James Grover McDonald
Encyclopedia
James Grover McDonald was a United States
diplomat
. He served as the first U.S. Ambassador
to Israel
.
He studied at Harvard University
.
to run the Commission for Refugees coming from Germany
. German opposition meant that the commission gained neither funding nor administrative support from the League. Moreover, MacDonald encountered fierce resistance from countries when trying to negotiate the resettlement of Jewish refugees
. Frustrated with the lack of compassion or cooperation, he resigned his post in 1935.
On 23 July 1948 he was appointed as the Special Representative of the United States to Israel. His appointment was a personal choice by President Truman. It was opposed by Secretary of Defense James Forrestal
and resented by Secretary of State George Marshall
. He was not a professional diplomat and had a difficult relationship with State Department staff whom he referred to as "technicians".
On his way to take up his appointment he had a meeting in London with Foreign Secretary Bevin
- "I had to tell myself that this was not Hitler seated before me" - at which he provoked Bevin into loosing his temper by suggesting that Britain should send a diplomatic representative to Tel Aviv. He arrived in Haifa 12 August 1948. During his first months in the country there were serious concerns for his security. Three months previously Thomas C. Wasson
, the US Consul in Jerusalem had been assassinated in West Jerusalem. On 22 August the Chief Code Clerk at the US Consulate in Jerusalem was kidnapped by the Stern Gang and held for almost 24 hours. Fears were increased following the killing of Count Bernadotte in September.
He was critical of the Provisinal Government's refusal to allow any Arab refugees to return to their homes. He argued that this would cause lasting bitterness. But he pesistently lobbied the State Department, as well as President Truman personally, for diplomatic recognition. On 24 August 1948 he telegrammed Truman: "I have reached the conclusion that the Jewish emphasis on peace negotiations is sounder than the present US and UN emphasis on truce and demilitarization [of Jerusalem] and refugees." In September he argued that delay in recognition "only encourages Jews in their aggressive attitude." During the election campaign for the first Knesset, December 1948, he repeatedly warned his superiors of the threat of the Soviet Union trying to influence the result. On 25 January 1949, just before election day, he succeeded in getting a US/Israel Export-Import Bank Loan approved.
At the start ot the Armistice negotations, January 1949, McDonald sent the State Department a four page assessment of Israel's military capacity in which he stated that current Israeli strength was "...30,000 at present, with an additional 30,000 over-age auxiliaries (including women) who are called up intermittently...The rumored figure of an "Israeli Defense Army" of 80,000 fighting men is, in the opinion of the Counselor [himself] and exaggeration." This compares with an assessment made three months later by his own Military Attache for Army Intelligence that, after a 10% demobilization, Israel had a standing army of between 95,000 and 100,000 with some 20,000 to 30,000 reserves.
In early February 1949 his position was upgraded to full Ambassador.
He strongly opposed the US Government's refusal to recognise Israel's occupancy of Jerusalem. His request to the State Department for permission to attend the opening session of the first Knesset in Jerusalem was turned down. He used his position to avoid any highlighting of this policy. On 29 July 1950 he broke the ban on conducting official business in the city when he held a meeting with David Ben Gurion to discuss the outbreak of the Korean War
.
He protested to the State Department when, in June 1949, President Truman criticised Israel and threatened sanctions following announcements that Israel might annex the Gaza Strip. In November 1948 he lobbied the State Department in favour of Israel's membership of the United Nations. He was also active in getting Menachem Begin
a visitor's visa to enter the US reversing the ban on members of terror organisations entering the country.
He campaigned for a US loan for the upgrading of Haifa harbour and was involved in the first formal commercial agreement between the two countries - the 1950 Israel/US air treaty.
He held two meetings with Pope Puis XII at which he argued for Papal recognition of Israel which was being withheld due to Israel's refusal to let Christians return to their homes in West Jerusalem following Operation Yevusi
.
Following the publication of his book My mission to Israel. 1948-1951. a complimentary copy was sent to every Rabbi in the United States.
