W. Averell Harriman

W. Averell Harriman was an American businessman, diplomat and Democratic politician. He served as ambassador to the Soviet Union during the Second World War, later became governor of New York and held senior foreign-policy roles during the Truman, Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

The wider career recorded for W. Averell Harriman also included service as United States Secretary of Commerce, United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. In dynastic and political terms, W. Averell Harriman was associated with United States. The biographical record places the beginning of W. Averell Harriman’s life at New York City and the end at Yorktown Heights, giving the career a geographical span that is not apparent from the headline events alone.

Giles Milton’s The Stalin Affair follows W. Averell Harriman as one of the Allied diplomats in Moscow negotiating aid, military strategy and access to Stalin’s government while the Eastern Front absorbs enormous losses. Wilbur Smith’s Crossfire moves its espionage plot into wartime Washington in 1943, where the Anglo-American effort to coordinate strategy with the Soviet Union places figures such as Harriman within the diplomatic world whose secrets Saffron Courtney is trying to protect from German intelligence.