W. Averell Harriman

World War I diplomacy

During the war he was active in publicizing the "Rape of Belgium" in the US. In 1916, President Wilson entrusted him with organizing the American intervention in the war ("Operation Harriman"). In this capacity he supported the organizers of the February Revolution in Russia.

World War II diplomacy

By virtue of his previous experience as a fixer in organizing the American intervention in the First World War, at the outbreak of World War II Harriman became Roosevelt's personal envoy to Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin, with the aim of establishing a direct link with the leaders of the countries enemy of Nazi Germany. He was the first - since 1940 - to speak of genocide underway in German concentration camps and of gas chambers.

Beaverbrook-Harriman mission

Beginning in the spring of 1941, Harriman served President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a special envoy to Europe and helped coordinate the Lend-Lease program. Roosevelt, in appointing him, referred to Harriman as his "defense expediter." Harriman arrived in London in March 1941, and was quickly absorbed into the close circle of counselors and intimates cultivated by the British prime Minister Winston Churchill. Less than a week later, he was dining with the prime minister at 10 Downing Street when a major bombardment by the Luftwaffe began, and he joined Churchill on the roof to watch the bombs fall.

Less than a month after his arrival in London, during another bomber raid, Harriman began a romantic affair with Pamela Digby Churchill, who was married to Churchill's son Randolph. Their marriage was in tatters. a result of his steady drinking problems and his gambling addiction. Pamela was 21 years old and Harriman was 50.

As part of his official duties, Harriman was expected to supply Roosevelt with regular reports on Churchill's actions and character. Harriman believed that the U.S. would inevitably be drawn into the conflict, in spite of the isolationist sentiment at home. In August 1941, Harriman was present at the Atlantic Conference meeting between FDR and Winston Churchill in Placentia Bay, which yielded the Atlantic Charter. The joint agreement would establish American and British goals for the period following the end of World War II—before the U.S. was involved in that war—in the form of a common declaration of principles that were eventually endorsed by all of the Allies. Harriman was subsequently dispatched to Moscow to negotiate the terms of the Lend-Lease agreement with the Soviet Union in September 1941, together with the Canadian publishing millionaire Lord Beaverbrook, who represented the United Kingdom.

Harriman tended to follow Beaverbrook's argument that since Germany had committed three million men to the invasion of the Soviet Union—so that the Soviets were doing the bulk of the fighting against the Third Reich—it was in the best interests of the Western powers to do everything to assist the Soviet Union. The decision to aid the Soviet Union was taken against the advice of the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, Laurence Steinhardt, who from the moment that Operation Barbarossa started on June 22, 1941, had been sending cables predicting the Soviet Union would be rapidly defeated, and that any American aid would thus be wasted. Likewise, General George Marshall was advising President Roosevelt that it was inevitable that Germany would crush the Soviet Union, and predicted that the Wehrmacht would reach Lake Baikal by the end of 1941.

The most important result of the Beaverbrook-Harriman mission to Moscow was the conclusion agreed upon between Churchill and Roosevelt that the Soviet Union would not collapse by the end of 1941. Additional conditions of the agreement were that even if the Soviet Union was defeated in 1942, keeping Soviet Russia fighting would impose major losses on the Wehrmacht, which would only benefit the United States and the United Kingdom. Harriman has been subsequently criticized for not imposing preconditions on American aid to the Soviet Union, but the American historian, Gerhard Weinberg, has defended him on this point, arguing that in 1941, it was Germany—not the Soviet Union—that represented the main danger to the United States. Furthermore, Joseph Stalin told Harriman that he would refuse American aid if preconditions were attached, leaving Harriman with no alternatives on the issue.

