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Oral History Interview with William H. Draper, Jr.
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Oral History Interview with William H. Draper, Jr.
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Oral History Interview
with
GENERAL WILLIAM H. DRAPER, JR.
Chief, Economics Division, Control Council for Germany, 1945-46; Military Government
Adviser to the Secretary of State, Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers, 1947; Under
Secretary of War, 1947; Under Secretary of the Army, 1947-49; and United States Special
Representative in Europe, with rank of Ambassador, January 1952 - - June 1953.
Washington, D.C.
January 11, 1972
by Jerry N. Hess, Harry S. Truman Library
The Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri
May, 1974
NOTICE
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. A
draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made;
therefore, the reader should remember that this. is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather
than the written, word.
RESTRICTIONS
This oral history transcript may be read and reproduced by researchers for purposes of research,
but it may be published only with the written permission of the interviewee. Researchers must
also have written permission from the interviewee to cite or quote from this transcript.
Oral History Interview
With
GEN. WILLIAM H. DRAPER, JR.
Washington, D.C.
January 11, 1972
by Jerry N. Hess, Harry S. Truman Library
[1]
HESS: General, for the record, will you relate a little of your personal background: Where were
you born, where were you educated, and what are a few of the positions that you have held both
before and since your service in the Truman administration.
DRAPER: My name is William H. Draper, Jr. I was born in New York City in Harlem, August
10, 1894. I went to school there and to NYU to college, where I got both a B.A. and a M.A. in
economics.
My work first was in the Army, shortly after I got out of college, although even before that I had
been a member of the Ford Peace Expedition to Europe which tried to stop the war at the end of
1915. I was chairman of the student delegation. There were sixty regular delegates and thirty
student delegates. The expedition, with Mr. Ford aboard, went to all the neutral countries
[2]
and set up a peace congress at The Hague at the Peace Palace, which lasted about six months.
Contrary to the public impression at the time the peace congress came fairly close to settling the
war. However, it did not. Within six months or a year, I saw a number of the student delegates in
the Army.
After the First World War, I went first with the National City Bank, then with the Bankers' Trust
Company and then Dillon, Read and Company. I stayed in the Army Reserves. In 1939 and 1940
I was Chief of Staff of the 77th Division, a Reserve Division, and probably because of that I
came in contact with General [George C.] Marshall. In 1940 he invited me to go on active duty
in Washington on the general staff, G-1, where I stayed for about a year and a half before Pearl
Harbor. During that period I worked largely with then Major [Lewis B.] Hershey, later General
Hershey, in writing the Selective Service Act and putting together the administration of Selective
Service.
After Pearl Harbor, General Marshall agreed that I should leave staff work and get a regiment.
After a regimental commander's refresher course at Fort Benning, I commanded the 136th
Infantry, part of the 33rd Division, a National Guard Division from Illinois. I joined them
[3]
in Tennessee, then for training near Seattle, Washington, then to the California desert, then to the
Pacific Theatre. I was called back after about a year out there to head up contract termination for
the War Department.
Then I was asked by the Secretary of War Mr. [Henry M.] Stimson and the Secretary of the
Navy, Mr. [James V.J Forrestal at that time, along with Admiral Lewis Strauss, to try to put the
purchasing arrangements for the Army and Navy together with a common purchasing policy an
action which did put some of the purchasing for both services together.
Then I went to Germany, going to France first, while the war was still on, with General [Lucius]
Clay, preliminary to the occupation which he was expecting to take over in Germany under
General [Dwight D.] Eisenhower. I was asked by General Clay to take on the responsibility for
the economic side of the occupation. Then General Eisenhower left for the United States where
he became Chief of Staff of the Army. General Clay eventually became Commander in Chief for
the European Theater in addition to handling occupied Germany.
After about two years in Berlin dealing with the German economy, its agriculture, industry, trade
and general administration of its economy the German
[4]
government had simply disappeared, and the occupation forces of Great Britain, Russia and the
United States and eventually of France, became the German government for some period -- in
July of '47 I returned to the United States for a coal conference with the British about the Ruhr --
the need for more coal production. While there, Secretary of War [Robert] Patterson resigned;
General Kenneth Royall was made Secretary and he asked me to become Under Secretary, which
after consulting General Clay for obvious reasons, I accepted.
My duties for the next two years were primarily supervision of the three occupations: Germany,
Japan and Austria, although I became Acting Secretary when Mr. Royall was away from
Washington.
After I retired in early '49 and married again (my first wife had died early in the war), I returned
briefly to Dillon, Read and Company and then was invited by Governor [Thomas E.] Dewey of
New York State, where I was living, to take over the Trusteeship of the Long Island Railroad
after several very serious rear end collisions on that railroad, as a result of which the public had
lost confidence in the safety of the road and in the management. I discharged this responsibility
for
[5]
about a year. We were able to find electronic safety devices that were installed over a period of
about a year, and which automatically and electronically, through the rails, put the brakes on the
following train if two trains got too close together. There have been no rear and collisions on the
Long Island Railroad since.
About that time the Truman administration invited me to become the United States' member of
the NATO Council in Paris. The Council was moving from London to Paris and being upgraded,
as it became evident that it would be necessary, with the Korean war on and the threat to
Western Europe from Russia, to build up the Western world's mutual defenses. The NATO
Alliance had been formed on paper about a year and a half before, but it became very clear that it
would be necessary to have a large and active defense force in being.
Before accepting I asked for the opportunity to visit Europe briefly and talk with General
Eisenhower who was there in command of NATO's military forces, such as they were, to make
sure that he and I would be working in close harmony, he being the top military man in NATO,
and I to be the top civilian on the U.S. side on the NATO Council.
We met in Paris. He introduced me to Winston Churchill
[6]
who happened to be there at the time. We talked about my possible appointment and he not only
agreed that I should take it but welcomed my appointment.
I returned to the United States and suggested that since I would be dealing with the defense of
Europe, and since I would also be representing the Mutual Security Administration under Mr.
[Averell] Harriman and dealing with the economic problems of the European countries as well at
a time when France and Great Britain were practically bankrupt, and when our Mutual Security
arrangements and our Marshall Plan follow up were beginning to bear fruit, but still required a
great many adjustments and continued assistance, that I would need deputies with the proper
authority and rank in the defense field, in the economic field, and in the political field; plus an
overall deputy, since we were dealing with twenty European countries, and I would be traveling
a great deal in Europe and back and forth to Washington. He would be my alter ego. These
arrangements were all agreed to and the deputies appointed.
I went to Paris about the end of '51, spent a few weeks in close collaboration with Jean Monnet,
and a prominent Britisher, whose name slips me, and who later became head of the British
atomic energy commission.
[7]
The three of us, known correctly or not as the three wise men planned the recommendations that
would be made to the Lisbon Conference, to which came Secretary of State [Dean] Acheson;
Secretary of Defense, Robert Lovett; John Snyder, Secretary of the Treasury, and Averell
Harriman.
The Lisbon Conference was held in February 1952. It laid the groundwork on a very constructive
basis for the military buildup of NATO. The French were asked for twelve divisions, as I recall.
The United States had to agree to a great deal of economic support to make that possible. There
were political questions involved. The French Prime Minister, Mr. [Maurice] Faure, I believe it
was at that time, at the last minute in a private conference, held in the basement of the British
Embassy, in Lisbon, told us that he agreed with the principle, that he was going to agree, he
thought, to what we were asking, namely twelve French divisions, for the common defense. But
he said, "This is going to cost me my political head." We adjourned this private meeting, we
went into the final Lisbon Conference meeting, the agreement generally was reached, and the
agreement signed. Three days later M. Faure did lose his job as Prime Minister, but the
agreement held.
After about a year and a half the various agreements made at Lisbon were pretty well coming
into force.
[8]
General Eisenhower was elected President. He asked me to return to the United States before he
took over as President to meet with him and with his future Cabinet members to acquaint them
with the developments in NATO. He himself, of course, was quite familiar with what had gone
on there. As was customary, I gave the incoming President my resignation. He asked me not to
insist. I pointed out that including the war years I had been about ten years in Government
service, or more perhaps, and he agreed that I could retire about the middle of '53, which I did.
Shortly after that I went to Mexico for six years to head the Mexican Light and Power Company,
a most enjoyable and constructive business assignment. In 1959 I decided it was time to return to
the United States. I persuaded General Maxwell Taylor, who was then retiring as Chief of Staff
of the Army, to take over my job in Mexico, which he did. Mrs. Draper and I moved to
California, and I formed a financing firm with General [Frederick L.] Anderson who had been
my general deputy in NATO. And six or seven years later I retired from that firm, moved to
Washington, and became Chairman of Combustion Engineering in New York for a few years. In
1965 I retired as Chairman, and since then I have been devoting my entire time to trying to do
something about finding
[9]
solutions for the population problem of the world -- the so-called population explosion.
That's very lengthy, much more so than I anticipated making it.
HESS: That's quite all right. What is the name of the particular organization that you are with
now?
DRAPER: I wear several hats: I am Honorary Chairman of the Population Crisis Committee here
in Washington; I'm on the Governing Body of the International Planned Parenthood Federation;
and am Honorary Vice-Chairman of the Planned Parenthood movement in this country; also by
President Nixon's appointment. I represent the United States each two years, or whenever
meetings are held, of the United Nations Population Commission. Our last meeting was in
November 1971 in Geneva, the first two weeks of November. In general, my work with the
Population Crisis Committee, means dealing with our own Government, and other governments,
and with private and international organizations interested and involved in the population
problem. I travel a great deal.
In addition to the above, for the last few years I have been assisting Mr. Paul Hoffman, who has
been in charge of the Development Program of the United Nations,
[10]
to raise the funds from governments for the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, about
thirty million dollars this past year from forty six governments.
HESS: What are your earliest recollections of Mr. Truman?
DRAPER: I don't believe that I had ever met Mr. Truman personally until after he became
President. At the time of President Roosevelt's death I was in Washington, on the General Staff
of the Army. Shortly after that I went to Europe, on General Eisenhower's staff under General
Clay.
HESS: What were your impressions upon the death of President Roosevelt? You mentioned that
you were here in town, but what came to mind?
DRAPER: We were still at war. President Roosevelt had been a great war President. I'm a
Republican; he was a Democrat. I hadn't voted for him. I disagreed with many of his domestic
policies, but I certainly recognized and do today that he foresaw our participation in the war, our
necessary involvement, and that prepared for it in a way that the American people accepted.
While it took some time it did help greatly to bolster the British during their year of fighting it
out alone, under the lend-lease
[11]
agreements that he made with Mr. Churchill. He began building up the forces preliminary to
Pearl Harbor so that when that blow struck it was, I think, very largely due to Mr. Roosevelt's
forethought and foresight, that we were able to quickly mobilize and go to war effectively.
