Bernard Baruch

Who are we talking about today, Philos?

We are talking about a man named Bernard Baruch, but I'm not going to say it like that because it's going to get really obnoxious.

So I'm just going to call him Baruch.

The book that was written about him is a hagiography written while he was still alive by a woman named Margaret Coit in 1957.

And he was responsible for gearing the wartime economies in both of those wars.

He is a critical piece of understanding the American rearmament for World War I and World War II.

That sounds like somebody who not only can pull strings, but where does someone like that come from? Like what's the, I mean, I know people know what the early life is, but what's the early life on Bernard Baruch? How did he get to where he got?

So he was born in 1870, five years after the end of the Civil War in Camden, South Carolina, but he was not a Southern boy.

Yes.

So I think what a good place to start might be a quote from Mr. Bernard Baruch, who was a well-known financier, investor in about 100 years ago.

And Bernard Baruch said a lot of interesting things.

But one of the things he says, all economic movements by their very nature are motivated by crowd psychology.

And I think at this stage, what we're seeing around the world is a sort of conflict, a collision of different mass psychologies.

And, you know, a multitude of other diplomats and people that were responsible for World War II, ultimately, as well.

Bernard Baruch goes...

Colonel House also goes to Europe as well, and well, Dulles, I don't think he's actually present at the Paris Peace Conference, but the information in the dispatches that are going from Dulles to Lippmann... are used by Lippmann to persuade Colonel House that the collection of intelligence is an urgent priority and that if conventional diplomats don't have much interest in pursuing it, then there needs to be a shift and a change in how American intelligence operates.

So I just want to very briefly elucidate the concepts of what intelligence is to help people understand what makes Alan Dulles' role so special.

But he was able to badger these big shot DuPont executives and officials on cross-examination.

And Bernard Baruch, chairman of the War Industries Board under Wilson, and a key person in the administration's waging of the war itself, he really dragged him over the... raked him over the coals, as it were, and just dragged him, you know, before the public audience.

He was rewarded, he and his younger brother, Donald, they were rewarded with a posting under Cordell Hall in the State Department.

his was the direct assistant to assistant secretary of state francis sire who was wilson's son-in-law um incidentally um and uh as well as special assistant to the director of the office for far eastern affairs um during the war years 39 to 44 specifically hiss was an assistant to stanley hornbeck um who again was insinuated into the odds of far eastern affairs a special advisor to cordell hall himself so um his was a man who was very well situated to impact policy at a very high level you know he wasn't some nobody he wasn't some he wasn't some uh he was he wasn't some he wasn't some you know uh legacy uh Wasp, whose family no longer had a fortune, so he was rewarded with kind of plum jobs that he could afford groceries and things.