FORRESTAL, JAMES V. 1892-1949

First u.s. secretary of defense

A Tragic Story

The story of James Vincent Forrestal is a tragic one. A man of humble birth raised high by his own ambition, he was brought low by his doubts about his worthiness to possess his exalted status. He entered the upper reaches of patrician power and was accepted as one among equals, but he seems never to have accepted himself as such. As secretary of the navy during World War II, he reinvented the U.S. fleet, enabling it to conduct the sea operations and marine landings that brought victory in both the Atlantic and Pacific. Rewarded by being named the first secretary of defense, he sought vainly to bring unity and central control to competing services. One of the most anti-Communist members of the foreign policy elite, he was convinced that war with the Soviet Union was inevitable; he tried desperately to convince President Harry S Truman to increase military spending but was dismissed as too hawkish. Convinced that both his political enemies and Communists were conspiring to kill him, and expressing despondency at his own failures, Forrestal was hospitalized in a psychiatric unit at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he committed suicide by jumping from a sixteenth-floor window. Though honored at his funeral in Arlington National Cemetery as the most patriotic of public servants, he died believing he had betrayed his past and his country.

Humble Origins

Born in Dutchess County, New York, not far from the birthplace of his political patron, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Forrestal came from a background a world apart from aristocratic Hyde Park. Despite his working-class, immigrant Irish roots, Forrestal worked his way to Princeton University, yet he always carried himself, as one of his friends said, "like Jimmy Cagney," proud of his boxer's spring and a nose broken twice in the ring. He was admired by his privileged classmates, but he chafed at the humiliation of being one of the few students forced to work while living in the town's poorest neighborhood. The ambivalence he felt about the world he left and the world he entered left him at home in neither, and the resulting psychological tension was channeled into a relentless work ethic.

From Wall Street to the White House

After college Forrestal obtained a position on Wall Street at William A. Read and Company (later Dillon, Read and Company), eventually one of the most powerful investment houses in the world. Serving in the navy during World War I, first as a seaman and then as an aviator, implanted in him a near religious attachment to it. Returning to Wall Street after the war, Forrestal became a multimillionaire and escaped the worst of the stock market crash of 1929. Although he sheltered nearly a million dollars from taxes in Canada during the Depression, he became a participant in the reform of the Securities and Exchange Commission under President Roosevelt, which led to his appointment in June 1940 as one of the president's advisers.

Military Secretary

Forrestal's managerial expertise and prior military service led to his appointment two months later as undersecretary of the navy. He became secretary of the navy on 19 May 1944. During World War II Forrestal linked the navy's procurement system to the civilian production sector, quickly turning the fleet into the largest, most powerful in the world. The navy became his life. He toured the Normandy beachheads with Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and was on the shore at Iwo Jima on the fourth day of the battle. Forrestal's success with the navy led to his appointment as the nation's first secretary of defense in 1947 when the military cabinet positions were combined. His job was to stop interservice rivalries and to centralize the management of the war machine.

Actions and Ideas

Perhaps as a result of his deprived background, Forrestal was a proponent of social equality. While on Wall Street he had been a member of the Urban League, and while secretary of the navy he was instrumental in upgrading the status of black sailors from messmen to full combat seamen. He also insisted that the newly formed Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (Waves) be integrated as well. Despite his vaunted pugnacity, he opposed the use of atomic bombs at the close of World War II, though not from any squeamishness about targeting civilians. As a student of military affairs he agreed with Generals Eisenhower and Curtis LeMay and others that the Japanese were already defeated and prepared to surrender. Atomic devastation of Japan would create such bad feelings, he believed, that the reintegration of Japan into the American-led global economy would be compromised. He believed that a generously reconstructed Japan, minus atomic destruction, would enable the defeated nation to become a linchpin of containment against the Soviet Union. Forrestal advised President Truman to retain Emperor Hirohito, even though this violated the previously declared policy of unconditional surrender.

