Arrival in Foggy Bottom (left) and Special Envoy
Saburō Kurusu (right) meet Hull on 17 November 1941, two weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941). at the
State Department exchanging ratifications of the 1943 treaty abolishing extraterritorial rights of the United States in China. Hull won election to the Senate in 1930, but resigned from it in 1933 to become Secretary of State. Hull became one of Roosevelt's strongest Southern allies during the 1932 presidential campaign. In the ensuing exchanges, Hull sent a letter of regret to Berlin for intemperate comments on both sides, but he also explained the principle of freedom of speech. As the response of Nazi propaganda organs rose in pitch to include characterizing American women as "prostitutes," Hull sent a letter of protest to Berlin, which elicited an "explanation" but no apology. Hull pursued the "
Good Neighbor Policy" with Latin American nations, which has been credited with preventing Nazi subterfuge in that region. In 1938, Hull engaged in a dialog with Mexican Foreign Minister Eduardo Hay concerning the failure of Mexico to compensate Americans who lost farmlands during
agrarian reforms in the late 1920s. He insisted that compensation must be "prompt, adequate and effective". Though the
Mexican Constitution guaranteed compensation for
expropriation or
nationalization, nothing had yet been paid. While Hay admitted Mexico's responsibility, he replied that there is "no rule universally accepted in theory nor carried out in practice which makes obligatory the payment of immediate compensation...." The so-called "Hull formula" has been adopted in many treaties concerning international investment but is still controversial, especially in
Latin American countries, which have historically subscribed to the
Calvo doctrine, which suggests that compensation is to be decided by the host country and that as long as there is equality between nationals and foreigners and no discrimination, there can be no claim in international law. The tension between the Hull formula and the Calvo doctrine is still important in the law of international investment.
Jews and SS St. Louis incident In 1939, Hull advised Roosevelt to reject the
SS St. Louis, a German ocean liner carrying 936 Jews seeking asylum from Germany. Hull's decision sent the Jews back to Europe on the eve of
the Holocaust. Some historians estimate that 254 of the passengers were ultimately murdered by the Nazis. Okay ...there were two conversations on the subject between (Secretary of the Treasury) Morgenthau and Secretary of State Cordell Hull. In the first, 3:17 PM on 5 June 1939, Hull made it clear to Morgenthau that the passengers could not legally be issued U.S. tourist visas because they had no return addresses. Furthermore, Hull made it clear to Morgenthau that the issue at hand was between the Cuban government and the passengers. The U.S., in effect, had no role. In the second conversation at 3:54 PM on June 6, 1939, Morgenthau said they did not know where the ship was and he inquired whether it was "proper to have the Coast Guard look for it". Hull responded by saying that he did not see any reason why it could not. Hull then informed him that he did not think that Morgenthau would want the search for the ship to get into the newspapers. Morgenthau said "Oh no. No, no. They would just—oh, they might send a plane to do patrol work. There would be nothing in the papers." Hull responded "Oh, that would be all right."
World War Two In the winter of 1939–1940, Roosevelt had decided to drop his vice president,
John Nance Garner, a conservative Texas Democrat who during Roosevelt's second term had been increasingly unable to hide his hostility to the New Deal, and ensure that someone else was the Democratic candidate for vice president in the 1940 election. For a time, Roosevelt had wanted to make Hull the Democratic candidate for vice president, not the least as a way to placate the powerful conservative Southern faction in the Democratic Party who would have been unhappy at seeing Garner being dropped. Hull made it clear that he was not willing to serve as the vice presidential candidate as he charged that the vice presidency had no power and he disapproved of Roosevelt's decision to seek a third term. Hull's unwillingness to accept the offer that Roosevelt made led to strained relations throughout the 1940 election. At the
1940 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Ickes advised Roosevelt to fire Hull, whom he charged had been a disaster as Secretary of State. Ickes wrote in his diary when Roosevelt told him that Hull had been a good Secretary of State: "I told him [Roosevelt] that I had distinct views to the contrary, referring to our sale of scrap iron and oil to Japan, our refusal to sell munitions of war to Spain, and our holding back on Spain and Austria. I referred to Munich and the disposition of our State Department to let Chamberlain dictate our policy on foreign affairs. The President replied that anyway Cordell had gotten away with it. My answer was "Yes, he goes about looking like an early Christian martyr and the people think that he is wonderful just on the basis of his looks. However, no-one has ever attacked him on the basis of his record and I regard him as the most vulnerable man that we could name". Ickes added in his diary: "All that he [Hull] ever tried to do in addition to his futile protests at continued encroachments of the dictators, was to negotiate reciprocal trade agreements. These were all right so far as they went; they might had led to something in ordinary times when peace was the principle preoccupation of the nations of the world, but as I had remarked to the President on more than one occasion, with the world in turmoil they like hunting an elephant in the jungle with a fly swatter". In September 1940, First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt maneuvered with another State Department official to bypass Hull's refusal to allow Jewish refugees aboard a Portuguese ship, the
