Background
George Venable Allen was born on November 3, 1903 in Durham, North Carolina, United States. He was the son of Thomas Ellis Allen, a merchant, and Harriet Moore.
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George Venable Allen
Edit ProfileEducation
Allen attended local schools, and later received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Duke University in 1924. In the fall of 1928 he entered graduate school at Harvard, where the following year he received a Master of Arts degree.
Career
Allen worked for four years as a high school teacher and principal in Buncombe County, North Carolina. In addition, he was a reporter for the Asheville Times and the Durham Herald-Sun. In 1930 Allen entered the United States Foreign Service as vice-consul in Kingston, Jamaica. He attended the Foreign Service school in 1930-1931, moving from there to vice-consulships in Shanghai from 1931 to 1934 and Athens and Patras, Greece, from 1934 to 1936.
Allen was named consul and third secretary of the legation at Cairo, Egypt, in 1936, and after two years at that post he returned to Washington as a staff member of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs in the State Department. In 1943 he became assistant chief of that division; the following year he was promoted to chief, remaining in that position until 1946. While in the Near Eastern Division, he attended the Moscow and Cairo conferences in 1943 and the Potsdam Conference in 1945. He was also a member of the United States delegation to the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco in 1945.
In May 1946 Allen became United States ambassador to Iran, replacing Wallace S. Murray. Allen had dealt with Iran since the end of World War II as a special adviser to Secretaries of State Edward Stettinius and James F. Byrnes, and Byrnes in particular had come to like his "fellow Carolinian. "
As ambassador to Iran, Allen agreed with other State Department policy makers, such as Loy Henderson, that the Soviet Union was trying to exploit Iranian instability to its own territorial advantage, and that Moscow's reluctance to withdraw Soviet troops from Iran contributed to the difficult situation. In the fall of 1946, Allen contributed to a reorganization of Qavam's cabinet, in which leftist Tudeh and pro-Tudeh members were replaced by members of anti-Soviet factions. He also recommended a show of support for Iran through an increase in economic aid. In 1947, to quiet Iranian opposition, Allen firmly stated America's desire for Iranian self-determination.
As ambassador to Yugoslavia, Allen articulated American support for the sovereignty of Yugoslavia and for its independence from the Soviet bloc.
As assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern, South Asian, and African affairs, Allen tried to dissuade Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser from completing an arms agreement with Czechoslovakia. He was to deliver what was rumored to be an ultimatum from Dulles threatening a cutoff of all American aid and trade. Allen doubted the mission could be successful and when, after some delay, he was able to interview Nasser, he talked off the cuff to Nasser for two hours. In the end, his mission still failed.
As director of the United States Information Agency, Allen was obliged to counteract the spectacular success of the Soviet Union's orbiting satellite, Sputnik, which had dealt a blow to the American image abroad. Moreover, Allen's predecessor, Arthur Larson, had made a highly partisan political speech that angered the Democratic majority in Congress. Allen did not believe in strident propaganda but instead adopted what he called a "positive, objective, and long-range approach, emphasizing the full and fair picture of American life and culture and seeking to find areas of mutual interest. " He felt that a subtler approach would yield greater support for American foreign policy. Although Allen sat on the National Security Council and was effective in relating the work of the USIA to the making of foreign policy, in practice he tried to detach the agency from an overly close identification with specific foreign policy positions. In 1958 President Eisenhower sent Allen to Brussels to investigate charges that the United States pavilion at the World's Fair was not as impressive as the Soviet pavilion. The following year Allen coordinated the United States National Exhibition in Moscow, where the highly publicized "kitchen debate" between Vice-President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev took place.
In 1948 Allen returned to Washington as assistant secretary of state for public affairs. In this position he directed the State Department's information and exchange programs in the face of budget cuts. The next year President Harry S. Truman named him ambassador to Yugoslavia, and he spent the remainder of the Truman years there.
With the coming of the Eisenhower administration in early 1953 Allen was transferred to the embassy at New Delhi, a relatively uneventful tour marked by his advocacy of increased economic aid for India. Returning to Washington in 1955, Allen assumed the post of assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern, South Asian, and African affairs. The highlight of his relatively brief tenure was his trip to Egypt in September 1955.
Following a short period as ambassador to Greece from 1956 to the fall of 1957, Allen assumed his most significant role, as director of the United States Information Agency (USIA), a position he held from November 1957 until his retirement after John F. Kennedy's election in November 1960.
In 1960 Allen became president of the Tobacco Institute and spent the next six years defending the industry against research reports linking smoking with cancer. President Lyndon Johnson called Allen out of diplomatic retirement in 1966, naming him Career Ambassador (one of sixteen then to hold that honorific title) and appointing him to head the Foreign Service Institute. He retired from that position in February 1969 and died the following year at his farm near Bahama, North Carolina.
Achievements
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Allen ably represented the United States as ambassador to several countries and was notable for promoting better United States-Iranian relations and influencing Iranian leaders to distance their country from the Soviet Union. Under his leadership as director of the United States Information Agency, more English was taught overseas, more English broadcasting was carried over the Voice of America, and more attention was paid to American participation in trade fairs. He was named as a Career Ambassador, the highest post in the Foreign Service. Allen was a recepient of the Charles Sumner Prize for International Relations while at Harvard and of the Robert Woods Bliss Essay Award for Foreign Service Officers in 1935. Two government publications bear his name, The President's Point Four Program (1949) and Report on India (1954).
Religion
Allen was a member of the Methodist church.
Politics
Allen moved quietly and loyally within both Democratic and Republican administrations and reflected the bipartisan Cold War views of his era.
Membership
Allen was a founding member of the Middle East Institute.
Interests
Connections
Allen was married on October 2, 1934, to Katharine Martin. They had three children.
References
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Born
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Died
July 11, 1970 (aged 67) -
Resting place
Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, District of Columbia, United States -
Nationality
American -
Religion
Methodist