Noel Field
Background
Field was the son of Dr Henry Havilland Field.[1] His father was an American Quaker biologist living in Geneva, where during World War One, he had acted as a contact linking US diplomat Allen Dulles with liberal circles in Germany.[2]
Career
After education at Harvard, Noel Field entered the State Department in 1926. He moved to the left politically while in Washington, and left the Department in 1936 to join the League of Nations staff in Geneva.[1]
In 1939, he became secretary of an international commission sent to Spain to repatriate foreign volunteers who had fought for the Spanish Republic. In 1941, he was appointed director of the Unitarian Service Committee in Vichy France. After the German invasion of Vichy France, he escaped to Switzerland where he became European Director of the Unitarian Service Committee in Geneva. Unofficially, he acted as Allen Dulles' contact with German communist exiles in Switzerland.[1]
Field's foster-daughter Erika Glaser, a member of the Swiss Communist underground, became secretary to Dulles' assistant Gerhard Van Arkel.[3]
In late 1944, Field was involved in helping OSS infiltrate Germany in advance of allied armies. In December that year, he proposed that OSS establish a working relationship with the Comité de l'Allemagne Libre Pour l'Ouest (CALPO), a Paris-based affiliate of the Soviet-backed Free Germany Committee.[4]
Dulles sent Field to the OSS station in Paris where his plan was rejected by Arthur Schlesinger and Albert Jolis. Schlesinger described Field as a "Quaker Communist, filled with smugness and sacrifice, and not a very intelligent man."[5]
Affiliations
External Resources
- Namebase FIELD NOEL HAVILLAND
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 R Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Intelligence Agency, University of California Press, 1972, p.212.
- ↑ R Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Intelligence Agency, University of California Press, 1972, p.205.
- ↑ R Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Intelligence Agency, University of California Press, 1972, p.227.
- ↑ R Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Intelligence Agency, University of California Press, 1972, pp.227-228.
- ↑ R Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Intelligence Agency, University of California Press, 1972, p.228.
