W. Averell Harriman

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(b. New York City, 15 Nov. 1891; d. 26 July 1986) US; US ambassador to Russia 1943 – 6, ambassador to Britain 1946, Secretary of Commerce 1946 – 8, ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary 1948 – 50, Special Assistant to the President 1950 – 1, Governor of New York 1955 – 8 The son of a railway magnate and self-made millionaire, Harriman was educated at Groton before graduating from Yale in 1913. Having worked as a clerk in the Union Pacific Railroad yards in Omaha, Nebraska, during college vacations, in 1915 he became a vice-president of the company. During the next twenty-five years he built up his own business empire, which included a private bank and one of the largest American-owned merchant fleets. In addition he chaired the boards of both the Illinois Central Railroad and the Union Pacific Railroad, 1932 – 42.

A staunch Democrat, it was in his capacity as close friend and confidant of Franklin D. Roosevelt that Harriman entered a career in the public service that was to span thirty-five years and four Democratic presidencies. In 1934, at the invitation of Roosevelt, he became a member of the Business Advisory Council of the Department of Commerce. A further appointment followed in 1941 when Roosevelt sent him to London to negotiate the Lend-Lease arrangements. Thus began a long career in international diplomacy that was to take Harriman to Russia and Britain as US ambassador, 1943 – 6 and 1946 respectively; to the conferences of the Allied powers at Casablanca, Tehran, and Yalta; gave him a roving brief as ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary 1948; ambassador at large in 1961 and 1965, and to include the frustrating and difficult task of representing the USA at the Vietnam peace conference, 1968 – 9. Sandwiched between these wide-ranging diplomatic posts, he also served as Secretary of Commerce in Truman's Cabinet, 1946 – 8.

When the Democrats lost the presidency in 1953 Harriman changed from being an appointed public servant to an elected one. In 1954 he narrowly won the governorship of New York. But his term of office was possibly one of the least successful of his roles. A Republican-controlled State Legislature frustrated his attempts to deliver his election pledges and, in 1958, he lost the governorship to another public-spirited plutocrat, Nelson Rockefeller. Two years earlier, in 1956, he had also seen his aspirations for becoming his party's presidential candidate dashed when Adlai Stevenson won the nomination.

In 1961 Harriman returned to the public service as ambassador at large, 1961 and 1965, and Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern Affairs 1961 – 5 and Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs 1963 – 5. When Nixon became President in 1969 Harriman retired and assumed the role of elder statesman of the Democratic Party. Harriman was an example of a man of great wealth who devoted much of his life to the service of his country. He was a skilled negotiator and a first class administrator.

(1891-1986) businessman and public official, born in New York City. Harriman held a variety of positions during Democratic administrations from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Lyndon B. Johnson. Harriman was Roosevelt's special representative (”defense expediter”) to Britain for the government program that provided material support to U.S. allies (1941-43). As the number-two man in the Economic Cooperation Administration, he was largely responsible for division of Marshall Plan aid among the nations of western Europe (1948-50). In 1950, early in the Korean War, he served briefly as a special assistant to President Harry S. Truman. As director of the Mutual Security Administration (1951-53), Harriman supervised the rearmament of America's allies in Europe, dispensing billions in military assistance. In 1961 he joined President John F. Kennedy's administration as assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs and undersecretary of state for political affairs; in 1963 he negotiated and signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty. In the role of ambassador-at-large during the Johnson administration (1965-68), Harriman began negotiations for peace in Vietnam. Between his early and later Washington assignments, Harriman served a single term as governor of New York (1955-59).

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

W. Averell Harriman (1891-1986), American industrialist and financier, had a distinguished second career as a top-level diplomatic negotiator for five Democratic presidents. He was Governor of New York for one term.

Harriman was born in 1891 during the administration of President Benjamin Harrison and died in 1986 during Ronald Reagan's first term; he first visited Siberia under the reign of Czar Nicholas II at age 7, and at age 91 made his last visit to Moscow to meet the new Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov. As a 35 year-old investment banker and industrialist, Harriman conducted mining negotiations with Leon Trotsky, and subsequently dealt directly as a diplomat with every Soviet leader from Stalin to Andropov. He worked on New Deal projects for President Franklin Roosevelt, and in 1943 was appointed Ambassador to the Soviet Union by FDR. After the war, he was President Harry Truman's ambassador to Great Britain and later, secretary of commerce, chief negotiator in Europe for the Marshall Plan, and special assistant to the president. In the Kennedy administration, Harriman served as ambassador at large, reporting directly to the president; as assistant secretary for Far Eastern affairs, he negotiated the Laos neutrality accords; and, at 71 years of age, as undersecretary of state for political affairs, he conducted successful negotiations with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev for the historic limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Under Lyndon Johnson, Harriman was again named Ambassador at Large, and then, more vaguely, "Ambassador for Peace;" in both capacities, he met with heads of state around the globe, and in 1968 spent the last seven months of his negotiating career as Johnson's emissary to the Paris Peace talks on Viet Nam. Finally, at age 84 and in Moscow once again, Harriman gave Leonid Brezhnev assurances that candidate Jimmy Carter was seriously interested in nuclear arms reduction. At a celebration of Harriman's 90th birthday, Senator Edward Kennedy saluted the honoree by saying, "We couldn't have held the twentieth century without him."

