Background

George Strausser Messersmith was born on October 3, 1883, in Fleetwood, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Charles A. Messersmith and Sarah S. C. Strausser. Whether through design or carelessness, Messersmith was peculiarly reticent about his background. Of his mother he said nothing at all, either in print or in his voluminous papers. He described his father simply as a "textile executive. " Messersmith left no other reference to his parents or antecedents. There are indications, though, that he may have been born to comfortable circumstances subsequently blighted by economic catastrophe.

Education

In the memoirs found among his papers, he wrote of being an "omnivorous" reader who by the age of eleven had "devoured" the works of the great English novelists, as well as countless adventure tales having exotic locales that instilled a desire to see and dwell in far places. He also mentioned being forced to leave school at age seventeen because of the pressing need to make a living. He had already graduated from Keystone State Normal School in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, and had done further academic work at Delaware State College, Newark, Delaware.

Career

Messersmith settled upon a teaching career, and until 1913 he held a series of teaching and administrative posts in the Delaware school system. Late in 1913, about to marry and aware of the limitations of a career in secondary education, Messersmith deferred to his longings to see far places by taking, and passing, the Foreign Service examinations. From the beginning of his diplomatic career, Messersmith revealed the flair for administrative work that had advanced him to the position of vice-president of the Delaware State Board of Examiners for Teachers. At his first post in Fort Erie, Canada, Messersmith had time to study the State Department regulations, which he found out-of-date and a hindrance to efficient work. Thereafter he determined to make administrative reform a central feature of his work. Between 1914 and 1925 he served in consular posts at Fort Erie, Curaçao, and Antwerp. In 1925-1928 he was consul general for Belgium and Luxembourg at Antwerp, and in 1928-1930 consul general in Buenos Aires. He was appointed an inspector of all Latin American consular and diplomatic posts in 1929. In 1930, Messersmith went to Europe, first as consul general in Berlin, then as minister in Vienna from 1934 to 1937. In 1937, Messersmith was transferred home to become an assistant secretary of state for administration to reorganize the Department of State, a task that he performed efficiently.

Messersmith began his ambassadorial career in 1940, in Cuba, where he proved to be an able executor of traditional Latin American policies, at one point pressing President Fulgencio Batista to pay a $7-$9 million bill to a bankrupt American construction firm that had collapsed as a result of Cuban nonpayment. At President Franklin D. Roosevelt's urging, Messersmith moved on to Mexico in 1942, where, among other assignments, he supervised the flow of strategic materials to the American war economy and worked to regain access to Mexican oil fields for both American and foreign oil companies, excluded since 1938. In April 1946, Messersmith was sent to Buenos Aires at the request of President Harry S. Truman and Secretary of State James Byrnes. Argentina had been accused of pro-Nazism during World War II, and some State Department officials had attempted to humble that country and exclude it from hemispheric affairs. Now Argentine adherence to an emerging hemispheric defense alliance was deemed vital, and Messersmith was sent to restore amicable relations. Working closely behind the scenes with President Juan Perón, whom he liked, Messersmith helped to get the Argentine Congress to accept the 1945 Act of Chapultepec. Byrnes's successor, George C. Marshall, seemed further to slight Messersmith's role; and in March 1947, when the ambassador criticized as inaccurate and hostile a State Department position paper on Argentina, he was asked for his resignation. He promptly submitted it, along with his resignation from the Foreign Service in June 1947. Messersmith was soon elected chairman of the board of the Canadian-owned Mexican Power and Light Co. , which was facing nationalization. He had become enamored of Mexico, believed that free enterprise was endangered in the postwar sweep of economic collectivism, and was attracted by the salary. He assumed office in 1947 and ran the company with great success until his retirement in 1955. Throughout his later years, Messersmith wrote at length, if disjointedly, about his Foreign Service career and left a rich collection for scholars. He served in several key Latin American posts at a time when world crises and emerging nationalism in the non-Western world decisively reshaped United States foreign policy. Messersmith's observations and recollections provide useful insights into how American diplomacy reacted or failed to react, to rising political expectations and new economic demands of our Latin American neighbors at a crucial stage in our relations. He died in Houston, Texas.

Achievements

• Messersmith is best known in his day for his controversial decision to issue a visa to Albert Einstein to travel to the United States. He is also known today for his diplomatic handling of King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, later Duke and Duchess of Windsor, in the era before World War II. One of his chief attainments was to bring under State Department control those commercial and agricultural attachés who had formerly been assigned by, and responsible to, the departments of commerce and agriculture.

Works

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  • The Government of Delaware

    ( About the Book Legal history is the study of how law ha...)

Politics

Messersmith became an early and ardent opponent of Nazism, claiming in his memoirs that Adolf Hitler "frothed at the mouth" at the mention of his name, but that Hermann Göring had ordered that he not be molested. Messersmith also noted that he spent hours unsuccessfully urging his British diplomatic counterparts to abandon appeasement. Messersmith was no mere agent of American business interests. He honestly believed that the Mexican economy could prosper only if Mexican oil fields were thrown open to all competent exploiters, both American and European. And at one point he and Secretary of State Cordell Hull successfully resisted efforts by California oil-man Edward Pauley, who worked, Messersmith claimed, through Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes to force a flagrantly one-sided contract upon the Mexican government. Messersmith claimed that the Argentine government also worked diligently to suppress long-standing American suspicions that it was pro-Nazi by passing legislation aimed at German alien property and citizens. But to the antagonistic American press and a "wavering" Truman and Byrnes, the Argentineans did not move far enough, fast enough.

Personality

Messersmith was rather brusque, pedantic, hardworking man, who seldom played and had no real hobbies save reading detective stories.

Connections

On July 22, 1914, Messersmith married Marion Lee Mustard. They had no children.

Father:

Charles A. Messersmith

Mother:

Sarah S. C. Strausser

Wife:

Marion Lee Mustard Messersmith

4 September 1887 - 16 November 1966

Friend:

Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David (Edward VIII)

23 June 1894 – 28 May 1972 Was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Empire, and Emperor of India, from 20 January 1936 until his abdication on 11 December the same year, after which he became the Duke of Windsor.

References

• George S. Messersmith: Diplomat of Democracy