Bullitt, William C (Christian) (1891-1967)

US diplomat who was one of President Roosevelt's most trusted advisors. In 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt made him the first ambassador to the USSR; he soon turned against communism, a position he increasingly promoted in the years ahead. He was ambassador to France 1936-40, and had a series of other special diplomatic assignments,

He was born in Philadelphia of an affluent family, and initially he worked in Europe as a newspaper correspondent, then joining the State Department (1917). A member of the American delegation to the Paris Peace Conference (1919), he initially advocated recognition of the new communist government in Russia; when this was rejected, he resigned from the State Department, and gave testimony before the Senate committee (1919) that influenced the rejection of the Versailles treaty. From 1919 he lived mainly in Europe; he turned to Freud for therapy and ended up collaborating with him on a highly negative psychological biography of Woodrow Wilson (not published until 1967). After he had fallen out with President Roosevelt in 1943, Bullitt joined the Free French army (1944-45). Although regarded as a nonconformist, he spent his last years dabbling in international affairs as a respected elder statesman.