Henry L. Stimson

Henry Lewis Stimson (1867–1950) was an American statesman, diplomat, and lawyer who served seven US presidents in senior cabinets over four decades. Educated at Yale (Skull and Bones) and Harvard Law School, he was a partner in Elihu Root's law firm before William Howard Taft appointed him Secretary of War in 1911. During World War I, Stimson served on the Western Front in France as an artillery colonel.

As Herbert Hoover's Secretary of State, he responded to the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria by issuing the Stimson Doctrine, refusing to recognize territorial changes executed through military aggression. In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt chose Stimson, a Republican, to serve as Secretary of War to lead bipartisan mobilization for World War II. Stimson oversaw the mobilization of thirteen million troops, directed the top-secret Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb, and advocated the creation of the Nuremberg trials to prosecute Nazi war crimes.