Stimson, Henry Lewis

(1867-1950)

   One of America’s longest- serving statesmen, Henry L. Stimson was born in New York City; attended Phillips Academy, Andover; and graduated from Yale University in 1888. He went to Harvard Law School, qualified in law in 1890, and practiced in New York City. Stimson was U.S. attorney for southern New York and in 1910 ran unsuccessfully as the Republican candidate for governor. In 1911, President William Howard Taft appointed him secretary of war. He resumed his legal practice in 1916.

   During World War I, Stimson served as a colonel with the artillery in France and then resumed his career as a Wall Street lawyer. In 1927, President Calvin Coolidge appointed him to mediate between warring factions in Nicaragua. From 1927 to 1929, he served as governor general of the Philippines and resisted early moves toward independence.

   In 1928, President Herbert Hoover appointed Stimson as secretary of state, and in that capacity he chaired the U.S. Delegation to the London Naval Conference from 1930 to 1931. In 1931, he issued a statement that became known as the Stimson Doctrine, expressing the opposition of the United States to the Japanese conquest of Manchuria and refusing to accept any change in territorial possession as a consequence of the invasion. Stimson tried to mobilize European opposition to Japanese aggression and would have preferred to take stronger action, but he bowed to Hoover’s wishes to maintain a purely limited diplomatic response.

   In 1940, Stimson was one of two Republicans appointed to the cabinet when President Franklin D. Roosevelt made him secretary of war (the other was Frank Knox). He supported the introduction of Selective Service in 1940 and advocated support for Great Britain before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Once the United States became involved in the war, he called for a speedy invasion of Europe. He expressed opposition about the massive bombing of Germany and the later firebombing of Tokyo, and he recommended offering the Japanese terms for surrender that would allow them to keep the emperor. Stimson also opposed the plan proposed by Henry Morgenthau with regard to postwar Germany, arguing that the economic destruction of the country would simply repeat the mistakes that had followed World War I. However, he was also the president’s senior adviser on atomic weapons and accepted the dropping of the atomic bombs in 1945 and was responsible for the choice of targets. Nonetheless, at the war’s end, he seemed to suggest a policy of cooperation with the Soviet Union rather than confrontation based on atomic superiority. Stimson published his memoirs, On Active Service in Peace and War, in 1948.