John Jay McCloy

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John Jay McCloy

John Jay McCloy (born March 31, 1895 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , † March 11, 1989 in Stamford , Connecticut ) was an American lawyer , politician and banker. During the Second World War he was Undersecretary in the US Department of War . From 1947 to 1949 he was President of the World Bank . As High Commissioner of the USA and thus its highest representative in the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany , he played a key role in the political and economic reconstruction of post-war Germany from 1949 to 1952 . From 1953 to 1960 he was chairman of the board of directors of Chase Manhattan Bank , after which he worked in various fields of business and political consulting.

Life

1895 to 1941: Apprenticeship, First World War and first professional positions

John Jay Snader McCloy was born on March 31, 1895 in Philadelphia to insurance clerk John Jay McCloy and Anna May Snader McCloy. When he was four years old, his brother William died, two years later the father. He first attended the Maplewood Quaker School , and the Peddie School in New Jersey from 1907 to 1912 , then graduated from the prestigious private Amherst College with the help of a scholarship and enrolled at Harvard University in 1916 at the Harvard Law School . He had to interrupt his university education for the time being due to the First World War . In 1917 he became a lieutenant in the US Army , and a year later he was promoted to captain . From 1918 to 1919 he served the expeditionary American Expeditionary Forces in France and Germany. After returning to the United States, he continued his studies at Harvard and obtained a law degree in 1921 .

After completing his studies, McCloy began his legal and banking career in August 1921 with the oldest law firm in the United States, founded in 1792, the prestigious New York law firm Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft in Lower Manhattan . In December 1924 he moved to the equally respected law firm Cravath, Henderson & de Gerssdorff .

Shortly after he joined the law firm Cravath, Henderson & de Gerssdorff , the firm and JP Morgan Bank took part in a $ 110 million loan to the German government at the time. He traveled frequently to France, Italy and Germany for the investment bank, as JP Morgan, like other Wall Street houses, had an interest in rebuilding Europe.

While McCloy was now working as a partner in the Paris branch of Cravath, Henderson & de Gerssdorff , on April 25, 1930, he married the German-American Ellen Zinsser, a cousin of Konrad Adenauer's wife Auguste Adenauer , née Zinsser. In the 1930s, he represented the Rockefellers, the founder of the US central bank FED Paul Warburg and JP Morgan Bank , where his brother-in-law John Zinsser was now on the board, as a corporate lawyer .

He then lived in Italy for a year and provided the dictatorial regime of the Italian leader Benito Mussolini with loans. The main task at this time was the granting of extensive loans to the governments in Germany and Italy, during which he was in contact with their fascist leaders. In addition to Morgan and Rockefeller, DuPont , General Motors , IBM and Ford financed these countries and many loans went directly to IG Farben, the world's largest chemical company at the time, headquartered in Frankfurt am Main . The IG Farben representatives in North America were customers of Cravath Henderson & de Gerssdorff and McCloy was the liaison to Europe.

Between 1931 and 1939 McCloy worked on the Black Tom case , a sabotage case from the First World War. McCloy provided evidence that German secret agents were responsible for the case, whereupon the Hague Arbitration Court ordered Germany to pay US $ 26 million in damages. During several years of research to clarify the complicated situation, McCloy traveled all over Europe and negotiated personally with greats of the Nazi regime such as Rudolf Hess and Hermann Göring . During his investigation into the affair, he also gained deep insight into the work of the intelligence services and was appointed to the US Department of War in 1940 as an expert on counter-espionage .

1941 to 1945: Civil service in World War II

McCloy (middle with hat and bag) lands to visit the Potsdam conference

Between 1941 and 1945 he served as Under Secretary ( Under Secretary ) in the US War Department under Minister Henry L. Stimson . McCloy had been referred to Stimson through his mentor Elihu Root . From this he was entrusted with a variety of different tasks. Among other things, McCloy oversaw the planning of the United States Department of Defense and negotiated with the US government about the approval of this project, he regulated the administrative details of the training program of the US Army and helped to create the department that later deciphered the Japanese secret codes. As Stimson's liaison with the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff , he was influential in foreign policy and in the planning of most strategic military operations on both fronts. McCloy visited all theaters of war and worked closely with General George C. Marshall . McCloy did not see desegregation in the US armed forces as a primary goal, but supported the African-American federal judge William H. Hastie in the abolition of a number of discriminatory measures. The "Advisory Committee for Colored People in the Troops", which he headed, usually just called the McCloy Committee for short , recommended in March 1944 that more units with black soldiers be deployed on the fronts, as McCloy was convinced of their "fighting potential".

