William Averell Harriman (November 15, 1891July 26, 1986) was an American politician, businessman, and scion of the wealthy Harriman family. He was a founder of Harriman & Co. which merged with the older Brown Brothers to form the Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. investment bank, served as Secretary of Commerce under President Harry S. Truman, and was the 48th governor of New York. He unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party nomination for president in 1952 and 1956. Throughout his career, he was a key foreign policy advisor to Democratic presidents.

Harriman was born to a wealthy family as the son of railroad baron E. H. Harriman. While attending Groton School and Yale University, he made contacts that led to creation of a banking firm that eventually merged into Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. He owned parts of various other companies, including Union Pacific Railroad, Merchant Shipping Corporation, and Polaroid Corporation. During the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harriman served in the National Recovery Administration and on the Business Advisory Council before moving into foreign policy roles. After helping to coordinate the Lend-Lease program, Harriman served as Roosevelt's personal envoy to the United Kingdom, then as the ambassador to the Soviet Union, and attended the major World War II conferences. After the war, he became a prominent advocate of George F. Kennan's policy of containment. He also served as Secretary of Commerce, and coordinated the implementation of the Marshall Plan.

In 1954, Harriman defeated Republican Senator Irving Ives to become the Governor of New York. He served a single term before his defeat by Nelson Rockefeller in the 1958 election. Harriman unsuccessfully sought the presidential nomination at the 1952 Democratic National Convention and the 1956 Democratic National Convention. Although Harriman had Truman's backing at the 1956 convention, the Democrats nominated Adlai Stevenson II in both elections.

After his gubernatorial defeat, Harriman became a widely respected foreign policy elder within the Democratic Party. He helped negotiate the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty during President John F. Kennedy's administration, and was deeply involved in the Vietnam War during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. After Johnson left office in 1969, Harriman became affiliated with various organizations, including the Club of Rome and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Early life and education William Averell Harriman was born in New York City, the son of railroad baron Edward Henry Harriman and Mary Williamson Averell. He was the brother of E. Roland Harriman and Mary Harriman Rumsey. Harriman was a close friend of Hall Roosevelt, the brother of Eleanor Roosevelt.

During the summer of 1899, Harriman's father organized the Harriman Alaska Expedition, a philanthropic-scientific survey of coastal Alaska and Russia that attracted 25 of the leading scientific, naturalist, and artist luminaries of the day, including John Muir, John Burroughs, George Bird Grinnell, C. Hart Merriam, Grove Karl Gilbert, and Edward Curtis, along with 100 family members and staff, aboard the steamship George Elder. This gave young Harriman his first introduction to Russia, a nation on which he spent much attention in his later life in public service.

Harriman attended Groton School in Massachusetts before going on to Yale, where he joined the Skull and Bones society and Psi Upsilon.Robbins, Alexandra (2002). Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power. Boston: Little, Brown. . He graduated in 1913. After graduating, he inherited one of the largest fortunes in America - his father had died in 1909 - and became Yale's youngest Crew coach.

Career Business affairs Using money from his father, he established the W.A. Harriman & Co banking business in 1922. His brother Roland joined the business in 1927 and the name was changed to Harriman Brothers & Company. In 1931 it merged with Brown Bros. & Co. to create the highly successful Wall Street firm Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. Notable employees included George Herbert Walker and his son-in-law Prescott Bush.

Harriman's main properties included Brown Brothers & Harriman & Co, the Union Pacific Railroad, the Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation, and venture capital investments that included the Polaroid Corporation. Harriman's associated properties included the Southern Pacific Railroad (including the Central Pacific Railroad), the Illinois Central Railroad, Wells Fargo & Co., the Pacific Mail Steamship Co., American Ship & Commerce, Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Aktiengesellschaft (HAPAG), the American Hawaiian Steamship Co., United American Lines, the Guaranty Trust Company, and the Union Banking Corporation. He served as Chairman of The Business Council, then known as the Business Advisory Council for the United States Department of Commerce, in 1937 and 1939.The Business Council, Official website, Background

Politics Harriman's older sister, Mary Rumsey, encouraged Averell to leave his finance job and work with her and their friends, the Roosevelts, to advance the goals of the New Deal. Averell joined the NRA National Recovery Administration, a federal effort to revitalize the American economy via price controls, marking the beginning of his political career.

Thoroughbred racing Following the death of August Belmont Jr., in 1924, Harriman, George Walker, and Joseph E. Widener purchased much of Belmont's thoroughbred breeding stock. Harriman raced under the nom de course of Arden Farm. Among his horses, Chance Play won the 1927 Jockey Club Gold Cup. He also raced in partnership with Walker under the name Log Cabin Stable before buying him out. U.S. Racing Hall of Fame inductee Louis Feustel, trainer of Man o' War, trained the Log Cabin horses until 1926. Of the partnership's successful runners purchased from the August Belmont estate, Ladkin is best remembered for defeating the European star Epinard in the International Special.

