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Alexander Sachs (August 1, 1893 – June 23, 1973) was an American economist and banker. In October 1939 he delivered the Einstein–Szilárd letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, suggesting that nuclear-fission research ought to be pursued with a view to possibly constructing nuclear weapons, should they prove feasible, in view of the likelihood that Nazi Germany would do so. This led to the initiation of the United States' Manhattan Project. 

Life and career

Born in Rossien, Lithuania, Sachs moved to the U.S. in 1904 to join his brother, Joseph A. Sachs, who was instrumental in his further education. He was educated at Townsend Harris High School in New York City, the City College of New York, and Columbia College. In 1913 he joined the municipal bond department at Boston-based investment bank Lee, Higginson & Co. but in 1915 returned to education as a graduate student in social sciences, philosophy, and jurisprudence at Harvard College. In later life, he was on the faculty at Princeton University. 

Between 1918 and 1921 he was an aide to Justice Louis Brandeis and the Zionist Organization of America on international problems of the Middle East and the World War I peace conference. 

From 1922 to 1929 he was economist and investment analyst for Walter Eugene Meyer in equity investment acquisitions. He then organized and became director of Economics Investment Research at the Lehman Corporation, a newly established investment company of Lehman Brothers. In 1931 he joined the board at Lehman. He was vice president from 1936 to 1943, remaining on the board until his death. 

In 1933 Sachs served as organizer and chief of the economic research division of the National Recovery Administration. In 1936 he served on the National Policy Committee. During the war, he was economic adviser to the Petroleum Industry War Council and special counsel to the director of the Office of Strategic Services. 

He was knighted by the Queen of England and at the time of his death held the title of Sir Alexander Sachs. 

He was married to the inventor Charlotte Cramer Sachs (1907–2004) and is survived by, among others, his nephew Paul S. Barr, M.D. of New York; and his nephew Zachary H. Sacks, an attorney in Los Angeles. 

[Atomic Bomb - Notes are later ... ]

On the thousands of hours of White House tapes Richard Nixon secretly recorded, you can hear him order exactly one burglary. It wasn’t Watergate, but it reveals the real root of the cover-up that toppled a President.

On June 17, 1971, (one year to the date before the Watergate arrests, by impure coincidence) Nixon ordered his inner circle to break into the Brookings Institution. “Blow the safe and get it,” the president said. “It” was a file of secret government documents on the 1968 bombing halt.

“What good will it do you, the bombing halt file?” asked National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger seconds after the president ordered his top aides to commit a felony.

“To blackmail him,” Nixon replied. President Lyndon Johnson had halted the bombing of North Vietnam less than a week before Election Day. Nixon claimed LBJ did it for political reasons, to throw the election to his vice president, Hubert Humphrey.

Kissinger knew better, since he had inside information about the talks. Having worked on an abortive bombing halt deal for Johnson in 1967, Kissinger used his connections with LBJ’s negotiators then to gain access to the Paris talks in 1968 -- access he used as a secret informant to the Nixon campaign.

“You remember, I used to give you information about it at the time,” Kissinger reminded the president. “To the best of my knowledge, there was never any conversation in which they said we’ll hold it until the end of October. I wasn’t in on the discussions here. I just saw the instructions to [Ambassador Averell] Harriman,” the chief U.S. negotiator in Paris. (Kissinger’s words on tape contradict his later claim that he didn’t even have access to classified information at the time.)

Nixon had his own reasons to realize that the bombing halt file didn’t contain blackmail material on Johnson. He knew from classified briefings during the campaign that Johnson had remained unwavering in demanding three concessions: If Hanoi wanted a bombing halt, it had to (1) respect the DMZ dividing Vietnam, (2) accept South Vietnamese participation in the Paris peace talks, and (3) stop shelling civilians in Southern cities. Throughout the negotiations, LBJ didn’t budge from these three demands. Hanoi remained equally adamant, insisting on an “unconditional” bombing halt -- until October 1968. Then Hanoi suddenly reversed course and accepted all three. Johnson didn’t decide the timing of the bombing halt; Hanoi did.

If the bombing halt file didn’t contain dirt on Johnson, what made Nixon want it desperately enough to risk impeachment and prison? Over the decades, evidence has slowly accumulated that Nixon had a far more compelling motive: the fear that the bombing halt file contained dirt on him.

