Henry l stimson, p.22
Henry L. Stimson, page 22
These positive developments left Stimson free to concentrate on American wartime strategy and larger questions of policy. Three principles guided all of Stimson’s thinking on these matters. Victory had to be won at the earliest possible moment, Europe must be the primary theater of the war, and the United States had to remain the arsenal of the Allies in order to defeat Germany. He was convinced that Japan could never match America’s power. Germany, on the other hand, had the potential to withstand the Allies’ attacks on the continent, particularly if it was successful in defeating the Soviet Union. Initial American energies, therefore, had to be concentrated on defending Great Britain. Moreover, for Stimson, the quickest route to victory was an attack at the center of German might. This required a cross-channel invasion of France at the earliest possible moment. Stimson was a consistent and dogged advocate of this policy from the beginning of the war until the actual D-Day landing in Normandy on June 6,1944. This position led to a series of disagreements with President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Although he was confident of victory, Stimson worried that the use of American forces in what he considered peripheral areas, such as the Mediterranean, the Balkans, or the Middle East, would serve to disillusion the American public, elicit pressure for the United States to concentrate its energies on Japan, and allow Germany time to defeat the Soviet Union.
Stimson had another reason for making Europe his primary concern—his knowledge of the Manhattan project, or “S-1,” as he usually referred to it. The Colonel was an advocate of numerous new scientific advances in weapons throughout the war and an early proponent of the most notable of these achievements, the atomic bomb. He saw the Manhattan project as a race against Germany. Should the Nazis develop this new weapon first, an Allied victory would be thrown into doubt. Thus, an attack directly against German power was necessary to help relieve the pressure on the Russian Army and prevent its destruction, to shorten the war and minimize American losses, and to defeat Germany before it could turn out a weapon that could stop the Allied advance. By 1945, the development and possible use of an atomic weapon came to dominate Stimson’s time and thinking, as he was the person primarily responsible for overseeing the Manhattan project.
The secretary of war also had had disagreements with President Roosevelt over postwar planning and policy. These centered on his opposition to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau’s plan to turn postwar Germany into a pastoral nation. Stimson believed that Germany would have to be rebuilt and democratized in order to ensure postwar prosperity and stability. He, therefore, opposed any punitive settlement that would embitter the German people and sow the seeds of future conflict. He was determined not to repeat the mistakes of the post–World War I period. Stimson ultimately persuaded Roosevelt to reverse his initial endorsement of Morgenthau’s plan and convinced the president that any postwar settlement had to include a revived and strong industrial Germany.
After Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945, Stimson continued in office until the end of the war under President Harry S. Truman. The secretary of war worked well with the new president after overcoming his initial negative views of Truman, formed when Truman was a senator from Missouri. Truman came to rely on Stimson for advice, particularly concerning the atomic bomb, and he earned Stimson’s respect and trust. Stimson was an advocate of the use of the atomic bomb at the earliest possible moment, if that was necessary for victory, but he was willing to pursue a negotiated end to the war by providing the Japanese an assurance concerning the continuation of their emperorship. For Stimson, the most urgent issue was ending the war so that attention could be given to postwar stability and reconstruction. When that option was rejected, he fully supported the use of the bombs in August 1945, but he disagreed with Truman’s secretary of state, James F. Byrnes, and others over their efforts to use the weapon as a means to force concessions from the Soviet Union. Although he would later become the leading public defender of the use of the bombs, Stimson was not comfortable with all the decisions made at the time nor in complete agreement with the use of the bomb as a diplomatic weapon. In the end, he concluded that providing the Japanese with some sort of guarantee of retaining the Emperor would have shortened the war and possibly made the use of the atomic bombs unnecessary.
Before leaving government for the last time on his seventy-eighth birthday, September 21,1945, Stimson made a final effort to shape American postwar policy directly and head off the growing conflict with the Soviet Union. His too often overlooked arguments are important for understanding the question of atomic diplomacy and the development of the Cold War. There were different choices that American leaders could have made at this critical time. Although he failed to convert anyone that day to the particulars of his argument, Stimson’s long service and legacy would influence American foreign policy during the period of the Cold War and throughout the next generation, albeit not always in a manner that he would have desired.
The Grand Alliance
Stimson was always at his best when his mind was clear to concentrate on one major issue at a time. As a lawyer, he was known for the thoroughness of his preparation and his briefs when he was working on one big case, and, as he got older, this cast of mind became more pronounced. The number of tasks, however, that demanded his attention during the early days of the war caused him constant distractions and annoyances. Fortunately, he was able to delegate many of these tasks to his senior staff. In addition, the groundwork laid during the prewar preparations proved to be a solid foundation on which to build up the military and ensure the adequate production of goods. By early 1942, Stimson was able to turn most of his attention to matters of strategy and victory.