War seizures controversy Harriman's banking business was the main Wall Street connection for German companies and the varied U.S. financial interests of Fritz Thyssen, who was a financial backer of the Nazi Party until 1938. The Trading With the Enemy Act (enacted on October 6, 1917)Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 classified any business transactions for profit with enemy nations as illegal, and any funds or assets involved were subject to seizure by the U.S. government. The declaration of war on the U.S. by Hitler led to a U.S. government order on October 20, 1942, to seize German interests in the U.S., which included Harriman's operations in New York City.

The Harriman business interests seized under the act in October and November 1942 included: Union Banking Corporation (UBC) (from Thyssen and Brown Brothers Harriman) Holland-American Trading Corporation (from Harriman) Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation (from Harriman) Silesian-American Corporation (this company was partially owned by a German entity; during the war, the Germans tried to take full control of Silesian-American. In response to that, the American government seized German-owned minority shares in the company, leaving the U.S. partners to carry on the portion of the business in the United States.)

The assets were held by the government for the duration of the war, then returned afterward; UBC was dissolved in 1951. Compensation for wartime losses in Poland was based on prewar assets. Harriman, who owned vast coal reserves in Poland, was handsomely compensated for them through an agreement between the American and Polish governments. Poles who had owned little but their homes received negligible sums.

World War I diplomacy During the war he was active in publicizing the "Rape of Belgium" in the US. In 1916, President Wilson entrusted him with organizing the American intervention in the war ("Operation Harriman"). In this capacity he supported the organizers of the February Revolution in Russia.

World War II diplomacy

By virtue of his previous experience as a fixer in organizing the American intervention in the First World War, at the outbreak of World War II Harriman became Roosevelt's personal envoy to Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin, with the aim of establishing a direct link with the leaders of the countries enemy of Nazi Germany. He was the first - since 1940 - to speak of genocide underway in German concentration camps and of gas chambers.

Beaverbrook-Harriman mission

Beginning in the spring of 1941, Harriman served President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a special envoy to Europe and helped coordinate the Lend-Lease program. Roosevelt, in appointing him, referred to Harriman as his "defense expediter." Harriman arrived in London in March 1941, and was quickly absorbed into the close circle of counselors and intimates cultivated by the British prime Minister Winston Churchill. Less than a week later, he was dining with the prime minister at 10 Downing Street when a major bombardment by the Luftwaffe began, and he joined Churchill on the roof to watch the bombs fall.Erik Larson, The Splendid and The Vile, Crown, New York, 2020, pp. 379-405

Less than a month after his arrival in London, during another bomber raid, Harriman began a romantic affair with Pamela Digby Churchill, who was married to Churchill's son Randolph. Their marriage was in tatters. a result of his steady drinking problems and his gambling addiction. Pamela was 21 years old and Harriman was 50.Larson, The Splendid And The Vile, pp 429-430

As part of his official duties, Harriman was expected to supply Roosevelt with regular reports on Churchill's actions and character. Harriman believed that the U.S. would inevitably be drawn into the conflict, in spite of the isolationist sentiment at home. In August 1941, Harriman was present at the Atlantic Conference meeting between FDR and Winston Churchill in Placentia Bay, which yielded the Atlantic Charter. The joint agreement would establish American and British goals for the period following the end of World War II—before the U.S. was involved in that war—in the form of a common declaration of principles that were eventually endorsed by all of the Allies.Theodore A. Wilson, The First Summit: Roosevelt and Churchill at Placentia Bay, 1941 (1991). Harriman was subsequently dispatched to Moscow to negotiate the terms of the Lend-Lease agreement with the Soviet Union in September 1941, together with the Canadian publishing millionaire Lord Beaverbrook, who represented the United Kingdom.Weinberg, Gerhard A World At Arms p. 288.

Harriman tended to follow Beaverbrook's argument that since Germany had committed three million men to the invasion of the Soviet Union—so that the Soviets were doing the bulk of the fighting against the Third Reich—it was in the best interests of the Western powers to do everything to assist the Soviet Union. The decision to aid the Soviet Union was taken against the advice of the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, Laurence Steinhardt, who from the moment that Operation Barbarossa started on June 22, 1941, had been sending cables predicting the Soviet Union would be rapidly defeated, and that any American aid would thus be wasted.Mayers, David "The Great Patriotic War, FDR's Embassy Moscow, and Soviet—US Relations" pp. 299–333 from The International History Review, Volume 33, No. 2, June 2011, p. 308-309 Likewise, General George Marshall was advising President Roosevelt that it was inevitable that Germany would crush the Soviet Union, and predicted that the Wehrmacht would reach Lake Baikal by the end of 1941.Mayers, David "The Great Patriotic War, FDR's Embassy Moscow, and Soviet—US Relations" pg. 299-333 from The International History Review, Volume 33, No. 2, June 2011, p. 308