Truman, Harry S.

Truman, Harry S.
born May 8, 1884, Lamar, Mo., U.S.
died Dec. 26, 1972, Kansas City, Mo.

33rd president of the U.S. (1945–53).

He worked at various jobs before serving with distinction in World War I. He became a partner in a Kansas City haberdashery; when the business failed, he entered Democratic Party politics with the help of Thomas Pendergast. He was elected county judge (1922–24), and he later became presiding judge of the county court (1926–34). His reputation for honesty and good management gained him bipartisan support. In the U.S. Senate (1935–45), he led a committee that exposed fraud in defense production. In 1944 he was chosen to replace the incumbent Henry Wallace as the Democratic Party vice presidential nominee, and he won election with Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt. After only 82 days as vice president, he became president on Roosevelt's death (April 1945). He quickly made final arrangements for the San Francisco charter-writing meeting of the UN, helped arrange Germany's unconditional surrender on May 8, which ended World War II in Europe, and in July attended the Potsdam Conference. The Pacific war ended officially on September 2, after he ordered atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; his justification was a report that 500,000 U.S. troops would be lost in a conventional invasion of Japan. He announced what would become known as the Truman Doctrine, which entailed aid for Greece and Turkey (1947); established the Central Intelligence Agency; and pressed for passage of the Marshall Plan to aid the economic recovery of western Europe. In the 1948 presidential election he defeated Thomas Dewey despite widespread expectation of his own defeat. On July 26, 1948, Truman issued an executive order banning segregation in the armed forces. He initiated a foreign policy of containment to restrict the Soviet Union's sphere of influence, pursued his Point Four Program, and initiated the Berlin airlift (see Berlin blockade and airlift) and the NATO pact of 1949. He sent troops under Gen. Douglas MacArthur to fight in the Korean War. Problems of pursuing the war occupied his administration until he retired. Though he was often criticized during his presidency, his reputation grew steadily in later years.

* * *

▪ president of United States
Introduction
(see Researcher's Note)
born May 8, 1884, Lamar, Missouri, U.S.
died December 26, 1972, Kansas City, Missouri
 33rd president of the United States (1945–53), who led his nation through the final stages of World War II and through the early years of the Cold War, vigorously opposing Soviet expansionism in Europe and sending U.S. forces to turn back a communist invasion of South Korea. (For a discussion of the history and nature of the presidency, see presidency of the United States of America.)

Early life and career
      Truman was the eldest of three children of John A. and Martha E. Truman; his father was a mule trader and farmer. After graduating from high school in 1901 in Independence, Missouri, he went to work as a bank clerk in Kansas City. In 1906 he moved to the family farm near Grandview, and he took over the farm management after his father's death in 1914. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Truman—nearly 33 years old and with two tours in the National Guard (1905–11) behind him—immediately volunteered. He was sent overseas a year later and served in France as the captain of Battery D, a field artillery unit that saw action at St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne. The men under his command came to be devoted to him, admiring him for his bravery and evenhanded leadership.

      Returning to the United States in 1919, Truman married Elizabeth Wallace (Bess Truman (Truman, Bess)), whom he had known since childhood. With army friend Edward Jacobson he opened a haberdashery, but the business failed in the severe recession of the early 1920s. Another army friend introduced him to Thomas Pendergast (Pendergast, Thomas J), Democratic boss of Kansas City. With the backing of the Pendergast machine, Truman launched his political career in 1922, running successfully for county judge. He lost his bid for reelection in 1924, but he was elected presiding judge of the county court in 1926, again with Pendergast's support. He served two four-year terms, during which he acquired a reputation for honesty (unusual among Pendergast politicians) and for skillful management.

      In 1934 Truman's political career seemed at an end because of the two-term tradition attached to his job and the reluctance of the Pendergast machine to advance him to higher office. When several people rejected the machine's offer to run in the Democratic primary for a seat in the U.S. Senate, however, Pendergast extended the offer to Truman, who quickly accepted. He won the primary with a 40,000-vote plurality, assuring his election in solidly Democratic Missouri. In January 1935 Truman was sworn in as Missouri's junior senator by Vice President John Nance Garner (Garner, John Nance).

