Harry S. Truman

Source

• Born: 8 May 1884
• Birthplace: Lamar, Missouri
• Died: 26 December 1972 (heart failure)
• Best Known As: President of the United States, 1945-53

Harry Truman became president of the United States after the death of Franklin Roosevelt on 12 April 1945. Roosevelt was already the longest-serving president in U.S. history when he chose Truman, then a senator from Missouri, to be his vice presidential candidate in 1944. When Roosevelt died suddenly the next year, Truman became the 33rd president and commander in chief of U.S. forces during World War II. He made the decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan in August of 1945, finally ending the war. Truman steered the U.S. through the post-war period with the no-nonsense Midwestern style and colorful harangues of Congress that are now his hallmark. (He placed on his desk a plaque reading "The buck stops here," a reference to the notion of avoiding responsibility by "passing the buck.") Truman was re-elected in 1948 in a contest many expected him to lose to the Republican candidate, Governor Thomas Dewey of New York. (A famous photograph shows Truman holding up a premature edition of the Chicago Tribune with the headline "Dewey Defeats Truman.") Truman tangled diplomatically with the Soviet Union in Berlin and elsewhere, founding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and setting the tone for the nearly five decades of the Cold War that followed. He gave up politics at the end of his second term, due in part to public discontent with the U.S. involvement in the Korean War. He was succeeded as president by Dwight D. Eisenhower.

His vice president was Kentuckian Alben W. Barkley... The "S" in Harry S. Truman is just an initial; it doesn't stand for anything... He was the captain of an artillery company during World War I; according to the Harry Truman Library, Truman and his unit "saw action in the Vosges, Saint Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne campaigns"... The Truman Library is located in his hometown of Independence, Missouri... Truman is sometimes called a "haberdasher" because he ran a men's clothing store in Kansas City from 1919-22; the store flopped and Truman spent years paying off his debts... Truman married the former Bess Wallace on 28 June 1919. They remained married until his death in 1972; Bess died on 18 October 1982. Their only child, Mary Margaret, was born on 17 February 1924. Margaret Truman became the author of a series of mystery novels set in Washington, D.C., including Murder at the White House (1980) and Murder at the Pentagon (1992).

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(b. Lamar, Missouri, 8 May 1884; d. 26 Dec. 1972) US; US Senator 1935 – 44, Vice-President 1945, President 1945 – 53 Born the son of a livestock salesman and farmer, Truman had the distinction of having a letter of the alphabet as part of his name. The families of his parents reputedly could not agree on a middle name — one wanting the family name of Shippe and the other Solomon — so his parents simply gave him "S" as his middle name. His formal education was confined to high school. His father ran into financial difficulties, which prevented Harry from going to college. Harry also had poor eyesight — he wore glasses from the age of 8 — and this prevented him from being admitted to West Point to pursue a military career. Instead he took up a number of clerical jobs before returning to work on the family farm. He was mobilized in 1917 and saw action during the First World War — showing leadership qualities that were admired by his men — and was demobilized with the rank of captain in 1919. Returning to Missouri, he married and with a friend set up a haberdasher's store. The store briefly flourished but then foundered. As the store hit hard times Truman began to take an interest in politics.

Truman began his political career in 1922 when he was elected to the administrative post of district judge. He lost a re-election bid in 1924 but was elected chief judge of Jackson County in 1926. He established a reputation for integrity and in 1934 the Democratic Party bosses in that state chose him to contest a Senate seat. They did so reluctantly after other potential candidates had turned them down. Truman won the election but had difficulty in making his mark in the Senate. He was associated with the party machine that had chosen him. What saved Truman's career was the decision of the Governor of Missouri, Lloyd Stark, to run against him for the Senate nomination in 1940. Truman had considered retiring — he had achieved little and found it difficult living in Washington — but he was stung into remaining in the race after President Franklin Roosevelt offered him a federal appointment as a means of providing a clear field for Stark. Truman stumped the state to rally support and was successful especially in getting unions and many workers to support him. He won a narrow victory in the primary and a clear victory in the general election.

Once returned to the Senate, he was chosen to head a committee investigating how money was spent on defence. The committee was largely Truman's idea and it served to bring his name to national prominence. The committee revealed massive overspending and inefficiency, identifying how corporations were profiting at the expense of the war effort. The result was a significant improvement in efficiency and regulation, saving the country several billion dollars. Truman emerged as a leading figure in the Senate. It was a position that established him as a possible vice-presidential candidate. In 1944, Roosevelt dropped Vice-President Henry Wallace from the ticket — Wallace was deemed too radical to be allowed to continue in the office — and Democratic Party chairman Bob Hannegan favoured Truman to succeed him. Truman, who had come to enjoy life in the Senate and supported James Byrnes for the vice-presidency, had to be persuaded by Hannegan and Roosevelt to accept the nomination. Not for the first time, Truman was to ascend the political ladder because of the favours of a political boss.

Roosevelt's re-election to a fourth term in 1944, albeit it by a relatively narrow margin, resulted in Truman being sworn in as Vice-President of the United States. The swearing-in ceremony took place on 20 January. Truman had little contact with the President. He only recalled seeing him twice, on both occasions Cabinet meetings at which nothing important was discussed or decided. On 12 April, after chairing the Senate, he was asked to go to the White House. Eleanor Roosevelt informed him that the President was dead. Truman was sworn in as the 33rd President in the Cabinet Room. Although Roosevelt was clearly ill, Truman had had no idea how bad his condition was. His elevation to the presidency came as a massive shock.

Truman realized that there were many Americans who could do the job better than he could but that they were not the ones who had the job of President. He threw himself into the massive task that confronted him. Though not an original thinker, he had a grasp of history — he spent his early years reading history books — and was not afraid to take decisions. Once taken, he stood by them. Inasmuch as he had a problem in carrying out the job, it was not a reluctance to take decisions but rather the speed at which he took them. He did not always spend a great deal of time reflecting before reaching a decision. He was also prone to express himself in fairly plain terms. This sometimes aided communication but could undermine efforts at diplomacy. After giving Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov a verbal dressing-down over the Soviet stance over Poland and the United Nations, Molotov complained that "I have never been talked to in my life like this." To which Truman retorted: "Carry out your agreements and you won't get talked to like this."

Truman had to take many decisions quickly. He authorized the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He presided over America's response to the developing Cold War. He achieved perhaps his greatest success in ensuring, with the support of the Republican leader Senator Arthur Vandenberg, that America remained a military actor on the world stage rather than withdrawing within its own borders. In 1947 he proclaimed the Truman doctrine, prescribing a policy of containment for the Soviet Union. In 1948 he approved the Marshall Plan, developed by Secretary of State George Marshall for the economic recovery of Europe. The same year he authorized the Berlin airlift, using planes to ship in supplies after the Soviets closed the road routes to Berlin.

Domestically, he faced many fights with Congress, especially after the Republicans gained control in 1946. His domestic programme was dubbed the Fair Deal but made little headway. His proposals to counter inflationary pressures failed to pass. Prices soared and industrial unrest increased. Congress passed the *Taft-Hartley Act, outlawing the closed shop, over Truman's veto. His liberal stance on social issues, including race, upset some of his own supporters, a number of whom — dubbed Dixiecrats — staged a walkout at the 1948 Democratic convention. Truman entered the 1948 presidential election as the underdog, most commentators expecting the Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey — who had fought Roosevelt in 1944 — to win, a view shared by Dewey himself. Truman waged an energetic campaign, calling Congress into special session and then, when it failed to achieve anything, attacking it as the "do-nothing 80th Congress". On election night, early forecasts suggested that Truman had lost and the Chicago Tribune went to press with the headline "Dewey defeats Truman", but by morning it was clear that Truman had won, winning 24.1 million votes against 21.9 for Dewey. Strom Thurmond, the Dixiecrat States' Rights candidate won just over 1 million votes, as did Henry Wallace running as a Progressive.

