Who Was at Bretton Woods?

In a new CFS paper, Mark Bernkopf and I offer a nearly complete list of the people who attended the 1944 Bretton Woods conference as delegates, secretarial staff, or journalists. There were roughly 700 people listed among several documents in the conference proceedings published in 1948 and the unpublished telephone directories issued during the conference.

In addition to the people directly concerned with the work of the conference, there were a number of Boy Scouts who helped distribute documents and move microphones, plus military messengers and police. None are listed in any document we have seen, though. Additionally, there were of course the staff not only of the Mount Washington Hotel, where the conference was held, but of three other hotels nearby that accommodated overflow boarders. The Bretton Arms Inn, within walking distance of the Mount Washington Hotel, is still in existence, while the more remote Crawford House and Maplewood Hotel no longer exist.

Mark Bernkopf, my coauthor, established in the 1990s what may have been the first Web site on central banking generally as opposed to the sites of particular central banks. It has since been superseded by other sites to which it served as an example and a spur, especially the “Central bank hub” section of the Bank for International Settlements site. After I found Mark’s site and contacted him by e-mail to ask him a question about it, we found that we lived within walking distance, and struck up a lasting friendship. A stint at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York before he established the Web site contributed to Mark’s interest in both the practice and history of central banking.

See Who Was at Bretton Woods?.

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About Kurt Schuler

Kurt Schuler, co-editor of The Bretton Woods Transcripts, is Senior Fellow of Financial History at the Center for Financial Stability and an economist in the Office of International Affairs at the United States Department of the Treasury.