Cold Warrior

With a hatred of communism lodged deeply in his Catholic background, Forrestal became one of the key proponents of a postwar military buildup against the Soviet Union, which he viewed as having replaced Germany as America's foremost enemy. He played a major role in shaping George F. Kennan's ideas about containment, transforming them from political goals to military ones. Exaggerating the Soviet military threat to paranoid levels, Forrestal set the pace for the establishment of Pacific bases and Mediterranean patrols. As a member of the inner circle of policy makers he also urged the creation of a secret intelligence network to conduct covert operations.

Breakup

The causes of Forrestal's postwar psychological disintegration are not known. He appears to have suffered considerable guilt about an early renunciation of his family and his Catholic faith. He never felt fully accepted by those he believed had been born to power, though most of them thought highly of him. His inability to unify the military services in anything but name may have led him to question the value of his earlier successes. In any case, he became increasingly irrational, believing for example that the Soviets were intent on fighting a war over Berlin in 1949 despite assurances to the contrary by overseas intelligence services. When he opposed recognition of Israel on the grounds that it would imperil American access to Middle East oil he was labeled an anti-Semite. Public attacks by journalists against his personal integrity unhinged him completely. When Secretary of State George C. Marshall declined to endorse his demands for increased deficit spending for the military, Forrestal began to see conspiracies to oust him and started behaving in ways that made his replacement inevitable. He refused to resign, even though his public opposition to Truman's defense budget was embarrassing the president. When Truman named Louis Johnson to replace him as secretary of defense, Forrestal came apart completely. Believing that Communists and Jews were conspiring against his life, he had to be hospitalized at Bethesda, where despite precautions he was able to take his own life.

Source:

Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley, Driven Patriot: The Life of James Forrestal (New York: Knopf, 1992).

Forrestal, James V. (1892–1949), investment banker, undersecretary of the navy (1940–44), secretary of the navy (1944–47), and the nation's first secretary of defense (1947–49).Forrestal was the youngest of three sons born to Irish immigrant parents in Beacon, New York. He attended Princeton University in the class of 1915, served as editor of the Daily Princetonian, and was voted “Most Likely to Succeed” and “The Man Nobody Knows.”

After a short stint as a naval aviator in World War I, he joined the Wall Street firm of William Read & Co. (later Dillon, Read) as a bond salesman. He was elected to the partnership in 1923, became one of the “golden boys” of investment banking during the Roaring Twenties, and was made president of the firm in 1940. He married Josephine Ogden, an editor of Vogue magazine, in 1926.

Called to Washington by President Franklin Roosevelt to help convert the U.S. economy to war production, Forrestal was named undersecretary of the navy (August 1940) with full authority in the area of procurement—for the design, construction, and delivery of ships to the fighting forces. Over the next three years he was the principal architect of the navy's vast World War II expansion from 1,099 to 50,759 vessels, and from 160,997 to 3,383,196 officers and men. The creation of that largest, most powerful fleet in the world was a precondition of victory.

Forrestal became secretary of the navy (in April 1944). He organized a comprehensive information effort to make the magnitude and complexity of the Pacific War—including the significance of particular naval battles and acts of heroism—more understandable to the American people. He toured the battlefronts in both the European and Pacific theaters, and went ashore at Iwo Jima on D‐Day+2, “exposing himself to the dangers of warfare as no other United States official of his rank did in World War II.” In August 1945, when the Japanese government expressed a readiness to surrender provided it did not “prejudice the prerogatives” of the emperor Hirohito, President Harry S. Truman's advisers were divided on the question whether this met the U.S. requirement for “unconditional surrender.” Forrestal convinced Truman to accept the Japanese condition, but to call it “unconditional surrender” and arrange to subordinate the emperor to the U.S. Supreme Allied Commander.

Forrestal was one of the first high officials to see in the Soviet Union an ideological, political, and military threat to U.S. security and to democratic societies everywhere. He played a large, influential role in government efforts to restore a shattered postwar world, confront the new Soviet challenge, and create or restructure those agencies (National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, cabinet secretariat) required to handle the new, unprecedented responsibilities of the Cold War in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. He commissioned a Soviet expert, George F. Kennan, to write the paper that became the famous Mr. X article, setting forth the “containment” doctrine that formed the definitive guideline for U.S. foreign policy throughout the Cold War.

