V o L u m e I : a d

See also

Heath, Edward; Thatcher, Margaret; United Kingdom

References

Hurd, Douglas. The Asian War: The Anglo-Chinese Confession, 1856–1860. New York:

Macmillan, 1967.

———. The Search for Peace. New York: Little, Brown, 1997.

Stuart, Mark. Douglas Hurd: The Public Servant. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing,

1998.

U.S. general and diplomat and ambassador to the Republic of China (1944–

1945). Born in the Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory, on 8 January 1883,

Patrick J. Hurley graduated from Indian University (now Bacone College)

in 1905. He earned a law degree from the National University of Law in

Washington, D.C., in 1908 and from George Washington University in 1913.

Admitted to the bar, he practiced law in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and was national

attorney for the Choctaw Nation during 1913–1917.

Hurley served in the Indian Territorial Volunteer Militia during 1902–

1907 and in the Oklahoma National Guard during 1914–1917. He fought in

France in the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I, rising to

the rank of lieutenant colonel. He then returned to Oklahoma, where invest-

ments in oil and banking made him one of the wealthiest men in the state.

Following donations to Herbert Hoover’s presidential campaign in 1928,

Hurley joined the new Hoover administration first as assistant secretary of

war in 1929 and then as secretary of war during 1929–1933. Hurley issued the

order to General Douglas MacArthur to evict the Bonus Army from Wash-

ington, D.C., in 1932. When Hoover was defeated for reelection, Hurley re-

turned to his business interests in Oklahoma.

When President Franklin Roosevelt sought to broaden his administra-

tion with Republicans following U.S. entry into World War II, Hurley was

recalled to active duty as an army brigadier general. He served as special

emissary to Australia, where he attempted unsuccessfully to secure the relief

of U.S. troops besieged in the Philippines. He then held a succession of spe-

cial assignments for President Roosevelt, including minister to New Zealand

(1942) and special emissary to the Soviet Union (1942) and the Near East

and Middle East (1943).

In August 1944 Roosevelt named Hurley as his personal representative

to China, and three months later he became ambassador. Directed by Roo-

sevelt to secure Nationalist leader Jiang Jieshi’s cooperation with the com-

munists to form a united front in fighting the Japanese, the uninformed

Hurley instead fell under Jiang’s sway and became an ardent champion of

the Nationalist position of noncooperation with the communists. This put

Hurley on a collision course with State Department “China Hands” John

Paton Davies and John Stewart Service, who believed that China would fall

Hurley, Patrick Jay

951

Hurley, Patrick Jay

(1883–1963)

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to the communists unless Jiang’s government underwent major reform and

was purged of corruption. Hurley held that only communists could take such

a stance.

Promoted to major general in 1944, Hurley returned to the United States

in September 1945 and declared in the course of a speech that U.S. diplo-

mats in China were refusing to carry out American policy, while in fact it

was Hurley himself who was contravening it. Under mounting criticism he

offered his resignation, which to his surprise President Harry S. Truman

accepted in November 1945. In his resignation letter, Hurley made the out-

rageous charge that State Department officials had aided the communists and

had prevented him from saving the Nationalist government.

Hurley then returned to New Mexico. An unsuccessful candidate for the

U.S. Senate from his native state in 1946, 1948, and 1952, he remained a

leading figure in the right-wing China lobby. In June 1950 Hurley accused

both Service and Davies of secretly passing information to the Chinese com-

munists that enabled them to subvert the Nationalists. Although both men

were cleared of this charge by the State Department, anticommunist cru-

sader Senator Joseph McCarthy picked it up, and both men were driven

from the State Department in 1953. Hurley died in Santa Fe, New Mexico,

on 30 July 1963.

Spencer C. Tucker

See also

Chinese Civil War; Marshall, George Catlett; McCarthy, Joseph Raymond; Roose-

velt, Franklin Delano; Service, John Stewart; Truman, Harry S.

References

Buhite, Russell D. Patrick J. Hurley and American Foreign Policy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press, 1973.

Fairbank, John K. The United States and China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

1971.

Purifoy, Lewis McCarroll. Harry Truman’s China Policy: McCarthyism and the Diplomacy

of Hysteria, 1947–1951. New York: New Viewpoints, 1976.

Slovak Communist Party official and president of Czechoslovakia (1975–1989).

Born on 10 January 1913 in Dúbravka, now part of Bratislava, Slovakia,

Gustáv Husák studied law at Comenius University and joined the Com-

munist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPCz) in 1933. During World War II the

Slovak fascist government jailed him several times for communist activi-

ties. Upon his release in 1943, he supported the resistance movement and

became a member of the Central Committee of the Slovak Communist Party

(SCP). In 1944 he became a leader of the Slovak national uprising, fleeing to

the Soviet Union when it failed.

952

Husák, Gustáv

Husák, Gustáv

(1913–1991)

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