With World War II coming to a close, American leaders wanted to ensure that past mistakes would not be repeated and that the United States would assume a place of global leadership. To these ends, American diplomats spent the final years of the war working to consolidate the gains American companies had made during the war by institutionalizing international free markets. The Bretton Woods Agreement negotiated in 1944 provided for three new institutions that were to help rationalize and open the world economy. They were the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (International Bank of Reconstruction and Development), and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). In a major triumph for both Truman and internationalists, the Bretton Woods Agreement passed Congress in mid 1945. Because the United States had survived the war intact and prosperous, it had the resources to dominate the...