John J. McCloy

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John J. McCloy bigraphy, stories - Presidents

John J. McCloy : biography

March 31, 1895 – March 11, 1989

John Jay McCloy (March 31, 1895 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – March 11, 1989 in Stamford, Connecticut) was a lawyer and banker who served as Assistant Secretary of War during World War II, president of the World Bank and U.S. High Commissioner for Germany. He later became a prominent United States presidential advisor, served on the Warren Commission, and was a member of the foreign policy establishment group of elders called "The Wise Men."

Additional sources

  • Martin Gilbert – Auschwitz And The Allies.
  • Stuart Erdheim – "Could The Allies Have Bombed Auschwitz-Birkenau?" – Holocaust and Genocide Studies (fall 97) pp 129–170.

Career

Early years

McCloy was educated at Peddie School, New Jersey, and Amherst College.Staff. , The Baltimore Sun, December 7, 1952. Accessed February 5, 2011. "McCloy, who is 57 years old, was born in Philadelphia and educated at Peddie School." He enrolled in Harvard Law School in 1916, but his education was interrupted by World War I.

Controversy

In 1949,http://morallowground.com/2010/11/14/justice-dept-report-u-s-hired-helped-worst-nazi-war-criminals-after-wwii/ John McCloy left his job as president of the World Bank to become the U.S. High Commissioner of Allied-occupied Germany. It wasn’t his first experience in that country; McCloy had been an attorney for the German chemical giant IG Farben in the 1930s. He also sat with Hitler in the Fuhrer’s box at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In a stunning amnesty, the U.S. High Commissioner commuted the life sentences of five of the worst Nazi doctors, including Dr. Herta Oberheuser, a woman who injected healthy children with oil and removed their limbs and organs without anesthesia while they were still alive and conscious. Commissioner McCloy also reduced the sentences of other Nazi criminals convicted in the Nürnberg Trials considerably. From 89 appeals of clemency he granted 79. 30 inmates were released immediately, and the sentences of the remaining 59 were drastically reduced, amongst them also the prominent industrialist Friedrich Flick and Alfred Krupp.. Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. Jahrgang 38 (1990), Heft 3 Note: The article contains a full list of all 89 persons convicted in the Nürnberg Process who were subsequently released

Army service

He was commissioned into the U.S. Army as a Second Lieutenant in 1917, being promoted to Captain in 1918. He served with the American Expeditionary Force in France in 1918 and 1919. He received his LL.B. from Harvard University in 1921.

Auschwitz bombing debate

During World War II, as Assistant Secretary of War, McCloy was a crucial voice in setting U.S. military priorities. The U.S. War Department was petitioned throughout late 1944 to help save Nazi prisoners by ordering the bombing of the railroad lines leading to Auschwitz. McCloy responded that only heavy bombers would be able to reach the sites from England, and that those bombers would be too vulnerable and were needed elsewhere.

McCloy claimed that the final decision on the selection of bombing targets, including those attacked by American planes, lay with the British alone. This was an incorrect claim. According to Michael Beschloss, in an interview three years before the latter’s death (in 1986) with Henry Morgenthau, III, McCloy claimed that the decision not to bomb Auschwitz was President Roosevelt’s and that he was merely fronting for him. McCloy also alleged to Morgenthau that Roosevelt refused to approve the Auschwitz rail bombing because he would then be accused of also killing Auschwitz prisoners.

In the early 1970s, McCloy stated that he himself "could no more order a bombing attack on Auschwitz than order a raid on Berlin".Letter from John J. McCloy to Donald L. Pevsner, following Pevsner’s citing to McCloy of the damning allegations in "While Six Million Died", by Arthur D. Morse (1967). However, while in the field with General Jacob L. Devers, advancing eastward through Germany in early 1945, a "suggestion" from McCloy resulted in Devers’ Army bypassing and sparing the historic Romantic Road town of Rothenburg an der Tauber. For his action, McCloy was later made an honorary citizen of the town."The Arms of Krupp", by William Manchester, 1968. These and other pro-German actions by McCloy resulted in significant protests much later, when McCloy was announcing the Volkswagen Scholarship at Harvard University in 1983.