The Foreign Service Journal, December 2021

60 DECEMBER 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL b Hitler’s action forced his East European allies—Bulgaria, Hun- gary and Romania—to follow Berlin. In Budapest, Premier László Bárdossy summoned Minister Herbert “Bertie” Pell, a U.S. political appointee to Hungary and former minister to Portugal, to announce a rupture in relations. Two days later, on Dec. 13, Hungary fell in line and declared war. (If the name “Pell” sounds familiar, it is because Bertie’s son—Claiborne, future FSO and long-serving chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—enlisted as a seaman in the Coast Guard in August 1941. Correspondence in FDR’s files testifies to an anxious father in faraway Budapest asking high-powered friends, including FDR, to keep an eye on his adventurous son.) In Bucharest, sadness prevailed. Minister FranklinMott Gun- ther, a career FSO since 1908 and former minister to Egypt and Ecuador was stricken with leukemia. Although advised to depart post, he remained. Assigned to Romania since 1937, Gunther distinguished himself through relentless reporting on rampant anti-Semitism, the Isai pogrom and the massacre of Jews. He was among the first at State to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding Romania’s appalling complicity in the ultimate murder of as many as 300,000 Jews. Citing obligations under the Tripartite Pact, an official delivered a note verbale on Dec. 12 announcing a state of war to Chargé James Benton. Less than two weeks later, the 56-year-old Gunther was dead. In the words of the State Depart- ment press release: He “sacrificed his life in the course of duty.” George H. Earle III, minister to Bulgaria, stands out as one of the most intriguing political diplomats of the 1930s. Appointed minister to Austria (1933-1934), Earle left Vienna to run success- fully as a NewDeal Democrat for the governorship of Pennsyl- vania. When his term ended in 1939 and a Senate bid failed, the indefatigable Earle jumped back into the diplomatic game. He attracted international attention in February 1941 when he became embroiled in a diplomatic kerfuffle. With Germans present in a popular restaurant, Earle requested the band play “Tipperary,” a British World War I marching song. Taking offense, In 1937 Benito Mussolini addresses a crowd from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome to celebrate the Fascist Party of Italy. (Inset) Benito Mussolini on Nov. 1, 1922, shortly after the March on Rome when he ascended to power. SUEDDEUTSCHEZEITUNG/ALAMY TOPICALPRESSAGENCY