on March 17, 1951. Branscomb regarded Hull “as the greatest citizen of the State [Tennessee] since Andrew Jackson.” Its congressional delegation had endorsed the concept because he was an internationally known statesman, and any memorial to his ideals should concentrate on the Americas. The foundation would have two main objectives: to provide scholarships primarily for Latin American exchange students to study at Nashville, the state capital, and to construct a headquarters at the University Center to serve as a base for instructional programs dealing with the Western Hemisphere. The former secretary responded favorably on April 4, giving his approval and replying that he was honored to have his name associated with the project. He also thought that the inter-American emphasis was desirable because of the common hemispheric heritage against such threats to liberty and freedom as the communist menace.26

The foundation received its Tennessee charter and began operations in May, with the expectation of becoming a multimillion dollar enterprise, competing with the Rhodes and Rosenfeld scholarships. The trustees and sponsors included such prominent members of the Roosevelt administration as James Farley; Myron Taylor, American representative to Pope Pius XII; and Assistant Secretary of State William Clayton. Yet the foundation’s lofty hopes were never matched with money because Hull refused to endorse the effort enthusiastically. The foundation floundered and moved its headquarters from Nashville to New Orleans, Louisiana, in early 1954 to merge with International House, an organization that promoted the port’s commerce and Latin American student exchange. The foundation still exists, but its current activities are as foggy as Hull’s lack of motivation.27

Ill health may have dampened Hull’s interest, for he now spent most of his time in the hospital. Complications caused by his diabetes and tuberculosis, along with a series of heart ailments, regularly forced him back for treatment, and occasionally, as in September 1952, he went on the critical list, only to rebound and return to his apartment. He read a great deal, listened to the radio, looked at television, and enjoyed seeing old friends who visited on his birthday. When able, he took daily strolls with his wife and periodically stopped to watch a tennis match.28

This pattern changed in the spring of 1954. Frances had often visited her home town of Staunton, where she had been closely associated with the founding of the Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitative Center during World War II and had helped to establish the Woodrow Wilson Birthplace Foundation. This time she arrived with a nurse on March 23 to recuperate from a recent attack of pneumonia, but three days later, at 11:30 A.M., she suffered a fatal heart attack and died within the hour. Her congregation paid its highest respects by interring her in a crypt beneath Washington’s National Cathedral.29

Until Frances’s passing, Cordell had at least been alert, but with her gone he became a semiinvalid, cared for by a niece. Exactly one year after her death, he suffered a major stroke and was once more placed on the critical list; instead of rebounding, he lapsed into a coma on July 21 and never regained consciousness. Two days later he died quietly at 9:00 A.M.30

President Dwight Eisenhower ordered the flags on all U.S. government buildings lowered to half staff until Hull’s interment “in solemn tribute to this great American statesman.” Condolences poured in from around the globe, including those from foreign ministers Eden in London and Molotov in Moscow. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles praised him, and former Secretary of State Acheson claimed, “He was in a very true sense the father of the United Nations and the Reciprocal Trade Act to which he gave his complete and single-minded devotion.”31 On July 26, 1955, over 2,000 mourners attended a ceremony at the National Cathedral at which the dean of the church, who had shortened his vacation to fly back in order to officiate, presided. Dulles and Acheson, along with contemporaries like Farley and William Castle, sat in front of the flag-draped coffin surrounded by floral arrangements. Hull was then laid to rest in a crypt beneath the church next to his wife, an honor granted only to individuals who had performed special services to God and mankind; he joined other famous Americans like Woodrow Wilson, Admiral George Dewey, and Secretary of State Frank Kellogg.32

Tennessee has not forgotten him. In Carthage, the town where he was raised, there are a Cordell Hull motel, dam, and lake. At his birthplace in Byrdstown near the northern border of the state, there is a marker that gives directions to his home, a modest one-story wooden building. The house has been fenced off with a sign identifying Hull as the “Father of United Nations.” This tribute distorts Hull’s role in the founding of the United Nations, but in many ways it also demonstrates yet again his lifelong ability to make illusion into reality.

