Henry L. Stimson
Henry Lewis Stimson was an American statesman, lawyer, and politician. Over his long career, he emerged as a leading figure in U.S. foreign policy by serving in both Republican and Democratic administrations. He served as Secretary of War under President William Howard Taft, Secretary of State under President Herbert Hoover, and again Secretary of War under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, overseeing American military efforts during World War II.
The son of the surgeon Lewis Atterbury Stimson and Candace C. Stimson Stimson became a Wall Street lawyer after graduating from Harvard Law School. He served as a United States Attorney under President Theodore Roosevelt and prosecuted several antitrust cases. After he was defeated in the 1910 New York gubernatorial election, Stimson served as Secretary of War under Taft. He continued the reorganization of the United States Army that had begun under his mentor, Elihu Root. After the outbreak of World War I, Stimson became part of the Preparedness Movement. He served as an artillery officer in France after the United States entered the war. From 1927 to 1929, he served as Governor-General of the Philippines under President Calvin Coolidge.
In 1929, President Hoover appointed Stimson as Secretary of State. Stimson sought to avoid a worldwide naval race and thus helped negotiate the London Naval Treaty. He protested the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, which instituted the Stimson Doctrine of nonrecognition of international territorial changes that are executed by force.
After World War II broke out in Europe, Stimson accepted President Franklin Roosevelt's appointment to return as Secretary of War. After the U.S. entered the war, Stimson, working very closely with Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, took charge of raising and training 13 million soldiers and airmen, supervised the spending of a third of the nation's GDP on the Army and the Air Forces, helped formulate military strategy, and oversaw the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bombs. He supported the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but convinced Truman to take the historic city of Kyoto off the atom bomb target list. During and after the war, Stimson strongly opposed the Morgenthau Plan, which would have deindustrialized and partitioned Germany into several smaller states. He also insisted on judicial proceedings against Nazi war criminals, which led to the Nuremberg trials.
Stimson retired from office in September 1945 and died in 1950.
Early life and career
Stimson was born in 1867 in Manhattan, New York City, the son of Lewis Atterbury Stimson, a prominent surgeon, and his wife, the former Candace Thurber Wheeler. When he was nine, his mother died of kidney failure, and he was then sent to boarding school.He spent summers with his grandmother Candace Wheeler at her Catskills country house and played with his uncle Dunham Wheeler, who was almost the same age, in "the Armory", which was their nickname for one corner of a large room in the house. Roaming the Catskill Mountains, he grew to love the outdoors and would become an avid sportsman.
He was educated at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where he gained a lifelong interest in religion and a close relationship with the school. He later donated Woodley, his Washington, D.C. estate, to the school in his will. He was an honorary lifetime member of Theodore Roosevelt's Boone and Crockett Club, North America's first wildlife conservation organization. He was a Phillips trustee from 1905 to 1947 and served as president of the board from 1935 to 1945. He then attended Yale College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He joined Skull and Bones, a secret society that afforded many contacts for the rest of his life. He graduated in 1888 and attended Harvard Law School, where he graduated in 1890. He joined the prestigious Wall Street law firm of Root and Clark in 1891 and became a partner in 1893. Elihu Root, a future Secretary of War and Secretary of State, became a major influence on and role model for Stimson.
Stimson developed a close relationship with Alfred Lee Loomis his first cousin twenty years his junior, and "became the father that Loomis never had; while Loomis became the son that Stimson could not have because he was sterile."
In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Stimson U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where Stimson made a distinguished record prosecuting antitrust cases. He later served from 1937 to 1939 as president of the New York City Bar Association, where a medal honoring service as a U.S. Attorney is still awarded in his honor.
Stimson was defeated as Republican candidate for Governor of New York in 1910.
He joined the Council on Foreign Relations at its inception and was described by The New York Times as "the group's quintessential member".
Secretary of War (1911–1913)
In 1911, President William Howard Taft appointed Stimson as Secretary of War. Stimson continued the reorganization of the army that had begun by Elihu Root, which improved its efficiency prior to its vast expansion in World War I. In 1913, Stimson left office following the accession of President Woodrow Wilson.World War I
Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Stimson was a strong supporter of Britain and France, although also supported U.S. neutrality. He called for preparation of a large, powerful army and was active in the privately funded Plattsburg Training Camp Movement to train potential officers.After the U.S. declared war on the German Empire in April 1917, Stimson was one of the 18 men selected by former President Theodore Roosevelt to raise a volunteer infantry division for service in France in 1917. However, President Woodrow Wilson refused to make use of the volunteers, and the unit was disbanded. Stimson subsequently served in the regular U.S. Army in France as an artillery officer and reached the rank of colonel in August 1918. He continued his military service in the Organized Reserve Corps and rose to the rank of brigadier general in 1922.