In Algeria, he helped found the French Committee for National Liberation. His responsibilities included the internment program for 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent after the attack on Pearl Harbor . While still in his capacity as Secretary of State, McCloy was one of a small group of people who learned of the US government's intention to use atomic bombs in Japan. He spoke out in favor of warning the Japanese people against the atomic bombs , but could not get his way. McCloy then wrote the surrender articles for Japan.

In November 1944 McCloy spoke out against a bombing of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp requested by the Jews , because due to the range only heavy four-engine bombers could have carried out the order and would have had to travel around 2000 miles over enemy territory without hunting protection. For precise destruction of the destruction facilities better suited for hunting or dive bombers did not have the necessary range. The use of the strategic air force to destroy the enemy industrial potential was urgent and the fastest possible victory over Germany would also solve the problem of the camps, so that all means had to be concentrated on it.

In 1944, Secretary of the War Stimson and McCloy stood in strong opposition to the intentions of ruling US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the US Treasury Department under Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau , in the form of the so-called Morgenthau Plan . This saw u. a. proposed dividing Germany into a northern and southern state, the Saarland should be given to France, East Prussia and Silesia should come under Russian and Polish control, respectively. The German government was to be decentralized, all Nazi criminals were to be executed, the Ruhr area to be de- industrialized as a “melting pot of wars”, and all schools, universities, newspapers and radio to be denazified by an Allied Education Commission. McCloy drew up a memorandum for Secretary of War Stimson outlining this type of occupation and victorious policy. a. branded as "a crime against civilization in itself". Ultimately, the Morgenthau plan was rejected due to public pressure and Roosevelt was convinced by Stimson and McCloy shortly after the Québec Conference , which should lead to the JCS 1067 directive . The main objectives of this moderate directive remained denazification and demilitarization. Roosevelt wanted to send McCloy to Germany as High Commissioner in 1945 . But McCloy declined and suggested the experienced General Lucius D. Clay for this post. From April 1945 McCloy was involved in the occupation of Germany as head of the "Department for Civil Affairs" (English Civil Affairs Division ) in the War Ministry. McCloy participated as a negotiator in the Casablanca , Cairo , San Francisco and Potsdam Conferences.

1945 to 1952: Lawyer, President of the World Bank, High Commissioner in Germany

from left: McGeorge Bundy , Lyndon B. Johnson and McCloy

After serving as Secretary of State, he returned to his civilian profession and in 1945 became a partner in the law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy . Until his death in 1989, he mainly worked for the firm as a lobbyist in the oil business.

From 1947 to 1949, McCloy succeeded the unsuccessful Eugene Meyer as President of the World Bank , founded in 1946, to establish the bank's reputation on Wall Street and to make it an effective instrument of economic diplomacy for the Truman administration . As President of the World Bank, he was in constant contact with the problems of post-war economic policy. Europe's industry and trade should be rebuilt, incentives for modernization should be set and credit problems should be avoided.

McCloy was from September 2, 1949 to August 1, 1952 American High Commissioner in Germany and thus successor to the military governor General Lucius D. Clay . In this position, which challenged his talents as a diplomat and manager, he initially resided in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe , and later in the Villa Cappell in Bad Godesberg . In this function, McCloy promoted the implementation of the Marshall Plan and the integration of the Federal Republic into the West. As with the World Bank, McCloy brought his team of experts with him to Germany. Chauncey Parker, former Cravath, Swaine & Moore attorney and World Bank advisor , has been charged with reorganizing and downsizing the military governor's staff. Within a few months, the “shadow cabinet” shrank to a small group of advisors on key issues of economy, politics, intelligence, military security, administration and law. One of the most important advisors was the banker and long-time friend McCloys Benjamin Buttenwieser , who was appointed "Deputy High Commissioner with special responsibility for financial matters". Head of the legal department was Harvard Law School professor Robert Bowie. The "office for labor" took over the union official Harvey Winfield Brown . The Public Relations Office was given to Shepard Stone , a renowned New York Times journalist , in 1950 .

