Page "William Henry Draper, Jr." Paragraph 2

At the invitation of George Marshall, he moved to Washington, D. C. to serve on the President's Advisory Committee for Selective Service, and was promoted to colonel in 1940.

At the start of World War II he took command of the 136th Infantry, 33rd Division, National Guard.

At the end of the war, he was promoted to brigadier-general and was posted to Berlin to serve as chief of the Economics Division, Allied Control Council for Germany from 1945 to 1947.

He opposed the Morgenthau Plan, which was designed to prevent a resurgence of German economic and military power by de-industrializing it and turning into a pastoral country.

Instead, he strongly supported measures to expedite Germany's economic recovery along liberal free-market and democratic lines followed by Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard.

There was some criticism of him by the author James Stewart Martin for leaving some former cooperators with the Nazis in their positions in industry.