Arthur A. Kimball

Who was Arthur A. Kimball?

Arthur Alden Kimball was a career civil servant who was part of the prosecution staff for the Nuremberg Trials, and also helped establish the Economic Cooperation Administration for administering the Marshall Plan.

Kimball was born in Washington, DC. His father, Arthur H. Kimball, was a prominent ophthalmologist and his grandfather, Judge Ivory Kimball, was a Civil War veteran who was appointed judge of the Washington, DC, police court by President Grover Cleveland in 1893. Arthur Kimball entered government service in 1928 when he went to work for the U.S. Department of Commerce. Over the next several years he worked for the National Recovery Administration and the Social Security Board. At the start of World War II he joined the army and became a budget officer in the War Department. He later served as Chief of Administration for the U.S. prosecution team at the Nazi war crimes trials in Nuremberg, Germany.

After the war Kimball worked in the U.S. Department of State and helped General George C. Marshall establish the Economic Cooperation Administration for administering the Marshall Plan. Kimball later served as head of the International Information Administration, a branch of the State Department. When the IIA became a separate agency, the U.S. Information Agency, in 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower allowed Kimball to serve as acting director until the first full-time director, Theodore Streibert, could take office.