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 anti-New Dealer), 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 (in offices adjacent to one another where the door between them was deliberately left open at all times) 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 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: "[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." 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, for the time being, "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, and voted to confirm him as Secretary of War. 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. 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." 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 whether a man of his age could handle the job. 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."
Japanese American internment Stimson was initially opposed to the
internment of Japanese Americans away from the West Coast, but he eventually gave in to pro-exclusion military advisers and secured Roosevelt's final approval for the incarceration program. The administration was split in the wake of Pearl Harbor, with
Justice Department officials arguing against "evacuation" and the Army and the War Department leaders demanding the immediate relocation. Still opposed to the idea of wholesale eviction, Stimson spent much of January 1942 in fielding calls from military advisers and West Coast politicians on the potential threat of a Japanese American
fifth column. By February, John McCloy and others from the pro-exclusion camp had won him over. On February 11, Stimson and McCloy briefed in a phone conference Roosevelt, who gave his Secretary of War the go-ahead to pursue whatever course he saw fit. McCloy contacted
Karl Bendetsen to begin formulating a removal strategy immediately after. Roosevelt granted Stimson the final approval to carry out the eviction of West Coast Japanese Americans on February 17, and two days later, Roosevelt issued
Executive Order 9066, which authorized the establishment of military zones that excluded certain persons. As the
Western Defense Command began circulating civilian exclusion orders, a new debate formed regarding Japanese Americans in the
Territory of Hawaii. Stimson joined other officials to push for the exclusion of all "enemy alien" Japanese from the islands. Although Stimson believed it to be "quite impossible" to determine the loyalty of Japanese Americans and eventually came to support the army's incarceration program, he remained unconvinced on the legality of the policy: "The second generation Japanese can only be evacuated either as part of a total evacuation, giving access to the areas only by permits, or by frankly trying to put them out on the ground that their racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or trust even the citizen Japanese. The latter is the fact but I am afraid it will make a tremendous hole in our constitutional system." Stimson authorized the release of Japanese Americans from camp in May 1944, but postponed permission for them to return to the West Coast until after the November elections to avoid controversy in Roosevelt's upcoming campaign. The incident caused a storm of controversy, and members of Congress called for Patton to be relieved of command. General
Dwight Eisenhower opposed any move to recall General Patton from the European Theater and said privately, "Patton is indispensable to the war effort – one of the guarantors of our victory." Stimson and McCloy agreed; Stimson told the Senate Patton would be retained because of the need for his "aggressive, winning leadership in the bitter battles which are to come before final victory."
Morgenthau Plan Stimson strongly opposed the
Morgenthau Plan to deindustrialize and to partition Germany into several smaller states. The plan also envisioned the deportation and the summary imprisonment of anybody suspected of responsibility for
war crimes. Initially, Roosevelt had been sympathetic to the plan, but Stimson's opposition and the public outcry when the plan was leaked made Roosevelt backtrack. Stimson thus retained overall control of the U.S. occupation zone in Germany, and despite the plan's influence on the early occupation, it never became official policy. Stimson, a lawyer, insisted, against the initial wishes of both Roosevelt and British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill, on proper judicial proceedings against leading war criminals. He and the War Department drafted the first proposals for an International Tribunal, which soon received backing from Truman. Stimson's plan eventually led to the
Nuremberg Trials of 1945–1946, which have strongly influenced the development of
international law.
