Ivan B. White Oral History Interview

Notice
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview.

RESTRICTIONS
This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Opened May, 1976
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

[1]

FUCHS: Mr. White, I wonder if you would give me a little resume of where you were born and your life before you came into the Foreign Service, and then we'll pick up from there.

WHITE: Yes, I was born in Salem, Oregon in 1907, and was graduated from Willamette University in 1929. My interest in the Foreign Service arose in 1928 when I took a course in a political science major in the conduct of American foreign policy. After graduation and working a year, I went to the University of Washington on a teaching fellowship. Taught half time and took

[2]

graduate work the other half time, went down to the Federal courthouse and took the written Foreign Service examinations, managed to pass, and then went to Washington in June, 1932 to take the oral and physical examinations, passed those and returned to the northwest. It was during the Hoover economy wave and they were not appointing those who had passed examinations -- so I took a job as Assistant Relief Administrator in the state of Oregon, which was at that time under the RFC and very shortly came under Harry Hopkins and the Federal Unemployment Relief Administration, which I continued until I was called up into the Foreign Service in October 1935. After a year of training in Mexico City at our Embassy there and three months in the Foreign Service school in Washington, I was sent to Japan where our oldest daughter was born. Then I was sent to Harvard on a year's study assignment in international

[3]

finance, and subsequently, to Rio de Janeiro as financial attache in the Embassy there.

FUCHS: What year was that?

WHITE: I was sent in 1941 and was there until September 1944.

FUCHS: You were there a good part of the war, then.

WHITE: Yes, first three years of the war. In June 1944 I was detailed to the Bretton Woods Conference to act as liaison officer with the Latin-American delegations, which during the wartime period constituted about 40 percent of the total delegations. I worked under Dean Acheson who at that time was Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs.

FUCHS: Did you go to the preliminary conference they had in Atlantic City in June '44?

[4]

WHITE: No, I knew about it, but I didn't go. I was sent directly -- actually I accompanied the Brazilian finance minister and his group up to the conference. In addition to acting as liaison with Dean Acheson, we negotiated with the Brazilian Finance Minister a coffee agreement providing for the purchase of an additional 2,000,000 bags of coffee for the armed services. At the end of that conference, which was at the time of the St. Lo breakthrough and about the time of the reoccupation of Paris by the Allied troops, Dean Acheson asked me where I'd like to be assigned next. I told him Paris. He smiled, but said nothing; two weeks subsequent to my return to Rio de Janeiro I had orders transferring me to Paris. So, after taking the family back to Oregon to remain during the wartime period, I flew to Paris and served as financial officer there.

FUCHS: Let's go back a little bit. At the Bretton

[5]

Woods Conference did you have occasion to observe some of the people such as Harry Dexter White and so forth? Do you have any reflections about any of these personalities?

WHITE: Yes, I played tennis with Harry Dexter White and Mrs. Morgenthau, plus another lady whose name I do not recall. And, of course, I knew Harry White intermittently both there and at the inaugural meeting of the International Bank and Fund at Savannah in April of 1946.

FUCHS: Do you have any reflections about him, his personality, or his ability?

WHITE: Well, yes. He was very pleasant to me because I first met him at the Conference of Inter-American Foreign Ministers which convened in Rio shortly after we became involved in the war in the early part of 1942. He came down with Sumner Welles as the Treasury Department representative and I

[6]

became acquainted with him then, and I think he was largely responsible for my being called up to the Treasury shortly thereafter in 1942 for a briefing on foreign funds control. I knew very little about his background up to that point and my impression of him at that moment was that he knew his business and that Morgenthau obviously relied heavily upon him.