Harriman believed if Germany defeated the Soviet Union, then all of the vast natural resources of the Soviet Union would be at the disposal of the Reich, making Germany far more powerful than it already was. Therefore, it was in the best interests of the United States to deny those resources to the Reich. He also pointed out that the defeat of the Soviet Union would free up three million men of the Wehrmacht for operations elsewhere, allowing Hitler to shift money and resources from his army to his navy and potentially increasing the threat to the United States. Harriman told Roosevelt that if Operation Barbarossa was successful in 1941, Hitler would almost certainly defeat Britain in 1942. His promise of $1 billion in aid technically exceeded his brief. Determined to win over the doubtful American public, he used his own funds to purchase time on CBS radio to explain the program in terms of enlightened self-interest. Nonetheless, considerable U.S. public skepticism towards Soviet aid persisted, lifting only with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

In a speech in 1972, Harriman stated: "Today people tend to forget that, in 1941, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill had one prime objective: to destroy Hitler's forces, and win the war in a way that would be least costly in terms of human lives. For over a year, the British alone had borne the brunt of Nazi attacks; for their own self-preservation, they wanted to keep Russia as a fighting ally. Roosevelt had yet another consideration in mind. In those early days of the war, he was fearful that we would eventually be drawn into the conflict, yet he still hoped that our participation could be limited to air and naval forces, with a minimum of ground troops. We are all, to a considerable extent, the product of our experience: Roosevelt had a particular horror of the trench warfare of World War I and he wanted above all to prevent that fate from again befalling American fighting men. He hoped that, with our support, the Red Army would be able to keep the Axis forces engaged. The strength of the British divisions coupled with our own air and sea power might then make it unnecessary for the United States to commit major ground forces on the European continent". The Beaverbrook-Harriman mission promised that the United States and Great Britain would supply the Soviet Union every month with 500 tanks and 400 airplanes, plus tin, copper, and zinc. However, the promised supplies had to be sent via the perilous "Murmansk run" through the Arctic Ocean, and only a tiny fraction of what was promised had in fact arrived by December 1941.

On November 25, 1941, twelve days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Harriman noted that "The United States Navy is shooting the Germans—German submarines and aircraft at sea." In 1941, a team of officers, led by General Albert Coady Wedemeyer on behalf of General Marshall, drew up the Victory Program, whose premise was that the Soviet Union would be defeated that year, and that to defeat Germany would require the United States to raise by the summer of 1943 a force of 215 divisions comprising 8.7 million men. The Harriman-Beaverbrook mission, whose more optimistic appraisal of Soviet fighting power ran contrary to the more pessimistic assessment, challenged one of the basic assumptions of the Victory Program. The Victory Program, with its call for a 215-division army plus men for the Army Air Corps, the Navy and the Marines would require massive amounts of equipment, leading to what was known as the Feasibility Dispute within different departments of the government. To build the necessary weapons for such a massive force would require the government essentially to end all civilian production in the U.S., a measure estimated to cause a 60% reduction in living standards. Many in the government felt this would impose a level of sacrifice that the American people would be unwilling to accept. The Feasibility Dispute ended in 1942 with the "civilian" fraction triumphing over the military as Roosevelt decided upon what was known as the "90 division gamble". Roosevelt decided that all of the evidence he received since the Harriman-Beaverbrook mission indicated that the Soviet Union would not be defeated as the Victory Program had assumed, and accordingly the 215 division force envisioned was not necessary and instead he would "gamble" with a 90 division force.

Moscow Conference

In August 1942, Harriman accompanied Churchill to the Moscow Conference to explain to Stalin why the western allies were carrying out operations in North Africa instead of opening the promised second front in France. The meeting was a difficult one with Stalin openly accusing Churchill to his face of lying to him and suggesting that the British would not open a second front in Europe because of cowardice, sarcastically saying that the recent defeats suffered by the British 8th Army in North Africa showed how brave the British were against the Wehrmacht. Harriman had spent much time after the meeting at the Kremlin reminding Churchill that the Allies needed the Soviet Union and to try not to take Stalin's remarks too personally, saying the fate of the world was hanging in balance.

On June 24, 1943, Harriman met with Churchill to tell him that Roosevelt did not want him to attend the up-coming summit meeting with Stalin, saying that it was important to allow Roosevelt who had never met Stalin to establish an "intimate understanding", which would be "impossible" if Churchill was there. Churchill rejected this suggestion, sending a telegram to Roosevelt full of hurt feelings saying: "I do not underrate the use that enemy propaganda would make of a meeting between the heads of Soviet Russia and the United States at this juncture with the British Commonwealth and Empire excluded. It would be serious and vexatious, and many would be bewildered and alarmed thereby." Roosevelt in his reply lied by saying that this was just a "misunderstanding" and he had never wanted to exclude Churchill from the summit with Stalin.

