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Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

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A brief objective description of the book: Dean Acheson was Harry Truman's Secretary of State. In that role, he was instrumental in setting the tone and direction of our foreign policy, especially toward the Communist bloc, at the very beginning of the post World War II era [hence the title of the book]. This book is his memoir of the years he spent in the State Department. He discusses how decisions were reached and how the policies were implemented. Acheson was an articulate and engaging writer, but only people interested in the subject of cold war foreign policy are likely to enjoy reading all the way through this book. If you are such a person, I expect you'll find the book captivating and brilliant.

But here's how the book affected me personally: Like most people interested in politics, I always held fiercely to my opinions about what we should have done or shouldn't have done in our cold war foreign policy. I listened to or read political speeches by George McGovern, Jesse Helms, Henry Wallace, Joe McCarthy, and everyone in between. But it was only when I read this book [and then followed it by reading "Diplomacy" by Henry Kissinger - another excellent book] that I realized that for decades I had been spewing forth opinions without knowing what I was talking about. Acheson does a wonderful job at describing the considerations that had to be taken into account before coming to conclusions on the many critical issues that faced the U.S. in those years, and he really opened my eyes.

It wasn't that Acheson's book taught me that I was wrong about any one particular issue. I didn't come away feeling that I had been too "hawkish" or too "dovish" about anything. I simply realized that every foreign policy decision is far more intricate, with many more variables and many more potential consequences to every decision, than I had ever understood before.

Acheson's book may be grist for debates among cold war ideologues. They may argue till kingdom come that if Acheson hadn't done this or said that, then such-and-such would never have happened. Some people will say that if Acheson had been nicer to poor old Joe Stalin, then Stalin would have been nicer to us. Some will say that if Acheson hadn't been so accommodating and naive, we could have destroyed the communist conspiracy before it ever got off the ground. My own feeling is that both groups are wrong, but that's beside the point. The important point is that those endless public debates between the hawks and the doves are almost criminally superficial. Almost never do we hear a speech or read an article that comes close to describing the full range of options in any major decision, along with a description of all the possible ramifications of one alternative or another.

The main thing I learned from reading this book was the extent of my own ignorance. And perhaps that's the beginning of wisdom.

Dean Acheson was deputy and acting secretary of the Treasury under FDR in the early 1930s, assistant and then under secretary of State from 1941 until 1947, and secretary of State under Truman from 1949 until 1953. Only President Harry S. Truman and Secretary of State (and Defense) George C. Marshall (and, of course, Josef Vissarionovich Stalin, ne Dugashvili) had more to do with making the post-World War II world as we knew it. Acheson titled his memoirs--highly egocentrically, for he was a highly egocentric man, certain of his own righteousness, intelligence, and good judgment--"Present at the Creation." The reference is to the king Alfonso the Wise of Castile, who in the thirteenth century had ironically noted that had he been present at the creation, he could have given good some useful hints. Acheson was present at the creation of a new world--the post-World War II world--and he did much more than give a few hints. The U.S. post-WWII policy of engagement to spend tens of billions of dollars helping western Europe rebuild bore his imprint, as did the policy of economic and political "containment" of the Soviet Union that began with the 1947 Truman Doctrine. The U.S. post-Korean War policy of confrontation--that the U.S. would be willing to go toe-to-toe with the Soviet Union and its proxies in many different corners of the world, and would build up a military that could quickly project massive force anywhere in the globe (the policy of NSC-68)--was in many ways his invention. Present at the Creation is his self-assured justification of what he did and suffered, with blasts at his critics both on the left and on the right. He makes a very strong case for his (and his boss President Truman's) policies. And on finishing the book you wonder where are today's equals of Acheson in talent, in decisiveness, and in self-righteousness?

Dean Acheson, who was Secretary of State in the Truman Administration, has written an outstanding autobiography---one that deserved the Pulitzer Prize, which he received in 1970. In Present at the Creation, we receive the 'inside scope' on the most serious issues of Acheson's day: the agreement to form NATO, the war in Korea, the removal of General MacArthur, and so on. While providing essential historical information, too, Acheson writes lucidly, presenting his story in a prose that reads like a novel, only (in this instance) a novel that actually happened. This is an excellent book, one I highly recommend.

Dean Acheson's memoir is devoted almost entirely to his service in the State Department following the end of the Second World War. He provides almost no details about his background or private life, and covers his pre-war career in a few chapters. This allows him to concentrate on what really matters, his history of post-war foreign relations.