As navy secretary, Forrestal strongly resisted President Truman's postwar plan to integrate the army, navy, and air force under a single secretary of defense. Truman's plan became law, but Forrestal succeeded in obtaining amendments that severely limited the power and authority of the new secretary: he would be essentially a presiding chairman of the board, with only “general authority” to assign military roles and missions and develop a single budget for the armed forces. The secretaries of army, navy, and air force would continue to administer their own separate departments.

When Truman's first choice for the new post declined it ( Robert Patterson, the outgoing Secretary of War), the president turned to Forrestal, who fatefully accepted. Almost immediately he found that the secretary of defense lacked adequate authority and staff to control an organization riven by bitter rivalries that were aggravated by a combination of expanding military technologies and sharply limited postwar military budgets. At the same time, the armed forces were charged with protecting the nation in a disordered postwar world, marked by widespread physical destruction and a dangerous new challenge from Stalinist Russia. Belatedly aware that his earlier concept had been deeply flawed, Forrestal nevertheless struggled to manage an almost unworkable organization. In the process he drove himself to exhaustion, and began a tragic descent into paranoia and self‐destruction. Truman asked for his resignation in March 1949. Forrestal was hospitalized for “reactive depression”—essentially the condition of combat fatigue seen frequently during World War II. On 22 May, he committed suicide by jumping from a sixteenth‐floor window of the Bethesda Naval Hospital.

Bibliography

Arnold A. Rogow , James Forrestal: A Study of Personality, Politics, and Polity, 1963.
Townsend Hoopes and and Douglas Brinkley , Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal, 1992.

Townsend Hoopes

James Vincent Forrestal

James Vincent Forrestal (1892-1949) was the first secretary of the U.S. Department of Defense. He was instrumental in building America's Navy during World War II and contributed to the unification of the armed forces.

James Forrestal was born on Feb. 15, 1892, in Matteawan (now part of Beacon), N.Y. His father owned a successful construction and contracting business and had married Mary A. Toohey; James was the youngest of their three sons.

Young Forrestal studied at St. Joachim's Parochial School and graduated from Matteawan High School. He began work as a cub reporter on the Matteawan Journal. When he became city editor for the Poughkeepsie News Press, he realized that he needed a college education to advance his career. He went to Dartmouth in 1911, the next year transferring to Princeton. As a senior he was on the student council and editor of the Daily Princetonian; his class voted him the "man most likely to succeed." However, about 6 weeks before graduation Forrestal left Princeton and never received a bachelor's degree. One of the reasons was that he had flunked an English course and did not make up the credits.

Forrestal worked briefly as a salesman. Then, as a reporter with the New York World, he came into contact with Wall Street society. In 1916 he joined the investment banking house of William Read and Company (soon Dillon, Read and Company). Except for service in the Navy during World War I, he remained with the company until 1940. Beginning as a bond salesman, Forrestal rapidly rose to partnership in the firm; in 1938 he became its president. As a result of several spectacular transactions, he was considered the "boy wonder" of Wall Street.

Secretary of the Navy

In 1940 at the peak of his career Forrestal accepted appointment as a $10,000-a-year administrative assistant to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. After 6 weeks in this position he was designated the first undersecretary of the Navy, a post newly created by Congress. During the next 4 years he transformed his post into a nerve center, coordinating the Navy Department's whole procurement and production war effort. His success in expanding the Navy was so great that by the end of World War II the American Navy was stronger than all other navies in the world combined.

On the death of Navy Secretary Frank Knox in April 1944, Roosevelt made Forrestal secretary. In this office for 4 years, he strongly opposed measures designed to make Germany and Japan completely impotent and strenuously objected to sharing atomic information. On the other hand, he supported America's continued effort to sustain the Chinese Nationalists against the Chinese Communists and urged the United States to retain formerly Japanese-held bases in the Pacific. He was an advocate of aid to free peoples and of containment of Soviet influence long before these policies were promulgated in the Truman Doctrine of 1947.

