It’s fun to imagine “what if” every once in a while. What if FDR had appointed Sumner Welles as head of the WRB? (Someone proposed Welles. The relationship between the WRB and State would have been really fun to watch.) What if the WRB had gotten 20 million dollars from Roosevelt? (That was Oscar Cox’s idea.)
On April 13, 1944, tired of hearing complaints from Ambassador Carlton Hayes in Madrid, and frustrated that Spain still had no WRB rep, Morgenthau went to FDR. Spain needed “a big man” and Morgenthau proposed Wendell Willkie. Willkie was seeking the Republican nomination for the 1944 Presidential election. I mean, he doesn’t get it (Dewey does, and Willkie dies in October 1944) but it’s still interesting to think what might have happened had FDR selected the man he had beaten in 1940 for a diplomatic mission to Spain.