Son of E.H. Harriman, the last and perhaps greatest of the 19th century "railroad barons, " William Averell Harriman was born in 1891 to a world of riches and power. His father taught his that "great wealth is an obligation", and he always followed his father's admonition to "be something and somebody." Traveling with his parents, Harriman had toured Europe in some depth before he went to prep school, and he was in Tokyo in 1905 when riots broke out over Japanese opposition to the terms of the treaty ending the Russo-Japanese war. His worldly experience led him to see the United States as part of a global community. He thought of the oceans as avenues of commerce instead of shields isolating America from foreign enemies.

Harriman graduated from Yale University in 1913, having already been elected to the board of the Union Pacific Railroad. Although vice president of the Union Pacific Railroad from 1915-1917, the young Harriman was wealthy enough to afford other business interests. During the next decade, with the perception that the United States had no significant merchant marine fleet, he bought a shipyard and began producing "prefabricated" freighters. He ventured into mining operations in Soviet Georgia, copper in Silesia (eastern Europe), oil in Iran, a power plant in Poland, gold in South America. In 1927, Harriman and his younger brother Roland went into banking; at the end of two years, they were handling accounts for hundreds of importers and exporters; at the end of another year, and not too long after the great Wall Street crash, they merged with their biggest competitor to become Brown Brothers Harriman and Company. Harriman became involved in aviation, as an original investor in a forerunner of Pan American Airways, and in publishing, with a national magazine called Today, "an independent journal of public affairs" whose first subscriber was FDR; Today eventually merged with News Week

In his earlier years, Harriman was something of a sportsman, vigorously involved with polo, racehorses, and bird dogs. After the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, NY, Harriman began to think about developing a destination ski resort somewhere in the western United States, accessible of course by Union Pacific passenger trains. He hired a young Austrian count and skier to scout the entire American west for the spot that met all of Harriman's requirements. The count was about to give up when he heard about Ketchum, "a backwater sheep town" in south central Idaho. It met all the requirements, and with the help of a (non-skiing) publicist who came up with a name and sold Harriman on the idea of making it a destination resort for the famous and glamorous, Sun Valley was born. In a short time, it was a big success, and while not a big profit-maker for the railroad, for Harriman Sun Valley "was the most satisfying venture of his business career."

The elder Harriman had been a Republican, but the son had never taken an active interest in politics, becoming a Democrat partly because of his sister Mary Harriman's friendships in the White House (the president was "Franklin") and her enthusiasm for the New Deal. He spent a good deal of time in Washington in the administration's first two years, looking after his own business interests rather than for a job; nevertheless, Harriman understood that real power in America has shifted from New York's financial district to Washington, and he "found joy in the exercise of power." Harriman's public career began in January, 1934, administering the National Recovery Administration's codes for heavy industry.

As Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Harriman performed services of the first importance. He attended the international conferences at Teheran and Yalta and provided excellent information regarding Soviet affairs. Optimistic at first about the possibility of good relations with Moscow, by 1945 Harriman changed his mind and began advocating a firm attitude toward the Soviets. Still, he never became an ideologue about the Soviets and always believed in treating them with firmness and patience.

Interspersed with Harriman's life as a globe-trotting diplomatic, there was Harriman the politician. He sought the Democratic party nomination for president in 1952 and 1956 and had considered running for the U.S. senate. In 1954, he won the New York Democratic nomination for governor, beating FDR, Jr., and managed to turn what had looked like a landslide victory in the general election into a "squeaker" victory of 11, 000 votes. Harriman's oratorical skills have been described as "wooden" and "paralytically boring." He was said to be "incapable of humor or repartee, " and people thought him aloof and reserved. Harriman tried for a second term but lost to Nelson Rockefeller; nevertheless, for years after, he was called "Governor."

Harriman's 14-year marriage to his first wife, Kitty, ended in divorce; his second wife, Marie, died after 41 years of marriage; his third wife, Pamela Churchill Harriman, was with him for the last 15 years of his life (she later served as ambassador to France in the Clinton administration until her death in 1997).

The last half or more of Harriman's life was spent as a public figure in the company of almost all the world leaders who defined and drove the twentieth century. The British political scientist Isaiah Berlin said Harriman "was an irreplaceable asset to the U.S. government and to the entire West because of an uncanny sense of what, as negotiator, could work, and what could not. In the most essential aspects of international relations, he seemed to be virtually infallible." Harriman's longevity at the top levels of government was said to be "because power and access to power, influence, and knowledge were his mother's milk." Of Averell Harriman's passing Pamela Churchill Harriman said, "He just decided that enough was enough."

Further Reading

Various aspects of Harriman's work are discussed in Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (1948; rev. ed. 1950); Harry S. Truman, Memoirs (2 vols., 1955-1956); Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, vol. 2 (1959); Clarence B. Randall, Adventures in Friendships (1965); Roger Hilsman, To Move a Nation: The Politics of Foreign Policy in the Administration of John F. Kennedy (1967); George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1925-1950 (1967); and Robert H. Jones, The Roads to Russia: United States Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union (1969); for an excellent and complete biography, see Rudy Abramson, Spanning the Century: The Life of W. Averell Harriman, 1891-1986 (1992)

(1891-1986), businessman, diplomat, and politician. A significant figure in Soviet-American relations during World War II and the cold war, Harriman, a wealthy businessman, served as an administrator and diplomat as well as adviser to Democratic presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt through Lyndon B. Johnson. Son of the financier and railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman and educated at Groton School and Yale University, he was chairman of the board of two major railroads and a Wall Street banker when he entered public service.

