Up for auction "French Ambassador" Hervé Alphand Hand Written Note Dated 1952 on Government Letterhead.
ES-1637
Hervé Alphand (31
May 1907 – 13 January 1994) was a French diplomat, and French
ambassador to the United States, from 1956 to 1965. Born into a family of diplomats, he studied
law and graduated in political science. In 1930, he joined the Inspector General of Finance. He married the same year, a
music-hall singer, Claude Raynaud; they divorced in 1957. In 1934, he was sent
to Ankara to help the government of Turkey to reorganize the finances of Turkey, and he was
appointed Financial Attaché in Moscow in 1936, before taking up positions in the
Department of Commerce. At the outbreak of World War II,
he was financial advisor of the Embassy of
France in Washington, D.C. Opposed to the Vichy regime, he
resigned in 1941, and joined Charles de Gaulle in London. He was then appointed
National Commissioner for the Economy, Finance and the Colonies and Director of
Economic Affairs of the French
Committee of National Liberation (CFLN), first in London and
then in Algiers, and became a close advisor to De Gaulle. At
the liberation of Paris in 1944, he became Director of Economic Affairs,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As such he participated in conferences on security
and reconstruction in Europe. He was representative of France to the sixteen
nation Conference in Paris, in July 1947, which developed the Marshall Plan. Raised to the rank of ambassador of France in 1950, he was
the French representative to NATO between 1952 and
1954, then Permanent Representative of France to the UN in 1955. He served as ambassador of France to the
United States between 1956 and 1965. He played a leading role in the
Franco-American relations. This included explaining the war in Algeria in the
context of decolonization, and with the return of De Gaulle to power in 1958,
justifying the French position on NATO, which resulted in the withdrawal of
France from the integrated military command of the organization in 1966.
During their stay in Washington, and his wife Nicole Alphand (ex-wife of Stephen
Bunau-Varilla), whom he married in 1958, made the Embassy of France
renowned for diplomatic receptions during the Kennedy administration. Back
in Paris in 1965, he became secretary general of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs until 1972. He then performed diplomatic missions in
the Middle East and the Far East. In 1977, he published his memoirs, Wonder
of being: a journal 1939 to 1973.