University, where White taught before joining the Treasury, in 1941. White became increasingly important in monetary matters, and was a top advisor to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., especially on international financial affairs dealing with China, France, Great Britain, Japan, Latin America, and the Soviet Union. In 1938, Morgenthau created a new division--the Division of Monetary Research--and promoted White to be its director. When the United States entered World War II in 1941, Morgenthau promoted White again, naming him Assistant to the Secretary. The post of Assistant Secretary, the most senior economist position in the Treasury, finally opened up in 1945, and Morgenthau promptly nominated White to Fill it. White left the Treasury in 1946 to become the U.S. Executive Director at the newly established International Monetary Fund. Japan policy In November 1941, White sent a memorandum to Morgenthau that was widely circulated and influenced State Department planning. White called for a comprehensive peaceful solution of rapidly escalating tensions between the United States and Japan, calling for major concessions on both sides. Langer and Gleason report that White's proposals were totally rewritten by the State Department and that the American key demand had been formulated long before White. It was an insistence on Japanese withdrawal from China, which Japan totally refused to consider. The complex negotiations at the top ranks of the US government, and its key allies of Britain and China, took place in late November 1941 with no further input from White or Morgenthau. White's proposals were never presented to Japan. Some historians have argued, however, that White manipulated Morgenthau and Roosevelt to provoke war with Japan in order to protect Stalin's Far Eastern front. After the U.S. entered the war in December 1941, Secretary Morgenthau appointed White to act as liaison between the Treasury and the State Department on all matters bearing on foreign relations. He was also made responsible for the Exchange Stabilization Fund. White eventually came to be in charge of wartime international matters for the Treasury, with access to extensive confidential information about the economic situation of the US and its wartime allies. He passed numerous secret documents to men he knew were Soviet spies. White was a dedicated internationalist, and his energies were directed at continuing the Grand Alliance with the USSR and maintaining peace through trade. He believed that powerful, multilateral institutions could avoid the mistakes of the Treaty of