When he died, to get to your direct question, I had known that he was not in good health, but I
had no idea that he was near death. It was almost -- here in Washington -- almost a physical
shock to the entire community, that permeated the atmosphere in a way that I've never known
before or since. Even the declaration of war didn't compare, the shock waves, that seemed to be
going around us everywhere with our war leader suddenly dead.
HESS: As you know, several historians have said that President Roosevelt had prior information
that Pearl Harbor was to be attacked, and he did not notify the commanders so that the Japanese
would attack and get us into the war in that manner. What do you think of that?
DRAPER: I don't believe it. I don't know, but I don't believe it. I can't believe that if there was
any prior knowledge of Pearl Harbor that General Marshall would have been riding horseback
that Sunday morning when it happened.
HESS: What kind of a job did you think Mr. Truman would do
[ 12 ]
as President of the United States, and just what did you know about him on April 12, 1945?
DRAPER: I had a favorable picture of Mr. Truman without knowing him personally. His work
as Committee Chairman in the Senate, and his investigation of war activities which had gone on
for some time before he became Vice President, had favorably impressed everyone, including
myself. As Vice President he was not prominent in current goings-on, so that I didn't know too
much about him; and like everyone else, I wondered what kind of a President he was going to
make. I was tremendously impressed with his modesty and the way in which he took over the
Presidency, indicating that he thought the size of the job was such that he only hoped he could
live up to its requirements.
HESS: And before moving on, as you were with Dillon, Read for a good number of years, what
are your recollections of Mr. James Forrestal? When did you first meet Mr. Forrestal?
DRAPER: When I first joined Dillon Read which was in 1926. He was already one of the senior
members of the firm. I guess he was the senior member of the firm, probably, next to Mr.
Clarence Dillon, the top man, and a very able
[13]
financial genius, I would put it almost. He worked in a way like -- by himself to some degree, but
he had tremendous influence in bringing financial arrangements to fruition. He was a very fine
person in every way. I knew him well, intimately, worked under him for years, so that in 1940 I
went to Washington before he did, but when he was invited to Washington he was one of the so-
called nine anonymous young men in the White House. He impressed everyone that he worked
with here in Washington and moved up to Under Secretary of the Navy, Secretary of the Navy,
and finally the first Secretary of Defense.
The Secretary of the Navy when he came to Washington was Secretary [Frank] Knox. One of the
smartest things that President Roosevelt ever did was to bring two Republicans into the Cabinet,
and the timing was perfect. There had been a lot of bickering going on in the War Department
between Secretary [Harry H.] Woodring and Assistant Secretary [Louis] Johnson. Nobody knew
who was boss or what the policies were. When the President decided that the time had come to
have the other party represented in the Cabinet in order to attract national support he appointed
Mr. Stimson as Secretary of War and Mr. Knox as Secretary of the Navy. In effect he turned
over our national defense to the Republicans, and so far
[14]
as the individuals he selected were concerned, he made a ten strike with each.
Mr. Forrestal had been invited to serve generally in and around the White House, but settled
down in the Navy. Mr. Knox must have known him or came to know him, and pretty soon he
was Under Secretary of the Navy, and then became Secretary later on.
During the period after Pearl Harbor the man who was responsible for the rebuilding of our Navy
after the attack on Pearl Harbor destroyed so much of it, and who built it to levels we'd never
dreamed of before, and which made it possible to fight in two oceans, and gradually to move
across the Pacific, island after island, until we had conquered the Japanese, was James Forrestal.
HESS: In your opinion, what was his view of the unification of the services?
DRAPER: My impression of Jim Forrestal's views on unification are that he was resisting a great
deal of pressure from the admirals who were almost all opposed to the idea, while himself
believing that it was the right solution for American defense organization. His thinking was
probably affected by his close association with Bob Patterson, the then Secretary of War, and
probably also by President Truman's own views.
[ 15 ]
HESS: In your opinion, why was he selected to be the first Secretary of Defense?
DRAPER: Simply for that reason. I don't say it was to bribe the Navy admirals but his
appointment did certainly take into account their point of view. The Navy had always been on its
own. The Captain was supreme on his ship. The Navy had that overall point of view -- a good
one indeed for fighting battles on the sea. I'm sure the President said to himself, "We'll just take
the Navy along by putting him in charge." And it worked.
HESS: What is your general opinion of his effectiveness both as the Secretary of the Navy,
which you've fairly well covered, but as Secretary of Defense, too? Just how effective was he in
the job?
DRAPER: The first Secretary of Defense had a hard job, obviously. He had to bring together the
War Department, which became the Department of the Army, and the new Air Force, which had
been a part of the Army, and the Navy as well. For the Air Force it meant a greater degree of
autonomy. But both the Navy and the Army and the War Department had been supreme and
independent in their own right, and it was not an easy thing to knock their heads together and for
both to have a single boss. I
[16]
think he did that job very well indeed.
I worked very closely with him for about three months. He asked Secretary Royall to let me
spend a few months directly with the Secretary of Defense to build up and put forward the first
defense budget for the three services. So I worked day in and day out on that job and saw a great
deal of him during that period. It really meant that I was dealing back and forth and
compromising with the three services to try to find a budget that the President would approve
and that still took care of each of the three services to the extent possible within that limit.
HESS: In his Memoirs Mr. Truman makes the comment that in working on military budgets,
sometimes the Navy was the most difficult to satisfy and to get along with. What would be your
view?
DRAPER: I found that true, too.
HESS: Why would that be true? Why was that true?
DRAPER: Their tradition had always been one of independent action and the Navy considered it
simply had to have what it needed. The admirals were good proponents and didn't take no for an
answer easily. A lot of my good
[17]
Navy friends were in there fighting all the way. They are still good friends of mine, those that are
still living. But when they're arguing the question of the Navy's rights, they're very strong
protagonists.
Actually, to get back to that first budget for just a minute, I'm afraid that I would consider that
first budget one of President Truman's real mistakes. At that time -- what year would that have
been, 1948, I guess -- the three budgets were put together at three levels: One, if I remember the
figures, the minimum budget of thirteen and a half billion dollars for the three services, which
sounds picayune today; the middle budget was about seventeen billion and the third was what the
three services asked for, and which was the way we first started to put the figures together, it was
about twenty-one billion dollars. Mr. Forrestal felt very strongly, as did I, that while he could
justify reducing the twenty-one billion, he felt strongly that the middle ground of seventeen
billion was the irreducible minimum from the point of view of the national defense of this
country.
I prepared these three budgets. The thirteen and a half budget was only made because the
President had set that as the figure, although it wasn't supposedly the final figure. But that was
the figure he hoped to reach.
[18]
So we had to make a budget there, but to get the three services to agree on the figures for that,
just meant they had to be rammed down their throats. But the seventeen billion budget took care
reasonably at least, of what each of the three felt their really irreducible requirements actually
were, although they all three badly wanted the twenty-one billion budget.
I sat in the meeting when Mr. Forrestal presented the three budgets to the President, and Mr.
Forrestal was more concerned than I had ever seen him in my life. He was very, very seriously
troubled. After the presentation the President said very little except to ask a few questions. Then
the President said, "I'll let you know, Jim." And a day or two later he did let him know that it was
thirteen and a half billion -- the President's original budget. I think that may have helped to bring
on the Korean war. I think that may have helped to bring on Jim's death. That's something I'd like
to put off the record until after the President dies.
HESS: Now, a further question on this same matter: Was Frank Pace the Director of the Bureau
of the Budget at this time? Harold Smith, of course, was the first director and he was replaced by
James Webb. I believe at this time Frank Pace was Director of the Bureau of
[19]
the Budget. In drawing up these very important budgets, the most important -- the budgets that
take most of the money -- are the military budgets. In drawing these up, did you work with the
Bureau of the Budget?
DRAPER: I must have. I guess it was Frank Pace, but whoever it was I certainly must have
worked with him, but not nearly as closely as I did with the three services. My job, really, was --
as outlined to me by Mr. Forrestal -- although I guess I evolved the idea of the three budgets, was
to take into account the three requests from the services and then to get a reasonable budget
together -- one that he could recommend. This turned out to be the seventeen billion one. And
then he also asked me, against his better judgment, to prepare a budget at the lower level, set by
the President, and when the lower level was approved, I know that it was a great shock. It meant
to him that his country was not going to get what it needed for its defense for that period.
HESS: 1948 was a very important year, that was a political year, the year Mr. Truman ran and
was elected, to many peoples' surprise. In your opinion, do you think he had political
considerations in mind when he wanted a balanced budget that year? Was that his reason for the
[20]
lower budget?
DRAPER: I wouldn't want to express an opinion on that. He felt that a balanced budget, now that
we were out of the war, was the necessity, the need for the country, I'm sure. Whether there were
political overtones, too, I can't say.
HESS: All right. As you have mentioned, the cutting back of the armed forces at this time left us
somewhat unprepared at the advent of the Korean war. We were unprepared to meet the situation
that arose. Where should the blame lie?
DRAPER: Those decisions are a matter of judgment. The President has to make the final
decisions. He doesn't have anybody to lay the blame on. I think one of the great tributes to Mr.
Truman, and I would be the first to make it, was his power of decision. Throughout the time that
I was Under Secretary, and sometimes acting as Secretary, I would go to the President from time
to time, with particular problems of the Department of the Army that had taken us weeks or
months in some cases to evaluate and decide what we should recommend or what course we
thought the country should pursue. I have never been impressed by anyone more in my life than
by
[21]
the way in which he would receive the problem; I would describe it briefly, for five or ten
minutes; he would ask a few questions; I would give him the two or possibly three alternative
decisions that could be made; he would make one of them, and that would be that. He would go
on to something else. That's the way he ran the Presidency. He constantly carried out the little
motto on his desk, "The Buck Stops Here."
Now, to get back to your question. He had to decide on whether a balanced budget at that time
was more important to the country than a little more money from his point of view in defense,
and he made the decision. I wouldn't criticize it.
HESS: How often did you meet with the President during the time that you were Under Secretary
of the Army, approximately?
DRAPER: I suppose twenty times, I don't know. I was there about two years -- twenty or thirty
times.
HESS: Did you work with any of the White House staff members at the time?
DRAPER: Yes, yes.
HESS: Who comes to mind? Did you work with Clark Clifford?
[22]
Clifford was Special Counsel at that time.
DRAPER: Yes, yes, very often with Clark Clifford.
HESS: Did he provide you with any particular help? Anything that you and he worked on that
might help illustrate his functions in this field? Is there anything that comes to mind?