Throughout the 1968 campaign, the Republican nominee promised not to interfere with the Paris talks. “We all hope in this room that there’s a chance that current negotiations may bring an honorable end to that war,” he told the Republican convention in Miami, “and we will say nothing during this campaign that might destroy that chance.” Publicly, Nixon claimed to put the quest for peace above his own quest for votes, although it was clear that any negotiating breakthrough by Johnson before Election Day would help Vice President Humphrey’s campaign.

One week before Election Day, Johnson got a tip that Nixon was trying to sabotage the negotiations. It came from a highly credible source, the legendary Alexander Sachs.

Sachs entered world history when, clutching a report from Albert Einstein, he warned Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 that Nazi Germany could corner the world uranium market and build an atomic bomb, a warning that led to the Manhattan Project. Sachs was also credited with predicting the Great Depression and the rise of Hitler, so he was not someone whose warnings could be safely ignored.

Sachs, chief economist for Lehman Corporation, informed Johnson that he had learned from Wall Street colleagues “closely involved with Nixon” that the Republican nominee “was trying to frustrate the president, by inciting Saigon to step up its demands, and by letting Hanoi know that when he took office ‘he could accept anything and blame it on his predecessor.’”

By that point, North Vietnam had already accepted Johnson’s terms. So had South Vietnam, privately, in meetings with the U.S. ambassador.

But America’s allies in Saigon saw risk and opportunity in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. The risk was the election of Hubert Humphrey, a dove who had urged LBJ not to Americanize the war in the first place and whose supporters hoped he’d withdraw from Vietnam quickly if elected. The opportunity was to elect the premiere anti-Communist politician of the Cold War, Richard Nixon. All Saigon had to do to tip the election to their preferred candidate was refuse to take part in the Paris talks. No talks, no peace -- there could be no settlement of the war if one side of it refused to even negotiate. The hopes for peace stirred by the bombing halt would evaporate.

Once LBJ received the warning from Sachs, he took a closer look at diplomatic intelligence collected by the National Security Agency (which intercepted cables from the South Vietnamese Ambassador Bui Diem in Washington, DC, to his home government in Saigon) and Central Intelligence Agency (which bugged South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu’s office). “[I am] still in contact with the Nixon entourage, which continues to be the favorite despite the uncertainty provoked by the news of an imminent bombing halt,” Ambassador Diem cabled President Thieu on Oct. 28, 1968. “I [explained discreetly to our partisan friends our] firm attitude.” The president ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation to put a wiretap on the embassy’s phone and tail one of “our partisan friends,” Anna Chennault, the Republican Party’s top female fundraiser.

It didn’t take long for the FBI to strike pay dirt. Three days before the election, the bureau sent the White House this wiretap report: “Mrs. Anna Chennault contacted Vietnamese Ambassador Bui Diem and advised him that she had received a message from her boss (not further identified) which her boss wanted her to give personally to the ambassador. She said the message was that the ambassador is to ‘hold on, we are gonna win’ and that her boss also said, ‘Hold on, he understands all of it.’” That day, President Thieu had announced that the South would not send a delegation to Paris, rendering any settlement of the war impossible for the time being and stalling Humphrey’s surge in the polls.

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SACKS-Joseph A. Beloved husband of the late Florence. Devoted father of Sanford, Renee Benin and Zachary. Cherished grandfather of Sharon, David. Wendy, Benlamin and Alexander. Dear brother of Eleanor Barr. Service Sunday December 23 at 10:30 a.m. “The Riverside”, 76th St. & Amsterdam Ave.

Papers of ALEXANDER SACHS (1874-1973)

The papers were donated to the Library by Charlotte Cramer Sachs (Mrs. Alexander Sachs) in 1985.

The papers consist of correspondence, financial papers, reports, studies, memoranda, minutes, printed material, extracts, charts, tables, statistics, ledgers, speeches and court testimony relating to Alexander Sachs' work as an economist and independent consultant in economic administration, his service as an economic advisor to President Roosevelt and to several government agencies and departments including the National Recovery Administration, the National Policy Committee, the President's Power Pool Conference, the Interstate Oil Compact Commission, the Petroleum Industry War Council, the Office of Strategic Services, Department of Defense, the Federal Reserve Board, the National Industrial Conference Board, the Justice Department and the State Department. Also included are his files relating to his work as an independent economic consultant to major corporations, utilities, railroads and some individuals.