Four Power declaration

Harriman was appointed as United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union in October 1943. In his 1975 memoir Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941-1946, Harriman wrote that Stalin was "the most inscrutable and contradictory character I have ever known", a mysterious man of "high intelligence and fantastic grasp of detail" who possessed much "shrewdness" and "surprising human sensitivity". Harriman concluded that Stalin was "better informed than Roosevelt, more realistic than Churchill, in some ways the most effective of the war leaders. At the same time he was, of course, a murderous tyrant." Harriman, who thoroughly enjoyed living in London, did not want to be U.S. ambassador in Moscow and only reluctantly accepted the assignment in October 1943 after Roosevelt told him that he was the only man he wanted in Moscow. Harriman was also reluctant to part with his mistress, Pamela Churchill, the wife of Randolph Churchill.

Although Harriman was one of the richest men in the United States, running a vast business empire comprising investments in railroads, aviation, banks, utilities, shipbuilding, oil production, steel manufacturing, and resorts, this in fact endeared him to the Soviets who believed he represented American capitalist ruling class. Nikita Khrushchev later told Harriman: "We like to do business with you, for you are the master and not the lackey". Stalin viewed the United States through a Marxist prism, which saw American Big Business as the puppeteers and American politicians as the puppets.

At a three power conference in Moscow that took place between October 19 and 30, 1943, Harriman played a major role in representing the United States as part of the American delegation headed by Secretary of State Cordell Hull while the Soviet delegation was headed by the Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov and the British delegation headed by the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. The main American demands at the Moscow Conference were to have a new international organization replace the League of Nations to be called the United Nations; to have Soviet Union to agree to adhere to the "unconditional surrender" formula adopted at the Casablanca conference (a major point given that the Soviets sometimes hinted that they were willing to sign a separate peace with Germany); and for the "Big Three" powers whom it was assumed would dominate the post-war world to be a "Big Four" as the Americans wanted China to stand alongside the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain as one of the world's dominant powers.

The demand for a "Big Four" instead of a "Big Three" turned out to the main difficulty at the Moscow conference as the British and Soviets did not consider China a major power in any sense. As long as the Soviet Union was engaged in the war against Germany, they did not wish to antagonize Japan with whom they had signed a neutrality agreement in 1941, and the Soviets objected that having Foo Ping Shen, the Chinese ambassador to Moscow, sign the proposed Four Power Declaration would cause tensions with Tokyo. Eventually, after much patient diplomacy, Harriman won out, and a Four Power declaration was signed on October 30, 1943, by Hull, Eden, Molotov and Foo stating that the four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council would be the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and China.

Planning for Operation Overlord and the war's end

Besides for the Four Power declaration, the other issues at the Moscow conference were whether the United States would recognize the French Committee of National Liberation headed by General Charles de Gaulle as the French government-in-exile. Roosevelt had a strong personal aversion to de Gaulle, and throughout the war, the Americans had an "anybody but de Gaulle" attitude. At Moscow, the Americans very reluctantly agreed to Eden's insistence that they extend some recognition to de Gaulle, although the Americans still refused to grant him full recognition, a matter which contributed much to de Gaulle's subsequent anti-Americanism.

The question of who the legitimate government of France was posed a major potential problem since the next year Operation Overlord, the invasion of France, was scheduled to take place. Presuming Overlord was successful, the question would arise over whom the Anglo-Americans would turn France over to. Nothing infuriated de Gaulle more than the implication that the Americans would not hand over France to his National Committee after the liberation. Tensions between Great Britain and the Soviet Union over the Arctic supply convoys were eased while the difficulties over supplies coming over Iran were left unresolved despite Harriman's best efforts at playing mediator. On the matter of Germany, the Soviet Union agreed to the "unconditional surrender" formula while it agreed that after the war, Germany was to be disarmed and denazified.

