Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.

Early life and education

Lodge was born in Nahant, Massachusetts. His father was George Cabot Lodge, a poet, through whom he was a grandson of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, great-great-grandson of Senator Elijah H. Mills, and great-great-great-grandson of Senator George Cabot. Through his mother, Mathilda Elizabeth Frelinghuysen (Davis), he was a great-grandson of Senator Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen, and a great-great-grandson of Senator John Davis. He had two siblings: John Davis Lodge (1903–1985), also a politician, and Helena Lodge de Streel (1905–1998).

Lodge attended St. Albans School and graduated from Middlesex School. In 1924, he graduated cum laude from Harvard College, where he was a member of the Hasty Pudding and the Fox Club.

Lodge worked in the newspaper business from 1924 to 1931. He was elected in 1932, and served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1933 to 1936, before being elected to the United States Senate

U.S. senator (1937–1944, 1947–1953) and World War II service (1944–1945)

In November 1936, Lodge was elected to the United States Senate as a Republican, defeating Democrat James Michael Curley. He served from January 1937 to February 1944.

World War II

Lodge served with distinction during the war, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. During the war he saw two tours of duty. The first was in 1942 while he was also serving as a US Senator. The second was in 1944 and 1945 after he resigned from the Senate.

The first period was a continuation of Lodge's longtime service as an Army Reserve officer. Lodge was a major in the 1st Armored Division. That tour ended in July 1942, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered Senators and Representatives also serving in the military to resign one of the two positions. Lodge, who chose to remain in the Senate, was ordered by Secretary of War Henry Stimson to return to Washington. During this brief service, he led a squadron of American tankers at Gazala; they were the first Americans to engage German troops on land in the war.

After returning to Washington and winning re-election in November 1942, Lodge went to observe Allied troops serving in Egypt and Libya, and in that position, he was on hand for the British retreat from Tobruk.

Lodge served the first year of his new Senate term but then resigned his Senate seat on February 3, 1944, in order to return to active duty, the first US Senator to do so since the Civil War. He saw action in Italy and France.

In the fall of 1944, Lodge single-handedly captured a four-man German patrol.

At the end of the war, in 1945, he used his knowledge of the French language and culture, gained from attending school in Paris, to aid Jacob L. Devers, commander of the Sixth United States Army Group, to coordinate activities with the French First Army commander, Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, and then carry out surrender negotiations with German forces in western Austria.

Lodge was decorated with the French Legion of Honor and Croix de Guerre with palm. His American decorations included the Legion of Merit and the Bronze Star Medal.

After the war, Lodge returned to Massachusetts and resumed his political career. He continued his status as an Army Reserve officer and rose to the rank of major general.

Return to Senate and the drafting of Eisenhower

In 1946 Lodge defeated Democratic Senator David I. Walsh and returned to the Senate. He soon emerged as a spokesman for the moderate, internationalist wing of the Republican Party. After World War II, which Lodge believed was in part caused by American isolationism, he came to advocate internationalism, saying: "The ideal of a provincial nation has given way to the realization that we have become the world's greatest power ... World War II first taught us the value of collective security."

In March 1950, Lodge sat on a subcommittee of the Government Operations Committee, chaired by Democratic Senator Millard Tydings, which looked into Senator Joseph McCarthy's list of possibly Communist State Department employees. Lodge argued in hearings that Tydings demonized McCarthy and whitewashed McCarthy's supposed discovery of security leaks at the State Department. Lodge told Tydings:

Mr. Chairman, this is the most unusual procedure I have seen in all the years I have been here. Why cannot the senator from Wisconsin get the normal treatment and be allowed to make his statement in his own way, ... and not be pulled to pieces before he has had a chance to offer one single consecutive sentence. ... I do not understand what kind of game is being played here.