Back in the USA he added his name to the list of Zionist groups, 23 October 1953, which issued a statement condemning the threat to cut off aid during the crisis over diverting water from the River Jordan.
is named after McDonald. It is home to a famous synagogue which (perhaps appropriately) serves members mainly of non-Israeli origins, including Americans. The synagogue is known locally as 'McDonald's'.
McDonald Street in Netanya is home to the Orthodox synagogue known to all and sundry as "McDonald's," a predominantly Anglo community full of elderly Brits and Americans who have retired to the seaside town in their golden years.
One wonders how many who turn up for their weekly orisons have the remotest idea who McDonald was.
In fact, James Grover McDonald was the first US ambassador to Israel. But he was so much more than that. He kept a diary which recorded his meetings with some of the history-making personalities of the 1930s, and his activities on behalf of the Jews back in the '30s when no one would listen.
His diary, which was never intended for publication, was dictated to his secretary at the end of each day, as he considered himself abetter speaker than a writer. One can surmise that there are few entries of the "schnitzel for lunch, walked the dog" variety. In a number of key diplomatic posts he had access to the highest levels of government in Europe and the United States. The diaries, which began in 1922, record events up to 1936. In his capacity as the League of Nations high commissioner for refugees from 1933 to 1935, he saw firsthand what the Nazis were plotting and believed, long before many German Jews had internalized the threat, that Hitler would destroy European Jewry.
He was born in Coldwater, Ohio, in 1886 and as his mother was German, he spoke the language fluently. He studied at Harvard and became friendly with visiting German students who later became prominent Nazis and in his work as chairman of the Foreign Policy Association, a job he held from 1919 to 1933, he regularly visited Germany. The Nazi officials, charmed by his fluent German and aquiline features, spoke openly about their plans for the Jews. On April 4, 1933, he records his meeting with two Nazi officials.
"I looked forward to an informing analysis of the Nazi economic program. Instead, after we discussed it for 10 or 15 minutes, both
Daitz and Ludecke drifted back to the subject of the Jews, which seems to be an obsession with so many of the Nazis... The casual expressions used by both men in speaking of the Jews were such as to make one cringe, because one would not speak so of even a most degenerate people.
"When I indicated my disbelief in their racial theories, they said what other Nazis had said: 'But surely you, a perfect type of Aryan, could not be unsympathetic to our views'... I had the impression that they really do set unbelievable store by such physical characteristics as long heads and light hair."
SO CONVINCED was he that the Jews were marked for destruction in Germany that he appealed to the international community to help settle them outside the Reich but had very little success. As Deborah Lipstadt wrote in her review of the diaries, now published as a book,Advocate for the Doomed, "McDonald, unlike many of his contemporaries, tried to make a difference in what would become a
unique story of doom and destruction." In December 1935 he resigned in protest at the lack of support for his work.
Later he played a role in the creation of Israel acting as an intermediary between the Truman administration and the founding
fathers.
Today all his private diaries are in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and how they ended up there is a story in itself.
In May 2003 the museum's library director received a letter from the daughter of the man who was going to write McDonald's biography, saying her father had died prematurely and she possessed about 500 pages of the diaries. She delivered the writings to the museum and the archivist realized immediately that not only was the collection of huge historical importance but that they represented only a fraction of his total writings.
Carrying out painstaking investigations, he discovered that the rest of the material was held by McDonald's daughter, Barbara McDonald Stewart, also a historian. She agreed to donate the 10,000 typed pages of diary entries to the museum and agreed to coedit them for publication. The first volume, covering the years 1932-1935, appeared in 2007.
After he retired as ambassador to Israel, McDonald - who had been on conversational terms with Hitler, Roosevelt, Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pius XII) and Chaim Weizmann - continued as a passionate Zionist and helped to sell Israel Bonds until his death in 1964.
