After I had gone through this matter with the President I told him of my condition of health and that my doctors felt that I must take a complete rest and that I thought that that meant leaving the Department finally in a short time.

As Secretary of State (1929–1933) under Republican President Herbert Hoover he articulated the Stimson Doctrine which announced American opposition to Japanese expansion in Asia. Roosevelt. During World War II he took charge of raising and training 13 million soldiers and airmen supervised the spending of a third of the nation's GDP on the Army and the Air Forces helped formulate military strategy and took personal control of building and using the atomic bomb.