The moment of my unhappiness arose when I put into Washington on my way to Paris and went over to make a courtesy call on him. I had been by that time designated by the State Department as financial officer and he commented that he was glad I was going to Paris, and I'd get along well there, if I didn't attempt to involve myself in financial matters which were the prerogative of the Treasury Department and its representative. I had very little to do with him after that point except at the inaugural meeting of the Bank and Fund at Savannah, where I acted as assistant to

[7]

Judge Fred Vinson, who at that time had become Secretary of the Treasury and who was president of the Conference. Each morning we'd have a caucus there and at one point Harry White took the position that we should abandon our strong position that the Bank and Fund should be located in Washington instead of New York, which the British favored, on the grounds that we didn't have the votes. Well, part of my job with Judge Vinson had been to keep track of the different delegations and their thinking and having them up to his suite for luncheons and to maintain good relationships. My reading was that we did have the votes to have it in Washington rather than in New York, and on some other issue, the details of which I forget, we had the same confrontation. To my amazement, Judge Vinson, who was Secretary of the Treasury and who appeared rather critical of Harry White (who was still Assistant Treasury

[8]

Secretary), sided with me on both issues. In retrospect, I think possibly Vinson, at that juncture, had picked up some kind of information indicating that Harry White might not be within his official family very long. Now that's pure surmise; an interpretation of why Vinson did not go along with White's views.

FUCHS: I'm not certain of the protocol but I believe you introduced Judge Vinson there, and you were a State Department financial man and he had his own Treasury Department finance man. Why was that done that way?

WHITE: I don't know. It could possibly be because of what we discussed. He may have acquired a lack of confidence. I know I was called back from Paris for this conference, called back to the State Department. I had been called back because we were going to have some bilateral negotiations

[9]

with the French. Leon Blum had formed his cabinet after de Gaulle had resigned -- the first de Gaulle administration. Leon Blum had come in and they were in dire need of financial assistance before the Marshall plan and we had a lot of other things to settle, all kinds of things. So I was called back primarily to work on that, and then I was detailed to this conference while I was back in Washington. I really don't know but I'm happy that it occurred because I loved the Judge. Vinson was one of the nicest persons I have ever known.

FUCHS: Had you known him previously?

WHITE: No, I hadn't. He had previously been in Congress.

FUCHS: Oh, you were introduced to him. I understood that you had introduced him at some meeting.

[10]

WHITE: No, this was later on. And I came to love and admire him. Vinson didn't know too much about international affairs, but he got along well with people and he had a certain shrewdness which is very helpful in international affairs, plus the fact that he had Will Clayton there, you see, as acting head of the American delegation, because Vinson was chairman of that inaugural meeting of the Bank and Fund; therefore he couldn't act as head of the American delegation. And he had Will Clayton who was a tremendous person.

FUCHS: I see, he acted as head of the delegation.

WHITE: That's right. Now, that brings us to the point of the first annual meeting of the International Bank and Monetary Fund. It was

[11]

held in Washington that same fall. By that time Fred Vinson had become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by appointment by Harry Truman. And the Judge was so interested in the International Bank and Monetary Fund that -- at the Wardman Park was that...

FUCHS: Wardman Park Hotel, now Sheraton Park.

WHITE: Yes, Wardman Park, that's where we had this conference. I was called back from Paris again, you see, to be an advisor to the American delegation, and I was always running into Judge Vinson, who came over frequently to sit around and chat with his friends. I soon discovered that he was so pleased with the Savannah meeting and the acquaintances made there that he left the impression he felt more at home in that kind of situation than he did up there on the bench. I'm

[12]

not sure but that's my interpretation. Anyway, he was there. So, having worked for him, I saw a great deal of him. I'd sit down and chat with him and we might have had a drink or two. Towards the end of the conference President Truman was giving a reception for the 44 governors of the Bank and Fund, usually finance ministers of the respective countries. (Today, I believe there are over a hundred.) So the word came down from the White House to the State Department they wanted someone designated to introduce the 44 governors to President Truman at this reception. So I was tagged for it. I suppose because I'd been both at Bretton Woods and Savannah. Well, I didn't know all of them, but with two exceptions, I was able to announce to the President the countries they represented. So, I arrived early at the White House where, in addition to the 44 governors having drinks before the reception, several Americans

[13]

had been invited, including Judge Vinson. When I was taken to one side to meet the President, I screwed up my courage and said, “ Mr. President, Judge Vinson’s over there kind of at loose ends and, of course, he knows all these people having been chairman of the conference at Savannah.”