He certainly deserves a street, a synagogue and other fitting memorials as a great friend of Israel and the Jews.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
diplomat
Diplomat
A diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organization. The main functions of diplomats revolve around the representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state, as well as the promotion of information and...
. He served as the first U.S. Ambassador
Ambassador
An ambassador is the highest ranking diplomat who represents a nation and is usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization....
to Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
.
He studied at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
.
Offices
- Chairman of the Board, Foreign Policy AssociationForeign Policy AssociationThe Foreign Policy Association is a non-profit organization dedicated to inspiring the American public to learn more about the world. Founded in 1918, it serves as a catalyst for developing awareness, understanding of, and providing informed opinions on global issues...
(1919 - 1933) - LEAGUE OF NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES COMING FROM GERMANY (1933 - 1935)
- Member, EDITORIAL STAFF, The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
(1936 - 1938) - President of the "President Roosevelt Consultive Committee for Political Refugees"
- Member, U.S. Delegation at the Evian ConferenceEvian ConferenceThe Évian Conference was convened at the initiative of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in July 1938 to discuss the issue of increasing numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. For eight days, from July 6 to July 13, representatives from 31 countries met at Évian-les-Bains, France...
(1938) - President, BROOKLYN INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES (1938 - 1942)
- Chairman, PRESIDENT'S ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON POLITICAL REFUGEES (1938 - 1945)
- News Analyst, NATIONAL BROADCASTING COMPANY, BLUE NETWORK (1942 - 1944)
- Member, Anglo-American Committee of InquiryAnglo-American Committee of InquiryThe Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry was a joint British and American attempt in 1946 to agree upon a policy as regards the admission of Jews to Palestine. The Committee was tasked to consult representative Arabs and Jews on the problems of Palestine, and to make other recommendations 'as may be...
1946 - UNITED STATES SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE TO ISRAEL (1948 - 1949)
- UNITED STATES AMBASSADOR TO ISRAEL (1949 - 1951)
- Chairman, ADVISORY COUNCIL, DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION FOR ISRAEL (1951 - 1961)
High Commissioner for Refugees Coming from Germany
In 1933, MacDonald was assigned by the League of NationsLeague of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
to run the Commission for Refugees coming from Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
. German opposition meant that the commission gained neither funding nor administrative support from the League. Moreover, MacDonald encountered fierce resistance from countries when trying to negotiate the resettlement of Jewish refugees
Jewish refugees
In the course of history, Jewish populations have been expelled or ostracised by various local authorities and have sought asylum from antisemitism numerous times...
. Frustrated with the lack of compassion or cooperation, he resigned his post in 1935.
Ambassador to Israel
McDonald was a member of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine set up 10 December 1945 to examine the possibilities for mass settlement of European Jews in Palestine. Its final report 30 April 1946, called for the immediate admission into Palestine of 100,000 Jewish Displaced Persons.On 23 July 1948 he was appointed as the Special Representative of the United States to Israel. His appointment was a personal choice by President Truman. It was opposed by Secretary of Defense James Forrestal
James Forrestal
James Vincent Forrestal was the last Cabinet-level United States Secretary of the Navy and the first United States Secretary of Defense....
and resented by Secretary of State George Marshall
George Marshall
George Catlett Marshall was an American military leader, Chief of Staff of the Army, Secretary of State, and the third Secretary of Defense...
. He was not a professional diplomat and had a difficult relationship with State Department staff whom he referred to as "technicians".
On his way to take up his appointment he had a meeting in London with Foreign Secretary Bevin
Ernest Bevin
Ernest Bevin was a British trade union leader and Labour politician. He served as general secretary of the powerful Transport and General Workers' Union from 1922 to 1945, as Minister of Labour in the war-time coalition government, and as Foreign Secretary in the post-war Labour Government.-Early...