Despite his Republican background and some misgivings over New Deal economic policies, Harriman became a supporter of Roosevelt. At the urging of Harry Hopkins he served in the National Recovery Administration and was chairman of the Business Advisory Council in the Department of Commerce for three years.

With the coming of World War II, Harriman, associated with Hopkins, utilized his economics expertise in foreign affairs, becoming one of the president's major advisers. In February 1941, Roosevelt dispatched him to London as Lend-Lease expediter "to keep the British Isles afloat," instructing him to report directly to the White House, thus bypassing the American ambassador and the State Department. Harriman acted on this personal level for several years, attending all of the wartime conferences and twice going on missions to arrange increased aid to the Soviet Union. In October 1943 Roosevelt appointed him ambassador to Russia.

During the war Harriman worked directly with both Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, coming to know them well. While ambassador, he insisted upon obtaining the Russian specialist George Kennan as minister counselor, and he himself became one of the most influential experts on Russian policy.

Upon the death of Roosevelt, Harriman returned to Washington to brief President Harry S. Truman, advocating the firm but friendly restraint of Stalin. (Truman became rather firmer than Harriman wished, terminating Lend-Lease after VE-day.) Harriman served under Truman as ambassador to Great Britain and then in the fall of 1946 became secretary of commerce. His involvement with foreign affairs continued. He chaired a committee that prepared proposals for the Marshall Plan to stimulate the economic recovery of Europe and in 1948 became special representative in Europe for the Economic Cooperation Administration. During the Korean War he was Truman's special assistant on national security affairs and in 1951 became head of the Mutual Security Agency, responsible for foreign aid.

In 1954, during Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidency, Harriman was elected governor of New York, but when he sought reelection in 1958 he lost to Nelson Rockefeller.

When John F. Kennedy took office, Harriman again became a molder of foreign policy. In 1963 as under secretary of state for political affairs, he negotiated a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union, the first move toward arms reduction since the onset of the cold war. Much of his attention then shifted to Vietnam. As assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs under Kennedy he had negotiated in 1962 the Geneva accords ending the civil war in Laos. In 1963 he helped arrange the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem, head of the South Vietnamese government. Harriman disliked President Lyndon B. Johnson's escalation of the Vietnam War, but served as ambassador-at-large at the Paris peace talks with North Vietnam until the close of the Johnson administration.

Bibliography:

W. Averell Harriman and Elie Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941-1946 (1975); George C. Herring, Jr., Aid to Russia, 1941-1946 (1973); Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986).

Author:

Frank Freidel

1891 - 1986

U.S. diplomat.

While ambassador in Moscow (1943 - 1946) during World War II (1939 - 1945), W. Averell Harriman became concerned with the USSR's involvement in Iran and advocated U.S. support for Iran's shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In July 1951, Harriman was U.S. President Harry S. Truman's special envoy to Iran's Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, and Harriman tried unsuccessfully to persuade Mossadegh to compromise with Britain over nationalization of the Anglo - Iranian Oil Company. Harriman respected Mossadegh as a genuine nationalist and counseled against intervention by Britain or the United States to remove him.

Harriman was elected governor of New York (1955 - 1958) but returned to national politics in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. In 1965, as undersecretary of state, he was sent to Jerusalem to inform the government of Israel that the United States intended to sell arms to Jordan. Harriman was later one of the chief negotiators in ending the Vietnam War.

Bibliography

Bill, James, and Louis, William Roger, eds. Musaddiq,Iranian Nationalism, and Oil. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988.

Findling, John, ed. Dictionary of American Diplomatic History, 2d edition. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989.

Spiegel, Steven L. The Other Arab - Israeli Conflict: Making America's Middle East Policy, from Truman to Reagan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

— ZACHARY KARABELL

This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (September 2009)

William Averell Harriman
48th Governor of New York
In office January 1, 1955 – December 31, 1958
Lieutenant	George De Luca
Preceded by	Thomas E. Dewey
Succeeded by	Nelson A. Rockefeller
United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union
In office 23 October 1943 – 24 January 1946
President	Harry S. Truman
Preceded by	William H. Standley
Succeeded by	Walter Bedell Smith
United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom
In office 1946 – 1946
Preceded by	John G. Winant
Succeeded by	Lewis W. Douglas
11th United States Secretary of Commerce
In office October 7, 1946 – April 22, 1948
President	Harry S. Truman
Preceded by	Henry A. Wallace
Succeeded by	Charles W. Sawyer
Born	November 15, 1891(1891-11-15) New York City, New York
Died	July 26, 1986 (aged 94) Yorktown Heights, New York
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Kitty Lanier Lawrence (divorced) Marie Norton Whitney (her death) Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill Hayward
Alma mater	Yale University

