Patrick Jay Hurley (January 8, 1883July 30, 1963) was an American attorney, Republican Party politician, military officer, and diplomat. He was the 51st United States Secretary of War from 1929 to 1933 in the cabinet of Herbert Hoover and a key American diplomat during World War II. As ambassador to China in 1944 and 1945, Hurley is remembered for his instrumental role in the recall of General Joseph Stilwell in favor of Albert Coady Wedemeyer, his advocacy for a rollback strategy in China, and his public criticism of State Department policy at the onset of the Second Red Scare. He was the first Oklahoman to serve in a presidential cabinet.
Hurley came from humble origins, born to Irish immigrant parents in Indian Territory (today Oklahoma). He worked as a mule driver and with Will Rogers as a cowboy. He attended Indian College in Muskogee and the National University School of Law in Washington, DC before opening a legal practice in Tulsa in 1908. Specializing in oil and gas law and investing heavily in real estate, Hurley achieved rapid success. He was elected president of the Tulsa Bar Association in 1911. He was also helped by his connections in the Republican Party. After Hurley unsuccessfully ran for the Oklahoma House of Representatives in 1910, President William Howard Taft appointed him as the national attorney for the Choctaw Nation.
Hurley was wounded in World War I and received the Silver Star. After the war, he returned to Tulsa, where he continued to enhance his political and business profile. After Hurley chaired Herbert Hoover's presidential campaign in Oklahoma, Hoover appointed him Assistant Secretary of War in 1929. He was shortly promoted to Secretary of War following the death of James W. Good in November and served until Hoover left office in 1933. He was recalled from private life in 1941 following American entry in to World War II and promoted to brigadier general. He served as a personal diplomatic representative for President Franklin D. Roosevelt in China, Iran, Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union, becoming the first foreigner granted Soviet permission to visit the Eastern Front, and was briefly United States Minister to New Zealand in 1942.
In 1944, Roosevelt appointed Hurley as United States Ambassador to China. He was tasked with mediating the factions of the Chinese Civil War in order to unify the country against the Empire of Japan. Hurley came to strongly favor the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek in the conflict, believing that they could win both the civil war and war with Japan with sufficient American support. He was also critical of British and European imperialism in the region. Frustrated by concessions to the Soviet Union at the Yalta Conference and believing that Communist victory in China was inevitable, Hurley resigned in 1945 and publicized his concerns that high-ranking members of the State Department were too sympathetic to the Chinese communist cause.
Returning to the United States, Hurley settled in New Mexico, where he became a leader of the New Mexico Republican Party. He was unsuccessfully nominated as a candidate for United States Senate in 1946, 1948, and 1952 and founded the United Western Minerals Company. He died in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1963.
Early life, education, and World War I Patrick was born near Lehigh in the Choctaw Nation in Indian Territory on January 8, 1883, to Pierce O'Neil and Mary Kelly Hurley. His parents immigrated to the United States from Ireland and settled in Indian Territory. He started working as a mule driver for coal mines at age 11 alongside his father and at age 15 attempted to enlisted in the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War, but was turned away for being too young. After failing to enlist, he worked as a cowboy and met his lifelong friend Will Rogers. He worked while attending Indian College (now Bacone College) where he graduated in 1905. He received his law degree from the National University School of Law, Washington, in 1908.
Law practice He started a law practice in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1908 specializing in oil and gas law and heavily invested in local real estate. He was an active member of the Republican Party and campaigned for Oklahoma House of Representatives in 1910, but lost the election. In 1911 he was elected as the president of the Tulsa Bar Association and he was appointed national attorney for the Choctaw Nation by President William Howard Taft. In 1916, he won a lawsuit to keep the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians from enrolling as members of the Choctaw Nation.
He received a second law degree, from George Washington University, in 1913. While attending George Washington University he was initiated into Epsilon chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. An active alumni, Hurley served as the 34th Grand Consul of Sigma Chi from 1946 to 1948.
Pancho Villa Expedition and World War I Hurley enlisted in the Indian Territorial Volunteer Militia in 1903 and he later served in the Oklahoma National Guard. In 1916, he was called to active duty and participated in the Pancho Villa Expedition. After the expedition, he was assigned to the Judge Advocate General's Corps and assigned to Washington D.C. During World War I, Hurley served with the Judge Advocate General's Corps of the 6th Army Corps, American Expeditionary Force, in France and helped negotiate with Luxembourg for the passage of allied troops through the neutral country. He was also awarded the Army Distinguished Service Medal.
In November 1918, Hurley was detached to the 76th Field Artillery Regiment and participated it in the battles near Louppy-le-Château, France. Hurley was wounded and awarded with Silver Star.
