Winant was born on East Side, New York City, the son of Frederick and Jeanette Winant. His father was a partner in a prosperous real estate company. Winant attended St. Paul's School in Concord and progressed to Princeton University, but he was a poor student, and left without graduating. He was appointed an instructor in history at St. Paul's in 1913, remaining there until 1917. He was elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives in 1916. In 1917, he joined the United States Army Air Service, trained as a pilot, and commanded the 8th Aero Squadron (Observation) in France, with the rank of captain.[2]
Public offices
Winant returned to his position at St. Paul's in 1919 after his military service, and was elected to the New Hampshire Senate in 1920. He lost money in oil stocks in 1929, which he had profited from through the 1920s.
Governor of New Hampshire
He twice served as Governor of New Hampshire: from 1925 to 1927, and from 1931 to 1935. He served his later terms during the Great Depression and responded in several ways. He oversaw an emergency credit act which allowed the state to guarantee debts of municipalities so that local governments could continue. He pushed through a minimum wage act for women and children. During the depression, Winant fought to keep improving the state's highways while reorganizing the state banking commission and pursuing more accurate accounting of state agencies' funds. Working closely with the federal government, Winant was the first governor whose state filled its enrollment quota in the Civilian Conservation Corps.[2][4]
Other offices
Subsequently, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Winant to be the first head of the Social Security Board in 1935, a position he held until 1937.[2] At the time, it was rumored that Roosevelt appointed Winant to prevent him from running for President in 1936, but Winant never admitted to Presidential aspirations. The next year, he was elected to head the International Labor Office in Geneva, Switzerland, from January 1939. As Director-General, he was preceded by Harold Butler and succeeded by Edward J. Phelan.
Ambassador to United Kingdom
In 1941, Roosevelt appointed Winant ambassador to Britain, and Winant remained in that post until he resigned in March 1946.[2] In a 2010 book, Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour, the author Lynne Olson described Winant as dramatically changing the U.S. stance as ambassador when succeeding pro-appeasement ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. Upon landing at Bristol airport in England in March 1941, Winant announced, "I'm very glad to be here. There is no place I'd rather be at this time than in England." The remark heartened a country that had come through the Battle of Britain and was in the midst of The Blitz, and it was featured dramatically on the front pages of most British newspapers the next day.
The new ambassador quickly developed close contacts with King George VI and Prime Minister Winston Churchill even though the U.S. was providing only military aid and the Axis was not yet at war with the U.S.[5] Winant, according to the book, had an affair with Churchill's second daughter Sarah Churchill during that time.[6]
Winant was with Winston Churchill when he learned that Pearl Harbor had been attacked on December 7, 1941.[7]
Return to US
President Harry S. Truman appointed Winant US representative to UNESCO in 1946 although he retired to Concord shortly after to write his memoirs.[2] However, he found himself unable to adjust to a quieter pace of life. "Everywhere Winant turned he saw the drama in which he had participated so significantly drawing to a close".[8] Estranged from his socially ambitious wife and deeply in debt, he became profoundly depressed.[8]
Personal life
John Winant Jr. (far right) with other Prominente after their release.
