Henry Morgenthau, Jr.
|
|
Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (May 11, 1891–February 6, 1967) was Secretary of the Treasury of the United States during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Morgenthau was born in New York City, the son of Henry Morgenthau Sr., a realtor and diplomat. He studied architecture and agriculture at Cornell University. In 1913, he met and became friends with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. During World War I, he worked for the U.S. Farm Administration. In 1929 Roosevelt, as Governor of New York, appointed him chair of the New York State Agricultural Advisory Committee and to the state Conservation Commission.
In 1933 Roosevelt became President and appointed Morgenthau governor of the Federal Farm Board. In 1934, when William H. Woodin resigned through ill-health, Roosevelt appointed Morgenthau Secretary of the Treasury. Morgenthau was an orthodox economist who opposed Keynesian economics and disapproved of some elements of Roosevelt's New Deal, but he was a Roosevelt loyalist and retained his office until 1945.
As the only Jewish member of Roosevelt's Cabinet, Morgenthau took a leading role in trying to persuade Roosevelt to allow more Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany to enter the United States, but his efforts were largely thwarted by obstruction from the State Department. In January 1944, however, Morgenthau succeeded in persuading Roosevelt to allow the creation of a War Refugee Board in the Treasury Department. This allowed an increasing number of Jews to enter the U.S. in 1944 and 1945 - as many as 200,000 Jews were saved in this way.
In 1944 Morgenthau proposed the Morgenthau Plan for postwar Germany, calling for Germany to be stripped of its industry and forced to return to an agrarian economy. Although the plan was considered, it was ultimately rejected. Later that year, Morgenthau was a leading participant in the Bretton Woods Conference, which created the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (precursor to the World Bank).
After Roosevelt's death, Morgenthau resigned from the Cabinet. He devoted the remainder of his life to philanthropy, and also became a financial advisor to Israel. He died in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1967.
| Preceded by: William H. Woodin | United States Secretary of the Treasury 1934–1945 | Succeeded by: Fred M. Vinson |