Truman's second term was dominated by the Cold War and events in the Far East. After North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel in Korea, Truman sent American forces to repel them, a move that was subsequently given United Nations sanction. General Douglas MacArthur was put in charge and he decided to pursue the fighting into North Korea, a tactic that prompted Chinese forces to intervene. MacArthur variously criticized both UN policy and that endorsed by his own President. After tolerating the General's insubordination for some months, Truman decided to act and dismissed MacArthur. MacArthur returned as a popular hero rather than a disgraced officer, though his popularity later waned.

MacArthur's dismissal came at a time when Truman was unpopular. Fears of Communists in government had led the Republicans to attack Truman for being "soft on Communism". Congress passed the McCarren Act in 1950, requiring Communists to register with the Justice Department; Truman vetoed it and Congress overrode the veto. Senator Joseph McCarthy led the attack on Communists in public office. The threat of disruption to steel supplies by an industrial dispute led Truman to seize the steel mills in 1952, a move that was later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. With the Korean War still dragging on, Truman decided that he had had enough. Though eligible to seek re-election for a second term in his own right, he declined to do so. Instead, he retired to Independence, Missouri, to work on his memoirs and the Truman Library. He lived for almost another twenty years, doing some travelling and spending time with his family. In 1971 he declined the Congressional Medal of Honour on the grounds that he had not done anything to deserve it. He died on 26 December 1972 at the age of 88.

Truman was a man who was willing to lead and to accept responsibility. Down to earth in language and approach, he was willing to fight for what he believed was right. He was loyal to friends and family. If a reviewer criticized the performance of his daughter Margaret at a concert, a call from the White House would result, leaving the reviewer in no doubt as to the President's opinion of the review. However, he was also loyal to many old cronies — some of whom lacked his integrity — keeping them longer than was politically wise. He battled for his policies with a hostile Congress and was unpopular for most of his presidency. His reputation increased in the years after leaving the White House. In the 1962 poll of historians on US presidents, he was ranked as a near-great president and in subsequent polls has always figured in the list of the top ten presidents. In the 1995 Chicago Sun-Times poll of presidential scholars he was ranked sixth, behind Thomas Jefferson and ahead of Woodrow Wilson. It was quite an achievement for the farm boy from Missouri.

Truman, Harry S. (1884-1972), US president 1945-53. No other US president is so easy for his countrymen to identify with while remaining so enigmatic to foreigners. The product of probably the most corrupt of all the many urban Democratic party ‘machines’, surrounded by crooks and fixers throughout all his public life, he was personally honest. A failure at every business he tried to start, he provided the seed money for the whole western European economy after WW II and was prepared to do the same for the USSR, even though he knew from personal acquaintance that Stalin was the enemy of everything he held dear. Chosen as the vice presidential candidate for the certain third re-election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, he met the great man twice, briefly, before he died and left him with the world to run, not even knowing about the Manhattan Project or any other of the high secrets of state. The list continues, but the longer it gets, the greater the wonder that a man who had shown no signs of aspiring even to mediocrity for 61 years, stepped into the giant shoes of his predecessor on 12 April 1945 and calmly, competently, and humanely directed the affairs of the world's most powerful state during the eight years of her greatest strength relative to the rest of the world. Furthermore he did this without indulging in any of the imperial trappings that have unbalanced so many of his successors, and at the end he went home by train with the wife to whom he had been faithful for 33 years, with the tickets paid from his own pocket, and was surprised and moved to find a large crowd waiting to say goodbye. The new America needed such a man, but only the old America could have produced him.

While he had more experience of Washington upon becoming president than Lincoln (so, for that matter, has every other president), he was held in similarly low esteem, particularly by the courtiers of his predecessor. In quick succession he had to launch the UN, deal with the surrender of Nazi Germany, meet Stalin and Attlee at Potsdam, and then order the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war in the Pacific. He then submitted a programme to Congress designed to ward off the possibility of a depression consequent on the demobilization of millions of servicemen and -women and the inflationary pressures of war spending, only to see it ripped to shreds and the Republicans take control of Congress in 1946. He fared better in foreign policy, in 1947 announcing the ‘Truman Doctrine’ with reference to the Greek civil war, and reversing an earlier decision to scrap the US intelligence services by authorizing the creation of the CIA. In 1948 he signed the Marshall Plan of financial aid for European economic recovery and called Stalin's bluff with the Berlin airlift. But he was such an underdog going into the 1948 elections that the day after polling day several newspapers incorrectly headlined that his opponent had won.

In 1949 he set up NATO, and instituted a programme of aid to underdeveloped countries, while his opponents yapped that he had ‘lost’ China to Mao Tse-tung and bayed for the blood of the crypto-communists in his administration who they said were responsible. They were right about the Soviet agents of influence, but blinded by partisanship attacked men like Acheson and Marshall, two stalwart anti-communists and probably the finest public servants the USA was ever blessed with. Finally, when the North Koreans with Soviet encouragement launched the Korean war, he did not flinch from fighting for a land he personally viewed as of no importance to the USA, and when the mighty MacArthur attempted to use the same techniques to dictate policy that had worked with Roosevelt, sacked him and weathered yet another storm of vituperation, holding the USA to a deeply unpopular war as part of a worldwide policy of containment that prevented any further Soviet adventurism on a similar scale—a very real possibility during his terms of office.

To understand Truman, one must understand that upright and unassuming though he was in private, he was a ferocious and ruthless competitor in all aspects of public life. Thus he cheerfully permitted his supporters to blacken his political opponents' reputations with false accusations and innuendo, but refused to use information about their private lives that would have destroyed them. Hence his ambivalence about the CIA. As the sign on his desk said: ‘The Buck Stops Here.’ From whatever wells of strength a Midwestern everyman draws upon, he had an instinctive feeling for what was right and what was merely expedient.

— Hugh Bicheno

(1884–1972), thirty‐third U.S. president

Born in Lamar, Missouri, a poor farmer's son, Harry Truman abandoned hope of a West Point education because of poor eyesight, but joined the National Guard in 1905. In World War I, 1917–18, Captain Harry Truman commanded Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, 35th Division, at the Battle of St. Mihiel, Varennes, the Meuse‐Argonne Offensive, and Metz. Back home as a protégé of the Democratic Pendergast machine of Kansas City, Truman won several local elections before his election as a U.S. senator in 1934. During World War II, in 1941–44, he chaired a special Senate committee investigating defense spending. He became President Franklin D. Roosevelt's vice presidential running mate in 1944, and succeeded to the presidency upon Roosevelt's death, 12 April 1945.

After the successful test of the atomic bomb in New Mexico in July 1945, Truman maintained the unconditional surrender demand toward Japan and took an increasingly hard line toward the Soviet Union. He approved the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that brought about the end of the war.

As president, 1945–53, Truman shaped U.S. foreign and defense policy in the early Cold War. His internationalism—more accurately, militant nationalism—depended heavily on military preparedness, a result of his belief in dealing from strength and his own combative personality. He relied upon particularly cosmopolitan, hard‐line advisers, especially Secretaries of State George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson and the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, W. Averell Harriman; but he prided himself on making the final decisions.

