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As a reward for his political support, on the recommendation of Secretary of the Treasury, William H. Woodin, he was made Under Secretary of the Treasury. It was one of the shortest jobs he ever held. His legal mind did not approve of President Roosevelt devaluing the dollar, and he spoke out against it. Roosevelt fired him. In a ceremony of Treasury officials at the White House, at which Acheson himself was a stiff-faced participant, Roosevelt handed the Under Secretary's job over to Henry Morgenthau Jr., remarking pointedly that he hoped Morgenthau's loyalty would stand up under any test. In a strained silence Acheson marched up to the President, shook his hand and told him that he was happy to have served. The two Groton graduates surveyed each other. Roosevelt gave Acheson a quick, surprised smile. "Well, Dean," said F.D.R., "you certainly can take it."
Acheson could take it. He went back to his law firm.
Advocate & Executor. But he remained loyal to Roosevelt. Acheson was one of the torchbearers in the 1940 campaign to put U.S. aid squarely behind Britain and France. He and three lawyer colleagues had written and made public a lawyer's brief supporting Roosevelt's right to swap the 50 U.S. destroyers for British bases in the Western Hemisphere. At the urging of Cordell Hull, Roosevelt invited Acheson back into his family as Assistant Secretary of State. Acheson gave up his law practice to take the $9,000-a-year job.
History has not yet made a final appraisal of the period between 1941 and 1947, when Dean Acheson served first as Assistant, then Under Secretary of State. In those six years the U.S. pulled itself out of one great crisis only to slide back into another, perhaps even greater crisis. A crashing historical failure, certainly, was the failure of the U.S. to understand and guard against Russian ambitions. A few men comprehended them and sounded warnings. But Acheson was not one of them. As did many another well-meaning man who was unable to divine the essential nature of Communism and the U.S.S.R., he believed that Communist Russia could be lived with amicably. By the time Dean Acheson had moved from that position he was moving with the crowd.
As Assistant and Under Secretary, Dean Acheson was always a highly competent explainer, advocate and executor of Administration policy. He acted as State's liaison man with Congress. He helped steer such complex and unwieldy vessels as Lend-Lease, UNRRA, the World Bank, the Export-Import Bank through diplomatic shoals. With David Lilienthal he wrote the plan for international control of atomic power which became the basis for U.S. policy.
When he finally took aim at Moscow, he drew the fire of Russian propagandists, who yelped that some of his remarks were "gross and rude slander." He helped fashion the so-called Truman Doctrine and warned Congressmen: "This is a dangerous life and a dangerous world." He planted a seed in a speech at Cleveland, Miss., which, somewhat to his astonishment, blossomed into the Marshall Plan.
Feeling that he had done his duty, he resigned as Under Secretary in June 1947, to return a year and a half later, at the urging of Harry Truman, to the highest position in the President's Cabinet and the nation's second most ticklish job.