William Christian Bullitt Jr.
William Christian Bullitt Jr. (January 25, 1891 – February 15, 1967) was an American diplomat, journalist, and novelist. He is known for his special mission to negotiate with Lenin on behalf of the Paris Peace Conference, often recalled as a missed opportunity to normalize relations with the Bolsheviks.[2] He was also the first U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union and the U.S. ambassador to France during World War II.[3] In his youth, he was considered a radical, but he later became an outspoken anticommunist.[4]
William Christian Bullitt Jr.
David R. Francis
(as Ambassador to Russia)
January 25, 1891
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
February 15, 1967 (aged 76)
Neuilly, France
Republican (after 1948)[1]
Democratic (before 1948)
2
Early years[edit]
Bullitt was born to a prominent Philadelphia family, the son of Louisa Gross (née Horwitz)[5] and William Christian Bullitt Sr. His family was of French descent. His ancestor Joseph Boulet, a Huguenot, had fled Nîmes in 1629.[6] Joseph Boulet settled in St. Mary's City in the English colony of Maryland in 1634, and the family later angelized its surname to Bullitt.[7] His grandfather was John Christian Bullitt, founder of the law firm today known as Drinker Biddle & Reath.[8] John C. Bullitt was also the preferred legal counsel for Jay Cooke, a choice of client that made him into a very rich man.[9] On his maternal side, Bullitt was descended from Haym Salomon, a Polish Jew who settled in Philadelphia in 1778.[10] The descendants of Salomon later converted to Episcopalism in the 19th century, and Bullitt's mother, Louisa Horwitz, was despite her surname an Episcopal.[11]
Bullitt's upbringing was cosmopolitan. Members of his family lived in the main European capitals, and he learned French and German at a very young age.[6] As a boy, Bullitt spent every summer on a grand tour of Europe.[12] Despite his upbringing, he always saw himself as an American first. Bullitt was staying in Paris during the Spanish-American War. During the war, he hung an American flag on the window of his room of his parents' Paris house to show his support for his country and wanted to attack the Spanish embassy in Paris, which his parents forbade, saying that as a seven year old, he was too young to take part in the war.[12] As a child, he was considered a rebellious and rambunctious youth who tended to associate with the "bad boys" as his parents called the boys from poor families.[13] As a teenager, he developed an obsession with one day being president as he wrote in private school: "I'm going to be a lawyer and Governor and Secretary of State and President".[14] As a student, he was considered to be intelligent, charming and funny, but with a fierce combative streak along being very egoistical.[15] Bullitt did not hesitate to use his family's wealth to achieve his ambitions and when one of his private school teachers accused him of cheating on an exam, Bullitt had his father use his influence to have the teacher fired.[16]
Bullitt graduated from Yale University in 1912, after having been voted "most brilliant" in his class.[17] When Bullitt arrived at Yale in September 1908, he saw the institution mainly a way to make contacts for his future political career.[18] Bullitt, who was already fluent in German and French, chose to major in those languages. This allowed him to achieve outstanding grades without working too hard, as he himself noted that he spoke better German and French than his professors.[19] Bullitt had little interest in learning, and he saw attending Yale more as a way to be popular as he set out with much success to be the proverbial "big man on the campus".[17] Handsome, intelligent, witty and good at both athletics and scholarship, Bullitt was an exceedingly popular student.[19] Two of Bullitt's closest friends at Yale were Cole Porter and Monty Woolley, with whom he staged several plays.[20] During his time at Yale, he was member of the elite Phi Beta Kappa fraternity and in 1911 was elected to the Scroll and Key secret society.[20]
After graduating from Yale, Bullitt enrolled at Harvard Law School. At Harvard, his professors did not tolerate the antics that Bullitt engaged at Yale such his constant jokes in the lecture halls and his practice of diverting a classroom conversation in order to dominate it and show off his intellectual abilities.[21] One of Bullitt's professors at Harvard, Joseph Henry Beale, took a particular pleasure in humiliating him in the classroom, which contributed to his decision to drop out of Harvard.[22] Moreover, during his time at Harvard, Bullitt became obsessed with the fear that he might become impotent because of his prematurely thinning hair as he erroneously associated baldness with a loss of sexual potency, and he assaulted several other students who suggested to him he would soon be impotent.[23] Additionally, Bullitt did not enjoy his legal studies, which he only undertaken on behalf of his father, who threatened to cut him off from his monthly allowance if he did not enter Harvard Law School.[24] When Bullitt's father died in March 1914, he immediately dropped out of Harvard.[25]
