Henry Morgenthau Jr.

Henry Morgenthau Jr. (1891–1967) was an American statesman who served as United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1934 to 1945 under Franklin D. Roosevelt. The son of Wilson's ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Morgenthau was a gentleman farmer in Dutchess County, New York, who became Roosevelt's closest lifelong neighbor and cabinet intimate.

As Treasury Secretary, Morgenthau stabilized the US financial system during the Great Depression, designed the financing for the New Deal, and raised over $200 billion through War Bonds to finance American victory in World War II. In July 1944, he presided over the historic Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire, establishing the post-war international monetary order, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank. In 1944, his Treasury investigation into State Department inaction led directly to the creation of the War Refugee Board, which rescued at least 200,000 European Jews from Nazi extermination.