Dawes, Charles Gates (1865–1951)

US Republican politician. In 1923 the Allied Reparations Commission appointed him president of the committee that produced the Dawes Plan, a loan of $200 million that enabled Germany to pay enormous war debts after World War I. It reduced tensions temporarily in Europe but was superseded by the Young Plan (which reduced the total reparations bill) in 1929. Dawes was made US vice-president (under Calvin Coolidge) in 1924, and he shared the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1925 with Austen Chamberlain for his reorganization of German reparation payments. He was ambassador to the UK 1929–32.

Dawes was born in Marietta, Ohio. During World War I he became a major of engineers in France in 1917, a member of the Allied Purchasing Board, and brigadier general in 1918.