[This is a series describing the 12 Post-War American
Presidents from a British perspective.]
When Franklin Roosevelt died on the brink of WW2 victory on 12
April 1945, the United States had lost a major political figure. FDR was
respected by his people for his steadfast war leadership, for his gravitas and for his eloquence. Others
supported him for his bold economic programme and gave him credit for ending the Slump. Quite a few disputed
his eminence and deplored his political tactics but were quietly
non-partisan during the war. Inevitably his successors were judged in
comparison to FDR; all of the12 Post-War Presidents had their merits, some much
more than that, but none of them bestrode the globe quite like the Titan
Roosevelt had done in his prime. Their problems and challenges were immense and
new issues required different kinds of solutions and a different style of
politics. Taken in the round, the verdict of history will be that they did
pretty well.
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| Harry Truman |
Harry S Truman
(1884-1972) from Lamar, Missouri, was born the son of farmers of Scots-Irish
stock. His early life was humdrum and obscure, showing little farming aptitude
and his bad sight led to his rejection as an Army cadet. The family moved to
Independence, Mo. He did not graduate from high school and when later he went
to college he soon dropped out. He was
studious at home, much encouraged by his mother, played the piano enthusiastically
and was largely self-taught. He had somehow managed to be accepted in the
National Guard in 1905 and when the US entered the Great War in 1917, Truman
commanded a field artillery unit, seeing plenty of action in the Meuse-Argonne
area, distinguishing himself as a respected leader of his men. His
self-confidence was much boosted.
On demobilisation, he quickly married his childhood
sweetheart Bess in 1919. He failed in a haberdashery venture in Kansas City but
thanks to his father’s local Democratic Party contacts he got a job as a county
official and later as a county judge. The Kansas City and Jackson County,
Missouri, Democrats were run by corrupt boss Tom Pendergast (jailed for tax
evasion in 1939) and Truman benefitted from his patronage. In 1934, Truman won
the Democratic primary for the Senate seat – the anti-Pendergast vote was split
- and duly won the election against a Republican incumbent. Although Truman was
an enthusiastic New Dealer, he hardly knew FDR, and was at that stage no more
than a dim machine politician from the mid-West. Truman became some kind of
national figure as chairman from 1940 of a sub-committee on military affairs –
known later as the Truman Committee – which investigated and exposed waste,
inefficiency and corruption in military and other government contracts. Since
entering the Senate he had spoken out against the power and lack of
accountability of big business, a theme which played well with Democratic
voters.
When FDR decided to run for his 4th term in 1944,
the Democratic Party hierarchy sought a replacement for rather too far
left-leaning Henry Wallace, the incumbent Vice-President. After much wheeling
and dealing FDR said he would accept either Truman or Supreme Court Justice
William O. Douglas. The Party preferred Truman and he was duly nominated. With
FDR they comfortably defeated the Republican ticket of Thomas Dewey and John
Bricker in November 1944.Truman’s elevation was in retrospect surprising as it
was widely believed FDR would not survive his full term and Truman’s stature
was untested.
Sworn in on 20 January 1945, Truman’s Vice-Presidency lasted
a mere 82 days. He only had two private conversations with Roosevelt and
received no briefings on the course of the war. On 12 April he had been
presiding over the Senate when he got a message to come to the White House,
where he was told by Eleanor Roosevelt that the President had died. Truman
admitted I felt like the moon, the stars,
and all the planets had fallen on me.
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| Truman with Stalin and Churchill at Potsdam |
Truman initially left all FDR’s administration in place but
had quickly to get up to speed on international affairs, of which he had no
experience. Germany surrendered on 8 May (Truman’s 61st birthday). In
July 1945 he was attending the 3 power Allied summit at Potsdam with Stalin and
Churchill – though Churchill was soon to be replaced by Clement Attlee
following the Labour landslide election victory. The post-war settlement in
Europe was agreed but war continued against Japan. Truman had only been briefed
on the Manhattan Project (the A-bomb) in late April and he hinted to Stalin
that a new weapon may be deployed (Stalin knew all about this through his spy
rings but naturally pretended ignorance!) On 6 August Hiroshima was devastated
and on 9 August so was Nagasaki. The Japanese surrendered on 14 August. Many US
and allied casualties were avoided by Truman’s decision. This decision has long
been ethically controversial in some cold ivory towers in the West but was
wholly justifiable amid the exigencies of total war.
With peace and demobilisation came the fear of domestic
unemployment and a return to labour disputes. Much of this worry was misplaced
as the US was the only functioning great economy left in the world and only the
US could meet global demand. Returning veterans were in the event quickly
absorbed into the expanding labour force.