Atomic bomb As Secretary of War, Stimson took direct and personal control of the entire atomic bomb project, with immediate supervision over Major General
Leslie Groves, the head of the
Manhattan Project. Both Roosevelt and Truman followed Stimson's advice on every aspect of the bomb, and Stimson overruled military officers when they opposed his views. One example of Stimson using his authority in this regard is an episode in which Stimson changed the list of potential targets for the first (and if necessary second) attacks on Japan using the new atomic bombs produced by the
Manhattan Project. The original target list included the city of
Kyoto, a place of immense cultural and historical significance to the Japanese people. While Kyoto may have satisfied the military criteria for a useful target, Stimson objected, declaring in a meeting of the
Interim Committee on June 1, 1945, "...there was one city that they must not bomb without my permission and that was Kyoto." Stimson's reasons for this decision have been obscured by popular myth. One well-traveled story is that Stimson didn't want to bomb Kyoto because he had spent his honeymoon there, and presumably had a nostalgic or sentimental attachment to the city. This anecdote comes from American diplomat and scholar
Edwin O. Reischauer in
My Life Between Japan and America (1986). There is no concrete evidence for this version of events, nor is there any record of Stimson ever expressing such a motive. Stimson did travel briefly to Kyoto in 1926, and spent a night there in 1929 as well, but both of these visits were more than 30 years after he and his wife married. In his personal diary, Stimson recorded his concern that annihilating such an important cultural site could generate long-lasting hostility among the Japanese people, which could in turn make Japan more friendly to the Soviet Union. In July 1945, while attending the Potsdam conference between Truman, Churchill and Stalin, which took place only two weeks before the first atomic bomb was dropped, Stimson wrote: The Manhattan Project was managed by Major General Groves (Corps of Engineers) with a staff of reservists and many thousands of civilian scientists and engineers. Groves nominally reported directly to General
George Marshall, but it was Stimson who had the final word. Stimson secured the necessary money and approval from Roosevelt and from Congress, ensured that the Manhattan Project had the highest priorities, and controlled all plans for the use of the bomb. On August 6,
Little Boy was dropped on
Hiroshima within hours of its earliest possible availability, followed on August 9 by the dropping of
Fat Man on
Nagasaki. Japan announced
its surrender to the Allies on August 15, six days after the latter bombing. Stimson ultimately concluded that if the U.S. had guaranteed the Japanese preservation of the imperial constitutional monarchy, Japan might have surrendered earlier and prevented the use of atomic bombs. Historians debate whether the impact of a continued blockade, relentless bombing, and the
Soviet Union's invasion of
Manchuria would have forced Japanese Emperor
Hirohito to surrender some time in late 1945 or early 1946, without the use of atomic bombs, but at the cost of massive Allied casualties. After American journalist
John Hersey's
account of the Hiroshima atomic bombing became a media sensation, Stimson and others published their own article "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb". It argued the atomic bombings saved the Japanese from themselves, that demonstrating it would have been impractical, and American casualties from a potential invasion would exceed 1 million, although military documents from July 1945 estimated under 200,000 casualties (
other estimates put the casualties as high as 4 million). Stimson also sidestepped questions such as the suffering of the victims and the radioactive qualities of the bombs, saying they had a "revolutionary character" or "unfamiliar nature". Because his article was the first official account of the reasonings behind the bombings, news outlets that were covering Hersey's
Hiroshima began to cover Stimson's article instead. President Truman commended Stimson, and
McGeorge Bundy, who had worked with Stimson on the article, later wrote, "We deserve some sort of medal."
Stimson's vision to attend the Potsdam Conference, July 16, 1945 Stimson looked beyond the immediate end of the war. He was the only top government official to try to predict the meaning of the
Atomic Age, and he envisioned a new era in human affairs. For half-a-century, he had worked to inject order, science, and moralism into matters of law, state, and diplomacy. The impact of the atomic bomb, he thought, would go far beyond military concerns to encompass diplomacy, world affairs, business, economics, and science. Above all, Stimson stated that the "most terrible weapon ever known in human history" opened up "the opportunity to bring the world into a pattern in which the peace of the world and our civilization can be saved." He thought the very destructiveness of the new weaponry would shatter the ages-old belief that wars could be advantageous. It might now be possible to call a halt to the use of destruction as a ready solution to human conflicts. Indeed, society's new control over the most elemental forces of nature finally "caps the climax of the race between man's growing technical power for destructiveness and his psychological power of self-control and group control—his moral power." To this end, Stimson advocated collaboration with the Soviet Union and genuine international control of atomic technology and weaponry, including possibly turning them over to the United Nations. He was opposed in this by other members of the Truman administration like
James Byrnes. Stimson's vision of such a new world order, shared in part by many atomic scientists as well as
Albert Einstein, would have meant yielding some sovereignty to something akin to a
world government. In 1931, when Japan had invaded Manchuria, Stimson, as Secretary of State, proclaimed the
Stimson Doctrine: no fruits of illegal aggression would ever be recognized by the United States. Although Japan ignored it, according to Stimson, the wheels of justice had now turned and the "peace-loving" nations, as Stimson called them, had the chance to punish Japan's misdeeds in a manner that would warn aggressor nations never again to invade their neighbors. To validate the new moral order, he believed that the atomic bomb had to be used against combatants and workers in the war.
Hiroshima and
Nagasaki had both contained combatant bases and major centers of war industry that employed tens of thousands of civilians. The question for Stimson was not one of whether the weapon should be used. Involved were the simple issue of ending a horrible war and the more subtle and more important question of the possibility of genuine peace among nations. Stimson's decision involved the fate of mankind, and he posed the problem to the world in such clear and articulate fashion that there was a nearly-unanimous agreement mankind had to find a way so that atomic weapons would never be used again to kill people. ==Personal life==