Acheson truly was "Present at the Creation" in that he participated in the creation of the postwar structure designed to contain communism after Stalin installed puppet goverments in Eastern Europe. During his tenure, he was criticized from the left for being too hawkish, and from the right as being either a communist or a communist sympathizer. The latter charges were particularly ridiculous; Acheson had no illusions about the Soviet Union, but he also had no intention to start World War III if it could be avoided.

Some will find the details of how agreements were reached with our allies tedious. However, these details are essential to understanding the limitations under which Acheson worked. He rightly viewed it essential to strive to revive Western Europe, and to treat these countries as allies, not puppets. The result of this foresight was NATO, and the decades-long consensus amoung Western Europe and the United States concerning how to deal with the Soviets.

Acheson was highly valued by Truman, and it is easy to see why. In addition to being intelligent and experienced in foreign affairs, Acheson (like Truman) was a great believer in loyalty. Thus, when Truman returned to Washington, Acheson was the only cabinet member to meet him at the train station, a gesture Truman never forgot. Of course, Acheson's loyalty did cause to make some unfortunate statements, such as when he said he would not turn his back on Alger Hiss, whom he had known briefly in the State Department (Acheson knew Hiss's brother Donald much better).

To use a term from the 1960s, Acheson was very much a man of the Establishment. He went to the best schools, was a Supreme Court clerk, and was a partner in a prominent law firm when he was not working for the Government. This background affects his prose style, which shows some degree of excessive conviction that he was almost always right, and shows no sign of self-doubt. For all of that, I found the book quite readable, and important to anyone interested in postwar history.

Despite his reputation as a blue-blooded aristocrat with a Wasp pedigree and a Yale education, the title Dean Acheson selected for his autobiography of his busy and memorable State Department years demonstrates an abiding humility. Dean Acheson was far more than "Present at the Creation"; he was an architect in creating some of the most vitally needed foreign policy initiatives in the nation's history.

In the world of statecraft time and circumstances generate opportunities for greatness. So it was with Acheson. Serving as an Under Secretary of State under General George C. Marshall and later as Secretary of State, both in the adiministration of President Harry Truman, Acheson was tapped to deliver the speech that familiarized Americans with what would become the Marshall Plan, an economic package which revitalized Europe during a bleak period following World War Two, helping a great continent get back on its feet and thwarting Soviet expansion plans in the process.

Acheson was also a principal architect of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which provided the kind of central military focus and comradeship needed at a time when Russian expansionism threatened to engulf the free world. Acheson was also intimately involved with the Truman Doctrine, which supplied Greece and Turkey with needed funds in the wake of a direct military threat from the Soviet Union. As Secretary of State it was Acheson who worked in harmony with President Truman to launch a United Nations coaliation action headed by the United States to defeat Communist aggression when South Korea was attacked by North Korea.

Acheson puts the reader in the context of the period when the Cold War bristled at its hottest level of intensity, describing the policies designed to thwart Soviet world objectives as well as delineating the individuals who created and implemented them.

William Hare

Dean Acheson became a personal hero during my high school years (1951-55) when I first learned about politics, especially the Red Baiting years; I was an active participant in the "Joe Must Go" campaign to unseat Joe McCarthy, for example. When I first read this book in 1971 it was if a childhood hero had come alive, still admirable in many ways, but with faults that I had not recognized as well.

Acheson dedicated his book to Truman, the "captain with the mighty heart." Nonetheless he describes his major disagreement with President Truman over establishing Israel and his problems with implementing the policy despite his misgivings.

"I did not share the President's views on the Palestine solution to the pressing and desperate plight of great numbers of displaced Jews in Eastern Europe. The number that could be absorbed by Arab Palestine without creating a grave political problem would be inadequate, and to transform the country into a Jewish state capable of receiving a million or more immigrants would vastly exacerbate the political problem and imperil not only American but all Western interests in the Near East. From Justice Brandeis, whom I revered, and Felix Frankfurter, my intimate friend, I had learned to understand, but not to share, the mystical emotion of the Jews to return to Palestine and end the Diaspora. In urging Zionism as an American Government policy, they had allowed, so I thought, their emotion to obscure the totality of American interest."

I was totally entranced with his description of firing General MacArthur. As a Wisconsin farm boy, the passages were eye opening; I had been deeply moved by MacArthur's "old soldiers" speech in Milwaukee.

