Presidential Adviser: First World War
In 1916, Baruch left Wall Street to advise president Woodrow Wilson on national defense and terms of peace. He served on the Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense and, in 1918, became the chairman of the new War Industries Board. With his leadership, this body successfully managed the US's economic mobilization during World War I. In 1919, Wilson asked Baruch to serve as a staff member at the Paris Peace Conference. Baruch did not approve of the reparations France and Britain demanded of Germany, and supported Wilson's view that there needed to be new forms of cooperation between nations, and supporting the creation of the League of Nations.
In the 1920s and 30s, Baruch expressed his concern that the United States needed to be prepared for the possibility of another world war. He wanted a more powerful version of the War Industries Board, which he saw as the only way to ensure maximum coordination between civilian business and military needs. Baruch remained a prominent government adviser during this time, and supported Franklin D. Roosevelt's domestic and foreign policy initiatives after his election.
During President Roosevelt's "New Deal" program, Baruch was a member of the "Brain Trust" and helped form the National Recovery Administration (NRA).
Read more about this topic: Bernard Baruch
Famous quotes containing the words presidential, world and/or war:
“Mr. Roosevelt, this is my principal requestit is almost the last request I shall ever make of anybody. Before you leave the presidential chair, recommend Congress to submit to the Legislatures a Constitutional Amendment which will enfranchise women, and thus take your place in history with Lincoln, the great emancipator. I beg of you not to close your term of office without doing this.”
—Susan B. Anthony (18201906)
“When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“This is no war for domination or imperial aggrandisement or material gain.... It is a war ... to establish, on impregnable rocks, the rights of the individual and it is a war to establish and revive the stature of man.”
—Winston Churchill (18741965)