Bullitt

While I sit around waiting for Elon Musk to announce a time machine that will take me to Britain and France in 1940, all I have for now is the long list of people who I would love to follow around when I get there. One name on my list that you might not recognize is William Christian Bullitt. He was the U.S. Ambassador to France from September 1936 until July 11, 1940. A garrulous friend of FDR, Bill Bullitt was a freewheeling diplomat who typically bypassed the State Department with the steady stream of chatty calls and cables that he sent directly to the president.

While I would especially have loved to shadow him in the first six months of 1940, Bullitt's backstory is also quite something. He was a sometimes-caustic member of Woodrow Wilson’s negotiating team at the Paris Peace Conference at Versailles in 1919. After his first marriage ended in divorce, Bullitt wed Louise Bryant, the widow of American Communist revolutionary John Reed. (That marriage also ended in divorce. Warren Beatty played John Reed in the movie “Reds." Diane Keaton played Louise Bryant). Bullitt wrote a psychological profile of President Wilson – with his co-author Sigmund Freud. In November 1933 he became the first American Ambassador to the Soviet Union. With his appointment to Paris in September 1936, Bullitt began an assignment that lasted until France fell to Nazi Germany.

Bullitt developed an extraordinary affection for France and the French. He spoke the language fluently and spent weekends at a centuries-old chateau that he rented in Chantilly. My first venture into the world of primary research was a visit to the archives of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, NY. In a folder that bulged with letters and telegrams, I came across an image of a carefully peeled label from a bottle of wine from the vineyards of Fourcaud Laussac in Bordeaux. The label is signed on the blank side by Bullitt and Edouard Daladier, France’s premier at the time. (That was in September 1939 – ten days after the Allies’ declaration of war on Germany). Bullitt attached a note to FDR that read: “On one side you will see the label of a bottle of wine such as does not exist any longer in the world, because the label came from the last bottle in existence which Daladier and I drank at lunch at my house today.” Bullitt developed warm relationships with all the leaders in the continually rotating French Government – to the extent that one joked of his wish that Bullitt would one day become France’s Ambassador to the U.S.

Bullitt’s communications were routinely a joy to read … often to the detriment of my productivity. In an April 18, 1940 letter to Assistant Secretary of State R. Walton Moore, Bullitt noted that the chief obstacle to a better working relationship between Daladier and his successor as Prime Minister - Paul Reynaud - was the clash between their mistresses: “… the lady love of each hates the lady love of the other, and from your experience as an old roué, you know that venom distilled in a horizontal position is always fatal.”

When the international diplomatic corps followed the French Government in flight through brief stays in three temporary capitals after they abandoned Paris early in June 1940, one ambassador stayed behind. Ignoring directions – but not firm orders - from President Franklin Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull to follow France’s leaders. U.S. Ambassador William Bullitt remained in Paris to help mitigate the impact of German occupation. By that time Bullitt was so completely absorbed into French society that he was asked to fill the governing void and serve as provisional mayor of Paris. Over the next two weeks, Bullitt helped coordinate the inevitable transfer of control of the city to German authorities as he arranged the safe passage of American and British citizens from France.

Shortly after Bullitt’s return to the U.S. in July 1940 he had a falling out with President Roosevelt. When FDR later denied Bullitt’s request for a commission in the U.S. military, the former ambassador returned to France and joined General Charles de Gaulle’s Free French Forces as chief of the psychological warfare division. Bullitt traveled extensively in the years after the war. He died in France in 1967 and is buried in Philadelphia.

Bullitt’s life is a gift to historians. His particular gift to me was his account of the last day he spent in France as U.S. Ambassador. Before flying back to Washington, Ambassador Bullitt traveled to Clermont-Ferrand on July 1, 1940. There he had post mortem conversations with the men who surrendered France to Germany, the men who now governed France under German control. Historian William H. Shirer later wrote that “Bullitt’s report gives better than any contemporary record I’ve seen the state of mind and heart and soul of the tattered men who controlled the French Government at this hour of adversary and trial.” Bullitt’s report of his conversations with France’s top admiral and general, as well as its new premier, provides a number of fine brush strokes that help brighten the story that I’m writing. I’m looking forward to sharing those stories with you.

Thanks for reading,
Bill

PS - I regrettably did not take a picture of the Fourcaud Laussac label in the FDR archives. The label in the picture above is from a magnum of a 1947 vintage that sold at auction for £14,700 in October 2019.