William Averell Harriman (November 15, 1891  – July 26, 1986) was an American Democratic Party politician, businessman, and diplomat. He was the son of railroad baron E. H. Harriman. He served as Secretary of Commerce under President Harry S. Truman and later as Governor of New York. He was a candidate for the Democratic Presidential Nomination in 1952, and again in 1956 when he was endorsed by President Truman but lost to Adlai Stevenson. Harriman served President Franklin D. Roosevelt as special envoy to Europe and served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union and U.S. Ambassador to Britain. He served in various positions in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Among his wives were Marie Norton Whitney, who left her husband Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney to marry him, and Pamela Harriman, former wife of Winston Churchill's son Randolph.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Business affairs 3 Thoroughbred racing 3.1 War seizures controversy 4 Diplomatic and political career 5 Family life 6 Trivia 7 Summary of career 8 See also 9 References 10 Bibliography 10.1 Primary sources 11 External links

Early life

William Averell Harriman was born in New York City, the son of railroad baron Edward Henry Harriman and Mary Williamson Averell, and brother of E. Roland Harriman. Harriman was a close friend of Hall Roosevelt (brother of Eleanor Roosevelt).

During the summer of 1899, Harriman's father organized the Harriman Alaska Expedition, a philanthropic-scientific survey of coastal Alaska and Russia that attracted twenty-five of the leading scientific, naturalist and artist luminaries of the day, including John Muir, John Burroughs, George Bird Grinnell, C. Hart Merriam, Grove Karl Gilbert, and Edward Curtis, along with 100 family members and staff, aboard the steamship George Elder. Young Harriman would have his first introduction to the nation - Russia - that he would spend a significant amount of attention on in his later life in public service.

He attended Groton School in Massachusetts before going on to Yale where he joined the Skull and Bones society. He graduated in 1913.

Business affairs

Using money from his father, in 1922 he established W.A. Harriman & Co, a banking business. In 1927, his brother Roland joined the business and the name was changed to Harriman Brothers & Company. In 1931, they merged with Brown Bros. & Co. to create the highly successful Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.. Notable employees included George Herbert Walker and his son-in-law Prescott Bush.

Harriman's main properties included Brown Brothers & Harriman & Co, Union Pacific Railroad, Merchant Shipping Corporation, and various venture capital investments including the Polaroid Corporation. Harriman's associated properties included the Southern Pacific Railroad (including the Central Pacific Railroad), Illinois Central Railroad, Wells Fargo & Co., the Pacific Mail Steamship Co., American Shipping & Commerce (HAPAG), the American Hawaiian Steamship Co., United American Lines, the Guaranty Trust Company, and the Union Banking Corporation.

Thoroughbred racing

Following the death of August Belmont, Jr. in 1924, Harriman, George Walker, and Joseph E. Widener purchased much of Belmont's Thoroughbred breeding stock. Harriman raced under the name of Arden Farms. Among his horses, Chance Play won the 1927 Jockey Club Gold Cup. As well, he raced in partnership with Walker under the name Log Cabin Stable. U.S. Racing Hall of Fame inductee Louis Feustel, trainer of Man o' War, trained the Log Cabin horses until 1926. [1] Of the partnership's successful runners purchased from the August Belmont estate, Ladkin is best remembered for defeating the European star Epinard in the International Special No. 2.

War seizures controversy

While Averell Harriman served as Senior Partner of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., Harriman Bank was the main Wall Street connection for German companies and the varied U.S. financial interests of Fritz Thyssen, who had been an early financial backer of the Nazi party until 1938, but who by 1939 had fled Germany and was bitterly denouncing Adolf Hitler. Business transactions for profit with Nazi Germany were not illegal when Hitler declared war on the US, but, six days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Trading With the Enemy Act after it had been made public that U.S. companies were doing business with the declared enemy of the United States. On October 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City.^{[citation needed]}

The Harriman business interests seized under the act in October and November 1942 included:^{[citation needed]}

• Union Banking Corporation (UBC) (for Thyssen and Brown Brothers Harriman).
• Holland-American Trading Corporation (with Harriman)
• the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation (with Harriman)
• Silesian-American Corporation (this company was partially owned by a German entity; during the war the Germans tried to take the full control of Silesian-American. In response to that, American government seized German owned minority shares in the company, leaving the U.S. partners to carry on the portion of the business in the United States.)

The assets were held by the government for the duration of the war, then returned afterward. UBC was dissolved in 1951.

Diplomatic and political career

Averell Harriman (center) with Winston Churchill (right) and Vyacheslav Molotov (left)

Harriman served President Franklin D. Roosevelt as special envoy to Europe, and was present at the meeting between Winston Churchill and the US president at Placentia Bay in August 1941. The outcome of this five-day meeting became known as the Atlantic Charter, a common declaration of principles of the US and the UK. He served as the US Ambassador to Soviet Union between 1943 and 1946 and the Ambassador to Britain in 1946.

In 1945, while Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Harriman was presented with a Trojan Horse gift. In 1952, the gift, a carved wood Great Seal of the United States, which had adorned "the ambassador’s Moscow residential office" in Spaso House, was found to be bugged.^[1][2]

He was later appointed the United States Secretary of Commerce under President Harry S. Truman to replace Henry A. Wallace, a critic of Truman's foreign policies. Harriman served between 1946 and 1948. He was then in Paris, where he was put in charge of the Marshall Plan, and had friendly relations with Irving Brown, a CIA agent charged of the international relations of the AFL-CIO ^[3][4]. Harrimann was then sent to Teheran in July 1951 to mediate between Persia and Britain in the wake of the Persian nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.^[5]

In the 1954 race to succeed Republican Thomas E. Dewey as Governor of New York, Harriman defeated Dewey's protege, U.S. Senator Irving M. Ives, by a tiny margin. He served as governor for one term until Republican Nelson Rockefeller defeated him in 1958. As governor, he increased personal taxes by 11% but his tenure was dominated by his presidential ambitions. Harriman was a candidate for the Democratic Presidential Nomination in 1952, and again in 1956 when he was endorsed by Truman but lost (both times) to Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson. Harriman was generally considered to be on the left or liberal wing of the Democratic party, hence his losing out to the more moderate Stevenson.

