Henry L. Stimson

American secretary of war (1911-1913, 1940-1945) and secretary of state (1929-1933)

• Born: September 21, 1867
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: October 20, 1950
• Place of death: Huntington, New York

Serving as secretary of war before World War I and again during World War II, and serving as secretary of state between the two wars, Stimson helped to define the United States’ transition from isolationism to world responsibility.

Early Life

Henry L. Stimson’s ancestors arrived in the New World from England as part of the Massachusetts migration of the seventeenth century. From his father, who made and lost a fortune on Wall Street before devoting the remainder of his career to surgery, Stimson learned the Presbyterian values of simplicity, hard work, and frugality. Stimson’s mother died when he was nine. He spent the next four years living with his grandparents. At thirteen, his father sent him to private schools that profoundly shaped his outlook: Phillips Academy, Yale, and finally Harvard Law School. Stimson credited Yale with giving him an appreciation for corporate class spirit and democracy, and Harvard with impressing on him the values of individualism and competition.

Leaving law school in 1890, Stimson joined a firm headed by Elihu Root (who later joined President Theodore Roosevelt’s cabinet). He soon entered local politics. Disgusted with what he considered to be the low ethical level of party leaders, Stimson helped to engineer a minor political revolt in 1897. This included attempts to eliminate financial corruption, to reform primary and election laws, and to select honest people to run for public office. Stimson’s efforts brought him considerable influence in a revitalized Republican Party. His work was typical of Progressive reformers of that period.

Stimson’s stern Presbyterian background helped to make him a patriot as well as a reformer. To his dying day, Stimson, like his hero Theodore Roosevelt, admired the military virtues. He joined the National Guard at the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898. Sent to Puerto Rico, he arrived too late to see active service; nevertheless, he remained in his squadron for nine years after returning to the practice of law. In 1905, in part because of his association with Root, who had just become secretary of state, and in part because of his friendship with President Roosevelt, which began during his reform period in New York, Stimson was appointed United States attorney for the Southern District of New York (which included New York City). At age thirty-eight, the national phase of his career was about to begin.

Life’s Work

Stimson’s work as United States attorney involved prosecutions of many corporations during a period when the government began to serve as a counterweight to the influence of big business. By the time he resigned in 1909, he had gained both a zest for public life and a modest national reputation.

He also had gained Roosevelt’s admiration, and in 1910 the former president handpicked Stimson to run as the Republican candidate for governor of New York. This was Stimson’s one campaign for elective office. He did not enjoy the experience, and he lost the election. Stimson was ill-suited to popular campaigns. He was conservatively dressed and self-consciously dignified; in fact, Stimson was rather cold and reserved. He resented telling crowds what they wanted to hear. Those who worked with him often found him distant and domineering, even arrogant.

His conservative brand of Progressive politics, however, met with the approval of both Roosevelt and his successor, William H. Taft, leading to Stimson’s appointment as secretary of war in 1911. He served in the office for two years, initiating changes in the Army that proved of value during World War I. Most notably, he increased the authority of the General Staff over the politically sensitive bureaus, and he modernized training procedures.

The political and administrative skirmishes that characterized Stimson’s tenure in the War Department were forgotten when World War I arrived. Stimson had admired President Woodrow Wilson’s domestic program, and he supported Wilson’s defense of American neutrality. Stimson, however, increasingly deplored Wilson’s refusal to prepare for war and openly opposed sending American troops to Mexico in 1915 because, he felt, the real enemy was in Europe. Only Wilson’s Declaration of War ended Stimson’s anger. He applied for a commission in the Army and went to Europe as a colonel in the artillery. “Wonderfully happy,” he later recalled of these days. His friends called him “Colonel” for the remainder of his life.

After the war, Stimson returned to the practice of law. His developing interest in international affairs was greatly sharpened by the debate over American membership in the League of Nations . Together with Elihu Root, who authored the charter of the World Court, Stimson became a leading Republican supporter of international organization. Regretting the Senate’s rejection of League membership, Stimson in 1922 helped to found the Council on Foreign Relations to stem a national return to isolationism.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Stimson’s subsequent public service occurred in the area of international affairs. During 1927, he accepted a presidential appointment as a special envoy to Nicaragua. He helped to protect American economic interests by ending a revolutionary challenge to the authority of the government, a process aided by the presence of U.S. Marines. During the next two years, he accepted appointment as governor-general of the Philippines. There he encouraged programs of economic development and became an influential opponent of those who wanted to grant independence to the islands.

Shortly after Stimson returned home, President-elect Herbert Hoover offered him the post of secretary of state. It was in the State Department that Stimson learned the lessons that shaped his approach to foreign policy for the rest of his life. The American public’s preoccupation with the Great Depression, reinforcing popular disillusionment with the United States’ involvement in World War I, undermined his efforts to generate a policy of international cooperation. Moreover, Stimson’s own plans concerning the American role in both Europe and the Far East were much less clear than he later suggested in his memoirs.

These matters were not academic. In 1931, Japanese army units began the occupation of Manchuria in China, undermining the post-World War I peace settlement and beginning the process that led to World War II. In the years after he left the State Department, Stimson became one of the most articulate champions of collective security (that is, the use of collective force to keep the peace).

Just before the Manchurian Crisis, however, Stimson had been ambivalent about the League of Nations and collective security, preferring to see the League as useful in Europe alone. Even as he brought the United States into closer cooperation with the League following the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, he did so with a divided mind. He was fearful about becoming involved in war against Japan and uneasy about the isolationist sentiments of both President Hoover and the American public. Moreover, he was troubled by his own failure to reconcile conflicts among his Far Eastern priorities protection of American economic interests, preservation of the postwar treaties and the League, and maintenance of peace with Japan. Even his greatest accomplishment the famous Nonrecognition Doctrine of 1932, which held that the United States would not recognize political change made in violation of existing treaties illustrated his failure: Japan subsequently ignored this doctrine, and friendly countries such as Great Britain and France viewed it as overly moralistic and rhetorical.