World War One[edit]
In 1914, Bullitt visited Russia with his mother. He was in Moscow on 28 July 1914 when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, provoking pro-Serb demonstrations on the streets as angry crowds waved the Serbian and Russian flags while chanting "Down with Austria! Long live Serbia!"[26] Bullitt took the last train from Moscow to Berlin and left Russia just before Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August 1914.[26] Upon his return to America, Bullitt worked as a journalist for the Philadelphia Ledger, and become the deputy editor of the paper in 1915.[26] In December 1915, in a publicity stunt, Henry Ford chartered an ocean liner, the Oscar II, which he called the "Peace Ship" and sailed to Europe with the intention of mediating an end to the war.[26] Bullitt was one of the journalists abroad the Oscar II and he filed mocking reports from the ship about the resulting media circus, stressing the absurdity of Ford's voyage. These reports were published in various American newspapers.[27] In January 1916, Bullitt started a popular humorous column in the Ledger, "Bumping the Bumps", which mocked virtually every aspect of American life.[28]
He married socialite Aimee Ernesta Drinker (1892-1981) in 1916. Drinker was a renowned beauty from one of Philadelphia's wealthiest families who turned down marriage proposals from 50 different men before she decided to accept Bullitt's marriage proposal.[29] Given her surplus of marriage proposals, many were surprised that she agreed to marry Bullitt, whom she dated only for a brief time and barely knew.[30] The Drinker family had arrived in the newly founded colony of Pennsylvania in 1670 as one of the first English settlers, and had a quasi-aristocratic position in Philadelphia's social life.[29] The marriage of a son and daughter from two of Philadelphia's richest families made front-page news in Philadelphia.[31] Bullitt was incapable of understanding women as persons, and he regarded his wife as an object that existed only for his own needs.[30] Given his views, the marriage became deeply unhappy.[30]
The couple took their honeymoon in May 1916 in Germany, Austria-Hungary and German-occupied Belgium. Bullitt interviewed various German and Austrian leaders for the Ledger.[29] The Bullitts were described by the Russian historian Alexander Etkind as a "socially progressive, but culturally conservative" couple who greatly admired the welfare state of Imperial Germany, which preserved the rule of the traditional elites while providing sufficient care for the poor to apparently end the possibility of a revolution.[29] Bullitt was especially impressed with the German health care system, under which the German state provided free medical care for all, and came to wish that his country adopt a similar system.[29] In September 1916, Bullitt took a guided tour of the Eastern Front, where he wrote admiringly of the German Army.[29] Bullitt interviewed the industrialist Walther Rathenau who told him that Germany might give Constantinople to Russia as compensation for German annexations of other parts of the Russian empire.[32] When Bullitt objected that the Ottomans would be opposed to the loss of their capital, Rathenau cynically replied, "We would only have to publish full accounts of the Armenian massacres, and German public opinion would be so incensed that we could drop the Turks as allies."[33]
Bullitt came to dislike the censorship and the overbearing behavior of the German officials. Ernesta wrote in her diary: "Billy says the Germans are the most moral people in the world when it comes to dealing with Germans and the most immoral in their dealings with the rest of the world."[33] On 3 September 1916, in Budapest, Bullitt interviewed the Hungarian prime minister, Count István Tisza, who admitted to him that the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia in 1914 had been written with the intention of having it be rejected. When he asked Tisza if the German government had been aware of the ultimatum, Tisza refused to answer. Tisza gave Bullitt the impression that he regarded starting the war as a monstrous mistake as he told him that all Austria wanted in 1914 was to annex Serbia, which had led to a war where millions had died.[34] On 17 September 1916 in Berlin, Bullitt interviewed the German Foreign Secretary, Gottlieb von Jagow, and caught him in a lie when Jagow claimed to have been ignorant of the contents of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. Bullitt then tricked Jagow into admitting that he had seen the Austrian ultimatum before it was issued. The interview made front-page news around the world.[35]