SS Quanza, to receive visas to enter the U.S. Through her efforts, the Jewish refugees disembarked on September 11, 1940, in Virginia. In a similar incident, American Jews sought to raise money to prevent the mass murder of Romanian Jews but were blocked by the State Department. "In wartime, in order to send money out of the United States, two government agencies had to sign a simple release—the Treasury Department under
Henry Morgenthau and the State Department under Secretary Cordell Hull. Morgenthau signed immediately. The State Department delayed, delayed, and delayed, as more Jews were dying in the Transnistria camps." In 1940, Jewish representatives in the United States lodged an official complaint against the discriminatory policies the State Department was using against the Jews. The results were fatal: Hull gave strict orders to every United States consulate worldwide forbidding the issuing of visas to Jews; at the same time a Jewish congressman petitioned Roosevelt, requesting his permission to allow twenty thousand Jewish children from Europe to enter the United States. The President did not respond to the petition. On 24 September 1940, Japan occupied the northern half of French Indochina (modern Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia), which was viewed in the Roosevelt administration as an extremely hostile act. A debate ensured in the cabinet about what measures to take in response. The Treasury Secretary
Henry Morgenthau Jr., the War Secretary
Henry L. Stimson, and the Interior Secretary
Harold L. Ickes all favored sanctions intended to cripple the Japanese economy. Hull by contrast with strong support from the Navy Secretary
Frank Knox, the U.S. Navy admirals and
Joseph Grew, the American ambassador to Japan, argued against sanctions as he predicated that the most likely Japanese response to sanctions would be to invade Southeast Asia to seize the resources to be found there. Roosevelt compromised by imposing sanctions on the sale of scrap iron and steel to Japan, but at Hull's urging excluded oil from the sanctions. However, Roosevelt did warn the Japanese that if they occupied the southern half of French Indochina, he would impose oil sanctions. Roosevelt excluded Hull from relations with the United Kingdom in 1940-1941 and Hull played no role whatever in the
Lend-Lease talks, the
ABC-1 talks and the Argentia Conference of 9–12 August 1941 where Roosevelt met the British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill at Placentia Bay in the British colony of Newfoundland to issue the Atlantic Charter. In July 1941, the Japanese prime minister, Prince
Fumimaro Konoe ordered the occupation of the southern half of French Indochina, which led to the United States imposing oil sanctions on 22 July 1941. Joining the United States in imposing oil sanctions on Japan were Britain, the Dominions, and the Dutch government-in-exile which controlled the oil-rich Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia), which in effect cut Japan off from all sources of oil. As Japan had stockpiled enough oil to last 18 months, a debate ensured in Tokyo about whatever to seize the European colonies in Southeast Asia to provide oil or seek a diplomatic resolution to the crisis. Konoe ordered preparations for war while opening talks with the United States. Several times, it was suggested by the Japanese ambassador
Kichisaburō Nomura that Konoe hold a summit meeting with Roosevelt on a ship in the Pacific Ocean to resolve the crisis, an offer that Hull rejected. Konoe was prepared to negotiate with Roosevelt on the basis that Japan withdraw from French Indochina only after it had won the war with China, a position that was unacceptable to the U.S. government. Moreover, Konoe continued to hold to the position that Japan was morally and legally bound by the "Basic Treaty" it had signed with puppet
Wang Jingwei regime, That claim that Japan was honor bound by the "Basic Treaty" was regarded by the Americans as absurd as
Wang Jingwei was a Japanese puppet who faithfully followed the orders of his Japanese puppet masters and was in no way the leader of China that Konoe portrayed him as. Roosevelt directed Hull to handle talks with the Japanese. The fact that Roosevelt ordered Hull to handle the negotiations while not playing a significant role himself was a clear indicator that Roosevelt did not see relations with Japan as especially important. Roosevelt always personally handled relations with nations that he considered important while leaving Hull to take care of relations with nations he felt were unimportant. The talks that Hull held with the Japanese diplomats in Washington D.C, namely the ambassador
Kichisaburō Nomura and the special imperial envoy
Saburō Kurusu soon extended from the subject of French Indochina to the subject of China. Both Morgenthau and Ickes complained that Hull was prepared to make too many concessions to the Japanese in order to avoid a war. Morgenthau was so outraged by Hull's approach that he wrote a letter to Roosevelt that he never sent that warned of a "Far Eastern Munich" in the making. Hull's approach to the talks led to protests from both the British and especially the Chinese about his willingness to abandon China to being absorbed into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere as the price of peace. Ickes wrote in his diary that about his pleasure that "the strenuous intervention of Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek had blocked the appeasers in the State Department". Ickes added that if Hull had made his deal with the Japanese that he had planned to resign in protest from the cabinet "...with a ringing statement attacking the arrangement and raising hell generally with the State Department and its policy of appeasement". Hull also handled formal statements with foreign governments. During the talks in Washington, Hull had benefitted from the fact that the Americans had broken the Japanese diplomatic codes and were reading all of their diplomatic cables to and from Washington. Hull was well aware that the new prime minister in Tokyo, General