Responding to Josef Stalin's imposition of Soviet control in Eastern Europe and American fears of a global expansion of communism, the Truman administration sought to create a postwar order of democracy, self‐government, and expanding world trade. But the Truman Doctrine of “containment” announced originally in 1947 as political and economic soon because militarized, as did the Marshall Plan of 1948 and NATO, created in 1949. The administration began to support a variety of anti‐Communist efforts in Europe and Asia.

U.S.‐Soviet relations had became confrontational in 1946. By 1948, in a dispute over Germany, Stalin blockaded Berlin; Truman responded with the Berlin airlift. In 1949, after the Soviet A‐bomb test, Truman ordered U.S. development of the hydrogen bomb.

The Truman administration in the late 1940s had sought an expanded military within a restricted budget. It failed to achieve universal military training for the army and in 1948 accepted a selective draft. In 1949, when it canceled the navy's supercarrier, it faced a “Revolt of the Admirals.” Primary reliance was placed on atomic bomber aircraft of the U.S. Air Force, made independent by the National Security Act of 1947.

The Korean War changed the budget picture and led to the enormous expansion of all the armed services. It also led to desegregation of the armed services, ordered by Truman in 1948. Yet the frustrations of this limited war precipitated a major crisis in civil‐military relations: Gen. Douglas MacArthur's public challenge to the administration's restrictions against attacking China itself. Consequently, President Truman relieved him of command.

Although the Truman administration was highly unpopular when it left office in 1953, admiration for Truman rose in the 1970s over his plain and honest style, decisiveness, and many of his Cold War policies, which some in the 1990s credited with ultimately defeating the Soviet Union. Yet a number of scholars believe that Truman's get‐tough style and hard‐line policies interacting with Stalin's paranoia and ruthlessly blunt policies served to escalate rather than diminish the Cold War.

[See also Berlin Crises; Civil Military Relations: Civilian Control of the Military; Manhattan Project; World War I: Military and Diplomatic Course; World War II: Military and Diplomatic Course.]

Bibliography

• Richard F. Haynes, The Awesome Power: Harry S. Truman as Commander in Chief, 1973.
• Melvyn Leffler, Preponderence of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War, 1992.
• David McCullough, Truman, 1992.
• Alonzo L. Hamby, Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman, 1995

Truman, Harry S. (1884-1972)33rd president of the United States (1949-1953), born in Lamar, Missouri, and raised in Independence, Missouri. Truman finished out the remainder of Franklin D. Roosevelt's fourth term as president of the United States (1945-1948), then ran for president himself. Truman spent ten years (1906-1916) trying his hand at farming and investing, disliking the former and failing at the latter, he rejoined the National Guard in 1917. After the United States entered World War I, he served as captain of 129th Field Artillery Regiment during World War I at St. Mihiel, the Meuse-Argonne offensive, and Metz. He returned home to marry Bess Wallace (1919) and open a haberdashery shop in downtown Kansas City with an Army buddy. That, too, failed, and Truman, heavily in debt, decided to use his Democratic machine connections and good reputation to enter the political arena in 1922. His early political career was unsteady at best, but he had the support of the Kansas City Democratic machine run by Boss Tom Pendergast, and was eventually elected to the U.S. Senate in 1934. He served there for ten years, immersing himself in transportation issues, helping to create the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, and foreign policy, becoming a strong advocate for global involvement and the United Nations. His popularity among liberal conservative Democrats made him the compromise choice as Roosevelt's vice presidential candidate in the 1944 presidential campaign. When Roosevelt suddenly died after less than four months in office, Truman became president. As president, Truman would face the difficulties of war and the uneasy peace that followed. After Germany's surrender in May 1945, he ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in August. After his attempts to appease Josef Stalin failed, he announced the Truman Doctrine of containment against Soviet expansion in 1947, and quickly followed that in 1948 with the Marshall Plan, a comprehensive plan for rebuilding Europe. Invited to participate in the Plan, Stalin refused, and the next step in containment, the North Atlantic Treaty was overwhelmingly ratified by the U.S. Senate, and NATO was established in 1949. The intensification of the Cold War with the Soviets, and their alliance with the victorious Chinese Communists under the leadership of Mao Zedong, had focused the attention of the U.S. on Communist gains around the world. Amid the rising tide of anticommunist sentiment, U.S. intelligence analysts announced that the USSR had detonated its first atomic bomb. In 1950, Truman reluctantly approved the development of of a thermonuclear “superbomb” (Edward Teller's hydrogen bomb), as well as obtaining the support of the United Nations to defend South Korea against the invading North Korean Communists. In spite of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's surprise victory over the North Koreans at Inchon, the war continued to drag on, and MacArthur pushed to extend the war into China, using atomic bombs, if necessary. When he learned that MacArthur had told Republican leaders how he thought the war in Korea should be carried out, using a method that neither the United Nations nor our European allies would countenance, Truman relieved him of duty in 1951. At the same time that Truman was ordering U.S. occupation troops from Japan into Korea, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested; earlier in 1950, Alger Hiss, a former assistant secretary of state, had been convicted of perjury for denying under oath that he had given classified information to the USSR. In March 1952, Truman announced that he would not seek reelection, and, although he campaigned strenuously on behalf of the Democratic candidate, Adlai Stevenson, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican candidate, won in a landslide. Truman retired to Independence, Missouri in 1953 to write his memoirs.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), thirty-third president of the United States, led America's transition from wartime to peacetime economy, forged the Truman doctrine, and made the decision to defend South Korea against Communist invasion.

Harry Truman was born in Lamar, Mo., on May 8, 1884. He went to high school in Independence, Mo. From 1900 until 1905 he held various small business positions. During the next 12 years he farmed on his parents' land near Independence. In 1917, soon after the United States entered World War I, he enlisted in the artillery, serving in France and achieving the rank of captain. On returning from the war, he joined a friend in opening a haberdashery. The haberdashery went bankrupt, but he adhered to hard work, accepting misfortunes serenely. In 1919 he married Bess Wallace; they had one child, Margaret.

Beginner in Politics

A staunch Democrat and admirer of Woodrow Wilson, Truman entered politics with the encouragement of Jackson County boss Tom Prendergast. With Prendergast's aid, Truman was elected county judge in 1922 and served from 1922 to 1924. He was presiding judge from 1926 to 1934, giving close attention to problems of county administration.

In the Democratic sweep in the national election of 1934, Truman, a firm supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, was chosen U.S. senator from Missouri. Reelected in 1940, he gained national attention as chairman of the Senate Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program. Long a student of history, he feared that corruption might cloud government operations and supported the creation of this Senate committee to watch contracts. But, aware that the partisanship shown by an earlier congressional committee had embarrassed President Abraham Lincoln, he kept his chairmanship loyally helpful to the Roosevelt administration. When Roosevelt was nominated for a fourth term in June 1944, the President bowed to the wishes of influential state and city leaders and named Truman for vice president.

Thrust into the Presidency

After Truman had served only 82 days as vice president, Roosevelt died suddenly on April 12, 1945. Though staggered by the burdens thrust on him, Truman quickly took command and in his first address to Congress promised to continue Roosevelt's policies. That July he attended the Potsdam Conference of the Great Powers on urgent international problems. It was his ominous task to authorize the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and to approve the surrender of the Japanese government on Allied terms in a treaty signed on the battleship Missourion Sept. 2, 1945. After the surrender of Japan, he replaced the model of a heavy gun on his desk with the replica of a shiny new plow. His desk also bore a firm motto of executive decision: "The Buck Stops Here!"