The war veteran McCloy, who had taken part in battles in the Koblenz area during the First World War shortly before the armistice , was again part of an American occupation force in Germany and said about this time: “Many of us who were occupied during the First World War Germany's involved (...) had learned how bitter this occupation was. And we all remembered the reparations question, the reoccupation of the Ruhr, the harassment, the agitation and the irritations that Hitler was able to capitalize on when he came to power. ”McCloy had the vision that the War devastated Germany will one day resume its role as a strong European power and this new Germany will flourish again under proper political leadership in the Western democratic order of values. McCloy encountered moral and physical debris on his arrival in Germany, and so he quickly began to put his vision into action. It was his job, as Marion Countess Dönhoff put it, "to make decisions every day that determined the development for years to come". The German-Jewish banker Eric M. Warburg , who returned with the liberation, pleaded with McCloy that the dismantling of German industrial companies should be stopped completely, otherwise nothing good could emerge from post-war Germany. This initially reacted negatively, but finally ordered the dismantling of twelve German industrial groups.

McCloy was an early advocate for proper criminal proceedings instead of court martial against the main German war criminals, thus paving the way for the Nuremberg trials . As the highest representative of the Allies, however, he again pardoned 89 of the convicted war criminals, which led to heated controversy, but was interpreted by McCloys as a "gesture of reconciliation". On January 31, 1951, he announced the final decisions on the appeals for clemency of the war criminals convicted in Nuremberg. After consultations with the Advisory Board on Clemency , the so-called " Peck Panel ", McCloy decided in several cases to drastically reduce the prison sentences of war criminals, including Friedrich Flick , Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach and Fritz ter Meer , which prompted Eleanor Roosevelt to do so To ask McCloy "why are we freeing so many Nazis". In addition, at the suggestion of the Peck Panel, Flick and Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach received back their company assets that had been confiscated in 1945. This was particularly problematic in view of the fact that these had been generated, among other things, with arms production and the employment of forced laborers and concentration camp inmates . In the opinion of the panel, however, at least in the case of Krupp, the expropriation would not have been compatible with the principles of American case law.

In the case of Klaus Barbie , who as Gestapo chief in Lyon was responsible for murders, deportations and mass tortures, a dilemma arose: On the one hand, France, which had sentenced Barbie to death in absentia in 1947, demanded his extradition from the Federal Republic, on the other hand Barbie had been in the service of the American counterintelligence Corps (CIC) since the same year and was entrusted not only with the search for other Nazi war criminals and the infiltration of the KPD , but also with intelligence activities against France and the KP there . The extradition would have put even more strain on relations with the French allies than the non-extradition, so that the CIC untruthfully claimed to McCloy that they no longer work with Barbie and do not know his whereabouts. The High Commissioner then refused extradition. French agencies operated this only half-heartedly, as Barbie had extensive knowledge of French collaborators . In 1951 he managed to escape to South America via the rat line .

Aside from this chapter, German-American relations were shaped by McCloy's understanding of the tasks that awaited Germany in a new era of reconciliation and reconstruction. McCloy recognized the vital importance of Germany's relationship with France and Western Europe and the United States' opportunity to build peaceful and prosperous transatlantic relations. He developed a good working relationship with the German post-war politicians Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and the SPD chairman Kurt Schumacher .

As a result of tough negotiations with the Hamburg Mayor Max Brauer and Wilhelm Kaisen , Mayor of Bremen , German shipbuilding was approved on April 4, 1951. From this point on, the Federal Republic of Germany was allowed to manufacture ships of all sizes and speeds without restrictions. McCloy described the negotiations that led to this decision in a bon mot : “If I were Dante, I would have described Hell as follows: Mr. Kaisen on my left, Mr. Brauer on my right, and then a 24-hour conversation about German shipbuilding. "

McCloy's mission was particularly effective because he enjoyed the confidence of the US President and had an excellent relationship with the US armed forces and with the Marshall Plan Director W. Averell Harriman . He used his abundance of power to promote democracy and the revitalization of the economy in Germany, even if there were conflicting goals, such as the pardoning of war criminals from business life. During his tenure, he helped lay the foundation for “more normal” relationships that the sovereign German government would later continue with the new US embassy in Bad Godesberg.

