Secretary Stimson…

The Stimson Memorandum of July 25, 1945

Henry Stimson

[Secretary of War] Henry Stimson's work was finished, and on July 25 he, too, left Potsdam for home. He left as he had arrived, still worrying. He thought back over the advice he had given the President, and he thought of the way Truman had handled the Russians—of how the Russians had not been told about the bomb, of what Stalin would conclude from its use by the Americans, of the way in which the "pepped up" President was trying to use the doomsday machine psychology against the Russians, and the way in which Truman was shouldering aside all others in his race to control the Far East. Stimson was seventy-seven years old, and he was exhausted. He felt it was time to retire, and within weeks of the end of the Potsdam conference he submitted his resignation. Yet he had also decided by then that "I was wrong," and so, before he left his post, he wrote one last memorandum to the President:

The advent of the atomic bomb has stimulated great military and probably even greater political interest throughout the civilized world. In a world atmosphere already extremely sensitive to power, the introduction of this weapon has profoundly affected political consideration in all sections of the globe…

To put the matter concisely, I consider the problem of our satisfactory relations with Russia as not merely connected with but as virtually dominated by the problem of the atomic bomb…

Those relations may be perhaps irretrievably embittered by the way in which we approach the solution of the bomb with Russia. For if we fail to approach them now and merely continue to negotiate with them, having this weapon rather ostentatiously on our hip, their suspicion and their distrust of our purposes and motives will increase…[Stimson's italics]

If the atomic bomb were merely another though more devastating military weapon to be assimilated into our pattern of international relations, it would be one thing… But I think the bomb instead constitutes merely a first step in a new control by man over the forces of nature too revolutionary and dangerous to fit in the old concepts. I think it really caps the climax of the race between man's growing technical power for destructiveness and his psychological power of self-control and group control—his moral power. If so, our method of approach to the Russians is a question of the most vital importance in the evolution of human progress…

My idea of an approach to the Soviets would be a direct proposal… that we would be prepared in effect to enter an arrangement… to control and limit the use of the atomic bomb… and so far as possible to direct and encourage the development of atomic power for peaceful and humanitarian purposes.

Truman whiled away the time on July 26 by flying to Frankfurt to inspect troops there.