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Lot 123
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Herbert Hoover to Leslie Groves Regarding Stance on Communism
Herbert Hoover to Leslie Groves Regarding Stance on Communism
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Description:

Hoover Herbert



Herbert Hoover to Leslie Groves Regarding Stance on Communism

 

Typed Letter Signed, to Leslie R. Groves Jr., February 5, 1952. 1 p., 7.25" x 10.5".  Includes printed Statement by Herbert Hoover, February 7, 1952. Very good.

 

Excerpts

“I enclose herewith the release containing your statement. You will observe that you are not alone. I trust it will have weight with the Congress – and I am grateful for your support.”

 

Enclosure

“The country should know that men of great experience and high rank from the Army, Navy and Air Force and diplomatic service have endorsed the proposals of my address of January 27th.”

 

“Lieutenant General Leslie R. Groves:

“‘I hope that Mr. Hoover’s words will not be ignored as they were a year ago just because they make unpleasant reading. As he points out the great danger of our position is over-extension of international commitments, both economic and military. It will take courage to revise our present policies, to admit our mistakes, and even to accept minor, and we hope temporary, defeats.

“‘As Mr. Hoover suggests, our military policy should be based on air and sea where our great technical capabilities can be put to best advantage rather than on the ground where the number of bayonets is of prime importance.’”

 

Historical Background

On January 27, 1952, former President Herbert Hoover made a nationwide broadcast from New York City on the theme that “peace rests upon defense from Communist aggression.” “One year ago,” Hoover told his listeners, “we engaged in a great debate on our foreign and military policies.” He criticized Western European nations (except the United Kingdom) for failing to defend themselves under the guidelines of the North Atlantic Pact. He characterized “vast readjustments of political power” in South Asia and the Middle East, where local forces were throwing off centuries of “white man’s exploitation.” He despaired of the ceasefire negotiations in Korea that had gone on for more than six months, while American forces suffered 25,000 casualties, the United Nations retreated from the original purpose of “united and independence for Korea” to a division along former lines, and the Chinese built up a great air force. In the United States, Hoover insisted, “the outstanding phenomenon...is the dangerous overstraining of our economy by our gigantic expenditures.” While the American people had not yet felt the full impact of government spending and taxes, “we already suffer from the blight of inflation and confiscatory taxes.” Hoover declared that the United States was in “a war economy without any worldwide shooting.”

 

Hoover warned prophetically, “Communism is an evil thing. It is contrary to the spiritual, moral, and material aspirations of man. These very reasons give rise to my conviction that it will decay and die of its own poisons. But that may be many years away and, in the meantime, we must be prepared for a long journey.” In that meantime, Hoover worried, “creeping socialism continues.”  Instead, Hoover urged Congress to reexamine the nation’s current situation and expressed his belief that “there are methods more effective to check the Communist menace in the long run and at the same time to lessen our domestic dangers.”

 

Hoover proposed that the United States focus first on the protection of the Western Hemisphere; deter a third world war by expanding air forces and navies “up to a striking force”; rely on air and sea power, rather than ground forces in Korea; concentrate military forces into an effective “striking force of air and sea power”; provide munitions to other nations to defend themselves; protect the economic strength of the United States; tell Western European nations they must provide for their own defense; and revise American relations to the United Nations Charter to prevent it from dominating the internal sovereignty of the nation. These reforms, Hoover believed, would “better halt the spread of Communist imperialism” and “stop the plunge into socialism,” while limiting American ground armies, reducing government expenditures, and curbing inflation.

 

He closed with a belief that “in these evil times peace can be preserved only through strength” but that the “center and final reserve of strength of the free world lies in the North American continent.” Anything that weakened that bastion of strength risked too much.

 

 

Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) was born in Iowa into a Quaker family, but both of his parents died before he was ten years old. After living with relatives in Iowa and Oregon, Hoover became one of the first students to attend newly established Stanford University, from which he graduated in 1895. Hoover worked as a mining engineer in California, Australia, and China. He became an independent mining consultant in 1908 and traveled the world until the outbreak of World War I, building his reputation and fortune. When the war began, he helped organize the return of 120,000 Americans from Europe and spearheaded humanitarian relief efforts in Belgium, from his administrative base in London. After the United States entered the war, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover to head the U.S. Food Administration. He lobbied for the job and agreed to accept no salary. After the war, the U.S. Food Administration became the American Relief Administration, which, at its height, fed 10.5 million people daily. Elected President of the United States in 1928, Hoover took office less than eight months before the Wall Street Crash of 1929 plunged the nation into the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Hoover’s 1932 bid for reelection. After he left office, Hoover was a harsh critic of Roosevelt’s New Deal and U.S. entry into World War II. He particularly opposed an alliance with the Soviet Union though he worked to provide relief to countries in occupied Europe. After the war, he became friends with President Harry S. Truman despite their ideological differences. He helped organize a school meals program in West Germany and chaired a commission to reorganize the executive departments in the U.S. government.

 

Leslie R. Groves Jr. (1896-1970) was a United States Army General with the Corps of Engineers who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II. Born in New York to a Protestant pastor who became an army chaplain, Groves graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1918 in a course shortened because of World War I. He entered the Corps of Engineers and gained promotions to major by 1940. In 1941, he was charged with overseeing the construction of the Pentagon, the largest office building in the world, with more than five million square feet. Disappointed that he had not received a combat assignment, Groves instead took charge of the Manhattan Project, designed to develop an atomic bomb. He continued nominally to supervise the Pentagon project to avoid suspicion, gained promotion to brigadier general, and began his work in September 1942. The project headquarters was initially in the War Department building in Washington, but in August 1943, moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He and physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer selected the site in Los Alamos, New Mexico, for a laboratory, and Groves pushed successfully for Oppenheimer to be placed in charge. Groves was in charge of obtaining critical uranium ores internationally and collecting military intelligence on Axis atomic research. Promoted to major general in March 1944, Groves received the Distinguished Service Medal for his work on the Manhattan Project after the war. In 1947, Groves became chief of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project. He received a promotion to lieutenant general in January 1948, just days before meeting with Army Chief of Staff Dwight D. Eisenhower, who reviewed a long list of complaints against Groves. Assured that he would not become Chief of Engineers, Groves retired in February 1948. From 1948 to 1961, he was a vice president of Sperry Rand, an equipment and electronics firm. After retirement, he served as president of the West Point alumni association and wrote a book on the Manhattan Project, published in 1962.


Ex. Leslie Groves family, Christies Auction.

 

 


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