Also included is material on Alexander Sachs' personal interests in philosophy, history, religion, the Middle East, Palestine, atomic energy, international relations and government. Among the subjects included, there is material on agriculture, banking, building, commodities, currency, depression, labor, minerals, oil, politics, public finance, railroads, recovery, stock markets, and taxation.

Quantity: 168 linear feet      [...]

Related Materials:

• President's Official File

• President's Personal File

• Papers of   Louis H. Bean   /   Adolf A. Berle   /   Francis Biddle   /   Gerhard Colm   /   Morris L. Cooke   /   Oscar Cox   /   Frederic Delano   /   Mordecai Ezekial   /   Leon Henderson   /   Harry Hopkins   /   Harold Ickes   /   Isador Lubin   /   Gardner Jackson   /   Gardiner Means   /   Henry Wallace   /   Louis B. Wehle

ALEXANDER SACHS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

• 1893 August 1, born to Samuel and Sarah Fay Alexander Sacks in Rossien, Lithuania.

• 1904 Summer, carne to the u.s. with his family.

• 1908-1910 attended Townsend Harris High School, N.Y.C.

• 1908-1910 attended The College of the City of New York.

• 1910-1912 Columbia College; received B.S. degree in 1912.

• 1912 Changed his name to Alexander Sachs (Alexander being his mother's maiden name).

• 1913-1914 statistician and member of the municipal bond department of Lee Higginson & Co., investment bankers.

• 1915-1917 attended Harvard College as a graduate student in social sciences, philosophy and jurisprudence.

• 1916 Francis Parkman Fellow at Harvard College.

• 1917 H.B. Rogers Memorial Fellowship at Harvard College.

• 1918-1921 aide to Justice Brandeis and Zionist Organization of America on international problems of the Middle East and World War I peace conference.

• 1919 June 17, naturalized citizen in N.Y.C.

• 1922-1929 economist and investment analyst for Walter Eugene Meyer in equity investment acquisitions.

• 1923 December 5, married Jeanne Cassell; divorced 1944.

• 1929-1942 organized and became the Director of Economics and Investment Research of the Lehman Corporation, a newl? established investment company of Lehman Brothers.

• 1931-1973 member of the Board of Directors of the Lehman Corporation.

• 1936-1942 Vice President of Lehman Corporation.

• 1942-1973 independent economic advisor and investment consultant in administrative economics and investment management for financial, utility and industrial corporations and a few individuals. s~M

• 1945 August 30, married Charlotte Cramer in [Stamford], CT.

• 1973 June 23, Alexander Sachs died at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City.

Voluntary Service:

• 1931 subcommittee of economists to the President's Committee on Recent Economic Changes.

• 1931 Summer, special advisor to Lord Reading and Lord Lothian on the impact of world depression on sterling and England.

• 1932 economic research for some of Franklin D. Roosevelt's campaign speeches.

• 1933 June to September organizer and first director of Division of Research and Planning of National Recovery Administration.

• 1936 member of the National Policy Committee.

• 1936 member of the International Conference on Problems of the Pacific.

• September 1936 advisor to and member of President's Power Pool Conference.

• 1938-1945 Chairman, Advisory Committee on Economics to the Interstate Oil Compact Commission.

• 1938 collaborated with J.M. Keynes in a reorientation of tax policies towards the promotion of constructive capital investment.

• 1938-1947 member of the Board of Councillors to the Committee on Economics of the Interstate Oil Compact Commission.

• 1939 originator of the atomic project in conferences with President Roosevelt, and Presidential Representative on the organizing committee.

• 1942 economic advisor to the Petroleum Industry War Council.

• 1944 March 22-January 1946 designated Special Consultant on economic questions to the Director of the Office of Strategic Services.

• 1952 member, 13th conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion.

• 1954 u.s. Atomic Energy Commission "Q" Clearance.

• 1955 June Deputy advisor to European Productivity Agency Conference in Paris.

• 1955 August 2 appointed a consultant to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

• 1957 July 18 appointed research asssistant and special consultant to the Department of Defense Operations Research Office at The Johns Hopkins University.