Service in the Wilson administration[edit]
In February 1917, Bullitt interviewed "Colonel" Edward M. House, a man who had no official position in the administration of President Woodrow Wilson, but was the president's closest friend and adviser who lived in the White House.[36] Both House and Bullitt belonged to the progressive wing of the Democratic party, and found that they had much in common.[36] House served as Bullitt's mentor in politics and introduced him to both Wilson and later to Franklin D. Roosevelt.[36] Ernesta gave birth to a son in 1917, who died two days later. Bullitt greatly admired Wilson, whom he called "clean-hearted" , "pure' and "wise".[37]
On 6 April 1917, the United States declared war on Germany following the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare and the publication of the Zimmerman telegram. Owing to his fluent German, Bullitt served at first in Army intelligence.[38] Walter Lippmann, a friend of Wilson's, recommended Bullitt for intelligence work, calling him the "sharpest of the American correspondents".[38] In December 1917, he was appointed assistant secretary of state for Europe and reported to Joseph Grew.[37] However, Bullitt tended to by-pass Grew and spent his reports straight to the president, who greatly admired Bullitt's writing.[37] It was during this period that Bullitt first become preoccupied with Russia as he sought to devise an American policy for the new Bolshevik regime.[39] In 1918, Bullitt was opposed to the "Polar Bear Expedition" as U.S. Army units were dispatched to the Arctic cities of Archangel and Murmansk, ostensibly to prevent American war supplies from falling into German hands, as he advised Wilson that American intervention on the White side in the Russian civil war would be a cardinal mistake.[39]
Diplomatic career[edit]
Working for President Woodrow Wilson at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, Bullitt was a strong supporter of legalistic internationalism, which was later known as Wilsonianism. When Wilson sailed to France to attend the Paris peace conference in December 1918 abroad the ocean liner USS George Washington, Bullitt also sailed abroad the George Washington as a member of the American delegation.[40] The other members of the American delegation were surprised by the aloof manner of the president, who spent almost all of his time with his wife Edith and told the American delegation very little about what he expected of them once they arrived in Paris.[40] Bullitt approached Wilson to tell him that the other members of the American delegation wanted the president to spend more time with them discussing what should be the American goals at the peace conference, instead of spending his time with Edith Wilson.[40] Wilson agreed and for the first time told the American delegation about what he expected them to achieve in Paris.[40] Wilson was impressed with Bullitt's boldness as the other members of the delegation had all felt his concerns, but none had the courage to speak to him.[40]
Divorce and friendship with Roosevelt[edit]
In May 1928 Bullitt had discovered in Bryant's room several love letters to her from the painter and sculptor Gwen Le Gallienne, who had agreed to teach Bryant how to paint and sculpt, which marked the effective end of his marriage.[102] Despite his wife's very public affair with Le Gallienne, which she no longer bothered to conceal after Bullitt found Le Gallienne's love letters, he remained fond of her and initially refused to divorce her.[103] As he researched his Wilson biography, Bullitt came into contact with several Democratic leaders, most notably "Colonel" House, which led him to resume his ambitions for a political career, and he returned to the United States in 1929.[104] Bryant did not follow her husband and remained in Paris with Le Gallienne.[105] In December 1929, Bullitt filed for divorce under the grounds that Bryant was having an affair with Le Gallienne.[102] The real reason for the divorce suit was that Bullitt had realized that his marriage to a well known Communist writer was threatening his political ambitions, and he used his wife's lesbian affair as his cudgel to win sole custody of their daughter.[106] Bryant was so embarrassed by the love letters from Le Gallienne that Bullitt's lawyer, Thomas White, introduced as evidence that she was an unfit mother that she did not contest the divorce.[103] On 24 March 1930, a Philadelphia court dissolved his marriage to Bryant and awarded him sole custody of their daughter, Anne.[107] In 1967, Anne Bullitt married her fourth husband, U.S. Senator Daniel Brewster; her four marriages were childless.
