Sumner Welles

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Sumner Welles (October 14, 1892 – September 24, 1961) was Under Secretary of State in US (the #2 position) from 1937 to 1943, during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. He was featured on the Time cover of August 11, 1941. He was born in New York City.

1 Early career
2 Cuba
3 Stimson Doctrine
4 World War II
5 Trivia
6 Bibliography
7 External links

[edit] Early career

The Welles family was rich, prominent, and wealthy; Welles preferred to be called Sumner after his famous ancestor Charles Sumner, a leading Senator in the Civil War and Reconstruction. At Groton he roomed with the brother of Eleanor Roosevelt, and was in her wedding party, where he met and became a close friend of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Welles was a top student graduating from Harvard College in 1914. Following the advice of Franklin Roosevelt, he went into the Foreign Service and won a choice assignment to Tokyo. In 1915 he married Esther Slater, whose family owned the Slater Mills in Massachusetts. They had two sons, one of whom wrote his biography.

He specialized in Latin America, was sent to Argentina in 1919, became fluent in Spanish, and proved a quick study in grasping the complexities of Latin American politics. In 1920 he became assistant chief of the Division of Latin American Affairs in Washington, and focused his attention on the Caribbean and Central America. He monitored closely the situations in Cuba and Haiti (then under American occupation). In 1922 he briefly resigned from the State Department, upset with Republican high tariff policies and the inefficiencies of the bureaucracy. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes brought him back as a special commissioner to the Dominican Republic with the rank of minister and with direct access to the secretary. Welles remained in this post for three years but failed to end American control of the nation's economy or to bring about the withdrawal of American troops there.

[edit] Cuba

During the Cuban crisis in 1920, President Woodrow Wilson sent Welles to Cuba. Welles arrived in Havana with a specific charge: mediate ‘in any form most suitable’ an end to the Cuban crisis. Welles’ role in these kinds of mediations was crucial. Welles started mediating and promising both sides of the Cuban opponents what they wanted to hear.

Welles promised Machado help of new commercial treaty to relieve economic distress if Machado reached a political settlement with the opposition. The government believed that the proposed mediation represented a clever form of continued support and a guarantee that Machado would serve a full length of his term.

Welles promised the opponents of the Machado’s government a change of government, and participation in the subsequent administration, if they joined the mediation and supported an orderly transfer of power. The opposition believed that the mediation was an ingenious method by which the United States planned to remove Machado.

The mediation provided the United States the means with which to pursue several policy objectives at once. The mediations provided the means through which opposition groups could obtain their objectives and join the political process in an orderly, instructional fashion. Just as important as easing Machado out was the necessity of easing new political elements in. The mediation conferred on sectors of outlawed opposition a measure of political legitimacy, providing them with a vested interest in a settlement sanctioned and supported by the United States. This served as a recruitment process, a method by which the US determined which groups were ‘responsible’ and which were not.

As U.S. special envoy to Cuba in 1933, Sumner Welles, with support from General Herrera, Colonels Castillo, Delgado etc (See Hugh Thomas ISBN 0-306-80827-7 and Enrique Ros sources), maneuvered to oust then-President Gerardo Machado from office. Fulgencio Batista, an army sergeant in the Cuban Army Telegraph service was still not a player. In September 1933 Batista emerged on the public scene a leader of an enlisted man rebellion, and began to seize control. In January 1934, Batista transferred army support from Grau to Union Nacionalista leader Carlos Mendieta. Within five days, the United States recognized the new government. During this process putative agent William Wieland (aka (Guillermo) Arturo Montenegro and sometimes spelled William Weiland or Wilheim Wieland) is said to have been active in Cuba for the first time. Wieland will go on to become a senior State Department official, not only involved in the Bogotazo, promoting the US arms embargo on Fulgencio Batista, and instrumental in inhibiting full US action during planning and the execution of the Bay of Pigs Invasion

Preceded by Harry F. Guggenheim	United States Ambassador to Cuba 1933	Succeeded by Jefferson Caffery

[edit] Stimson Doctrine

Following the principles of Stimson Doctrine, on July 23, 1940, Sumner Welles made a declaration on the US non-recognition policy of the Soviet annexation and incorporation of the three Baltic States as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. More than 50 countries later followed US in this position.

[edit] World War II

Roosevelt was always close to Welles and made him the central figure in the State Department, much to the chagrin of secretary Cordell Hull, who could not be removed because he had a powerrful political base. Historians give the credit to Sumner Welles for designing the United Nations. FDR made Welles the key person and Welles had "a dominance over UN planning" that was "starting to embitter Hull."^[1] Welles did not have a political base, however, and his enemies finally pounced when they discovered what appeared to be a homosexual episode; Roosevelt, embittered, was forced to fire Welles. Welles became a prominent commentator and author on foreign affairs but held no more government positions.

[edit] Trivia

Welles was a great-nephew of Edith Wharton.

[edit] Bibliography

Michael J. Devine. "Welles, Sumner"; in American National Biography Online (Feb. 2000) online
Gellman, Irwin F. Secret Affairs: Franklin Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welles. Johns Hopkins U. Pr., 1995. 499 pp.
Welles, Benjamin (1997-11-01). Sumner Welles: Fdr's Global Strategist : A Biography (Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute Series on Diplomatic and Economic History), Hardcover, St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-17440-3 EAN: 9780312174408. scholarly study by his son

Sources on Welles (and Wieland) in Cuba and aftermath

Fuentes, Norberto (2004). La Autobiografia De Fidel Castro. Mexico D.F: Editorial Planeta. ISBN 84-233-3604-2, ISBN 970-749-001-2.
Gonzalez, Servando (2002). The Secret Fidel Castro: Deconstructing the Symbol. U.S.: Spooks Books. ISBN 0-9711391-0-5, ISBN 0-9711391-1-3.
Kapcia, A. (2002). "The Siege of the Hotel Nacional, Cuba, 1933: A Reassessment". Journal of Latin American Studies: 283–309.
Lazo, Mario (1968). Dagger in the heart: American policy failures in Cuba. New York: Twin Circle.
Phillips, R Hart (1935). Cuban side show, 2nd edition, Havana: Cuban Press. ASIN: B000860P60.
Phillips, R Hart (1959). Cuba, Island of Paradox. New York, NY: McDowell Obolensky. ASIN: B0007E0OAU.
Thomas, Hugh (April, 1998). Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom, Updated Paperback edition, Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80827-7.

Books by Sumner Welles include:

Welles, Sumner (1944). The time for decision. Harper & Brothers. ASIN B0006AQB0M.
Welles, Sumner (1972). Naboth's Vineyard: The Dominican Republic, 1844-1924. Arno Press. ISBN 0-405-04596-4.