In July 1950, the record of the committee hearing was printed, and Lodge was outraged to find that 35 pages were not included. Lodge noted that his objections to the conduct of the hearing and his misgivings about the inadequacy of vetting suspected traitors were missing, and that the edited version read as if all committee members agreed that McCarthy was at fault and that there was no Communist infiltration of the State Department. Lodge stated "I shall not attempt to characterize these methods of leaving out of the printed text parts of the testimony and proceedings ... because I think they speak for themselves." Lodge soon fell out with McCarthy and joined the effort to reduce McCarthy's influence.

In late 1951, Lodge helped persuade General Dwight D. Eisenhower to run for the Republican presidential nomination. When Eisenhower finally consented, Lodge served as his campaign manager and played a key role in helping Eisenhower to win the nomination over Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, the candidate of the party's conservative faction. Taft favored a quasi-isolationist foreign policy, being opposed to American membership in NATO and the United Nations, and Lodge wanted Eisenhower to run in order to pull the GOP away from Taft's ideology. Gossip talk of the day said that he reportedly declined an offer to be Ike's running mate.

1952 Senate campaign

In the fall of 1952, Lodge found himself fighting in a tight race for re-election with John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. Representative. His efforts in helping Eisenhower caused Lodge to neglect his own campaign. In addition, some of Taft's supporters in Massachusetts defected from Lodge to the Kennedy campaign out of anger over Lodge's support of Eisenhower. In November 1952 Lodge was defeated by Kennedy; Lodge received 48.5% of the vote to Kennedy's 51.5%. This was the second of three Senate elections contested between a member of the Republican Lodge family and a member of the Democratic Fitzgerald-Kennedy clan, after the 1916 election between Lodge's and Kennedy's grandfathers and before the 1962 special election between Lodge's son and Kennedy's younger brother Ted.

Kennedy was congratulated for his victory by his dominating father, Joseph Kennedy Sr, saying at long last an Irish Catholic had humbled a scion of the WASP Boston Brahmin elite, saying that this was the most satisfying of all his son's electoral victories.

Ambassador to the United Nations (1953–1960)

Lodge was named U.S. ambassador to the United Nations by President Eisenhower in February 1953, with his office elevated to Cabinet-level rank. In contrast to his grandfather (who had been a principal opponent of the UN's predecessor, the League of Nations), Lodge was supportive of the UN as an institution for promoting peace. As he famously said about it, "This organization is created to prevent you from going to hell. It isn't created to take you to heaven." Since then, no one has even approached his record of seven and a half years as ambassador to the UN. During his time as UN Ambassador, Lodge supported the Cold War policies of the Eisenhower administration, and often engaged in debates with the UN representatives of the Soviet Union. Lodge often appeared on television "talking tough" to Soviet diplomats, and famously responded to the charge that the United States was responsible for aggression around the world by saying: "Membership in the United Nations gives every member the right to make a fool of himself, and that is the right of which the Soviet Union, in this case, has taken full advantage of."

During the CIA-sponsored overthrowing of the legitimate Guatemalan government, when Britain and France became concerned about the US being involved in the aggression, Lodge (as US Ambassador to the United Nations) threatened to withdraw US support to Britain on Egypt and Cyprus, and to France on Tunisia and Morocco, unless they backed the US in their action. When the government was overthrown, the United Fruit Company, of which Lodge was a significant stockholder, re-established itself in Guatemala. The episodes tainted an otherwise distinguished career and painted Lodge as a face of US imperialism and exceptionalism.

In 1959, he escorted Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev on a highly publicized tour of the United States. In 1960 he embarked on a reciprocal tour of the Soviet Union, including stops at the Bibi-Khanym Mosque in Samarkand.