DRAPER: No, we talked about the problems as they came along and he'd give me the President's
answers. As a rule, of course, Secretary Royall had these conversations. It was when either he
delegated me to do something in particular or when he'd be away on a trip that I would have the
direct contact.
HESS: Did you have any contact with the Military Aide, General Harry Vaughan?
DRAPER: I certainly met him a few times, but remember nothing in particular.
HESS: You have mentioned a meeting at the White House in which Mr. Forrestal presented the
budget and mentioned his attitude at that time. What are the earliest signs that you can recall of
the unfortunate mental breakdown that overtook Mr. Forrestal? Was this the first time
[23]
that you noticed that something might be wrong?
DRAPER: Well, I didn't notice any mental breakdown or anything of that kind. He was simply
greatly shocked that the President's decision was so low. No, I think that was much later on I
retired. I saw Jim several times before that. I retired, around March of '49. I had been wanting to
return to private life before that but Jim had persuaded me to stay just as the President had
persuaded him to stay over the election into the new year. He and Mr. Royall and the President
permitted me to go in March of '49.
HESS: The same month that Mr. Forrestal left.
DRAPER: He left after I did. I saw him before I left to say goodbye, and I noticed then that he
was very distraught.
I returned to Washington about ten days later, after my wedding and a short honeymoon, and had
breakfast with Jim, and then I could hardly get his attention on anything. He was obviously
worried, distraught
HESS: Early in April.
DRAPER: No, this was still in March, I think. He was soon going to leave -- I knew then he was
going to leave. He was going to leave and I ascribed his distraught condition
[24]
to the fact that he was leaving, and perhaps to not being happy about his successor going to take
over.
HESS: In March Louis Johnson replaced him.
DRAPER: That's correct.
HESS: Why was that change made? You mentioned that Mr. Forrestal had wanted to leave.
DRAPER: He had wanted to leave, but this was in the fall or winter before, but the President
persuaded him that he needed him and wanted him to stay, and he agreed to stay, and then
apparently very suddenly the President decided to appoint Mr. Johnson. My information at the
time, which was rumor largely, was that Mr. Johnson had raised the money for the election and
was told that he could have any job he wanted after the election, if the President were elected,
which you can understand. Then Mr. Johnson asked for the Defense job, and the President gave
it to him.
I was present when Johnson was sworn in at the Pentagon. They had a full dress affair in the
encircled area inside the Pentagon Square or Pentagon, and the President pinned a medal on Jim,
and then swore in Johnson. Everybody from the Pentagon had been invited
[25]
to flock inside the enclosure and see the show. Jim went back to his office and a friend of his
from New York took him by plane to Hobe Sound where he stayed at Douglas Dillon's house.
That's where the tragedy started.
HESS: Do you think that Mr. Forrestal had changed his mind in March and would liked to have
remained?
DRAPER: I don't know, but my guess is at that time he didn't like to be suddenly replaced. He
perhaps would voluntarily have offered to go in another month or two, but I don't think he felt
happy at all about the President, after urging him so hard to stay, deciding that somebody else
should take the job. That's a personal impression only.
HESS: Some people say that Mr. Forrestal's lack of support of the President in the election might
have influenced that. Would he reasonably have expected support from Mr. Forrestal?
DRAPER: It's been a pretty regular rule in our Government that people involved in defense
should not get into politics. I certainly agree with that rule personally, and I think that was Jim's
point of view, and I wouldn't expect that the President thought anything else. No, I think it was
just because Johnson had put the President
[26]
under a real obligation and he was paying his debt.
HESS: We discussed the reduced budget, and not too long after Mr. Johnson came in, I believe
one of his first actions was to stop work on the super carrier, the U.S.S. United States, and that
was when Secretary of the Navy John L. Sullivan resigned, shortly after you left.
DRAPER: That's right, but I'm not familiar with that incident.
HESS: Back on General Marshall. You had mentioned that General Marshall asked you to come
back into the Army in 1940. What were your early associations with General Marshall? When
did you first meet him?
DRAPER: As Chief of Staff of the 77th Division, which was then a part-time job, that was when
I was in the Reserves. We could see war looming ahead. I had for some months, maybe for a
year, been working with other officers of the Division, and with General Vanderbilt who was the
commanding general at that time, preparing war plans so far as the Division was concerned, and
looking forward at the right time to calling in the enlisted men and also piecing out the training
of the officers. We had had occasion two or three times to take some of these
[27]
plans to Washington for consultation. And General Marshall had sat in on some of these
consultations. I had met with him to discuss these plans and problems with him on behalf of our
Division.
One day I got a personal phone call from him asking if I'd come down and go on active duty for
six months -- it turned out to be nine years -- but I can't blame General Marshall for that. I really
think that he wanted to have some Reserve officer down there to give him whatever benefit there
might be in the Reserve thinking, and also to reflect perhaps, through that Reserve officer, to
some of the Reserve Divisions, the War Department thinking about the future of the Reserves.
But it didn't turn out that way. I became almost immediately involved in the Selective Service
and in the G-1 operation and was absorbed with that, working with General -- then Major --
Lewis Hershey. The President appointed me -- President Roosevelt -- to the Army and Navy
Recreation Board and some of the other boards and committees that dealt with the enlargement
of the strength of the Army and the Navy.
HESS: You were with General Marshall at the Moscow conference, but that was in 1947, so we
have another subject before we come to that. We will come back to General Marshall.
[28]
But we should cover your experiences in Germany at the end of World War II. I believe that you
were Chief of the Economics Division of the Control Council for Germany from '45 to '47. Just
what were your general impressions at that time and what were your duties?
DRAPER: As I've said before, the occupation became the actual Government of Germany. When
we moved up from Versailles, our offices were first in Frankfurt, and then in July of 1945 we
moved to Berlin.
First the tripartite Control Council, then when the French joined us, the quadripartite Control
Council was the Government of Germany. It was simply that. Each of our national army
organizations in our own zones of Germany were supreme, subject only to the quadripartite
policy decisions. So my job, under those general policies and in line with the Morgenthau
doctrine that had been directed to us from Washington as the U.S. economic policy for Germany,
was to run the economy of our zone of Germany. That meant the agriculture, the industry, and
the trade (in or out of Germany although there was no trade outside of Germany at that time),
and to try to keep the country from starving and from going berserk.
The crops that year were quite good, and there was
[29]
also considerable food we found that the Wehrmacht had stored, which we took over. So there
was no immediate danger of starvation that particular fall or even that winter. The winter was not
too cold, but there was great concern whether the crop could be gathered that summer and fall.
There were some eight million Germans in prison camps. The crop had to be brought in by the
old men and the boys and the women, but they did it. Industry was at a complete standstill; the
coalmines in the Ruhr had been flooded before the Germans gave up that area; there was no coal
production; and no coal on hand; no factory was turning a wheel hardly anywhere in Germany.
The destruction of the air bombing had made all of the factories or most of them look as if they
never would run again. It turned out a year later that after the debris was cleared away, there was
more of the machinery and the going parts of the factories able to be revived than we had
expected. But at the beginning there was no production of coal or of anything else, except food
on the farms, and the factories and the industrial production of the country was practically nil.
So, except for what food was being grown, Germany had to start from a standing start to again
make its way.
We found after a few months that we were going to
[30]
have to import food. Western Germany, the part where we were, had not been the breadbasket;
that had been Eastern Germany largely, and we were getting no supplies of food or anything else
from the Russian zone, so that we had to look the situation in the face and come to a decision.
General Clay first had to be persuaded and then he had to help me persuade them back in
Washington that we in this country -- even though we had conquered Germany -- that we were
going to have to help feed them. That was an idea that no one at that time had even envisaged.
We had to get appropriations; I had to come back to appear before the Congress, and
HESS: Was it difficult putting that view over?
DRAPER: Very. And I think probably it was only made possible because the crisis was delayed
about a year. Actually we managed to wiggle through during the first eight or ten months
because our own Army had been bringing with it a food reserve to avoid feeding troubles for our
allies or our enemies during the fighting, and we had as well as the food that we found in the
warehouses that the Germans had husbanded as their stock and their reserve. Those things helped
that first six or eight or ten months.
But as those months went by, we could see that in
[ 31 ]
our area of Germany we had to have more food, and the British concluded similarly, particularly
in the Ruhr.
The one thing that saved the day, in my judgment, was the action taken by one who is now a very
close friend of mine, Mr. Tracy Voorhees. He was the adviser to the President on food. I don't
know at what stage that appointment was made, but that's how it turned out. He clearly saw these
problems, both for Japan and Germany, and he had the great good fortune, and the imagination,
to suggest to President Truman that the one man in this country who could help solve this
problem and help persuade the Republican Congress that action should be taken, was former
President Hoover. He first suggested this to the President, then he went to see Mr. Hoover, and
the President then talked to Mr. Hoover.
As you recall, after the First World War, Mr. Hoover had made his famous journey to Belgium
and to Europe. He still found alive and was able to collect, half a dozen of the top people who
had gone with him in 1919 on that first relief mission, when President Truman asked him to
repeat, on a much more serious scale, his visit to Belgium after the First World War that had
prevented that country from starving.
So, I guess it was early in '46, or the winter of
[32]
'45-'46, that General Clay and I got word from Washington that the former President was
coming with Mr. Voorhees and a group of those that he had collected together, to make a survey,
not only of Germany but of the food situation in our allies' territory as well; France, Belgium,
and so on. So they came first to Germany, and I remember the occasion very well, when they
came in by train. General Clay and I met them, Mr. Hoover and Tracy Voorhees and the others.
Mr. Hoover understood the situation very quickly because of his past experiences, and he came
to realize that if the Germans weren't fed (I don't care who fed them), but if they weren't fed, we
couldn't stay there even with bayonets, that that was not a tolerable situation in modern times,
and that if we wanted a peaceful occupation, if we wanted to bring the Germans back into the
community of nations, first they had to be fed, not too much, but they had to have enough to live.
The ration in Berlin was 1560 calories a day, just about half of what you and I eat now, or then,
as well. They got along on it. It wasn't a good solid three meals by any means.
One of the first steps we had to take was because we needed coal worse than anything else,
except food, and
[33]
we didn't have any coal. The Ruhr mines had to be mined if we were going to get the factories
started, and we found that the miners couldn't mine coal on 1560 calories or even 1800, so one of
the first steps we took was to raise the calorie level for the miners to 4000 calories, against great
protest, obviously. Then the next step we had to take was to search the miners when they went
home every night, because they were dividing their 4000 calories with their families. Well, from
the humanitarian point of view that's fine, but it couldn't work, and so we had to strip them of
food and they had to eat it themselves. So it was that kind of decisions we had to face.