And he said, “Hell , yes, tell Fred to come on over and join the reception line.”

So we put Vinson in the reception line right behind the President. And I could tell that Vinson was tickled pink because he could then shake hands with all the people he’d known before.

FUCHS: Had you met President Truman prior to that?

WHITE: No, never met him before that meeting. So that was very pleasant and I enjoyed it. Well, I knew I couldn’t make it in terms of all their names, because I’m not the greatest one for names, although I knew quite a few on them; but I could

[14]

introduce them and I did as, for example, the “Governor from Iceland” instead of “Thor Thors.” So, that’s really my one direct experience with Harry Truman.

There was another amusing, albeit indirect, experience. After serving in Paris and then serving in Trieste as Director of Finance and Economics for Allied Military Government, the last of the SHAPE-type organizations, I was called back into the Department as economic advised for the Latin-American area. This was just immediately after Dean Acheson had become Secretary of State and, as such, I was directly responsible to Eddie Miller who was Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. By 1950 I was in Brazil on business and planned to go on down to Uruguay and Argentina, when I received a telegram from Eddie Miller asking me to go from Buenos Aires to Santiago, Chile and be there at a certain date to

[15]

attend the inauguration of the National Steel Mill at Concepcion, which is south of Santiago. So I wired back and I said, "Of course." After Montevideo and Buenos Aires, I took a plane to Santiago. I didn't think much about the stop-over but had wired the Embassy to make a reservation for a hotel there. When the plane arrived at the Santiago airport I looked out the window, and there was a red carpet, a group in formal dress, plus a large crowd. My reaction was that some dignitary must have been on our plane. As I was disembarking, I saw a friend from the Embassy, who rushed up to me and said, "Put on your coat, you have to go through this reception line."

I started to ask why and he pushed me, so I went through it and shook hands with everyone. They even had a band out there, and I was a bit bewildered. Well, when the ceremonies were completed my Embassy friend informed me that the

[16]

Chilean Government had invited Harry Truman to come down to the steel mill dedication and that they wanted to honor him for his great assistance to Chile. He sent a message through the State Department that he deeply regretted he couldn't come, but that he would designate a personal representative to attend the ceremonies. The State Department informed the Chilean Government that I had been so designated but inadvertently forgot to inform me.

FUCHS: They never told you what you were doing?

WHITE: They never told me, it was just one of those things. Well, I was about three echelons down the line but, in retrospect, greatly enjoyed my exalted status.

FUCHS: You didn't know that red carpet was for you.

WHITE: No. It's a good thing I didn't. I'd have

[17]

worried.

The Chileans put on ten days of the greatest show you ever saw. I vaguely remember it through a haze of wining and dining and that sort of thing. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed every minute of it.

FUCHS: Then, at Bretton Woods, do you think that all the substantive matters had really been settled at the Atlantic City meeting or did they...

WHITE: No, I don't think so, but I think most of them. I think the broad outlines of the Fund's Charter were pretty well settled. The Bank thing was wider open, especially about its lending power and things like that. I really think that White and the other experts concentrated more on the Fund. I think, subsequently, the Bank has become just as important.

[18]

It was important then to the recipient countries, potential recipients; but I do not think that the potential lenders (the U.S., Canada and other industrialized nations), had given the same concentrated attention to the Bank. Consequently, the Bank and its operations required more attention by the Board of Governors in the postwar period. I think the Marshall plan was necessary, in part because, after all, the Bank as a recovery instrument was a lending institution and the Western European postwar situation required some grants, in addition to loans. Secondly, the Bank in its first year or so of operation was so timid and ultraconservative that it really didn't serve as the type of instrument envisioned at Bretton Woods.

