S8 Ep185: Henry Stimson's Moral Struggle with Firebombing and the Atomic Bomb: Colleague Evan Thomas introduces Secretary of War Henry Stimson, a "Christian gentleman" and realist who agonized over the morality of war, noting that while overseeing the firebombing o

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🗓️ 13 December 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

Henry Stimson's Moral Struggle with Firebombing and the Atomic Bomb: Colleague Evan Thomas introduces Secretary of War Henry Stimson, a "Christian gentleman" and realist who agonized over the morality of war, noting that while overseeing the firebombing of Tokyo and the "Frankenstein monster" of the atomic bomb, Stimson struggled with the conflict between his moral vision and the necessity of using power.

1935 TOKYO

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0:00.0	This is CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor.
0:09.6	Here's John Batchelor.
0:12.5	It is March, late winter, early spring of 1945.
0:18.8	And a flight of B-29s goes out from the islands in the Pacific towards Tokyo.
0:25.5	The ambition is to burn Tokyo, the night of the March 9th into the 10th.
0:31.1	That is an expression of the power of the American U.S. Army Air Force late in the war.
0:38.4	Germany is still in the contest, but Japan is burning.
0:42.5	A man who learns about this mission within hours of its success, the burning of Tokyo,
0:50.9	is Henry Lewis Stimson, the Secretary of War. Henry Lewis Stimson forms the point of view,
0:58.0	the moral high ground point of view in a new book, The Road to Surrender, Three Men and the
1:03.9	Countdown to the End of World War II. I welcome the distinguished author Evan Thomas to comment
1:10.3	on who Henry Stimson is at this point in his life.
1:14.9	He has served several presidents, most importantly, Franklin Roosevelt.
1:21.0	But at this point, he's also weighed down by the demands of his office and his own health issues. Evan, congratulations
1:30.7	and good evening. What do we understand about Henry Stimson at this point at his life,
1:35.8	the least of which being that he's a Victorian gentleman? Good evening to you, Evan.
1:40.4	Good evening to you, John. Henry Simpson is a morally upright person. He sees himself that way. He calls himself a Christian gentleman. And he is. You know, he goes to church on Sunday. He has a moral vision. He believes in what he calls the law of moral progress. He believes that the United States is the country best suited, really, in the history of the world,
2:02.5	to achieve this moral perfection, if you will. But at the same time, and this is crucial,
2:10.1	Henry Simpson is a realist. He's a power guy. He was a prosecutor. He was a New York lawyer.
2:17.1	He's been Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense.
2:20.1	He wanted the United States to stand up to fascism in the 1930s when nobody else did. He's been
2:27.2	an interventionist all the way. So he is both a moralist who believes in a fairly benign Christian God, and at the same time, he is a guy who
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