Milton Katz

Nationality

U.S.A.

Date of Birth

1907

Date of Death

1995

Political
Preference

Milton Katz was born in Manhattan and graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. Katz became a Harvard Law School professor and administrator of the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) to rebuild Europe after World War II.

During the war, Katz served first as part of the War Production Board and the Combined Production and Resources Board and later as a lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve. Katz was assigned to the Office of Strategic Service (OSS) as deputy Chief of Secret Intelligence.

When the war ended, Katz spent a year as general counsel to the European headquarters of ECA. In 1949, he was named deputy U.S. Special Representative in Europe with the rank of ambassador, and came to work with Averell Harriman in Paris. In 1950 he replaced Averell Harriman as the U.S. Special Representative. When Katz came in this position, the Marshall Plan was starting to focus more and more on military cooperation and recovery, as the European Payments Union (EPU) had been created in 1950 – thus alleviating many of the urgent economic problems. Katz, however, was instrumental in the last stages of the EPU-negotiations, when he signed an agreement with the British Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Gaitskell. In the agreement, the U.S. promised the reimburse the U.K. with dollars for any losses in its gold reserves that would result from intra-European clearing through EPU. As such, the Katz-Gaitskell agreement took away the last obstacle to British participation in the EPU.

Triggered by the Korean War (which started in June 1950), as well as his role in the Finance and Economic Committee of the newly created North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Katz made it his personal task to cast NATO policies in a positive light with the Europeans. To that end, he was convinced that the task of rebuilding Europe economically went hand in hand with the task of building up military strength. Military and economic strength were mutually consistent and mutually necessary. Katz thus tried to reconcile the European Recovery Program (ERP) with a rearmament program.

After his ambassadorship, he returned home and helped to establish International Legal Studies program at Harvard Law School and directed it from 1954 to 1974.