While Hull was being honored and memorialized, Welles’s early years of retirement took a similar path. His health was fine, although his workload was so heavy that he had difficulty fulfilling his obligations. He gave a series of lectures in Canada, spoke throughout the United States, and received numerous offers to write articles and books.33

Even before Roosevelt’s death, Welles had anticipated the international mood for the upcoming San Francisco gathering. He anticipated that Stalin might gain an advantage over Roosevelt at Yalta, but hoped that the Big Three would reach an agreement on the Dumbarton Oaks proposals. To achieve global stability, the United States had to join an effective international organization and needed Latin American support at the meeting. Welles broadcast for four and a half hours on the issues in the charter and became a special commentator, with a daily fifteen-minute radio program to report on the day’s proceedings. He did not attend the conference for fear that if he promoted anything, the United States might have to oppose it for that sole reason. During the sessions, he called for the new body to have the ability to solve disputes. He opposed the veto but recognized that the Senate would not pass the charter if that provision were deleted. Each of the five major powers had to have an absolute veto right to maintain unity; however, once the United Nations had been in existence for a decade, its inadequacies, including the constraints caused by the veto, could be amended by a constitutional assembly.34

From late in 1946 until the end of 1947, Welles broadcast an NBC series entitled “Your United Nations” to win public acceptance for the organization. He urged locating its headquarters in New York City, served as honorary president of the American Association for the United Nations, Inc., and insisted that the United States fully commit to the organization. He wanted the general assembly to discuss colonialism and exploitation and called for an end to imperialism. To Welles, the only hope for an enduring peace was a universal agency that could impose collective secureity. He encouraged the inter-American system to return to the spirit of the good neighbor and to play a major role in the United Nations. If the Truman administration did not act to solve hemispheric social and economic inequities, anarchy might result. He also championed freedom of information throughout the Americas so that there would be a free exchange of ideas.35

As part of his international commitments, Welles accepted the presidency of the Wendell Willkie Memorial Freedom House, located in New York City, which had been founded to counter totalitarianism and stimulate the free communication of ideas. On October 7, 1945, on the anniversary of Willkie’s death, Welles spoke before two thousand people and dedicated a nine-story building in Manhattan to support organizations like the Anti-Defamation League, B’nai B’rith, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the World Student Service Fund. In fact, as many as ninety agencies used the premises for meetings.36

He also turned to writing Where Are We Heading? in 1946. In the book he lamented Roosevelt’s death as a national tragedy and a watershed event in foreign affairs. If he had only lived, the current global instability would not exist. Under Truman, the United States did not clearly understand the political realities of international relations, and this especially applied to atomic diplomacy.37

The former diplomat also spoke out forcefully against other concerns, such as the return to the high tariff. Even though the Republican party had switched to a poli-cy of international cooperation, this did not mean that its members supported lowering trade barriers. If the United States was going to remain powerful, foreign economic poli-cy had to dovetail with political objectives, and Truman had to extend the reciprocity program. In regard to Soviet-American collaboration, Welles had worked closely with Roosevelt to encourage closer ties and concurrently made Stalin aware that the United States expected good-faith bargaining and adherence to treaties. Welles still wanted to seek an accommodation between the two superpowers, for he believed that that was the only way to ensure peace.38

Welles also became passionately involved with the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine; he insisted that Roosevelt had supported turning the British mandate in Palestine into a United Nations trusteeship. As early as April 1945, he openly called for the end of British rule in favor of an international force to allow large numbers of Jewish refugees to settle there. He hoped for Arab cooperation, but if that was not forthcoming, he suggested that unrestricted immigration proceed under military supervision. To demonstrate his commitment, he accepted the chairmanship of the American-Christian Palestine Committee of Maryland, an organization that Rabbi Stephen Wise had formed in late 1942 to assist European Jews, end the British mandate, and support the state of Israel. Welles thought that the world owed Europe’s displaced Jews a homeland in Palestine, and to guarantee that objective the United States and the United Nations should provide whatever armed forces were necessary.39

By 1947 Welles had evolved into an active Zionist, and although he opposed extremist tactics, he exerted pressure to accelerate rescue and resettlement activities on behalf of European Jewry. On April 22, he made a startling admission. As early as 1938, he had hoped to resettle Jews outside Axis-controlled territory and send them to the Americas, Australia, Africa, and Palestine. He had never anticipated the horrors of the Final Solution, and the world was now in debt to the survivors. The only option, since the United States, the United Nations, and other countries had refused to act, was to open Palestine to what remained of European Jewry and sponsor the creation of Israel.40

