Yousuf Karsh · CC BY-SA 3.0 nl

Franklin Roosevelt's Treasury secretary, who designed and financed the New Deal before taking on the far larger task of financing America's participation in the Second World War. He shaped Lend-Lease policy, pushed for aid to Jewish refugees, and proposed the controversial Morgenthau Plan to deindustrialize postwar Germany. For six days in 1945, following a cabinet vacancy, he stood next in line to the presidency — the only Jewish American ever to hold that position in the constitutional order of succession.