Morgenthau

1945 · 140948892 — New York and London: Harper & Brothers 1945. First Edition. Near Fine/Near Fine. First edition first printing. A remarkable association copy not only signed by author Henry Morgenthau on the front free endpaper and inscribed to the then-President of the book's publisher known for picking Pulitzer Prize winners: "For Cass Canfield a swell Publisher with sincere affection." Additionally it is signed in pencil on the book's title page by one its primary ghostwriters government official Harry Dexter White with Morgenthau's name suggestively crossed-out. As White's biographer David Rees put it "White was now to supervise the writing of a book by Treasury staff explaining the Morgenthau Plan eventually published a year later under Morgenthau's name as Germany is Our Problem." Morgenthau himself acknowledged White's role in the signed copy he gave White in 1945 cited in James Boughton's Harry White and the American Creed. <p>In 1948 a handwritten note by White to Whittaker Chambers would embroil him in a covert hunt for Soviet moles within the U.S. government. He died that year but five years later his face would grace newspapers all over the world as he was accused of being a spy for the Soviet Union connected to the network of Nathan Silvermaster. His degree of culpability remains debated to this day although release of the Venona decrypts provided damning evidence. The posthumous nature of White's notoriety has meant that his signature is extremely rare especially on books rather than documents.<br /> <p>viii 4 ix - xiii iii 239 pp. foldout map printed on speckled wartime paper. Bound in publisher's navy cloth with gilt lettering to spine. Near Fine light rubbing to extremities dulled gilt and dust jacket clipping tipped to front pastedown. In a Near Fine unclipped dust jacket with lightly worn with a few small tape repairs to verso. Uncommon especially in such nice shape.<br /> <br /> <p>The book outlines what would become known as The Morgenthau Plan for postwar Germany. The U.S. Secretary of the Treasury called for the defeated enemy's radical total deindustrialization decentralization and transformation into a pastoral society. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt regretted his initial support for Morgenthau's plan after it was vigorously decried at home and abroad and his successor favored the less vengeful and more pragmatic Marshall Plan. White's role in formulating the plan that would bear his superior at the Treasury Department's name remains little-known as it itself has fallen into obscurity since the early Cold War. Less controversial was White's role in co-founding both the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Harper & Brothers unknown