Batt, William L. Papers

Vice-Chairman, War Production Board, 1941-1945; Chief of Economic Cooperation Administration Mission in Great Britain, 1950-1952

The papers of William L. Batt include correspondence, press clippings, reports, diaries, a significant number of transcripts of addresses, and other items concerning Batt’s career in government, especially his work with the War Production Board and the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) Mission in Great Britain.

Size: 2 linear feet, 2 linear inches.
Access: Open.
Copyright: The donors gave to the U.S. government their copyrights in this material and in any other material received by the U.S. government and maintained in a depository administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. Documents created by U.S. government officials in the course of their official duties are in the public domain. Copyright interest in other documents presumably belongs to the creators of those documents, or their heirs.
Processed by: Erwin J. Mueller (1977); John Shay and David Clark (2015); Jan Davis and David Clark (2016); Randy Sowell (2023).
Updated by: Molly Black (2019) as part of the Truman Library Internship Program.
Supervising Archivists: Randy Sowell and David Clark.

The papers of William L. Batt include correspondence, press clippings, reports, diaries, a significant number of transcripts of addresses, and other items concerning Batt’s career in government, especially his work with the War Production Board and the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) Mission in Great Britain. The collection is arranged in one series, a Subject File.

The collection also contains correspondence, reports, diaries, and printed materials concerning topics such as the administration of the Marshall Plan in Great Britain; the World Affairs Council; labor and defense; and U.S.-Canada relations. Also included are a significant number of transcripts of speeches relating to the War Production Board between 1941–1945. One press clipping regards the coronation of Elizabeth II in Great Britain in 1953. There is also some personal correspondence in the collection.

The collection also contains the contents of scrapbooks related to the ECA and printed materials related to dinners and awards ceremonies attended by Batt.

The Truman Library also has an oral history interview with Batt’s son, William L. Batt, Jr. More information about the Marshall Plan can be found at the Library in the papers of Paul G. Hoffman, Harry G. Price, and Paul R. Porter.