The famed headline from the Presidential election of 1948 when Truman came from behind to grab victory (Photo courtesy of Library of Congress-American Memory)
I graded him an “A” in Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents. But America was not always so generous towards Harry S. Truman, America’s 33rd President, born on May 8, 1884 in Lamar, Missouri.
Truman inherited the Oval Office on April 12, 1945 after First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt told him that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was dead. The following day, a shaken Truman said to reporters:
Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don’t know whether you fellows had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.
The only president with combat experience in World War I, Truman was a relatively obscure Senator from Missouri who had been picked to fill out Roosevelt’s ticket for the unprecedented and successful fourth run at the presidency in 1944. As FDR’s fourth term opened, the war in Europe was nearing its conclusion but the brutal and deadly fighting in the Pacific continued –with a potential invasion of Japan on the horizon.
With the overwhelming task of replacing the dominant political figure of the 20th century, Truman was immediately faced with a daunting choice: whether or not to use the atomic bomb– a weapon Truman did not know existed until he became president. The fateful decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 remains his most controversial action.
In FDR’s unfinished term and his own term, that followed a come-from-behind victory in 1948, Truman would make other controversial and unpopular decisions about war and peace that were all part of his “The Buck Stops Here”* legacy:
•desegregating the armed forces
•recognizing Israel’s statehood
•”containing” Communism as the Cold War heated up
•entering the war in Korea
•firing the popular General Douglas MacArthur
•setting in motion the “Marshall Plan” to rebuild war-torn Europe
When he left office in 1953, his popularity was in shreds. But Truman’s common sense, honesty, and decisiveness have left “Give “em Hell” Harry with a much better historical legacy. Truman died on December 26, 1972. (His New York Times obituary.)
Read more about Truman in Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents.
*”The Buck Stops Here” was the famed saying on a plaque that Truman kept on his Oval Office desk.