His presidential ambitions defeated, Harriman became a widely-respected elder statesman of the party. In January 1961, he was appointed Ambassador at Large in the Kennedy administration, a position he held until November, when he became Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. In December 1961, Anatoliy Golitsyn defected from the Soviet Union and named Harriman a Soviet spy, but Harriman nonetheless remained in his position until April 1963, when he became Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He continued in that position in the Lyndon Johnson administration, until March 1965 when he again became Ambassador at Large, a position he would hold for the remainder of Johnson's presidency. Harriman was the chief US negotiator at the Paris peace talks on Vietnam.

Harriman is noted for supporting, on behalf of the state department, the coup against Vietnam president Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963. Johnson's confession in the assassination of Diem could indicate some complicity on Harriman's part.^{[6] [7]}

Harriman received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 and West Point's Sylvanus Thayer Award in 1975.

Family life

His first marriage was to Kitty Lanier Lawrence, whom he had divorced before her death in 1936. He subsequently married Marie Norton Whitney, former wife of Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney. They remained married until her death in 1970.

His third and final marriage was in 1971 to Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill Hayward, the former wife of Winston Churchill's son Randolph, and widow of Broadway producer Leland Hayward. Harriman died in 1986 in Yorktown Heights, New York, aged 94. He and Pamela are buried at Arden Farm Graveyard in Arden, New York.

Trivia

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (September 2008)

• Harriman gained the nickname of "Crocodile" within US State Department and foreign affairs circles (see "The Best and the Brightest").

Summary of career

• Vice President, Union Pacific Railroad Co., 1915-17
• Director, Illinois Central Railroad Co., 1915-46
• Member, Palisades Interstate Park Commission, 1915-54
• Chairman, Merchant Shipbuilding Corp.,1917-25
• Chairman, W. A. Harriman & Company, 1920-31
• Partner, Soviet Georgian Manganese Concessions, 1925-28
• Chairman, executive committee, Illinois Central Railroad, 1931-42
• Senior partner, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., 1931-46
• Chairman, Union Pacific Railroad, 1932-46
• Co-founded Today magazine with Vincent Astor, 1935-37 (merged with Newsweek in 1937)
• Administrator and Special Assistant, National Recovery Administration, 1934-35
• Founded, Sun Valley Ski Resort, Idaho, 1936
• Chairman, Business Advisory Council, 1937-39
• Chief, Materials Branch & Production Division, Office of Production Management, 1941
• US Ambassador & Special Representative to the Prime Minister of Britain, 1941-43
• Chairman, Ambassador & Special Representative of the US President's Special Mission to the USSR, 1941-43
• US Ambassador to the USSR, 1943-46
• US Ambassador, Britain, 1946
• US Secretary of Commerce, 1946-48
• United States Coordinator, European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan), 1948-50
• Special Assistant to the U.S. President, 1950-52
• US Representative and Chairman, North Atlantic Commission on Defense Plans, 1951-52
• Director, Mutual Security Agency, 1951-53
• Candidate, Democratic nomination for US President, 1952
• Governor, State of New York, 1955-58
• Candidate, Democratic nomination for US President, 1956
• US Ambassador-at-large, 1961
• United States Deputy Representative, International Conference on the Settlement of the Laotian, 1961-62
• Assistant US Secretary of State, Far Eastern Affairs, 1961-63
• Special Representative to the US President, Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, 1963
• Under US Secretary of State, Political Affairs, 1963-65
• US Ambassador-at-large, 1965-69
• Chairman, President's Commission of the Observance of Human Rights Year, 1968
• Personal Representative of the US President, Peace Talks with North Vietnam, 1968-69
• Chairman, Foreign Policy Task Force, Democratic National Committee, 1976
• Member, American Academy of Diplomacy Charter, Club of Rome, Council on Foreign Relations, Knights of Pythias, Skull and Bones Society, Psi Upsilon Fraternity and the Jupiter Island Club.

See also

• Florence Jaffray Harriman

Papers of W. Averell Harriman, Library of Congress (see [2])

• U.S. presidential election, 1952
• U.S. presidential election, 1956

References

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (November 2007)

1. ^ The Great Seal
2. ^ http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/R?r101:FLD001:E53490,E53490 INTRODUCTION TO `EMBASSY MOSCOW: ATTITUDES AND ERRORS' – (BY HENRY J. HYDE, REPUBLICAN OF ILLINOIS) (Extension of Remarks - October 26, 1988) page [E3490]
3. ^ Harry Kelber, « AFL-CIO’s Dark Past », 22 November 2004, on laboreducator.org
4. ^ Frédéric Charpier, La CIA en France. 60 ans d'ingérence dans les affaires françaises, Seuil, 2008, p. 40-43. See also Les belles aventures de la CIA en France, 8 January, 2008, Bakchich.
5. ^ http://www.bibliothecapersica.com/articles/v12f1/v12f1011.html
6. ^ http://www.whitehousetapes.org/clips/1963_1104_jfk_vietnam_memoir.html
7. ^ http://www.whitehousetapes.org/clips/1966_0201_lbj_mccarthy_vietnam.html

