My Amazon Review of Patrick Weil's "The Madman in the White House: Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullitt and the Lost Psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson"

 William Bullitt: Diplomat and Amateur Psychiatrist

 

Yale law professor Patrick Weil has really written two books in one. The first deals with the joint effort of William Bullitt and Sigmund Freud to write a psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson. The second is an excellent biography of the extraordinarily well-connected diplomat, William Bullitt.  I found the biography of Bullitt far more interesting.

 

Bullitt hooks up with Sigmund Freud in 1926, first as a patient and later as a collaborator as they seek to understand why Woodrow Wilson failed so badly at the Paris Peace Conference and later in his attempt to ratify the Versailles Treaty though the U.S. Senate. Their explanation is rooted in Wilson’s “daddy issues” (my term) and his Christ Complex.  To me, even with Sigmund Freud at the helm, psychoanalysis at a distance is problematic. Further the title of the book calls Wilson a “madman” when in fact Freud used the term neurosis, not psychosis to describe Wilson’s personality. A simpler explanation would be somewhere along the way Wilson, became a stubborn old man, and systematically began to destroy what he had built.

 

Either way Weil shows the importance of personality in diplomatic affairs. Instead of buying into the older explanation the imperialist machinations of France and England combined with the isolationists in the Senate that worked to kill the treaty, Weil puts the blame directly on Wilson’s personality. Wilson didn’t like the advice he was getting from his two key advisors, Secretary of State Lansing and his longtime confidant, Colonel House, so he fired them. He was too stubborn to make a deal with the Senate Republicans that was already blessed by Britain and France that would have enabled passage through the Senate. Indeed, I learned that as part of the deal was a Treaty of Guarantee that would have established a mutual defense pact between the U.S., Britain and France, a precursor to the Atlantic alliance, if you will.

 

Now, as to Bullitt. At 25, Bullitt, as scion of Philadelphia society, was a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference. In the middle of the conference, he goes off to Russia to try and make a deal with Lenin, which Wilson rejects. He leaves the conference disillusioned by Wilson’s craven dealmaking. A few years later he marries Louise Bryant, John “10 Days that Shook the World” Reed’s widow. In 1933 he became Roosevelt’s ambassador to Russia and later was his ambassador to Paris where he was his eyes and ears to Nazi Europe. Along the way he helped write speeches for Roosevelt.

 

As ambassador to Russia, he hired George Kenan, Charles “Chip” Bohlen and Loy Henderson, who would become mainstays of U.S. Russia policy during the early Cold War years. In Paris he befriended Charles de Gaulle on the right and Leon Blum on the left. In 1943 he wrote a long memo outlining the threats coming from Russia, that Kenan viewed as precursor to his 1946 Long Telegram. As a result, because of Russia policy difference and Bullitt telling Roosevelt about his friend and Deputy Secretary of State Sumner Wells’ homosexual proclivities, the two break and Bullitt endorses Dewey in 1944.

 

Now on the right with respect to Russia policy, Bullitt gets along great with John Foster Dulles, Chiang-Kai-Shek, and Syngman Rhee of South Korea. Indeed, Bullitt at the request of both Rhee and Dulles mediated a position between them that helped end the Korean War. Further Bullitt came very close with Richard Nixon as congressman and later as vice-president.

 

Weil did a huge amount of work going through all of the Bullitt papers at the Yale library, and his efforts show throughout this book. His work includes uncovering the original Freud-Bullitt manuscript. For a history buff like me, this is a terrific book.

For the full Amazon URL see: William Bullitt: Diplomat and Amateur Psychiatrist (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Michael Neiberg's "When France Fell…"

 Vichy Water

 

Army War College professor Michael Neiberg has authored an important book on American policy towards Vichy France during World War II, a topic that is usually skimmed over in history books on World War II. He goes into great detail about the failed policies of Secretary of State Cordell Hull who bent over backwards to maintain relations with Vichy and to prevent the recognition of Charles de Gaulle as the true leader of France.

 

The fall of France in May 1940 was a shock to U.S. security. Of a sudden the U.S. appeared vulnerable to Hitler’s armies as the balance of power in Europe collapsed. Immediately the U.S. instituted the draft, began a major arms build-up, and started to search for fifth columnists. Hull wanted to maintain relations with the rump Vichy government to keep the French fleet out German control and to limit German influence in France’s Africa and North American colonies. The problem was that as time passed Vichy became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Reich.

 

Neiberg is particularly good at portraying the rolls of such larger-than-life Americans as OSS Director William Donavan, diplomats William Leahy and Robert Murphy and General Mark Clark. On the Vichy side see the aged World War I hero of Verdun, Henri Petain as president and the crypto Nazi Pierre Laval as prime minister along with Admiral Jean Darland who ran the French Navy and then switched sides, before he was assassinated, by working for the Allies.

 

In essence the Vichy government was a right-wing counter to communism. After the French collapse the French right feared a civil war with the communists as the possibility of a rising similar to the Paris Commune in 1870 loomed. However, because the French Communist party like its counterparts everywhere followed the Soviet line of maintaining friendly relations with Germany until the June 1941 invasion of Russia no uprising took place. Vichy hated the British, especially after Churchill ordered the sinking of several French vessels at Mers-el-Keber.

Through it all U.S. policy until late 1943 could be described as a theme park for policy incoherence. Ultimately the U.S. sided with de Gaulle as plans for the invasion of Europe intensified. To me one of the highlights of the book is that Neiberg uses lines from the movie Casablanca as chapter headings. My main quibble is that the book is way too detailed and too long for the lay reader.

For the full Amazon url see: Vichy Water (amazon.com)