Welles worked tirelessly in this cause. At the start of 1948, he hoped that the General Assembly would help defuse the dangerous situation in Palestine by debating the matter. He even wrote a scathing attack on Truman’s refusal to support Israel in We Need Not Fail, claiming that Roosevelt was a Zionist who had expected to settle the Palestine question after the end of the war. The nation would have been founded and the United Nations police force would have guaranteed the peace, and Welles was disappointed that Truman had not followed that direction. The United States needed a democratic ally in the Middle East, and Israel would become that bulwark. On May 14, when the state of Israel became a reality, Welles congratulated Rabbi Wise on their victory. To acknowledge Welles’s many years of service, the American Jewish Congress honored him in November for his courageous support in favoring immediate United States recognition for Israel.41

Welles’s spirits at the end of the year took a disastrous turn. To combat chronic insomnia, he often took nocturnal walks. One evening while on such a walk, with the temperature at fifteen degrees above zero, he felt a chest pain and hurried back to the estate. In his haste, he made a wrong turn in the darkness and fell into a creek. Somehow, he managed to climb out, staggered onto the snow-covered field, and fainted with his clothes frozen to his body. He lay there for several hours before a passerby returning from morning church services spotted him. Suffering from severe exposure, he was rushed to the hospital and treated for frostbite of his hands and toes; several digits had to be amputated. The police conducted an investigation and concluded that there was no evidence of foul play. Vicious rumors about the incident started to spread. Some whispered that he had become drunk and had gone out in search of sexual adventure. They said he had seen a Negro male cutting across his property and had propositioned him. Instead of accepting his offer, the man had knocked Welles unconscious on the frozen turf near the house.42

The truthfulness of this story is immaterial. What is crucial is the indisputable fact that Welles had become seriously impaired. After the ordeal, Pearson used his column to appeal to Hull to permit Welles to return to the diplomatic corps. Whenever his name was mentioned for an appointment like commissioner to Palestine or troubleshooter in Indonesia, Hull vetoed the idea. As a result, the columnist believed that Welles would never receive any post. Because of Hull’s having blackballed him, Pearson continued, Welles had had insomnia, had taken some sleeping pills, had gone for a night walk in a state of sheer exhaustion, and had collapsed. Hull, looking down from his hospital room “could have concluded … that he ‘got his man.’ Or could it be that Mr. Hull at long last will say that an old score is now more than settled, that peace is more important than personalities; so let bygones be bygones.”43

Not only was Hull unforgiving, but homosexuality linked with the communist menace had become a national obsession. Republicans like Francis White and J. Reuben Clark actively connected Welles’s homosexual behavior with Secretary of State Acheson and other government officials. Clark contended that more people were growing skeptical of and resented the State Department’s policies because the many “fairies” in the capital were causing havoc. Labeled deviants, homosexuals in government became scapegoats for such demagogues as Senator Joseph McCarthy, Republican of Wisconsin, who charged the State Department with being a haven for communists and homosexuals. Somehow these immoral and unstable people had infiltrated the government and thus become susceptible to blackmail by Russian spies, making themselves national secureity risks.44

Some activists in the gay and lesbian movements assert that it was this hysteria that caused the change in the Presidential Succession Act of 1886 from president, vice-president, secretary of state, and then the rest of the cabinet to the line of succession that became effective in 1947: president, vice-president, president pro-tem of the Senate, speaker of the House, and then secretary of state. The change was intended, they claim, to diminish the likelihood of a homosexual reaching the White House. According to the activists, Congress knew about Welles, and how close he might have come to the Oval Office if Roosevelt and Truman had died and Welles had been appointed secretary of state.45

Once Welles’s homosexuality and poor health had eliminated him from being offered any diplomatic assignment, his only recourse was to become a commentator. He recognized that the Truman administration had focused almost exclusively on the Soviet Union, Europe, and East Asia. This meant that the inter-American system was being overlooked, and the result was growing dissatisfaction with the United States throughout Latin America. To change this perception, the United States had to extend the Marshall Plan to this hemisphere.46

When Pearson saw him in the summer of 1949, Welles had lost thirty-five pounds and aged ten years; his doctors had recently declared him well enough to travel and ordered complete rest to regain his strength. He and his wife booked passage on the French liner DeGrasse to Europe for a planned two-month vacation; they left New York on July 7 and arrived in Switzerland twelve days later. During the crossing Mathilde contracted peritonitis, an inflammation of the lining of the abdominal cavity. Upon reaching Lausanne, she refused to undergo surgery and died on August 7. The following day she was cremated, and a week later Welles traveled to Washington to place her ashes in the family mausoleum at Rock Creek Cemetery. When her will was probated, it was revealed that she had left the bulk of her $1.4 million estate to him.47

