Baruch, Bernard Mannes

Baruch, Bernard Mannes (b. 19 Aug. 1870, d. 20 June 1965). US financier and political adviser Born in Camden, South Carolina, to a poor Jewish family, by 1914 he had made a personal fortune on the New York stock exchange. He became the respected adviser of presidents from Wilson to Kennedy, preferring to be an éminence grise to running for elective office. In World War I he served under President Wilson on the Council of National Defense, and was the successful chairperson of the War Industries Board 1917–19, exercising enormous power over the US wartime economy. He was the US economic adviser at the Paris Peace Conference after the war. During World War II he was special adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt on manpower mobilization and postwar planning. In 1946 he was appointed to the UN Atomic Energy Commission, which proposed a World Atomic Authority with full control over the manufacture of atomic bombs throughout the world—a proposal rejected by the Soviet Union.