So Mr. Hoover made his survey, went over the findings with me, and then he went to three or
four of these other countries which were pleading that they wanted the food. The worst thing in
the world from their point of view was to feed their former enemies. And so the decision had to
be made, and was made, that the allies, most of them, while not well off with food, weren't
starving. We did furnish some food to them, and certainly later under the Marshall plan they got
food, but the basic decision was made that we had to feed the Germans, that they were the worst
off, and we had to send food to them. And it was Mr. Hoover and his influence with the
Republican Congress
[34]
and his report to them, privately as well as his published report, that did the trick. He and I saw
the head of the appropriations committee, and things like that, and he appeared before them, I
believe; I certainly did.
And that was the one part of the appropriation, as I remember it, that the Senator from New
Hampshire, who was chairman of the appropriations committee, accepted in its entirety, with Mr.
Hoover's word for it -- and then it was appropriated by the House of Representatives, too, and we
got every dollar of the request we made.
Then the food had to be bought. It turned out in '46-'47, that year, worldwide, including the
United States, that the crops were very poor, and Tracy Voorhees did the buying for the
Government for the food, or directed it, and had great difficulty to find the food, to find wheat
and corn and the other basic things, and he finally shipped one crop which was in surplus,
potatoes, and we got a good many shiploads of potatoes. Those you had to get over in a hurry
and use in a hurry or they'd spoil. But I give Mr. Hoover and Tracy Voorhees very high marks --
and Mr. Truman the President, who backed us to the limit -- for the fact that we were able to
prevent most of the threatened starvation, although there were plenty of deaths from hunger and
cold because there was no coal for
[35]
heating, and comparatively little food, so that disease took the old people off pretty easily. So
while there were many deaths that undoubtedly had to do with lack of food, there wasn't rampant
starvation. The fact that they got fed reasonably, small rations, but reasonably; and then the fact
that we took their part in Berlin, against the Russians' willingness to starve them out at the time
of the airlift, and at the time of the blockade, those two things together, in my judgment have
now made the Germans among our most trusted allies.
HESS: What was the nature of the experiences that you had at that time working with the Soviet
representatives that were in Germany? Were they difficult people to work with? Did they live up
to agreements that were made?
DRAPER: They were difficult people to work with, they didn't always live up to their
agreements, but I greatly admired those that I worked with during the first year, particularly
General Shabalin, who was my opposite member as the Russian member of the economic
directorate. He had been a schoolteacher before World War I, had joined the army in World War
I, stayed in the Army, became a general but was still a schoolteacher and a peasant at heart, and
with it all, a fine person. I met him first about ten
[36]
days after we got to Berlin. I was in General Clay's staff meeting -- Saturday morning was our
staff meeting -- and he came to my office, I learned later, storming around because the day
before he had had a pass to go to Frankfurt on one of our planes to see the city, and he had gone
back this Saturday morning because the weather had been bad Friday, and they told him the pass
had been rescinded by my order, which didn't happen to be true, but that's what they told him.
And he came storming into my office to complain and to give me hell. When I came out of the
staff meeting, he'd gone, but I learned all about his visit.
So after I had lunch I got my jeep and my Russian interpreter and went over to his headquarters.
He wasn't there but I found his house, and I called there. At first he wouldn't let me in, he was so
mad, but finally my interpreter made him understand that he could go to Frankfurt every day of
the week as far as I was concerned, and I would see that he got there. So then he went a hundred
percent the other way and said, "Kamerad," put his arms around me, and said we had to celebrate
this meeting of the two armies by my staying and having lunch with him. Well, I'd just finished a
big lunch, but I figured in the interest of international camaraderie,
[37]
I had to eat another lunch.
I never suffered so much in my life for my country. Lunch started with a great big bowl of
cabbage soup, and I thought maybe that was the lunch, but the next course was a big steak with
four eggs on it.
Anyway, we made up, and we were good friends ever since. We didn't always agree, obviously.
He'd get instructions one way and I'd get them another, but we always remained friends and I'm
sure that he, and I think all of the other Russian generals that I dealt with, including even
Marshal Zhukov and General (later Marshal) Sokolovsky, were looking forward to a peaceful
solution, just as we were, and hoping to build a permanent peace, in contrast to the two world
wars in thirty years, which we had just experienced.
But as our system of rapidly bringing the troops back home went on, the Russian attitude in
Moscow, hardened steadily. Our so-called point system meant that the oldest ones in service,
whether officers or enlisted men, unless they volunteered to stay, were railroaded home first.
HESS: We lost our most experienced men first?
DRAPER: Yes. As a result of that policy we were losing
[ 38 ]
them pretty fast, and our equipment was being loaded and taken out and driven out, and taken
out on ships, as fast as it could go.
When the war ended I suppose that our military strength in Europe and Germany was greater
than any similar military strength that had ever been concentrated in one spot before in the
history of the world. Within six or eight or ten months as this point system operated, our military
strength was -- I won't say nil -- but certainly not very great.
HESS: Greatly reduced.
DRAPER: Tremendously reduced, and the Russians could see that as well as we could.
HESS: Could you see a change in their attitude?
DRAPER: Without any question. After about a year, instead of being fairly reasonable -- they
never were truly reasonable, but at least you could get along with them -- but then it became nyet
instead of saglasin, no instead of yes, almost invariably. They undoubtedly thought back in
Moscow at that time that they were going to conquer Europe, move across the rest of Europe to
the channel. And I think that when the Korean war started
[39]
that's what they had in mind doing as soon as they could.
A map had been put out by our State Department that showed the perimeter that we were going
to defend, and it did not include Korea. I think we fooled the Russians as well as ourselves. And
when Truman made perhaps the greatest decision of his life, to go back and fight in Korea,
which he did within twenty-four hours of their attack, the United Nations soon endorsed his
decision and our Congress came along later. But it was President Truman personally that made
that decision. He acted, and fooled the Russians. We weren't too ready for it ourselves, but we
prevented Europe being taken over -- or rather he did -- by that action.
HESS: You have mentioned the Morgenthau plan. I also understand there was a Draper plan, and
it was your belief that the German economy could not be restored under the agriculture and light
industry plan of Henry Morgenthau. Tell me about your plan.
DRAPER: I never heard of a Draper plan in Germany. Later on there was one that was called
that in Japan.
The Morgenthau plan was unfortunate; it was based on vengeance plus the theory that the
Germans had started World War I; perhaps they had, but they were paying for
[40]
it anyway, and they had certainly started World War II. And Mr. Morgenthau was of the opinion
that Germany should be prevented from having the where withal to ever start another war, and he
persuaded President Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill to agree to his proposals. He believed that if
the Germans were limited to growing food and to light industry and were not permitted any
substantial amount of steel production or other basic industrial production, and not permitted to
build ships or any of the other things that are required for war, even when on a peacetime basis,
that they would be kept perpetually and forever in a condition impossible for them to wage war.
That also would be in a condition which would become impossible for the Germans to exist
unless somebody helped them and provided the necessities of life. It became evident to us very
quickly that this was the case, and that if we carried out literally the terms of the very famous
Morgenthau directive, the United States would have to support Germany for the rest of time or as
long as that policy stayed in effect. And so, we had to wiggle here and waggle there and do the
best we could without openly breaking our directive to permit the German economy to begin to
function. We argued with
[41]
this one and argued with that one here in Washington and in Germany, wherever we had the
chance, and bit by bit, we recouped or revised the situation so that it became possible.
A Dr. Calvin Hoover from Duke University came over. He was a very fine international
economist, who is still alive. Although he only had a limited period of service, a few months, we
asked him under the directive to draft up a potential possible level of industry plan. He did that
very effectively, but from the point of view of the directive, and so under duress, under pressure.
And it was his plan that with some modifications was finally adopted by the quadripartite
government for Germany. The levels were changed some.
We were more hardboiled than anybody except the Russians. The British were the most sensible.
The French were even better than we were, although they were pretty severe, too. The Russians
went even beyond the Morgenthau plan. They were basing their tough attitude on the fact that
their whole country had been ravaged and millions of their people killed. They had been invaded,
and you have a certain point of view when that happens. They were there to take it out on
Germany, I guess, and we were pretty near as bad, although we hadn't been invaded.
[42]
Anyway, the level of industry was finally determined on a level that didn't last long; it wasn't
realistic. It took about two years to change. It was after I was back in Washington as Under
Secretary before that directive was finally officially revoked.
In the meantime, we didn't pay as much attention to it as perhaps we should from the point of
view of military discipline. There were several efforts to pull me back and have me charged with
not carrying out the directive.
General Clay always defended me. He knew perfectly well that such a policy couldn't last just as
well as I did. We fought it out and finally persuaded Washington. General Marshall himself
defended me in testimony before a Congressional Committee. So, it finally worked out. The real
turning point came when the currency was devalued or revalued in 1948. At that time we gave
the Russians the opportunity to do the same to revalue the mark in their sector, in their zone; they
refused. I was back in Washington before this -- when they walked out of the four power council
meeting -- the Kommanditura. A few days later they declared the blockade of Berlin.
HESS: Which we will get to in just a minute. Did you ever discuss the Morgenthau plan with its
author, with Henry Morgenthau?
[43]
DRAPER: Yes, I had a session with him before I went to Germany and he gave me his views. At
that time I didn't have any very clear cut views myself, one way or the other. I hadn't been in
Germany except on that Ford Peace Expedition I spoke of many years before. I had gone through
Germany from Sweden to Holland in a locked car with all the other peace seeking delegates,
guarded by German bayonets and with signs saying that we were spies and the soldiers shouldn't
talk to us. So that was my only former visit to Germany. So I didn't, at that time, do anything but
listen. I don't think I ever talked to him about it during the period of the occupation, but I did
since, before his death, and he and I didn't agree.
HESS: What did he say? Did he realize that you were there in Germany and not really going
along with his plan?
DRAPER: Oh, I'm sure he did.
HESS: Did he say anything of that nature when you spoke to him later?
DRAPER: Yes, in a more or less friendly fashion we agreed that we had been in complete
disagreement. By that time the whole situation had changed, of course. He was no longer in
office either.
[44]
HESS: That's right. What were his views? Did he think his plans should have been adhered to,
that things would have been better off if Germany had been turned into an agricultural nation?
DRAPER: I would think probably so. He certainly wasn't giving any ground, but it was a
friendly conversation. But it was past history by that time.
HESS: Anything else before we move on to the period of time that you were military
government adviser to General Marshall in Moscow?
DRAPER: No, that was while I was still in Germany. I think we went to Moscow in December
1946 and were there about eight weeks. The conference ended earlier than this memo would
indicate.
HESS: Oh, I see. I had the wrong dates down here.