Bibliography

• Rudy Abramson. Spanning the Century: The Life of W. Averell Harriman, 1891-1986 (1992), 779pp
  • review by Hogan, Michael J. "The Vice Men of Foreign Policy" . Reviews in American History 1993 21(2): 320-328. ISSN 0048-7511 Fulltext in Jstor
• Bland, Larry I. "Averell Harriman, the Russians and the Origins of the Cold War in Europe, 1943-45." Australian Journal of Politics and History 1977 23(3): 403-416. ISSN 0004-9522 Abstract: Portrays Harriman, Roosevelt's lend-lease expediter in London, and later ambassador in Moscow, as representative of "the best in the American diplomatic tradition." The rich, well travelled son of a railroad magnate broke with his class in 1932 and became a New Dealer. He took a "Wilsonian liberalism" into diplomatic affairs, but by 1943 urged hard reciprocal bargaining with the Russians. His optimism about Soviet postwar intentions was shaken in 1945 by the fate of Poland and the prisoners of war issue, and he became a pioneer "cold warrior." By the 1960s he was wanting to "de-escalate the rhetoric." Concludes that the irony of Harriman's ambassadorship is that some of his sound advice of 1943-44 was ignored, while his rather shrill rhetoric of 1945 was accepted as expert advice.
• Chandler, Harriette L. "The Transition to Cold Warrior: the Evolution of W. Averell Harriman's Assessment of the U.S.S.R.'s Polish Policy, October 1943-Warsaw Uprising." East European Quarterly 1976 10(2): 229-245. ISSN 0012-8449. Abstract: Although Harriman helped develop the philosophical foundations of the Containment Policy he approached his job as Ambassador to the USSR with considerable understanding and acceptance of the goals of Soviet foreign policy. His position was generally conciliatory toward the Soviet Union until Stalin's stern refusal to aid the beleaguered Poles in the Warsaw Uprising convinced him that the "Soviet will could be bent, if at all, only by hard bargaining, a readiness to apply pressure by withholding favors, and a willingness to do without Soviet assistance in some other areas." Based on recently declassified documents.
• Clemens, Diane S. "Averell Harriman, John Deane, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the 'Reversal of Co-operation' with the Soviet Union in April 1945." International History Review 1992 14(2): 277-306. ISSN 0707-5332. Discusses the events of April 1945 that led to a change in US policy concerning the Soviet Union. Harriman, ambassador to the Soviet Union, and Major-General John Deane, commanding general of the US military mission to Moscow, had been urging Roosevelt and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to take a firmer stance against Stalin and his plans for Eastern Europe, especially as they concerned the formation of the new government in Poland. After Roosevelt died, Harriman and Deane were able to convince President Harry Truman to stand firm, and by the end of the month US-Soviet relations were deteriorating. According to the author, the Cold War had begun.
• Isaacson, Walter and Thomas, Evan. The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made 1986. 853 pp.
• Langer, John Daniel. "The Harriman-beaverbrook Mission and the Debate over Unconditional Aid for the Soviet Union, 1941." Journal of Contemporary History 1979 14(3): 463-482. ISSN 0022-0094 Fulltext in Jstor. Abstract: US presidential adviser Harry Hopkins, suggested a mission to Moscow to determine Russian needs after the Nazi invasion. In mid-September 1941 W. Averell Harriman, US lend-lease representative in London, and Lord Beaverbrook, British supply minister, met with Joseph Stalin and offered incredibly generous aid. It was vainly anticipated that the USSR would reciprocate with information. Instead the formal protocol sealing the conference was but a restatement of Allied promises of specific help. The United States treated the protocol as sacred and even after Pearl Harbor gave preference to supplies to Russia before meeting the needs of American forces. Friendship with the Soviet Union, in the interest of peace, was to be won at any price.
• Larsh, William. "W. Averell Harriman and the Polish Question, December 1943-August 1944." East European Politics and Societies 1993 7(3): 513-554. ISSN 0888-3254. A detailed investigation of the Harriman Papers, resulting in an appeal for a reexamination of American foreign policy and diplomacy during World War II, especially regarding the Polish question, and a new look at the origins of the Cold War. Czechoslovakia's Eduard Benes and the Czech solution had considerable influence on W. Averell Harriman and his optimistic belief that the USSR would honor its declarations for an independent Poland and exercise a restrained predominance in other East European matters.
• Moynihan, Daniel Patrick and Wilson, James Q. "Patronage in New York State, 1955-1959." American Political Science Review 1964 58(2): 286-301. ISSN 0003-0554 Fulltext in Jstor. Abstract: An analysis of the efforts of the Harriman administration "to discover and apply guidelines for patronage decisions which would optimize the attainment of two potentially conflicting goals," namely, "staffing the government with competent and attractive administrators, and acquiring and consolidating power over the party apparatus."
• Paterson, Thomas G. "The Abortive American Loan to Russia and the Origins of the Cold War, 1943-1946." Journal of American History 1969 56(1): 70-92. ISSN 0021-8723 Fulltext in Jstor. Abstract: In January 1945 the USSR requested a loan of six billion dollars from the United States to finance the purchase of industrial equipment, railroad equipment, and manufactured goods. Harriman dismissed the Russian terms as unreasonable and urged that the obvious Soviet need for a loan be used as a diplomatic weapon. The Truman administration followed this proposal, but failed to prepare Congress or public opinion for a loan and refused to enter into serious negotiations over it at Teheran. Russia was miffed at American "dollar diplomacy" at a time when a large British loan was negotiated at two percent interest. The USSR refused to accept the U.S. price of an "open door" in Eastern Europe, Soviet membership in Bretton Woods institutions, and compliance with U.S. international economic policy. The loan controversy may have worsened relations over reparations and East European questions.
• Wehrle, Edmund F. "'A Good, Bad Deal': John F. Kennedy, W. Averell Harriman, and the Neutralization of Laos, 1961-1962." Pacific Historical Review 1998 67(3): 349-377. ISSN 0030-8684 Abstract: In the case of Laos, Kennedy sought to establish a truly neutral government in the volatile region of Southeast Asia. At Kennedy's behest, his special ambassador, W. Averell Harriman, sought a government in Laos that included nationalists, democrats, socialists, and Communists. Kennedy and Harriman secured Soviet support for a coalition government under Prince Souvana Phouma. In 1962 it looked as if the plan had been successful, but while the government remained in place for a decade Soviet and American support for true neutrality waned within a few years.