• 1957-1958 chairman, Conference of Business Economists member of the advisory committee of the Walter Kidde Nuclear Labs.

• 1966 participated in National Industrial Conference Board conference on gold and world monetary problems.

• 1966 May participated in a panel of experts for the u.s. Senate subcommittee on Government Research and National Policy.

• 1968 special consultant to the Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs. 

  • Member, executive committee of the-Council for Democracy and Citizens for Victory.

Achievements

• Foresaw the collapse of the boom of the late Twenties and forecast the world's entry into a prolonged period of declining long term interest rates.

• Proposed the policy of long term low interest rates as a recovery measure.

• Devised the insured amortized mortgage for the reform of building finance and the revitalization of residential construction.

• Founded Central Statistics Board.

• Originated the economic-financial basis of the Federal Housing Administration.

• Collaborated with Dean Landis in the revision of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Special Studies:

• 1941 study for Lewis Douglas of the Mutual Life Insurance Co. on criteria for the conservation of income and value in the investment field.

• 1946 study on money rate trends since the Great Depression with perspective on the developing postwar economy.

• 1947 study for the Rockefeller Foundation on investment policies for educational institutions.

• 1942-1945 study for Cities Service Oil Co. on the problems of the functional economies of the oil industry in relation to the economy.

Legal Matters:

• 1941-1943 special collaborator for United Gas Pipeline Co. for presentation and pretrial settlement of issues before the Federal Power Commission.

• 1942 preparation of material for Union Pacific Railroad Co. excess profits tax credit case.

• 1950s expert witness for the Justice Department in their tax case against Radio Corporation of America.

• 1951 expert witness on utility economics and finance for New York Telephone Co. rate and finance cases.

• 1951 and 1954 preparation of material including briefs for the Pacific Lighting Gas Supply Co. and the Southern Counties Gas Co. in rate cases before the California Public Utility Commission.

• 1952 expert witness for Philadelphia Electric Co. in an arbitration case involving alternative energy resources.

• 1961 testified before the Federal Communications Commission in one of its periodic reviews of the Bell Systems earnings.

Speeches and Lectures:

• 1933 November, Swarthmore College

• 1934-1936 Institute of Public Affairs, Univerisity of Virginia

• 1937 American Management Association

• 1938 American Mining and Metallurgical Engineers

• 1939 St. John's College, Annapolis, MD

• 1939 New School for Social Research

• 1942-1943 St. John's College and Town and Gown Meetings, Annapolis, MD

• 1946 St. John's College, Annapolis, MD lectured on atomic bomb and world affairs

• 1965 Weizmann Institute of Science on the atomic project

• 1966 Institute of World Affairs at University of Chicago

Publications: Book Chapters, Pamphlets and Periodical Articles

• "An Economic Program to Meet the Depression." Barron's September 26, 1932: 3, 10-11.

• ''A Report on Coal." The New Republic August 30, 1933.

• "National Recovery Policies and the Problem of Economic Planning." in America's Recovery Program, pp. 107-190. Oxford Press, 1934.

• "Summary of a Comprehensive Financial Analysis of the Causes of the Slump.'' The Annalist January 14, 1938: 35-36.

• ''The Financial Dynamics of the Recovery Since 1933 and Latest Constriction Phase 1n Capital Flow.'' Financial Management Series Number 53, American Management Association. New York, 1938.

• "Taxation and Recovery." Fortune May 1939.

• "Point-Counterpoint on Economic Stagnation.'' Social Research May 1939.

• "Restoring the Economic-Cultural Bases of American Foreign Investment." The Academy of Political Science, Columbia University, 1950.

• "Korean Diplomacy: It Stands in Need of Searching ReExamination."  Barron's, March 26, 1951.

• "Rights, Promises, and Property.'' in Moral Principles of Action, Chapter 14. New York: Harper, 1952.

• "A Critique of 'The Cycle Theory'." The Conference Board Business Record, vol.X, no. 4 (April 1953): 151-154.

• "Killing the Goose: The Tax Laws are Making Industry Live Off Capital.'' Barron's October 18, 1954.

• ''Interest Rates and Monetary Policy." Studies in Business Economics, Number 62, 1956.

