Harry Truman

 

Harry S. Truman (1884 – 1972) was the thirty-third President of the United States (1945–1953); as vice president, he succeeded to the office upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. During World War I he served as an artillery officer. After the war he became part of the political machine of Tom Pendergast and was elected a county judge in Missouri and eventually a United States Senator. In 1944, Roosevelt replaced Henry A. Wallace as vice president with Truman for Roosevelt's fourth term.

As president, Truman faced challenge after challenge in domestic affairs: a tumultuous reconversion of the economy marked by severe shortages, numerous strikes, and the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act over his veto. After confounding all predictions to win re-election in 1948, he was almost unable to pass any of his Fair Deal program. He used executive orders to begin desegregation of the U.S. armed forces and to launch a system of loyalty checks to remove thousands of communist sympathizers from government office, even though he strongly opposed mandatory loyalty oaths for governmental employees, a stance that led to charges that his administration was soft on communism. Truman's presidency was also eventful in foreign affairs, with the end of World War II (including his decision to use nuclear weapons in combat), the founding of the United Nations, the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, the Truman Doctrine to contain communism, the beginning of the Cold War, the creation of NATO, and the Korean War. Corruption in Truman's administration reached the cabinet and senior White House staff. Republicans made corruption a central issue in the 1952 campaign.

Truman, whose demeanor was very different from that of the patrician Roosevelt, was a folksy, unassuming president. He popularized such phrases as "The buck stops here" and "If you can't stand the heat, you better get out of the kitchen."  He overcame the low expectations of many political observers who compared him (unfavorably) with his highly regarded predecessor. At one point in his second term, Truman's public opinion ratings were the lowest on record, but popular and scholarly assessments of his presidency became more positive after his retirement from politics and the publication of his memoirs. He died in 1972. Many U.S. scholars today rank him among the top ten presidents. Truman's legendary upset victory in 1948 over Thomas E. Dewey is routinely invoked by underdog presidential candidates.

Truman had been vice president for only 82 days when President Roosevelt died. He had had very little meaningful communication with Roosevelt about world affairs or domestic politics after being sworn in as vice president, and was completely uninformed about major initiatives relating to the successful prosecution of the war—notably the top secret Manhattan Project, which was about to test the world's first atomic bomb.

Shortly after taking the oath of office, Truman said to reporters:

"Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don't know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me what happened yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me."

A few days after his swearing in, he wrote to his wife, Bess: "It won't be long until I can sit back and study the whole picture and. . . there'll be no more to this job than there was to running Jackson County and not anymore worry."  However, the simplicity he had predicted would prove elusive.

Upon assuming the presidency, Truman asked all the members of FDR's cabinet to remain in place, told them that he was open to their advice, and laid down a central principle of his administration: he would be the one making decisions, and they were to support him.  Just a few weeks after Truman assumed office, the Allies achieved victory in Europe.

Truman was quickly briefed on the Manhattan Project and authorized use of atomic weapons against the Japanese in August 1945, after Japan rejected the Potsdam Declaration. The atomic bombings that followed were the first, and so far the only, instance of nuclear warfare.

On the morning of August 6, 1945, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  Two days later, having heard nothing from the Japanese government, Truman let the U.S. military proceed with its plans to drop a second atomic bomb. On August 9, Nagasaki was also devastated.  Truman received news of the bombing while aboard the heavy cruiser USS Augusta on his way back to the U.S. after the Potsdam Conference. The Japanese agreed to surrender on August 14.

At the Potsdam Conference, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was aware of the U.S. government's possession of the atomic bomb.  In the years since the bombings, however, questions about Truman's choice have become more pointed. Supporters of Truman's decision to use the bomb argue that it saved hundreds of thousands of lives that would have been lost in an invasion of mainland Japan. Eleanor Roosevelt spoke in support of this view when she said, in 1954, that Truman had "made the only decision he could," and that the bomb's use was necessary "to avoid tremendous sacrifice of American lives."  Others, including historian Gar Alperovitz, have argued that the use of nuclear weapons was unnecessary and inherently immoral.