DRAPER: I figure the conference ended in February.
HESS: December through February.
DRAPER: February, maybe March.
HESS: Tell me about the conference. What comes to mind when you look back on that
conference, and the Russians' attitude?
[45]
DRAPER: It was one of the most interesting experiences of my life.
We were there in Moscow for seven or eight weeks. We expected it to be much shorter, and it
dragged out. They were most hospitable as far as the physical facilities went. They cleaned all
their top people out of a hotel before we came and repainted it and, in effect, turned the hotel
over to us. Nobody in Russia owned an automobile, of course, but they had assigned automobiles
to all their top people, generals and government officials, but they took them away from many of
them for us. Each one of us had a car and a driver assigned to us. Food was scarce for the
population but not for us. We had everything we could ask for including very scarce fresh eggs.
They did everything they could to be hospitable.
General Marshall was our representative. Molotov was usually speaking for the Russian.
[Aneurin] Bevin, the British coalminer who became Foreign Secretary, was British
representative and the star performer, I would say, of the whole show. The Frenchman was good,
too. It was a battle of wits and a battle of nations for several weeks.
The basic differences, of course, were obvious between the Russians and the other three. Bevin
told
[46]
them off several times. He was the only one, he said, of all of them, in spite of what the Russians
were saying, that ever really worked at a job such as the mines. He knew what the working man's
needs were better than they did, and yet he saw it from a democratic point of view and not a
dictator's -- but he was absolutely frank. The differences of opinion were very, very real, and not
very much agreement was reached. In spite of putting out statements from time to time that
looked reasonably favorable, there wasn't much really accomplished. About half way through the
conference, the question of our supporting the Greeks and the Turks came up when it was
announced by President Truman. General Marshall, of course, was our Secretary of State and
was there with us. He was involved very definitely in the new Truman Doctrine and the Russians
were supporting the other side. So it was a very open split. General Marshall handled himself
beautifully.
I often got to see Averell Harriman who was our Ambassador in Moscow then. He had also been
our Ambassador in 1945, when I had gone to Moscow the first time in the fall of '45 as Acting
Chairman of the Reparations Commission. At that time I really had the chance to really know
Mr. Harriman. I had met him a few times before. He had the picture of the Russians' real
ambition and real lack
[47]
of desire to come to friendly terms, of peaceful friendly relations with the United States. Earlier,
I think, than any other of our diplomats or officials. I had certainly gotten from him in September
of 1945, a picture of Russia as it's turned out to really be, far better than from anyone else. At
that time, General Clay and I had tended to discount his point of view, because in Germany we
both were hoping and thinking and wishing that we were going to reach a peaceful solution
between our two countries. I don't think Harriman thought that at all, because he had seen the
Russians operating from behind the scenes through a good part of the war.
To go back to the foreign ministers' meeting, we discussed the whole future of Europe, and
indirectly how the United States and Russia would be living together after the war. We didn't get
very far, in fact it was at the Moscow Conference that the Cold War really started. So the foreign
ministers had to have another meeting in Paris a year later, as I remember, to try to patch things
up. So we just went on, each side going their own way more and more.
HESS: Not too long after General Marshall's return was the date of his speech at Harvard
University. It was on June 5th, the famous Marshall Plan speech. At the
[48]
time that the foreign ministers' meeting was going on, was there very much discussion about the
necessity for a massive aid plan in all of Europe, such as the Marshall Plan came to be?
DRAPER: No, there were some off-the-record backroom discussions, many of those, as to what
was going to happen in Western Europe including Germany. But I was surprised when the
Marshall Plan was announced. I remember being at a garden party on a Sunday in Germany
when someone came and handed me the press release that had just come off the wire of General
Marshall's speech at Harvard. It was something that I knew very little about until that happened.
Later on, of course I participated a great deal as the Plan developed.
HESS: Which we will get to. I believe your last duty as a military government official was in
connection with the British-American conference on the Ruhr coal production which was held
here in town in August of 1947. We've mentioned that earlier this morning, but could you
expand on that? What do you recall about that particular conference? Why was it called, what
was its importance, and what was its outcome?
DRAPER: There were over the months many discussions of what
[49]
should happen to the Ruhr coal. There were claims on it from almost every one of our allies. The
need for more coal was very evident, and there was more coal there than anywhere else in
Europe. Why the meeting was called in Washington rather than in Germany I didn't know at the
time, and don't know now. I suppose our own Government officials including the Under
Secretary of War, Kenneth Royall, wanted to find out why the coal production wasn't rising
quicker, and why we weren't able to meet the requests of our allies. One of the things that we had
a specific directive on in the early days, and I think it was signed by Churchill and Roosevelt
personally, was that a very large part of the coal in the Ruhr (and this was before much was
being mined) had to go to Belgium and France, and we couldn't carry it out. Germany simply
couldn't have existed if some of that coal, or even the bulk of that coal, which was very little,
very much less than the requirements, didn't go into German industry. We fought that battle out
with Washington and finally won it. But at the time of the coal conference this was still
simmering and still a problem, and I presume that's why this meeting was held in Washington.
The meeting was going very well. We had settled all the various issues, and just about the time
we were coming to a conclusion, Mr. Royall called me one morning
[50]
and said that Mr. Robert Patterson, the Secretary of War, had just called him to tell him that he
had just resigned, and was leaving Washington that day. His money had run out completely, he
had borrowed all he could on his life insurance policies, and he had to go back to work in order
to be able to support his family. He didn't put it that way publicly, obviously.
Judge Patterson had come to this conclusion that very morning when his secretary brought in the
figures. He called the President and said, "I'd like to come over and see you." And when he dial
he told him that he was retiring, resigning, and leaving Washington the same day. Before he saw
the President, he told Mr. Royall about this, who was his Under Secretary. He also had told him
that if the President asked him for a recommendation he was going to recommend Mr. Royall as
Secretary.
Kenneth Royall called me to tell me this and to say that if this happened that same day, he was
going to have to move over to the Secretary's office, and would I be good enough for three or
four days to just cover his desk and handle what papers I could and those that I couldn't, come
and see him about. I said I shouldn't really do this because I was in uniform and this was a
civilian job. "Well," he said, "you'll be just doing this on my
[51]
behalf, so don't worry about that."
This all did happen, and he became Secretary. Three or four days later he asked me to stay at the
desk and take over and become Under Secretary, provided the President approved, and if I was
confirmed by the Senate. I said I would have to talk to General Clay first, who was my
commander. I was reporting to him, and this was going to twist the relationship all the way
around. So I did talk to General Clay on the long distance telephone and he said, "Sure, go
ahead." So I did become Under Secretary.
HESS: This was in August of 1947?
DRAPER: I guess so. I don't remember the exact date.
HESS: As a Republican, what are your views on Mr. Truman's understanding of the political
importance of having members of the opposition party represented in high Government office?
DRAPER: I don't think I ever discussed the question with him. He certainly knew what benefit
President Roosevelt had derived from appointing Mr. Stimson and Mr. Knox. But I wasn't
appointed as a Republican, I'm sure, as far as Mr. Truman was concerned, nor General Royall
[52]
either.
General Royall and I had worked closely together when he and I were serving together, during
the year or more that I had been in Washington before I went to Germany, working on contract
termination, and when he was working on various matters on the staff. So we had gotten to be
rather close friends. I was back there and working under his jurisdiction on this coal conference.
He was participating in that, and he simply thought, "Here is a fellow that I have confidence in;
he knows the situation in Germany; he hasn't been to Japan, but those are our two big occupation
problems, and why wouldn't he be the right fellow to have here." It had nothing to do with
whether I was a Republican or a Socialist or a Democrat.
HESS: And I understand that shortly after your appointment you went over to Japan, is that
correct?
DRAPER: That's right. I had never met General MacArthur, but I had heard fantastic tales about
him, and I figured that he would think, "Here's this fellow who's been in Germany and
Germany's going to get a good deal of the favors if he's going to be the Under Secretary." I
thought the best thing for me to do if I was going to
[53]
be evenhanded and have any influence in Japan on the occupation there, was to go to Japan right
away. Mr. Royall had delegated to me under his basic responsibility, the operation of the three
occupations. So I felt I'd better get right over there and come to terms with General MacArthur
and let him know that I was ready to assist in any reasonable way to make the Japanese
occupation a success. I think it was the right thing to have done.
I arrived there. I informed him that I was coming. He was at the airport to meet me, which I
believe was the first time he'd met any official from Washington. He took me right to lunch and I
said, "What can I do to help?"
Almost the first question he asked me was, "Could you find me somebody that knows something
about running the economy of Japan, because I don't. And my military officers who are
responsible for it don't either," which was obvious and natural.
So my quest back here was to find such a man, and it took some months. Before I was able to
solve that one, I took Paul Hoffman who was then president of Studebaker this was before the
Marshall Plan -- and Percy Johnston, the head of the Chemical Bank in New York, and three or
four other businessmen as a group to Japan to make a report on just the kind of thing that I'd
been up against
[54]
in Germany. While it wasn't called the Morgenthau Plan, the economic order to MacArthur very
closely paralleled those that went to Germany.
There was one big exception, a difference, and that was that contrary to the situation in
Germany, there was a Japanese government. The fact that the Emperor had been permitted to
stay and that the Japanese government continued in office, made it easier in many ways in Japan
than in Germany to bring about a stable situation. But of course, General MacArthur was
Emperor No. 1 and the other one was Emperor No. 2, actually General justified that position and
that confidence in the eyes of the Japanese people, who had expected a cutthroat dictator; and
instead they found a great administrator who fed them when there was no food, who was just but
severe, and who merited and received their adulation. I guess that is the right word, and certainly
he gained their great respect. Every morning when he, at a certain minute, would appear in his
car to enter the Dai-Ichi Building where his headquarters were, there were hundreds of people
gathered there. This went on for months and months, just to see him come in; and it was the
same at night when he left.
I took this group of businessmen over, because I
[55]
had become convinced from what I'd known in Germany and what I had learned in Japan in two
or three visits, that the orders concerning the economy of Japan had to be changed. I took this
group of businessmen there to buttress my own recommendations to the President and the
Secretary of State and the Congress to change the instructions to MacArthur in Japan. There
wasn't a wheel turning, they didn't have a pound of cotton to spin in their textile mills, arid while
they had coal of a poor quality and water power, those were about their two assets. There are
very few resources in Japan, natural resources, except the people themselves. Their whole
economy is based on taking in raw materials and fashioning them and then selling them to the
world. They do it pretty well, as you know. But then they had no raw material. They had no
credit; they had no money; they had no way to buy raw materials, unless we provided them, and
we weren't providing them. The place was, so far as industry was concerned, a morgue.