1960 vice presidential campaign

Lodge left the UN ambassadorship, turning over his seat to Deputy Chief Jerry Wadsworth during the election of 1960 to run for Vice President on the Republican ticket headed by Richard Nixon, against Lodge's old foe, John F. Kennedy. Before choosing Lodge, Nixon had also considered Representative Walter Judd of Minnesota and Senator Thruston B. Morton of Kentucky. Eisenhower had supported the choice of Lodge. Nixon finally settled on Lodge in the hope that his presence on the ticket would force Kennedy to divert time and resources to securing his Massachusetts base, but Kennedy won his home state handily. Nixon also felt that the name Lodge had made for himself in the United Nations as a foreign policy expert would prove useful against the relatively inexperienced Kennedy. Nixon and Lodge lost the election in a razor-thin vote.

The choice of Lodge proved to be questionable. He did not carry his home state for Nixon. Also, some conservative Republicans charged that Lodge had cost the ticket votes, particularly in the South, by his pledge (made without Nixon's approval) that if elected, Nixon would name at least one African American to a Cabinet post. He suggested appointing the diplomat Ralph Bunche as a "wonderful idea". Nixon was furious at Lodge for this pledge, and accused him of spending too much time campaigning with minority groups, instead of the white majority. One Republican from West Virginia said of Lodge's speech: "Whoever recommended that Harlem speech should have been thrown out of an airplane at 25,000 feet".

Between 1961 and 1962, Lodge was the first director-general of the Atlantic Institute.

Ambassador to South Vietnam (1963–1964)

Kennedy appointed Lodge ambassador to South Vietnam, which he held from 1963 to 1964. Lodge's appointment came as Kennedy began to lose confidence in South Vietnam's President Ngô Đình Diệm, particularly after Diệm denied culpability for the Huế Phật Đản shootings and instead blamed the Viet Cong. As the current ambassador, Frederick Nolting, was a partisan of Diệm, Kennedy felt it was time for a new ambassador who would be tough on Diệm in a way that Nolting never could be. Furthermore, Nolting had considered it his duty to silence unfavourable press coverage of Diệm, causing him to feud with reporters who wrote that the Diem regime was corrupt and unpopular. On June 27, 1963, Kennedy named Lodge as his ambassador to South Vietnam. Lodge had visited Vietnam as a newsman in the 1930s, and though he spoke no Vietnamese, he was fluent in French, a language widely used by the South Vietnamese elite. More importantly, Kennedy was haunted by the way that the "loss of China" had badly damaged the Truman administration, and feeling that South Vietnam might likewise now be lost, wanted a well-known Republican politician as his ambassador in South Vietnam to shield him from potential Republican attacks that he "lost" South Vietnam.

Kennedy had chosen Lodge because he knew he would accept. The Cabot Lodges were one of the most distinguished Boston Brahmin families with a long history of public service, and that given his pride in his family's history, Lodge would never turn down an opportunity to serve the United States. Lodge for his part believed that if he was successful as an ambassador to an important American ally in the middle of a crisis, that would help his presidential ambitions. When Kennedy asked Lodge if he was willing to serve as an ambassador, Lodge replied: "If you need me, of course, I want to do it". Eisenhower warned Lodge against taking the job, believing that Kennedy only offered Republicans the more difficult jobs to damage their reputations. Despite Eisenhower's advice, Lodge told him that he felt it was his patriotic duty to accept, saying that the Cabot Lodges had always served the United States regardless if the president was a Democrat or a Republican, and he was not going to break with his family's traditions.

Lodge arrived in Saigon on August 22, 1963, finding a city gripped by protests in response to the Xá Lợi Pagoda raids that had taken place the night before. Thrust into the crisis, Lodge received a cable from Kennedy demanding to know what was going on, and in his reply Lodge wrote that Ngô Đình Nhu had ordered the raids "probably" with the "full support" of Diem. In his first press conference, Lodge gave a roistering talk about the freedom of the press, earning cheers from the reporters who resented Nolting's attempts to silence them. Knowing that Lodge had been sent to Saigon to be tough with Diem, some of the reporters taunted South Vietnamese officials present by saying: "Our new mandarin is going to lick your old mandarin". One of Lodge's first acts as ambassador was to visit the Agency for International Development (AID) office in Saigon, where two Buddhist monks had taken refuge, and to whom he agreed to grant asylum. When Lodge learned that the two monks were vegetarians, he ordered the AID workers to bring them only vegetables and fruits.

