Arthur Bliss Lane

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For other people named Arthur Lane, see Arthur Lane (disambiguation).
Arthur Bliss Lane
John C. Wiley
Personal details
Born(1894-06-16)June 16, 1894
Brooklyn, New York
DiedAugust 12, 1956(1956-08-12) (aged 62)
New York City
NationalityAmerican

Arthur Bliss Lane (16 June 1894 – 12 August 1956) was a United States diplomat who served in Latin America and Europe. During his diplomatic career he dealt with the rise of a dictatorship in Nicaragua in the 1930s, World War II and its aftermath in Europe, and the rise of the Soviet-installed communist regime in Poland.

Biography

Lane was born in Bay Ridge,

U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C. Lane then worked in the embassy in Mexico
from 1925 to 1933.

He was appointed U.S. Minister to

Sandinistas) claimed that Lane gave Somoza permission for the assassination. Lane spent the next two years trying to reconcile Somoza and Sacasa, leaving the country before the next election as the U.S. adopted a more non-interventionist policy.[1]

He was next U.S. minister to

Ambassador to Colombia
(1942–1944), and subsequently to Poland from 1944 to 1947, first to the Polish government in exile in London and later in Warsaw to the post-war government.

Lane in Warsaw after World War II

While in Poland, Lane resigned his post on February 24, 1947, in protest of the takeover of the country by the Communist puppet regime,[2] and wrote a book detailing what he considered to be the failure of the United States and Britain to keep their promise that the Poles would have a free election after the war. In that book he described what he considered the betrayal of Poland by the Western Allies, hence the title, I Saw Poland Betrayed. The book was translated into Polish and published in the United States, and later disseminated by an underground samizdat publishing house in Poland in the 1980s.

According to Lane, the U.S. and Britain at the

United States Constitution, since Roosevelt never reported his decision to the Senate. The Yalta Conference
was the final death blow to Poland's hopes for independence and for a democratic form of government, according to Lane.

Following his career at the State Department, Lane was active in investigating the

Katyn Massacre and also active in several anti-Communist organizations, such as the National Committee for a Free Europe
. He would also later campaign for Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1952 presidential election, in opposition to his former boss, Democrat Harry Truman.

After his death, Lane's papers were archived in Yale University's Sterling Memorial Library.[3]

References

  1. ^ Presidents, Diplomats, and Other Mortals: Essays Honoring Robert H. Ferrell, edited J. Garry Clifford and Theodore A. Wilson, University of Missouri Press, 2007, p 75-76
  2. ^ "Poland" (List of Ambassadors to Poland). United States Department of State. 2004. Retrieved 2007-08-24.
  3. ^ Guide to the Arthur Bliss Lane Papers MS 5[permanent dead link], Yale University Library

External links

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