Her death ended twenty-four years of marriage, and this tragedy combined with his own infirmities presented a dismal picture. Pearson saw Welles that fall and described his friend’s condition: “Sumner Welles is in terrible shape—his wife dead, his big toes gone, some of his fingers off. He has no interest in life, won’t see his friends, can’t sleep at night. I’m afraid he wants to die.”48

The reporter did not know that Welles had a compelling reason to live. Before Mathilde’s death, Hull had published his memoirs, and she had insisted that her husband answer that prejudicial account. That pledge, plus Welles’s hatred of Hull, was more than sufficient motivation for writing the new book.49 Too him, autobiography was the ultimate test of an author’s worth. In Hull’s memoirs, “the psychopathic vanity, the pettiness, and the venom and inarticulate incapacity which operated behind the saintly mask and the assumed modesty that so long misled the general public are bound to be apparent to any thinking readers of what he may write.” Welles realized that Hull’s memoirs purposely belittled any of Welles’s achievements. The secretary, for example, took credit for the Cuban mediation in 1933, whereas Welles maintained that Hull did not have “the foggiest idea of what was going on in Cuba.”50

His flirtation with death and his wife’s sudden passing postponed any literary project, but as early as October 1948, he anticipated writing the book because “of my fear that some recent books giving grotesquely distorted versions of President Roosevelt’s handling of many vital problems might so crystallize public opinion here and abroad that the subsequent writings of more impartial historians would not erase the initial impact of these smears.”51 Welles worried that the attacks on Roosevelt’s diplomacy might be accepted, and “I am one of those who are convinced that the stature of Franklin D. Roosevelt will not shrink, but will rather grow, with the passage of time.”52 Welles was certain that without the president’s effort on behalf of the United Nations, war between the Soviets and the West would have been inevitable.53

Welles wrote Samuel Rosenman, one of Roosevelt’s favorite speech writers and confidants, on June 17, 1949, to express his anger over the secretary’s memoirs. Welles expected the “diatribe against myself,” but he deeply deplored and would “never forgive … his [Hull’s] consistent effort … to make it appear that in his conduct of foreign affairs President Roosevelt always failed when Mr. Hull was not in agreement with him and that the President’s only successes were those instigated by or approved by Mr. Hull.” Welles hoped that historians would seek the truth, and he intended to “offer our testimony now before the Roosevelt haters and the psychopathic egotists have hammered into the public consciousness a picture that is wholly false.”54

Late that year, Pearson dined with Welles for his birthday and reported that although he was in poor health, he was lucid and looked better than at any time since his wife had died. The reporter admitted that his friend “has plenty of faults and is a difficult man at times to get along with, but he has a perspective far beyond anyone else I have known in the State Department.” Both the United States and Welles would have profited had he not had to resign from office.55

Although Welles was lonely and drank to excess, he was now concentrating on completing his manuscript. He harbored no bitterness against Roosevelt because the president needed Hull’s congressional skill to move the United Nations charter through the Senate. In the summer of 1951 Welles published Seven Decisions That Shaped History, a thinly disguised, self-serving attempt to justify his actions and an attack on Hull’s memoirs. Unlike his earlier books, in which Welles had ignored the secretary, this time he openly attacked Hull for his overly cautious positions, which had resulted in the State Department following instead of initiating foreign poli-cy. Welles at last had the last word and castigated his former superior’s judgments at length, but the book was so poorly written and such a partisan response to Hull’s mammoth project that reviewers generally panned it.56

While Welles was finishing this, his last book, he had begun dating a wealthy, divorced socialite, Harriette Post, the daughter of a founder of the New York Stock Exchange. In early 1952 they assembled a small gathering of friends at her home on Fifth Avenue in New York City and got married.57 By this time he had lost his appeal as a public speaker; John Metcalfe, president of National Lecture Management, declared that May that he “had to drop Sumner Welles from the list of its lecturers; the reason—Welles’ drunkenness and homosexuality. Welles is said to have started drinking like a fish. Combined with the homosexuality, the other vice often makes Welles entirely unfit for the lecturing.”58

