HARRY S. TRUMAN

THE 33RD PRESIDENT OF
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(1945-1953)

TRUMAN, Harry S. (1884–1972), 33rd president of the U.S. (1945–53), who initiated the cold war foreign policy of containing communism and continued the modest welfare state established under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. His decisiveness and willingness to accept responsibility for difficult decisions contributed to the trend begun under Roosevelt toward the centralization of power in the executive branch.   Early Career. Truman was born in Lamar, Mo., on May 8, 1884, the son of a livestock trader and farmer. He attended high school in Independence, near Kansas City, held odd jobs and farmed for a time, and served in France during World War I as an artillery battery commander. Returning to the Kansas City area after the war, he married Elizabeth Virginia ("Bess") Wallace (1885–1982) and opened a men’s clothing store, which failed in the postwar depression. In 1922 he entered local Democratic politics and was elected judge (commissioner) of Jackson Co. With the support of the influential political leader Thomas J. Pendergast (1872–1945) he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1934, where he voted consistently for New Deal legislation. During World War II he came to national prominence as chairman of a Senate investigating committee exposing waste in the war effort. President Roosevelt chose him as his running mate in 1944.   Truman as President. On the death of Roosevelt in April 1945, Truman succeeded to the presidency. Although he was a veteran politician and legislator, Truman had no experience in foreign affairs. The ailing Roosevelt had not prepared him to take over a foreign policy that called for using the atomic bomb to bring the war with Japan to a close and for continuing cooperation with the Soviet Union, a U.S. wartime ally.   Foreign policy. Truman had no difficulty carrying out the war strategy, but he was unwilling to make allowances for what Joseph Stalin contended were the Soviet Union’s postwar needs. He did not accept Soviet reasons for the establishment of a buffer zone of satellite governments between the USSR and Western Europe—essentially the formation of a Soviet sphere of influence—and he became convinced that Stalin meant to extend Communist influence throughout Europe. By early 1947 Truman had a new foreign policy in the making. In its early stages this policy was called the Truman Doctrine and was confined to economic aid to Greece and Turkey to help those governments resist Soviet influence. In its later stages it was called "containment" and was aimed at blocking Communist expansion anywhere in the world. Under Truman, the Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) were the major manifestations of containment and committed the U.S. to a role of world leadership it had never before been willing to assume. Implemented in 1947–48, the Marshall Plan was a massive American-financed reconstruction program for war-torn Europe. NATO was a military alliance established in 1949 to provide a common defense against potential Soviet military aggression, and it was the first peacetime military alliance the U.S. had ever joined. After 1950, Truman’s policy was modified in response to the Soviet acquisition of atomic weapons, the defeat by Communist forces of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists in China, and the invasion of South Korea by Soviet-sponsored North Korea. The end of the U.S. nuclear monopoly committed the administration to a nuclear arms race and the development of the hydrogen bomb. The fall of Chiang’s government and the Communist action in Korea led Truman to expand his containment policy to include Asia—he committed U.S. troops under UN sponsorship to a police action to ensure the territorial integrity of South Korea. Truman was already providing financial aid to the French in Vietnam, who were resisting an independence movement led by the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh.   Expansion of presidential power. While implementing this energetic foreign policy in the cold war atmosphere, Truman assumed more and more power at the expense of Congress. His boldest act was the use of U.S. troops in Korea without prior congressional consent. His administration was also responsible for the establishment of the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency, which provided advice and information to the executive on foreign policy matters, independent of the State Department and Congress. At the same time, the White House staff and the bureaucracy of the executive office grew dramatically, and the president’s Bureau of the Budget took over many planning tasks that had once been under the jurisdiction of congressional committees. This gave Truman and subsequent presidents more ability to function outside congressional restraints, especially in foreign affairs, but it made Truman vulnerable to conservatives and others who were critical of big government.   Domestic affairs. Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities were convinced that the Truman administration had been infiltrated by Communists, and some critics actually saw Truman’s centralization of authority as evidence of Communist influence. The president responded to the attacks of these critics by reluctantly establishing a stringent loyalty program that required all federal employees to submit to screening by loyalty boards. Unable to have his way with Congress in domestic legislative matters, he made frequent use of his veto power. In 1947 he tried unsuccessfully to halt passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which was designed to curb some of the powers acquired by organized labor during the New Deal. This won him a reputation as a friend of labor, and he appealed to other liberal factions within the Democratic party by supporting civil rights legislation and by recognizing the state of Israel in 1948. His aggressive anti-Communist policies abroad and his liberalism at home helped produce a three-way split in the Democratic party as he came up for reelection in 1948. On the left, former Vice-President Henry A. Wallace was critical of his hard line against the USSR; on the right, South Carolina Gov. Strom Thurmond (1902– ), opposed his advocacy of civil rights. Truman used his fiery, folksy style to lambaste the "Do-Nothing" Republican 80th Congress in a tireless campaign that ended in his upset victory over the Republican nominee, Thomas E. Dewey. Truman saw his narrow victory as a mandate for an ambitious legislative program, which he called the Fair Deal. During his second term, however, he was frustrated in his attempt to obtain civil rights legislation, federal aid to education, and a repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, as well as his efforts to set up a public power project and a national health insurance system. He did manage to hold the line on such basic New Deal items as subsidies to farmers, public housing, social security, and the minimum wage. Truman chose not to seek renomination in 1952 and retired to Independence, Missouri, where he resided until his death.   