Diplomatic career
Bohlen joined the US Department of State in 1929. His first diplomatic post was in Prague. In 1931, he was transferred to Paris, where he studied Russian and became a Soviet specialist. In 1934, at 30, he joined the staff of the first US embassy to the Soviet Union in Moscow. On August 24, 1939, Bohlen received the full content of the secret Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, signed only a day earlier, from Hans von Herwarth. The secret protocol contained an understanding between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin to divide Central Europe, the Baltic States, and Finland between Germany and the Soviet Union. US President Franklin Roosevelt was urgently informed, but the US did not share the information with any of the governments concerned.
A week later, the plan was realized by the German and Soviet invasions of Poland, and World War II started. In 1940 and 1941, he worked in the American embassy in Tokyo, where he was interned for six months before his release by the Japanese in mid-1942. In 1943, Bohlen became head of the East European Division, the first of the six specialists who started the Russian-language program in the late 1920s to become the head of a division of the State Department. He then worked on Soviet issues in the State Department during the war, accompanying Harry Hopkins on missions to Stalin in Moscow. He worked closely with Roosevelt and was his interpreter at the Tehran Conference in 1943 and the Yalta Conference in 1945. He also served as interpreter for US President Harry Truman at the Potsdam Conference in 1945. Bohlen later lamented that the Potsdam Conference was the beginning of the Cold War: "After Potsdam, there was little that could be done to induce the Soviet Union to become a reasonable and cooperative member of the world community. Discrepancies between the systems were too great, the hostility of the Soviet Union toward capitalist countries too great."
In 1946, Bohlen disagreed with his friend and mentor, Ambassador George F. Kennan, on how to deal with the Soviets. Kennan proposed a strategy of containment of Soviet expansion, but Bohlen was more cautious and recommended accommodation by allowing Stalin to have a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe without it being disturbed by the US. Bohlen, criticized by some of the hawks in the US Congress, paid close attention to public opinion as he considered domestic influence in a democracy to be inevitable. When George C. Marshall became Secretary of State in 1947, Bohlen became a key adviser to Truman. Bohlen, at Marshall's request and guidance, wrote Marshall's June 5, 1947 speech that led to the Marshall Plan. Bohlen was US minister to France from 1949 to 1951.
Kennan, declared persona non grata for some criticism of the Soviet Union in Berlin in September 1952, would not be allowed to return there. Oversight of the embassy was then awarded to Chargé d'Affaires Jacob Beam. On January 20, 1953, Dwight Eisenhower became US president. When Stalin died in March 1953, the post of ambassador was still vacant, and the embassy was still being led by Beam. In April 1953, Eisenhower named Bohlen as ambassador to the Soviet Union. The confirmation hearings were difficult as despite a recommendation from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Bohlen's presence at Yalta was held against him by Democratic and Republican members of the Conservative coalition which controlled the Senate at the time. He was particularly criticized by Senator Joseph McCarthy, who claimed that Bohlen was both sympathetic to Communism and that he was homosexual. McCarthy also criticized Bohlen's brother-in-law, Charles W. Thayer, claiming that Thayer had a history of homosexuality as well. Both the Republican leader Robert Taft and the Democrat leader Lyndon Johnson, both associated with the coalition, supported him and Eisenhower's support was unstinting. After Thayer resigned, Bohlen was confirmed 74–13.
Bohlen oversaw several key events during his time as ambassador to the Soviet Union, including the rise of Georgy Malenkov to the premiership, the arrest and execution of Lavrentiy Beria, the ascendency of Nikita Khrushchev, the Hungarian Revolution and the Suez Crisis. Bohlen's relationship with US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles soured. He was demoted on April 18, 1957, by Eisenhower after Dulles forced Bohlen's resignation. Bohlen later served as ambassador to the Philippines from 1957 to 1959. He returned to the US in 1959 by request of Secretary of State Christian Herter to serve in the newly-formed Bureau of Soviet Affairs.
Bohlen served as ambassador to France from 1962 to 1968 under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. According to the Kennedy advisor Theodore Sorensen, Bohlen participated in early discussions surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. During an ExComm meeting on October 18, 1962, Dean Rusk read a letter he wrote the previous night during deliberations in which he advocated for dealing with Khrushchev through firm diplomatic action, followed by a declaration of war if his response was unsatisfactory.
To everyone's surprise, Bohlen kept reservations aboard an ocean liner that would take him to his Paris post as ambassador, rather than waiting until after the crisis had been resolved. He was thus absent for most of what was arguably the most important confrontation between the two superpowers of the Cold War. He was a consultant in 1968 and 1969 to the transition at the State Department from Secretary of State Dean Rusk to President Richard Nixon's first Secretary of State, William P. Rogers. Bohlen served as Acting Secretary of State in January 1969. Bohlen retired in January 1969.