Culture and education were other major concerns of McCloy. Under his leadership, the High Commission paid special attention to young people in Germany. Throughout McCloy's tenure, he worked to develop them into Western European citizens who should be well informed about the United States. The German universities, which had been drawn into the National Socialist system and its ideology, required a thorough reorientation from the American perspective. Many of the rectors were removed from their offices and teaching at all levels was under American and British guidance. Shepard Stone , a friend and colleague of McCloys, had a particular interest in reforming the German education system , and the High Commission supported the Free University of Berlin in particular with financial resources. For the establishment of the Ulm School of Design , through Walter Gropius , American foundations were central donors and sponsors. McCloy supported the initiative to found the HfG as Project No. 1 . The HfG should get a college- like campus based on the US model, so that the university members could live together in a free community of teachers and students. Shortly before his departure as high commissioner in 1952, John McCloy presented founding member Inge Scholl with a check for one million  DM .

After his tenure as High Commissioner, McCloy was instrumental in setting up a whole series of scholarships and fellowships that should help to consolidate German-American relations over the decades. The Harvard University and Columbia University were involved in academic fellowship programs. There were also scholarships from the American Council on Germany , an organization that McCloy and his wife Ellen McCloy were involved in setting up. Both lived from 1949 to 1952 in the house in the forest in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe .

It was just as important that McCloy encouraged Jean Monnet , the founding father of the European Communities, who were friends with him, to reintegrate Germany into the Western community of states. McCloy initiated Germany's accession to NATO , which meant the rearmament of Germany just a decade after the end of the devastating war. He also strongly advocated American approval of the Schuman Plan , which led to the formation of the Coal and Steel Community , the European Community, and ultimately the European Union .

1952 to 1989: Policy Advice, Chase Manhattan Bank and Warren Commission

McCloy in the Cabinet Room of the White House (1966)

After his time as High Commissioner, he founded the American Council on Germany with Warburg and others in 1952 and, at the same time, its German sister organization, the Atlantik-Brücke .

From 1952 to 1965 he was initially a consultant, then from 1953 chairman of the Ford Foundation for Peace Issues. From 1953 to 1960 McCloy was chairman of the board of directors of Chase Manhattan Bank . From 1954 to 1970 he was a board member of the Council on Foreign Relations . From 1972 to 1987 he was chairman of the American Council on Germany .

McCloy (far left), member of the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination attempt on John F. Kennedy

In 1961 he was appointed by John F. Kennedy as a special advisor on disarmament issues. With the Soviet negotiator and former ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, Walerian Sorin , the McCloy-Sorin Agreement was concluded , which was unanimously adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1961 . The agreement was subsequently codified in Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty .

McCloy was one of the so-called six Wise Men . Two diplomats, two bankers, and two attorneys who worked as foreign policy advisors to presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Lyndon B. Johnson . The six wise men were: Dean Acheson , W. Averell Harriman , George F. Kennan , Robert A. Lovett, and John McCloy. McCloy has served as presidential advisor to John F. Kennedy , Lyndon B. Johnson , Richard Nixon , Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan .

In 1963 President Johnson appointed him a member of the Warren Commission , which was supposed to investigate the background to the assassination attempt on John F. Kennedy . While he initially had significant doubts about the lone perpetrator theory, complained of delays in investigations and other inconsistencies, he eventually, under the strong influence of Allen W. Dulles , was persuaded to sign the final report. The West Berlin visit Kennedy in 1963 initiated McCloy, after he had had with Khrushchev talks. During the Cuba crisis he was a member of the relevant coordination committee.

In 1979 McCloy, along with David Rockefeller , Henry Kissinger and others, convinced US President Jimmy Carter to allow the severely cancerous former Shah of Persia into the country so that he could be treated at the New York Presbyterian Hospital . This humanitarian gesture was instrumentalized by the Khomeini regime for anti-American agitation, so that a little later Iranian students stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took 52 US diplomats hostage for 444 days .

John Jay McCloy passed away shortly before his 94th birthday. Many of his contemporaries attended his funeral in the Presbyterian Church on New York's Park Avenue . Among them Richard Nixon , David Rockefeller , Henry Kissinger , Cyrus Vance , Paul Volcker , Charles Mathias , James Baker , McGeorge Bundy , as well as the former German politicians Helmut Schmidt and Karl Carstens .

Private life

McCloy and his wife had two children.

