HARRY S TRUMAN
Biography
On April 12, 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. That same day Vice President Harry S Truman was sworn in to succeed him.
Truman became president at a particularly critical time. World War II was coming to an end, and the Cold War with the Soviet Union was in its beginning stages.
Early Years
Harry S Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri, on May 8, 1884. He was the eldest of three children of Martha Ellen Young and John Anderson Truman. Because his parents could not decide which of his grandfathers to name him after, they gave young Harry the letter “S” instead of a middle name.
The entrance of the United States into World War I in 1917 gave Truman an opportunity to show his abilities. Soon after war was declared, he received his commission as a first lieutenant in the Missouri National Guard. In March, 1918, he left for France with the 35th Division. Truman commanded a field artillery battery in several campaigns. Throughout the fighting he managed to maintain firm discipline among his unruly men yet retain their affection. He said afterwards: “I've always been sorry I did not get a university education in the regular way. But I got it in the Army the hard way—and it stuck.”
After his discharge from the Army in 1919 with the rank of captain, Truman married his childhood sweetheart, Bess Wallace. Their only child, a daughter named Mary Margaret, was born in 1924. Soon after his marriage Truman entered into a partnership with one of his army friends and opened a men's clothing store in Kansas City. But in the postwar depression of 1921 the store failed. Truman lost his life savings and owed $20,000 in debts. He refused to go into bankruptcy, however, and instead scraped for 15 years to pay off the money he owed.
He Enters Politics
Truman's friends urged him to enter politics. Like his father, he was a Democrat with strong views. In 1922, Truman won election as one of three judges of the Jackson County Court. His friends called him Judge Truman, but his duties were administrative rather than judicial. Since he felt that his new responsibilities called for a knowledge of law, he studied at night for two years at the Kansas City School of Law. In 1926 he was elected presiding judge, an office he held until 1935.
During these years Truman was allied with the notorious political machine of Kansas City boss Thomas J. Pendergast (1870-1945). In spite of this, Truman maintained his reputation as a man of strict honesty and unusual efficiency. Pendergast complained frequently that Truman was “the contrariest cuss in Missouri” but respected him as a popular vote-getter. In 1934 he backed Truman for election to the United States Senate.
During his first term in the Senate, Truman seldom spoke and was handicapped by his tie with Pendergast. With difficulty he won re-election in 1940. In his second term as a senator, however, he became famous.
Vice President and President
The success of the committee and his support of President Franklin Roosevelt's policies led Truman's political supporters to back him for the Democratic nomination for vice president in the election of 1944. President Roosevelt was running for a fourth term, and he and Truman were elected easily.
During his 12 weeks as vice president Truman saw little of Roosevelt. He received no special briefings on the major issues facing the administration, such as the deteriorating relations with Soviet Russia and the development of the atomic bomb. Roosevelt's health was failing, but he optimistically expected to regain it. Thus Truman was far from prepared for the responsibilities that suddenly fell on him when Roosevelt died. The day after his inauguration he remarked to reporters: “Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now… yesterday…I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”
Truman's first task was to bring World War II to a triumphant conclusion. On May 8, 1945, just a few weeks after he took office, the unconditional surrender of the German forces ended the war in Europe. There remained the task of forcing the surrender of Japan and of meeting the increasing difficulties with the Soviet Union. The Soviets, in violation of the agreements reached with President Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill at the Yalta Conference, were gradually taking over political control of the countries of Eastern Europe.
The Atomic Bomb
In July, 1945, President Truman went to Potsdam, Germany, to meet with Churchill and Soviet premier Joseph Stalin. While there, Truman received word of the first successful test of the atomic bomb. Truman could arrive at no useful agreements with Stalin at Potsdam. However, the President did issue a warning to Japan that unless it surrendered, it faced complete devastation. When the Japanese ignored the ultimatum, Truman ordered the atomic bomb dropped on Japan. The target was the city of Hiroshima. In spite of the frightful damage done by the bomb, Japan did not surrender until a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. On September 2, 1945, aboard the battleship Missouri, the Japanese signed the surrender documents. “Let there be no mistake about it,” Truman said later. “I regarded the bomb as a military weapon and never had any doubt that it should be used.”
Problems at Home
With the long war finally at an end, millions of Americans in the armed forces and in defense plants were eager to return to peaceful pursuits. The armed forces were demobilized (disbanded) at top speed, and wartime economic controls were rapidly abandoned. In September, 1945, President Truman sent to Congress a message containing his recommendations for domestic legislation. Among other things, the President asked for expanded social security, an increase in the minimum wage, a permanent Fair Employment Practices Act, a bill to provide full employment, and public housing and slum clearance. Additional recommendations called for federal aid to education and for health insurance, medical care, and federal control of atomic energy.
But the mood of the United States during the next 2 years favored more conservative policies, and Congress enacted only two of Truman's recommendations. In 1946 it passed the Atomic Energy Act, which created the Atomic Energy Commission to exercise control over research and development of atomic energy. Congress also passed a limited version of the President's full employment program. This was the Maximum Employment Act. Among other things, this act established the Council of Economic Advisers to assist the president and issue a yearly report on economic conditions.