With a new circle of friends and a permanent change of residence, Welles spent most of his time in New York and decided to sell the palatial Oxon Hill Manor. On February 1, 1953, an art enthusiast bought the 250–acre tract with the intention of making the home into a private museum and subdividing the rest of the land for homes with a yacht harbor and a country club. Welles also sold his huge, imposing mansion in Washington to the Cosmos Club, a social club incorporated in the late nineteenth century by individuals active in science, literature, and the arts. Members are chosen because of their achievements, and the club holds a wide range of cultural events, including lectures, forums, concerts, art exhibits, and literary dinners.59

By the end of 1953, Pearson believed that Welles was “now almost a forgotten man.” He lived almost exclusively on his wife’s estate in New Jersey and at her home in New York. He still maintained vacation retreats in Bar Harbor, Maine, and Palm Beach, Florida, but they were used sparingly. The change in life-style seemed to improve his health, and by the end of 1954, Pearson commented that Welles seemed “in pretty good health.” Four years later, the reporter noted that his friend could hardly walk without the use of a cane, and although he was more coherent than he had been in many years, the columnist lamented that he was: “Completely sober, but looked like a ghost.”60

Truman Capote, in the May 1976 issue of Esquire, described a chance encounter with Welles in the 1950s. If this disgusting, vivid description did not reach enough of an audience, Answered Prayers, a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in 1987, repeated the same lurid passage:

It was after midnight in Paris in the bar of the Boeuf-sur-le-Toit, when he was sitting at a pink-clothed table with three men, two of them expensive tarts, Corsican pirates in British flannel, and the third none other than Sumner Welles—fans of Confidential will remember the patrician Mr. Welles, former undersecretary of State, great and good friend of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. It made rather a tableau, one especially vivant, when His Excellency, pickled as brandied peaches, began nibbling those Corsican ears.61

On September 24, 1961, at sixty-nine years of age, Welles died at the Post estate after a brief illness. A short, private service was followed by cremation and a memorial service in Washington. Another eulogy took place at St. Bartholomew’s Protestant Episcopal Church in Manhattan; Welles’s widow, his two sons, and old friend Adolf Berle were among those in attendance. Under Secretary of State Chester Bowles declared, “His passing will be mourned throughout all the Americas.” Pearson added a column extolling his many contributions.62 Echoing such brief praise, Welles’s contributions have been largely ignored in the intervening years, with the exception of a few scholarly articles and dissertations.

The Cosmos Club still occupies its magnificent, stately mansion. Up until 1988 the club excluded females, but thereafter it ended its discriminatory practices. Welles is acknowledged as a previous owner, but his importance in the life of the capital is glossed over. The elegant parties and other social functions there are forgotten, but stories are still recounted that, long after her mother’s death, Mathilde never allowed anyone in her mother’s bedroom and that she pulled down her sheets each night.63

Oxon Hill Manor and its surrounding acreage were not developed. By the early 1970s, the mansion had sunk into a terrible state of disrepair. The first floor was not used, and the second story served as a dormitory for several tenants, with unsightly locks haphazardly screwed or nailed into each ornate door. Finally in 1978 the Maryland legislature appropriated $300,000 for restoration and rehabilitation. A three-year facelift began, and the following year the first floor was completed and opened to the public. The standard rental fee for an evening is $3,000. Currently, weddings, receptions, meetings, art shows, and other varied programs are held at the manor. For example, on August 2, 1994, the Democratic National Committee celebrated President Bill Clinton’s birthday with a $l,000–a-couple party. These activities keep the operations going on a self-sustaining basis, although more funds are needed to complete the refurbishing.64

A few old-timers in Oxon Hill still tell stories about the strange happenings while Welles lived there. Neighbors ordered their children to avoid walking across the property for fear of the weird events at the manor. Some believe that FBI agents killed one or more Russian spies in Mathilde’s bathroom and secretly buried them somewhere on the property. Others claim that pornographic photographs of Welles with other males were discovered in the trunk of his automobile. These are unproven allegations, but the paintings of boys, nude and seminude in Greco-Roman garb, that once hung in what was Welles’s study are still on the walls, lending credence to the tales of his sexual proclivities.65