In May–June 1932, Bullitt made a lengthy visit to the Soviet Union, where he met the Soviet Foreign Commissar, Maxim Litvinov.[108] Upon his return to America, Bullitt served as a foreign policy adviser for Governor Roosevelt who became the Democratic candidate for presidency that year.[108] Colonel House-who was still the éminence grise of the Democrats- had decided that Bullitt was one of the few Democrats with sufficient knowledge of foreign affairs to advise Roosevelt, whose background as governor of New York was felt by House to make him ill-informed about foreign policy.[109] House was an elder statesmen within the Democratic party and he advised Roosevelt to accept Bullitt's services.[109] Bullitt donated a large sum of money to the Roosevelt campaign and on 23 September 1932 received a handwritten thank you letter from Roosevelt.[109] Bullitt first met Roosevelt on 5 October 1932, and quickly become one of his close friends.[109] In November 1932, Roosevelt was elected president and in January 1933, he sent Bullitt on a tour of Europe to contact various European leaders on behalf of the president-elect.[110] Roosevelt was in Warm Springs at the time, and Bullitt used a code to communicate with him.[111]
Bullitt was primarily concerned about the problem of European debts to the United States as he met with prime minister Ramsay MacDonald and the chancellor of the exchequer Neville Chamberlain in London; Édouard Herriot and the premier Joseph Paul-Boncour in Paris; and the German Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath in Berlin.[112] While he was in Berlin, Bullitt met up with his old friend Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl to get his opinion on Adolf Hitler, who just been appointed German chancellor on 30 January 1933, with Hanfstaengl responding, "He is a small, obscure Austrian house painter with the ability to speak to crowds."[113] During his mission, Bullitt wore disguises; rented apartments under his own name, which he failed to live in to confuse any reporters; and rented the apartments he did live in under false names.[114] When Bullitt arrived in New York on 16 February 1933, he told a reporter from the New York Times that it was "sheer nonsense" that he been representing Roosevelt.[114] Bullitt was nearly prosecuted for violating the Logan Act for his European trip, and only the difficulty in assembling evidence that he had been abroad representing the president-elect prevented charges from being laid.[115]
The Cold War[edit]
Between 1941 and 1945, Bullitt wrote volumes of stories and social commentary on the dangers of fascism and communism. In the postwar years, he became a militant anticommunist. At the same time, he also believed that extending the 1919 Bullitt Commission and the negotiations with Lenin would have been constructive.[261] Bullitt became a militant critic of the foreign policy of the Roosevelt administration, which he described as soft on communism.[262] In his 1946 book The Great Globe Itself, Bullitt was extremely critical of Roosevelt's policies towards the Soviet Union, which characterized as appeasement of Stalin.[263]
Bullitt sought a post with the new Democratic president Harry S. Truman, who refused him.[264] Clark Clifford warned the president that Bullitt had a habit of turning against the presidents he served as he noted that he turned against both Wilson and Roosevelt.[264] In 1947, Bullitt was greatly alarmed by the popularity of the French Communist party, which he believed was turning France into a Communist dictatorship after the liberation as he complained that French Communists occupied too many posts in the government, and put his hopes into de Gaulle as France's "savior" from Communism.[265] Bullitt had a tendency for hero-worship, which colored his writings on his friend de Gaulle, but he expressed concern that even de Gaulle might not be able to stop the French Communists.[265]
Moving increasingly to the right, Bullitt attached himself to the China Lobby, which favored the support of the Kuomintang regime.[266] In 1947, Henry Luce hired Bullitt for some $13, 000 dollars to work as the "special correspondent" of Life on China.[267] Bullitt was then sent off on a tour of China to report on the war.[267] On 13 October 1947, Life published an article by Bullitt entitled "Report on China" that began with question posed in capital letters: "CAN CHINA BE KEPT OUT OF THE HANDS OF STALIN?"[267] Bullitt advocated American support for the Kuomintang, who were losing the Chinese civil war to the Chinese Communists as he wrote: "If China falls into the hands of Stalin, all of Asia including Japan will sooner or later fall into his hands".[268] Bullitt advocated that the United States provide the Republic of China with some $1.35 billion in aid with some $75 million to go for the stabilization of the inflation-weakened Chinese dollar immediately; another $75 million for further stabilization of the Chinese economy over the next three years; and some $600 million for the modernization of the National Revolutionary Army.[268] Finally, Bullitt advocated that the United States pay for and train some 10 new divisions of the National Revolutionary Army, which would lead an offensive to retake Manchuria, which had lost to the Communist People's Liberation Army earlier that year.[268] Manchuria, a region with some 34 million people was known as the industrial heartland of China, a center of heavy industry, and its loss to the Communists alongside the best divisions of the National Revolutionary Army that had sent to hold it had been major blows to the Kuomintang regime. The media mogul Luce ensured that Bullitt's "Report on China" was given widespread publicity.[268]