      He began his Senate career under the cloud of being a puppet of the corrupt Pendergast, but Truman's friendliness, personal integrity, and attention to the duties of his office soon won over his colleagues. He was responsible for two major pieces of legislation: the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, establishing government regulation of the aviation industry, and the Wheeler-Truman Transportation Act of 1940, providing government oversight of railroad reorganization. Following a tough Democratic primary victory in 1940, he won a second term in the Senate, and it was during this term that he gained national recognition for leading an investigation into fraud and waste in the U.S. military. While taking care not to jeopardize the massive effort being launched to prepare the nation for war, the Truman Committee (officially the Special Committee Investigating National Defense) exposed graft and deficiencies in production. The committee made it a practice to issue draft reports of its findings to corporations, unions, and government agencies under investigation, allowing for the correction of abuses before formal action was initiated.

      Respected by his Senate colleagues and admired by the public at large, Truman was selected to run as Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Roosevelt, Franklin D.)'s vice president on the 1944 Democratic ticket, replacing Henry A. Wallace (Wallace, Henry A.). The Roosevelt-Truman ticket garnered 53 percent of the vote to 46 percent for their Republican rivals, and Truman took the oath of office as vice president on January 20, 1945. His term lasted just 82 days, however, during which time he met with the president only twice. Roosevelt, who apparently did not realize how ill he was, made little effort to inform Truman about the administration's programs and plans, nor did he prepare Truman for dealing with the heavy responsibilities that were about to devolve upon him.

Succession to the presidency
      Roosevelt died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945, leaving Truman and the public in shock. He told reporters the day after taking the oath of office that he felt as if “the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen” on him and asked them to pray for him. He was hardly, however, as scholars have noted, a political naif. Although he had no foreign policy experience, he was a capable administrator of large bureaucracies and a skilled politician who knew how to use the press to his purposes.

  Truman was sworn in as president on the same day as Roosevelt's death, which was just weeks away from Truman's 61st birthday. He began his presidency with great energy, making final arrangements for the San Francisco meeting to draft a charter for the United Nations, helping to arrange Germany's unconditional surrender on May 8, and traveling to Potsdam (Potsdam Conference) in July for a meeting with Allied leaders to discuss the fate of postwar Germany. While in Potsdam Truman received word of the successful test of an atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and it was from Potsdam that Truman sent an ultimatum to Japan to surrender or face “utter devastation.” When Japan did not surrender and his advisers estimated that up to 500,000 Americans might be killed in an invasion of Japan, Truman authorized the dropping of atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9), killing more than 100,000 men, women, and children. This remains perhaps the most controversial decision ever taken by a U.S. president, one which scholars continue to debate today. (See Sidebar: The decision to use the atomic bomb. See also primary source document: Announcement of the Dropping of an Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima (Harry S. Truman: Announcement of the Dropping of an Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima).) Japan surrendered August 14, the Pacific war ending officially on September 2, 1945.

 Scarcely had the guns of World War II been silenced than Truman faced the threat of Soviet expansionism in eastern Europe. Early in 1946, Truman brought Winston Churchill to Missouri to sound the alarm with his “ Iron Curtain” address. The following year, Truman put the world on notice through his Truman Doctrine (see original text (Harry S. Truman: The Truman Doctrine)) that the United States would oppose communist aggression everywhere; specifically, he called for economic aid to Greece and Turkey to help those countries resist communist takeover. Later in 1947, the president backed Secretary of State George Marshall (Marshall, George Catlett)'s strategy for undercutting communism's appeal in western Europe by sending enormous amounts of financial aid (ultimately about $13 billion) to rebuild devastated European economies. Both the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program) achieved their objectives, but they also contributed to the global polarization that characterized five decades of Cold War hostility between East and West.

