Dag Hammarskjöld
Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld (Dag Hammarskjöld ▶) (July 29, 1905 – September 18, 1961) was a Swedish diplomat and the second Secretary-General of the United Nations. He served from April 18, 1953 until his death in a plane crash on September 18, 1961.
Hammarskjold was a man who sought a close relationship with God. His personal journal, published following his death under the title "Markings" revealed the footprints of his spiritual journey.
As Secretary General, Hammarskjold took the stance that he was not representing his own nation but he was a representative of the international community. When he contemplated decisions and undertook action, he always kept this in mind. Prior to his untimely death, Hammarskjold was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He was awarded this honor posthumously for his dedication to achieving lasting peace.
Dag Hammarskjold was succeeded as Secretary General by U Thant.
Early life and Education
Dag Hammarskjöld was born in Jönköping, Sweden. He lived most of his childhood in the college town, Uppsala. Dag was the fourth and youngest son of Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, Prime Minister of Sweden (1914–1917), and Agnes Almquist. His ancestors had served the Swedish Crown since the 17th century. During his youth, Dag's father was governor of Uppland County.
He began his studies at Uppsala University when he was 18. In 1925, Hammarskjold graduated with honours, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree. His majors were Linguistics, Literature and History. He continued his studies at Uppsala, pursuing and earning a Master's degree in Economics in 1928 and a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1930. He then moved to Stockholm.
Career in Swedish Government
From 1930 to 1934 Dag Hammarskjold was secretary of a governmental committee on unemployment. He also wrote his doctoral thesis Konjunkturspridningen (The Spread of the Business Cycle). Hammarskjold received his Doctorate in Economics from Stockholm University in 1933. For the next several years, he worked as Assistant Professor of Political Economics at the University of Stockholm.
In 1936 he became Secretary of the Sveriges Riksbank (Bank of Sweden). After only a year, Mr. Hammarskjold was appointed as Permanent Undersecretary of the Ministry of Finance, which was considered one of the most difficult jobs in the government. From 1941 to 1948 he also served as Chairman of the Board of the National Bank of Sweden, also a government appointment. He was the first to have both assignments simultaneously.
As 1945 began, Hammarskjold became Adviser to the Cabinet on financial and economic problems. In this position he coordinated government plans to alleviate the economic problems of the post-World War II period.
Hammarskjöld was appointed to Sweden's Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 1947, continuing his responsibility for handling economic issues. Two years later, he became the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs.
Also in 1947, he was a delegate to the Paris conference that established the Marshall Plan. In 1948 he was again in Paris to attend the conference of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Hammarskjold became head of the Sweden delegation to UNISCAN in 1950. This organization was created for the purpose of promoting economic cooperation between United Kingdom and the Scandinavian countries. The next year he became a Cabinet Minister without portfolio, essentially, Deputy Foreign Minister. Although Hammarskjöld served with a cabinet dominated by the Social Democrats, he never officially joined any political party.
In 1951, Hammarskjöld became Vice Chairman of the Swedish delegation to the Sixth Regular Session of the United Nations General Assembly in Paris. He became the acting chairman of the Swedish delegation to the 7th General Assembly in New York in 1952.
On December 20, 1954, Mr. Hammarskjold was elected to take his father's vacated seat in the Swedish Academy. The Swedish Academy is the organization that is charged with choosing Nobel Prize recipients.
UN Secretary General
When Trygve Lie resigned from his post as UN Secretary General in 1953, the Security Council recommended Hammarskjöld to the post. It came as a surprise to him. The UN General Assembly elected him unanimously in the April 7–10 session. In 1957, he was re-elected.
Hammarskjöld started his term by establishing his own secretariat of 4,000 administrators. He set up regulations that defined their responsibilities. He insisted that the secretary-general should be able to take emergency action without the prior approval of the Security Council or the General Assembly.
During his terms, Hammarskjöld tried to soothe relations between Israel and the Arab states. In 1955 he went to mainland China to negotiate the release of 15 US pilots who had served in the Korean War and been captured by the Chinese. In 1956 he established the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF). In 1957 he intervened in the Suez Crisis.