• ''On Determination of the 1957 Outlook." The Conference Board

• Business Record vol.XIV, no. 4 (April 1957)

• "Unemployment Wages and Inflation." Studies in Business Economics Number 62, 1958.

• "The A.T. & T. Case in a Changed Economy." Financial Analysts Journal September 1966.

• Contributor to Gold and World Monetary Problems, National Industrial Conference Board [Report of] Convocation.  New York: Macmillan, October 1966.

Awards and Distinctions

• Honorary Commander, Order of the British Empire 1948

Alexander Sachs -  DESCRIPTION OF THE COLLECTION

This collection consists of Alexander Sachs' office files generated by his work for Walter Meyer, the Lehman Corporation, various government agencies and departments, and his clients. There are some files concerning financial and family matters and non-economic subjects of personal interest to Alexander Sachs including ancient history, the Middle East, science, philosophy and religion.

The papers are arranged in eleven different series, following the filing procedures used in his office. These series are: correspondence files; subject files; reports, studies and memoranda; economic charts and statistics; chronological file; unfinished work and notes; economic extracts; government publications; desiderata; clients file; and financial matters.

Periodically, the office files were culled of inactive files to be sent to storage. These storage files have been reintegrated into the collection.

The series of reports, studies and memoranda was created during the processing of the collection to contain those items which had been water damaged prior to their arrival at the Library. During the water damage and resultant restoration processes, the office file designations for these items were removed.

All of the series are interconnected. For example, although the bulk of the papers relating to one of Mr. Sachs' clients will be in the client's file, correspondence with a company official may be in the correspondence file, a study on the client's type of business may be in the reports, studies and memoranda file, charts for that report may be among the economic charts and statistics, carbon copies of letters from Mr. Sachs to a company official may be in the chronological file, extracts of articles published by the company may be in the economic extracts, and government publications may have been used to compile reports to the company. Some of the related items are cross-referenced.

A small amount of correspondence from Alexander Sachs to Sidney B. Lurie was given to the Library by Mr. Lurie in 1983. These items have been placed in the correspondence file: Lurie, Sidney B.

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Called Roosevelt's Attention to A-Bomb Potential in 1939

Alexander Sachs, a Russian‑-born economist and the man who first interested President Franking D. Roosevelt in the possibilities of the atomic bomb, died yesterday at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. He was 79 years old and lived at 1200 Fifth Avenue.  On Oct. 11,1939, Dr. Sachs read to Mr. Roosevelt a report from Albert Einstein predicting that an atomic bomb, carried by ship, could destroy an entire port complex and the surrounding area.  With characteristic vigor, President Roosevelt brushed aside the hesitations of American scientists and officials, set the atomic project on its irrevocable course and pressed it toward the historic climax that came at Hiroshima after his death.   When Dr. Sachs went to the President,  two weeks after Poland had been crushed by the Nazis, he carried the Einstein report, buttressed by comments from Dr. Leo Szilard, and American physicist, and Prof. Enrico Fermi, a fugitive from Italian fascism.

Foresaw Nuclear Gap

Dr. Einstein and Dr. Szilard were revealed by Dr. Sachs's testimony as the first to worry about the implications for the United States of atomic energy in the hands of a hostile power.   The economist told the President that the Fermi and Szilard researches were only one step ahead of those of Nazi physicists. Germany had already overrun Czechoslovakia, which had good uranium ore, and Hitler had forbidden its export.  The Einstein report pointed out that the most important source of uranium was the Belgian Congo, and Dr. Sachs added that he predicted the invasion of Belgium and the possible loss of this source for the United States.  President Roosevelt ordered the immediate establishment of a committee on uranium, and in February, 1940, $6,000 was allotted for the work at Columbia University.

Bush Headed Committee

In June, the committee was placed under the newly created National Defense Research Committee (later the Office of Scientific Research and Development) headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush. After Pearl Harbor, the decision was made to go all out.  Dr. Sachs was born in Rossien, Russia, Aug. 1, 1893. He came to the United States in 1904 and was educated at Columbia and Harvard universities.  During the nineteen-thirties, he was vice president and chief economist of the Lehman Corporation and for a time chief economist of the National Recovery Administration.  Among the developments he was credited with having predicted were the 1929 depression, the 1933 banking crisis and the rise of Hitler.  Surviving is his widow, the former Charlotte Cramer.