Primary sources

• W. Averell Harriman. America and Russia in a changing world: A half century of personal observation (1971)
• W. Averell Harriman. Public papers of Averell Harriman, fifty-second governor of the state of New York, 1955-1959 (1960)
• Harriman, W. Averell and Abel, Elie. Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941-1946. (1975). 595 pp.

External links

W. Averell Harriman has been interviewed as part of Frontline Diplomacy: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, a site at the Library of Congress.

Awards
Preceded by Robert Daniel Murphy	Sylvanus Thayer Award recipient 1975	Succeeded by Gordon Gray
Political offices
Preceded by Thomas E. Dewey	Governor of New York 1955 – 1958	Succeeded by Nelson Rockefeller

v • d • e United States Secretaries of Commerce Secretaries of Commerce & Labor Cortelyou • Metcalf • Straus • Nagel Secretaries of Commerce Redfield • Alexander • Hoover • Whiting • Lamont • Chapin • Roper • Hopkins • Jones • Wallace • Harriman • Sawyer • Weeks • Strauss • Mueller • Hodges • Connor • Trowbridge • Smith • Stans • Peterson • Dent • Morton • Richardson • Kreps • Klutznick • Baldrige • Verity • Mosbacher • Franklin • Brown • Kantor • Daley • Mineta • Evans • Gutierrez • Locke

v • d • e Cabinet of President Harry S. Truman (1945–1953) Vice President None (1945–1949) • Alben W. Barkley (1949–1953) Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, Jr. (1945–1945) • James F. Byrnes (1945–1947) • George C. Marshall (1947–1949) • Dean G. Acheson (1949–1953) Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson (1945–1945) • Robert P. Patterson (1945–1947) • Kenneth C. Royall (1947–1947) Secretary of Defense James Forrestal (1947–1949) • Louis A. Johnson (1949–1950) • George C. Marshall (1950–1951) • Robert A. Lovett (1951–1953) Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (1945–1945) • Fred M. Vinson (1945–1946) • John W. Snyder (1946–1953) Attorney General Francis Biddle (1945) • Tom C. Clark (1945–1949) • J. Howard McGrath (1949–1952) • James P. McGranery (1952–1953) Postmaster General Frank C. Walker (1945) • Robert E. Hannegan (1945–1947) • Jesse M. Donaldson (1947–1953) Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal (1945–1947) Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes (1945–1946) • Julius A. Krug (1946–1949) • Oscar L. Chapman (1949–1953) Secretary of the Agriculture Claude R. Wickard (1945) • Clinton P. Anderson (1945–1948) • Charles F. Brannan (1948–1953) Secretary of Commerce Henry A. Wallace (1945–1946) • W. Averell Harriman (1946–1948) • Charles W. Sawyer (1948–1953) Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins (1945) • Lewis B. Schwellenbach (1945–1948) • Maurice J. Tobin (1948–1953)

v • d • e Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs of the United States of America Robert D. Murphy · Livingston T. Merchant · George C. McGhee · W. Averell Harriman · Eugene V. Rostow · U. Alexis Johnson · William J. Porter · Joseph J. Sisco · Philip Habib · David D. Newsom · Walter J. Stoessel, Jr. · Lawrence S. Eagleburger · Michael Hayden Armacost · Robert Michael Kimmitt · Arnold Lee Kanter · Peter Tarnoff · Thomas R. Pickering · Marc Isaiah Grossman · R. Nicholas Burns · William Joseph Burns