Secretary of Defense

Believing that the oil-producing states in the Middle East were of strategic importance to the United States, Forrestal opposed actions favorable to the creation of the state of Israel in 1947 and 1948. He was also enmeshed in the postwar dispute over unification of the armed services. The Army favored unification, but the Navy feared it. A battle ensued both in Congress and within the government. Forrestal supported greater unity but not complete integration. As a result of President Harry Truman's mediation, the National Security Act, adopted on July 26, 1947, effected among other things the reorganization that created a single Department of Defense, with the secretary of defense given Cabinet rank. Truman's appointment of Forrestal as the first secretary of defense in July 1948 was unanimously acclaimed by the nation's press.

Forrestal gave an impression of toughness and strength. His tight mouth, piercing eyes, and the way he carried himself made him seem more robust than he actually was. In the last months of his life he was mentally disturbed. In March 1949 he resigned as defense secretary, and shortly afterward he was placed under psychiatric care at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. On May 22, 1949, he committed suicide.

Further Reading

An indispensable book on Forrestal is The Forrestal Diaries (1951), edited by Walter Millis with the collaboration of E. S. Duffield (1951). Arnold A. Rogow, James Forrestal: A Study of Personality, Politics, and Policy (1963), attempts to probe Forrestal's life psychoanalytically. For details on Forrestal's role in the reorganization of the Navy Department and expansion of the Navy during World War II see Robert H. Connery, The Navy and the Industrial Mobilization in World War II (1951), and Robert Greenhalgh Albion and Robert Howe Connery, Forrestal and the Navy (1962). □

Forrestal, James Vincent (1892–1949) U.S. public official and financier. Born in Matteawan, New York, he graduated from Princeton in 1915 and soon established himself as a bond salesman on Wall Street. After serving as a naval aviator in World War I, he continued to build his reputation in the securities market, and attracted the notice of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who appointed Forrestal to a number of government positions. In August 1940 he became undersecretary of the Navy, and performed a vital role building up the service for war. He became secretary in 1944, and though he initially opposed unification of the armed services, in 1947 he was confirmed as the first secretary of defense to head the National Military Establishment created by the National Security Act of 1947. Despite his diligent work to merge the services, Forrestal was especially criticized for failing to control the air force, and he had many policy disagreements with President Harry S. Truman. He resigned in March 1949 at Truman's request, suffering from nervous exhaustion and depression. While undergoing treatment at the naval hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, he jumped from a window to his death.

Forrestal, James V. (1892–1949),US banker who, from June 1940, served as one of Roosevelt's special administrative assistants before being appointed to the newly created post of under-secretary of the navy that August. As deputy to James Knox, Forrestal's responsibility was the US Navy's wartime procurement program me. He travelled extensively to combat areas and after succeeding Knox in May 1944 he became the first secretary of the navy to land under fire when he visited US forces on Iwo Jima in April 1945.

In many ways he was a man of contradictions and he was slow to make decisions, but the navy flourished under his skilled administration. That he was the sole survivor of Roosevelt's cabinet in the administration of President Truman shows his political acumen, but he always thought of himself as an investment banker and always listed his address in Washington as ‘temporary’. In July 1947 he became first US secretary of defense.

James Vincent Forrestal , 1892–1949, U.S. secretary of the navy (1944–47) and secretary of defense (1947–49), b. Beacon, N.Y. He was a naval aviator in World War I and later began (1923) a career as an investment banker. He was appointed administrative assistant to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (June, 1940), under secretary of the navy (Aug., 1940), and secretary of the navy (1944) as successor to Frank Knox. With the reorganization of the War and the Navy departments, he became the first secretary of defense (see Defense, United States Department of ). Illness forced his resignation, and he later committed suicide.

Bibliography: See study by C. Simpson (1967); biography by T. Hoopes and D. Brinkley (1992).