FUCHS: Do you think that if the Bank would have gotten off of the ground a little faster and been a little broader plan that Europe wouldn't have

[19]

deteriorated as much as it did to the point where they needed the Marshall plan?

WHITE: No, I still think the Marshall plan would have been needed because the economic disruption and actual damage was of greater magnitude than, I think, was anticipated at Bretton Woods. I believe the thing we didn't realize at that time was that the pipelines of supply were as exhausted as they were. I mean if you take raw material and run them all the way through the production, whole sale and retail levels you've got an enormous quantity of goods. I think we had a pretty good idea of what the capital destruction was, but I think we had an inadequate idea of the exhaustion of the pipeline. And, of course, the thing that made it worse was that the minute the war was over they cut out the lend-lease thing and that compounded the problem. I think all of us in the business -- and I was in France at the time -- were

[20]

as horrified as the French and the British and all our other friends when lend-lease was chopped off immediately. I don't recall the name of the chap who was lend-lease administrator, but as I undestand it he had recommended this to Truman and Truman had okayed it. And I know it was subsequent to that that Truman started making his own selections of personnel and relying more on them.

FUCHS: As I recall the story he cut it off and then he said he'd never sign anything after that without reading it carefully, and it was sort of a mistake; but didn't they rescind that to a degree? Maybe it never got started up again, do you recall?

WHITE: Well, I don't think it was ever rescinded. It may have been slightly modified, but it certainly increased the need for something like the Marshall plan.

FUCHS: Lord Keynes had a more ambitious plan at

[21]

Bretton Woods and the preliminary negotiations for the Bank and the Fund. Do you have any reflections about that?

WHITE: He may have, I just don't recall that.

FUCHS: I think there was something to do with a payments union.

WHITE: It may have, it may have. But I think at that juncture the British were so pressed financially themselves that they really had to defer to us. Yes, I think they probably did.

FUCHS: Was it your impression that White was calling most of the shots?

WHITE: At Bretton Woods? Yes, yes. I think Morgenthau leaned on him heavily.

FUCHS: Let's see, were the quotas and some of the currencies pegged, or wasn't that done until

[22]

Savannah?

WHITE: No, the quotas were set there and it wasn't until the last day that the Soviets agreed to theirs, and then, of course, they never ratified it.

FUCHS: What do you think happened there that they reneged on their commitment?

WHITE: Oh, I think it was part of the whole panorama of the Stalinist philosophy which was kind of a Soviet isolationism, coupled with the desire to get the United States off of the continent of Europe.

FUCHS: Of course the Cold War was beginning then.. Was there a feeling that it was a very bad thing -- or was there a sigh of relief that they didn't sign?

WHITE: No, at this juncture, at Bretton Woods,

[23]

I think we regarded it as very important to get the Soviets in because we still were hoping for "one world" and all that. By the time of the Marshall plan, the Soviets had been so difficult or impossible about so many things that I think many people concluded that if the Russians were admitted they would sabotage the Marshall plan from within. So, there was a sigh of relief when they elected not to come in. You know they had the Paris conference. But I don't think it was just an anti-Communist feeling because most people were anxious for any European country that wanted, like Czechoslovakia and Poland, to join the group. I think the Soviets would have been welcomed if their behavior pattern immediately preceding that had been different.

FUCHS: What was the principal accomplishment at Savannah?

[24]

WHITE: Well, Savannah was to get things going. I think there were two things decided there, though the second item decided has been subject to some modification. First was the location of the Bank and they decided on Washington. There was a vote on it and our position was sustained.

FUCHS: Who were the strong proponents for the New York location?

WHITE: The British. The second issue was the relative importance of the executive directors in contrast with the president of the Bank and the executive director of the Monetary Fund, and we leaned at that time towards the executive directors having the dominant position; and I believe they still do in the Monetary Fund. That's my impression. I haven't been near it for some years. But in the International Bank the gravitation has been in the direction of the presidency having a good

[25]

chunk of the power. Those were the two things, at least theoretically, resolved.

FUCHS: What were the primary reasons you recall for the British wanting the Bank in New York rather than Washington?