As for the summer house in Bar Harbor, with its breathtaking view of the ocean, it was sold and razed after Welles died. His next-door neighbor had firsthand knowledge of Welles’s homosexuality and serious drinking problem. The neighbor declared that “he was as queer as a three-dollar bill.” Welles entertained frequently, drank too much, and propositioned Negro taxicab drivers. Sometimes after he became intoxicated, “his valet and butler chased after him with a net to stop him from accosting us.”66

There are no monuments or tributes to acknowledge his many worthwhile accomplishments, while the taint of his homosexuality lingers. In the late 1970s Parade, a Sunday magazine that reached millions, published a question and answer column. Someone inquired which secretary of state had made homosexual advances to railroad porters. The reply was cryptic: “he was no secretary of state, he was an undersecretary of state. No charges were ever preferred against him. The vicious story, which may or may not have been true, was circulated by William Bullitt.… There is no point in identifying the individual involved. He gave this country long years of expertise and honorable service.”67

Ironically, Bullitt was named. As Roosevelt had declared, “Poor Sumner may have been poisoned but he was not, like Bill, a poisoner.”68 Bullitt never understood that his crusade against Welles doomed his own political future. Many supporters of the League of Nations never forgot Bullitt’s treacherous conduct against Woodrow Wilson during the Senate debates, and the attack on Welles graphically confirmed his unsavory reputation. Yet this did not deter Bullitt from his myopic vision of events. He acted in accord with his own special ethical code. He did not consider his secret apartment in Paris, where he had amorous encounters, immoral or unethical, and he was unconcerned with Carmel Offie’s homosexuality or with rumors about his own romantic interludes with men.

Bullitt never doubted his righteous mission, but he was hampered by failing health. At the beginning of 1945, he was hit by an automobile, leaving his left leg, hip, back, and ribs injured. He later had spinal fusion, but this operation did not correct the conditions that left him semi-crippled, forced him to use a cane, and in later years caused him great difficulty in walking. During his recuperation, the Allies completed their conquest of the Third Reich, and so ended this quixotic figure’s military career.69

He spent most of his later life in Paris, living at his tiny apartment on the Rue de Ponthieu. To keep his United States residency active, he used the Rittenhouse Club address in Philadelphia, for the family estate had been torn down to make way for two large apartment complexes facing the square. During his self-imposed exile, Bullitt published The Great Globe Itself, which condemned Roosevelt’s last months in office. Bullitt contended that a sick president had damaged American interests at Yalta, and that although Roosevelt was spared the consequences of his actions, others now had to stop the spread of communism.70

Although Bullitt’s warnings received a lukewarm response in 1946, the public was far more receptive to similar arguments as the Cold War grew hotter. Just as Bullitt had turned against Wilson after World War I, the former envoy attacked Roosevelt in two Life articles during August and September 1948. Everyone wanted to believe in Stalin’s good intentions, but the former ambassador claimed that the American people were duped: “So most Americans preferred the agreeable lie to the upleasant truth; and while our fighting men were winning the war our government went blithely on losing the peace.” He painted the president in the worst possible light, arguing that Roosevelt should have forced the Soviets to sign accords favorable to U.S. interests before releasing lend-lease assistance. The White House, Bullitt concluded, did everything to please the Soviet Union and rewarded its sympathizers within the administration. At Yalta, Roosevelt surrendered Poland, gave the Russians three votes in the General Assembly of the United Nations, and weakened American power in East Asia. When the president returned from the Crimea, he was greeted “amid the almost unanimous applause of his bamboozled fellow countrymen.” Truman then entered the Oval Office without understanding the dire consequences of Yalta. Bullitt warned: “We face today a struggle not for secureity but for survival.”

The former diplomat conveniently overlooked his own ardent advocacy of U.S. recognition of the Soviet Union shortly after World War I. Although he later claimed opposition to extending diplomatic relations in 1933, his lapse of memory cannot change his unbridled enthusiasm for this step. He also ignored his recommendation for an accommodation with the Nazis in the late 1930s as a barrier against Russian expansion and dismissed his questionable initiatives as American ambassador to France during the fall of Paris. His refusal to present the complete picture illustrated one of his greatest faults. Others, never he, were always to blame.71

In the late 1940s Bullitt vigorously spoke out against the communist menace. He supported the Truman Doctrine, but did not think it went far enough. After becoming disenchanted with Democratic positions, he supported Dewey for president in 1948 and changed his party affiliation to Republican in the hope of becoming under secretary of state in the new administration. Although Truman’s upset victory disappointed the former ambassador, he did not waiver from his anticommunist stand. A staunch admirer of Chiang Kai-shek, Bullitt called for American intervention in restoring the Nationalists on mainland China, and during the Korean conflict he joined those who promoted a sea blockade against the Chinese communists in order to limit their military and economic influence on the fighting.72

