Sumner Welles — Preparing the European Mission

Sumner Welles, forty-seven, has been Under-Secretary of State in the Roosevelt administration since 1937 — right hand of Secretary of State Cordell Hull but enjoying direct access to the White House through his long personal friendship with Roosevelt (they had known each other at Groton School in the 1900s). A career diplomat, specialist in Latin America and Europe, polyglot, married to a New York heiress.

After the fall of Poland, Roosevelt and Welles devise a project: send Welles on an exploratory mission in Europe to meet Mussolini (Rome), Hitler (Berlin), Daladier (Paris), Chamberlain (London), perhaps Stalin (Moscow). The stated aim would be "to sound out the chances of a negotiated peace." But the exact nature of the mandate — mere gathering of information, the buying of time, or a genuine attempt at mediation — remains to be settled, and will shape the whole diplomatic apparatus and the manner of communicating it.

Hull is sceptical: he fears that a Welles mission would publicly legitimise the Nazi and Fascist regimes in mid-war. Eleanor Roosevelt is hostile: for her, to negotiate with Hitler would be to abandon Poland. But Roosevelt wishes, with the presidential election of November 1940 in view, to demonstrate to Americans that he has "tried everything" for peace before accepting war. The mission is planned for early 1940. Its format remains to be fixed: transparency before the press, discretion reserved for the president, or an intermediate frame. What mandate and what visibility should the journey be given?