John Jay McCloy (March 31, 1895 – March 11, 1989) was an American lawyer, diplomat, and banker. He served as Assistant Secretary of War during World War II under Henry Stimson. In this capacity he dealt with German sabotage and political tensions in the North Africa Campaign. He was the prime mover of Japanese internment, as well as a high-ranking federal bureaucrat who opposed the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
After the war, he served as the president of the World Bank, U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Warren Commission, and a prominent adviser to all presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan. McCloy was one of a group of important foreign policy advisers whose activities are detailed in the 1986 book The Wise Men, by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, who describe McCloy as "the most influential private citizen in the United States".
Early life John McCloy was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of John J. McCloy (1862–1901) and Anna (née Snader) McCloy (1866–1959). His father was an insurance man who died when McCloy was five. His mother was a hairdresser in Philadelphia, with many high-society clients. McCloy's family was poor; he would later often say he grew up on the "wrong side of the tracks," and describe himself as being outside the establishment circles in which he would later move.Finder, Joseph (Apr 12, 1992) "Ultimate Insider, Ultimate Outsider". New York Times, Section 7, pp. 1, 23-24. Archived from the original. His original name was "John Snader McCloy".Holland, Max (Autumn 1991). "Citizen McCloy: The Rise and Fall of the American Establishment". The Wilson Quarterly, vol. 15, no. 4. pp. 22–42. Full issue. . It was later changed to "John Jay McCloy", probably to sound more aristocratic.Mead, Frederick S. (1921). Harvard's Military Record in the World War. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Alumni Association. p. 606.
McCloy was educated at the Peddie School in New Jersey, and Amherst College from which he graduated in 1916. He was an above-average student who excelled at tennis and moved smoothly among the sons of the nation's elite.Bird (1992), pp. 24-41. McCloy was a brother of Beta Theta Pi fraternity at Amherst. In 1930, McCloy married Ellen Zinsser, a native of Hastings-on-Hudson, New York and a 1918 graduate of Smith College. She was active in volunteer and civic organizations, such as volunteer nursing programs and served on the board of the New York chapter of the Girls Clubs of America, the Bellevue Hospital nursing school, and the New York chapter of the American Red Cross. They had two children: John J. McCloy II and Ellen Z. McCloy.
World War I McCloy enrolled in Harvard Law School in 1916, and he was an average student. He was profoundly influenced by his experience at the Plattsburg Preparedness camps. When the US entered the war in April 1917, he joined the United States Army in May and was trained at Plattsburgh, New York and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Artillery on August 15, 1917. He was promoted to first lieutenant on December 29. In May 1918 he was assigned as an aide to Brigadier General Guy H. Preston, commander of the 160th Field Artillery Brigade of the 85th Division. He sailed for France for service with the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) on July 29, 1918. He saw combat service in the last weeks of the war, as commander of an artillery battery during the Meuse–Argonne offensive.
After the armistice of November 11, 1918, he was transferred to General Headquarters of the AEF in Chaumont, Haute-Marne, France, on March 1, 1919. He was then sent to the Advance General Headquarters in Trier, Germany and was promoted to captain on June 29. McCloy returned to the US on July 20 and resigned from the army on August 15, 1919. He then returned to Harvard where he received his LL.B. degree in 1921.
Wall Street lawyer
McCloy went to New York to become an associate in the firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, which was then one of the nation's most prestigious law firms. He moved to Cravath, Henderson, & de Gersdorff in 1924, where he worked with many wealthy clients, such as the St. Paul Railroad. In 1934, McCloy found new evidence allowing him to re-open an action for damages against Germany for the destruction caused by the 1916 Black Tom explosion.New York Observer article (July 2006) , bookrags.com; accessed March 14, 2018.
He undertook much work for corporations in Nazi Germany and advised the major German chemical combine I.G. Farben, later the manufacturer of the Zyklon B gas. By the time he left for government service in 1940, McCloy earned about $45,000 a year ($835,000 in 2020 dollars) and had savings of $106,000 ($2,000,000 in 2020 dollars). His involvement in litigation over a World War I sabotage case gave him a strong interest in intelligence issues and in German affairs.Kai Bird, The Chairman (1992), chapters 5-6.
World War II
US Secretary of War Henry Stimson hired McCloy as a consultant in September 1940, even though McCloy was a Republican Party supporter and opposed Franklin Roosevelt for the upcoming November 1940 presidential election.Bird. The Chairman (1992), pg. 113.
Stimson was particularly interested in McCloy due to McCloy's extensive experience with German sabotage in the Black Tom case. Stimson knew that the Germans would once again try to sabotage American infrastructure if a war against the United States were to break out. Working for Stimson, McCloy became immersed in war planning. On April 22, 1941, he was made Assistant Secretary of War but held only civilian responsibilities, especially the purchase of war materials for the Army, Lend Lease, the draft, and issues of intelligence and sabotage.Bird. The Chairman (1992), pp. 117-268. Once the USA entered the war, McCloy was a crucial voice in setting US military priorities and played a key role in several notable decisions.
