Henry Morgenthau Jr.

Henry Morgenthau Jr. (May 11, 1891 – February 6, 1967) was an American government official of German Jewish descent who served as the 52nd United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1934 to 1945 under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. Born in New York City to real estate developer and diplomat Henry Morgenthau Sr., he briefly studied agriculture at Cornell University before managing a farm in New York, where he developed a close friendship with Roosevelt. As Treasury Secretary, Morgenthau played a central role in financing the New Deal recovery programs, including the establishment of the Works Progress Administration, and mobilized massive war bond sales that raised tens of billions to fund the U.S. effort in World War II. He chaired the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, which laid the foundation for the post-war international monetary system through the creation of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Morgenthau was instrumental in pressuring Roosevelt to form the War Refugee Board in 1944, an agency credited with rescuing up to 200,000 Jews and other refugees from Nazi persecution. His tenure is also defined by the controversial Morgenthau Plan, a proposal to deindustrialize and partition Germany into a primarily agricultural economy to prevent future aggression, which initially gained Roosevelt's support but was ultimately rejected amid opposition from military leaders and public backlash.