The Truman administration at once took steps to demo-bilize the armed forces, terminate wartime agencies, and resume production of peacetime goods. Truman was thus brought face-to-face with inflation, a steep rise in the cost of living, and a new militancy on the part of labor unions, which had conformed to wartime pledges against strikes. He immediately showed his power of unhesitating decision - one of his principal traits. He declared wage increases essential to cushion the blows from changes in the economy, sternly opposed restrictive measures against labor, and acted to maintain union rights as set forth in the Wagner Act. When a new Congress, controlled by Republicans, passed the Taft-Hartley Bill, which limited labor action, he vetoed it as bad for industry and workers alike. After Congress repassed it over his veto, he continued denouncing it as a "slave-labor bill, " thus keeping it a subject of popular and congressional contention.

Truman also energetically supported the wartime Fair Employment Act, designed to prevent discrimination against African Americans, Jews, and other minority groups. He also advocated a broad program of social welfare, harmonizing with the New Deal policies. Although sharp friction developed between the Truman administration and conservative elements in Congress, he carried the passage of measures for slum clearance, construction of lowcost housing, the beginnings of a health insurance program, and the establishment of the Council of Economic Advisers to help attain full employment. Though hampered by lack of experience and limited education, and bitterly denounced by cultivated and affluent groups, he gained wide support among the masses as an effective example of the average man.

Traveling to Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., in March 1946, Truman heard British prime minister Winston Churchill deliver his "Iron Curtain" speech, declaring that tyranny was spreading in Europe, that an Iron Curtain was descending from Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, and that the Soviet Union, aiming at an indefinite expansion of its powers, would respect only military strength in a steel-clad alliance of America, Britain, and other Western powers. Truman, who said later that he had sponsored Churchill's speech as a test of public sentiment, was delighted by the generally positive reaction throughout the Western world to this direct challenge to Russia. As Russian aggressiveness made the international scene stormier, he gave vigorous support to the United Nations Charter, which the United States had accepted on July 28, 1945.

Cabinet Dissension

Truman exhibited his characteristic decisiveness in crushing dissension in his own Cabinet. When Henry A. Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture, delivered a speech in New York supporting the Russian position in world affairs, attacking Great Britain, and criticizing American foreign policy for failure to cooperate with the Soviets, Secretary of State James Byrnes acidly declared that he would resign if the President did not insist that Wallace refrain from criticizing American foreign policy while in the Cabinet. Senator Arthur Vandenberg declared that he could serve only one secretary of state at a time, and Truman immediately forced Wallace out of the Cabinet.

By his stern measures, Truman pleased labor and international liberals but made himself unpopular with radical leftist sympathizers. Meanwhile, his friendship with old-time associates, his platitudinous utterances, and his hesitancy to delay using price controls as a weapon against inflation aroused general criticism. But Truman hewed firmly to the policies he had chosen, faced Redbaiting senator Joseph McCarthy without flinching, and read calmly Republican headlines of 1946 asking "Had enough?"

Truman Doctrine

But Truman's greatest and most decisive stroke lay just ahead. Turkey and Greece seemed to stand on the edge of bankruptcy and defeat by Communist elements. Truman staunchly backed Secretary of State Dean Acheson and other State Department leaders in their stand for continued American support to democracy abroad. Refusing to flinch at costs, Truman sent Congress a message on March 2, 1947, asking for an appropriation of $400 million for sustaining Greece and Turkey. He also announced the Truman Doctrine, declaring that the United States would support all free peoples who were resisting attempted subjugation either by armed minorities at home or aggressors outside their borders.

Truman's unyielding policy made it possible for George Marshall, in charge of economic affairs in the State Department, and George Kennan, supervising policy planning, to carry through Congress the epochal Marshall Plan for the transfer of massive economic aid from the free nations of the West to beleaguered countries in Europe and Asia. The presidential campaign of 1948 came as the Marshall Plan gathered widespread support from democratic governments in Europe, South America, Africa, and elsewhere.

His Reelection

In 1948 Truman, with undiminished courage, entered the presidential contest and fought a stubborn battle against the Republican candidate, Thomas E. Dewey. With Clark Clifford mapping his strategy, he faced heavy odds. Although Dewey refused to discuss many issues, keeping safely silent, Truman and the Democratic party centered heavy attacks on the record of the 80th Congress. The President covered 22, 000 miles in campaign trips, making 271 speeches. The entry of two new parties into the battle made the outcome doubtful. The conservative Southern Democrats, or "Dixiecrats, " nominated a ticket under Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, and followers of Henry Wallace organized the Progressive party behind him.

A heavy majority of newspapers and pollsters seemed confident that Dewey would win. Truman was speaking to enthusiastic whistle-stop crowds, whose rallying cry was "Give 'em hell, Harry!" He addressed himself mainly to industrial workers and agricultural groups and was the first major candidate to stump in Harlem. Truman went to bed on election night as the Chicago Tribune published an "extra" with the headlines, "Dewey Defeats Truman!" Next morning he awoke to find the country enjoying a wild guffaw as it learned that Truman had not only carried the country with a plurality of 2, 000, 000 votes (24, 105, 812 ballots for Truman against 21, 970, 065 ballots for Dewey) but had won a Democratic Congress.

Korean War

On Sunday, June 25, 1950, the Korean War was precipitated when North Korean Communist forces invaded the Republic of South Korea, crossing the 38th parallel at several points. Truman at once summoned an emergency conference and on June 27 announced that he would pledge American armed strength for the defense of South Korea. By September 15, American troops, supported by other forces of the United Nations, were taking the offensive in Korea. Truman held firm in the costly war that ensued but hesitated to approve a major counteroffensive across the Yalu River. In April 1951, amid national frustration over the war, he courageously dismissed Gen. Douglas MacArthur as head of the Far East Command of the U.S. Army. He took this action on the grounds that MacArthur had repeatedly challenged the Far Eastern policies of the administration, thus overriding the basic American principle that the military must always be subordinate to the civil arm of the government, and that MacArthur had recommended the use of bombs against Chinese forces north of the Yalu River in a way which might well provoke open war with Russia and cost the United States the support of important allies in the war.

Following the storm over MacArthur, Truman announced that he would not run again for the presidency, though a new constitutional amendment limiting presidents to two terms did not apply to him. He retired to private life, publishing two volumes of Memoirs in 1955 and 1956, and giving influential support to President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s.

Retirement and Legacy

Truman died on December 26, 1972 and was buried in the courtyard of the Truman Library. When his wife Bess died in 1982, she was buried beside him. Their home in Independence, Missouri remains just as it was when Bess died; Truman's 1972 Chrysler Newport still sits in the garage, and his hat and coat hang under the stairs. The nearby Truman Library is one of the most popular presidential libraries, and includes much of his papers and correspondence, as well as a reproduction of the Oval Office as it looked during his term. The mock White House room even includes a 1947 television, significant since Truman was the first president to own a tv set.

Long after Truman's death, his popularity continues to soar. During the 1996 presidential elections he was quoted by both candidates in debates and speeches. In 1997, new books and movies were in the works, and earlier in the decade he was even commemorated with a $.020 United States postage stamp. Truman's daughter Margaret has carved out a successful career as a novelist, with works such as Murder in the National Gallery.

