James V. Forrestal

James Forrestal

James Vincent Forrestal (born February 15, 1892 in Matteawan , Dutchess County , New York , † May 22, 1949 in Bethesda , Maryland ) was an American politician, the last Secretary of the Navy and the first Secretary of Defense of the United States .

Life

Training and first professions

Forrestal was the son of Irish immigrants. He graduated from high school at 16 and then worked for local newspapers for three years. In 1911 he enrolled at Dartmouth College and moved to Princeton University the following year . He dropped out of university without a degree.

Forrestal then worked as a securities dealer, but joined the United States Navy at the beginning of World War I and became a naval aviator . Forrestal remained in training until the end of the war, attaining the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade .

After the war Forrestal worked for the Democratic Party in Dutchess County, where he met among others with Franklin D. Roosevelt .

In 1926 Forrestal married Josephine Ogden, a columnist for Vogue magazine and a former member of the Ziegfeld Follies . The marriage resulted in two sons.

From 1923 he became a partner in the William A. Read and Company, in which he traded in shares, in 1937 he became its chairman.

Government work

Forrestal (center) with Harry S. Truman (right), ca.1944

Forrestal at his desk, ca.1947

In 1940, US President Roosevelt appointed Forrestal as assistant to the government, in July he nominated him as Undersecretary in the United States Department of the Navy . After the death of the Navy Minister William F. Knox in April 1944, James V. Forrestal was appointed his successor on May 19 and led the Navy through the end of the Second World War and the subsequent demobilization .

Forrestal worked on the National Security Act until he became the first US Secretary of Defense in 1947 . During Forrestal's tenure, Harry S. Truman cut the military budget, which Forrestal put at the center of the tugging for limited funds. As a former naval aviator, Forrestal was particularly fond of this branch of the armed forces and approved the construction of the aircraft carrier USS United States (CVA-58) , the first in a series of supercarriers , which was scrapped five days after the keel was laid.

death

Forrestal resigned from his post on March 28, 1949, and five days later was transferred to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda after a nervous breakdown . Although he was noticeably better, even family members were not allowed to visit. On May 22nd - his brother had announced that he would take him out of the hospital the next day - he rushed out of the window on the 16th floor where his sick suite was located. The official cause of death was given as suicide . There was no police investigation. In the meantime, considerable contradictions and sloppiness have been found in the report of an investigative commission of the Navy, which was kept secret until 2004.

The aircraft carrier USS Forrestal (CV-59) of the Forrestal class was named after Forrestal .

Web links

Commons : James Forrestal  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Biography of the DoD (Engl.)
• Marc Pitzke : “The nerd in the Pentagon.” In: one day of March 28, 2014
• James Forrestal in the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (English)
• Newspaper article about James V. Forrestal in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ende bei Nachtigall , article of March 4, 1964 on Spiegel Online
2. ↑ The Willcutts Report on the Death of James Forrestal .