Henry Stimson

(1867 - 1950)

Born in Manhattan, Henry Stimson served in five presidents’ administrations between 1911 and 1945—as a field artillery officer, special commissioner to Nicaragua, governor-general of the Philippine Islands, secretary of war, and secretary of state. By the outbreak of World War II, he was an outspoken interventionist, and he later recommended that President Truman drop the atom bomb on Japan, arguing that nuclear warfare would save more lives than it cost. “War in the twentieth century has grown steadily more barbarous, more destructive, more debased in all its aspects,” he wrote in 1947. “Now, with the release of atomic energy, man’s ability to destroy himself is very nearly complete.”