Winant married Constance Rivington Russell (1899–1983) in 1919.[2][9] They had a daughter, Constance (1921–1978), and two sons, John Jr. (1922–1993) and Rivington (1925–2011).[10] Constance married Carlos Valando, a Peruvian scientist, in 1941.[11] John Winant Jr. served as a bomber pilot in World War II and was taken prisoner by the Germans.[2] Sent to Colditz, he was removed in April 1945 as one of the Prominente to be used as a bargaining chip by Himmler and the SS as the end of the war approached; he was eventually released.[12] Rivington Winant also served in World War II and later became treasurer at the United Nations.[2][13]
Suicide
John Gilbert Winant (c.1943)
Winant shot himself in the head at his Concord home on 3 November 1947, the day his book Letter from Grosvenor Square was published.[2][14][15] The book Citizens of London reports that after Roosevelt's death, with Winant distanced from his Republican Party base, "[h]e hoped that he was going to become secretary-general of the new UN... On top of that [disappointed hope], his affair with Sarah Churchill ended badly. 'He was an exhausted, sick man after the war'," author Olson continued in the interview on NPR.[6]
Winston Churchill sent four dozen yellow roses to Winant's funeral, and the British king and queen sent their condolences by telegram.[16]
Winant was buried at Blossom Hill cemetery in Concord; his wish to be buried in the St Paul's School's consecrated cemetery refused by the Episcopalian rector on the grounds that suicide was a sin. However, in the more secular culture of 1968, his casket was reinterred at St Paul's.[17] His epitaph was his 1946 quote:
Doing the day's work day by day, doing a little, adding a little, broadening our bases wanting not only for ourselves but for others also, a fairer chance for all people everywhere. Forever moving forward, always remembering that it is the things of the spirit that in the end prevail. That caring counts and that where there is no vision the people perish. That hope and faith count and that without charity, there can be nothing good. That having dared to live dangerously, and in believing in the inherent goodness of man, we can stride forward into the unknown with growing confidence.[18]
In what amounted to a eulogy, The New York Times wrote of Winant two days after his death:
Here was a man who truly loved mankind and tried all his life to make the lot of his fellow-men better and happier... Governor Winant was a liberal Republican. When President Roosevelt summoned him to a larger field as head of the Social Security Board, his political opponents called him "a Republican New Dealer."[3]
In 1948, the Winant Clayton Volunteers formed in honor of Winant and the Reverend Philip "Tubby" Clayton, organizer of the Toc H Christian charity in the First World War. Initially, American volunteers came to London to help British families rebuild churches and community centers damaged during World War II. In 1959 the exchange was reciprocated with Winant volunteers traveling from America to England while the Claytons go from England to work in the United States.
In 1982, The Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire established The John G. Winant Fellowship for students interested in working in non-profit or governmental organizations.[19]
In 2009, Rivington Winant, with his wife Joan, donated 85 acres of land in Concord for the creation of Winant Park in honor of his late father and mother. The property sits on what was formerly the Winants' estate and offers the public biking, hiking and cross-country ski trails.[20] Rivington Winant said his goal was to create "something that would be useful to the people of Concord, and something my father would like."[21]
Two positions have been endowed in Winant's honour at the University of Oxford: the John G. Winant Lectureship in U.S. Foreign Policy and the John Gilbert Winant Visiting Professorship of American Government, which is held at Oxford's Rothermere American Institute.[22]
On June 30, 2017, a statue of Winant was unveiled outside the New Hampshire State Library in Concord. The campaign to build the statue with private funds was led by Van McLeod, longtime head of New Hampshire's Department of Cultural Resources, and state lawmaker Steve Shurtleff.[23]
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, was a British politician, statesman, army officer, and writer. He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, Churchill was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an economic liberal and imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, as leader from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.
The Tehran Conference was a strategy meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill from 28 November to 1 December 1943, after the Anglo-Soviet Invasion of Iran. It was held in the Soviet Union's embassy in Tehran, Iran (Persia). It was the first of the World War II conferences of the "Big Three" Allied leaders. It closely followed the Cairo Conference which had taken place on 22–26 November 1943, and preceded the 1945 Yalta and Potsdam conferences. Although the three leaders arrived with differing objectives, the main outcome of the Tehran Conference was the Western Allies' commitment to open a second front against Nazi Germany. The conference also addressed the 'Big Three' Allies' relations with Turkey and Iran, operations in Yugoslavia and against Japan, and the envisaged post-war settlement. A separate protocol signed at the conference pledged the Big Three to recognize Iran's independence.
The Atlantic Charter was a statement issued on 14 August 1941 that set out American and British goals for the world after the end of World War II.
