The Foreign Service Journal, February 2004

I started upstairs and on the stairs I met Willie Dawson, the old head of the Foreign Service School, and he said, “What are you doing here?” and I told him and he said, “Look, are you sure you want to do this?” He said we are now just putting into operation a system of special train- ing of three years’ post-graduate training for men already in the Service, in any of what were regard- ed as the four exotic languages — Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Russian. You could have post-grad- uate training without leaving the Foreign Service, so I did sign up for the Russian. But we had to serve for a year and a half in that field before our academic training even began. They wanted to make sure that we didn’t succumb to the liquor or the women or the wrong things, and that we could be depended upon as serious officers. So I was then sent as a consular officer for a year or so in the Baltic countries, then as part of the diplomatic staff in Riga, and then returned to Berlin. I was then sent to the University of Berlin, largely because it had the best courses in the world at that time on Russian and Soviet life and economics, and also because they realized I had the linguistic capability in German to go there as a regular stu- dent. This was a school set up by Bismarck for German diplomats. So I went there for two years, and at the end of that time FDR decided to recognize Russia. I happened to be home on leave at the time the agreements with [Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs Maxim] Litvinov for the conclusion of relations were completed. And I was introduced to Bill Bullitt, the first man selected to go to Russia as ambassador. Bullitt was delighted and took me along as a personal aide all the way to Russia. He spent only a few days and went back to organize an embassy. But my wife and I were left as the first American diplomatic representatives residing in Russia for some months. All of this, of course, was enor- mously exciting and interesting. I loved the Russian assignment. We were there at a difficult time, but we were prepared for this. After about four years of service in Russia, I was removed, I think at the insistence of the ambassador that FDR sent to replace Bullitt. Bullitt was a brilliant man; he was explosive and impatient, but he was a man of the world and he knew what he was doing. But the man sent to replace him was a fraud, a figure in the Democratic Party [Joseph Davies]. He was ... whew! The day he and his wife came, all of us who were Foreign Service officers met in Loy Henderson’s flat and asked ourselves if we should all resign, because we, through great devotion and effort, had made our embassy in Moscow, along with the German embassy, the most respected diplomatic mission in town. Diplomats came to us for guidance in understanding Russia. And we felt that this assignment of ambassador showed that the president couldn’t have cared less about us. He didn’t give a god- damn. He wanted to get kudos for this in the Democratic Party. In his view, the whole mission was expendable for his political purposes at home. I rebelled against this. We considered resigning en masse. I expect that the ambassador knew my feelings. I was soon trans- ferred. I didn’t serve there again until ’44 when Averell Harriman took me along as counselor of the embassy. FSJ : I know you served with and under some impres- sive people. Are there one or two people who really stand out in your mind? GFK : I was very close in my official position to George Marshall when he was Secretary of State. I had the only office adjoining his. If I have any hero, it was George Marshall — a man of a great many qualities, qualities very similar, literally, to those of George Washington. I served with Wilbur Carr briefly in Czechoslovakia, when Czechoslovakia was folding. Carr was a great old standby, an assistant secretary in the Department of State who was really a rock and founda- tion of the department for many, many years. Of the others, Averell [Harriman] was the hardest, stiffest, most demanding and unbending of my chiefs, but a man of great quality. FSJ : You’ve had a career with several phases — you’ve been known as a diplomat, a shaper of policy, a writer and scholar. During which period in your career do you feel you made the greatest contribution? F O C U S 18 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 Whatever may be the virtues of the Foreign Service, it’s part of the vast Washington bureaucracy today, and you can’t change that.