Foreign service Bingham served in
Kobe, Japan, as a civilian secretary in the United States embassy. He worked part-time as a schoolteacher. He traveled to India and Egypt before returning to the United States to attend
Harvard University. After obtaining his law degree, he scored third in his class on the foreign service exam. Bingham's first assignment in the
United States Foreign Service was in
Beijing, China, during the beginning of the communist revolution. Bingham also served in
Warsaw,
Poland, sharing an apartment with another diplomat,
Charles W. Yost, whose daughter, Felicity, became Bingham's god-daughter. In 1934, Bingham served as third secretary to the United States Embassy in London.
Vice Consul in France In 1939, Bingham was posted to the US Consulate in
Marseille, where he had responsibility for issuing entry visas to the United States. On May 10, 1940,
Adolf Hitler's forces invaded France and the French government fell. The French signed an
armistice with Germany and forced most of France's large population of foreign refugees to move to internment camps. Many thousands of refugees went to Marseille to seek visas for the United States and other foreign destinations. Anxious to limit immigration into the United States and to maintain good relations with the
Vichy government, the U.S. State Department discouraged diplomats from helping refugees. In Marseille, as elsewhere, foreign service staff usually showed little flexibility or compassion towards the desperate refugees. However, American rescue workers soon noticed that "Harry" Bingham was an exception. Bingham personally toured some of the wretched internment camps and sought American aid to improve conditions. He helped many refugees to avoid internment and prepare for emigration and freely issued
Nansen passports, a useful form of identity for stateless persons. An American rescue worker,
Martha Sharp, organized a group of children to leave southern France for the US in late 1940. She had this to say about Bingham, "I am proud that our government is represented in its Foreign Services by a man of your quality," she wrote. "I feel so deeply about this that I shall take the earliest opportunity to transmit it through the
Unitarian Service Committee to the United States State Department, for I believe that such humane and cooperative handling of individuals is what we need most coupled with intelligence and good breeding." Bingham also cooperated a great deal with
Varian Fry, an effective rescue worker based in Vichy France during 1940 and 1941. Bingham worked with Fry on notable cases, including the emigration of
Marc Chagall, political theorist
Hannah Arendt, novelist
Lion Feuchtwanger, and many other distinguished refugees. In the case of Feuchtwanger, Bingham went so far as to help spirit the novelist out of an internment camp and sheltered him in his own house while plans were made to help the refugee walk over the Pyrenees.
Consequence In 1941, the United States government abruptly pulled Bingham from his position as Vice Consul and transferred him to
Portugal and then
Argentina. When he was in Argentina, he helped to track Nazi war criminals in
South America. In early 1946, after being passed over for promotion, he resigned from the United States Foreign Service. ==Personal life==