David E. Lilienthal

David E. Lilienthal moved from building the Tennessee Valley Authority into the center of postwar debates over atomic power, where his insistence on civilian control brought him into conflict with military authority and exposed him to a bruising confirmation fight. His significance in the account rests not only on his administrative record but on the ethical questions he pressed: who should control the atomic bomb, and what kind of weapon could be used against civilians without changing the meaning of war?

Identity and the TVA

In his mid-forties, Lilienthal was a DePauw University and Harvard Law School graduate, the son of Jewish immigrants, and a figure still regarded as a model New Dealer. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the institution with which he was most closely identified, had built dams, created lakes and forests, encouraged new industries and farming methods, and brought electricity to roughly 700,000 users. During the war, its power also fueled the giant uranium plants at Oak Ridge. The account credits Lilienthal with having made the TVA as much as anyone: its achievements were both material and administrative, joining regional development to the production demands of wartime industry.

That record gave his later appointment particular weight. Lilienthal was not presented simply as a specialist entering a new field; he was an experienced New Dealer whose work at a large public agency had already demonstrated the reach of civilian administration. The TVA’s wartime role connected his earlier career directly to the atomic question, while the scale of its public works offered a contrasting model to the military’s claim over atomic energy.

Appointment and the confirmation fight

After Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death, many New Dealers left government. Lilienthal, by contrast, chose to remain, first at the TVA and then in the new Atomic Energy Commission. In October he resigned from the authority to become Harry S. Truman’s designated, but not yet confirmed, choice to lead the commission. Truman insisted that atomic energy be placed under civilian control. Lilienthal nevertheless felt inadequately qualified for a position with potentially extraordinary importance in postwar Washington, and he spent days in serious doubt before Truman’s persuasion and patience helped him accept.

The nomination quickly became contentious. Hearings turned the TVA itself into a target: Senator Kenneth McKellar called it a “hotbed of Communism” and cast suspicion on Lilienthal. McKellar also believed that Leslie Groves had discovered the secret of splitting the atom and questioned why Groves should not remain in command of it. The dispute therefore reached beyond Lilienthal’s qualifications. It set a successful civilian agency and its nominee against a view that military responsibility for the bomb should bring military control with it.

Lilienthal’s political prospects looked bleak when the Republican majority appeared lined up against him. He described Senator Taft’s speech as “a kick in the teeth” and could not know how long confirmation would take or what it would cost him. Truman, however, told him from the White House that he would stand behind the nomination and remain in the fight “if it took 150 years.” The episode showed the appointment as a test of both men: Lilienthal had to withstand public suspicion, while Truman had to sustain his support through a hostile process.

Faith, dissent, and personal trust

Lilienthal did not approve of every action by Truman. When Truman called for drafting striking railway workers, Lilienthal was so distressed by the speech he heard on the radio that he walked into his garden in Tennessee and stood in the drenching rain, hoping it might wash away his misery. The moment makes his liberal commitments concrete: disagreement with the President was not a minor reservation, but a felt response to the use of state power against strikers.

Yet his confidence in Truman endured. Lilienthal believed the President had shown faith in him and saw in him courage and candor uncommon in a politician. He considered it easier to work for Truman than it had been to work for Franklin D. Roosevelt because Truman gave him straight answers. At an early Oval Office progress report, Truman welcomed Lilienthal and the other four commissioners heartily, then warned that the Army would surrender no more control over atomic energy than it could avoid. He added that he knew how the Army was trained not to give things up because he had once been part of it. Lilienthal recorded the exchange as an encouraging moment, small in duration but important to his sense of the President’s resolve.

His diary also preserved less favorable judgments of the political climate. During a later period of attacks on Truman, Lilienthal was aghast at what he considered the unfair treatment of the President, and angry that liberals and progressives were supporting alternatives. His entries make the relationship more than a story of agreement: Lilienthal could recoil from a policy and still defend Truman against what he saw as unjust judgment.

Civilian authority and the human stakes of the bomb

The argument over control became explicit at a meeting attended by Truman, Lilienthal, the other members of the Atomic Energy Commission, Secretary of the Army Royall, Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington, and Donald F. Carpenter of the Military Liaison Committee. Carpenter read a formal request that the President transfer custody of the bomb to the Joint Chiefs. The letter argued that those ultimately responsible for using the weapon should possess it, both to become familiar with it and to unify command. Truman, displeased at being read to, cut him off: “I can read.”

Lilienthal reframed the request as a question of broad policy, not merely administrative convenience. Because the President was both Commander in Chief and Chief Magistrate, he argued, the bomb should be the responsibility of no one other than the President. Civilian control was essential. When Truman said he did not think the weapon should be used unless absolutely necessary, Lilienthal recorded the President’s pause and reflection as he described its destructive power. Truman rejected the idea that it was an ordinary military weapon: it would wipe out women, children, and unarmed people, and had to be treated differently from rifles and cannon. Lilienthal observed that the military representatives’ performance did little to reassure him about entrusting such forces to the military establishment. His diary thus documented both the policy confrontation and the moral distinction at its center: the bomb’s effects on civilians made it unlike conventional weapons.

The superbomb debate and departure

Lilienthal’s opposition to placing the bomb in military custody was part of a wider concern about the direction of atomic policy. When the possibility of a superbomb arose, he resisted a decision made in an atmosphere of excitement. Proceeding, he feared, could make a different approach to the atomic arms race impossible. He also considered the country’s near-exclusive reliance on this kind of weapon unwise, warning that a new device might give Americans false confidence that the balance of power would then belong to them. The project, in his view, raised questions about defense budgets as well as foreign policy.

The advisory committee unanimously recommended against developing the superbomb, and the Atomic Energy Commission concurred. The commission itself had voted three to two, with Lilienthal casting the deciding vote. Truman then appointed Lilienthal, Acheson, and Johnson to a special National Security Council committee, the Z Committee, to advise whether development should proceed and whether the matter should be publicized. A week later, Washington knew the superbomb was under consideration. Lilienthal’s vote did not end the dispute, but it made his resistance consequential: his position helped shape the formal advice placed before the President.

On February 14, Lilienthal came to the Oval Office for a final farewell meeting with Truman. He later called it one of the happiest sessions he had ever had with him. That closing note sits alongside the rain-soaked protest, the confirmation struggle, and the confrontations over custody and development. Lilienthal’s public role was marked by disagreement as well as trust: he could oppose a presidential decision, defend the President against political attacks, and press for civilian restraint over weapons whose destruction reached far beyond the battlefield.