- "I had to tell myself that this was not Hitler seated before me" - at which he provoked Bevin into loosing his temper by suggesting that Britain should send a diplomatic representative to Tel Aviv. He arrived in Haifa 12 August 1948. During his first months in the country there were serious concerns for his security. Three months previously Thomas C. Wasson
Thomas C. Wasson
Thomas Campbell Wasson was an American diplomat who was assassinated while serving as the Consul General for the United States in Jerusalem, Palestine. Wasson was also a member of United Nations Truce Commission.-Career:...
, the US Consul in Jerusalem had been assassinated in West Jerusalem. On 22 August the Chief Code Clerk at the US Consulate in Jerusalem was kidnapped by the Stern Gang and held for almost 24 hours. Fears were increased following the killing of Count Bernadotte in September.
He was critical of the Provisinal Government's refusal to allow any Arab refugees to return to their homes. He argued that this would cause lasting bitterness. But he pesistently lobbied the State Department, as well as President Truman personally, for diplomatic recognition. On 24 August 1948 he telegrammed Truman: "I have reached the conclusion that the Jewish emphasis on peace negotiations is sounder than the present US and UN emphasis on truce and demilitarization [of Jerusalem] and refugees." In September he argued that delay in recognition "only encourages Jews in their aggressive attitude." During the election campaign for the first Knesset, December 1948, he repeatedly warned his superiors of the threat of the Soviet Union trying to influence the result. On 25 January 1949, just before election day, he succeeded in getting a US/Israel Export-Import Bank Loan approved.
At the start ot the Armistice negotations, January 1949, McDonald sent the State Department a four page assessment of Israel's military capacity in which he stated that current Israeli strength was "...30,000 at present, with an additional 30,000 over-age auxiliaries (including women) who are called up intermittently...The rumored figure of an "Israeli Defense Army" of 80,000 fighting men is, in the opinion of the Counselor [himself] and exaggeration." This compares with an assessment made three months later by his own Military Attache for Army Intelligence that, after a 10% demobilization, Israel had a standing army of between 95,000 and 100,000 with some 20,000 to 30,000 reserves.
In early February 1949 his position was upgraded to full Ambassador.
He strongly opposed the US Government's refusal to recognise Israel's occupancy of Jerusalem. His request to the State Department for permission to attend the opening session of the first Knesset in Jerusalem was turned down. He used his position to avoid any highlighting of this policy. On 29 July 1950 he broke the ban on conducting official business in the city when he held a meeting with David Ben Gurion to discuss the outbreak of the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
.
He protested to the State Department when, in June 1949, President Truman criticised Israel and threatened sanctions following announcements that Israel might annex the Gaza Strip. In November 1948 he lobbied the State Department in favour of Israel's membership of the United Nations. He was also active in getting Menachem Begin
Menachem Begin
' was a politician, founder of Likud and the sixth Prime Minister of the State of Israel. Before independence, he was the leader of the Zionist militant group Irgun, the Revisionist breakaway from the larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. He proclaimed a revolt, on 1 February 1944,...
a visitor's visa to enter the US reversing the ban on members of terror organisations entering the country.
He campaigned for a US loan for the upgrading of Haifa harbour and was involved in the first formal commercial agreement between the two countries - the 1950 Israel/US air treaty.
He held two meetings with Pope Puis XII at which he argued for Papal recognition of Israel which was being withheld due to Israel's refusal to let Christians return to their homes in West Jerusalem following Operation Yevusi
Operation Yevusi
Operation Yevusi was a Palmach military operation carried out during the 1948 Arab Israeli War to assert Jewish control over Jerusalem. The operation, commanded by Yitzhak Sadeh, lasted two weeks, from 22 April 1948 to 3 May 1948. Not all objectives were achieved before the British enforced a...
.
Following the publication of his book My mission to Israel. 1948-1951. a complimentary copy was sent to every Rabbi in the United States.
Back in the USA he added his name to the list of Zionist groups, 23 October 1953, which issued a statement condemning the threat to cut off aid during the crisis over diverting water from the River Jordan.
