The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order (Council on Foreign Relations Books (Princeton University Press))

by Benn Steil

The story of the Faustian bargain Britain struck with the United States in order to survive the war would become an essential element in the Bretton Woods drama.

His visionary monetary schemes notwithstanding, Keynes had ultimately come to the United States with the mission of conserving what he could of bankrupt Britain’s historic imperial prerogatives—what little room for maneuver it would be allowed in what seemed sure to be a dollar-dominated postwar world.