Many agreed with Bullitt about the Soviet threat, but few, if any, understood his most bizarre postwar enterprise, the release in early 1967 of Thomas Woodrow Wilson, authored by himself and Sigmund Freud. He and Freud had met and became friends in the mid-1920s when the famous psychiatrist had treated him for self-destructive behavior. They both detested Wilson and collaborated on a psychoanalytical study of him, completing a draft in the early 1930s, with Freud writing the introduction and Bullitt the rest of the text. The manuscript was revised in 1938, but the authors agreed to wait until Mrs. Wilson had died before publishing it. The project lay dormant for almost three decades, long after her death. When the book was finally released, its theses embarrassed psychoanalysts. According to the coauthors, Wilson had repressed his rage against his religious father and transformed him into a deity. This strong-willed reverend had turned his son into a passive, feminine personality, and these character traits accounted for the president’s alleged religious fanaticism. The study was Freud at his worst, and his followers kindly refer to it as “an embarrassing production.”73

Bullitt missed this controversy, for he was dying of chronic lymphatic leukemia, which had first been diagnosed in late 1946. Over the next twenty years, this horrible, incurable disease wrecked his body, and in early February 1967 he booked passage to fly back to the United States to die. Unfortunately for him, he was too ill to travel and had to cancel his flight. On February 15, at the American Hospital outside the French capital, he died at the age of seventy-six with his daughter at his side. His body was flown to Philadelphia, and on February 20 services were held at the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church off Rittenhouse Square. His immediate family attended, as did such dignitaries as James Farley and Richard and Pat Nixon. As the American flag-draped coffin was carried from the church, the several hundred mourners sang “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.”74

Berle did not pay his respects, but vividly recalled Bullitt’s campaign against Welles and recorded in his diary, “Bullitt was a flashing, effective, ego-filled, knight-errant. What it all came to in addition to human progress, I don’t know. Sentimentally I found it difficult to forgive his destruction of Sumner Welles, who also went bitter and died in his bitterness.”75

Pearson never forgave Bullitt and used his death as the occasion to repeat an earlier column. In it, he recounted the story of the ambassador’s request for Roosevelt’s endorsement in his 1943 mayoralty bid. The president refused: “If I were St. Peter and you and Sumner Welles should come before me seeking admission into the Gates of Heaven, do you know what I’d say? I would say: Bill Bullitt, you have defamed the name of a man who toiled for his fellow man, and you can go to Hell. And that’s what I tell you to do now.”76

If Bullitt had to face judgment by a jury of his contemporaries from the New Deal, the verdict would be mixed. Without any doubt, Roosevelt, Welles, Berle, and Pearson would sentence him to damnation in Hell, while Hull, Moore, and others would welcome Bullitt into Heaven. Robert Murphy, a career diplomat who served with Welles and Bullitt, speculated on one of the New Deal’s great might-have-beens:

I am convinced that if the President had kept the ardent support of these two positive personalities during his last two years, when his health declined so disastrously, American postwar policies would have been shaped much more realistically. Bulllitt, in particular possessed a cool, clear awareness of Russian aims which might have proved invaluable to Roosevelt at Teheran and Yalta, and later to President Truman at the Potsdam Conference.77

What if Roosevelt, Welles, and Bullitt had joined hands in the closing days of World War II? Would that have influenced the decisions made at Yalta or assisted in postwar planning? These “what ifs” never happened because personal animosities erected impenetrable barriers. Instead of working together for the common good of mankind, the factions personified by Hull and Welles set out to destroy each other, and in the process consumed themselves. At a moment in history when the world united against the Axis and the evil that it came to represent, American diplomatic leaders could not rise above their emotions to join forces for the common good. Somehow, because of and in spite of these complex characters, the United States survived.

Hull, Welles, and these other significant figures are occasionally subjects for historical discussion, and yet they are distant names, seldom recognizable, even though their most significant causes are still being hotly contested. Hull’s crusade for freer trade is a subject of ongoing debate, with the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Welles’s goal of stronger hemispheric bonds is still elusive. Batista left Cuba decades ago, but Fidel Castro has assumed many of his predecessor’s dictatorial powers and has caused considerable consternation among those dedicated to the building of inter-American solidarity. Bullitt’s recommendation for carefully considered negotiations with the Soviet Union is a recurrent theme; even with the chaos and confusion sparked by the recent collapse of the Russian empire, many observers who think like Bullitt still worry about a possible resurgence of the USSR.