WHITE: Well, I think they believed that the Bank, and possibly the Fund would be subject to more political influence in Washington. From my judgment, both the Bank and Fund have operated with a minimum of political interference. I don't think you can have international institutions of that magnitude without some consideration of political aspects. But I've been encouraged in the case of both those institutions by their objectivity.

FUCHS: Do you think there has been much feeling within the other countries that the United States was really dominating it and they were really just ratifying what we wanted?

[26]

WHITE: Well, there was that period where that was pretty much so, although not entirely the case; but I think in recent years, the locus of power has become more diffused and that probably is not the case anymore, though I really haven't been close to it for some years.

FUCHS: What about Argentina at Bretton Woods? You were there with the Latin-Americans? I realize they weren't brought in. They didn't even attend?

WHITE: Neither Argentina nor Chile were there. You see, at that time they had remained outside of what was called the Alliance and it was only in the last few days of the war that they hopped aboard the bandwagon; so I'm quite sure they weren't there.

FUCHS: I thought maybe they sent observers?

WHITE: I don't think they were invited.

[27]

FUCHS: What about the U.N. organization conference? Did you go to that?

WHITE: No. I came up to Washington twice while I was in Rio, The first time was on this foreign funds control assignment, and then the second was for the Bretton Woods Conference. The third time I came I was on my way to Paris.

FUCHS: Did you get to Mexico City, where the Act of Chapultepec was signed?

WHITE: No, I was in Europe.

FUCHS: That was prior to the U.N. Conference, I believe.

WHITE: Yes. I went to Paris, I guess in October

[28]

of '44, before Chapultepec. I was on the European scene.

FUCHS: The meeting in Washington, I believe you referred to it as the inaugural meeting.

WHITE: No, the inaugural meeting of the Bank and Fund was Savannah.

FUCHS: Savannah?

WHITE: I believe it was April '46 when the azaleas were all out. I know that time we went by train, and when we arrived the local citizens took us in a parade of cars down the main streets, the azaleas were out and they were beautiful. It was beautiful; so it must have been April. Then the first annual meeting was that fall, probably September or October of '46.

[29]

FUCHS: They alluded to that as the first annual meeting and the other was the inaugural meeting.

WHITE: The inaugural meeting was Savannah and the first annual meeting was Washington that fall.

FUCHS: What did they accomplish there? Was that largely a social event?

WHITE: Well, no. Things began to point up then in terms of the magnitude of the reconstruction problem in Europe and there was a good deal of discussion about it. It was at that juncture that Will Clayton asked me to go back and do economic surveys of several European countries.

FUCHS: You were where? He asked you to come back to the United States?

WHITE: No, I was in the United States when he asked me.

[30]

FUCHS: Oh, I see.

WHITE: I went back to Paris and then I did France first. And then I did Italy and Belgium and the Netherlands and then even put into Switzerland.

FUCHS: How did you go about doing these surveys?

WHITE: Well, of course, France I had been in and knew my way around. I kind of updated some of the work I had been doing, drew a few conclusions. The others I'd go into and I knew what I was looking for and I would meet some of the experts in the different countries, and I'd consult with our economic and financial people in the embassies and with the Treasury people when they had them.

FUCHS: Did you have a staff with you?

WHITE: No, I did it all alone, off-the-cuff. Anyway, that lasted until along about March or April in

[31]

1947, and Will Clayton was in Geneva at the International Trade meeting they had there, conducting negotiations with the individual countries, under the trade agreements program; he was head of our delegation. I put in there a couple of times and we went over things, and it was clear to him that we needed something of some greater magnitude. He went back to Washington and consulted with Dean Acheson. Dean Acheson gave his Mississippi address, and by that time Clayton had kind of outlined to me what he had in mind, which was very close to the Marshall plan as it worked out, and he went back and talked to Acheson. I assume -- things get a little hazy here - that they both participated in the drafting of Marshall's Harvard address. Then after the address he came back, he was still based in Geneva, but that's when they had the conference of 16 and replied to Marshall's invitation

[32]

for the European countries to gather together and they worked in Paris the hot summer of 1947. They were working there in some place without air-conditioning with the ceiling this high.

