John J. McCloy

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From March 1947 to June 1949, McCloy served as the second president of the World Bank. At the time of his appointment, the World Bank was a new entity, having only been manned by one previous president, Eugene Meyer, who resigned six months into his tenure over disputes with the bank's executive directors. McCloy was brought in to resolve the situation and was determined to make the bank an entity that would fund economically efficient projects, not just consumption. Over this tenure, he would develop relationships with Wall Street to overcome their skepticism of these bonds from countries, selling over hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds. Eventually, McCloy would leave the World Bank, as the Marshall Plan would start giving vast sums of economic support in 1948 for Allied countries that would swamp the investment the World Bank could provide.

On September 2, 1949, McCloy replaced the previous five successive military governors for the US Zone in Germany as the first US High Commissioner for Germany and held the position until August 1, 1952. He oversaw the further creation of the Federal Republic of Germany after May 23 of 1949.

At the strong urging of the West German government, and under massive pressure from the West German public, McCloy approved recommendations (including from the Peck Panel) for commuting of sentences of Nazi criminals including those of the prominent industrialists Friedrich Flick, Alfried Krupp, and Einsatzgruppe commander Martin Sandberger. McCloy granted the restitution of Krupp's entire property. He commuted the sentence of Ernst von Weizsäcker. Another commutation handed down was for Edmund Veesenmayer, who played a role in mass deportations.

Nuremberg judge William J. Wilkins wrote,

Nevertheless, McCloy refused to grant total clemency. He refused to commute the death sentences of five men whom he called "the worst of the worst":

Two other death sentences from the Dachau trials were upheld by General Thomas T. Handy, that of Georg Schallermair and Hans-Theodor Schmidt. There were mass protests by hundreds of thousands people amongst the West German public and government. Many were outraged that full amnesty had not been granted to the condemned, and it got to the point that McCloy and his family started to receive death threats. However, neither McCloy nor Handy changed their minds on the seven men they refused to spare. All 7 of them were hanged, one by one, at Landsberg Prison on 7 June 1951.

McCloy supported the initiative of Inge Aicher-Scholl (the sister of Sophie Scholl), Otl Aicher and Max Bill to found the Ulm School of Design. HfG Ulm is considered to be the most influential design school in the world after the Bauhaus. The founders sought and received support in the USA (via Walter Gropius) and within the American High Command in Germany. McCloy saw the endeavor as Project No. 1 and supported a college and campus combination along US examples. In 1952 Scholl received from McCloy a check for one million Deutschmarks.

McCloy had served as the first US High Commissioner. His final successor as commissioner was the fourth US High Commissioner, James B. Conant; the office was terminated on May 5, 1955.

Following his service in Germany, he served as chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank from 1953 to 1960 (operating as "Chase National Bank" prior to 1955), and as chairman of the Ford Foundation from 1958 to 1965; he was also a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1946 to 1949, and then again from 1953 to 1958, before he took up the position at Ford.

Following the 1953 death of Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, President Eisenhower considered appointing McCloy in his place, but he was viewed as too favourable to big business.

From 1954 to 1970, he was chairman of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations in New York, to be succeeded by David Rockefeller, who had worked closely with him at the Chase Bank. McCloy had a long association with the Rockefeller family, going back to his early Harvard days when he taught the young Rockefeller brothers how to sail. He was also a member of the Draper Committee, formed in 1958 by Eisenhower.

He later served as adviser to John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, and was the primary negotiator on the Presidential Disarmament Committee.

From 1966 to 1968, he was Honorary Chairman of the Paris-based Atlantic Institute.

In late 1967 McCloy was considered by US President Lyndon Johnson for the position of US Ambassador to the United Nations and was approached by Secretary of State Dean Rusk on this matter, however McCloy turned down the offer.

McCloy was selected by President Lyndon Johnson to serve on the Warren Commission in late November 1963. Notably, he was initially skeptical of the lone gunman theory, but a trip to Dallas with CIA veteran Allen Dulles, an old friend also serving on the commission, convinced him of the case against Oswald. To avoid a minority dissenting report, McCloy brokered the final consensus and the crucial wording of the primary conclusion of the final report. He stated that any possible evidence of a conspiracy was "beyond the reach" of all of America's investigatory agencies, principally the FBI and the CIA as well as the Commission itself. In a 1975 interview with Eric Sevareid of CBS, McCloy stated, "I never saw a case that I thought was more completely proven than... the assassination."

He described writings that propagated assassination conspiracies theories as "just nonsense."

McCloy became a name partner in the Rockefeller-associated prominent New York law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. He would serve here from 1945 to 1947, and then after serving on the Warren Commission, remained a general partner for 27 years, until he died in 1989. In that capacity, he acted for the "Seven Sisters", the leading multinational oil companies, including Exxon, in their initial confrontations with the nationalization movement in Libya as well as negotiations with Saudi Arabia and OPEC. Because of his stature in the legal world and his long association with the Rockefellers and as a presidential adviser, he was sometimes referred to as the "Chairman of the American Establishment".

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