Benjamin Sumner Welles III (October 14, 1892 – September 24, 1961) was an American government official and diplomat. He was a major foreign policy adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and served as Under Secretary of State from 1937 to 1943, during Roosevelt's presidency.
Born in New York City to a wealthy, well-connected political family, Welles graduated from Harvard College in 1914. He entered the Foreign Service at the advice of Franklin Roosevelt, who was a family friend. Welles was excited by Woodrow Wilson's ideas about how American principles could reorder the international system based on liberal democracy, free-trade capitalism, international law, a league of nations, and an end to colonialism.O'Sullivan (2008), pp. xii–xvi
Welles specialized in Latin American diplomatic affairs and served several posts in Washington and in the field. President Calvin Coolidge distrusted Welles because of his divorce, and dismissed him from the foreign service. Welles left public service for some years, and wrote a book on the history of the Dominican Republic.O'Sullivan (2008), p. 5.
When Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, he put Welles in charge of Latin American affairs as Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs. Welles became heavily involved in negotiations that removed Cuban president Gerardo Machado from power and replaced him with rival Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada. He was later promoted to Under Secretary of State, in which role he continued to be active in Latin American issues, but also expanded into European affairs as World War II began in Europe in 1939. In 1940, he issued the Welles Declaration which condemned Soviet occupation of the Baltic states and proved to be a minor point of contention among the Soviets and their Western allies once the U.S. entered the war in 1941. After the fall of France, he downgraded French affairs because they no longer were a major power. Roosevelt relied on Welles much more than on the official Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, who became the enemy of Welles.O'Sullivan (2008), p. xiii.
Welles was forced out of government service by Secretary Hull after his enemies began to spread word of a 1943 incident in which he had propositioned two male railroad porters for sex.Benjamin Welles, Global Strategist, pp. 273–274 Returning to private life, he continued to write books on foreign relations and became an advisor to media organizations. He was a target of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the post-war "red scare", though he was never formally sanctioned. He died in New Jersey in 1961, survived by his third wife and two children from his first marriage.
Early life Benjamin Sumner Welles III was born on October 14, 1892, in New York City to Benjamin Sumner Welles Jr. and Frances Wyeth Swan. His elder sister was Emily Frances Welles, who married Harry Pelham Robbins. He preferred to be called "Sumner" after his famous relative Charles Sumner, a leading Senator from Massachusetts during the American Civil War and Reconstruction. His family was wealthy and was connected to the era's most prominent families. He was a grandnephew of Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, known as "the Mrs. Astor". Among his ancestors were Thomas Welles,Donna H. Siemiatkoski, The Descendants of Governor Thomas Welles of Connecticut, 1590–1658, and His Wife, Alice Tomes (Gateway Press, 1990) a colonial Governor of Connecticut, and Increase Sumner, Governor of Massachusetts from 1797 to 1799. Although the two men were occasionally mistaken for cousins, Welles was no relation to director Orson Welles.Orson Welles in Italy by Alberto Anile and Marcus Perryman. Indiana University Press (September 25, 2013), , p. 26
The Welles family was also connected to the Roosevelts. His first cousin once removed Helen Schermerhorn Astor married James Roosevelt Roosevelt, half-brother of future President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR). At the age of 10, Welles was entered in Miss Kearny's Day School for Boys in New York City. In September 1904, he entered Groton School in Massachusetts, where he remained for six years. There he roomed with Hall Roosevelt, the brother of Eleanor Roosevelt. In March 1905 at the age of 12 Welles served as a page at Franklin D. Roosevelt's wedding to Eleanor.
Welles attended Harvard College where he studied "economics, Iberian literature and culture", and graduated after three years in 1914.Life, April 26, 1943 available online, accessed November 8, 2010
Diplomatic career After graduating from Harvard, Welles followed the advice of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and joined the U.S. Foreign Service. A New York Times profile described him while he joined the foreign service: "Tall, slender, blond, and always correctly tailored, he concealed a natural shyness under an appearance of dignified firmness. Although intolerant of inefficiency, he brought to bear unusual tact and a self-imposed patience."The New York Times: Harold B. Hinton, "Welles: Our Man of the Hour in Cuba", August 20, 1933, accessed November 8, 2010 He secured an assignment to Tokyo, where he served in the embassy as third secretary only briefly.
Latin America Welles soon became a specialist in Latin American affairs. He served in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1919 and became fluent in Spanish. In 1921, Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes appointed him to head the Division of Latin American Affairs.
In March 1922, Welles briefly resigned from the State Department. He was unsympathetic to the view held by American diplomacy that military might was meant to protect the overseas interests of U.S. business. Hughes brought him back the next year as a special commissioner to the Dominican Republic. His particular assignment was to oversee the withdrawal of U.S. forces and to negotiate protection for overseas investors in the Dominican Republic's debt. Welles remained in that post for three years and his work was accomplished after his departure in a 1924 treaty.
