Analysis: Compulsory Service Must Be Adopted

Date: July 31, 1940

Author: Henry L. Stimson

Genre: speech

Summary Overview

The continuing advance of Nazi Germany by the end of the 1930s prompted declarations of war across Europe. Although the United States was not yet directly threatened by Adolf Hitler's campaign, Secretary of War Henry Stimson argued in 1940 that there existed a “war emergency” that warranted American preparation. Speaking in Congress before the House Military Affairs Committee, Stimson argued that the best course of action was to raise a military force through compulsory service rather than a voluntary system. Time was of the essence, he warned: Great Britain, the last viable US military ally to remain unconquered by Germany, was not far from collapse. If Britain were to fall, Germany would control the Atlantic Ocean, while its ally Japan would control the Pacific. War, he said, was coming to North America, and the Axis would defeat America as it did Europe unless a suitable military force was formed in time to stop it.

Defining Moment

At the end of the 1930s, Germany was battered and nearly crushed by two decades of punitive economic, military, and political sanctions levied upon it by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. It reemerged, however, as it embraced the nationalist, racist, and anti-Semitic ideals of Chancellor Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime. Immediately upon assuming power in 1933, Hitler launched a campaign designed to expand Germany's geographic domain.

After violating the terms of the treaty by inserting troops into the demilitarized Rhineland as well as absorbing Austria, Hitler made a number of bold moves across the borders of sovereign nations. In 1939, Germany annexed Czechoslovakia and invaded Poland (an act that prompted France, Britain, New Zealand, and Australia to declare war). In 1940, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg followed as the Nazi blitzkrieg spread across Europe. In June of 1940, France fell and was occupied, with a puppet government installed in Vichy. On the other side of the world, Japan (which in 1940 would join forces with Hitler and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini through the Tripartite Pact) had already invaded the Chinese region of Manchuria in 1931, setting up a puppet government there, and was continuing its advance toward Beijing and into Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.

By 1940, much of the world outside the Americas was living under wartime conditions. After France fell, the last viable opponent for Germany was Great Britain. (The Soviet Union had entered into a nonaggression pact in 1939 with Germany.) German bombers began sorties over London and other key targets in England during the fall of 1940. Offshore, German U-boats started sinking merchant ships en route from the United States to British ports.

Weary from World War I and separated from Europe by thousands of miles of ocean, the United States remained on the sidelines. A majority of Americans simply felt that the growing crisis in Europe was a matter that was of no concern to them. Neutrality, they felt, was the better course of action. Still, there was also widespread concern that, should Great Britain fail to repel the Nazis, the war would spread across both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Because the American Army had been significantly reduced after World War I, and the Navy was largely occupied with the Japan crisis, emergency legislation was introduced in Congress to raise a military force capable of addressing the wartime threat. In July 1940, Secretary of War Henry Stimson appeared before the House Military Affairs Committee to advocate for an initiative to reinstate a system of selective compulsory military service (also known as conscription or the draft).

Author Biography

Henry Lewis Stimson was born on September 21, 1867, in New York City and spent much of his later childhood in upstate New York. He attended the prestigious Philips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, before pursuing his bachelor's degree at Yale University. He later graduated from Harvard Law School in 1890. In 1891, he returned to New York City and was admitted to the New York state bar. In 1910, Stimson made his first attempt at elected office, running unsuccessfully as a Republican for governor of New York. He was appointed secretary of war by President William Howard Taft in 1911. Stimson would hold several positions in the Taft, Coolidge, and Hoover administrations, including that of secretary of state in 1929. In 1940, Stimson was brought out of retirement by President Franklin Roosevelt to serve as secretary of war. He would later advise President Harry Truman on the first use of the atomic bomb in 1945. Stimson retired after the war, returning with his wife of fifty-three years, Mabel White, to their Long Island estate. Stimson died on October 20, 1950.

Document Analysis

Secretary of War Henry Stimson understood that most people, his audience on the House Military Affairs Committee included, believed that raising an army was a policy that should only be implemented during a time of war. Stimson also understood that the very notion of raising an army through compulsory service would be unpopular in a nation that only two decades earlier lost tens of thousands of citizens in World War I. His testimony before the House Military Affairs Committee therefore presents selective compulsory service as the only reasonable and equitable policy in the face of a very real and imminent threat.

Speaking to the first point, Stimson acknowledges that many Americans will be concerned about implementing a compulsory service system for raising an army when no declaration of war has been made. Speaking to committee members and through them to Congress, Stimson argues that a compulsory service system speaks to the lessons learned from many wars throughout American history. From the Revolutionary War through the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I, Stimson explains that the government turned to a volunteer-based system for enlistment. In each case, he says, the numbers of people who enlisted voluntarily were insufficient to ensure a successful outcome for the United States. In order to meet its needs for a viable force, the government needs to resort to mandatory conscription. Stimson suggests that a volunteer-based enlistment system is too slow a process in order to raise a force when a threat is so imminent.

Stimson also argues that a system of compulsory service—one that would only turn away those whose health and/or physical limitations prevented them from performing their duties on the battlefield—was the most fair policy to adopt. Compulsory service, he argues, requires every able-bodied man, regardless of his wealth or social standing, to join the military. Furthermore, such a system will draw citizens from every state and every career and ensure that each integral aspect of the war effort is managed by capable citizens. Furthermore, Stimson suggests that a compulsory system would be more carefully administered during wartime than a volunteer-based policy would be, because a volunteer-based system would create a rush to fill certain areas during times of war, but a compulsory system would be more carefully administered.

Stimson repeatedly points to a need for expediency in raising an army. Other nations, including Great Britain and the by-then vanquished nations of France, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium, had failed to recognize the need for major defense operations before war was already upon them, Stimson says. The United States should take heed of these mistakes, especially in light of the very real threat that exists, he adds.

Stimson describes the imminent threat as two-pronged: During World War I, he explains, the United States was protected by the line of battle in Europe—the Maginot Line that fortified France—as well as thousands of miles of ocean. By 1940, however, France had been conquered and Britain was being pummeled by German bombers. Offshore, the German Navy had established itself west of Britain and was being made increasingly powerful thanks to the shipbuilding prowess of Norway, the Netherlands, and Italy, all of which were now under German control. Even French ships had been commandeered and used for Nazi purposes. Meanwhile, in the Pacific, another Hitler ally, Japan, continued to strengthen its naval power. The United States was indeed threatened from both the Atlantic and Pacific, Stimson says. It is therefore critical that Congress act quickly to raise a strong military and the technology necessary to address this threat before the United States shares the same wartime fate as its allies in Europe.

Glossary

fiduciary: a person to whom property or power is entrusted for the benefit of another

Bibliography and Additional Reading

“Biographies of the Secretaries of State: Henry Lewis Stimson.” Office of the Historian. US Dept. of State, n.d. Web. 31 Oct. 2014.

Chambers, John Whiteclay. Draftees or Volunteers: A Documentary History of the Debate over Military Conscription in the United States, 1787–1973. New York: Garland, 1975. Print.

“Henry L. Stimson Dies at 83 in His Home on Long Island.” New York Times. New York Times, 21 Oct. 1950. Web. 31 Oct. 2014.

Morison, Elting E., and Dennis E. Showalter. Turmoil and Tradition: A Study of the Life and Times of Henry L. Stimson. 1960. New York: History Book Club. 2003. Print.

Schmitz, David F. Henry L. Stimson: The First Wise Man. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2001. Print.