The Wealth of Shadows is a historical novel based primarily on attempts at the U.S. Treasury Department to kneecap Germany economically in 1939 and 1940 and to enshrine the U.S. dollar as the linchpin of the global financial system at the end of World War II. It is based on real events, but it reads as a thriller, though there are no violent scenes. The main characters are real, including senior U.S. Treasury official Harry Dexter White, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., and John Maynard Keynes. The book is narrated from the perspective of a Mr. Ansel Luxford, a tax lawyer who works for White. Though little known, Luxford is a real person who was involved in White=s efforts against Germany and his successful besting of Keynes at the Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire.
For those interested in this historical period, this novel is not only good entertainment but interesting history, along with ruminations about what money is. There is even a side trip to a used car dealership which provides the author an opportunity to discuss Pareto optimality and the importance of reading the fine print. This foreshadows how White manages to trick Keynes at Bretton Woods. Mr. Moore has helpfully provided endnotes which detail what is historically accurate in selected chapters and what he imagined, made up, or changed.
Secretary Morgenthau[1] is well-known for having tried, not all that successfully, to get the Roosevelt Administration to do more to help European Jews. He is, therefore, supportive of White=s unconventional and sometimes extra-legal maneuvers against Germany at a time when the United States was officially neutral. However, White is opposed by a faction at the State Department led by Breckinridge Long, an antisemitic senior State Department official, whom White eventually manages to sideline.
For those with even a passing familiarity with the period, it does not give anything away to mention that at the end of the novel Luxford discovers that White has been providing classified information to the Soviet Union. This is a subject about which I know little, not having read the various books and articles about White=s espionage activities. According to Moore, most historians believe he did spy for the Soviet Union. Assuming they are right, it is unclear how much harm to U.S. national security or interests White=s spying did. White apparently received information from the Soviets in exchange for the information he provided. It is probable that White thought he was smarter than the Soviets and that he was using them. The Soviets most likely thought they were using White. (Pareto optimality? I don=t know.) It is probably true that White did not consider himself a traitor.
Moore does not pass judgment on White and says in his endnotes that information on White=s espionage remains murky. White died before he could be tried for spying.
Much of what happens in the novel and in reality, in addition to White=s espionage activities, is morally ambiguous. Moore does not hammer this point, but he does leave it to the reader to ponder the ethics of what people did.
For those looking for an engrossing summer read, I recommend this book. It may even motivate some to learn more about this period, perhaps by looking at some of the books Moore said he consulted.[2]
[1] Secretary
Morgenthau deserves praise for his efforts to help the Jews. However, as
Secretary, his record is mixed. For example, the journalist Diana B. Henriques,
in her book Taming the Street: The Old Guard, the New Deal, and FDR=s Fight to Regulate American Capitalism
(2023) writes: AFDR=s conservative Treasury secretary, his
Hyde Park neighbor Henry Morgenthau Jr. was a decent but limited man with vague
economic ideas firmly rooted in the Victorian era. Even as the market slump
worsened, he argued that only a balanced budget would provide the big dose of >business confidence= the economy needed.@ Also, after the war he proposed that
Germany be deindustrialized and made into an agrarian economy, the AMorgenthau Plan.@
Fortunately, President Truman opted in 1948 to implement the Marshall Plan.