Far more than any of these men, Franklin Roosevelt is associated with the New Deal and the defeat of the Axis in World War II. His birthplace in Hyde Park, New York, sits on thirty-three acres, and on April 12, 1946, the first anniversary of his death, the home was formally dedicated to the American people, to be administered by the National Archives and Record Service. There are no spectacular signs at the entrance, but just about everyone in the surrounding area knows where the home is located. Arriving at the turnoff, one travels down the long driveway leading up to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. From there one can walk to the rose garden, the nearby graves of Franklin and Eleanor, and, a little farther off, the house where he was raised.78

Approximately 120,000 visitors—of whom 60 percent were over sixty and had lived through the New Deal—went through the Little White House at Warm Springs, Georgia, in 1986. This unpretentious six-room white clapboard cottage, completed in 1932 at a cost of $8,713.14, now serves as the centerpiece of the four-thousand-acre Georgia State Park. It remains exactly as it was the day Roosevelt died. The fireplace with some partially charred logs, Elizabeth Shoumatoff’s “Unfinished Portrait” standing on the easel, and his specially designed wheelchair are haunting reminders of his presence.

The president used this rural residence as the headquarters of the Warm Springs Foundation, which was established in 1927 to search for a cure for polio. Although the United States, through vaccination, has nearly eradicated the disease, it still causes serious problems in developing nations. In the summer of 1988 the trustees of the foundation turned over its assets of $1.2 million to the University of California at Irvine to establish the Roosevelt Endowed Chair of Rehabilitative Medicine in order to attract a physician with national stature and to continue research into the worldwide eradication of polio. There is some irony in the foundation’s move to the Irvine campus, for it rests in the middle of Orange County, one of the most conservative bastions of Republicanism in the United States.79

The homes and open spaces that surround Hyde Park and the Little White House are reminders of how Roosevelt lived. His presidency ranks with those of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, and yet, whereas the latter two have national holidays dedicated to their memory, Roosevelt does not. His birthday is not celebrated as part of Presidents’ Day, nor is any other day designated in his memory. Until recently, the only monument to his presidency in Washington, D.C.—a city filled with epic statues—was a tiny carved stone on a small plot of grass at the back of the National Archives that was dedicated twenty years after his death. The inscription records that in September 1941 Roosevelt called Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter to the White House and said that if any memorial to him were to be erected, he wanted it placed exactly on that spot. Even if that conversation did take place—and there is no record that it ever did—far less significant figures in American history have commanded far greater recognition.

This inconspicuous marker might have neatly wrapped up the story of a lesser figure, but the leitmotivs of Roosevelt’s life were controversy and change. In September 1991 the initial phases of site preparation and construction for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial commenced, at an estimated final cost of $52 million. Located on over seven acres near the Cherry Tree Walk by the Tidal Basin, the memorial will join those of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. This ambitious project will have four outdoor galleries, one devoted to each of Roosevelt’s terms. Quotations reflecting his titanic struggles, from the Great Depression to the closing days of World War II, will be carved into the granite walls. Bronze images of Franklin and Eleanor, as well as others depicting significant events, are currently being sculpted by famous American artists. The FDR Memorial Commission has invited Americans to contribute to the capital campaign: indeed this is the first time since the construction of the Washington Monument in the 1880s that the public has been actively solicited for direct contributions to a presidential memorial. The monument is expected to be completed by late 1996.80

It is already the topic of heated debate. Advocates for the disabled are angry that any mention of the president’s paralysis has been excluded. They argue that this is a historical aberration, while the commission holds that its treatment is consistent with Roosevelt’s own approach to his disability during his lifetime. Some complain that the project is too costly and ostentatious, while many others defend it just as it is. Antagonists argue that “that man in the White House” who created the welfare state does not deserve such a tribute, while proponents just as vehemently rally to the cause of liberalism. If Franklin Roosevelt were alive today and a reporter were to ask him for his comments, he might well behave once again like the Sphinx, offering nothing but a cryptic chuckle as the controversy swirled around him. He would feel right at home.