“Overruled and Worn Down”: Truman Sends an Ambassador to Spain

Harry S. Truman answered the reporter's question in the "plain-speaking" manner Americans had come to expect from him. It would "be a long, long time before there is an ambassador in Spain," the president declared. The date was November 2, 1950. Seven weeks later, on December 27, the State Department announced that Stanton Griffis was the new American ambassador to Spain.(1) The tale of Truman's about-face on sending an ambassador to Spain is a telling case of both the extent and limits of presidential power in foreign policy. It demonstrates how a president can find himself abandoning even deeply held personal convictions in the face of opposition to his policy. Ever since he became president in April 1945, Truman had been his administration's most outspoken critic of the Spanish regime. He was never able to hide his contempt for Franco and routinely mentioned him in the same breath as Hitler and Mussolini. Another leader might have succumbed to the intense pressure for a change long before Truman did; instead, he repeatedly used his power as president to counter the trend toward closer relations with Franco Spain. But by the end of 1950, Truman was, in his own words, "overruled and worn down."(2) The change in policy in no way reflected a change in Truman's views. Long after he left office, he continued to berate Franco. Rather, forces within and without the administration combined to pressure Truman to adopt a new policy, which he found difficult to stomach. There were three distinct, though interrelated, factors that influenced American policy toward Spain: lobbying efforts, bureaucratic politics, and the international situation. Truman's reversal in late 1950 was the result of the convergence of all three in such a way that he could no longer resist the accumulated weight of the forces arrayed against him. The story has its origins in the postwar revulsion against the government of Francisco Franco. Many people still recalled that in the dark days of 1940-41, Franco's policy had been decidedly pro-Axis. As the Americans for Democratic Action later reminded President Truman, "Franco, let it not be forgotten, is the man who once said: `What joy to see the German bombers one day punishing the insolence of the skyscrapers of New York.'"(3)0 In 1946, memory of Spain's wartime policy led the United Nations (UN) General Assembly to vote to recall ambassadors from Spain as a symbol of world disapproval of the Franco regime. As long as Franco ruled, Spain was to be a pariah. The repeal of the UN resolution thus became the focus of Spanish diplomacy. Franco's success in convincing the United States to support repeal and to restore full diplomatic relations with Spain was in part the culmination of years of effort in the United States by a group known as the Spain lobby. The Spain lobby was, in the words of one historian, "more effective than the highly publicized China lobby of that period." Beginning in earnest in 1948, the Spain lobby fought the battle to rehabilitate Franco and bring Spain into the Western fold.(4) Jose Felix Lequerica led the attempt to improve relations with the United States. Lequerica was an audacious choice. Franco's most recent biographer has called Lequerica "the consummate cynic." During the war in occupied France, he had gained the reputation of "being more German than the Germans." In 1945, the United States had rejected him as the new Spanish ambassador because he was considered an unabashed fascist. In 1948, he recast himself as a lobbyist. No expense was spared in his efforts to improve Spain's image and expand its influence, and "large amounts of money were spread."(5) Although it is difficult to evaluate precisely the impact of his lobbying efforts, Secretary of State Dean Acheson noted in 1950 that Lequerica's "activities, and particularly the lobbying in which he has engaged, have on occasion created great difficulties for the administration. …