The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, circumscribing the power of the trades
unions, passed through Congress despite Truman’s veto, was really over-kill
although even Truman sometimes invoked it. Truman also upset Southern Democrats
by de-segregating the armed forces, a brave and long-overdue reform, during the
run-up to the 1948 election. Truman’s approval rating at home plummeted as
normal politics were resumed.
But his approval rating overseas was very high. Europe was
devastated by the war and her ally Britain was effectively bankrupt. Lend-Lease
was suddenly terminated and Britain had to send Maynard Keynes to negotiate an
American loan on terms which seemed harsh at the time but were in retrospect
generous – finally repaid in 2006! When in 1946 Britain announced its
withdrawal of aid to the Royalists in the Greek civil war battling the
communists, the US immediately filled the gap. This led to the promulgation of
the “Truman Doctrine”, a policy of US intervention and containment to restrict
any further advance of communism. More positively Truman, with bi-partisan
support, poured $13bn into the rebuilding of Europe under the Marshall Plan,
named after his doughty Secretary of State General George Marshall. This
greatly stimulated the recovery of the economies of Western Europe. American
isolationism was dead and buried.
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| George Marshall |
 | |||||||
| Dean Acheson |
The British, weary of refereeing inter-communal fighting,
returned its PalestineMandate to the UN and after months of further conflict
the Jewish state of Israel was proclaimed in May 1948. Truman, against the
advice of Marshall and the State Department, immediately recognised the new
state. This was probably inevitable given the Zionist preferences of the US
electorate but a sense of injustice long poisoned relations with the Arab
world, which had been politically inept.
Despite coping well with these major issues, the received
wisdom in Washington was that Truman was little more than a stop-gap and would
lose heavily to Thomas Dewey in the November 1948 election. The Democrats were
badly split with Strom Thurmond running on a Dixiecrat States’ Rights ticket
and Henry Wallace leading his leftist Progressive Party. Confounding the
experts and the pollsters, Truman romped to a famous victory.
 |
| Truman defies the Chicago Tribune and wins in 1948 |
The second term began well but eventually ran into the sand.
Dean Acheson succeeded Marshall as Secretary of State and in 1949 NATO was created
giving mutual security to its members. West Germany morphed into the Federal
Republic and re-joined the international community. In Asia new anxieties arose
when in 1949 Mao’s communists ousted Chiang Kai Shek on mainland China. The US
withheld recognition and supported Chiang on Taiwan. A major crisis arose when
in 1950 Kim Il Sung’s North Korea invaded the South. Eventually a UN force
(overwhelmingly American) led by war hero General Douglas MacArthur was sent to
remove the invaders and duly pushed them back to the Yalu River. At this point
Mao’s China intervened and military deadlock ensued. MacArthur wanted to use
nuclear weapons (to Europe’s dismay) and lobbied against Truman. The President
took this as insubordination and sacked MacArthur, who returned home to a
hero’s ticker-tape welcome. Truman’s action was justified but the public adored
its hero and the President became deeply unpopular.
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| Truman authorises Korean intervention |
America prospered under Truman and was in her full pomp as
the greatest world power. The Russians quickly caught up militarily by
exploding its own A-bomb and this and other spy revelations triggered off a
sometimes hysterical “Red Scare” much stoked up by the sinister demagogue
Senator Joe McCarthy and by the House Un-American Activities Committee. A badly
handled steel dispute, with the President’s seizure of steel mills being
declared illegal, damaged Truman further, as did a whiff of corruption among
senior colleagues. His 4 Supreme Court appointments had elements of cronyism
and a later critic described them as “inexcusable”.
Truman wisely did not choose to run again, which he could
have done, in 1952. He supported Adlai Stevenson’s campaign but Adlai was no
match for Dwight Eisenhower, another war hero. Truman was enraged that
Eisenhower had not denounced McCarthy in his campaign and Eisenhower was
furious at some of Truman’s attacks on him. The customary Inauguration car
journey with the incoming and outgoing presidents sharing a limousine almost
did not happen and it was some years before the two men were reconciled.
Truman retired to Independence Missouri and had little political
influence subsequently; he died in Kansas City in 1972 aged 88. His departure
from office was not much mourned but his career was reassessed from the 1960s
and his significant contribution honoured. Truman was an unassuming man and the
fact that he was “just folks” appealed to many. He presided over a talented
administration which saved and then rebuilt Europe; he led the US when her
economic, military and material dominance was unrivalled. He was a very
fortunate President who had risen to a truly daunting challenge.
SMD
24.08.14
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014
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