Assassination Attempt. In the summer of 1947, pending the independence of Israel, the Zionist Stern Gang was believed to have sent a number of letter bombs addressed to the president and high-ranking staff at the White House. The Secret Service had been alerted by British intelligence after similar letters had been sent to high-ranking British officials and the Gang claimed credit. The mail room of the White House intercepted the letters and the Secret Service defused them. At the time, the incident was not publicized. Truman's daughter Margaret confirmed the incident in her biography of Truman published in 1972. It had earlier been told in a memoir by Ira R.T. Smith, who worked in the mail room. On November 1, 1950, two Puerto Rican pro-independence activists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, attempted to kill Truman at the Blair House, where Truman lived while the White House was being renovated. In the attack, Torresola mortally wounded White House Policeman Leslie Coffelt, who killed the attacker with a shot to the head. Collazo wounded another officer, and survived with serious injuries. Truman was not harmed at all but was at risk. He commuted Collazo's death sentence, after conviction in a federal trial, to life in prison. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter commuted it to time served.   Death. On December 5, 1972, Truman was admitted to Kansas City's Research Hospital and Medical Center with lung congestion from pneumonia. He developed multiple organ failure and died at 7:50 am on December 26 at the age of 88. Bess Truman opted for a simple private service at the library for her husband rather than a state funeral in Washington. A week after the funeral, foreign dignitaries and Washington officials attended a memorial service at Washington National Cathedral. Bess died in 1982; they both are buried at the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum in Independence, Missouri.   Tributes and honors. In 1956, Truman traveled to Europe with his wife. In Britain, he received an honorary degree in Civic Law from Oxford University and met with Winston Churchill.[185] In 1959, he was given a 50-year award by the Masons, recognizing his longstanding involvement: he was initiated on February 9, 1909 into the Belton Freemasonry Lodge in Missouri. In 1911, he helped establish the Grandview Lodge, and he served as its first Worshipful Master. In September 1940, during his Senate re-election campaign, Truman was elected Grand Master of the Missouri Grand Lodge of Freemasonry; Truman said later that the Masonic election assured his victory in the general election. In 1945, he was made a 33° Sovereign Grand Inspector General and an Honorary Member of the supreme council at the Supreme Council A.A.S.R. Southern Jurisdiction Headquarters in Washington D.C. [198][199] Truman was also a member of Sons of the American Revolution (SAR)[200] and a card-carrying member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.[201] Two of his relatives were Confederate soldiers. In 1975, the Truman Scholarship was created as a federal program to honor U.S. college students who exemplified dedication to public service and leadership in public policy.[203] In 2004, the President Harry S. Truman Fellowship in National Security Science and Engineering was created as a distinguished postdoctoral three-year appointment at Sandia National Laboratories.[204] In 2001, the University of Missouri established the Harry S. Truman School of Public Affairs to advance the study and practice of governance.[205] The University of Missouri's Missouri Tigers athletic programs have an official mascot named Truman the Tiger. On July 1, 1996, Northeast Missouri State University became Truman State University—to mark its transformation from a teachers' college to a highly selective liberal arts university and to honor the only Missourian to become president. A member institution of the City Colleges of Chicago, Harry S Truman College in Chicago, Illinois, is named in his honor for his dedication to public colleges and universities. In 2000, the headquarters for the State Department, built in the 1930s but never officially named, was dedicated as the Harry S Truman Building.[206] Despite Truman's attempt to curtail the naval carrier arm, which led to the 1949 Revolt of the Admirals, an aircraft carrier is named after him. The USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) was christened on September 7, 1996. [208] The 129th Field Artillery Regiment is designated "Truman's Own" in recognition of Truman's service as commander of its D Battery during World War I.[209] In 1984, Truman was posthumously awarded the United States Congressional Gold Medal. In 1991, he was inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians, and a bronze bust depicting him is on permanent display in the rotunda of the Missouri State Capitol. In 2006, Thomas Daniel, grandson of the Trumans, accepted a star on the Missouri Walk of Fame to honor his late grandfather. In 2007, John Truman, a nephew, accepted a star for Bess Truman. The Walk of Fame is in Marshfield, Missouri, a city Truman visited in 1948.[211] Other sites associated with Truman include: Harry S. Truman National Historic Site includes the Wallace House at 219 N. Delaware in Independence and the family farmhouse at Grandview, Missouri (Truman sold most of the farm for Kansas City suburban development including the Truman Corners Shopping Center). Harry S. Truman Birthplace State Historic Site is the house where Truman was born and spent 11 months in Lamar, Missouri. Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum – The Presidential library in Independence Harry S. Truman Little White House – Truman's winter getaway at Key West, Florida