Role in the 1963 coup d'état

Lodge quickly determined that Diem was both inept and corrupt, and that South Vietnam was headed for disaster unless Diem reformed his administration or was replaced. On August 29 Lodge wrote in a cable: "We are launched on a course from where there is no respectable turning back: the overthrow of the Diem government. There is no turning back because U.S. prestige is already publicly committed to this end in large measure, and will become more so as the facts leak out. In a more fundamental sense, there is no turning back because there is no possibility, in my view, that the war can be won under a Diem administration".

Lodge, noting that the South Vietnamese Army was completely reliant upon American military aid, demanded that Kennedy halt all such aid as long as Diem was president, and to make an "all-out effort" to have the mutinous generals "move promptly", as the outcome of the coup would depend "at least as much on us as them". Lodge warned that to allow Diem to continue would lead to a popular revolt that would bring in a "pro-Communist or at best neutralist set of politicians". At the same time, French President Charles de Gaulle had launched a major diplomatic initiative to end the war in Vietnam that called for a federation of North and South Vietnam, and for both Vietnams to be neutral in the Cold War. Lodge was opposed to the peace plan, as he saw the proposed neutralization of South Vietnam as no different from Communist control of South Vietnam.

Kennedy accepted Lodge's recommendations and gave him carte blanche to manage the affairs in Vietnam as he best saw fit, and gave him the power to cut off American aid if necessary. Just why Kennedy delegated such to Lodge has remained a matter of debate. Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. later wrote Lodge was "a strong man with the bit between his teeth" whom Kennedy could not manage. In contrast, journalist Stanley Karnow speculated that Kennedy having embraced and praised Diem preferred that the "messy job" of overthrowing him be contracted out to Lodge, all the more so as there was always the possibility that the coup might fail, in which case the president would blame a "rogue ambassador".

On October 5, Lodge cabled back to Kennedy that he learned that the generals were finally ready to proceed. The CIA officer, Lucien Conein met with General Dương Văn Minh, who asked that the United States "not thwart" a coup and promise to continue to provide the aid worth about $500 million per year after Diem was overthrown. Lodge seized upon Minh's remark to argue to Kennedy that the United States should promise that it "will not attempt to thwart" a coup, a formula that Kennedy embraced. Lodge himself later used this line as a defence against criticism, saying he did not promise to support a coup, only "not thwart" it.

After the coup

On November 24, 1963, two days after Kennedy's assassination, Lodge arrived in Washington to meet the new president, Lyndon Johnson. Johnson told Lodge he would not "lose" Vietnam, saying "tell those generals in Saigon that Lyndon Johnson intends to stand by our word". After Diem's assassination, Lodge seems to have lost interest in Vietnam as he became increasingly lethargic in performing his duties as ambassador. After his high hopes that Diem's removal would spark improvements, he reported that the new leader, General Dương Văn Minh, was a "good, well intentioned man", but asked "Will he be strong enough to get on top of things?" In December 1963, the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, visited South Vietnam where he reported the American team in Saigon "lacks leadership, has been poorly informed and is not working to a common plan". McNamara described a dysfunctional atmosphere at the embassy as Lodge was still feuding with Harkins and had blocked him from using the embassy's cable room to communicate with Washington. Lodge distrusted the diplomats at the embassy, and was noted for his secretive ways.

The coup sparked a rapid succession of leaders in South Vietnam, each unable to rally and unify their people and in turn overthrown by someone new. These frequent changes in leadership caused political instability in the South, since no strong, centralized and permanent government was in place to govern the nation, while the Viet Minh stepped up their infiltration of the Southern populace and their pace of attacks in the South. Having supported the coup against President Diem, Lodge then realized it had caused the situation in the region to deteriorate, and he suggested to the State Department that South Vietnam should be made to relinquish its independence and become a protectorate of the United States (like the former status of the Philippines) so as to bring governmental stability. The alternatives, he warned, were either increased military involvement by the U.S. or total abandonment of South Vietnam by America.

