Herbert Hoover, Henry Stimson, and the Collapse of the Post-World War I International Order, 1921–1933

Abstract

Herbert Hoover was arguably the most significant political figure during the Republican administrations between 1921 and 1933, first as secretary of commerce then as president of the United States. Along with the presidents under whom he served as secretary of commerce, Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, Hoover thought the United States had entered a new era of peace and prosperity during the 1920s. Yet by the time Hoover left office, after serving only one term in the presidency, prosperity was only a memory, and Europe’s peace was threatened by the advent to power in Germany of Adolf Hitler and Japan's conquest of China’s Manchurian provinces.