Though Bullitt did not speak Mandarin, the Republican-controlled Congress had Bullitt testify as an expert witness on China that the policies of the Truman administration would lead to the "loss" of China.[268] Bullitt testified: "The independence of the U.S. will not last a generation longer than the independence of China".[268] As the resident Asia expert for the Luce media empire, another article by Bullitt was published in Life in December 1947, this time on the war in French Indochina.[268] Bullitt had made visit to French Indochina to see the war himself in the fall of 1947.[266] Bullitt admitted that much of the Vietnamese population wanted independence from France, and called Ho Chi Minh an "intelligent, completely selfless man endowed with great personal charm".[269] However, Bullitt advocated that Vietnam be granted independence within the French Union and he wrote that the victory of the Viet Minh would replace "the yoke of France by the terrible yoke of Stalin".[270] The Vietnamese leader whom Bullitt favored was the playboy Emperor Bảo Đại who was living in exile in Hong Kong.[271] Bullitt advocated greater American involvement in south-east Asia to preserve French Indochina and testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that if France failed in Vietnam, "the U.S. should perhaps take a hand in the matter".[270] Bullitt's association with the China Lobby and his criticism of the Truman administration for in his view not providing sufficient support for the Kuomintang marked his estrangement from the Democrats.[272]
In 1948, Bullitt left the Democratic Party and joined the Republican party.[273] Bullitt expected the Republican candidate, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, to win the election and wanted to serve as secretary of state in the expected Dewey administration.[273] In his 1948 article "How We Won The War and Lost the Peace" in Life, Bullitt criticized Roosevelt's foreign policy towards the Soviet Union as one of endless blunders and concluded: "Russia will be able to mobilize the manpower and industrial strength of China and Japan for its ultimate assault on the United States".[262] In an upset victory, Truman who had widely expected to lose the 1948 election was elected by a very narrow margin. Bullitt grew increasingly preoccupied with China from 1948 onward as the Chinese Communists continued their string of victories, which he portrayed in his articles as a result of the policies of the Truman administration.[263]
In 1952, Bullitt appeared with Senator Richard Nixon at Georgetown University to criticize the foreign policy of the Truman administration, especially in Asia, as "soft on communism".[274] In the 1952 election, Bullitt endorsed the Republican candidate, Dwight Eisenhower, and when Eisenhower won the election, lobbied hard for a post in the new administration.[275] However, Eisenhower found Bullitt's views on the Soviet Union to be too extreme for his liking, and told his chief of staff, Sherman Adams, that he did not want to see Bullitt.[275] Unhappy with the unwillingness of Eisenhower to give him a post, in June 1953, Bullitt went to Seoul to denounce the soon-to-concluded armistice that ended the Korean War as a sell-out.[275] Bullitt was usually abroad in the last years as he owned a cottage in Taiwan that was close to the residence of Chiang Kai-shek and rented an expensive apartment in Paris.[274]
In the August 24, 1954, issue of Look, in his article "Should We Support an Attack on Red China?", he proposed an immediate attack on Communist China and asserted that the United States should "reply to the next Communist aggression by dropping bombs on the Soviet Union."[276] In 1954, Bullitt's friendship with Chiang Kai-shek ended and he ceased visiting Taiwan.[277] A servant had held a party in Bullitt's house in Taiwan while he was on a visit to the United States without his permission, which was a crime under Chinese law.[277] Bullitt asked Chiang to drop the prosecution, and when he refused, he ceased speaking to him.[277] In 1964, Bullitt broke with de Gaulle when France recognized the People's Republic of China as the legitimate government of China, which greatly angered him.[277]
The biography of Wilson that was co-written by Bullitt and Freud in the 1920s was published in 1966. It argued that Wilson resolved his Oedipus complex by becoming highly neurotic, casting his father as God and himself as Christ, the savior of mankind, which ruined the Versailles Treaty.[278] The thesis put forward by Bullit and Freud was that Wilson during the Paris peace conference had suffered an "extraordinary mental disintegration" caused by his issues with his overbearing father, the Presbyterian preacher Thomas Wilson.[279] Freud and Bullitt claimed that Wilson had envisioned his principle domestic opponent, the Republican senator Henry Cabot Lodge, as a "father representative" and thus could not compromise with Lodge as it brought back too many negative memories of his submission as a boy to his father.[280] The co-authors argued that Wilson was delusional in 1919 as his mind was in a "wild flight from fact".[280] Bullitt and Freud claimed that Wilson, a deeply religious man whose values were powerfully shaped by his Calvinist upbringing, chose to cast himself as a Christ figure who sacrificed himself as "the Savior of the World".[280] The book received a reception that was almost unanimously hostile. The historian A. J. P. Taylor called it a "disgrace" and asked, "How did anyone ever manage to take Freud seriously?"[281] The American historian Lloyd Ambrosius wrote the key assumptions made by Freud and Bullitt, namely that the Treaty of Versailles was a mockery of the 14 Points and that Wilson could have if had wanted to, forced the other leaders at the Paris peace conference to accept his vision of the peace, were both wrong.[282]
Bullitt died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, on February 15, 1967, and is buried in Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia.
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