In June 1964, Lodge resigned as ambassador to run to seek the Republican nomination to be the presidential candidate for the election of that year. Lodge had been unpopular with his embassy staff, and most were happy to see him go.

1964 presidential candidacy

Despite their defeat in 1960, neither Nixon's nor Lodge's national profiles were damaged, with both being speculated candidates for the 1964 presidential election. Lodge made the "Most Admired Men" list for 1962 and led major candidates such as George Romney and Nelson Rockefeller in Republican presidential polling.

In 1962 after helping campaign for his son George C. Lodge in the Senate race Paul Grindle, the nephew of Senator Leverett Saltonstall who had filled Lodge's seat after his resignation to join World War II, along with Sally Saltonstall, Caroline Williams, and David Goldberg opened a Lodge for President office in Boston, but in 1964 was forced to shut down after failing to prove any affiliation with Lodge. However, Grindle relocated to Concord, New Hampshire. The organization acquired a mailing list of 96,000 Republican voters which successfully established a base for Lodge in New Hampshire. Footage of former President Eisenhower endorsing Lodge for vice president in 1960 was used in TV commercials and portrayed as Eisenhower endorsing Lodge for president. Three days before the March 10 New Hampshire primary Goldwater chose to stop campaigning in the state as he predicted a victory for himself with a substantial number of votes for Lodge.

In 1964, Lodge, while still Ambassador to South Vietnam, was the surprise write-in victor in the Republican New Hampshire primary, defeating declared presidential candidates Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller. His entire campaign was organized by a small band of political amateurs working independently of the ambassador, who, believing they had little hope of winning him any delegates, did nothing to aid their efforts. However, when they scored the New Hampshire upset, Lodge, along with the press and Republican party leaders, suddenly began to seriously consider his candidacy. Many observers remarked on the situation's similarity to 1952, when Eisenhower had unexpectedly defeated Senator Robert A. Taft, then leader of the Republican Party's conservative faction. However, Lodge (who refused to become an open candidate) did not fare as well in later primaries, and Goldwater ultimately won the presidential nomination. Like most liberal Republicans, Lodge opposed Goldwater, particularly his proposal to realign the Democratic and Republican parties into Liberal and Conservative parties, calling it "abhorrent", and felt that nobody should oppose the aid of the federal government in helping Americans. At one point during the convention, Lodge was confronted by a staunch Goldwater supporter who called him terrible for opposing Goldwater. In reply, Lodge said: "You're terrible, too."

Later diplomatic career (1965–1977)

Lodge was re-appointed ambassador to South Vietnam by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, and served thereafter as Ambassador-at-large (1967–1968) and Ambassador to West Germany (1968–1969). In 1969, following the election of his former running mate Richard M. Nixon to the presidency, he was appointed to serve as head of the American delegation at the Paris peace negotiations, and he served occasionally as personal representative of the President to the Holy See from 1970 to 1977.

Personal life

In 1926, Lodge married Emily Esther Sears. They had two children: George Cabot Lodge II (1927-2026) and Henry Sears Lodge (1930–2017). George worked in the federal civil service and was a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School.

Henry Sears married Elenita Ziegler of New York City and was a former sales executive. Henry's son, Henry Sears Lodge Jr., MD, (1958–2017) was a physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and became well known as the author of the 'Younger Next Year' series of books.

In 1966 he was elected an honorary member of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati.

Lodge died in 1985 after a long illness and was interred in the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Watertown, Massachusetts. Two years after Lodge's death, Sears married Forrester A. Clark. She died in 1992 of lung cancer and is interred near her first husband in the Cabot Lodge family columbarium.