The orders were that General MacArthur was not responsible for the economy, that he had the
authority, of course, but the real responsibility was that of the Japanese government, but they had
no authority; they had no assets, no capital; so the thing was just falling
[56]
between two stools. The Japanese yen was depreciating six or seven percent a month. The whole
country was being fed and largely fed by us, but that's all you could say.
You spoke of the Draper plan, this plan, or this report that we made, that Paul Hoffman and
Percy Johnston and the rest of the businessmen made after we spent had a month in Japan. The
report we made resulted in the President changing the policy, on the recommendation of the
Secretary of State. Secretary of the Treasury John Snyder was the first one to understand it, and
the President also soon understood it fully. And it was then that I recommended to the President
that Joe [Joseph M.7 Dodge, who had been in charge of the finance division in Germany, and
who had then had gone back to his Detroit bank, and became president of the American Banker's
Association, be invited to go to Japan as a kind of economic czar. I had asked him but he
wouldn't go before. Now the rules were changed, there was a chance to win, for the economy to
recover but it took somebody with a lot of knowledge and a lot of guts to do it. General
MacArthur had promised his complete support, which he always gave. So the President invited
Dodge to come to Washington. He told me that morning before seeing
[57]
the President that he wasn't going to take the job. The President saw him and Dodge had lunch
with me and by that time he had taken the job.
The same thing was almost true with Paul Hoffman whose wife recommended against his taking
the Marshall plan job. He was offered the job while we were on the way back from Japan in
Hawaii. He was on my plane and we got off in Honolulu and there was a phone call from the
White House for Paul Hoffman. They got on the phone with him and said that the Congress had
just passed the Economic Cooperation Plan for Europe, and the President wanted to sign it the
next day, and at the same time to announce the new administrator was Paul Hoffman. So
whoever it was in the White House said, "We'd like your answer on the telephone, please."
Paul said, "Well, you have my answer on the telephone. It's no!"
And then they got me on the phone and said, "How soon can you get this fellow to Washington."
We flew to Los Angeles. I had dinner with him, stayed with his family that night, and his wife
said, "No Paul, you can't take it." He called his associates in South Bend at Studebaker and they
said, "No, you and we are working together to pull this company out of trouble."
So we went to Washington together the next day. On
[58]
the plane he said, "You see I can't do it."
So I said, "Well, we'll have lunch after you have seen the President."
At lunch he said, "Well, the President's asked me to reconsider, so I'm going to talk again with
my family."
So while we were still having lunch at the Army-Navy Club they brought in a report from the
ticker tape saying the President had just announced the appointment of Hoffman as
Administrator of the European Cooperation Program.
HESS: What did he say?
DRAPER: He was shocked, but he took it, and he told me no later than two weeks ago that that
was the best thing that ever happened to him in his life. That was the kind of thing the President
could get away with, and did, and it was part of his strength. He didn't have to do quite the same
with Dodge.
Dodge did take the job, although somewhat reluctantly. Joe Dodge went out there to Japan and in
six or eight months he had done the job.
We adopted a new policy which was sent by cable to General MacArthur, which made it possible
for the economy to be revised, but it had to involve the farmers,
[59]
the farm prices, agricultural production, the industrial production, and raw materials. It required
a loan from the Export -- Import Bank to provide them with cotton, which worked out very
quickly. And it required Dodge to take care of the price relationships to increase taxes, and to put
that economy back on a paying, balanced basis. And from a tremendous governmental deficit
situation when Dodge went over, within six months to nine months he had balanced the Japanese
budget, or rather he forced the Japanese government to balance its budget, but under his
instructions.
HESS: General, will you tell me a little about your interest in population control?
DRAPER: Population control may be the wrong word. It's a population problem and a
population explosion and the question is what to do about it.
I got interested in this question of population when President Eisenhower appointed me in 1958
as Chairman of his Committee on Foreign Aid, Military Aid and Economic Aid. We found, the
committee of ten, that in most of the developing countries their rate of population growth was
such that it was interfering seriously with their economic development, particularly with any
[ 60 ]
improvement in their per capita income. The whole purpose of economic foreign aid was to
improve the lot of the individual members of society, especially down at the bottom and to
improve per capita income. So if the population increase was offsetting any gain in a particular
economy, and dividing it into that many more pieces, the only way to help was to cut down on
the growth rate of the population, on a voluntary basis.
Eventually, we recommended to President Eisenhower that our country through its aid program
give help to population programs of foreign governments, on their request. To our surprise he
turned down that request, because it was an election year and he thought that Senator Kennedy
was going to be running for President. With the Catholic Bishops attacking this particular
recommendation, President Eisenhower feared that if he approved our recommendation and if
Kennedy, as a Catholic, attacked it this might split the American people on a religious issue in a
national political campaign; and he thought this would be bad for the American people.
Later on he changed his mind, after he was no longer President, and published articles saying
that not only private organizations but governments, and particularly our own Government, had
to take an interest in this
[61]
problem, if it was to be solved which it has been doing since.
It was President Kennedy, a Catholic, who really started that program, and then President
Johnson expanded it, and President Nixon has gone even farther in sending the Congress a
special message on population. A special law was passed a year or more ago which is to take
care of our own population problem here. It proposes to give birth control information and
services to the five million women that are estimated to be too poor to afford family planning
facilities themselves.
Anyway, during this period, after President Eisenhower had changed his mind and was
favorable, I asked him whether he would head up an honorary Council for the Planned
Parenthood movement. He still was dubious about this, I guess for political reasons. Finally I
asked him whether if President Truman -- and I had no idea what Harry Truman thought about
this problem, I had never discussed it with him -- if President Truman, as the only other living
ex-President, were willing to be an honorary co-chairman with him of Planned Parenthood,
would that make a difference, would he then be willing to accept. He said, "If Harry will, I will."
So I trotted off to Independence, Missouri, where
[62]
President Truman had already invited me to come sometime to see his Library. I gave him
President Eisenhower's regards and best wishes, and told him that President Eisenhower would
only take on this honorary chairmanship if he would also do so.
He said, "Well, if President Eisenhower is willing to, I don't know why I shouldn't." And he did.
And the two of their names and their influence and their later statements, from time to time, were
of tremendous help in raising the whole level of the Planned Parenthood and world population
movement to a much higher level.
HESS: General, one of the important things you had to deal with at the time that you were Under
Secretary of the Army was the Berlin blockade. What was your involvement in that, and when
did you first think that a blockade was probable?
DRAPER: We knew for some weeks that this situation was rising, that trouble was brewing. We
were having constant arguments in the quadripartite council in Berlin. I was in Washington. I
stayed up several nights all night long as we followed these negotiations, partly because of the
difference in time. Instructions had to be given almost momentarily, sometimes by scramble
telephone or
[63]
by cable. And we watched the rising emotion and the rising level of argument with the
realization that we were perhaps moving even toward war with Russia.
When finally the revaluation of the currency, of the German mark, was decided on by the three
powers in order to put the economy back on a money basis rather than a ration basis -- because
up to that time, people had pockets full of paper money but unless they had a ration ticket to buy
an overcoat or to get food (unless it was through the black market), they had no way to buy. The
purpose was to squeeze the juice out of the overvalued currency and put it down to its real value.
The result turned out later to be the right thing to have done. The goods came out of hiding and
the economy began to get back on its feet.
But at the moment, the Russians refused to go along. We invited them and they refused. They
walked out of the council one night, broke up the meeting, and trouble was obviously ahead.
I had planned at that time to make an inspection visit in Berlin and in Vienna, and had set up a
trip and had my plane waiting. I left early one morning, with General [Albert C.] Wedemeyer,
my chief planning officer at that time. We took off without knowing that the
[64]
blockade was already on. We had our cables with us, that had accumulated during the night, and
after we had breakfast on the plane, we read our cables and learned that the blockade was on. We
were on our way to London.
On the way over we planned the airlift. General Wedemeyer had had charge of the airlift over the
hump in India earlier during the war, so he had a pretty good idea of what the different types of
planes would carry in the way of tonnage, and how often a plane could land at an airport, through
actual experience. I had negotiated in Berlin with the Russians for the feeding of Berlin some
years before, for the British and American sectors, and later these included the French, so I knew
the tonnage of food necessary on a ration level to feed the two and a half million people in those
sectors of the city.
We both knew the number of planes we had in Europe. They were DC-3s, the old DC-3, or C-47
in Army parlance, the workhorse of the war. We had about a hundred of them. They would each
carry about two and a half tons of food on a trip, and you had to allow about a two minute
leeway for a landing during the day, and a little more at night, quite a little more at night. So we
figured whether or not it was a physical possibility to feed that many people with that many
planes, if we had the
[65]
pilots and the airfields, and all the necessary organization was set up. We came to the conclusion
that it was a possibility but not a sure thing, and that it was worth trying.
So when we got to London, Lewis Douglas who was our Ambassador there, met us and we
arranged through him and he went with us to see Bevin, who was the Foreign Minister still, in
London. We told him our plan, and he said, "All right, we'll add twenty-five planes." All they
had that were available. "We're all for it," he said. "You never can make it work; you never can
feed two or three million people from the air, but we'll make a great psychological impression.
The Russians are trying to starve the Germans and we're trying to feed them. I'd suggest you take
milk powder and chocolate and things of that kind for the women and children and make it as
much of a psychological show as you can, and it will give us a little more time for negotiations.
But it will never succeed."
We loaded up that plane at our Embassy with about two tons of food, and I guess I signed for it.
They've never come back to ask me to pay yet. Then we went on to Paris. We didn't know what
the French government's attitude would be. We found them just as much for it as
[66]
we were, or as were the British. They had no planes to offer, but they would be backing it, and
they had an airfield in Berlin and that would be at our disposal. It was [Georges] Bidault and
[Robert] Schumann (one Prime Minister and the other Foreign Minister) that I talked to. So we
had their blessing.
In the meantime, I had talked to General Clay on the scramble telephone and had given him our
figures and our conclusions. He had been doing similar figuring and he'd come to the same
conclusion, that it was worth trying.
So we got to Berlin the next day, and General Clay called in his people and we exchanged
thoughts and ideas and figures and he called in his Air Force commander and the airlift started a
day or two later.
Then I flew down to Vienna. In Berlin the war clouds were everywhere. It was a question of
what hour or day the war might break out. We didn't know. We got to Vienna and it was just as
peaceful as Washington is today. It was the Fourth of July and our commanding general there
was giving the usual Fourth of July garden party, and the Russians came and were toasting the
Fourth of July just as much as we were.
Anyway, the airlift got started that way, and we nearly lost, actually. We were very close to
defeat.