FUCHS: Did you go there?

WHITE: Well, I was liaison with them, you see. I acted on behalf of Will Clayton as the American liaison officer.

FUCHS: To the council of European economic advisers?

WHITE: Yes, I kept in touch with a number of them, and dealt directly with Sir Oliver Franks, who was later British ambassador to the United States.

FUCHS: What were your impressions of him?

WHITE: Oh, I thought he was a great guy, still do. All that summer I would be in touch with them and in touch with Will Clayton. He came down several

[33]

times and addressed the group. He had great facility for simplicity, simplifying rather complex problems, and he put down in about four sentences what he felt the essentials were of European recovery. One was that we needed to send them a lot, without getting too much into debt, of food and fuel, and they needed to concentrate on developing their own resources of those two items. Those were their great deficiencies. But we had to get the pipeline filled up. Secondly, he felt it important that they achieve and maintain monetary stability. Thirdly, he felt that it was important that they agree to join together to reduce and eventually to eliminate economic and other barriers among the group. The concept has now become the Common Market. Clayton was way ahead of his time. And he felt that we should get from them the necessary commitments on those three points.

[34]

That was his advice to them. So in their own report they came around pretty well on some of that. Then they reached the point where they'd almost evolved their plan and Sir Oliver Franks requested consultation with Will Clayton in Geneva, and he went up and I went up; and he put before Clayton a program, four-year program requiring U.S. assistance of some 20 billion dollars. I think they put it for four or five years. Clayton had a pretty good feeling for what Congress would go for. Chris Herter, who had been head of the Select Committee of the House on the Marshall plan had been to Europe that summer as had some 17 congressional groups, believe it or not. So. Clayton told Franks that he felt that was too much. That he felt that we'd be doing well if Congress over a period of four years would put up 16 billion. So they went back and revised their estimates downward a bit. In actual fact European reconstruction over the four years period required

[35]

only 14 billon. But I think Clayton probably had a better judgment at that juncture on how rapidly Europe could recover if we could put in the necessary elements than the Europeans themselves, because he was closer to it than they were, Now, I think I’ve talked enough for one day.

FUCHS: No, go ahead.

WHITE: Well, what more do we talk about?

FUCHS: Did you come in touch with Averell Harriman in the Paris office?

WHITE: Yes, I did. Not on any detailed basis, but Will Clayton, as I understand it, had been offered the job, once the Marshall plan was underway, of being head of the European office; he declined, he had some family problems, His wife was not well. So he declined and wrote me a letter saying that unfortunately he would not be back,

[36]

and Harriman was appointed. By that time I had been assigned on loan to the Army, as Director of Finance and Economics, Allied Military Government in Trieste and I had departed from Paris by the time Harriman had arrived.

FUCHS: That was 1947 or '48?

WHITE: The spring of '48.

FUCHS: '48?

WHITE: Yes.

FUCHS: We didn't really get rolling on the Marshall plan until '48.

WHITE: That's right. There was interim aid, you see, first, three months of it. But I came up from Trieste because by that time Trieste was being brought in as a member of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation.

[37]

FUCHS: OEEC.

WHITE: That is right.

I was to be the Trieste member of the council that met every three months or so -- the finance ministers. Harriman was with them. So, the first time I went up there I met Harriman. At that time they didn't even have their office in the Hotel Talleyrand. He was occupying an office in the Embassy. I'd met him before when he was Secretary of Commerce. Ambassador Caffery had him to dinner and afterwards the three of us talked at great length regarding the problem of reconstruction.

Trieste by the end of 1948 was in the Marshall plan and as a member of the OEEC, we had to get our program approved and money allocated the same as any other sovereign country, though we weren't. So, I went to Paris several times and I would plead my case for funds at Talleyrand like any foreign representative. I had to make it before the OEEC

[38]

staff, too. So there were two hurdles to surmount.

