Hopkins, Harry L.

Hopkins, Harry L. (1890–1946),US politician and diplomat who acted as Roosevelt's, and then Truman's, special envoy during the war.

Hopkins was born in Iowa and as a young man was involved in social work in New York. A detached retina disqualified him from military service and in 1917 he worked for the American Red Cross in New Orleans. After the war he worked in welfare which eventually led to his appointment as director of the New Deal Federal Emergency Relief Administration when Roosevelt became president in 1933. He was appointed secretary of commerce in December 1938 but was plagued by the digestive disorders which eventually killed him, and resigned in August 1940. In January 1941 he visited the UK as Roosevelt's ‘special representative’ to catalogue Britain's military Lend-Lease requirements and it was during his six-week stay there that he established a close working relationship with Churchill. ‘Churchill is the gov't in every sense of the word,’ he wrote to Roosevelt. ‘…I cannot emphasize too strongly that he is the one and only person over here with whom you need to have a full meeting of minds’ (quoted in R. Edmonds, The Big Three, London, 1991, p. 211). In March 1941 he was given responsibility for the whole Lend-Lease programme, and by the time he relinquished this post to Stettinius that August he was being called assistant to the president or, as someone dubbed him, ‘Roosevelt's own personal foreign office’.

In July 1941 he again went to London, to prepare for the Placentia Bay conference, before flying on to Moscow to meet Stalin, and Roosevelt subsequently accepted his recommendation that the USSR should be included in Lend-Lease. During that year he also worked as the president's special representative in the complicated negotiations with the British over Lend-Lease. He subsequently became Roosevelt's aide at nearly every major Allied conference and was the personal link not only between the president and his fellow members of the Grand Alliance but with his military leaders, which enabled the White House to dominate every aspect of America's conduct of the war. His final mission before he resigned in July 1945 was to Moscow in May to try to solve the problem of a provisional Polish government (see Poland, 2(d)), and over the Security Council's voting procedures at the San Francisco conference.

Hopkins was an outstanding representative of Roosevelt's views and he commanded the respect of both Stalin and Churchill, his highly valued bluntness leading the latter to say that if Hopkins were ever elevated to the peerage he should take the title ‘Lord Root of the matter’. For much of the war he was one of Roosevelt's closest advisers and confidants. From May 1940 until November 1943 he lived in the White House and became part of the president's family. Frequent ill-health, and a temporary drop in Roosevelt's esteem after he left the White House, did not prevent him making a major contribution to his country's policies during the war years.

Bibliography

McJimsey, G. , Harry Hopkins (Cambridge, Mass., 1987).
Sherwood, R. , The White House Papers of Harry L. Hopkins, 2 vols. (London, 1948–9).