[67]
After about two or three months we almost ran out of food. We had about ninety days' supply of
coal, and about thirty days' supply of food when this started. We should have stocked up more
before. We really didn't visualize that this blockade was going to happen. We should have taken
action earlier and stocked food, but we hadn't, at least not very much. We had about thirty days'
of food and some 90 days of coal. Se we didn't have to worry about the coal right away.
This started in early July. I would guess that it was about the end of August, when we were really
running downhill. We weren't keeping even. We got down to three or four or five days' stock of
food. So we had to face a strategic decision in Washington. There was one way we could save
this situation if we were willing to take the risk, and that was to take all the DC-4s that we had
around the world, Army planes and private airline planes, and substitute them for the DC-3s. The
DC-4 will carry ten tons where the DC-3 carries two and a half. But it meant stripping our Army
in Japan, it meant stripping our Army in Europe, and the airlines in the United States, of the only
really available and useful carriage for troops if we were going to war. It would have meant a
very real difference whether we had those
[68]
planes immediately available or had to find a way to get them together again.
But the decision was finally made to substitute, and we quietly stripped everywhere of these
planes, and took them away from the airlines and the Army and sent them to Europe, substituted
them, and put the DC-3s back in their place. They of course couldn't do the job of troop carrying
that the others were capable of doing. So immediately the level of food shipments by air went up.
And by that time, the coal was also running out, and so some of these were then made coal
wagons, the most expensive coal wagons the world ever saw. We tried dropping the coal in
chutes, or as it was into big nets, or on the ground. By the time it got near the ground it was
powder and blew away and it didn't work at all, so we had to land the planes and unload them
just like the food. I rode one of those coal wagons one day from Berlin to Frankfurt and it was
quite an experience. But it began to work. Everything worked fine. The stocks were built up, the
stockpiles of both food and coal.
Then in November we had an early winter, and early fog; the fog's bad in Berlin, anyway; but
this year it was worse than they had ever seen, I guess, and it came down about the first of
November and it just stuck. It
[69]
meant that you had to go on GCA, on instruments entirely. In the meantime, the Russians were
buzzing the planes. They didn't shoot any down, but they came right near us. It's a wonder there
weren't any accidents, and so starting a war, because that would have probably done it.
Anyway, this fog came down and it meant that you had to land every five or six or ten minutes
instead of every two, and the stockpiles ran down again. It ran right through December and by
the third or fourth or fifth of January we were down to two days again. And it looked like
curtains. If that fog had stayed another three weeks we probably would have had to run up the
white flag. We probably couldn't have gone on. You can't have people starving, and keep on with
the occupation. But the weather lifted about the fifth of January, it was fine, and immediately we
restored the situation. The Russians knew they were licked right away, but it was May before
they finally gave up.
In Berlin at that time -- I went back and forth a number of times from Washington -- at almost
any point in Berlin, you could see three planes in the air, two on their way in and one or two on
the way out, depending on where you were standing, and it was that continual bridge of planes
that the Berliners (and the other Germans knew about it all over Germany), kept seeing day after
day.
[70]
There were forty of our pilots killed in accidents. They knew that, too.
HESS: Avery visible sign of support.
DRAPER: That was what brought the Germans into our camp, in my opinion.
HESS: During that period of time, were you ever in any meeting with President Truman where
he might have expressed his views on the handling of the blockade?
DRAPER: No, we knew perfectly well his views. They were very clear cut. I don't think I met
personally with him during this period -- well, I probably did as Under Secretary, but I don't
recall -- I undoubtedly did.
HESS: During the period of time that you served, the armed services were organized into the
National Military Establishment.
DRAPER: Right.
HESS: That law came into being, it was the National Security Act of '47, passed on July 25th.
What is your general evaluation of that particular setup, and why was it found necessary two
years later to change it and set up a Department of Defense? What was deficient?
[71]
DRAPER: Was the first one by law or by regulation -- whichever it was, it was intended to put
the three departments into a coordinated whole. And probably (and I'm not too sure about this, it
was a long time ago, and I was out of the Department before that second law, I guess, was
passed), but the first step was taken in 1949.
HESS: That was when the Department of Defense was established, but it was 1947 when the
National Military Establishment was formed.
DRAPER: It was 1947, that's right. Well, that was put together as a first effort, and on the basis
of a couple of years of experience I suppose that the law which fashioned it on a more permanent
basis was passed. I don't think there were any great changes, were there?
HESS: I think about the only changes that I can recall, were that the Secretary of the Navy and
the Secretary of the Air Force and the Secretary of the Army did not sit in on the Cabinet
meetings. They weren't considered Cabinet level under the Department of Defense, whereas they
sat in on Cabinet meetings during the days of the National Military Establishment.
DRAPER: That's true. That's normal. It meant that the
[72]
Cabinet was a little too bulky.
HESS: That's right, and it gave the Secretary of Defense more authority under the present setup.
DRAPER: I think the whole thing has worked out just the way it should, a logical development,
and most other countries have adopted much that same form of defense establishment, indicating
that others think that we have the right method now.
HESS: Earlier this morning I asked your opinion of Secretary Forrestal's view on unification, and
as you know, the Navy expressed a good deal of fear about the effects of unification. They
thought they would lose the Air Wing to the Air Force; they thought they would lose the Marines
to the Army. Do you think the Army would have liked to have taken over the Marine Corps at
this time?
DRAPER: I have no doubt it would have loved to have done it, but nobody ever took that as a
practical possibility that I ever heard of.
HESS: Did you ever hear any of the generals discussing that subject?
DRAPER: I guess I heard the Navy's fears about it, but
[73]
I don't think we in the Army had any illusions.
HESS: More on the Navy's side than on the Army's side.
DRAPER: And as far as Navy Air is concerned, that's certainly going strong still. In Vietnam
you get planes off the ships right along, off the carriers. And I guess the Army with its little
planes, has actually as many or more planes than the Air Force. Of course it doesn't have the
fighting ships.
HESS: Just a word or two about some of the gentlemen you served with. Kenneth Royall, of
course, we've mentioned him several times.
DRAPER: He passed away a year or so ago.
HESS: Not too long ago. How effective was he?
DRAPER: He was a wonderful leader. He had great self-confidence; he had great ability; he had
great experience and background. He was the one that first integrated the blacks and whites in
the Army; he was a southerner and he could do that better than a northerner could have done. He
had real vision. He had the great confidence of President Truman, I know, and every impression
I have and recollection is that he gave the country a splendid
[74]
administration for the Department of the Army.
HESS: On the problem of integration of blacks into the armed forces: Did your duties touch upon
that?
DRAPER: Not particularly. I incidentally only know it was Secretary Royall's thinking, and he
was the first one to take action in that direction. And I think it was his personal initiative.
HESS: John L. Sullivan was Secretary of the Navy at that time.
DRAPER: A splendid person, too. He's still living here in Washington. And John Kenney was
his Under Secretary. John Kenney and I worked very closely together. And so I did with Mr.
Sullivan.
HESS: Stuart Symington was Secretary of the Air Force.
DRAPER: Now he's in the Senate, and taking quite a different point of view than he did then
about military matters, and about the war in Vietnam, particularly.
HESS: Mr. Gordon Gray, who was later Secretary of the Army was Assistant Secretary at the
time you were Under Secretary.
DRAPER: He was Assistant Secretary and so was Tracy Voorhees,
[75]
the one I mentioned before. There were two Assistant Secretaries. And Gordon Gray later
became Secretary of the Army, both of them fine people. Gordon Gray was a young captain who
came to the Department after I was Under Secretary, and Tracy Voorhees had charge of food
problems for the Army, and then he became Assistant Secretary. We had a fine family of
officials there, all working very closely together under Mr. Royall.
HESS: What other problems did you have to deal with as Under Secretary? What other areas of
the job have we not touched upon?
DRAPER: Well, there was the whole question of budget; there was the whole question of
strength of the Army. I really had a full-time job running the several Army occupations. It
included four (I said three before; it included Korea and Austria also). But whenever the
Secretary, Mr. Royall, was on a trip or away, I was Acting Secretary and had to deal with the
whole range of whatever came up at that time.
HESS: Did you see at that time that there was any likelihood of trouble in Korea as it erupted in
1950?
DRAPER: No, no. I went to Korea, went out to the dividing line between North and South Korea
and checked on our
[76]
situation there, but at that time we were still there, we hadn't pulled out. So it changed
completely after I had left when it was decided to pull our troops back to Japan. That, I suppose,
acted as an invitation, or at least it didn't prevent the possibility, of an invasion from the North.
HESS: Do you recall the views of the Department of the Army at the time the Secretary of State
Dean Acheson made the talk, and drew the defense perimeter down the western area of the
Pacific, leaving Korea out?
DRAPER: No, I was already out of the Department, and I read about it in the newspapers just
like you would have done, and thought it was unfortunate, but I had no particular knowledge or
comment about it at that time.
HESS: We earlier have mentioned your appointment as United States Special Representative in
Europe in 1953, and you mentioned about
DRAPER: '51 it was, '51 to '53.
HESS:
'51, and you mentioned about taking the trip to see General Eisenhower. Just what
were your duties as Special Representative in Europe?
[77]
DRAPER: NATO had been formed a short time -- two or three years before that or less. The
NATO Alliance was a direct result of the Korean war in its requirement, as Dean Acheson and
the rest of us saw as the need, and the other countries as well, to band together to keep the
Russians from moving to the Channel; it was just as simple as that.
My duties as the U.S. member of the Council were to deal first with the defense aspects and help
to build up the strength of NATO from all of the countries concerned, including our own; to
embark on a program of ammunition production and arms production in Europe, which had
practically disappeared from Europe; to provide the European countries with planes and
ammunition and artillery to the extent necessary until their own production got underway. That
was on the defense side.
On the mutual assistance side: The need was for economic assistance to permit them to carry this
military burden, and to extend the recovery they were already beginning to make from the
ravages of war.
On the political side, it was of vital importance to discuss not only European problems with our
NATO allies, but worldwide problems, such as we had to deal with in the Pacific and with, of
course, the Russians,
[78]
and the Koreans, the United Nations' problems, because the United Nations was involved in the
Korean war as well. So there were those three: The defense, the political and the economic. And
Ambassador Livingston Merchant was my Ambassador on the political side; General Luke
Finley was my deputy on the military side; and Paul Porter was my economic deputy. General
[Frederick L.] Anderson was my overall general deputy.
The responsibilities required me to deal with twenty countries that were in Europe, and also
including Canada, also a member of NATO.
HESS: Just briefly, what are your views of the current state of NATO?
DRAPER: I'm delighted that the President has now appointed a new Ambassador, the former
Secretary of the Treasury, David Kennedy, and has again broadened out the duties and
responsibilities of our NATO Ambassador.