Stimson learned from his failures. Between 1933 and 1939, while out of public office, he strongly advocated a policy of collective security that went far beyond nonrecognition. These were years that witnessed the rule of Adolf Hitler in Germany, the invasion of Ethiopia by Italy, and the expansion of Japanese control over China. Consequently, when the Democratic president Franklin D. Roosevelt in mid-1940 needed to personify his own commitment to the principles of bipartisanship and collective security after Hitler’s armies invaded France, he invited a Republican, Stimson, to serve again as secretary of war.

Stimson headed the War Department from 1940 to 1945. He helped to streamline the lines of military command and brought a number of extraordinary subordinates into the War Department at a critical time in the nation’s history. He worked well with Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, and he maintained a trusted relationship with President Roosevelt, whose domestic policies were at odds with his own. Stimson did not always prevail on issues of policy. He favored opening a second front in France in 1943 rather than 1944, as was finally done, and he respected General Charles de Gaulle more than did Roosevelt, who distrusted the leader of the Free French forces. He was rebuffed on strategic issues related to such things as his advocacy, in 1942, of the use of Army Air Forces for antisubmarine duty and his proposals in 1944 to increase the size of the Army rather than merely replace units in the field.

Most of Stimson’s recommendations, however, were accepted. He fully supported the “Europe first” strategy of defeating Germany before turning the weight of American military might against Japan. He reluctantly approved the removal of Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast, and he prevailed in his opposition to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau’s plan to convert postwar Germany into a strictly agricultural society. He oversaw the Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic bomb, and successfully chaired the Interim Committee that devised the strategy for using that terrible new instrument of war. Stimson understood the implications of the bomb better than most officials, and in 1946 he called for international cooperation regarding its development. In this quest he failed. Out of this failure would, in part, grow the Cold War.

Significance

Stimson left government service in 1945. His direct influence on military and foreign policy thereby ended, but his indirect influence as embodied in the work of his subordinates continued to affect policy for many more years. In many ways, Stimson’s early contributions were made possible by his well-placed connections with people such as Root and Theodore Roosevelt. He did the rest on his own. Stimson was neither brilliant nor charismatic. He was, however, loyal, forceful, and strong-minded. His failures were often the product of an overly moralistic approach to politics, a trait that was especially evident in his service as secretary of state during the Manchurian Crisis.

However, Stimson’s failures prepared the way for his successes. If he failed in diplomacy, he came to symbolize collective security during a period when the diplomacy of appeasement gradually yielded to a recognition of the need for military defense. As secretary of war a second time, his administrative and military talents paid great dividends. There is no reason to think that the outcome of World War II would have been any different had someone other than Stimson headed the War Department. Nevertheless, there is every reason to think that he effectively administered both the hugely complex war machinery between 1940 and 1945 and the planning for the postwar period, in which his moralism gave way to a more realistic appreciation of the behavior of great powers.

Bibliography

Current, Richard N. “Henry L. Stimson.” In An Uncertain Tradition: American Secretaries of State in the Twentieth Century, edited by Norman A. Graebner. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961. An excellent, short overview of Stimson in the State Department. The author views Stimson’s moralistic approach to diplomacy as creating more problems than it solved, and emphasizes the differences between Stimson and President Hoover.

Ferrell, Robert H. American Diplomacy in the Great Depression: Hoover-Stimson Foreign Policy, 1929-1933. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957. The author contends that the Depression prevented Hoover and Stimson from taking an assertive stance against the enemies of peace.

Hodgson, Godfrey. The Colonel: The Life and Wars of Henry Stimson, 1867-1950. New York: Knopf, 1990. Biography delineating Stimson’s policies as secretary of state and war.

Louria, Margot. Triumph and Downfall: America’s Pursuit of Peace and Prosperity, 1921-1933. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001. Examines the activities of the three secretaries of state during the presidential administrations of Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, describing their efforts to preserve world peace and security. The fourth part of the book focuses on Stimson.

Morison, Elting E. Turmoil and Tradition: A Study of the Life and Times of Henry L. Stimson. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1960. In the most comprehensive biography of Stimson, Morison provides a somewhat uncritical account of his career. The author relies heavily on the material in Stimson’s own memoirs.

Ostrower, Gary B. Collective Insecurity: The United States and the League of Nations During the Early Thirties. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1979. This work focuses on Stimson as the key figure in the transition of American diplomacy from isolationism to collective security.

Schmitz, David F. Henry L. Stimson: The First Wise Man. Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 2000. Examines Stimson’s influence on U.S. foreign policy. Schmitz argues that Stimson’s unique life and career provide a framework for understanding America’s foreign relations from the imperialist policies of the 1890’s through the post-World War II years, when the United States emerged as the major world power.

Sherwin, Martin J. A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975. A brilliant analysis of the way in which the atomic bomb affected wartime diplomacy, and the part Stimson played in this drama.

Stimson, Henry L. The Far-Eastern Crisis: Recollections and Observations. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1936. Stimson wrote this book as a lesson for those who would deal with aggression in the future. His book is a plea for the democratic states to cooperate within the framework of a collective-security system.

Stimson, Henry L., and McGeorge Bundy. On Active Service in Peace and War. New York: Harper, 1948. A gracefully written memoir that benefited greatly from the existence of extensive diaries composed by Stimson. This volume emphasizes the period since 1929.