Honors

literature

  • Erika J. Fischer, Heinz-D. Fischer (ed.): John J. McCloys speeches on Germany and Berlin issues. Journalistic activities and speeches 1949–1952. Berlin-Verlag Spitz, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-87061-318-1
  • Kai Bird: The Chairman: John J. McCloy - The Making of the American Establishment . Simon & Schuster, New York 1992, ISBN 0-671-45415-3
  • Walter Isaacson, Evan Thomas: The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made: Acheson, Bohlen, Harriman, Kennan, Lovett, and McCloy . Simon & Schuster, New York 1986.
  • John Donald Wilson: The Chase: The Chase Manhattan Bank, NA, 1945–1985 . Harvard Business School Press, Boston 1986.
  • Klaus Schwabe: Advocate for France? John McCloy and the integration of the Federal Republic. , In: Ludolf Herbst, Werner Bührer, Hanno Sowade (eds.): From the Marshall Plan to the EEC. The incorporation of the Federal Republic of Germany into the western world. Oldenbourg, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-486-55601-0
  • Thomas Alan Schwartz: The Atlantic Bridge. John McCloy and post-war Germany. Ullstein, Frankfurt / Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-550-07512-X
  • Thomas Alan Schwartz: The pardon of German war criminals , in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , issue 3, 1990

Web links

Commons : John Jay McCloy  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Amherst College Archives
  2. ^ Scott Christianson: The Last Gasp - The Rise and Fall of the American Gas Chamber . University of California, 2010, ISBN 0-520-25562-3 , pp. 126-129
  3. ↑ Thomas Alan Schwartz: John McCloy und das Nachkriegsdeutschland , p. 24
  4. ^ A b John McCloy. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
  5. ^ John Jay McCloy . ( Memento of the original from April 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Harvard Kennedy School @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mccloys.org
  6. ↑ a b Thomas Alan Schwartz: John McCloy and post-war Germany , pp. 29–32
  7. ^ Kai Bird: The Chairman: John J McCloy & The Making of the American Establishment, New York 1992, ISBN 0-671-45415-3 , page 187ff
  8. ^ John J. McCloy, Lawyer and Diplomat, Is Dead at 93 , The New York Times, March 12, 1989
  9. ↑ Why the allies didn't bomb Auschwitz . In: The Guardian , September 9, 2009
  10. ↑ Thomas Alan Schwartz: John McCloy and post-war Germany , pp. 49/51
  11. ^ Helmut Vogt : Guardians of the Bonn Republic: The Allied High Commissioners 1949–1955 . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2004, ISBN 3-506-70139-8 , p. 57/58
  12. ↑ Thomas Alan Schwartz: John McCloy und das Nachkriegsdeutschland , p. 70
  13. ↑ Ludger Kühnhardt: Atlantik Brücke: 50 Years of German-American Partnership , p. 24
  14. ↑ The Pardon for German War Criminals - John J. McCloy and the Landsberg Inmates . (PDF; 1.7 MB) In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , issue 3, 1990
  15. ↑ Kai Bird: The Chairman: John J McCloy & The Making of the American Establishment , 2017, ISBN 978-1-5011-6917-5 (E-Book), Chapter 17: McCloy and the US Intelligence Operations in Germany
  16. ↑ Uwe Bahnsen, Kerstin von Stürmer: Trümmer / Träume / Tor zur Welt The history of Hamburg from 1945 to today. Sutton Verlag GmbH, Erfurt 2012, ISBN 978-3-95400-050-0 , page 59
  17. ↑ On the history of the HfG
  18. ↑ Christine Elder, Elizabeth G. Sammis (Ed.): A Vision Fulfilled. 50 years of Americans on the Rhine. United States Embassy Bonn, 1999
  19. ↑ John J. McCloy . ( Memento of the original from December 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. American Council on Germany @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.acgusa.org
  20. ↑ David Rockefeller: Memoirs . Random House Trade Paperbacks, ISBN 0-8129-6973-1 , pp. 356-375
  21. ↑ Thomas Alan Schwartz: John McCloy and post-war Germany
personal data
SURNAME McCloy, John Jay
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lawyer and politician, High Commissioner for his country in Germany (1949–1952)
DATE OF BIRTH March 31, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH March 11, 1989
Place of death Stamford , Connecticut