After I left the job was downgraded very considerably, and has been on a much lower level ever
since. I'm glad to see it reviving. He's going to, in fact, have a little higher status than I had. He'll
be a member of the Cabinet as well as Ambassador and he's a Roving Ambassador as well, so he
will combine trade functions,
[79]
which I had too, but on a broader scale throughout the world. He will need, I believe, equally
strong deputies if he's going to cover this wide ground.
The NATO Alliance has, in my judgment, prevented World War III. We have been losing
strength on a comparative basis with the Russians in Europe and in the rest of the world. I
noticed just today or yesterday that it's been reported that our aerial defenses are weak too, by the
Armed Services sub-committee, but that's a tendency that is obvious from the fact that we've
been involved in the Vietnam war. The Russians have gone merrily along to increase their
missile strength. They're way ahead of us in missiles now. I'm told that we are building five
nuclear Submarines a year and the Russians twenty. They've thrown a missile defense around
Moscow. We have it only around some of our missile bases and none around Washington or
around any of our other big cities, and I think the next big problem myself -- this is a personal
view -- the next big problem that our President faces is to evaluate, and I'm not in any position to
do that, whether or not the Russians are, as the Secretary of Defense has recently indicated, about
to pass us strategically. If that is the judgment of those who know best, then we have to change
direction on our defense budgets, and our research and development
[80]
of the whole missile and defensive posture of this country. That involves NATO as well as the
world. Obviously you are familiar with the fact that these recent discussions that have been going
on in NATO have gotten a certain amount of agreement from the Germans to take over more of
the costs and from the other NATO partners to take over some more of the defense costs,
because of our big imbalance of trade.
HESS: At the time that you were in Europe as Ambassador, near the end of the Truman
administration, what do you recall about the success of the Marshall plan at this point?
DRAPER: Oh, tremendous. I suppose that we have never, as a nation, done anything that at
comparatively small cost was of such great benefit to the world, to Europe, and incidentally and
indirectly to ourselves. It was the groundwork for their recovery. They had to do the work
themselves to recover from the war. We couldn't do that, but we gave them the resources to
rebuild their economy, but the result of that has so greatly increased their ability to trade with us
and to produce that between us we've risen to heights that we never would have done without
that fillip that came just at the right time.
[81]
That was a great, imaginative, well-timed, and well-directed operation in the international field.
One of the best this country's ever done.
HESS: Were there any other major problems that you had to handle in Europe at this time?
DRAPER: The Marshall plan didn't come
HESS: That's right.
DRAPER: The Marshall plan was at the time I was in Germany, and the German picture was not
directly involved in the Marshall plan except as a parallel operation, but we had to work very
closely together, Mr. Harriman and Paul Hoffman and General Clay and myself, under the
President's direction.
HESS: What I had reference to was any major problems, any major duties, as Special
Representative in Europe that we haven't mentioned.
DRAPER: No, I was dealing with the governments of all the Western European countries, and
we were having sessions and meetings and problems continuously, but it was a time of building
strength and a time of great interest on the part of all governments including our own. I
[82]
got every cooperation from Washington. I had to come back to explain things and get directions
and get help regularly, either I or General Anderson. It was one of the greatest experiences of my
life, that two-year period.
HESS: You held that position until June of '53.
DRAPER: That's right.
HESS: In your opinion, what were President Truman's major accomplishments during his career,
and what were his major failings? What went right and what went wrong?
DRAPER: I would think that he was one of our greatest Presidents, My wife thinks he's the last
great American. She's a Democrat.
He really was great for one whose experience had been what it had been, haberdashery salesman,
I guess originally, and then part of the machine in Missouri, the political machine, and then a
Senator from Missouri. The ability that he displayed when he was faced with the responsibility
of leading this country in war and then in peace, was unbelievable, and I think that historians are
going to look back on President Truman as one of the greatest men we've ever had in that office.
The right
[83]
man at the right time, and one from whom the country could hardly have expected the great
degree of high quality service and integrity that he displayed.
His great accomplishments: He recognized, as President Roosevelt had not, very quickly, the
Russian threat, thanks probably to Ambassador Harriman and others, but he not only recognized
it but then began to do something about it. He had the courage, in the face of what many would
have quailed under, to take on the assistance to Greece and Turkey and flaunt the Russians, and
got away with it. He had the statesmanship to see the need, under Secretary Acheson's
recommendations, and General Marshall's, for both the Marshall Plan itself and later the NATO
Alliance, and those are two national efforts that were very successful. The NATO Alliance was
initiated by him and is still in force, and is the keystone in our whole foreign policy.
If I were to be bold enough to suggest one of his mistakes, and there were very few, I would
think it was the decision not to win the Korean war. It's my own belief that the risks that we
would have had to take, and they were real, possibilities that China and/or Russia would come in,
as China did, were risks that could have been taken if the planning had been different, if the
[84]
planning and the authority given to General MacArthur had included the decision to win the war,
which I'm afraid was not taken, and then if the planning had been along the lines necessary to
accomplish that.
I was, as a Reserve officer, a Reserve retired major general, in close touch with the General Staff
in Washington during the Korean war. I was available if they needed me at any time, and I used
to spend a good deal of voluntary time here, particularly with G-3, or operations. We weren't on
a war footing basis. We were more so than we have been during the Vietnam war, but we were
not on the kind of war footing basis that you go on if you're going to win a war. If you decide to
go to war at all the only way, in my opinion, is to do everything you can to win it and as quickly
as possible.
Now, General MacArthur cannot be condoned however, for what was really his failure to obey
orders later. I think his recommendations were correct, and the President should have perhaps
accepted them, or more of them. I know that he was at times asking for four more divisions than
he got, and things like that. The ammunition was running awful short at times, and we just didn't
have it, and we weren't turning our industry throughout the country over to the wartime job,
which we could have done,
[ 85 ]
and had done during the World War.
So, I believe -- and there can be differences of opinion -- that the British and perhaps the
Secretary of State and others, advised him that the risks were too great, and the President took
those seriously and so we fought the Korean war with one hand behind our backs. He certainly
did the right thing to treat General MacArthur the way he did when the chips were down. No
President can have a commander in his Army defy his instructions. That's almost what General
MacArthur did, and as much as I admire General MacArthur, and I do, because what I saw him
do in Japan was tremendous, and what he did in the Korean war by insisting on that outflanking
action
HESS: The Inchon landing.
DRAPER: Yes, and which Washington was very cold to and only acceded to because of his
strong recommendations as I understand it, that was the thing that gave us a chance to win the
war, but then we failed to go on.
It was too bad that General MacArthur went to the Chinese border. If he had stayed fifty miles or
a hundred miles away we probably wouldn't have had the Chinese come in and we would have
had a better ending to the whole thing, but we weren't really trying to carry it through.
[86]
I'm afraid that that very fact, that we didn't win in the Korean war, led to the Vietnam war
eventually, and to some of the many problems we've had since. But no one can rewrite history.
HESS: Once it's done, it's done.
DRAPER: It's done. President Truman performed a service to this country that no one can
exaggerate. It's very real and he should be very happy, he and Mrs. Truman, at the tremendous
service that he was able to render to his country and to the world.
HESS: General, do you have anything else to add on Mr. Truman or your service in the Truman
administration?
DRAPER: I just have the greatest possible admiration and friendly feelings toward both
President and Mrs. Truman. They were both always hospitable and courteous to me. The fact that
I happened to be a Republican was never even mentioned. I don't know whether he even -- I
guess he knew it all right -- but that had nothing to do with our relationship. There was nothing
political about it. He gave me every support and backing; so did Secretary Royall. I enjoyed my
service during his administration tremendously, and I have the greatest admiration. I hope
[87]
you'll be good enough to give him my best regards and my best wishes for health for both of
them.
HESS: We'll see that that is conveyed. Thank you very much, sir.
DRAPER: Thank you, sir.
[88]
INDEX
Anderson, General Frederick L., 8
Berlin airlift, planning of, 63-70
Berlin blockade, 62-63
Bevin, Ernest, 65
Clay, General Lucius, 3, 66
Clifford, Clark, 22
Coal production, postwar Germany, 48-49
Cold war, beginning of (Moscow Conference), 47
Combustion Engineering Company, 8
Defense budget of 1948, 17-21
Dodge, Joseph M., 56-58
"Draper plan" for Japan, 56
Draper, William H., Jr.:
Berlin airlift, planning of, 63-70
and Ford peace expedition of 1915, 1-2
Long Island Railroad Company, director of, 4-5
and Marshall, General George C., 26-27
Mexican Light and Power Company, director of, 8
and Selective Service Act, 2
and Soviet officials in Germany, 35-38
and Truman, Harry S., 10, 12, 21
Under Secretary of the Army, appointment as, 50-52
Eisenhower, Dwight D., and population policy, 59-62
Faure, Premiere Maurice, 7
Ford peace expedition of 1915, 1-2
Foreign Ministers Conference, Moscow (1946-47), 44-47
Forrestal, James, 12-16, 18, 23
Germany, postwar food policy in, 28-35
Germany, postwar, and Soviet policy, 37-41
Harriman, W. Averell, 46-47
Hoffman, Paul, appointment as Director of ECA, 57-58
Hoover, Calvin, 41
Hoover, Herbert, and European food relief, 31-34
Japan, U.S. postwar economic policy toward, 53-59
Johnson, Louis, 24-25
Knox, Frank, 13
Korean war, strategy of, 83-84
Korean war, U.S. decision to enter, 39
[89]
Lisbon Conference of 1952, 7
Long Island Railroad Company, 4-5
MacArthur, General Douglas, 52-54
MacArthur, General Douglas, dismissal of, 84-85
Marshall, General George C., 26-27
Marshall plan, 48, 80-82
Morgenthau plan, 39-44
Moscow Conference of 1946-47, 44-47
Mutual Security Administration, 6
North Atlantic Treaty Organization Council, 5, 77-80
NATO, and Lisbon Conference of 1952, 7
Patterson, Robert, 50
Planned Parenthood Federation, 61-62
Population Crisis Committee, 9
Population "explosion," problem of, 59-62
Purchasing policy, joint Army-Navy (World War II), 3
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 10-11
Royall, Kenneth, 49-51, 52, 73-74
Symington, Stuart, 74
"Three wise men," 7
Truman, Harry S.:
and decision-making ability, 20-21
evaluation of, by General William Draper, 82-83, 86-87
and Planned Parenthood Federation, 61
Unification of Armed Forces, 14-17, 71-73
U.N. Population Commission, 9
Voorhees, Tracy, 31, 34, 74, 75
Wedemeyer, General Albert C.., 62-63