Arnold Wolfers
Educated in his native Switzerland and in Germany, Wolfers was a lecturer at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik in Berlin in the late 1920s and then became its director in the early 1930s.
As master of Pierson College at Yale, he played a significant role during World War II by recruiting for the Office of Strategic Services.
In 1957 he left Yale and became director of the Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research at Johns Hopkins University, where he served in that role until his retirement in 1965.
[1] He served as a first lieutenant in the infantry of the Swiss Army,[2] with some of the service taking place from May 1914 to March 1915,[1] part of which included Switzerland's maintaining a state of armed neutrality during World War I.
[2][21] Wolfers and Jaeckh both gave lecture tours in America, made contacts there, and secured funding for the Hochschule's library and publications from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Rockefeller Foundation.
[2][20] He was active in the International Student Service and presided over their annual conference in 1931, held in the midst of the Great Depression, at Mount Holyoke College in the United States.
[26] In a November 1932 article in the journal International Affairs, Wolfers prophesied that "Hitler, with all his anti-democratic tendencies, is caught by the fact that he leads a mass movement...
[32] He commented that Europeans generally felt threatened by U.S. monetary policy, but that people in Germany were sympathetic to U.S. leadership in trying to overcome the Depression.
[19] Intellectually, Wolfers' early work on international politics and economics was influenced by European conflicts and their effect upon the world and revealed something of a Realpolitik point of view.
[37] In terms of economics, Wolfers spoke somewhat favorably of New Deal initiatives such as the National Recovery Administration that sought to manage some competitive forces.
[20] The college system had just been created at Yale two years earlier and masterships were sought after by faculty for the extra stipend and larger living environment they allotted.
[45] One former Yale undergraduate later said that he had lived in Pierson and that as head of the hall, Wolfers had been wiser and more useful regarding the practical issues of foreign policy than any of the faculty in political science.
[48] Wolfers traveled to the State Department in Washington frequently and also discussed these matters with his friend and Yale alumnus Dean Acheson.
Wolfers had a distinctive image on campus: tall and well-dressed with an aristocratic demeanor and a crisp voice that rotated between people in conversation "rather like a searchlight" in the words of one observer.
[57] Another protégé of Wolfers was Robert I. Blum, who became one of the early core members of the X-2 Counter Espionage Branch of the OSS, which provided liaison with the British in the exploitation of Ultra signals intelligence.
[58] In addition, Anita Forrer, Doris's sister, became an OSS agent and conducted secret and dangerous operations in Switzerland on behalf of Allen Dulles.
[59] In June 1944, Wolfers was among a group of ten prominent Protestant clergy and laymen organized by the Commission on a Just and Durable Peace who issued a signed statement advocating a way of dealing with Germany after war.
[60] A month after V-E Day, Wolfers had a letter published wherein he remarked upon "the shocking revelations" of Nazi concentration camps but still recommended "stern but humane rules" for directing the future of the German people.
[61] He worked with Basil Duke Henning, the master of Saybrook College, on a study of what Soviet leaders would judge American foreign policy options to be if they used the European press for their information.
[5] This was a new institute founded by Paul Nitze, who wanted to create a center within the School of Advanced International Studies that would join academics and policymakers.
[67] Encouraged by the Wolferses' acquaintance Carl Jung, who thought that Doris had a greater creative instinct than her role as Arnold's secretary and amanuensis made use of, she had resumed her career as an artist in the early-to-mid 1950s.
It largely featured contributions from his former students, including ones from Raymond L. Garthoff, Laurence W. Martin, Lucian W. Pye, W. Howard Wriggins, Ernest W. Lefever, and the editors.
The second, Discord and Collaboration in a New Europe: Essays in Honor of Arnold Wolfers, edited by Douglas T. Stuart and Stephen F. Szabo, came out in 1994 based on a 1992 conference at Dickinson College.
[83] Wolfers could be categorized as belonging to "progressive realists", figures who often shared legal training, left-leaning traits in their thinking, and institutionally reformist goals.
[84] Wolfers' focus on morality and ethics in international relations, which he viewed as something that could transcend demands for security depending upon circumstances, is also unusual for a realist.
[85] Martin believes Wolfers "swam against the tide" within the realist school, taking "a middle line that makes him seem in retrospect a pioneer revisionist of realism.
"[86] But Wolfers did not subscribe to alternative explanations for international relations, such as behaviorism or quantification, instead preferring to rely upon, as he said, "history, personal experience, introspection, common sense and the gift of logical reason".
"[91] Wolfers found composition difficult and his written output was small, with Britain and France Between Two Wars and Discord and Collaboration being his two major works.
"[95] In his 2011 book, political theorist William E. Scheuerman posits three "towering figures" of mid-twentieth century classical realism – E. H. Carr, Hans J. Morgenthau, Reinhold Niebuhr – and next includes Wolfers, along with John H. Herz and Frederick L. Schuman, in a group of "prominent postwar US political scientists, relatively neglected today but widely respected at mid century".
[96] In the 2011 Encyclopedia of Power, Douglas T. Stuart wrote that "More than 40 years after his death, Arnold Wolfers remains one of the most influential experts in the field of international relations.
