Robert Borden Reams

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Robert Borden Reams (1962)

Robert Borden Reams (born January 27, 1904 in Luthersburg , Pennsylvania , † March 26, 1994 in Panama City , Florida ) was an American diplomat .

Life

Robert Borden Reams grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania. He worked as a sales representative and hotel manager before successfully applying for employment with the Foreign Service . From 1929 to 1931 he was Vice Consul in Le Havre, France . He then worked in Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth in South Africa until 1936 . He was then US consul in Copenhagen from 1937 to 1940 .

Reams worked from 1942 under Breckinridge Long in the Department of European Affairs of the State Department , where he was responsible for " Jewish questions". Breckinridge Long, a personal friend Reams', practiced a restrictive policy in dealing with the front of the Nazis fleeing Jews. Robert Borden Reams called himself a loyal " Master Sergeant " and did not see himself as a decision maker. However, all communications from the State Department on the issue of Jewish refugees ran through his desk and he argued vehemently internally against Jewish immigration to the United States. On the one hand, the number of Jews potentially entering the country would be too high; on the other hand, the National Socialists would use too much commitment by the Allies for the Jews for their own purposes.

In the second half of the 1940s had Reams as chargé d'affaires of the US Embassy in Yugoslavia . He successfully campaigned for a dismantling of trade restrictions on the part of the United States in order to strengthen Tito as an opponent of Soviet influence. In the 1950s, Reams was the American consul general in Calcutta and Kathmandu . He became the United States Ambassador to the Young African Republics of Dahomey , Ivory Coast , Niger, and Upper Volta in 1960 . His official seat was in Abidjan . Robert F. Kennedy , who visited Abidjan, saw him as an old-fashioned, conservative and not very dynamic ambassador and advocated Reams' recall with his brother John F. Kennedy . In 1961, Reams was retired. His successor as ambassador in Abidjan was James Wine .

Web links

Commons : Robert Borden Reams  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Robert Shogan: Prelude to Catastrophe: FDR's Jews and the Menace of Nazism . Ivan R. Dee, Chicago 2010, ISBN 978-1-56663-831-9 , pp. 197-199 .
  2. ↑ Lawrence Kestenbaum: Reams, Robert Borden (1904-1994). In: The Political Graveyard. Retrieved February 26, 2017 (English).
  3. ^ A b c Robert N. Rosen: Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust . Thunder's Mouth Press, New York 2006, ISBN 1-56025-995-7 , pp. 270 and 351 .
  4. ↑ Lorraine M. Lees: Keeping Tito Afloat: The United States, Yugoslavia, and the Cold War, 1945-1960 . The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park 1997, ISBN 0-271-01629-9 , pp. 59-60 .
  5. ↑ a b Brandon Grove: Behind Embassy Walls: The Life and Times of an American Diplomat . University of Missouri Press, Columbia 2005, ISBN 0-8262-1573-4 , pp. 67 and 74 .
  6. ^ Robert Borden Reams (1904-1994). Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs, United States Department of State, accessed February 26, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Reams, Robert Borden
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH January 27, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Luthersburg , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH March 26, 1994
Place of death Panama City , Florida