Meanwhile, the United States was suffering the pains of the hurried change to a peacetime economy. A scarcity of goods, rising prices, and workers' strikes for higher wages led to inflation. Truman had enjoyed general sympathy and popularity when he became president. But now he became the butt of jokes. Voters, tired of wartime and postwar shortages, swept Republicans into control of both houses of Congress in 1946. The new Congress followed a conservative course in economic legislation. In 1947, over Truman's veto, it passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which placed certain restrictions on labor unions.
The Election of 1948
In 1948, Truman prepared to run for election for a term as president in his own right. His Republican opponent was Governor Thomas E. Dewey (1902-71) of New York. In addition, the President was faced with a split in his own party. A small group of radical Democrats nominated former vice-president Henry A. Wallace (1888-1965) as the Progressive Party candidate. Southern Democrats, who were angered at the strong civil rights plank in the regular Democratic platform, formed the Dixiecrat, or States' Rights, Party, with Governor (later Senator) J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina as their candidate for president.
In spite of predictions of his defeat by every poll-taker in the United States, Truman planned a vigorous campaign. He told his vice-presidential running mate, Senator Alben W. Barkley (1877-1956) of Kentucky, “I'm going to fight hard. I'm going to give them hell.” Truman campaigned across the nation, denouncing what he called the “do-nothing” Congress. He appealed for voter support for his program of welfare and civil rights legislation, aid to farmers, and repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act. To practically everyone's surprise but his own, Truman defeated Dewey by over 2,000,000 popular votes and by an electoral vote of 304 to 189. The Progressive and Dixiecrat parties received relatively few votes. The Democrats also regained control of both houses of Congress.
With renewed vigor Truman urged upon Congress his domestic program, which he was now calling the Fair Deal. But Congress was dominated by a conservative alliance of Southern Democrats and Republicans, and the President was able to obtain little beyond the strengthening of such earlier measures as social security, public housing, and the minimum wage.
Foreign Affairs
In his foreign policy President Truman was more successful in winning the backing of Congress. His achievements in foreign affairs were so notable that a group of 75 historians, in a poll taken in 1962, ranked him among the near-great presidents.
Throughout his presidency Truman hoped that the United States could help maintain peace through international cooperation. On June 26, 1945, at San Francisco he witnessed the signing of the charter establishing the United Nations. He hailed it as a “declaration of great faith by the nations of the earth—faith that war is not inevitable, faith that peace can be maintained.” In this same spirit Truman proposed international control of atomic energy to harness it for peaceful uses. But the Soviet Union refused to accept the American plan submitted to the United Nations in 1946. Instead, Soviet leaders worked at top speed to develop their own bomb.
The Truman Doctrine
Gradually, Truman realized that more vigorous measures had to be taken if the spread of Communism was to be stopped. In 1947 he became especially alarmed by Soviet pressure on Turkey and by Soviet aid to Communist guerillas in Greece. He requested funds from Congress to assist the armed forces of these countries. He also set forth the policy that came to be called the Truman Doctrine: “to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation…”
The Marshall Plan
The need for help to war-torn Europe led to Truman's proposal, in 1947, of what came to be known as the Marshall Plan, after Secretary of State George C. Marshall. Under the Marshall Plan, large amounts of U.S. aid were sent to the nations of Western Europe, which brought about their rapid economic recovery. Truman also called for aid, under his Point Four program, to developing nations of Africa and Asia.
The Berlin Airlift
In 1948, Soviet forces blockaded the western sectors of Berlin, the former capital of Germany, which had been under the control of the four Allied powers since the end of World War II. Truman did not want to risk war by sending land convoys through the Soviet lines. Instead, he ordered West Berlin supplied by air, which forced the Soviets to lift the blockade in 1949.
To meet any further Soviet military threats to Western Europe, in 1949 Truman helped shape a new alliance called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Truman was severely criticized for not having sent massive military aid to President Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government before the mainland of China fell to Communist forces in 1949. However, Truman's advisers, chiefly George C. Marshall, had decided that nothing the United States could do would save the Nationalists, who withdrew to Taiwan.
The Korean War
When Communist North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, Truman called for armed assistance to the South Koreans under a United Nations command headed by the United States. Technically, the Korean War was what Truman called a “police action by the United Nations”" After Communist Chinese forces entered the war in great numbers, Truman refused to allow the United Nations commander, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, to bomb bases within China for fear that it might lead to all-out war. When MacArthur sought through Republican leaders in Congress to reverse Truman's policy, the President relieved MacArthur of his command. An armistice in Korea was not obtained until July, 1953, after Truman had left the presidency.
Retirement
After leaving office in January, 1953, Truman returned to his home in Independence, Missouri. He traveled widely, published his memoirs, and enjoyed the status of an elder statesman. He died on December 26, 1972, and was buried in Independence.
Frank Freidel
Harvard University, Author, America in the Twentieth Century