"It seems impossible to overestimate the damage that General MacArthur's willful insubordination and incredibly bad judgment did to the United States. The general was surely bright enough to understand what his Government wanted him to do. General Ridgway, who succeeded him, understood perfectly and achieved the desired ends. MacArthur disagreed with the desired ends . . . he pressed his will and his luck to a shattering defeat."

Two other passages found their way into my copy book:

"I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way."

"The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the Convention of 1787, not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was, not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy."

If nothing else, Acheson convinced me that the Founders had created a structure of government that not only creates friction, but often creates deadlock. This is a book that repays careful reading and re-reading; there are lessons here that ring true over the decades since I first read Acheson's superb autobiography.

2008 Addendum:

Robert L. Beisner's Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War is the best biography of Acheson I've read, and it was fascinating to re-read Acheson's autobiography side by side with Beisner's book. Acheson played a central role in the creation of many important institutions, -- Lend Lease, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the European Union and the World Trade Organization. According to Beisner, "Dean Acheson was more than 'present at the creation' of the Cold War; he was a primary architect." I also found it interesting to reread parts of Present at the Creation to add depth to The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made by Walter Isaacson.

Robert C. Ross 1970 2008

Note: One of twelve NY Times "Editors' Choice" books for 1969; see first Comment.

A generally enjoyable and interesting book. I hold Dean Acheson in very high regard along with Harry Truman and George Marshall. As other reviewers have stated, those three men (and several others) initiated policies that shaped world history for the next 50 years.

That said, the most fascinating aspect of the book for me was the back-stabbing, political posturing, stonewalling, and unresponsiveness that Acheson described throughout all the various government bureaucracies (both foreign and domestic) - Congress, the Defense Department, Foreign Ministries, Treasury, etc. It drives home to the reader just how difficult it is to get ANYTHING done in government! And it also reminds the reader that the political animosity and disfunction we see in modern government isn't a new phenomenon at all...

I respect that this book has a Pulitzer for History, and it has a wealth of information for scholars, but for the lay reader, it is too long by 100 pages or so and goes into minute governmental procedures and such, obscuring the good parts of the book. Acheson manages to be hawkish, critical of both parties, but makes a lot of sense too about containment, and realistically looking at the Soviets. I take his comments with a grain of salt, as this is part memoir and apologia. I would have liked to see more of his take on the years after Truman's presidency. And yes, this book did help me appriciate Truman's character more.

I was thrilled to receive this book from the collection of one of my favorite history professors who was retiring at the time he gave it to me. Now, having finished reading this incredible memoir, I now realize what a wonderful gift this was to receive at all. Mr. Acheson's recollection of his years in the State Department from 1941 to 1953 is incredibly concise, but hardly ever boring. There are a few key aspects of this book that make it so wonderful to read: first, since Mr. Acheson chose to focus on his years in the State Department rather than on a general autobiography, there is more room to focus on all aspects of the diplomacy he dealt with during this period. In fact, if had added personal details about his life, it would have defeated the whole purpose of the book. The second key is his focus on personal diplomacy. In a book devoted solely to U.S. foreign policy, it can be very easy to get bogged down in minutiae. But by focusing on the personal diplomacy he conducted with his counterparts and other governmental figures (foreign and domestic) around the world, the reader gets a truer picture of how diplomacy is conducted than any other book on foreign policy that I have read. Plus, you have the added bonus of Mr. Acheson's short vignettes of important public figures provides a key source of information on the important movers at the beginning of the Cold War. And finally, nearly every topic is covered meticulously, leaving a key record for Cold War historians to pore over in the future. I will say that the first 100 or so pages, when Mr. Acheson was Assistant Secretary of State during World War II, is a little dull as it appears that Mr. Acheson's duties only dealt with economic diplomacy, a relatively dull subject even in war. But once he becomes Congressional liaison, then Under Secretary, and finally Secretary of State, then it becomes hard to put down. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in Cold War diplomacy.

I'm a 16 year old sophmore in high school and have an interest in all history, especially history that took place during the 1930's to around 1965. this book gave very deep and detailed insight into the inerworkings of the stae department after world war 2, and displayed the type of men it took to rebuild governments around the world into well oiled democratic machines. i would HIGHLY reccomend this book to anyone interested in learning a great deal about the state department under truman and acheson, as well as a person just interested in a good read.