Winning a second term
    As the presidential election of 1948 approached, the odds against Truman's winning the presidency seemed enormous. The Republicans had triumphed in the congressional elections of 1946, running against Truman as the symbol of the New Deal. That electoral triumph seemed to indicate that the American people were weary of reform and of the Democratic Party. Worsening Truman's chances for reelection was the defection of liberal Democrats, breaking with the president over his hard-line opposition to the Soviet Union; many of these liberals supported the candidacy of Henry A. Wallace, who was running as the Progressive Party candidate for president. At the Democratic National Convention, Southern delegates bolted as well, angry at the president for his strong civil rights initiatives; these Southern Democrats supported Strom Thurmond (Thurmond, Strom), the States' Rights (“Dixiecrat”) presidential candidate. But Truman surprised everyone. He launched a cross-country whistle-stop campaign, blasting the “do-nothing, good-for-nothing Republican Congress.” As he hammered away at Republican support for the antilabour Taft-Hartley Act (Taft–Hartley Act) (passed over Truman's veto) and other conservative policies, crowds responded with “Give 'em hell, Harry!” The excitement generated by Truman's vigorous campaigning contrasted sharply with the lacklustre speeches of Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey (Dewey, Thomas E.), and Truman won by a comfortable margin, 49 percent to 45 percent; Wallace and Thurmond had little impact on the outcome. (See primary source document: Inaugural Address (Harry S. Truman: Inaugural Address).)

      Energized by his surprising victory, Truman presented his program for domestic reform in 1949. The Fair Deal included proposals for expanded public housing, increased aid to education, a higher minimum wage, federal protection for civil rights, and national health insurance. Despite Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, most Fair Deal proposals either failed to gain legislative majorities or passed in much weakened form. Truman succeeded, however, in laying the groundwork for the domestic agenda for decades to come.

 In part, the Fair Deal fell victim to rising Cold War tensions that absorbed attention and resources. In 1949 Chinese Communists finally won their long civil war, seizing control of the mainland. Almost simultaneously, the Soviet Union successfully tested a nuclear bomb (nuclear weapon), ending the nuclear monopoly enjoyed by the United States since 1945. Truman, who had faced down the Soviet threat to Berlin in 1948 with a massive airlift of food and supplies (Berlin blockade and airlift) to sustain the noncommunist sectors of the city, led the United States into a collective security agreement with noncommunist European nations—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—to resist Soviet expansionism. In 1950 he authorized development of the hydrogen bomb (thermonuclear bomb) in order to maintain an arms lead over the Soviets. By the end of the decade, the wartime alliance linking the United States and Soviet Union had been completely severed and the two nations had embarked on an arms race of potentially world-destroying dimensions.

Outbreak of the Korean War
 In June 1950 military forces of communist North Korea suddenly plunged southward across the 38th parallel boundary in an attempt to seize noncommunist South Korea. Outraged, Truman reportedly responded, “By God, I'm going to let them [North Korea] have it!” Truman did not ask Congress for a declaration of war (Korean War), and he was later criticized for this decision. Instead, he sent to South Korea, with UN sanction, U.S. forces under General Douglas MacArthur (MacArthur, Douglas) to repel the invasion. Ill-prepared for combat, the Americans were pushed back to the southern tip of the Korean peninsula before MacArthur's brilliant Inchon offensive drove the communists north of the 38th parallel. South Korea was liberated, but MacArthur wanted a victory over the communists, not merely restoration of the status quo. U.S. forces drove northward, nearly to the Yalu River boundary with Manchuria. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops then poured into North Korea, pushing the fighting once again down to the 38th parallel. When MacArthur insisted on extending the war to China and using nuclear weapons to defeat the communists, Truman removed him from command—a courageous assertion of civilian control over the military. The administration was devoted to its policy of containment. The war, however, dragged on inconclusively past the end of Truman's presidency, eventually claiming the lives of more than 33,000 Americans and leaving a residual bitterness at home.

