Treasury Files
Memorandum by the Secretary of the Treasury’s Assistant (White)
Memorandum for the Secretary’s Files
Cherwell had a draft of a memorandum summarizing a conversation of the previous day with Churchill and the President on the subject of a policy toward Germany.2 This was the memorandum which they were to give to Churchill. The Secretary felt that the memorandum went too far in the wrong direction. He said he thought it represented “two steps backwards.” The Secretary said they ought to begin where Churchill left off and go forward. In the first conversation Churchill had been shocked by the proposal but on the following day he seemed to accept the program designed to weaken German economy. The memorandum ought to take that for granted. Churchill had already spoken of diverting Germany to an agricultural state as she was in the last quarter of the 19th Century. The Secretary thought that rather than present too inadequate a memorandum they ought to go back that afternoon and raise the question again with Churchill and the President and write the memorandum [Page 360] on the conversation that will have taken place that afternoon rather than on the previous day.
The Secretary then spoke to Cherwell about Brand. He told him that he hadn’t wanted him to come to Washington to represent the British Treasury in the first place but that when he did come he gave him a chance, and that he was not helping England by his behavior. The Secretary mentioned Playfair and White suggested Opie or Keynes as possible Treasury representatives.