Further Reading

Truman's account of his career is in his Memoirs (2 vols., 1955-1956) and Mr. Citizen (1960). Biographies of Truman include Jonathan Daniels, The Man of Independence (1950); Alfred Steinberg, The Man from Missouri: The Life and Times of Harry S. Truman (1962), a scholarly study; Cabell B. H. Phillips, The Truman Presidency: The History of a Triumphant Succession (1966), written from a journalistic perspective; and Joseph Gies, Harry S. Truman: A Pictorial Biography (1968), a useful but laudatory study. More recent biographies include David McCullough's Truman (1992), Margaret Truman's Harry S Truman (1972), and Harold Gosnell's Truman's Crises (1980).

Truman's election campaign is recounted in Irwin Ross, The Loneliest Campaign: The Truman Victory of 1948 (1968). The presidential election is detailed in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections (4 vols., 1971). Truman's administration is considered in general in L.W. Koenig, The Truman Administration (1956), and Barton J. Bernstein, ed., Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration (1970). Specific aspects of his administration are covered in Richard O. Davies, Housing Reform during the Truman Administration (1966); Arthur F. McClure, The Truman Administration and the Problems of Postwar Labor, 1945-1948 (1969); and William Carl Berman, The Politics of Civil Rights in the Truman Administration (1970).

American foreign policy is examined in Herbert Feis, The Atom Bomb and the End of World War II (1961; rev. ed. 1966) and From Trust to Terror: The Onset of the Cold War, 1945-1950 (1970). Revisionist views, critical of Truman's policies, are in Gar Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965), and David Horowitz, The Free World Colossus: A Critique of American Foreign Policy in the Cold War (1965; rev. ed. 1971). For general historical background Eric Goldman, The Crucial Decade - and After: America, 1945-1960 (1956; rev. ed. 1960), is recommended.

• Born: May 8, 1884, Lamar, Mo.
• Political party: Democrat
• Education: high school
• Military service: U.S. Army, 1917–19
• Previous government service: road overseer, Jackson County, Mo., 1914; postmaster, Grandview, Mo., 1915; Jackson County judge, 1922–24; Jackson County presiding judge, 1926–34; U.S. Senate, 1934–45; Vice President, 1945
• Succeeded to Presidency, 1945; served, 1945–53
• Died: Dec. 26, 1972, Kansas City, Mo. Harry Truman was the first President to assume office in the middle of a war. His decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan shortened World War II and reduced U.S. casualties. In the postwar period he presided over the creation of collective security measures (the creation of alliances for mutual defense against aggression) to contain communist expansion in Europe. Although he won an elected term in one of the greatest upsets in U.S. history, subsequent inflation and labor unrest, coupled with his decision to use U.S. troops to defend South Korea, contributed to his unpopularity and his decision not to seek a second elected term.

Truman grew up on a farm near Independence, Missouri. He finished high school and became a railroad worker, mail room boy, bank clerk, and bookkeeper, returning to his grandfather's farm after several years. In World War I he served as a first lieutenant and then captain of artillery, seeing action near the end of the war in the Argonne Forest and at Verdun. In 1919 he married Elizabeth Virginia (“Bess”) Wallace. Truman became a partner in a men's haberdashery with an army friend; when the store failed and left him deeply in debt, he refused to declare bankruptcy and spent years paying off creditors.

Truman's political career began after he was introduced to the Democratic boss of Kansas City, Missouri, Tom Pendergast. As a loyal worker in the Pendergast machine, he helped the organization move into rural Jackson County. He became a county judge (an administrative, not a legal, position), and in 1934 the Pendergast machine backed him in a three-way race for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. Truman won the nomination, then campaigned for and won election as a supporter of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. In 1940 he again won a three-way race for the Democratic nomination, then won re-election even though Boss Pendergast had been sentenced to prison for income tax evasion and other members of his machine had been convicted of vote fraud. Voters knew that Truman had not been involved in these activities.

In his second term in the Senate, Truman chaired the Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program. He uncovered waste, fraud, and corruption and contributed greatly to the successful U.S. war effort.

In 1944 President Franklin Roosevelt dropped Henry Wallace from his ticket and offered the Democratic convention a choice between Harry Truman and Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas. Although a majority of the delegates supported Wallace on the first ballot, they bowed to Roosevelt's wishes and nominated Truman on the second ballot.

President Roosevelt's death on April 12, 1945, elevated Truman to the Presidency. On May 7 Truman announced that the war in Europe had ended. His first important mission was the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, where he met with British prime minister Winston Churchill and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to negotiate the fate of Eastern Europe. Returning home, Truman won Senate consent to the charter of the United Nations; for the first time, the United States would be part of a world organization. In July he decided to use the atomic bomb against Japan to end the war in the Pacific. Hiroshima was destroyed on August 6, Nagasaki on August 9. On August 14 Japan surrendered.

In September 1945 Truman presented his domestic Fair Deal program to Congress: new initiatives in health care, civil rights, public housing, and rural development. Much of the legislation was stalled by a conservative coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats, although Congress did pass the Employment Act of 1946, which established the Council of Economic Advisers. With the slogan “Had Enough?” the Republicans won control of Congress in 1946 and began passing their own measures. Truman vetoed the Taft-Hartley Act, a law regulating strikes, because he thought it was antiunion, but Congress passed it over his veto in 1947. It also passed an income tax reduction bill. Truman intervened in railroad and coal strikes in 1946 and 1947, alienating labor and liberals, and his attempt to continue the wartime Fair Employment Practices Committee (set up to outlaw racial discrimination in employment) upset Southern conservatives, who abolished it.

In 1948 Truman won the Democratic nomination for President with the support of the urban party bosses. In a brilliant election-year tactic, Truman called the Republican-dominated Congress into special session and challenged it to pass his program. While the Republicans stalled, Truman campaigned for reelection against the “Do-Nothing 80th Congress.” He made a whistle-stop railroad tour and crowds chanted “Give 'em Hell, Harry.” He proposed major new civil rights legislation, including federal protection against lynchings, voting rights measures, prohibition of discrimination in interstate transportation, and a permanent fair practices commission. In the midst of the campaign Truman issued an executive order ending racial segregation in the armed forces. With overwhelming support from blacks, Truman eked out narrow margins of victory in key Northern states and defeated Republican Thomas E. Dewey, Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, and Progressive Henry Wallace. Truman won less than half the popular vote, in the closest election since 1916.

Truman returned to Washington to savor his victory, proudly holding aloft a copy of the Chicago Tribune that carried the election night headline “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.”

Truman's major domestic success after winning reelection was the Housing Act of 1949, which provided for slum clearance and public housing in urban areas. Congress also raised the minimum wage. It stalled, however, on Truman's farm, education, health, labor, and civil rights proposals.

Truman's foreign policy was based on containing communist expansion in Western Europe. Rather than seeking to cultivate the Soviets as allies, Truman believed that they had to “be faced with an iron fist and strong language.” Congress created the Defense Department to supervise the Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force and established the Joint Chiefs of Staff for military planning. It also created the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency.

In March 1947 the President announced the Truman Doctrine, stating that the United States would “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressure.” He called for military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey to prevent communist guerrilla movements from seizing power. Then, in June Secretary of State George Marshall announced the European Recovery Program (later known as the Marshall Plan). Between 1948 and 1951 more than $12 billion was granted or loaned to European nations to restore their postwar economies. In the spring and summer of 1948 Truman ordered U.S. airplanes to supply West Berlin, breaking a Soviet blockade of the western part of the city. The Point Four foreign aid program of technical assistance began in 1949, the same year that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) committed the United States to the defense of Western Europe. Similarly, the Rio Pact and the Anzus Pact committed the United States to the defense of the Western Hemisphere, Australia, and New Zealand. Mutual defense treaties were also signed with the Philippines and Japan. The Soviets tested their first atomic bomb in 1949, so in 1950 Truman permitted development of the powerful hydrogen bomb to proceed. It was successfully tested in 1952.

