Harry Truman

Truman knew little about the A-bomb. It was all FDR's idea. Truman had little to do with the dropping of the bombs. He only knew about it 60 or so days before they were dopped.

Harry S. Truman served the remainder of late-President Franklin D. Roosevelt's fourth term of office, from April 1945 until January 1949. He was elected President in 1948, and continued in office until 1953, when he was succeeded by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Truman nearly lost the Democratic party endorsement in 1948, due to resistance from Southern Democrats. As a result, he faced three major opponents in the November general election, including legendary Senator Strom Thurmond (D-SC), who temporarily left the Democratic party to run as a Dixiecrat (no, really).

General Election 1948

Democratic Party.........Harry S. Truman/Alben Barkley

Republican Party..........Thomas Dewey/Earl Warren (future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court)

Dixiecrat Party.............Strom Thurmond/Fielding L. Wright

Progressive Party.........Henry A. Wallace/Glen H. Taylor

Republican Thomas Dewey was expected to win the popular election and accumulate the most electoral votes. The Chicago Timeswas so confident of Dewey's success, they pre-printed the next day's paper with the front page headline, "Dewey Defeats Truman!" When the electoral votes were tabulated, however, Truman had defeated Dewey by a wide margin, 303 electoral votes to Dewey's 189. Thurmond carried four Southern states and won the remaining 39 votes.

More clearly than any earlier act, the Truman Doctrine proclaimed that the United States had embarked on a new foreign policy. This new policy of containment would have profound effects on American society and culture. Its immediate aim was to prevent the Soviet Union from moving beyond the line it had reached in Eastern and Central Europe. By 1947 the Truman administration viewed the Soviet Union as powerful, totalitarian, and aggressive, much like Germany and Japan in the 1930s, and believed it must be contained by a policy of firmness and strength.

Two developments appeared to stand in the way. First, the nation had reduced its military force to well below two million people, less than a sixth of those in uniform in 1945. Second, the nation seemed to be slipping back into isolationist attitudes that had prevailed in the 1930s, including hostility toward spending money on foreign affairs. Elections in 1946 had turned control of Congress over to Republicans determined to slash the federal budget.

Crisis in Greece, 1947

At this juncture, the regimes in Greece and Turkey were in trouble. Communist-led revolutionaries in Greece, aided by Communist-controlled Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Albania, challenged the recently restored monarchy. Turkey's problems stemmed directly from the Soviet Union, which was pressuring the Turks for a share in control of the outlet from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. These two situations threatened to become a crisis, as the British, weakened by the war and their collapsing empire, informed the U.S. State Department in late February that they could no longer help the Greek and Turkish regimes. The British government asked the United States to step in so that the Soviets would not gain control. American diplomats on the scene as well as State Department and military leaders in Washington feared that Communist victories in Greece and Turkey would open the door for Soviet expansion into the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Western Europe.

With his White House staff eager to improve his image, Truman moved quickly. Meeting with leaders of the Republican-controlled Congress, he and his foreign policy team argued for an American response. Concerned about a hostile reaction to new spending, Arthur Vandenberg, the powerful chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, advised the president to explain the administration's position to Congress and the public in a dramatic way. Truman agreed, as did Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, his top adviser on the issue.

Truman's Speech

On March 12, 1947, the president made a strongly worded speech to Congress. He described the world situation as grave but maintained that the Greek government could win its civil war if it received aid. He argued that the United States was the only nation that could supply it. Linking his proposal with World War II, he portrayed world history as now dominated by a struggle between free and unfree ways of life. American policy, he declared, should "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressure." Suggesting that this could be done "primarily through economic and financial aid," he asked for $400 million for Greece and Turkey. These ideas were the main elements of what was quickly labeled the Truman Doctrine.

Truman encountered opposition but triumphed over it. Critics, some of them still confident that the United States and the Soviet Union could be friends, decried the departure from a policy of opposition to intervention in remote places and doubted that the threat justified the move. Some charged that the doctrine would weaken the United Nations and prop up weak, undemocratic regimes in Greece and around the world. These critics warned that the costs would be greater than American resources could support and would damage the American economy. Some warned also that the new policy would lead to war with the Soviet Union. Responding effectively, the administration worked closely with leaders in Congress, including Vandenberg, who argued that the doctrine was "worth trying as an alternative to another 'Munich' [the surrender in 1938 by the leaders of Great Britain, France, and Italy to Adolf Hitler's demand for a portion of Czechoslovakia] and perhaps another war." Acheson promised that the United States would appraise each situation as it arose, not automatically intervene. In April and May, Congress went along, with nearly all Democrats and most Republicans voting for what the president had proposed. Mounting fears of Communism had overwhelmed concerns about government spending.

Success and Its Aftermath

The doctrine soon achieved its immediate objectives. The Greek government defeated the rebels, and Turkey built up its military forces and effectively resisted Soviet pressure. These successes offered encouragement for later interventions.

The three months from February to May 1947 were a pivotal moment in American history. During this time the United States, by developing and accepting the Truman Doctrine, made a large and significant change in its role in the world. "The epoch of isolation and occasional intervention is ended," The New York Times declared during the national debate. "It is being replaced by an epoch of responsibility." Truman's leading biographer, Alonzo Hamby, noted a half-century later: "What Truman promised was a long engagement with the wider world in the interest of defending democracy against totalitarianism�. The Truman Doctrine had been the call to arms of the Cold War" (pp. 387, 401). The United States had entered a new kind of conflict, marked by an arms race, a Red Scare, major wars in Korea and Vietnam, global polarization, and, ultimately, the defeat of Communism.