Europe first, also known as Germany first, was the key element of the grand strategy agreed upon by the United States and the United Kingdom during World War II. According to this policy, the United States and the United Kingdom would use the preponderance of their resources to subdue Nazi Germany in Europe first. Simultaneously, they would fight a holding action against Japan in the Pacific, using fewer resources. After the defeat of Germany—considered the greatest threat to the UK and the Soviet Union—all Allied forces could be concentrated against Japan.
William Averell Harriman, better known as Averell Harriman, was an American Democratic politician, businessman, and diplomat. The son of railroad baron E. H. Harriman, he served as Secretary of Commerce under President Harry S. Truman, and later as the 48th Governor of New York. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952 and 1956, as well as a core member of the group of foreign policy elders known as "The Wise Men".
Culbert Levy Olson was an American lawyer and politician. A Democratic Party member, Olson was involved in Utah and California politics and was elected as the 29th governor of California from 1939 to 1943.
The destroyers-for-bases deal was an agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom on September 2, 1940, according to which 50 Caldwell, Wickes, and Clemson class US Navy destroyers were transferred to the Royal Navy from the United States Navy in exchange for land rights on British possessions.
Sarah Millicent Hermione Touchet-Jesson, Baroness Audley was a British actress and dancer known for being the daughter of Winston Churchill, who was Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945 and from 1951 to 1955.
"The Darkest Hour" is a phrase used to refer to an early period of World War II, from approximately mid-1940 to mid-1941. While widely attributed to Winston Churchill, the origins of the phrase are unclear.
Charles William Tobey was an American politician, who was a Governor of New Hampshire and a United States senator.
Francis Parnell Murphy was a manufacturer and politician from Nashua, New Hampshire. He served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives and on the Governor's Council before being twice elected as a Republican Governor.
Lincoln MacVeagh was a United States soldier, diplomat, businessman, and archaeologist. He served a long career as the United States ambassador to several countries during difficult times.
Sir Owen St Clair O'Malley was a British diplomat. He was Minister to Hungary between 1939 and 1941. He was British ambassador to the Polish government in exile in London during World War II. From July 1945 until May 1947, he was Ambassador to Portugal.
The Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire is located in Huddleston Hall, on the campus of the University of New Hampshire in Durham. The school publishes approximately 40 policy-relevant briefs per year, offers three masters degree programs, and encourages and facilitates constructive dialogue on divisive public policy issues.
James McLellan Langley was an American newspaper editor and diplomat.
Lynne Olson is an American author, historian and journalist. She was born on August 19, 1949 and is married to Stanley Cloud, with whom she often writes. In 1969 she graduated from University of Arizona. Before becoming a writer she worked for the Associated Press and the Baltimore Sun. She has written several books on the history of the World War II era, which have received positive critical reviews.
The following is a timeline of the first premiership of Winston Churchill, who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. Churchill served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the bulk of World War II. His speeches and radio broadcasts helped inspire British resistance, especially during the difficult days of 1940–41 when the British Commonwealth and Empire stood almost alone in its active opposition to Nazi Germany. He led Britain as Prime Minister until victory over Nazi Germany had been secured. for the general history see Timeline of the United Kingdom home front during World War II.
Darkest Hour is a 2017 war drama film directed by Joe Wright and written by Anthony McCarten. Set in May 1940, it stars Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill and is an account of his early days as prime minister during the Second World War and the May 1940 War Cabinet Crisis, while Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht swept across Western Europe and threatened to defeat the United Kingdom. The German advance leads to friction at the highest levels of government between those who would make a peace treaty with Adolf Hitler, and Churchill, who refused. The film also stars Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily James, Ben Mendelsohn, Stephen Dillane, and Ronald Pickup.
The UK-US relations in World War II comprised an extensive and highly complex relationships, in terms of diplomacy, military action, financing, and supplies. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and American President Franklin D. Roosevelt formed close personal ties, that operated apart from their respective diplomatic and military organizations.
Archibald Douglas Russell was an American financier and philanthropist.
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