Truman's policy of containment against communist aggression was put to the test. On June 28, 1950, Truman ordered U.S. air and ground forces to repel a North Korean invasion of South Korea. This “police action” was sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council. Truman's conduct of the war was controversial. On the advice of Secretary of State Dean Acheson, he did not ask Congress for a declaration of war. He allowed General Douglas MacArthur to invade North Korea, but when communist Chinese troops entered the war, Truman refused to allow bombing of North Korean supply bases in China because he feared it might lead to all-out war between the United States and China. On April 11, 1951, Truman fired MacArthur for insubordination after the general called for bombing China. MacArthur received a hero's welcome back in the United States and addressed a joint session of Congress.

The Korean War dragged on. Close to 50,000 U.S. troops were killed and 100,000 wounded. The war rekindled inflation and shortages in the economy and contributed to Truman's declining popularity. After Truman seized steel mills on April 8, 1952, during a strike, claiming he had to ensure production as a war measure, the Supreme Court ordered that he return the mills to their owners. This ruling further diminished Truman's popularity.

On March 29, 1952, Truman announced that he would not seek reelection. In his farewell address, he observed that “the President's job is to make decisions. … He can't pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That's his job.” With his job over, he retired to Independence, Missouri, where he wrote his memoirs and oversaw the creation of his Presidential library. “You, more than any man, have saved Western civilization,” Winston Churchill told him. (1952); Wallace, Henry

See also Barkley, Alben; Eisenhower, Dwight David; Roosevelt, Franklin D.; Steel seizure

Sources

• Robert H. Ferrell, Harry S. Truman and the Modern American Presidency (Boston: Little, Brown, 1983).
• David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992).
• Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman (New York: Berkley, 1974).
• Harry S. Truman, Memoirs of Harry S. Truman, vol. 1, Year of Decisions, 1945 (New York: Da Capo, 1986).
• Harry S. Truman, Memoirs of Harry S. Truman, vol. 2, Years of Trial and Hope (New York: Da Capo, 1987).
• Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman (New York: Morrow, 1973)

(1884-1972), thirty-third president of the United States, remembered for his genial common touch and outspoken bluntness. Truman rose in politics as the result of an alliance with the notorious Pendergast machine of Kansas City. A failure in various business ventures, he was notably successful in other endeavors--as a combat artillery captain in World War I, a rising figure in the Reserve Officers Corps (1920-1939), an effective county administrator (1923-1924, 1927-1934), and a popular and industrious U.S. senator (1935-1945). Beneath a usually friendly manner, he harbored a thick layer of aggressiveness that occasionally discharged itself in angry outbursts.

Achieving the vice presidency in 1944 because of his acceptability to all wings of the Democratic party, he became president upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, April 12, 1945. As a party leader, he hoped to maintain a grand coalition that would have room for all the diverse elements of Roosevelt's political coalition. Personally, however, he considered himself a bit to the left of center and possessed roots in the tradition of western and midwestern insurgency. As president, therefore, he pursued an aggressively liberal program (the Fair Deal) that roused the Democratic presidential party and helped him win election in 1948. Its major elements, however, were defeated by a conservative Congress and an indifferent postwar public concerned primarily with preserving the New Deal rather than with achieving new liberal breakthroughs.

In foreign policy, Truman had long been an aggressive internationalist who envisioned the United States as a world leader with the mission of spreading democratic political institutions and capitalist prosperity. As president, he adopted epochal measures (the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the North Atlantic Treaty) designed to block Soviet expansion into Western Europe. Neither original nor subtle as a diplomatist, he nevertheless displayed good judgment in selecting his lieutenants, followed their advice on the large issues, and supported them loyally. His European policies were highly successful, but Asia was less amenable to U.S. intervention. Public frustration with the fall of China to communism in 1949 and with the limited Korean War (1950-1953) gave a strong boost to McCarthyism, disrupted the coalition Truman had largely preserved in 1948, and paved the way for the Republican victory of 1952.

Truman's greatest asset, an ability to identify with the ordinary American, was also his greatest liability. He could seem, at his worst, limited, undignified, erratic, and altogether incapable of dealing with the awesome responsibilities of the postwar presidency. He attempted to mask what appears to have been a certain discomfort with his high office by adopting a pose of decisiveness that too often appeared to be impetuosity. Widely unpopular when he retired in 1953, he enjoyed a subsequent upswing in public esteem as the American people increasingly remembered him for his frank commonness and contrasted him favorably with successors who appeared artificial and devious.

Bibliography:

Robert J. Donovan, Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945-1948 (1977) and Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1949-1953 (1982); Robert Ferrell, ed., Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman (1980).

Author:

Alonzo L. Hamby

See also Elections: 1944 , 1948. For events during Truman's administration, see Alger Hiss Case; Anticommunism; Berlin Blockade; Cold War; Dixiecrat Party; Fair Deal; Hydrogen Bomb; Korean War; Marshall Plan; North Atlantic Treaty Organization; Nuclear Weapons: Origins and Legacy; Nuremberg Trials; Potsdam Conference; Progressive Parties: 1912, 1924, 1948; Racial Desegregation; Rosenberg Case; Taft-Hartley Act; Truman Doctrine; World War II.

Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972, 33d President of the United States, b. Lamar, Mo.

Early Life and Political Career

He grew up on a farm near Independence, Mo., worked at various jobs, and tended the family farm. He served as a captain of field artillery in France in World War I. On his return from the war he married (1919) Elizabeth (Bess) Virginia Wallace; they had one daughter, Mary Margaret. After a brief partnership in a haberdashery store, Truman turned to politics and, with support from the Democratic machine of Thomas J. Pendergast, was elected judge (1922-24) and president judge (1926-34) of Jackson co., Mo. He attended (1923-25) the Kansas City school of law.

In 1934 he was elected a U.S. Senator. In the Senate he was a firm supporter of the New Deal policies of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but the administration was cool toward Truman because of his connection with Pendergast. By 1940 the Pendergast machine had been broken, and Truman had a hard fight for reelection. In his second term he achieved national prominence as chairman of a Senate committee to investigate government expenditures in World War II. His vigorous investigations revealed startling inefficiency and bungling on war contracts. Because he was acceptable both to the conservative Democrats and the New Dealers as well as to powerful labor leaders, Truman was nominated for Vice President in 1944 and was elected to office along with President Roosevelt.

Presidency

On the death (Apr. 12, 1945) of Roosevelt, Truman succeeded to the presidency. He assumed power at a very critical time. He was immediately confronted with the problems of concluding the war and preparing for the difficulties of international postwar readjustment. The war in Europe ended with Germany's unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945, and in July Truman attended the Potsdam Conference to discuss the postwar European settlement. To end the conflict with Japan, he authorized the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That action did bring the war to an immediate end, but the morality of it continues to be debated.

First Term

At home, inflation and demobilization were the chief worries of reconversion to a peacetime economy. Although Truman began quietly to eliminate the old New Dealers from the administration, his domestic policies were essentially a continuation of those of the New Deal. His program (later labeled the Fair Deal) called for guaranteed full employment, a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee to end racial discrimination, an increased minimum wage and extended social security benefits, price and rent controls, public housing projects, and public health insurance. However, Congress, which was controlled by the Republicans after the 1946 elections, blocked most of these projects, while passing other legislation-notably the Taft-Hartley Labor Act (1947)-over Truman's veto.

