George F. Kennan : an American life

Then, on the sixteenth, another department cable arrived instructing Kennan, “by direction of the President,” to “request” the American use of Azores facilities on a scale far larger than anything the British had asked for or obtained. Convinced that such an unexpected communication would provoke Salazar’s wrath—if not his resignation—Kennan took a second unusual step: he refused to carry out a White House order and asked permission to return to Washington to explain why, if necessary to the president himself: “I am willing to take full personal responsibility for this position.”³⁴

That message made its way back to FDR, who asked for Kennan’s reasons in writing and, when given them, replied that he would “leave to your judgment and discretion the manner of approach to these negotiations.” Vastly relieved, Kennan went to the Foreign Office in Lisbon and told “a whopping lie”: that the State Department had now authorized him to extend a previously contemplated but delayed acknowledgment of Portuguese sovereignty over all Portuguese possessions, including the Azores. This elicited an appreciative message of gratitude from the Portuguese minister in Washington “for the guaranty thus given.” But it in turn puzzled the State Department, causing the under secretary of state, Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., to tell a colleague that the Portuguese diplomat had thanked him “for some damn guarantee, and said that he always knew we would want facilities in the Azores. Now what in the name of hell did he mean by that?”³⁵

Kennan himself—revealing nothing—witnessed that exchange, having been abruptly and without explanation ordered back to Washington. The trip took five days, flying by way of South America and Bermuda, so there was plenty of time to worry: he arrived “unnerved, overtired, jittery, not myself.” Stettinius hustled him off to the Pentagon, where he found himself facing General George C. Marshall, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, who was in a particularly bad humor that day. All were angry about the delay in securing Azores base rights. A confused discussion ensued, which Stimson ended by telling Stettinius that the State Department needed “a full-fledged ambassador” in Lisbon who could “give proper attention to our affairs at this important post. Will you see to that, Mr. Secretary?” Kennan was then told to leave.³⁶

Angry with himself for having failed to explain the situation adequately, convinced that he knew more about Portugal than anyone else in Washington, Kennan took yet another unorthodox step: he got in touch with the president’s chief of staff, Admiral William D. Leahy, who had been a fellow passenger the year before on the Drottningholm. Leahy arranged a meeting with Roosevelt’s top aide Harry Hopkins, who then took the surprised Kennan to see the president himself. FDR listened cheerfully to the whole story, told Kennan not to worry “about all those people in the Pentagon,” and drafted a personal letter to Salazar recalling that as under secretary of the Navy after World War I, he had been responsible for dismantling Azores bases used by the Americans and returning them to Portuguese control. “I do not need to tell you the United States has no designs on the territory of Portugal and its possessions.... I do not think our peoples have been in close enough touch in the past.”³⁷

That, Kennan recalled, produced the desired results: “I went back with that letter and opened negotiations with Salazar. . . . [W]e spent many hours in conversation, [and he] agreed to our use of the British facilities.” Afterward Kennan was able to reconstruct what had happened. The Pentagon had seen only his refusal to execute Roosevelt’s order, but not his explanation or FDR’s approval of it. The State Department, “accustomed to sneezing whenever the Pentagon caught cold,” had simply transmitted its demand for Kennan’s recall, without attempting to clarify the matter. The episode illustrated how poor communication had been within the American government, so much so that four years later Kennan turned it into a case study, at the newly established National War College, on the need for closer political-military coordination. It was, one of his students commented, “a hell of a way to run a railroad.”³⁸ But the episode also showed—for all his nervousness—a growing self-confidence on Kennan’s part.

During the Azores base negotiations, Kennan violated at least four rules, any one of which could have got him sacked from the Foreign Service. He exceeded his instructions in a conversation with a foreign head of government. He refused to carry out a presidential order. He lied, to another government, about the position of his own. And he went over the heads of his superiors in the State Department—as well as the secretary of war and the Joint Chiefs of Staff—to make a direct appeal to the White House. He turned out to be right in the end and so enhanced rather than ruined his reputation: he even received, from the secretary of state, personal congratulations for “the rapid and substantial progress made.” In this sense, Kennan passed his own test of hoping “to do better than other, less experienced men.” There were, however, many more experienced men in the department who viewed Kennan’s Azores “adventures,” despite their favorable outcome, “with a disapproval bordering on sheer horror.” They considered him, Kennan’s British friend Frank Roberts guessed, “very foolish, and rather lucky to get away with it.”³⁹

VI.

Kennan’s next assignment—there having been no enthusiasm on his part or the department’s for his staying in Lisbon—did little to reassure him about Washington’s coordination of military operations with political objectives. The new job was that of political adviser to the American ambassador in Great Britain, John G. Winant, who would be representing the United States on the recently established European Advisory Commission. Created by the British, Americans, and Soviets late in 1943, this organization’s chief responsibility was to settle the terms of Germany’s surrender and to agree on plans for the postwar occupation of that country. But Washington had reached no consensus on how to handle these matters: as a consequence, the EAC could accomplish little. “So far as I could learn from my superiors in the department,” Kennan remembered, “their attitude toward the commission was dominated by a lively concern lest the new body should at some point and by some mischance actually do something.”⁴⁰

The inactivity might have been harmless had the British and Russians remained similarly inactive, but they did not. By February 1944 both had submitted draft surrender documents, and they had even agreed on occupation zone boundaries. Under their plan, the British would control the northwestern third of Germany, the Americans the southwestern third, and the Russians the eastern third. Berlin, deep within the Soviet zone, would be jointly occupied. Winant pressed Washington for a reaction, but for several weeks received no response. The State Department then forwarded, on March 8, a completely different plan, approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that awarded the United States 46 percent of Germany’s territory and 51 percent of its population, while pushing the Soviet zone far to the east. The proposed boundaries broke up existing German administrative districts but did not extend all the way to the Czech border, leaving control of that region undetermined. No explanation accompanied this plan: Winant was told simply to put it before the EAC as the American position.⁴¹

Kennan’s Azores bases experience left him in little doubt about what had happened. Once again the Joint Chiefs had elevated military convenience above all else, and the State Department had unquestioningly passed along their plan. This time Kennan did not have to offer to return to Washington to explain the plan’s deficiencies: his chief, Winant, sent him. The flight, by way of Iceland and Newfoundland, was the worst yet. The plane’s heating system failed halfway across the Atlantic, and while landing at Gander its brakes froze, causing it almost to slide off the runway into the sea. Kennan arrived in Washington again “dazed and unnerved by the vicissitudes of wartime intercontinental travel.” His reception, however, was considerably warmer than it had been the previous fall.⁴²

“The President was kindly, charming, and talked to me at some length,” Kennan reported to Bullitt, with whom he stayed. When shown the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposal, FDR “laughed gaily and said, just as I had expected him to say: ‘Why that’s just something I once drew on the back of an envelope.’” The president agreed that the proposal made no sense and authorized Winant to accept the British-Russian alternative. He spent most of the interview fretting about the British occupation of northwestern Germany—FDR wanted the Americans there—but he showed