Sumner Welles

Benjamin Sumner Welles ( born October 14, 1892 in New York City; † September 24, 1961 in Bernardsville, New Jersey) was an American diplomat and Deputy Secretary of State ( Under Secretary of State ) from 1937 to 1943 in the time Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency.

Rise

Coming from a rich family, the first name comes from a known ancestors in the U.S. (Charles Sumner ), he early became acquainted with the Roosevelts and a friend of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He graduated in 1914 at Harvard University, went into the diplomatic service and initially got a job in Tokyo. In 1915 he married Esther Slater from a business family in Massachusetts. Two sons came from this marriage. One was his biographer.

His first focus was Latin America, and he was sent in 1919 to Argentina. In 1920, he was Deputy Chief of the Latin America Division in the State Department in Washington. In 1922, he retired temporarily from the service because he was with the tax policies of the Republicans and the bureaucracy in the clinch. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes caught up with him for three years as a special envoy (Special Commissioner) returns the rank of a Minister of the Dominican Republic.

Cuba

In the first Cuban missile crisis in 1920 he was sent by President Woodrow Wilson there. Welles had to choose between two conflicting parties mediate (General Herrera, the Colonel Castillo, Delgado, who later became President Gerardo Machado). In 1933 he served for a short time as the United States Ambassador to Cuba; while he supported Fulgencio Batista.

The Stimson Doctrine

In 1940 he rejected the Soviet annexation of the three Baltic states from as a result of the Molotov -Ribbentrop Pact between the German Reich and the Soviet Union. This position many countries followed suit.

World War II

During World War II Welles frequently served as a consultant Franklin Roosevelt in the State Department. To him, the draft for the UN (United Nations ) is attributed (see also Cordell Hull). Because of an alleged homosexual affair he had to vacate his office in 1943. But he remained for many years a prominent U.S. commentator and author on foreign policy.