In March 1942, the military was reorganized with the creation of a joint command of the chief of staff and senior officers of the army, the army air force, and the navy. In addition, the War Department was restructured with the creation of three commands under the chief of staff responsible for the ground forces, the air forces, and supply. This decentralization proved necessary to allow for the effective expansion of the military in 1942 and 1943. This system freed General Marshall and the General Staff to concentrate on military planning and supervision, with senior officers in direct charge of the day-to-day operations of the army. With the army alone growing from 1.4 million to 8.3 million soldiers in two years, an effective and flexible system of training, supply, and command was vital. Along with reorganization, the other major change that allowed the military to reach its full strength in numbers was reducing the draft age from twenty-one to eighteen. After the initial enthusiasm for enlistment had cooled down in 1942, it became evident that the military could not meet its target numbers without drawing older workers away from defense production. The solution was to lower the draft age to include men who were not yet in the workforce or deemed vital to certain industries.
Stimson wanted to take this matter one step further and supported the passage of a National Service Act that he believed would solve all problems related to the sufficiency of troops and workers for industry. It would extend the power of the government to compel civilians to take on certain work deemed vital to the war effort. This measure was stalled throughout 1942 and 1943 by lack of presidential support. Finally, in January 1944, Roosevelt endorsed the measure as the only fair and democratic method for organizing and recruiting American workers. Stimson worked hard to gain its passage, both because he thought it was necessary to victory at the earliest possible moment and because it reflected his view of every man’s responsibility to serve. He argued in front of congressional committees that the measure was necessary to bring about maximum production and to prevent potential labor unrest that could create shortages of material for American soldiers. All men, he argued, had an equal obligation to the war effort. “The men in war production are not essentially different” from those serving in combat. National service was to prevent any disruptions in production and extend equally throughout the population the burden and duties of the American people to the war. Moreover, Stimson argued, “National service will be the means of hastening the end of this war.... Every month the war is prolonged will be measured in the lives of thousands of young men, in billions of dollars.” Faced with intense opposition from organized labor and liberals, and Roosevelt’s unwillingness to lobby for the bill, Congress refused to adopt this radical new principle, and it failed to be reported out of committee. A second effort in 1945 was defeated in the Senate.2
Stimson, however, actually found little to complain about in terms of war production. Labor mainly held to its no-strike pledge, industrial production increased from $1.5 billion to $37.5 billion in the first three years of the war, billions of dollars of lend-lease aid was shipped abroad, and the American military was the best equipped and most powerful that the world had ever seen. He was able to tell the press in April 1942 that, although the dictators had gotten the jump on the United States in the first stages of the war, America “could be counted on to show greater strength” and “would pull down its enemy by sheer endurance and unbreakable morale.” In November, Stimson noted that the enormous expansion of munitions making was going well, with full production having been reached during the summer. “Great new factories have been built all over the country. Shortages of tools have been practically filled ... and we have plenty of labor.”3 There were always areas of difficulties, shortages of some materials, and production lags, but these were specific problems best handled by those directly in charge. Given these conditions, the secretary left most of the work and worrying to Assistant Secretary of War Robert Patterson and only turned his attention to these issues sporadically, when decisions were necessary that only he could make or that impinged upon his main concerns of strategy and a quick and decisive military victory.
Throughout the first three years of the war, 1942 through 1944, the question of military strategy and the achievement of a quick victory over Germany commanded Stimson’s time. Having prepared the nation for war, he now saw it as the area where he could make his greatest contribution to the war effort: Although the public might be clamoring for immediate action against Japan, Stimson saw Europe as the decisive area in the war. In his first wartime memorandum for the president, in December 1941, concerning the fundamental issues to be discussed with the British, Stimson made his views clear: “Our joint war plans,” Stimson began, “have recognized the North Atlantic as our principal theatre of operations should America become involved in the war.” In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the survival of Great Britain “should now be given primary consideration. . . . Its safety must underlie all our other efforts in the war.” Roosevelt concurred, and he agreed that an American force should be sent immediately to Great Britain. 4
With this and the decisions necessary to shore up American defenses and the fleet in the Pacific behind him, Stimson turned his attention in March to an overall plan for the war. He feared that the lack of a strategic commitment to use Great Britain as the base for offensive operations could lead to “a series of diversionary shipments of troops and supplies to other areas.”5 Stimson, therefore, sought to get Roosevelt to take the lead in formulating policy with the British and to make a cross-channel invasion the top priority. At a meeting of senior officials with the president on March 5, the secretary of war made his case. He argued that the war with Japan was mainly a naval affair, with only the opportunity for a limited offensive until the fleet could be strengthened. Direct aid to the Russians by sending forces through the Persian Gulf was infeasible, and action in the Mediterranean should not even be considered. The only acceptable strategy, Stimson concluded, was “sending an overwhelming force to the British Isles and threatening an attack on the Germans in France.” It would sustain existing programs and raise British morale. Most important, “it would now have the effect of giving Hitler two fronts to fight on if it could be done in time while the Russians were still in.” Both Chief of Staff Marshall and General Dwight D. Eisenhower agreed that the Pacific was “a secondary theatre.” As Stimson put it: “If we win over Japan there, we might still not win the war; but if we lost there, we would surely lose the war.” The key, Stimson recorded Eisenhower as saying the next day, “was to keep Russia in the war which was of primary importance for, if she went out of the war he could see nothing better than a stalemate for us.” That dictated “a powerful attack through Great Britain into France.”6
The British, however, favored a very different strategy. They sought an attack into North Africa that would begin the process of gaining control of the Mediterranean Sea and encircling Hitler’s forces, while helping to secure contact with vital parts of their empire that were threatened by both the Germans and Japanese. The British strategic theory was that Germany could be defeated by a series of smaller engagements in Italy, Greece, and the Balkans. Hitting against the soft underbelly of German forces would better ensure a much-needed success in the first major engagement with the German Army and help to alleviate the pressure on the Russians. Stimson, recalling Churchill’s opposition to the Western Front in 1915, was sure that the prime minister feared a repeat of the bloodletting of World War I, and that he did not want to risk another Dunkirk. Moreover, the prime minister was apparently willing to let the Russians do all the serious ground fighting. Thus, a right hook into the Mediterranean was Churchill’s basic position for the next two years.
