Planning for postwar economic cooperation: The United States Treasury, the Soviet Union, and Bretton Woods, 1933--1946

During World War II FDR determined that a new departure in American foreign policy was necessary to secure postwar peace and prosperity. The framework sketched by FDR included collective security, multilateralism, and mutually beneficial economic and trade relations based on equal access to markets and raw materials, free trade, and currency convertibility. Roosevelt believed that the Soviet Union would play a constructive part and prove a willing partner in the envisioned postwar international order. Through continual demonstrations of American friendship, accommodation, and good will, the suspicion and hostility that clouded the relations between the nations could be dispersed.; It fell to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. to translate these rhetorical generalities, which he fully shared, into a plan for postwar international monetary cooperation. Morgenthau assigned Harry Dexter White the responsibility for planning what became known as the Bretton Woods institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD or World Bank).; The dissertation examines the efforts of White to integrate the unique features of the Soviet monetary and trade system with the stated principles of the IMF. In spite of the best efforts of White and the administration and numerous concessions granted during negotiations, the Kremlin did not ratify the Bretton Woods agreements. An assessment of Treasury's planning and negotiations vis-à-vis the Soviet Union suggest that White's choice of gold as the link to connect the Soviet Union to the IMF was not practicable and was but one example of flawed Treasury negotiating strategy.; This study rejects the charge that White shaped the IMF to serve the interests of the Soviet Union. However newly-available archival material demonstrates that the Bretton Woods negotiations were “compromised.” Through information supplied by White and other Treasury employees Stalin was fully informed on the American negotiating position and strategy. This new information demands a fundamental reassessment not just of the Bretton Woods negotiations, but the whole of wartime Soviet-American economic and political relations.