Cordell Hull

Cordell Hull served as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of State from 1933 to 1944. He linked lower trade barriers to peace and prosperity and supported stronger international institutions, although Roosevelt retained direct control of many of the administration’s most consequential diplomatic decisions. ²

Cordell Hull challenged the Australian and New Zealand agreement of January 1944 when Prime Minister John Curtin and Australian minister Owen Dixon called on him in Washington on April 24. In his memorandum, Hull objected to provisions concerning Pacific territorial settlements and urged postponement of a regional conference until after the war. Curtin presented the agreement as a means of improving islanders' welfare; Hull recorded his disagreement with that explanation. ¹

Hull had reached the State Department through Tennessee law and Democratic politics. He practiced law, became a circuit judge, and served in the House of Representatives and Senate before Franklin Roosevelt made him secretary of state in March 1933. Trade policy remained a central concern. He advocated the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934, which enabled the president to negotiate tariff reductions with other countries. ²

His diplomatic work also included the American commitment to nonintervention at Montevideo in 1933 and wartime planning for a new international organization. Hull left office in November 1944. The following year, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his part in establishing the United Nations. ²

Hull’s commercial policy rested on the belief that tariff rivalry had deepened the Depression and international antagonism. Reciprocal trade agreements gave the executive branch a way to negotiate reductions rather than wait for comprehensive tariff legislation. In East Asia, he sought to delay war with Japan as its invasion of China intensified the conflict between Japanese expansion and American interests. Wartime diplomacy then connected his trade agenda with plans for a postwar international organization. ²

His tenure also encompassed serious failures in the response to the persecution and murder of European Jews. In 1943, Treasury officials documented State Department obstruction of relief proposals and efforts to limit the transmission of information about mass murder. Their intervention helped prompt Roosevelt to establish the War Refugee Board in January 1944. Hull was one of its nominal heads, but its staff and much of its operational work came from the Treasury Department. ^{2, 3}