FUCHS: What was the status of Trieste?

WHITE: Well, the status was that in the Paris peace treaty there had been a provision to make it the Free Territory of Trieste, but neither the Yugoslavs nor the Italians wanted that. It was a difficult and dangerous period. The Italians felt Trieste should go back to Italy and the Yugoslavs wanted it just as badly. The Yugoslavs had their troops right up to the border of the Free Territory and we had five thousand troops and the British five thousand to defend it.

FUCHS: What year was this?

WHITE: This was '47-'48.

FUCHS: Were you down there?

WHITE: I went down in April of '48. There'd been a

[39]

threat there one time and everybody was a little tense. After I got down there, all of a sudden the Yugoslavs eased off and they had an economic group there I dealt with, and we got our electric power from them among other things. We had other things; they wanted to get involved with some trade with us. And things eased off and we were a little perplexed for a while until it developed that Tito had had his schism with Stalin and was no longer being belligerent around us. It took several months for us in Trieste to realize the reasons for Yugoslavia's improved behavior. Anyway, we developed the Marshall plan very rapidly because Trieste was small and because it was largely a problem of putting the shipyards to work. We got it off to a pretty fast start there and we were going full blast while the Italians were still trying to get organized. We had this joint commission in Rome, and I used to go over there every two months and meet with them because we were using their

[40]

currency and had a lot of other economic and financial problems growing out of the peace treaty. But by then it was apparent that neither the Yugoslavs nor the Italians would go along with this Free Territory of Trieste and we didn't press it, A, because we were pretty well committed politically to returning the city to Italy, and, B, it didn't make much economic sense to have a Free Territory of Trieste since the city had been developed under the old Austro-Hungarian Empire as a port for the whole empire, which made sense before World War I. Trieste's hinterland had been so fragmented politically that the port's raison d' etre was lost. Also the Communist countries were developing their own ports. The Yugoslavs were developing one, and you could see that there just wasn't anybody on either side of the Free Territory or behind it, who, if it actually became free, would do any business with it. It didn't

[41]

stand an economic chance of being viable. So, I think by that time everyone was pretty well agreed that a Free Territory was no solution. The solution which came long afterwards, after I left there, was in my judgment a quite rational one; that was the city, which was dominantly Italian, would go to Italy (with a corridor so it would be an integral part of Italy), and the rest of it on the fringes also adjoining the Adriatic in the direction of Yugoslavia would go to Yugoslavia. I think it was a pretty happy solution. But it took a long time to reach it.

FUCHS: What exchange was used in Trieste?

WHITE: We kept the Italian lira.

FUCHS: Who initially advocated making a free city out of it right after the war?

WHITE: That I don't know. That was the Paris peace

[42]

conference, and it was probably one of those compromises because nobody could think of any other solution that both parties would agree to. I think, as I recall, Secretary Byrnes was head of our delegation.

FUCHS: What type of representation did we have in Trieste? You were connected with the military government?

WHITE: Yes, I was on loan from the State Department to the Pentagon. We did have a political advisor who was [Robert P.] Bob Joyce. We had a SHAEF-type organization headed by a British Major General, Terrence Airey.

FUCHS: That was about the extent of it?

WHITE: Yes, he had about 3 or 4 people. I had a couple of civilians that the Pentagon sent over, but largely I relied on Army officers, British and

[43]

American.

FUCHS: What were your views of the appointment of Paul Hoffman?

WHITE: Well, I thought it was all right. I didn’t know him but, you know, you don’t know someone, you assume it’s all right. As far as I know Hoffman was a good appointment. I think by and large the staffing of ECA was very good and the people there I the first two years were really dedicated and they were in there working and pitching ball and they had a good grasp of things. I think after the first couple of years, after the bloom was off the rose, the personnel deteriorated a bit. You got down to -- in some cases -- to people whom I regarded as kind of Washington drifters who moved from one agency to another; they were not, in some cases, the top-flight economists and top-flight businessmen the U.S. had in the

[44]

first two years.

