This chapter examines Stimson’s first months back at the War Department following the Fall of France in June 1940 and how its position within Washington shifted from the margins to the center of US policymaking. It examines the dysfunction and turbulence at the War Department in the years prior to Stimson’s arrival and the specific reforms Stimson made to mitigate this upheaval and ensure the Army was in the rooms where policymaking happened. By focusing on these changes and their application during those intial months, this chapter argues that the War Department turned into a crucial buraucratic, political, and policy operator because Stimson and his inner circle overhauled its organizational structure, fashioned concrete policy objectives, and deliberately worked to influence domestic politics and policymaking. By consciously performing as a political actor, the War Department gained leverage over its bureucratic rivals at the Navy and State Departments and became a consequential policymaking nexus inside the Roosevelt administration and within the US government.