Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (July 5, 1902 – February 27, 1985) was an American diplomat and politician who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate and served as United States Ambassador to the United Nations in the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1960, he was the Republican nominee for Vice President. Lodge later served as a diplomat in the administrations of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford. Lodge was a contender in the Republican primary of the 1964 presidential election.
Born in Nahant, Massachusetts, Lodge was the grandson of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and the great-grandson of Secretary of State Frederick T. Frelinghuysen. After graduating from Harvard University, Lodge won election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He defeated Democratic governor James Michael Curley in 1936 to represent Massachusetts in the United States Senate. He resigned from the Senate in 1944 to serve in Italy and France during World War II. Lodge remained in the Army Reserve after the war and eventually rose to the rank of major general. In 1946, Lodge defeated incumbent Democratic senator David I. Walsh to return to the Senate.
He led the Draft Eisenhower movement before the 1952 election and managed Eisenhower's successful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination at the 1952 Republican National Convention. Eisenhower defeated Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson II in the general election, but Lodge lost his own re-election campaign to then-congressman John F. Kennedy. Lodge was named as ambassador to the United Nations in 1953 and became a member of Eisenhower's Cabinet. Vice President Richard Nixon chose Lodge as his running mate in the 1960 presidential election but they narrowly lost to Democrat ticket of then-senator Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
In 1963, the now-President Kennedy appointed Lodge to the position of Ambassador to South Vietnam, where Lodge supported the 1963 South Vietnamese coup. In 1964, Lodge won by a plurality a number of that year's party presidential primaries and caucuses on the strength of his name, reputation, and respect among many voters, though the nomination went to Barry Goldwater. This effort was encouraged and directed by a low-budget but high-impact grassroots campaign by academic and political amateurs. He continued to represent the United States in various countries under Presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. Lodge led the U.S. delegation that signed the Paris Peace Accords with North Vietnam, leading to the end of the Vietnam War. He died in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1985.
Early life and education Lodge was born in Nahant, Massachusetts. His father was George Cabot Lodge, a poet, through whom he was a grandson of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, great-great-grandson of Senator Elijah H. Mills, and great-great-great-grandson of Senator George Cabot. Through his mother, Mathilda Elizabeth Frelinghuysen (Davis), he was a great-grandson of Senator Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen, and a great-great-grandson of Senator John Davis. He had two siblings: John Davis Lodge (1903–1985), also a politician, and Helena Lodge de Streel (1905–1998).
Lodge attended St. Albans School and graduated from Middlesex School. In 1924, he graduated cum laude from Harvard College, where he was a member of the Hasty Pudding and the Fox Club.
Lodge worked in the newspaper business from 1924 to 1931. He was elected in 1932, and served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1933 to 1936, before being elected to the United States Senate
U.S. senator (1937–1944, 1947–1953) and World War II service (1944–1945) In November 1936, Lodge was elected to the United States Senate as a Republican, defeating Democrat James Michael Curley. He served from January 1937 to February 1944.
World War II Lodge served with distinction during the war, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. During the war he saw two tours of duty. The first was in 1942 while he was also serving as a US Senator. The second was in 1944 and 1945 after he resigned from the Senate.
The first period was a continuation of Lodge's longtime service as an Army Reserve officer. Lodge was a major in the 1st Armored Division. That tour ended in July 1942, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered Senators and Representatives also serving in the military to resign one of the two positions. Lodge, who chose to remain in the Senate, was ordered by Secretary of War Henry Stimson to return to Washington. During this brief service, he led a squadron of American tankers at Gazala; they were the first Americans to engage German troops on land in the war.
After returning to Washington and winning re-election in November 1942, Lodge went to observe Allied troops serving in Egypt and Libya,"Into the Funnel", Time, 1942-07-42. and in that position, he was on hand for the British retreat from Tobruk."For Services Rendered", Time, July 20, 1942.
Lodge served the first year of his new Senate term but then resigned his Senate seat on February 3, 1944, in order to return to active duty,"Lodge in the Field", Time, February 14, 1944. the first US Senator to do so since the Civil War. He saw action in Italy and France.
In the fall of 1944, Lodge single-handedly captured a four-man German patrol."People", Time, October 9, 1944.
At the end of the war, in 1945, he used his knowledge of the French language and culture, gained from attending school in Paris, to aid Jacob L. Devers, commander of the Sixth United States Army Group, to coordinate activities with the French First Army commander, Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, and then carry out surrender negotiations with German forces in western Austria.
Lodge was decorated with the French Legion of Honor and Croix de Guerre with palm."Reservations", Time, March 19, 1945. His American decorations included the Legion of Merit and the Bronze Star Medal.
After the war, Lodge returned to Massachusetts and resumed his political career. He continued his status as an Army Reserve officer and rose to the rank of major general.