Well, that's about enough for this time.

Acheson, Dean, 3, 4, 14, 31
Act of Chapultepec, 27
Adriatic Sea, 41
Airey, Terrence, 42
Argentina, 14, 26
Army, 36
Atlantic City, New Jersey, 3, 17
Austro-Hungarian Empire, 40

Belgium, 30
Blum, Leon, 9
Brazil, 4, 14
Bretton Woods Conference, 3, 5, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22-23, 26, 27
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 14, 15
Byrnes, James F., 42

Caffery, Jefferson, 37
Chapultepec Conference, 27-28
Chile, 16, 26
Clayton, Will C., 10, 29, 31, 32-35
Cold War, 22
Common Market, 33
Concepcion, Chile, 15
Czechoslovakia, 23

deGaulle, Charles, 9

Federal Unemployment Relief Administration, 2
Foreign Service, 1
France,, 19-20, 30
Franks, Oliver, 32, 34
Free Territory of Trieste, 40-42

Geneva, Switzerland, 31, 34

Harriman, W. Averell, 35-36, 37
Harvard University, 2-3, 31
Herter, Christian A., 34
Hoffman, Paul G., 43
Hopkins, Harry, 2
Hotel Talleyrand, 37

Iceland, 14
Inter American Foreign Ministers, 5
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 5, 10, 11, 17, 18-19
International Monetary Fund, 10, 11, 24, 25, 28
Italy, 30, 38, 39-40, 41

Japan, 2
Joyce, Robert P., 42

Keynes, John Maynard, 20-21

Latin America, 3, 14, 36
Lend Lease, 19, 20

Marshall plan, 9, 18, 19, 20, 23, 31-32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39
Mexico City, Mexico, 2, 27
Miller, Edward G., 14
Mississippi, 31
Montevideo, Uruguay, 15
Morgenthau, Henry G., 6, 21
Morgenthau, Mrs. Henry G., 5

National Steel Mill, 15
Netherlands, 30
New York, New York, 7, 24, 25

Oregon, 2, 4
Organization for European Economic Cooperation, 36, 37

Paris, France, 4, 6, 8, 11, 14, 23, 27, 30, 32, 35, 36, 37
Paris Peace Conference, 23, 38, 41-42
Pentagon, 42
Poland, 23

Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 2
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 3, 4, 5, 27, 39

Salem, Oregon, 1
Santiago, Chile, 14, 15
Savannah, Georgia, 5, 6, 11, 22, 23-24, 28-29
Select Committee of the House on the Marshall Plan, 34
Sheraton Park, 11
State, Department of, 6, 8, 12, 42
Stalin, Joseph, 22
Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces, 42
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe, 14
Switzerland, 30

Tito, 39
Treasury Department, 5, 6, 7
Trieste, Italy, 14, 36-42
Truman, Harry S., 11, 12, 13, 16, 20

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 22-23
United Kingdom, 7, 20, 21, 24, 25, 32, 38, 42
United Nations, 27
University of Washington, 1
Uruguay, 14

Vinson, Fred M., 7, 8, 9-11, 13

Wardman Park Hotel, 11
Washington, D.C., 2, 7, 9, 11, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 31, 43
Welles, Sumner, 5
White, Harry Dexter, 5, 7-8, 21
White, Ivan B.:

• • and Brazil, 14
    as Director of Finance and Economics for the Allied Military Government, 14
    and the Foreign Service, 1, 2
    and France, 30
    and Harvard University, 2-3
    and Japan, 2
    and Mexico City, Mexico, 2
    and Oregon, 2
    and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 2
    and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 3, 4
    and Santiago, Chile, 15-16
    and steel mill dedication, 15-17
    and Trieste, Italy, 14, 37-42
    and the University of Washington, 1
    and Washington, D.C., 2
    and Willamette University, 1
    and the World Bank, 24, 25, 28
    and World War I, 40