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Francis Beverley Biddle (May 9, 1886 – October 4, 1968) was an American lawyer and judge who was the United States Attorney General during World War II. He also served as the primary American judge during Nuremberg trials following World War II and a United States circuit judge of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
During World War I he served as Private in the United States Army from October 23 to November 30, 1918. After he enlisted, he was detailed to the Field Artillery Central Officer's training school at Camp Taylor, Kentucky but the war ended during his training and he was discharged. Harvard's Military Record in the World War (1921)
Biddle prosecuted several prominent left-wing individuals and organizations under the Smith Act. In 1941, he authorized the prosecution of 29 Socialist Workers Party members in a move that was criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union. The New York Times: "18 are Sentenced in Sedition Trial", December 9, 1941, accessed June 20, 2012 Under the act, he also tried unsuccessfully to have Harry Bridges deported.Steele, Free Speech, 208-11; The New York Times: Lewis Wood, "Bridges Ordered Deported at Once", May 29, 1942, accessed June 22, 2012
In 1942, Biddle became involved in a case in which a military tribunal appointed by Roosevelt tried eight captured Nazi agents for espionage and for planning sabotage in the United States as part of the German Operation Pastorius. Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Royall challenged Roosevelt's decision to prosecute the Germans in military tribunals by citing Ex parte Milligan (1866), a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could not establish military tribunals to try civilians in areas that civilian courts were functioning, even during wartime. Biddle responded that the Germans were not entitled to have access to civilian courts because of their status as unlawful combatants. The US Supreme Court upheld that decision in Ex parte Quirin (1942) by ruling that the military commission that was set up to try the Germans was lawful. On August 3, 1942, all eight were found guilty and sentenced to death. Five days later, six of the eight were executed in the electric chair on the third floor of the District of Columbia jail. The other two were given prison terms since they had willingly turned their comrades over to the FBI. In 1948, both men were released from prison and returned to Germany.
In 1943, after the internment had already taken place, he asked Roosevelt for the camps to be closed: "The present practice of keeping loyal American citizens in concentration camps for longer than is necessary is dangerous and repugnant to the principles of our government." Roosevelt resisted, however, and the camps would not be closed for another year. In a postwar memoir, Biddle wrote that "American citizens of Japanese origin were not even handled like aliens of the other enemy nationalities—Germans and Italians—on a selective basis, but as untouchables, a group who could not be trusted and had to be shut up only because they were of Japanese descent."
In 1947, he was nominated by Truman as the US representative on the United Nations Economic and Social Council. However, after the Republican Party refused to act on the nomination, Biddle asked Truman to withdraw his name.
In 1950, he was named as chairman of the Americans for Democratic Action, a position that he held for three years. One decade later, he wrote two volumes of memoirs: A Casual Past in 1961 and In Brief Authority in 1962. His final position came as chairman of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial Commission from which he resigned in 1965.
Biddle died on October 4, 1968, of a heart attack at his summer home in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, at the age of 82. Biddle was interred at the St. Thomas' Church Cemetery in Whitemarsh Township, Pennsylvania.
Personal life
On April 27, 1918, Biddle was married to the poet Katherine Garrison Chapin. They had two sons:
Writing
Biddle's writing skills had long been in evidence prior to the release of his memoirs. In 1927, he wrote a novel about Philadelphia society, The Llanfear Pattern. In 1942, he wrote of his close association with Oliver Wendell Holmes 30 years earlier with a biography of the jurist, Mr. Justice Holmes, which was adapted into a 1946 Broadway play and a 1950 film entitled The Magnificent Yankee. Democratic Thinking and the War was published in 1944. His 1949 book, The World's Best Hope, looked at the role of the United States in the post-war era. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963.
In popular culture
Biddle was portrayed by Len Cariou in the 2000 miniseries Nuremberg. Biddle was also the subject of the 2004 play Trying by Joanna McClelland Glass, who had served as Biddle's personal secretary from 1967 to 1968.
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Further reading
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Categories: 1886 Births, 1968 Deaths, 20th-century American Politicians, American Civil Liberties Union People, American Judges Of International Courts And Tribunals, Assistant United States Attorneys, Francis, Cornell Family, Fellows Of The American Academy Of Arts And Sciences, Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration Cabinet Members, Groton School Alumni, The Harvard Lampoon Alumni, Harvard Law School Alumni, Judges Of The International Military Tribunal In Nuremberg, Law Clerks Of The Supreme Court Of The United States, Members Of The Philadelphia Club, National Labor Relations Board Officials, Pennsylvania Democrats, Pennsylvania Lawyers, Pennsylvania Progressives, Truman Administration Cabinet Members, United States Army Soldiers, United States Army Personnel Of World War I, United States Army Field Artillery Branch Personnel, Military Personnel From Paris, Attorneys General Of The United States, Solicitors General Of The United States, American Expatriates In France
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