Century Group

Century Group (Lobby, Front organziation)
Successor	Fight For Freedom Committee
Formation	1940
Extinction	1941
Interests	British Security Coordination
Membership	• Francis Pickens Miller • Henry P. Van Dusen • Lewis W. Douglas • Ulric Bell • Ward Cheney • Herbert Agar • Geoffrey Parsons • Major George Fielding Eliot • John L. Balderston • Joseph Alsop • Elmer Davis • William L. Clayton • Whitney Hart Shepardson • James P. Warburg • George Watts Hill • Frank L. Polk • Dean G. Acheson • Allen W. Dulles • James B. Conant • Ernest M. Hopkins • William Agar • Henry Sloane Coffin • Henry W. Hobson • Henry R. Luce • Harold Guinzburg • Robert E. Sherwood • Walter Wanger • William H. Standley
A British-coordinated interventionist group active in the United States prior to American entry into World War Two.

The Century Group was an informal pro-British interventionist group of wealthy businessmen and journalists, active in the United States prior to American entry into World War Two, and coordinating with the British Security Coordination.

The group evolved over the summer of 1940 out of the earlier Miller Group which had met at the home of Francis Pickens Miller in June that year. It took its name from the exclusive Century Club in New York City where it met.

They included several CBS commentators, many top editors of New York newspapers, including the New York Herald Tribune. They had tremendous influence because they used their media, particularly Henry Luce and Time Life, to promote the idea that the Unites States had to get into the war.

By the spring of 1941 it had evolved into the Fight for Freedom Committee. In this form it was claimed as a British front in a 1941 report by SOE agent Sydney Morrell.

Activities

The Century Group was notably more interventionist in its outlook than the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies (CDAAA); whereas the latter organization sought all possible aid to the Allies, the former advocated all-out war, arguing that this was America's war to fight.

During the 1940 presidential election, the Century Group operated as a liaison between the British government, the White House and the Republican candidate Wendell Willkie. It brokered an agreement from Willkie to refrain from criticizing a proposal that allowed Roosevelt to unilaterally authorize the transfer of scores of mothballed destroyers to Britain. On August 30, 1940, British Security Coordination's agents secured Willkie's commitment to acquiesce to the transfer. Assured that he wouldn't pay a devastating political price, Roosevelt announced the deal at a press conference four days later.

 

Known members

14 of the 28 of the members already have pages here:

Member	Description
Dean Acheson	US deep state operative who was the 51st Secretary of State
Joseph Alsop	Influential journalist very close to the CIA
John Balderston
William Clayton
Henry Sloane Coffin	leading liberal Presbyterian leader. Bonesman.
James Bryant Conant
Lewis Douglas	US diplomat
Allen Dulles	Dulles served the longest ever term as Director of Central Intelligence and dominated American intelligence for a generation. He personified a cadre of Ivy League pragmatic elitists in high echelons of the government who greatly admired Germany’s scientific achievements.<a href="#cite_note-1">[1]</a> Dulles was fired by JFK after the Bay of Pigs and bore a grudge against him thereafter.
Ernest Hopkins	President of Dartmouth College from 1916 to 1945.
Henry Luce
Francis Pickens Miller	Hawkish spook
Frank Polk
Whitney Hart Shepardson
James Warburg

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