War Department

The War Department oversaw an expanding wartime effort whose scale brought both urgent military construction and serious questions about waste, secrecy, and civilian control. In the account, it is not only the government body responsible for defense projects but also a powerful institution whose spending and decisions were examined by the Truman Committee and, in the case of the atomic bomb, became part of a grave presidential responsibility.

Wartime Expansion and Construction

The rush to prepare for war brought extensive camp construction and procurement, but Harry S. Truman found that speed was often accompanied by waste. At Fort Leonard Wood, equipment and materials lay exposed to weather, a contractor lacked previous construction experience, and hundreds of workers were reportedly idle while drawing pay. Truman took notes as he visited sites and spoke with people, usually without identifying himself unless asked.

A particular concern was the cost-plus method used for much of the construction: contractors received their costs plus a fixed percentage profit, a structure that could reward inflated spending. Truman was also troubled that a large share of defense work went to a small number of large corporations, mostly in the East, while customary safeguards in government transactions seemed to be falling away. He sought to bring these concerns to Franklin D. Roosevelt, then prepared a speech and consulted senators, friends, and staff.

The committee’s subsequent inspections gave the concerns specific scale. At Indiantown Gap, construction cost more than ten times its original estimate; Camp Wallace, initially budgeted at $480,000, ultimately cost $2,539,000. The Army had also wasted an estimated $13 million by renting trucks and other construction equipment instead of buying it outright. A previous Army study of camp construction, produced after similar waste in the last war, had itself been lost. Truman told the Senate that the findings raised troubling questions about the quality of planning beyond construction.

The Truman Committee and Institutional Oversight

The War Department became a central subject of the Truman Committee’s work, but the committee’s remit had defined limits. It was to report findings in the name of the full committee, not as the work of one senator or its chairman, and it was not to direct military strategy, personnel, or the size and disposition of the defense effort. The distinction allowed scrutiny of administration and expenditure without claiming authority over battlefield command.

The hearings began on April 15, 1941, with senior military and civilian officials, including Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and Chief of Staff George C. Marshall. During discussion of Army seniority, Marshall argued for selective promotion and distinguished effective leadership from mediocrity. Truman later identified that first hearing as the beginning of his respect for Marshall.

The committee’s approach also required restraint over procurement policy. Truman worried that pressing too far could turn oversight into an attempt to dictate policy, recalling the danger of an intrusive Civil War committee. When supporting the centralized administration of the war effort, he accepted that the committee might back a decision even where it disagreed. His concern was not simply who controlled a contract, but whether the military buildup would leave civilian government able to direct the country’s economic and political life.

Procurement, Secrecy, and the Canol Pipeline

That concern sharpened in 1942, when military contracts added $400 billion to the economy in the first six months of the year. Truman saw generals and admirals gaining influence over industry and agriculture and warned that wartime arrangements could shape the country after the war. In a broadcast, he argued that generals and admirals should identify what they needed to fight battles with, while the authority to determine the broader direction of the effort remained civilian.

The Canol pipeline exposed the risks of projects launched with little outside scrutiny. General Brehon B. Somervell had initiated a plan for a four-inch oil pipeline stretching 1,200 miles from Canada to Alaska. The project proceeded with little consideration of terrain, climate, available materials or manpower, and without adequate attention to the views of oil experts, the Corps of Engineers, or the War Production Board. A $25 million item appeared in the War Department budget with no description beyond construction of military facilities in Canada and Alaska.

The secrecy was intended chiefly to prevent interference from other civilian parts of government, including the Interior Department’s petroleum authorities. When Secretary Harold Ickes brought the project before the committee, he described its origins as a brief memorandum from Somervell. The committee heard further testimony from Somervell’s adviser James H. Graham, who had neither estimated the cost nor established how long the pipeline would be. Ickes called the project useless, and the committee reached a similar conclusion. The episode made secrecy and the absence of basic cost estimates evidence of a failure in oversight, not merely administrative shortcomings.

Atomic Secrecy and the Limits of Review

In 1943, committee investigators encountered unexplained expenditures connected to the Manhattan Project. On June 17, Truman telephoned Stimson, who told him that the undertaking was a highly important secret development known personally to only a few people. Truman accepted Stimson’s assurance that it had a specific and unique purpose and ended the inquiry. By July, he had learned enough to understand its essential nature. When Lewis Schwellenbach raised concerns about nearly half a million acres being condemned for DuPont along the Columbia River near Hanford, Truman wrote to reassure him.

The committee’s oversight of the atomic bomb did not make it the decision-making authority. Stimson stressed that its role was advisory and that the responsibility for recommending action to the President rested with him. The committee and its scientific panel considered whether the weapon could first be demonstrated harmlessly, but concluded that no demonstration seemed likely to produce the shock needed to secure surrender. The possibility of failure, and the risk that a failed demonstration would strengthen Japanese resolve, also weighed against that alternative.

At Potsdam, Truman later recalled a consensus among Stimson, George C. Marshall, William D. Leahy, James F. Byrnes, and General Arnold in favor of using the bomb. Marshall estimated that an invasion of the Tokyo plain and other parts of Japan would cost at least a quarter of a million American casualties. Truman wrote that he reached his conclusion after long and careful thought and did not like the weapon. The account leaves open whether there was one decisive moment when he made up his mind, but makes clear that the final burden of judgment was not the committee’s or the War Department’s as an institution: it rested with the President.

Civilian Authority and Presidential Accountability

Across construction, procurement, and atomic policy, the War Department’s power was tested against a recurring principle: military expertise and execution did not displace civilian authority. Truman supported allowing a single head to administer procurement and resisted pushing the committee into policy-making, yet he also challenged arrangements that insulated major spending from scrutiny. His position joined institutional restraint to persistent oversight rather than treating them as opposites.

The boundary became explicit in later conflict over military command. Truman regarded General Douglas MacArthur’s unilateral public challenge to administration policy as defiance of presidential orders and of the United Nations’ policy. The confrontation was not a War Department investigation, but it extended the same question raised by wartime procurement: whether military officers could act independently of the civilian government. In the account, the department’s significance therefore lies both in its role as the engine of mobilization and in the disputes that made clear who held ultimate responsibility for the use of national power.