Creating a wartime security apparatus An indefatigable committee member, McCloy during the war served on the government task forces that built the Pentagon, created the Office of Strategic Services, which eventually became the Central Intelligence Agency, and he proposed both the United Nations and the war crimes tribunals. He chaired the predecessor to the National Security Council.
Internment of Japanese-Americans In February 1942, his involvement in combating sabotage made McCloy heavily involved in the decision to forcibly remove Japanese-Americans from their homes on the West Coast to inland internment camps. Kai Bird wrote in his biography of McCloy:
More than any individual, McCloy was responsible for the decision, since the (U.S.) President had delegated the matter to him through (U.S. Secretary of War) Stimson.
The generals on the scene had insisted on mass relocation to prevent sabotage, and the Army's G-2 (intelligence division) concluded that it was needed. A key document was a Magic-decrypted interception of a Japanese diplomat in Los Angeles, who reported, "We also have connections with our second generations working in airplane plants for intelligence purposes."Bird, Kai. The Chairman (1992), pp. 155-56. The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) disagreed with the Army; in a concurrent report prepared by Commander Kenneth Ringle, ONI had argued against mass internment because most of the Japanese-American citizens suspected of espionage or sabotage were already under surveillance or in FBI custody.Irons. The Courage of Their Convictions (1988), p. 44 McCloy was responsible for supervising the evacuations to the camps, but the camps were run by a civilian agency.Bird. The Chairman (1992) pp 147-74
The actions were unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court.Gordon Hirabayashi v. United States 320 U.S. 81 (1943) By 1945, the judicial consensus had eroded considerably. Three justices dissented in a similar internment challenge brought by Fred Korematsu. The dissenters were led by Justice Frank Murphy's reversal of his reluctant concurrence in the earlier case of Gordon Hirabayashi.Irons. The Courage of Their Convictions (1988), pp 45-46. Historian Roger Daniels says McCloy was strongly opposed to reopening the judicial verdicts on the constitutionality of the internment.Roger Daniels, Unfinished Business: The Japanese-American Internment Cases (1986) The dissent eventually led to judicial reversal of the criminal convictions of Hirabayashi, Korematsu, and others on the basis of government misconduct including the deliberate suppression of the ONI's Ringle report during the Supreme Court's deliberations in 1943.Irons. The Courage of Their Convictions (1988) pp. 44-48.
Edward Ennis, a former colleague and Justice Department lawyer tasked with the preparation of the government's briefs to the Supreme Court in the Hirabayashi case, would directly accuse McCloy of personal deception in testimony before the Seattle Federal Court's 1985 coram nobis review.Irons (1988). The Courage of Their Convictions, p. 48 That led directly to the final resolution, in 1987, of the internment cases before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which fully exonerated Hirabayashi and other Japanese-American citizens, who fought the wartime curfews and forced relocations resulting from Army orders which the three-judge panel unanimously held were "based upon racism rather than military necessity."Irons. The Courage of Their Convictions (1988) p. 49; quoting 46 F. Supp. 657 (9th Cir. 1987) (per Schroeder, J.)
Bombing of Auschwitz
The War Department was petitioned throughout late 1944 to help save Nazi-held prisoners by ordering the bombing of the railroad lines leading to Auschwitz and the gas chambers in the camp. McCloy responded in a letter dated July 4, 1944 to John W. Pehle of the War Refugee Board, "The War Department is of the opinion that the suggested air operation is impracticable. It could be executed only by the diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations and would in any case be of such doubtful efficacy that it would not amount to a practical project." "In fact, long range American bombers stationed in Italy had flown over Auschwitz several times that spring in search of the I.G. Farben petrochemical plant nearby."
In another series of letters, A. Leon Kubowitzki of the World Jewish Congress requested on August 9, 1944 that McCloy consider a message sent to them by Ernest Frischer of the Czechoslovak State Council from the War Refugee Board. Frischer believed that "destruction of gas chambers and crematoria in Oswiecim by bombing would have a certain effect," and that "bombing of railway communications in this same area would also be of importance and of military interest." On the August 14, 1944 McCloy responded to Kubowitzki with a letter detailing how the operation would "be of such doubtful efficacy that it would not warrant the use of our resources," adding that "even if practicable, might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans."
On November 8, 1944, McCloy received another letter from Pehle, now urging McCloy to speak with the War Department and reconsider their refusal to conduct the bombings. Pehle described how he was "hesitant to urge the destruction of these camps by direct, military action," but felt differently after reading a report from two escapees from Auschwitz who described the conditions of the death camp. McCloy had no direct authority over the Army Air Forces and could not overrule its choice of targets; the Army Air Forces, led by General Hap Arnold was adamantly opposed to any outside civilian group choosing its targets. Roosevelt himself rejected any such proposals.
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