Return to Senate and the drafting of Eisenhower In 1946 Lodge defeated Democratic Senator David I. Walsh and returned to the Senate. He soon emerged as a spokesman for the moderate, internationalist wing of the Republican Party. After World War II, which Lodge believed was in part caused by American isolationism, he came to advocate internationalism, saying: "The ideal of a provincial nation has given way to the realization that we have become the world's greatest power ... World War II first taught us the value of collective security."
In March 1950, Lodge sat on a subcommittee of the Government Operations Committee, chaired by Democratic Senator Millard Tydings, which looked into Senator Joseph McCarthy's list of possibly Communist State Department employees. Lodge argued in hearings that Tydings demonized McCarthy and whitewashed McCarthy's supposed discovery of security leaks at the State Department. Lodge told Tydings:
Mr. Chairman, this is the most unusual procedure I have seen in all the years I have been here. Why cannot the senator from Wisconsin get the normal treatment and be allowed to make his statement in his own way, ... and not be pulled to pieces before he has had a chance to offer one single consecutive sentence. ... I do not understand what kind of game is being played here.Tydings hearing p.11
In July 1950, the record of the committee hearing was printed, and Lodge was outraged to find that 35 pages were not included.Congressional Record, July 24, 1950, 10813-14 Lodge noted that his objections to the conduct of the hearing and his misgivings about the inadequacy of vetting suspected traitors were missing,Congressional Record, July 24, 1950, pp 10815-19. and that the edited version read as if all committee members agreed that McCarthy was at fault and that there was no Communist infiltration of the State Department.Tydings report, p. 167 Lodge stated "I shall not attempt to characterize these methods of leaving out of the printed text parts of the testimony and proceedings ... because I think they speak for themselves." Lodge soon fell out with McCarthy and joined the effort to reduce McCarthy's influence.
In late 1951, Lodge helped persuade General Dwight D. Eisenhower to run for the Republican presidential nomination. When Eisenhower finally consented, Lodge served as his campaign manager and played a key role in helping Eisenhower to win the nomination over Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, the candidate of the party's conservative faction. Taft favored a quasi-isolationist foreign policy, being opposed to American membership in NATO and the United Nations, and Lodge wanted Eisenhower to run in order to pull the GOP away from Taft's ideology. Gossip talk of the day said that he reportedly declined an offer to be Ike's running mate.
1952 Senate campaign In the fall of 1952, Lodge found himself fighting in a tight race for re-election with John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. Representative. His efforts in helping Eisenhower caused Lodge to neglect his own campaign. In addition, some of Taft's supporters in Massachusetts defected from Lodge to the Kennedy campaign out of anger over Lodge's support of Eisenhower. In November 1952 Lodge was defeated by Kennedy; Lodge received 48.5% of the vote to Kennedy's 51.5%. This was the second of three Senate elections contested between a member of the Republican Lodge family and a member of the Democratic Fitzgerald-Kennedy clan, after the 1916 election between Lodge's and Kennedy's grandfathers and before the 1962 special election between Lodge's son and Kennedy's younger brother Ted.
Kennedy was congratulated for his victory by his dominating father, Joseph Kennedy Sr, saying at long last an Irish Catholic had humbled a scion of the WASP Boston Brahmin elite, saying that this was the most satisfying of all his son's electoral victories.
Ambassador to the United Nations (1953–1960) Lodge was named U.S. ambassador to the United Nations by President Eisenhower in February 1953, with his office elevated to Cabinet-level rank. In contrast to his grandfather (who had been a principal opponent of the UN's predecessor, the League of Nations), Lodge was supportive of the UN as an institution for promoting peace. As he famously said about it, "This organization is created to prevent you from going to hell. It isn't created to take you to heaven." Since then, no one has even approached his record of seven and a half years as ambassador to the UN. During his time as UN Ambassador, Lodge supported the Cold War policies of the Eisenhower administration, and often engaged in debates with the UN representatives of the Soviet Union. Lodge often appeared on television "talking tough" to Soviet diplomats, and famously responded to the charge that the United States was responsible for aggression around the world by saying: "Membership in the United Nations gives every member the right to make a fool of himself, and that is the right of which the Soviet Union, in this case, has taken full advantage of."
During the CIA-sponsored overthrowing of the legitimate Guatemalan government, when Britain and France became concerned about the US being involved in the aggression, Lodge (as US Ambassador to the United Nations) threatened to withdraw US support to Britain on Egypt and Cyprus, and to France on Tunisia and Morocco, unless they backed the US in their action. When the government was overthrown, the United Fruit Company, of which Lodge was a significant stockholder, re-established itself in Guatemala. The episodes tainted an otherwise distinguished career and painted Lodge as a face of US imperialism and exceptionalism.
In 1959, he escorted Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev on a highly publicized tour of the United States. In 1960 he embarked on a reciprocal tour of the Soviet Union, including stops at the Bibi-Khanym Mosque in Samarkand.