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This chapter examines fiscal conservatism under the Roosevelt administration. Fiscal conservatism has been linked to liberalism since the construction of the New Deal state. Indeed, a pragmatic alliance between liberals and moderate fiscal conservatives has played a key role in some of the most durable state-building efforts in U.S. history. This alliance produced bold federal initiatives in a nation historically resistant to centralized government. Building on the work of James Savage and David Kennedy, this chapter argues that fiscal conservatism constituted a key component of the New Deal during the years 1933–1938. It looks at two members of the administration who maintained pressure on Franklin Roosevelt to balance budgets: Lewis Douglas, who served as Director of Budget from 1933 to 1934, and Henry Morgenthau Jr., secretary of the treasury from 1934 to 1945. The chapter concludes with an assessment of Roosevelt's fiscal policy in relation to Keynesianism.

Chapter 8 analyzes the culmination of the Eastern Question by analyzing American reactions to the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1917 and President Woodrow Wilson’s failed plans for an American mandate over Armenia. It examines the role played by the United States in establishing the larger mandate system in the Middle East. The primary actors involved in pushing for such a system included political and diplomatic elites, such as Woodrow Wilson and Henry Morgenthau, who worked closely with American missionaries, including Josiah Strong and James Barton. It also analyzes how American support for the Balfour Declaration built on previous arguments about the Jewish Question in Europe to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In concludes with an analysis of the King-Crane Commission.

This chapter discusses the ratification of the Bretton Woods agreements and security of postwar financial support for Great Britain and the Soviet Union, which saw Harry White drawn into major controversies involving Germany and the Soviet Union. One was a scheme devised by Harry's boss, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, to pastoralize Germany after the war. The chapter refers to an interagency decision to share the printing of banknotes for the occupation of Germany with the Soviet Union. It recounts how Morgenthau turned his attention to postwar planning for Germany immediately after the Bretton Woods conference ended in July 1944. The State Department developed a plan—to be issued through the interdepartmental Executive Committee on Economic Foreign Policy (ECEFP)—for the allies to occupy and partition Germany and extract large reparations payments.

This chapter details how Henry Morgenthau elevated Harry White to the post of assistant to the secretary and assigned him full responsibility for international economic policy when the United States finally entered World War II. Although Harry had earlier shown substantial interest in domestic economic policies, by the time of World War II he was focusing entirely on international financial issues. The chapter cites a magazine profile that describes Harry as a practical, somewhat conservative economist, rather than a theorist. It highlights Harry's career, noting one characteristic on which everyone could agree was that he was extremely hardworking. After a full day at the office, he routinely took large batches of papers home to work on through the evening.

This chapter examines writing on the Armenian deportations and massacres. It draws on the diary and dispatches of the American ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Henry Morgenthau (1856–1945), which were later published as a memoir. It argues that Morgenthau is the proper place to begin to understand how the history of what later would be called “genocide” has been written about by eyewitnesses, by diplomats in their dispatches, by missionaries and soldiers in letters and memoirs, and eventually by professional historians. The chapter also considers the lack of distanced reflection or scholarly attention paid to the Armenian massacres for almost fifty years after the events; and the continued denial of genocide by the Turkish government and sponsored spokesmen.

Chapter 3, Into the Abyss, examines Japanese-American relations from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1933 inauguration to the summer of 1937 and the onset of the Second Sino-Japanese War. This chapter focuses on the new administration’s application of containment, and particularly its decision to no longer employ diplomatic engagement as well as its decision to rebuild the Far Eastern balance of power through normalizing relations with the Soviet Union and providing aggressive aid to China. This chapter also considers how events in China, namely the December 1936 Xian Incident, and Japan’s February 26 (1936) Incident shaped Sino-Japanese relations and contributed to the outbreak of hostilities in July of 1937.

This chapter reviews how Harry White was beginning to rise through the ranks as he had shown his independence and had gained a more important patron, Secretary Henry Morgenthau, by 1936. Harry had become the U.S. Treasury's point man on all issues relating to international financial policy. It outlines the issues that were increasing in importance, as the U.S. economy gradually recovered from the Depression while Europe and Asia were languishing economically and drifting toward war. The chapter talks about Morgenthau's promotion of Harry to assistant director of the Division of Research and Statistics on October 1, 1936, with an annual salary of $6,500. However, the Treasury post was not allocated within the regular budget and his salary was still being paid from the emergency Depression-fighting fund.

