Word: stimson
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Unquestionably, Marshall had inherited some of his suspicion of the Nationalists from his great friend, War Secretary Stimson (see Historical Notes). But for years Chiang Kai-shek had stood implacably in Asia against the Chinese Communists. George Marshall had caught a glimpse of the same enemy that Chiang had long faced, but he still did not recognize him as such...
...Secretary of War from the pre-Pearl Harbor Lend-Lease campaign until after V-J day, Elder Statesman Henry L. Stimson never wavered in two firm convictions. One was that ultimate victory could be assured only by a cross-Channel invasion of Europe. The other was that the sooner the invasion came the better. In the first excerpts from his wartime autobiography, published in the January issue of the Ladies' Home Journal,* 80-year-old Henry Stimson this week gave his account of the battle he fought for adoption of his strategy...
...Lingering Predilection." From the outset, Stimson's major opponents were the two sometimes brilliant, always compelling men who ran the war from Washington and London. Though both Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had early accepted the War Department's Operation BOLERO (a 50-division cross-Channel assault by the summer of 1943), "neither of the two had been fully and finally persuaded...
...Churchill's case, it was a question of caution. On three separate occasions he tried to sidetrack BOLERO for a less risky venture. The last time, Stimson wrote angrily in his diary: "As 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." In Roosevelt's case, it was a question of "some operation in 1942" and a "lingering predilection for the Mediterranean." The resulting compromise was the invasion of North Africa, a bitter disappointment to Stimson, but "the only operation that...
Single Yardstick. Despite his dissatisfaction with the North African invasion, Stimson supported it once it was launched. When Wendell Willkie was preparing to go on the air to attack the Eisenhower-Darlan agreement, Stimson grabbed for his telephone. "I told him flatly that if he criticized the Darlan agreement at this juncture he would run the risk of jeopardizing the success of the United States Army in North Africa and would be rendering its task very much more difficult...