Nicaragua and Philippines
In 1901, Stimson was sent by President to Nicaragua to negotiate an end to the Nicaraguan Civil War of 1899-1904. Stimson wrote that Nicaraguans "were not fitted for the responsibilities that go with independence and still less fitted for popular self-government." He opposed independence for the Philippines for the same reason after he had been appointed Governor-General of the Philippines, an office that he held from 1927 to 1929.Secretary of State (1929–1933)
Stimson returned to the cabinet in 1929, when U.S. President Herbert Hoover appointed him US Secretary of State. Both served until 1933. Stimson lived in the Woodley Mansion in Washington, D.C., where he remained through 1946.Shortly after being appointed as the new Secretary of State, Stimson shut down the Cipher Bureau in 1929. According to the NSA's Center for Cryptologic History, Stimson likely dissolved the bureau for budgetary reasons. But he also considered intercepting diplomatic communications unethical, reputedly saying: "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail." By the advent of World War II in 1940 it appears Stimson had changed his mind, at least as to the ethics of codebreaking.
In 1930 and 1931, Stimson was the chairman of the U.S. delegation to the London Naval Conference of 1930. In the following year, he was the Chairman of the U.S. delegation to World Disarmament Conference in Geneva. The same year, the United States issued the "Stimson Doctrine" in response to Japanese invasion of Manchuria. It stated that the U.S. refused to recognize any situation or treaty that limited U.S. treaty rights or was brought about by aggression.
On October 5, 1931, the League of Nations received a strongly worded letter from Stimson urging it to pressure Japan against aggression in China, and informing the League that the U.S. would support the League's actions.
Returning to private life at the end of the Hoover administration, Stimson was an outspoken opponent of Japanese aggression.
Secretary of War (1940–1945)
After World War II broke out, Roosevelt returned Stimson to his post at the head of the War Department, in July 1940. The choice of Stimson, a conservative Republican and Frank Knox as secretary of the Navy was a calculated effort by the president to win bipartisan support for what was considered the almost-inevitable U.S. entrance into the war.In the seventeen months leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Stimson, working side-by-side with U.S. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall led efforts to prepare an unprepared America for war. Together, Stimson and Marshall had to build up the Army and Army Air Corps, organize housing and training for the soldiers, and oversee the design, testing, production, and distribution of the various machines, weapons, and materials required to support the country and its allies.
Ten days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Stimson entered in his diary the following statement: " brought up the event that we are likely to be attacked perhaps next Monday, for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning, and the question was what we should do. The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves."
With respect to the war in Europe, Stimson was "pro-British" even before Pearl Harbor. Stimson's view was the British Royal Navy, fighting Nazi Germany in the Atlantic, was protecting America, and was the reason the U.S. did not "have to do the fighting ourselves." Stimson said America should "rely on the shield of the British Navy," and that on that basis the U.S. should do everything possible to arm and supply the British.
Because of this view, when the Senate voted to confirm him, all of the most notorious isolationist Senators such as Henrik Shipstead and Ernest Lundeen of Minnesota, Gerald Nye of North Dakota, Robert Marion La Follette of Wisconsin, David I. Walsh of Massachusetts and Burton K. Wheeler of Montana voted against his confirmation on the grounds he was "too pro-British" whereas all of the most "Anglophile" Senators such as John H. Bankhead II and J. Lister Hill of Alabama, Kenneth McKellar and Tom Stewart of Tennessee, Harry Schwartz and Joseph C. O'Mahoney of Wyoming all spoke in favor of Stimson and his foreign policy views. The British government watched his confirmation vote closely, hoping he would have enough votes to get confirmed by the Senate, and they celebrated when he was confirmed.
Stimson and Frank Knox, both "vigorous interventionists", were confirmed by the Senate at the same time. Both advocated American entry into World War II on the side of the United Kingdom, earning them the title of "war hawks" from isolationists. Knox was described as "even more of a Hawk than Stimson." Stimson was hired by FDR explicitly to replace Harry Hines Woodring, Knox was hired explicitly to replace Charles Edison on the grounds that Edison and Woodring were isolationists who did not agree with the philosophy of helping Great Britain in their war against the Nazis. Stimson referred to the views of isolationists as "hopelessly twisted."
The power of isolationists explains why Stimson did not record "shock, horror or anger" after Roosevelt informed him of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Instead, he wrote, "my first feeling was of relief that the indecision was over and that a crisis had come in a way which would unite our people For I feel this country united has practically nothing to fear while the apathy and visions stirred up by unpatriotic men have been hitherto very discouraging."
During the war, Stimson oversaw a great expansion of the military, including drafting and training of 13 million soldiers and airmen as well as purchasing and transporting 30 percent of the nation's industrial output to the battlefields. In addition to George Marshall, Stimson worked closely with his top aides Robert P. Patterson, who succeeded Stimson as secretary; Robert Lovett, who handled the Air Force; Harvey Bundy; and John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War.
Stimson was 73 when he took the reins as War Secretary, and many critics questioned if a man of his age could tackle a job that was so enormous. He defied all naysayers and plunged into the task with "an energy that men 20 years his junior could not have mustered." However, at 75, Stimson confessed that he was "feeling very tired. The unconscious strain has been pretty heavy on me."