A New Deal administrator turned wartime diplomatic envoy
In Moscow in May 1945, Hopkins asked Stalin when Soviet forces would be ready for war against Japan, and Stalin named August 8.
Harry Hopkins was the administrator who organized U.S. public relief during the Great Depression around paid work, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s closest adviser. After directing federal relief and public-works programs, he served as secretary of commerce and helped coordinate Lend-Lease and Allied cooperation during the war. Despite declining health, he negotiated with the Soviet Union as Roosevelt’s and Truman’s envoy, and in Moscow in May 1945 drew out Stalin’s position on the timing of the war against Japan and occupation zones, exposing the stakes of the postwar order in East Asia.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1913–1915Superintendent, Employment Bureau, New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor
- 1915–1918Executive secretary, New York City Bureau of Child Welfare
- 1921–1923General manager, American Red Cross Southwestern Division
- 1933–1935Administrator, Federal Emergency Relief Administration
- 1935–1938Administrator, Works Progress Administration
- 1938–1940United States secretary of commerce
- 1940–1945Special assistant to President Roosevelt and wartime envoy
- 1945President Truman’s envoy, Moscow talks
- 1946Died in New York
Related historical events
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarU.S. envoy who prioritized aid to the Soviet UnionHe prioritized aid to the Soviet Union, whose soldiers he said were bearing the brunt of the war.
- 1945.08The Soviet Entry into the War against JapanTruman's special envoyMet Stalin in Moscow in late May 1945, who confirmed the Soviet Army would be ready by August 8.
Managing the Soviet alliance and disputes over aid
Hopkins was the top American official assigned to dealing with the Soviet Union during World War II. He dealt with Soviet officials from the middle ranks to Stalin himself, and in Lend-Lease matters his counterpart was Anastas Mikoyan. He often explained Roosevelt's plans to Stalin and other top Soviet officials in order to enlist Soviet support for American objectives, an endeavor that met with limited success. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, he recommended that Roosevelt include the Soviets in Lend-Lease, and Roosevelt accepted; in July of that year Hopkins traveled to Moscow for personal contact with Stalin.
Despite repeated Republican objections to aid for the Soviets, Hopkins gave priority to supplying the Soviet Union, holding that with Soviet soldiers bearing the brunt of the war, American aid would hasten its conclusion. On August 10, 1943, he spoke about the USSR's decisive role, arguing that the Axis could not be defeated in Europe without Russia and that, with Germany crushed, no power in Europe could oppose its military forces. Soviet cooperation was not always forthcoming: Moscow refused to let American naval experts see the German experimental U-boat station at Gdynia, captured on March 28, 1945, a matter bound up with protecting the convoys that carried Lend-Lease supplies.
His closeness to the Soviet Union also became material for political attacks on him. In mid-1943 a representative asserted that his wife Louise had received a large quantity of emeralds from the British press magnate Lord Beaverbrook, which Louise denied, and Hopkins considered a libel suit over a Chicago Tribune story. The attacks continued after his death: in December 1949 George Racey Jordan testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee that Hopkins had passed nuclear material and secrets to the Soviets. Historian David Roll argues Jordan's claims are not credible, while Sean McMeekin wrote in 2021 that Lend-Lease records declassified in the 1970s confirm nearly all of Jordan's claims except his allegation that Hopkins's actions were illegal. Eduard Mark found Hopkins not pro-Soviet but anti-German and pro-American in his recommendations, while Robert Conquest criticized him for accepting an unexamined stereotype of Soviet motives.