Henry L. Stimson

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Henry L. Stimson bigraphy, stories - United States Secretary of State

Henry L. Stimson : biography

September 21, 1867 – October 20, 1950

Henry Lewis Stimson (September 21, 1867 – October 20, 1950) was an American statesman, lawyer and Republican Party politician and spokesman on foreign policy. He served as Secretary of War (1911–1913) under Republican William Howard Taft, and as Governor-General of the Philippines (1927–1929). As Secretary of State (1929–1933) under Republican President Herbert Hoover he articulated the Stimson Doctrine which announced American opposition to Japanese expansion in Asia. He again served as Secretary of War (1940–1945) under Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, and was a leading hawk calling for war against Germany. During World War II he 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 took personal control of building and using the atomic bomb.

Secretary of War (1st term)

In 1911, President William Howard Taft appointed Stimson Secretary of War. He continued the reorganization of the Army begun by Elihu Root, improving its efficiency prior to its vast expansion in World War I. In 1913, following the accession of President Woodrow Wilson, Stimson left office.

Death

Stimson resigned from office on September 4, 1945 due to health reasons and retired to write his memoirs with the aid of McGeorge Bundy. On Active Service in Peace and War was published by Harper in 1948 to critical acclaim. It is often cited by historians, as are the 170,000 typed pages of candid diaries that Stimson dictated at the end of every day. The Diary is now in the Yale University Library; parts have been published in microfilm. Stimson suffered a heart attack on October 1945.

In 1946 Stimson joined the Empire State Society of the Sons of the American Revolution.

Stimson died in October 1950 age 83 at his estate in West Hills, New York. He is buried in the adjacent town of Cold Spring Harbor, in the cemetery of St. John’s Church.http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/stilgenbauer-stockslager.html#STIMSON

Stimson is remembered on Long Island with the Henry L. Stimson Middle School in Huntington Station and by a residential building on the campus of Stony Brook University. The Henry L. Stimson Center, a private research institute in Washington, DC, advocates what it says is Stimson’s "practical, non-partisan approach" to international relations. The Benjamin Franklin-class ballistic missile submarine and a street in Houston have been named for him.

Stimson is also commemorated by the New York City Bar Association, where he served as President from 1937 to 1939, with the Henry L. Stimson Medal. The medal is awarded annually to outstanding Assistant U.S. Attorneys in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.

In popular culture

Stimson has been portrayed in nearly a dozen movies and television shows about World War II and its aftermath, including Truman (1995), Truman at Potsdam (1995), Fat Man and Little Boy (1989), Day One (1989), War and Remembrance (1988), Race for the Bomb (1987), Churchill and the Generals (1981),Oppenheimer (1980), Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), and The Beginning or the End (1947).

Secretary of War (2nd term)

After World War II broke out in Europe, President Franklin D. Roosevelt returned Stimson, now aged 73, to his post at the head of the War Department. The Democratic President chose Stimson, a Republican, in part to foster bi-partisan unity supporting the war Roosevelt saw as inevitable. Ten days before the Attack on Pearl Harbor, Stimson entered in his diary the following statement: [Roosevelt] 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.*Richard N. Current, "How Stimson Meant to ‘Maneuver’ the Japanese," Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol. 40, No. 1 (Jun., 1953), pp. 67-74 During the war, Stimson directed the expansion of the military, managing the conscription and training of 13 million soldiers and airmen and the purchase and transportation to battlefields of 30% of the nation’s industrial output. He worked closely with his top aides Robert P. Patterson (who succeeded Stimson as Secretary),Kieth Eiler, Mobilizing America: Robert P. Patterson and the War Effort (Cornell U.P. 1997) Robert Lovett (who handled the Air Force), and John J. McCloy.Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made: Acheson, Bohlen, Harriman, Kennan, Lovett, and McCloy (1986)