      The inability of the United States to achieve a clear-cut victory in Korea following Soviet conquests in eastern Europe and the triumph of communism in China led many Americans to conclude that the United States was losing the Cold War. Accusations began to fly that the president and some of his top advisers were “soft on communism,” thereby explaining why the United States—without question the world's greatest power in 1945—had been unable to halt the communist advance. As the nation's second “Red Scare” (the fear that communists had infiltrated key positions in government and society) took hold in the late 1940s and early '50s, Truman's popularity began to plummet. In March 1952 he announced he was not going to run for reelection. By the time he left the White House in January 1953, his approval rating was just 31 percent; it had peaked at 87 percent in July 1945.

      Over the next two decades, however, Truman's standing among American presidents rose. He began to be appreciated as a president who had, in Truman's own words, “done his damnedest.” The ultimate common man thrust into leadership at a critical time in the nation's history, Truman had risen to the challenge and acquitted himself far better than nearly everyone had expected. Later presidents, regardless of political party, looked back on him fondly, admiring his willingness to take responsibility for the country (as a sign on his desk read, “The Buck Stops Here!”) and trying to emulate his appeal to the average voter. His Fair Deal social programs, such as those delineating civil rights for African Americans, had been defeated during his presidency but were enacted in the 1960s and retained by Democratic and Republican administrations alike. Truman did, however, issue an executive order (9981) that desegregated the military, and he was noted for appointing African Americans to high-level positions. His reputation suffered slightly in the 1980s, when scholars highlighted the fact that in private conversation and personal correspondence, Truman told off-colour jokes and referred to minorities and ethnic groups in terms considered highly offensive today.

 His life in retirement was modest but active, perhaps epitomized by his habit of taking a brisk morning walk, or “constitutional,” along the sidewalks of Independence, Missouri. He enjoyed joking with reporters, and he seems to have initiated a controversy over the period after his middle initial. (See Researcher's Note.) He remained in good health, spending his days reading voraciously, until the mid-1960s, when he declined rapidly. On Christmas Day 1972, Truman lapsed into unconsciousness and died the next morning.

Alfred Steinberg Ed.

Cabinet of President Harry S. Truman
       Cabinet of President Harry S. Truman Cabinet of President Harry S. TrumanThe table provides a list of cabinet members in the administration of President Harry S. Truman.

Additional Reading
Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, 2 vol. (1955–56, reprinted 1986–87), and Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 8 vol. (1961–66), are among the best collections of source materials. Robert H. Ferrell (ed.), Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman (1980), and Dear Bess: The Letters from Harry to Bess Truman, 1910–1959 (1983), offer collections of Truman's personal writing. Monte M. Poen (ed.), Strictly Personal and Confidential: The Letters Harry Truman Never Mailed (1982), comprising letters composed by Truman between 1945 and 1972, emphasizes the broad difference between the public figure and the private man.Biographies of Truman include Jonathan Daniels, The Man of Independence (1950, reprinted 1971), a good account of Truman's early career; William Hillman, Mr. President (1952), which includes letters and excerpts from Truman's diaries; Alfred Steinberg, The Man from Missouri (1962), covering Truman's life and activities through his presidency; Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman (1973, reprinted 1993), a candid, readable account written by his daughter; Harold F. Gosnell, Truman's Crises (1980, reissued 1996), tracing his political career; Richard Lawrence Miller, Truman: The Rise to Power (1986), reinterpreting Truman's experiences in local Missouri politics and national politics before acceding to the presidency; William E. Pemberton, Harry S. Truman: Fair Dealer and Cold Warrior (1989); David McCullough, Truman (1992), a sweeping narrative; Robert H. Ferrell, Harry S. Truman (1994); and Alonzo L. Hamby, Man of the People (1995), an analytical assessment of the foundations of Truman's thoughts and actions. Robert H. Ferrell, Choosing Truman: The Democratic Convention of 1944 (1994), chronicles the events that led to the Democratic Party's nomination of Truman as the vice presidential candidate and, consequently, his selection as the recognized successor to the then-failing Roosevelt. Irwin Ross, The Loneliest Campaign: The Truman Victory of 1948 (1968, reprinted 1977), offers an account of the 1948 presidential election campaign.Assessments of Truman's administration may be found in Bert Cochran, Harry Truman and the Crisis Presidency (1973); Robert J. Donovan, Conflict and Crisis (1977, reissued 1996), and Tumultuous Years (1982), on Truman's first and second terms, respectively; Donald R. McCoy, The Presidency of Harry S. Truman (1984); and Michael J. Lacey (ed.), The Truman Presidency (1989). Alonzo L. Hamby, Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism (1973), explores the evolving aspects of liberal philosophy and action during the Truman presidency. Gar Alperovitz et al., The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (1995); and Ronald Takaki, Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb (1995), provide a critical assessment of Truman's actions in the closing months of World War II; Stanley Weintraub, The Last Great Victory (1995); and J. Robert Moskin, Mr. Truman's War (1996), are more positive in their evaluation. Richard J. Walton, Henry Wallace, Harry Truman, and the Cold War (1976), chronicles Vice President Wallace's split with Truman over the administration's foreign policy and Wallace's subsequent challenge to Truman's candidacy for the 1948 presidential election. Works on Truman's foreign policy and the origins of the Cold War are numerous. Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (1992), is the leading modern interpretation and has an extensive bibliography; also important is Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed (1975, reprinted 1987). Robert James Maddox, From War to Cold War: The Education of Harry S. Truman (1988), examines the shift in U.S. foreign policy toward the Soviet Union between the last months of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration and the first months of Truman's.Margaret Truman, Bess W. Truman (1986), is a biography of the first lady by her daughter.Alfred Steinberg Ed.