On March 25, Roosevelt again met with his top advisors, including Stimson, Knox, Marshall, and his special assistant Harry Hopkins, to discuss these ideas. Marshall forcefully made the presentation for a cross-channel invasion and warned the president against the dispersion of American forces into secondary areas. Roosevelt agreed to support the development of this plan, but it was clear he still was entertaining the Mediterranean option. Two days later, Stimson wrote Roosevelt a personal letter designed to gain his backing for his and Marshall’s plan. He began by stating: “John Sherman said in 1877, ‘The only way to resume specie payments is to resume.’ Similarly, the only way to get the initiative in this war is to take it.” When the plan for the attack on France was completed, Stimson advised Roosevelt to send his most trusted advocate to Churchill to press for its adoption. Once that was completed, every effort should be made to rearrange shipping allotments and ensure the “preparation of landing gear for the ultimate invasion,” aiming for “a definite date of completion not later than September.” The lack of landing barges was the only substantive British objection to the offensive. Stimson concluded by noting, “So long as we remain without our own plan of offensive, our forces will inevitably be dispersed and wasted.”7
As this plan, code-named BOLERO, was developed, it called for a full-scale invasion of France in the spring of 1943. If the Russians were in danger of collapsing, it had a contingency for a smaller attack in the fall of 1942, SLEDGEHAMMER, to provide an immediate second front and relief to the beleaguered Soviet Army. Stimson, Marshall, and Eisenhower all realized that an attack in 1942 could fail, but noted that it was well worth the risk because of the need to keep Russia and its army in the war. Without an eastern front, it would be that much harder to dislodge Hitler from the rest of Europe. For these reasons, Stimson saw it as crucial that the United States commit itself to as early an assault on France as possible.
Roosevelt agreed to the plan on April 1 and took Stimson’s advice by sending Hopkins and Marshall to London to meet with Churchill. After difficult negotiations, they gained Churchill’s approval. Stimson could not have been more pleased. With the British agreement, he began to make preparations for moving the necessary troops and supplies to England. Stimson was, therefore, greatly shocked when, on June 17, Roosevelt, at the behest of Churchill, announced that the prime minister was coming to Washington for a new round of meetings to reopen the discussion of an operation in North Africa, code-named GYMNAST. With Marshall’s full support, Stimson again wrote a personal letter to Roosevelt to state his case that the war could only be won by a cross-channel invasion.
The central point to be kept in mind, Stimson argued, was that “the only thing Hitler rightly dreaded was a second front. In establishing such a front lay the best hope of keeping the Russian Army in the War and thus ultimately defeating Hitler. To apply the rapidly developing manpower and industrial strength of America promptly to the opening of such a front was manifestly the only way it could be accomplished.” The British Isles were the one safe spot to gather American forces and land supplies, and BOLERO, he reiterated, provided “the surest road, first to shaking Hitler’s anti-Russian campaign of ’42, and second, to the ultimate defeat of his armies and the victorious termination of the war. Geographically and historically,” Stimson continued, it was the “easiest road to the center of our enemy’s heart.” Given this, Stimson opined that “an immense burden of proof rests upon any proposition which may impose the slightest risk of weakening Bolero.”8
When Churchill arrived on June 21, he launched into an immediate attack on the American plan. Roosevelt, supported by Marshall, stood firm in support of BOLERO, going so far as to show Churchill Stimson’s letter. A compromise was struck by which preparations for the attack on France would continue until September 1. At that point, there would be an evaluation of progress “to see if a real attack could be made without the danger of disaster.” 9 By early July, the British were again challenging this agreement. Marshall informed Stimson that Churchill was reviving discussions of GYMNAST and seeking to reverse the decisions just reached in Washington. The chief of staff proposed that Stimson force a final showdown over the question. Stimson, greatly annoyed by London’s efforts to renege on its promises, concluded that, if the “British won’t go through with what they agreed to, we will turn our backs on them and take up the war with Japan.”10