All of the delegations at the Moscow conference agreed that Germany was to be permanently disarmed after the war, which led to the question of whether Germany should be deindustrialized as well in order to ensure that Germany would never be able to build military weapons again; no consensus was reached over this issue. The question of what Germany's borders were to be after the war was left unresolved, through everybody at the conference agreed that Germany was going to lose territory with the only question being just how much. One matter where agreement was reached was with Austria as it was announced at the Moscow conference that the Anschluss of 1938 was to be undone and Austria would have its independence restored after the war. Finally, in regards to the Reich, it was agreed that war crimes trials were to take place after the war with lesser war criminals to be tried in the nations where they had committed their crimes while the leaders of Germany were to be tried by a special court consisting of judges from the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union.

The communique in Moscow which announced that war crimes trials would be held after the war was intended primarily as a deterrent to German officials currently engaged in war crimes as it was hoped that the prospect of facing a hangman's noose after the war might change their behavior. As for Italy, it was agreed that the Soviet Union was to send a representative to the Allied Control Commission which governed the liberated parts of Italy and that Italy was to pay reparations to the Soviet Union in the form of ships, as much of the Italian merchant marine was to be handed over to the Soviet Union. No agreement was reached over the question of the Soviet Union's borders after the war, with the Soviets insisting that their postwar borders should be exactly where they were on June 21, 1941, a point that the American delegation and to a lesser extent British delegation resisted.

Relations with Poland and China

At the Tehran Conference in late 1943 Harriman was tasked with placating a suspicious Churchill while Roosevelt attempted to gain the confidence of Stalin. The conference highlighted the divisions between the United States and Britain about the postwar world. Churchill was intent on maintaining Britain's empire and carving the postwar world into spheres of influence while the United States upheld the principles of self-determination as laid out in the Atlantic Charter. Harriman mistrusted the Soviet leader's motives and intentions and opposed the spheres approach as it would give Stalin a free hand in eastern Europe. At the Tehran conference, Molotov finally promised Harriman what he long sought, namely that after Germany was defeated, the Soviet Union would declare war on Japan. At Tehran, Roosevelt told Stalin that as a "practical man" who was planning to run for a fourth term in 1944 that he had to think of Polish-American voters, but that he agreed that the Soviets could keep the part of Poland they had annexed in 1939, provided that this was kept a secret until the 1944 election.

Negotiations preceding the bombing of Japan

In the summer of 1944, Stalin promised Harriman that the Americans would be allowed to use air bases in the Soviet Far East to bomb Japan, but only if the Americans supplied the Soviet Air Force with hundreds of four engine bombers. In September 1944, Stalin expressed much pique to Harriman that the recent Anglo-American communique issued at the Quebec Conference did not mention the Soviet Union, leading him to state sarcastically "if the United States and Great Britain desired to bring the Japanese to their knees without Russian participation, the Russians were ready to do this." When Harriman protested it was impossible to include the Soviet Union in the plans for victory over Japan until the Soviets opened staff talks, Stalin assented.

Yalta Conference

Harriman also attended the Yalta Conference, where he encouraged taking a stronger line with the Soviet Union—especially on questions of Poland. The American delegation at the Yalta conference stayed at the luxurious Livadia Palace overlooking the Black Sea, and Harriman was given a room

Legacy and honors

The Harriman Hall at Stony Brook University was named in his honor.

The W. Averell Harriman State Office Building Campus in Albany, New York, also carries his name.

Harriman State Park (Idaho)

For the state park in New York named after his parents, see Harriman State Park (New York).

Harriman State Park is a state park in eastern Idaho, United States. It is located on an 11,000-acre (45 km2) wildlife refuge in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and is home to an abundance of elk, moose, sandhill cranes, trumpeter swans, and the occasional black or grizzly bear. Two-thirds of the trumpeter swans that winter in the contiguous United States spend the season in Harriman State Park. The land was deeded to Idaho for free in 1977 by Roland and W. Averell Harriman, whose insistence that the state have a professional park managing service helped prompt the creation of the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation in 1965. The park opened to the public in 1982. It is located in Fremont County, 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Island Park, Idaho. Henry's Fork, a fly-fishing stream, winds through the meadows of Harriman State Park. In winter, many of its roads and trails are groomed for cross country skiing.