v • d • e Governors of New York G. Clinton · Jay · G. Clinton · Lewis · Tompkins · Tayler* · D. Clinton · Yates · D. Clinton · Pitcher · Van Buren · Throop · Marcy · Seward · Bouck · Wright · Young · Fish · Hunt · Seymour · Clark · King · Morgan · Seymour · Fenton · Hoffman · J. Adams Dix · Tilden · Robinson · Cornell · Cleveland · Hill · Flower · Morton · Black · T. Roosevelt · Odell · Higgins · Hughes · White · J. Alden Dix · Sulzer · Glynn · Whitman · Smith · Miller · Smith · F. Roosevelt · Lehman · Poletti · Dewey · Harriman · Rockefeller · Wilson · Carey · Cuomo · Pataki · Spitzer · Paterson (*) denotes Acting

v • d • e United States Ambassadors to the United Kingdom Ministers Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James's 1785-1811 John Adams 1785-1788 · Thomas Pinckney 1792-1796 · Rufus King 1796-1803 · James Monroe 1803-1807 · William Pinkney 1808-1811 · Jonathan Russell (chargé d'affaires) 1811-1812 Envoys Extraordinary and Ministers Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James's 1815-1893 John Quincy Adams 1815-1817 · Richard Rush 1818-1825 · Rufus King 1825-1826 · Albert Gallatin 1826-1827 · James Barbour 1828-1829 · Louis McLane 1829-1831 · Martin Van Buren 1831-1832 · Aaron Vail (chargé d'affaires) 1832-1836 · Andrew Stevenson 1836-1841 · Edward Everett 1841-1845 · Louis McLane 1845-1846 · George Bancroft 1846-1849 · Abbott Lawrence 1849-1852 · Joseph R. Ingersoll 1852-1853 · James Buchanan 1853-1856 · George M. Dallas 1856-1861 · Charles Adams, Sr. 1861-1868 · Reverdy Johnson 1868-1869 · John Lothrop Motley 1869-1870 · Robert C. Schenck 1871-1876 · Edwards Pierrepont 1876-1877 · John Welsh 1877-1879 · James Russell Lowell 1880-1885 · Edward J. Phelps 1885-1889 · Robert T. Lincoln 1889-1893 Ambassadors Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James's 1893-present Thomas F. Bayard, Sr. 1893-1897 · John Hay 1897-1898 · Joseph Choate 1899-1905 · Whitelaw Reid 1905-1912 · Walter Page 1913-1918 · John W. Davis 1918-1921 · George Harvey 1921-1923 · Frank B. Kellogg 1924-1925 · Alanson B. Houghton 1925-1929 · Charles G. Dawes 1929-1931 · Andrew W. Mellon 1932-1933 · Robert Bingham 1933-1937 · Joseph P. Kennedy 1938-1940 · John G. Winant 1941-1946 · W. Averell Harriman 1946 · Lewis W. Douglas 1947-1950 · Walter S. Gifford 1950-1953 · Winthrop W. Aldrich 1953-1957 · John Hay Whitney 1957-1961 · David K. E. Bruce 1961-1969 · Walter H. Annenberg 1969-1974 · Elliot L. Richardson 1975-1976 · Anne Armstrong 1976-1977 · Kingman Brewster, Jr. 1977-1981 · John J. Louis, Jr. 1981-1983 · Charles H. Price II 1983-1989 · Henry E. Catto, Jr. 1989-1991 · Raymond G. H. Seitz 1991-1994 · William J. Crowe, Jr. 1994-1997 · Philip Lader 1997-2001 · William S. Farish III 2001-2004 · Robert H. Tuttle 2005-2009 · Louis Susman 2009-

v • d • e United States presidential election, 1956 Democratic Party 1956 Democratic National Convention Candidates Battle · Chandler · Davis · Harriman · Johnson · Kefauver · Lausche · Stevenson · Timmerman VP Candidates Brown · Clement · Collins · Gore · Hodges · Humphrey · Johnson · Kefauver · Kennedy · Symington · Wagner Republican Party 1956 Republican National Convention Candidates Eisenhower VP Candidates Nixon

v • d • e Buddhist crisis Events Hue Vesak shootings · Hue chemical attacks · Self-immolation of Thich Quang Duc · Double Seven Day scuffle · Xa Loi Pagoda raids · 1963 South Vietnamese coup (reaction) · Arrest and assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem Policy Joint Communique · Cable 243 · Krulak Mendenhall mission · McNamara Taylor mission Political or religious figures Ngo Dinh Diem · Ngo Dinh Nhu · Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu · Ngo Dinh Can · Ngo Dinh Thuc · Nguyen Ngoc Tho · Nguyen Dinh Thuan · Bui Van Luong · Vu Van Mau · Buu Hoi · Tran Van Chuong · Thich Tri Quang · Thich Quang Duc · Thich Tinh Khiet · Thich Thien Hoa · Frederick Nolting · Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. · Maxwell D. Taylor · Robert McNamara · Victor H. Krulak · Joseph Mendenhall · William Trueheart · Roger Hilsman · Averell Harriman · Michael Forrestal  · John F. Kennedy Military figures Duong Van Minh · Tran Van Don · Ton That Dinh · Le Van Kim · Nguyen Van Thieu · Pham Ngoc Thao · Tran Kim Tuyen · Tran Thien Khiem · Nguyen Huu Co · Huynh Van Cao · Do Mau · Do Cao Tri · Nguyen Khanh · Nguyen Van Nhung · Le Quang Tung · ARVN Special Forces · Lucien Conein Journalists David Halberstam · Malcolm Browne · Peter Arnett · Neil Sheehan · Marguerite Higgins

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