New Light on Harry Dexter White

Abstract

Harry Dexter White is remembered today as the “other” founding father of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, almost always as an afterthought as homage is paid to his far more renowned British counterpart, John Maynard Keynes. In the months leading up to and beyond the U.S. entry into World War II, White and Keynes independently drafted plans for a postwar stabilization fund aimed at restoring multilateral trade with convertible currencies. They traded plans in 1942 and then worked jointly on increasingly detailed proposals that led eventually to the creation of the IMF and World Bank. White is also remembered as a man who was accused of being a Soviet spy during the war, who died of a heart attack in 1948 just three days after giving a spirited and emotional public defense of his character before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and whose name was dragged out prominently five years later in an ugly battle between the Eisenhower Administration and former President Truman. Squeezed into the shadows between the luminosity of Keynes and the glaring excesses of McCarthyism, White's reputation has long been in need of a more sober inspection in the light of history.