* * *


Universalium. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем решить контрольную работу

Look at other dictionaries:

  • TRUMAN, HARRY S.° — (1884–1972), 33rd president of the United States. From 1922 to 1924 his partner in an unsuccessful haberdashery business in Kansas City was Eddie Jacobson, a Jewish businessman. Truman was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1935, in 1945 became vice… …   Encyclopedia of Judaism

  • Truman,Harry S. — Truman, Harry S. 1884 1972. The 33rd President of the United States (1945 1953). He authorized the use of the atomic bomb against Japan (1945), implemented the Marshall Plan (1948), initiated the establishment of NATO (1949), and ordered U.S.… …   Universalium

  • Truman, Harry S. — (1884 1972)    34th vice president and 30th president of the United States. Harry S. Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri. The “S” was added to his name to appease both paternal and maternal grandfathers, Anderson Shippe Truman and Solomon Young.… …   Historical Dictionary of the Roosevelt–Truman Era

  • Truman Harry S. — (1884–1972)    Although the Nazi concentration camps were being liberated when Harry Truman inherited the presidency in April 1945, the effects of the Holocaust lasted throughout his two terms in office. The problems he faced, including the… …   Historical dictionary of the Holocaust

  • Truman, Harry S. — (1884–1972)    Thirty second president of the United States. No American president had as direct an impact on Jewish history as Truman. As vice president, he succeeded Franklin D.Roosevelt when the latter died in office. To the general surprise,… …   Who’s Who in Jewish History after the period of the Old Testament

  • Truman, Harry — 1884–1972    A Senator from Missouri at the outbreak of World War II, Truman was asked to chair the Senate Special Committee to investigate the National Defense Program which was under suspicion of misappropriation of funds and misallocation of… …   Who’s Who in World War Two

  • Truman, Harry S. — ► (1884 1972) Político estadounidense. Senador demócrata por Missouri (1935 45). Elegido vicepresidente de E.U.A. en 1944. Fue presidente en 1945 y reelegido para el período 1948 52. Decidió el lanzamiento de bombas atómicas sobre Hiroshima y… …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • Truman, Harry S. —  (1884–1972) Democratic politician, president (1945–53). The S stands for nothing as Truman had no middle name, and for that reason some authorities spell it without a period …   Bryson’s dictionary for writers and editors

  • Harry S. Truman — hacia 1945 …   Wikipedia Español

  • Harry S Truman — Harry S. Truman (1945) Harry S. Truman (eigentlich Harry S Truman) (* 8. Mai 1884 in Lamar, Missouri; † 26. Dezember 1972 in Kansas City, Missouri) war ein US amerikanischer Politiker der Demokratischen Partei …   Deutsch Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”