Leland Burnette Morris (February 7, 1886 – July 2, 1950) was an American diplomat. A native of

Fort Clark, Texas Fort Clark was a frontier fort located just off U.S. Route 90 near Brackettville, in Kinney County, Texas, United States. It later became the headquarters for the 2nd Cavalry Division. The Fort Clark Historic District was added to the National ...

, he was the first

United States Ambassador to Iran Prior to 1944, Iran was not served by a United States ambassador; instead, a diplomatic minister was sent. The first ambassador was named in 1944. After the Iran hostage crisis in 1979, the United States terminated diplomatic relations with the ...

, serving that post from 1944 to 1945. Earlier he was

United States Ambassador to Iceland Until 1874, Iceland was a dependency of Denmark rather than an independent nation. In 1874, Denmark granted Iceland home rule, which again was expanded in 1904. In 1918, The Act of Union, an agreement between Denmark, recognized Iceland as a fu ...

from 1942. Morris served many other diplomatic posts including American Consul General in Jerusalem in 1936, American

Consul General A consul is an official representative of the government of one state in the territory of another, normally acting to assist and protect the citizens of the consul's own country, as well as to facilitate trade and friendship between the people ...

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

from 1938 to 1940 after the

German annexation of Austria The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "Greater Germany") ...

and the American ''

chargé d'affaires A ''chargé d'affaires'' (), plural ''chargés d'affaires'', often shortened to ''chargé'' (French) and sometimes in colloquial English to ''charge-D'', is a diplomat who serves as an embassy's chief of mission in the absence of the ambassado ...

'' in Germany during the outbreak of official American involvement in World War II. His mother was Susan Frances (née Reece) Morris and his father was Louis Thompson Morris, a colonel in the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, ...

. During his post in Vienna, Morris is credited by the Jewish-Austrian author

Felix Salten Felix Salten (; 6 September 1869 – 8 October 1945) was an Austro-Hungarian author and literary critic in Vienna. Life and death Salten was born Siegmund Salzmann on 6 September 1869 in Pest, Austria-Hungary. His father was Fülöp Salzmann, t ...

for ensuring his and his family's protection from persecution by Nazi authorities. Salten and his wife Ottilie Metzl were able to emigrate to Switzerland due to their daughter Anna-Katharina having married a Swiss man.

Service in Germany during World War II

Morris became the American ''Chargé d'affaires'' in Germany in October 1940. Prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States was officially neutral and retained a diplomatic corps in Berlin. This included diplomat

George Kennan George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly histo ...

. Morris, serving as ''Chargé d'Affaires'', was the highest-ranking American diplomat in Germany at the time (the last United States Ambassador,

Hugh R. Wilson Hugh Robert Wilson (January 29, 1885 – December 29, 1946) was a member of the United States Foreign Service who headed the United States mission to Switzerland for ten years beginning in 1927. He became Assistant Secretary of State in 1937 and ...

, was recalled in 1938 in protest of

Kristallnacht () or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (german: Novemberpogrome, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) paramilitary and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation fro ...

). On December 11, after the Pearl Harbor attack, German Foreign Minister

Joachim von Ribbentrop Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop (; 30 April 1893 – 16 October 1946) was a German politician and diplomat who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nazi Germany from 1938 to 1945. Ribbentrop first came to Adolf Hitler's not ...

summoned Morris to his office and read to Morris Germany's formal declaration of war and addressed him by accusing the United States of violations of neutrality and other acts of war. According to Kennan, after reading the declaration Ribbentrop screamed at Morris, ''"Ihr Präsident hat diesen Krieg gewollt; jetzt hat er ihn"'' ("Your President has wanted this war, now he has it"), turned on his heels and left the room. Official diplomatic relations between the United States and Germany thus ended. On December 14, most of the American diplomatic corps still in Germany, including Morris, Kennan, and Associated Press journalist Louis P. Lochner were detained by German authorities and held at a former resort near

Bad Nauheim Bad Nauheim is a town in the Wetteraukreis district of Hesse state of Germany. As of 2020, Bad Nauheim has a population of 32,493. The town is approximately north of Frankfurt am Main, on the east edge of the Taunus mountain range. It is a wor ...

. In February 1942, through Swiss diplomats, Morris reported conditions of the detainment to his superiors in Washington. While there was relative freedom of movement around the resort grounds, he wrote of food shortages and weight-loss amongst the group. In May, Morris and the other Americans were transferred to

Lisbon Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administrative limits w ...

, Portugal where they departed for New York aboard the SS ''Drottningholm'' and exchanged for German prisoners being held in the United States.

Death

Morris died on July 2, 1950, at the age of 64, in Washington, D.C.

References

External links

U. S. Department of State - Office of the Historian page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morris, Leland B. Ambassadors of the United States to Germany Ambassadors of the United States to Iran Ambassadors of the United States to Iceland People from Kinney County, Texas 1886 births 1950 deaths United States Foreign Service personnel 20th-century American diplomats