In 1960 the former Belgian colony and now newly-independent Congo asked for UN aid in defusing the escalating civil strife. Hammarskjöld made four trips to the Congo republic. However, his efforts towards the decolonisation of Africa were considered insufficient by the USSR. In September 1960 the Soviet Union denounced his decision to send a UN emergency force to keep the peace. They demanded his resignation, and the replacement of the office of Secretary General by a three-man directorate with a built in veto, the "troika". According to the memoir of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, the objective was to "equally represent interests of three groups of countries: capitalist, socialist and recently independent" [1].
Like his predecessor Trygve Lie, Hammarskjöld ended his term no longer on speaking terms with the Soviet Union. His bad relations with both the Soviets and the French contributed to financial crisis at the UN, as both these governments refused to pay their peacekeeping dues.
Death
In September 1961, Hammarskjöld found out about the fighting between non-combatant UN forces and Katanga troops of Moise Tshombe. He was en route to negotiate a cease-fire on the night of September 17-18 when his plane crashed near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). He and fifteen others perished. There is still speculation as to the cause of the crash.
The explanation of investigators at the time is that Hammarskjöld's aircraft descended too low on its approach to Ndola's airport at night. The crew had filed no flight plan for security reasons. No evidence of a bomb, surface-to-air missile or hijacking has ever been presented. It has been speculated that the crew of the DC-6 incorrectly used altitude data for Ndolo (915 ft, 279 m), which is in Congo and at lower altitude, rather than Ndola ( 4167ft, 1270 m) in Northern Rhodesia.
On August 19, 1998, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chairman of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), revealed that recently-uncovered letters had implicated British MI5, American CIA and South African intelligence services in the 1961 crash of Dag Hammarskjöld's plane. One TRC letter said that a bomb in the aircraft's wheel-bay was set to detonate when the wheels came down for landing. [2]
On July 29, 2005, exactly 100 years after Hammarskjöld's birth, the Norwegian Major General Bjørn Egge gave an interview to the newspaper Aftenposten on the events surrounding his death. According to Egge, who was the first UN officer to see the body, Hammarskjöld had a hole in his forehead, and this hole was subsequently airbrushed from photos taken of the body. It appeared to Egge that Hammarskjöld had been thrown from the plane, and grass and leaves in his hands might indicate that he survived the crash, and had tried to scramble away from the wreckage. Egge's statement does not, however, align with Archbishop Tutu's information. [3]
A less conspiratorial theory holds that Hammarskjöld's plane struck some treetops as it was preparing for landing. Hammarskjöld was the only person whose body was separate from the wreckage and therefore not burnt due to his aversion to seatbelts. He was thrown from the crash able to crawl away from the plane, but his injuries were severe enough that he was already dead by the time the plane was found.
His only book Vägmärken (Markings) was published in 1963. A collection of his diary reflections, the book starts in 1925, when he was 20 years old, and ends at his death in 1961. [4] In the book Hammarskjöld reveals himself as a Christian Mysticist and describes his diplomat deed in the way of a ”inner journey”; the book became popular with U.S. students and also with the former Swedish archbishop K.G. Hammar.
Nobel Peace Prize
Hammarskjöld received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961, having been nominated before his death.
Legacy
Today Hammarskjöld is viewed perhaps as the greatest Secretary-General because of his ability to shape events in contrast to his successors. This view is one that is commonly shared by intellectuals around the world, such as the historian Paul Kennedy, who hailed Hammarskjöld in his book The Parliament of Man.[citation needed]
A Manhattan park near the United Nations headquarters is called Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, and nearby buildings use it as a vanity address.[citation needed]
External links
- Kofi Annan, Dag Hammarskjöld and the 21st century, The Fourth Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture 6th September 2001, Uppsala University (pdf)
- Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary-General: the official website of the UN
- Markings - "the spiritual diary of Dag Hammarskjöld"
- The Nobel Prize
- Letters say Hammarskjöld's death Western plot
- UN assassination plot denied
- Plot to kill Hammarskjöld
- Media briefing by Archbishop Desmond Tutu
- 18 September 1961 UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld is killed
| Preceded by: Trygve Lie |
UN Secretary-General 1953-1961 |
Succeeded by: U Thant |
| Preceded by: Hjalmar Hammarskjöld |
Swedish Academy, Seat No.17 1954-1961 |
Succeeded by: Erik Lindegren |
| |||||
Template:UNSecretary-General
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