Lewis Schwellenbach

Lewis Schwellenbach was a Senate friend of Harry S. Truman whose appearances in the account connect campaign loyalty with the hazards of wartime secrecy. He supported Truman’s difficult 1940 reelection campaign, then, as a federal judge in Spokane, asked about the immense land acquisitions near Hanford and received information about a secret weapon that Truman should not have put in an ordinary letter.

Senate Friend and Campaign Support

Schwellenbach was the first of Truman’s Senate friends to arrive in Missouri to help with the 1940 campaign. He came to Sedalia for the official opening on Saturday, June 15, a day after German troops occupied Paris. Several thousand people gathered, fewer than the campaign expected, but the presence of a trusted colleague mattered to Truman. The campaign had little money and faced an uncertain contest; Schwellenbach’s support was part of a notable show of friendship from fellow Democrats in the Senate.

Carl Hatch and Sherman Minton also came to Missouri to speak for Truman. Schwellenbach’s appearance thus belonged to a wider effort by old Senate associates to help a friend campaigning on his New Deal record, even as President Franklin D. Roosevelt offered him little support. His role in the campaign was not described as that of a manager or financial backer: the evidence presents him as a colleague who traveled to Missouri and lent his voice.

The Hanford Inquiry

By 1943 Schwellenbach had left the Senate to become a federal district judge in Spokane. Concerned about sudden, enormous land condemnations for DuPont Company along the Columbia River near Hanford, he wrote to Truman to ask about the transaction. The acquisitions involved nearly half a million acres, and Truman knew enough about the secret undertaking to answer his former colleague.

In a letter dated July 15, 1943, Truman disclosed that the land was being used to build a plant for a secret weapon capable of a tremendous explosion. He added that he hoped it would work. The answer gave Schwellenbach the essential nature of the project, though the account does not suggest that he had sought more than an explanation of the land deal.

A Breach of Wartime Secrecy

Truman’s disclosure was a serious lapse in security. He sent the information through ordinary mail rather than writing privately, and dictated the letter to his secretary, Mildred Dryden, so she too learned of the weapon’s purpose. A concern raised by Schwellenbach had therefore elicited a startlingly candid answer that traveled well beyond a private conversation between the two men.

As far as is known, neither Schwellenbach nor Dryden spoke further about the letter. The episode links Schwellenbach’s place in Truman’s political circle to a different kind of trust: his inquiry reached a president who was willing to reassure an old colleague, but the reassurance exposed information that wartime secrecy demanded he protect. The evidence records no further role for Schwellenbach in the project.