Hideki Tojo was a hardliner and that the Japanese were moving troops into Southeast Asia. However, much like Roosevelt, Hull was complacent about the danger of a war with Japan. Notably he sent on 26 November 1941 the
Hull note just prior to the
Pearl Harbor attack, which was formally titled "Outline of proposed Basis for Agreement Between The United States and Japan." The American historian
Herbert P. Bix wrote that the term "Hull note" is misleading as it implied that Hull had issued an ultimatum to Japan when he had not. The so-called Hull note had no time limit for its acceptance which is the case with ultimatums.. Moreover the first paragraph of the note stated it was a "tentative" offer and stated quite clearly that there was room for further negotiation on the basis of the note. In his note, Hull had called for a complete Japanese withdrawal from China and French Indochina but did not give a time limit for when the withdrawal would take place. More importantly, the Hull note had stated that the term China was an undefined word, which left open the possibility that the Japanese would only have to withdraw from the parts of China they had conquered since 1937 and might be allowed to keep the sham state of Manchukuo (a Japanese colony that masqueraded as an ostensibly independent country) that the Japanese had seized in 1931. Of all their conquests, Manchukuo was that the one that the Japanese people were most attached to, not least because millions of Japanese settlers had been brought into Manchukuo since 1931 and presumably would have to return to Japan if Chinese sovereignty was restored. Finally, Hull in his note implied that the United States might be willing to recognize the sham state of Manchukuo (a key objective of Japanese diplomacy since 1931) in exchange for a Japanese withdrawal from the rest of China. The Hull note stated that the only legitimate government of China was the government of
Chiang Kai-shek based in Chunking and firmly ruled out American recognition of the puppet government of
Wang Jingwei based in Nanking. Bix wrote that the Hull Note was far from being the humiliating ultimatum that Japanese historians portray it as, and that in fact Hull was prepared to make certain generous concessions to Japan to avoid a war. In Tokyo, the prime minister General
Hideki Tojo chose to misrepresent to his cabinet the Hull note as an ultimatum and claimed that the note had called for Japan to give up all of its conquests in China since 1931, which allowed to Tojo to maintain that Japan now had no other choice but to go to war against the United States. The Japanese foreign minister
Shigenori Tōgō was aware that the Hull note was not an ultimatum and that the note had stated that China was undefined term, but chose to remain silent at the cabinet meeting. Bix wrote that the Japanese cabinet was dealing in bad faith with the talks with the Americans as both Tojo and Tōgō claimed that Japan was honor bound by the "Basic Treaty" it had signed with puppet
Wang Jingwei regime in 1938 and could not reestablish diplomatic relations with the Kuomintang regime. The Japanese cabinet felt much relief at the Hull note, which allowed them an excuse for the war they were about to launch. Hull received news of the Pearl Harbor attack on 7 December 1941 while he was outside his office. The Japanese ambassador
Kichisaburō Nomura and Japan's special envoy
Saburō Kurusu were waiting to see Hull with a 14-part message from the Japanese government that officially notified of a breakdown in negotiations. The United States had broken
Japanese encryption, and Hull knew the message's contents. He blasted the diplomats: "In all my fifty years of public service, I have never seen such a document that was more crowded with infamous falsehood and distortion." When the
Free French Forces of
Charles de Gaulle occupied the French islands of
Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, south of
Newfoundland, occupied by
Vichy France, in December 1941, Hull lodged a very strong protest and went as far as referring to the
Gaullist naval forces as "the so-called Free French." His request to have the Vichy governor reinstated was met with strong criticism in the American press: newspapers mocked the "so-called Secretary of State". The islands remained under the Free French until the end of the war. Hull, who always held de Gaulle in disregard, if not detestation, even before the incident, would never cease trying to maneuver against him during the rest of the war. He regarded de Gaulle as an unscrupulous adventurer whose word was not to be trusted, and was generally considered to be the American official most hostile to the Free French movement. Hull and Roosevelt also maintained relations with
Vichy France, which Hull credited with allowing General
Henri Giraud's forces to join allied forces in the
North African campaign against Germany and Italy. Throughout
World War II, Hull found himself increasingly sidelined from the Roosevelt administration's inner circle on wartime strategy. While he remained central to formal diplomatic efforts, particularly in Latin America and in laying the groundwork for postwar institutions, he was often excluded from key decisions involving military planning and combined Allied strategy. In his memoirs, Hull expressed frustration that his proposal to participate in high-level war councils—especially those involving both diplomatic and military elements—was ignored by the president. Roosevelt instead relied on informal advisors and military leadership, limiting the Secretary of State's role in wartime governance. Hull chaired the
Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy, which was created in February 1942. In 1942, Roosevelt started to strongly press the British prime minister Winston Churchill to promise independence for India, saying it was time to end the Raj. Hull differed from Roosevelt on the question of India and in 1942 told
Lord Halifax, the British ambassador in Washington, about his opposition to independence for "backward peoples" who were in his viewpoint incapable of governing themselves. Halifax reported to London that Hull was unwilling to openly criticize Roosevelt, but with an "eye on India" suggested that independence be delayed for "backward peoples". Hull advised Halifax that he should advise London that the British should make ending the Raj conditional on a promise that an independent India should immediately declare war on the Axis powers, a condition that was unlikely to be met as
Mohandas Gandhi, the leader of the Indian Congress Party, was a pacifist. In 1942,
Wendell Willkie, the Republican candidate for president in the 1940 election, went on a semi-official and much publicized "one world" tour. Willkie had no official capacity to speak for the United States, but his trip had been publicity blessed by Roosevelt as a way to ensure bipartisan support for his foreign policy, all the more so as Willkie was one of the leaders of the liberal, internationalist wing of the Republicans. Hull was privately opposed to Willkie's trip, and even more so when Willkie during the China phase of his world journey publicity criticized American immigration laws for excluding Asians from coming to the United States. In response to Willkie's speech, the Chinese ambassador in Washington,
Wei Daoming, asked Hull about when Asians could came as immigrants to America again, which inspired Hull to launch a rant against Willkie as a "troublemaking person" who went around the world creating "misunderstanding" between the Allies. In the same speech in Chunking, Willkie had called for an end to European imperialism in Asia as he urged Britain, France and the Netherlands to grant independence to all their colonies in Asia after war for those colonies occupied by Japan or immediately in the case of India and Ceylon. In a long, angry memo to Roosevelt, Hull lashed out at Willkie for his speech, saying that none of the Asian colonies were ready for independence and knowing of Roosevelt's dislike for European imperialism in Asia instead insisted that the model should be the Philippines. The Philippines had been an American colony which the United States had promised independence to in 1935 and had gradually devolving powers down to the Filipinos, which Hull stated was the better model for ending European imperialism in Asia. In 1943, Hull served as United States delegate to the
Moscow Conference. At times, his main objective was to enlarge foreign trade and lower tariffs. Some of the issues concerning the American role in World War II, were handled by Roosevelt working through
Sumner Welles, the second-ranking official at the State Department, which caused conflicts between the two. Hull did not attend the summit meetings that Roosevelt had with
Winston Churchill and
Joseph Stalin. In 1943 Hull ended Welles's career at the State Department by threatening to expose allegations of his homosexuality dating back to 1941, and Hull threatened to resign if Welles was not let go due to the allegations and possibly concern that they could be used to blackmail Welles. In 1943, Hull tried hard to prevent
Herbert Pell from serving as the U.S. delegate to the
United Nations War Crimes Commission in London. During Pell's time on the commission, Hull constantly hindered his work, making it very clear his distaste for both Pell and his views on punishing war crimes. Hull in particular objected to Pell's plans for American courts to try German officials for crimes against German citizens not only during the war, but also for the entirety of the Nazi dictatorship starting in 1933 as Pell argued that Nazi Germany was a criminal state and all of its actions should be treated as criminal. Hull argued that Pell's proposals violated international law and German sovereignty, but also more importantly created a precedent that could be highly dangerous for himself and other American officials. Lynching of Afro-Americans was a common practice in the South, and Hull noted that under Pell's proposals that defined crimes against humanity as state-sanctioned violence directed against groups for racial or religious reasons American officials could be tried for crimes against humanity for tolerating the practice of lynching. To counter the objections of Hull and others, Pell was forced to redefine crimes against humanity as state-sanctioned violence directed against groups for racial or religious reasons as part of the preparation for "aggressive war" or the waging of "aggressive war", which allowed Pell to claim that American officials would be protected from international justice for tolerating the lynching of blacks.
Establishing the United Nations , Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Manuel L. Quezon, and Secretary Hull. Hull was the underlying force and architect in the
creation of the
United Nations, as recognized by the 1945
Nobel Peace Prize, an honor for which Roosevelt nominated him. During World War II, Hull and Roosevelt had worked toward the development of a world organization to prevent a third World War. Hull and his staff drafted the "
Charter of the United Nations" in mid-1943. ==Later years==