In foreign affairs his chief adversary was the USSR. Relations with that country deteriorated rapidly after Potsdam. The two powers were unable to agree to feasible plans for the unification of Germany, general disarmament, or the establishment of a United Nations armed force. Truman took an increasingly tough stand against what he considered to be the threat of Communist expansion in S and W Europe. In 1947 he proposed a program of economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey, stating that it should be a principle of U.S. policy "to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." Enunciation of the so-called Truman Doctrine signaled the beginning of the policy of "containment" of Communism. It was implemented by the adoption of the Marshall Plan (1947), designed to effect the economic reconstruction of Europe, by the Point Four program (1949) of technical aid to underdeveloped countries, and, above all, by the creation (1949) of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

In 1948, Truman ordered the desegregation of the armed forces. As a result, a bloc of southern Democrats bolted the party and sponsored J. Strom Thurmond for President in the election of that year. Truman was also challenged on the left by Henry A. Wallace of the Progressive party, who opposed Truman's policy of confrontation with the Soviet Union. Although he won renomination, the President was thought to have little chance of reelection. But Truman embarked on a vigorous whistle-stop campaign across the country, blaming the Republican Congress for most of the nation's ills and highlighting its inactivity by calling a special session of Congress, at which he urged the Republicans to enact into law their own moderately liberal party platform. The campaign was a resounding success. Contrary to all the predictions, Truman defeated his Republican opponent, Thomas E. Dewey, and Democratic majorities swept into the House and Senate.

Second Term

In his second administration Truman made little progress with his Fair Deal programs, although he did secure passage of a housing act (1949). Domestic affairs were increasingly dominated by the fear of Communist subversion. Truman had instituted (1947) a loyalty program for civil servants, but the government came under increasing attack for loose security, particularly after the conviction of Alger Hiss. Truman dismissed the charges of internal subversion as a "red herring"; in 1950 the McCarran Internal Security Act, which provided for the registration of Communist and Communist-front organizations, was passsed over Truman's veto.

Overseas developments contributed considerably to the tide of fear within the United States. Truman's administration was blamed by many for the collapse of the regime of Chiang Kai-shek (toward which the administration had been cool) and the victory of the Communists in China (1949). The success of the Chinese Revolution was followed by the outbreak (1950) of the Korean War. Truman immediately sent U.S. troops to Korea under the aegis of the United Nations. In 1951 he raised the controversy that had been building up around American foreign policy to a new pitch of intensity when he dismissed Gen. Douglas MacArthur from his East Asian command for insubordination for attempting to involve the Chinese in the war and for publicly advocating an attack on China.

At home Truman became involved in further controversy when he seized (1952) the steel industry in order to prevent a strike. He claimed that the action was justified by the President's inherent powers in time of emergency, but the Supreme Court overruled him. Disclosures of corruption among federal officials were also politically damaging during this period. Truman declined renomination in 1952 and pressed the presidential candidacy of Adlai Stevenson, who was, however, overwhelmingly defeated by the Republican candidate, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Later Life and Legacy

Truman remained active in politics for many years after his retirement, campaigning around the country for Democratic candidates and commenting on national issues. He also contributed much time to the Harry S. Truman Library, which opened in 1957 in Independence, Mo. Truman died on Dec. 26, 1972.

Although Truman did not have great success with his domestic programs, many of his reform proposals were later enacted into law. Thrust into office largely ignorant of foreign affairs, he acted decisively in erecting the machinery of "containment" against the threat of Communist expansion and committing the United States to a new internationalism. Some historians, however, have challenged the assumption of a Communist threat on which Truman's action were based. They argue that the cold war confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union could have been averted by a more conciliatory attitude on the part of the Truman administration. Although Truman's policies remain a subject of controversy, he has become a popular figure largely because of his feisty personality and his come-from-behind victory in 1948.

Bibliography

See his Year of Decisions (1955), Years of Trial and Hope (1956), and Mr. Citizen (1960). See also S. Neal, ed., Eleanor and Harry: The Corresondence of Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman (2002); biographies by M. Truman (1972), D. McCullough (1992), and A. L. Hamby (1995); R. Donovan, The Presidency of Harry S. Truman (2 vol., 1979-84); R. Ferrell, Harry S. Truman and the Modern American Presidency (1983); R. S. Kirkendall, ed., Harry S. Truman Encyclopedia (1989); Z. Karabell, The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election (2000); W. D. Miscamble, From Roosevelt to Truman: Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War (2008).

1884 - 1972

Thirty-third president of the United States.

At the end of World War II, the Middle East was not among the United States' strategic priorities. Even after the Iranian crisis of 1945 and 1946 and following the promulgation of the Truman Doctrine in 1947, the American administration seemed reluctant to involve the United States in an area that had been part of the British, and partially French, sphere of influence. Indeed, Truman and his assistants hoped that, even after the British withdrawal from Greece and Turkey, London would be able to retain control of the Middle Eastern "inner core" and to resist any threat of Soviet infiltration into the area. Although members of the Truman administration held negative opinions about the effects of British (and French) colonialism on emerging Arab nationalism, nevertheless geostrategic necessities led the United States to favor some continuation of British influence in the region.

This inconsistency also applied to American policy on the "Zionist question." The foundation of a Jewish state in Palestine became one of the main issues of Truman's worldview, although the U.S. president was annoyed by Zionist importunity and influenced by the State Department's negative opinion. However, advised above all by his special counselor, Clark Clifford, and by David Niles, Truman believed that the birth of Israel would represent a strategic asset for Washington's Middle East policy. So the United States favored the new Jewish state, with the negative repercussion that its relations with the Arab Middle East became problematic. Fearing that some Arab countries would be drawn into the Soviet orbit, Truman tried to implement a policy of appeasement toward the Arabs. In this connection, he attempted to find a solution (via the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine) to the question of the Palestinian refugees of the 1948 Arab-Israel War. This issue was not resolved and, along with other unresolved questions, became the inheritance of Truman's successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

Bibliography

Cohen, Michael J. Fighting World War Three from the MiddleEast: Allied Contingency Plans, 1945 - 1954. London: Cass, 1997.

Cohen, Michael J. Truman and Israel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

Druks, Herbert. The Uncertain Friendship: The U.S. and Israel from Roosevelt to Kennedy. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001.

Lesch, David W., ed. The Middle East and the United States: AHistorical and Political Reassessment. Boulder, CO: West-view Press, 2003.

— ANTONIO DONNO

(1884-1972)

1954	The Year of Decision. The initial volume of Truman's memoirs deals with his first year as president. Years of Trial and Hope (1956) would cover the remainder of his presidential years. Truman's recollections have been called the most candid self-assessment ever made by a U.S. president.

(trooh-muhn)

A political leader of the twentieth century. A Democrat, Truman was president from 1945 to 1953. In 1944, after representing Missouri in the Senate, Truman was elected vice president under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and became president when Roosevelt died. He led the nation in the final months of World War II and made the decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Truman enthusiastically supported the United Nations and put forward the Marshall Plan to aid the recovery of Europe after the war. He sent American troops to support the United Nations in the Korean War, and, in a controversial move, removed General Douglas MacArthur from his command in Korea. (See Truman-MacArthur controversy.)

Truman's homespun, often feisty style of leadership made him a symbol of no-nonsense Middle America. People often encouraged him, following his own preferences in vocabulary, with the words “Give 'em hell, Harry.” A sign on his desk read “The buck stops here.” He was also fond of the saying, “If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

Truman gained a surprise victory in the presidential election of 1948 over the Republican candidate, Thomas E. Dewey. On the day of the election, several commentators had confidently asserted that Truman could not win, and the Chicago Tribune had gone to press with a huge headline reading “Dewey Defeats Truman.” Truman discussed these errors with great relish the next day.