In this chapter, Olick presents numerous prologues to West German memory. In order to trace the threads of contemporary German memory, he begins by describing historical factors during the 1918-1945 period. These factors included Roosevelt’s negative view of Prussian militarism and his call for “unconditional surrender”, the impact of Roosevelt’s Jewish treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and his deindustrialization plan; and Western discourse about German pathologies. Olick then analyses the 1945-1949 occupation of Germany and public discourse in Germany surrounding responsibility and guilt, as well as the controversy over the source of German suffering. The chapter concludes with a summary of the birth of West German politics, starting with the election of Konrad Adenauer as first chancellor of West Germany and Theodor Heuss as first president.

This chapter recounts how Harry White finally got a title that was commensurate with the responsibilities of chief economist that he had fulfilled for the preceding three years. It points out that the U.S. Treasury organization chart had room for only two assistant secretaries, and both posts had been occupied by men who were not economists. In November 1944 one of those men, John L. Sullivan, resigned to become assistant secretary of the navy, creating the opening that both Henry Morgenthau and Harry had been waiting for throughout the war. The chapter reviews how Harry's promotion did not substantially alter Harry's responsibilities and he remained in charge of the division that was now called Monetary Research and Foreign Funds Control. As World War II drew to a close in the months following the Bretton Woods conference, Harry faced several challenges, both ongoing and new.

The chapter quotes ER's wish to be remembered for her "gift of friendship" and describes friendship with Martha Van Rensselaer and Flora Rose at Cornell school of home economics; Molly Dewson, FDR's New Dealer, and partner, Polly Porter; Esther Lupe and Elizabeth Read; Rose Schneiderman and Maud Swartz; and Elinor and Henry Morgenthau Jr. Defines ER's preference for a "threesome."

The centenary of the genocide of the Ottoman Armenians was commemorated in 2015 by the worldwide Armenian diaspora community, as well as within Armenia itself. This chapter critically examines the ways in which the memory of the genocide of the Armenians has been framed in terms of race, with Western observers from 1915 on applying racialized discourses to the Ottomans and the events of the Armenian genocide. The chapter considers the evolution of notions of “racial extermination” and racial incompatibility and incommensurability in the era of imperialism prior to and during the First World War, and draws attention to the nexus between imperial revisionism, global politics, and genocidal racial violence. Finally, the chapter considers the links between the Armenian genocide and the genocidal politics of the Nazi regime.

This chapter examines the early British and French efforts to procure war materiel from the United States and the positive influence of those negotiations on the development of Anglo-American collaboration. The account first establishes the intense anti-interventionist sentiment that set the conditions for the negotiations. The narrative outlines the initial confused nature of the British and French purchasing commissions. Using the development and purchase of aircraft as the primary case study, the chapter outlines the fits, starts, and frictions that plagued the initial supply negotiations. Although shared mutual interests facilitated collaboration, the fact that Anglo-French purchase orders developed the U.S. industrial base and contributed to lowering unemployment still lingering from the Great Depression helped as well. Over time, the negotiations slowly intertwined the two powers’ industrial efforts, promoting an increasing spiral of collaboration that included war planning based on allocation decisions.

This chapter covers the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1945, the resignation of Henry Morgenthau as Treasury secretary in July, and the end of World War II in August, which meant that Harry White's job at the U.S. Treasury was effectively completed. The chapter discusses how Harry White developed a negative view of both Fred M. Vinson and Harry S. Truman. Harry found that Truman always used good words but never did anything, or if he did act, he acted weakly or on the wrong side. The chapter refers to the American journalist I. F. (“Izzy”) Stone, who came to see Harry at his office in the Treasury building on Pennsylvania Avenue in the spring of 1946. Stone, who had just returned from an extended trip through Eastern Europe and Palestine documenting the plight of Jewish refugees, was an admirer of Harry and his work.