Road in Israel
A road in the large Israeli town of NetanyaNetanya
Netanya is a city in the Northern Centre District of Israel, and is the capital of the surrounding Sharon plain. It is located north of Tel Aviv, and south of Haifa between the 'Poleg' stream and Wingate Institute in the south and the 'Avichail' stream in the north.Its of beaches have made the...
is named after McDonald. It is home to a famous synagogue which (perhaps appropriately) serves members mainly of non-Israeli origins, including Americans. The synagogue is known locally as 'McDonald's'.
McDonald Street in Netanya is home to the Orthodox synagogue known to all and sundry as "McDonald's," a predominantly Anglo community full of elderly Brits and Americans who have retired to the seaside town in their golden years.
One wonders how many who turn up for their weekly orisons have the remotest idea who McDonald was.
In fact, James Grover McDonald was the first US ambassador to Israel. But he was so much more than that. He kept a diary which recorded his meetings with some of the history-making personalities of the 1930s, and his activities on behalf of the Jews back in the '30s when no one would listen.
His diary, which was never intended for publication, was dictated to his secretary at the end of each day, as he considered himself abetter speaker than a writer. One can surmise that there are few entries of the "schnitzel for lunch, walked the dog" variety. In a number of key diplomatic posts he had access to the highest levels of government in Europe and the United States. The diaries, which began in 1922, record events up to 1936. In his capacity as the League of Nations high commissioner for refugees from 1933 to 1935, he saw firsthand what the Nazis were plotting and believed, long before many German Jews had internalized the threat, that Hitler would destroy European Jewry.
He was born in Coldwater, Ohio, in 1886 and as his mother was German, he spoke the language fluently. He studied at Harvard and became friendly with visiting German students who later became prominent Nazis and in his work as chairman of the Foreign Policy Association, a job he held from 1919 to 1933, he regularly visited Germany. The Nazi officials, charmed by his fluent German and aquiline features, spoke openly about their plans for the Jews. On April 4, 1933, he records his meeting with two Nazi officials.
"I looked forward to an informing analysis of the Nazi economic program. Instead, after we discussed it for 10 or 15 minutes, both
Daitz and Ludecke drifted back to the subject of the Jews, which seems to be an obsession with so many of the Nazis... The casual expressions used by both men in speaking of the Jews were such as to make one cringe, because one would not speak so of even a most degenerate people.
"When I indicated my disbelief in their racial theories, they said what other Nazis had said: 'But surely you, a perfect type of Aryan, could not be unsympathetic to our views'... I had the impression that they really do set unbelievable store by such physical characteristics as long heads and light hair."
SO CONVINCED was he that the Jews were marked for destruction in Germany that he appealed to the international community to help settle them outside the Reich but had very little success. As Deborah Lipstadt wrote in her review of the diaries, now published as a book,Advocate for the Doomed, "McDonald, unlike many of his contemporaries, tried to make a difference in what would become a
unique story of doom and destruction." In December 1935 he resigned in protest at the lack of support for his work.
Later he played a role in the creation of Israel acting as an intermediary between the Truman administration and the founding
fathers.
Today all his private diaries are in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and how they ended up there is a story in itself.
In May 2003 the museum's library director received a letter from the daughter of the man who was going to write McDonald's biography, saying her father had died prematurely and she possessed about 500 pages of the diaries. She delivered the writings to the museum and the archivist realized immediately that not only was the collection of huge historical importance but that they represented only a fraction of his total writings.
Carrying out painstaking investigations, he discovered that the rest of the material was held by McDonald's daughter, Barbara McDonald Stewart, also a historian. She agreed to donate the 10,000 typed pages of diary entries to the museum and agreed to coedit them for publication. The first volume, covering the years 1932-1935, appeared in 2007.
After he retired as ambassador to Israel, McDonald - who had been on conversational terms with Hitler, Roosevelt, Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pius XII) and Chaim Weizmann - continued as a passionate Zionist and helped to sell Israel Bonds until his death in 1964.
He certainly deserves a street, a synagogue and other fitting memorials as a great friend of Israel and the Jews.