Harry S. Truman served as the thirty-third president of the United States from 1945 to 1953. Truman, who became president upon the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, made some of the most momentous decisions in U.S. history, including the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, the rebuilding of Europe under the MarshallPlan, and the fighting of the Korean War. A defender of Roosevelt's NewDeal domestic programs, in 1948 Truman fought unsuccessfully for a federal civilrights law that would have outlawed racial discrimination in employment. Though Truman was unpopular when he left office, by the 1960s his reputation had rebounded dramatically. Many political historians consider him one of the greatest U.S. presidents.

Truman was born on May 8, 1884, in Lamar, Missouri, the son of a farmer and mule trader. After graduation from high school in Independence, Missouri, in 1910, Truman held a succession of jobs. During World War I, he entered the U.S. Army and distinguished himself as a captain of a gunnery unit during fighting in France. After the war Truman's career choices did not improve. He became a partner in a men's clothing store but lost his savings when the business went bankrupt in the postwar economic depression.

At that point Truman entered politics, developing an association with Thomas J. Pendergast, the Democratic leader who ran Kansas City and Jackson County, Missouri. With Pendergast's backing, Truman became a county judge in 1922, at a time when a law degree was not required to be a judge. Truman proved an able judge and administrator, but anti-Pendergast forces defeated him in 1924. He was reelected to the judgeship in 1926, however, and served until 1934. During this period Truman studied law at the Kansas City School of Law.

In 1934 Pendergast had difficulty finding a U.S. senatorial candidate. He selected Truman, his fourth choice, and in November 1934 Truman was elected amid rumors that Pendergast had rigged the votes in Jackson County to ensure the victory.

As a U.S. senator, Truman was viewed at first as a Pendergast stooge, but he soon convinced his colleagues of his independence and intelligence. An ardent defender of Roosevelt's New Deal programs, Truman entered the national limelight during World War II as the head of a Senate committee that investigated defense spending. Truman drew praise for uncovering graft, mismanagement, and inefficiency in the U.S. war production industries.

In 1944 Roosevelt, who was running for an unprecedented fourth term, replaced Vice President Henry A. Wallace with Truman. After his reelection Roosevelt had little to do with his new vice president; before his death on April 12, 1945, he met only twice with Truman.

When he assumed office, Truman faced grave decisions in both domestic and foreign policy as World War II drew to a close. The fighting in Europe ended with Germany's surrender on May 7, 1945. Truman attended the Potsdam Conference in July to discuss the postwar future of Europe, but little was decided besides the division of Germany into zones to be governed by the Allies. U.S. relations with the Soviet Union began to chill as it became apparent that the Soviets would maintain control over Eastern Europe.

In August 1945 Truman approved the use of atomic bombs against Japan. On August 6 a bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and three days later Nagasaki was also devastated by nuclear attack. Japan opened peace negotiations on August 10 and surrendered on September 2. Truman justified his actions based on the belief that without the use of the atomic bombs, U.S. troops would have had to invade the Japanese mainland at great loss of military and civilian life.

By 1946 it was clear that an official "cold war" existed between the United States and the Soviet Union. Truman maintained a strong stand against the Soviets and the danger of Communist intervention in Europe. In 1947 he announced the Truman Doctrine, which promised U.S. aid to countries that resisted Communist aggression. Based on this doctrine, Truman provided military and financial assistance to Greece and Turkey to help them to remain independent.

Truman followed up this initiative with the Marshall Plan of 1947. This plan aided the restoration of Western Europe by providing massive amounts of financial aid to rebuild the European infrastructure. In 1949 Truman encouraged the acceptance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), by which the United States and European nations not under Communist rule pledged mutual protection against aggression.

On the domestic front, Truman faced a difficult situation. In 1946 the Republican party won control of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate for the first time in a generation. Truman fought unsuccessfully to prevent the passage of the Taft-HartleyAct, also known as the Labor Management Relations Act (29 U.S.C.A. §141 et seq.), which restricted some of the powers that labor unions had acquired in the 1930s. By 1948 it appeared that Truman would not win election to a full term.

At the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Truman backed a platform plank that called for a federal civil rights bill that would ban racial discrimination in employment. Many southern Democrats walked out of the convention, formed the segregationist Dixiecrat party, and nominated South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond for president. A left-wing offshoot, the Progressive party, nominated Henry Wallace, Roosevelt's vice president before Truman, for president. The Republican party nominated New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, who in the early weeks of the campaign appeared to have an insurmountable lead.

Truman demonstrated his political acumen by calling the Republican Congress back into session after the political conventions to consider his legislative proposals. When the Republicans turned these aside, he labeled them the "do nothing Congress" and began a cross-country campaign during which he delighted crowds with his "give 'em hell" speeches. To the surprise of most commentators, Truman beat Dewey by 114 electoral votes.

Truman made little progress on his domestic agenda, which he called the Fair Deal. His second term was beset with foreign problems. The Chinese Communists won control of their country, and in 1950 North Korea invaded South Korea. Truman authorized the sending of U.S. troops to Korea under the sponsorship of the United Nations to prevent the fall of South Korea to the Communist North Koreans. After General Douglas MacArthur led U.S. troops deep into North Korea, the Communist Chinese joined the fighting and pushed the U.S. forces back. Soon the war was a stalemate.

Truman's popularity declined after he removed MacArthur from his command for insubordination—the general had stated publicly that the United States should bomb China. Domestically, Truman took the controversial step of seizing the steel industry in 1952 to prohibit a strike that would have crippled the national defense. In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 72 S. Ct. 863, 96 L. Ed. 1153 (1952), popularly known as the Steel Seizure case, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to allow the government to seize and operate the steel mills and rejected Truman's argument that he had inherent executive power to issue the seizure order.

In 1952 Truman decided not to run for a second term. He retired to Independence, Missouri, to oversee the Truman presidential library but remained a prominent Democratic leader for the remainder of his life. He died on December 26, 1972, in Kansas City, Missouri.

Quotes:

"Whenever I make a bum decision, I go out and make another one."

"It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose your own."

"Give me a one-handed economist! All my economists say, On the one hand on the other."

"Whenever a man does the best he can, then that is all he can do."

"If you want to get elected, shake hands with 25, 000 people between and November 7."

"I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says: Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest. I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have."

See more famous quotes by Harry S. Truman

(1884--1972), Thirty-third president of the United States, in office from 1945--1953. Before he reached the White House, Truman was a judge and a senator from Missouri, and in 1944 became the vice-presidential running mate of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Truman became president upon Roosevelt's death in April 1945. Less than a month later the Germans surrendered to the Allies and the war in Europe ended.

Already as a senator, Truman took a strong stand in favor of helping the persecuted Jews of Europe. As president at the war's end, he was candidly supportive of helping Jewish Survivors and Displaced Persons (DPs, see also Displaced Persons, Jewish). In July 1945 he changed certain aspects of the Displaced Persons Act that were discriminatory against Jews. In 1946 he publicly asked the British government to allow 10,000 DPs into Palestine, as he was convinced that Palestine was the best place to resettle Jewish Refugees. As a result, he also supported the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, and on November 29, 1947 he had the United States vote affirmatively for the United Nations' Partition Plan, whereby Jews would be given a state in Palestine. In May 1948 Truman's government was the first to recognize the newly established State of Israel.

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