Interwar years Hurley returned to the United States in 1919. He married Ruth Wilson, daughter of Henry Braid Wilson, in Washington D.C. that year before returning to Oklahoma. The couple would have four children. He assisted with the response to the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921 and was active in Tulsa where he served as president of the First Trust and Savings Bank and the receiver for the Gilliland Oil Company. He chaired the 1926 Republican Party of Oklahoma convention. Many of the developments Hurley financed in Tulsa included racially discriminatory covenants barring non-white residents.
Hoover administration Hurley chaired Herbert Hoover's presidential campaign in Oklahoma in 1928. After Hoover's inauguration the following year he was appointed Assistant Secretary of War by President Herbert Hoover in 1929. The same year, he opened the Ambassador Hotel in Tulsa. He was promoted to Secretary of War after the death of James William Good and served in Hoover's cabinet until 1933. He was the first Oklahoman to serve in a presidential cabinet.
Post-administration After Hoover left office, Hurley remained influential by playing a key role in the Interstate Oil Compact of 1935. In 1939, he represented Sinclair Oil Corporation in negotiations for compensation after the Mexican oil expropriation.
World War II
Hurley received a promotion to brigadier general (from colonel in the reserves) in 1941 when the United States entered World War II, and General George C. Marshall, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, dispatched him to the Far East as a personal representative to examine the feasibility of relieving American troops besieged on the Bataan peninsula. Dwight Eisenhower, a staff officer in Washington, sent Hurley to Australia with $10 million in cash, to arrange supplies and charters for the Philippines. According to historian Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower had served under Hurley for the last three years at the War Department, "needed someone to organise blockade runners for MacArthur, and Hurley, an old-fashioned buccaneer in politics, with energy and decisiveness, was perfect for the job." He was successful in delivering additional food and ammunition to the soldiers on three separate occasions but could not evacuate them.
After the conclusion of this mission, he embarked on a series of assignments as a personal representative of President Franklin Roosevelt. He served as minister to New Zealand in 1942 and then flew to the Soviet Union, the first foreigner to receive permission to visit the Eastern Front. Over the next two years, he visited the Near East, Middle East, China, Iran and Afghanistan on behalf of Roosevelt.
Soviet Union Hurley was assigned by Roosevelt to be his personal representative to Joseph Stalin in November 1942. In that capacity, Hurley witnessed Marshall Georgy Zhukov's 19 November counter-attack, Operation Uranus, against Axis forces in Stalingrad. Hurley would tour the battlegrounds around the city during the fighting, often seeing the remains of Romanian forces after having been destroyed by the advancing Soviets, which he claimed the Soviets reported as being German for propaganda reasons. He stayed in the Stalingrad area for ten days before returning to Moscow.
The first and potentially only high-ranking US military officer to be granted access to Soviet combat operations on the Eastern Front, Hurley reported amiable relations with Soviet military officers. He gave his Soviet aides nicknames from Native Americans chiefs, "Rain-in-the-Face" and "Sitting Bull." He also reported that the Soviet generals "were interested in the amount of war supplies–especially planes, tanks, and trucks–that the United States [could] furnish Russia" and that they were adamant that a second front needed to be opened soon.
Iran When Hurley arrived in Tehran, he made a great impression by wearing cowboy hats and rejecting normal diplomatic protocols, with many in the Iranian élite used to strict diplomatic protocol saying they had never met a diplomat like Hurley.Milani, Abbas The Shah, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010 page 106. An Iranian-American historian, Abbas Milani, described Hurley as "an odd and eccentric character" who was "horrified" by the "abject poverty amongst the people and arrogant disdain for the populations by the British and Soviet ambassadors." Hurley, an Anglophobe, felt that the British Empire was a malign force in international affairs, and he believed that Iran's backwardness and poverty was caused by the country being in the British sphere of influence. Hurley often met with Iranian officials, especially the young Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had inherited the Sun Throne only two years earlier. Hurley had the responsibility of organizing preparations on the American side for the Tehran summit in November 1943. Hurley accepted the Soviet claim that there was a German plot to assassinate Roosevelt, which required for Roosevelt and the rest of the American delegation to stay in the Soviet embassy, which allowed the Soviets, who had bugged the rooms of Americans, to listen to their deliberations.
After the Tehran summit, Roosevelt had a long talk with Hurley about the future of Iran and then asked for a report. The Hurley Report argued that Iran was "a country rich in natural resources," with excellent prospects for becoming a nation with a government "based upon the consent of the governed."Milani, Abbas The Shah, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010 page 107. Hurley argued that Iran's two main problems were the illiteracy of most Iranians and Iran's semi-colonial status to the Soviet Union and Britain. Hurley argued that it was wrong for the United States to spend so much blood and treasure in the war to maintain the decaying British Empire, which needed to go. Hurley ended his report by saying that American policy in Iran should be to end Soviet and British influence in that nation, promote literacy, and sponsor economic development. Roosevelt passed on the Hurley report to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, with the note "This is for your eyes only. I rather like his general approach."