In 1924, U.S. President Calvin Coolidge sent Welles to act as mediator between disputing parties in Honduras. The country had lacked a legitimate government since the election of 1923 failed to produce a majority for any candidate and the legislature had failed to exercise its power to appoint a new president. Negotiations managed by Welles from April 23 to 28 produced an interim government under General Vicente Tosta, who promised to appoint a cabinet representing all factions and to schedule a presidential election as soon as possible in which he would not be a candidate. Negotiations ended with the signing of an agreement aboard the USS Milwaukee in the port of Amapala.Benjamin Welles, Global Strategist, ch. 9: Crisis in Honduras, 1923"Nancy Peckenham and Annie Street, Honduras: Portrait of a Captive Nation (New York: Praeger, 1985), 62ff.; Lester D. Langley, The banana wars: United States intervention in the Caribbean, 1898–1934 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983), 172ff.Time: "Foreign News: Honduran Strife", April 21, 1924, accessed November 10, 2010; Time: "Foreign News: Revolutions", April 28, 1924, accessed November 10, 2010; Time: "Foreign News: Revolt Ends?", September 15, 1924, accessed November 10, 2010
Years out of government service
Coolidge, however, disapproved of Welles's 1925 marriage to Mathilde Scott Townsend, who had only recently divorced the President's friend, Senator Peter Gerry of Rhode Island. He promptly ended Welles's diplomatic career.
Welles then retired to his estate at Oxon Hill, Maryland. He devoted himself to writing and his two-volume history of the Dominican Republic, Naboth's Vineyard: The Dominican Republic, 1844–1924 appeared in 1928.In the Bible's Books of Kings, Naboth was stoned to death for refusing to surrender his vineyard to Ahab. Time described the work as "a ponderous, lifeless, two-volume work which was technically a history of Santo Domingo, actually a careful indictment of U.S. foreign policy in the Hemisphere". James Reston summarized its thesis: "we should keep in our own back yard and stop claiming rights for ourselves that we denied to other sovereign States".The New York Times: James B. Reston, "Acting Secretary", August 3, 1941, accessed November 8, 2010
He served as an unofficial adviser to Dominican President Horacio Vásquez.
During the presidential election of 1932, Welles provided foreign policy expertise to the Roosevelt campaign. He was a major contributor to the campaign as well.
Cuba
In April 1933, FDR appointed Welles Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, but when a revolution in Cuba against President Gerardo Machado left its government divided and uncertain, he became instead the President's special envoy to Cuba. He arrived in Havana in May 1933. His mission was to negotiate a settlement so that the U.S. could avoid intervening as U.S. law, namely the Platt Amendment of 1901, required.
His instructions were to mediate "in any form most suitable" an end to the Cuban situation. Welles promised Machado a new commercial treaty to relieve economic distress if Machado reached a political settlement with his opponents, Colonel Dr. Cosme de la Torriente, from the Nationalist Union; Joaquín Martínez Sáenz, for ABC; Nicasio Silveira, for the Revolutionary Radical Cellular Organization; and Dr. Manuel Dorta-Duque, representing the delegation of the University of Havana. Machado believed the U.S. would help him survive politically. Welles promised the opponents of Machado's government a change of government and participation in the subsequent administration, if they joined the mediation process and supported an orderly transfer of power. One crucial step was persuading Machado to issue an amnesty for political prisoners so that the opposition leaders could appear in public. Machado soon lost faith in Welles and denounced U.S. interference as a colonialist adventure. Welles' mediation process conferred political legitimacy on sectors of the opposition that participated and allowed the U.S. to assess their viability as long-term political allies. Unable to influence Machado, Welles met with Rafael Guas Inclan, president of the Chamber of Representatives, at the home of newspaper publisher Alfredo Hornedo, and requested that he initiate impeachment proceedings against the president. When Guas harshly rebuffed him,Rafael Guas Inclan to Antonio Rafael de la Cova, Feb. 22, 1975 Welles then negotiated an end to his presidency, with support from General Alberto Herrera, Colonels Julio Sanguily, Rafael del Castillo, and Erasmo Delgado after threatening U.S. intervention under the Platt Amendment and the restructuring of the Cuban army high command.See Hugh Thomas, Cuba or The Pursuit of Freedom (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), Justo Carrillo, Cuba 1933: Students, Yankees, and Soldiers (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1994), Ricardo Adam y Silva, La Gran Mentira 4 Septiembre 1933 (Santo Domingo: Editora Corripio, 1986), Enrique Ros, La Revolucion de 1933 (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 2005) and Luis E. Aguilar, Cuba 1933: Prologue to Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972).
In 1937, FDR promoted Welles to Under Secretary, and the Senate promptly confirmed the appointment. Indicative of ongoing rivalries within the State Department, Robert Walton Moore, an ally of Secretary of State Hull was appointed the department's Counselor at the same time, a position equal in rank to that of Under Secretary.Time: "The Cabinet: Double Upping", May 31, 1937, accessed November 9, 2010
World War II In the week following Kristallnacht, in November 1938, the British government offered to give the major part of its quota of 65,000 British citizens eligible for emigration to the United States to Jews fleeing Hitler. Under-Secretary Welles opposed this idea, as he later recounted: