George Messersmith

George Strausser Messersmith (b. 3 October 1883 - 29 January 1960) was an American (USA) diplomat. A noted anti-Nazi activist, he is probably best known for his controversial decision to issue a visa to Albert Einstein to travel to the United States.

Early life

Probably Jewish, George was born in Fleetwood, Berkshire county, Pennsylvania, the son of Charles A. Messersmith (1846-1889), a textile executive, 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. Messersmith left no other reference to his parents or antecedents. However civic records survive: George had a younger brother, Robert (1883-1929). In the late 1860s Charles Messersmith (their father) became a partner in a wadding mill. The mill was built on the south side of the new railroad tracks in Fleetwood and near the dam. By 1870 he had twenty people on the payroll, and annual sales in excess of $100,000. Charles plowed his profits into real estate, an iron mine, and "a two-story frame tenant house", perhaps for his employees. Then he bought out his partners and became the mill’s sole proprietor. In May 1873 the Messersmith mill was destroyed by fire. Charles had to watch much of the family’s property being carted off by his many creditors. At the age of forty-three, Charles Messersmith died. George recounted he had to leave school at the age of seventeen because of the pressing need to make a living. He had already completed his schooling at the Keystone State Normal School in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, and had done further academic work at Delaware State College, Newark, Delaware.

Career

Messersmith became a teacher, and until 1913 he held a series of teaching and administrative posts in the Delaware school system, including Vice-president of the Delaware State Board of Examiners for Teachers. Late in 1913 he sat for the Foreign Service examinations. His first post was in Fort Erie, Canada. Between 1914 and 1925 he served in consular posts there, and at 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 Inspector of all Latin American consular and diplomatic posts in 1929.

Berlin

In 1930 he was returned to Europe as Consul-General in Berlin (1930-34) with responsibility for administering the annual German immigrant quota.

In 1933 Messersmith wrote a jaundiced dispatch to the USA State Department:

I wish it were really possible to make our people at home understand how definitely this martial spirit is being developed in Germany. If this government remains in power for another year, and it carries on in the measure in this direction, it will go far toward making Germany a danger to world peace for years to come. With few exceptions, the men who are running the government are of a mentality that you and I cannot understand. Some of them are psychopathic cases and would ordinarily be receiving treatment somewhere."

Despite being opposed to the new German government he remained on reasonable diplomatic terms with the German Foreign Office.

Vienna

In 1934 he was appointed USA Minister in Vienna, until 1937. In this period he befriended the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, then in exile, while they were in Vienna, spied on them and made "what amounted to a detailed watching brief on the duke." When Messersmith returned to Washington, DC, in August 1937, he informed the Secret Intelligence Service and the British authorities that the Windsors had "Nazi connections", which "would seriously affect the Windsors' entire future."

Later years

In 1937 he became Assistant Secretary of State for Administration to reorganize the State Department.

Messersmith began his ambassadorial career in 1940, in Cuba, moved 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 State Department officials had attempted to exclude that country from hemispheric affairs. However, 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 Messersmith 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, in 1947. He 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 volumous collection of papers. Messersmith's observations and recollections were said to provide useful insights into how American diplomacy reacted or failed to react, to rising political expectations and new economic demands of the USA's Latin American neighbors at a crucial stage.

He died in Houston, Texas but was buried in Lewes, Sussex county, Delaware.

Sources

External links

• https://prabook.com/web/george.messersmith/3758792
• https://fleetwoodpa.org/george-s-messersmith-introduction/
• https://snaccooperative.org/view/27484222