HARRY TRUMAN: The Post-War American Presidents (1)

[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.

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 4^th 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.

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 61^st 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.

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.

Relations with the USSR had been tense for years but the Cold War began in earnest in June 1948 when the Russians, on the pretext of currency changes in Germany, blockaded 4-power Berlin, deep in the communist Russian zone. Truman reacted robustly creating with the British an airlift to supply the beleaguered Berliners. The blockade lasted 11 months and was a huge success, heartening US allies everywhere.

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.

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

SIR ANTHONY HOPKINS: Celebrities of Stage and Screen (11)

[This is the eleventh in an occasional series describing British artistes who found fame on stage or in the movies]

I confess to having negative feelings towards roistering Welshmen: this prejudice emanates from the evening in the 1960s I was randomly head-butted by a Welsh rugby fan outside a convivial pub in Edinburgh’s Rose Street and I reeled about stunned and bloodied. I guess Wales had lost the game that afternoon at Murrayfield but that hardly excuses mindless violence and I have since not much admired the fan’s compatriots, especially if like Richard Burton they boozed away and squandered their talents or like Stanley Baker, their fame rested on how many bars they have trashed or bottles broken. The Welsh women were not much better either- noisy singer Dorothy Squires caused chaos and havoc all around her – although talented Catherine Zeta-Jones has smouldering good looks, helping her to manage her tempestuous marriage and volatile emotional health. I am certainly prepared to make an exception to my anti-boyo stance in the case of consummate actor Anthony Hopkins.

A young Anthony Hopkins

Anthony Hopkins (1937- ) has no doubt many of the notorious Welsh characteristics bubbling inside, but he controls them very effectively. The son of a baker in Margam, Port Talbot, Hopkins was a slow schoolboy until taken in hand by his parents and sent to a more stretching institution. He blossomed in music and drama at the Royal Welsh College in Cardiff graduating in 1957 and after National Service he attended RADA. A few years in rep until he was spotted by no less than Lawrence Olivier and invited to join the National Theatre in 1965. When Olivier fell ill, Hopkins, as his understudy, won laurels for his playing of Edgar in Strindberg’s The Dance of Death provoking green-eyed Olivier to write that Hopkins “walked away with the part like a cat with a mouse between his teeth”

Hopkins great break was playing the supporting role of gay Prince Richard (later Richard Coeur de Lion) in the 1968 hit film The Lion in Winter with Peter O’Toole as Henry II and Katherine Hepburn as his Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. This gave him a taste for film and TV acting for which he is now globally famous. In the 1970s he shone as Pierre in BBC’s War and Peace and as Lloyd George in Young Winston as well as taking leading roles at the National Theatre. Yet perhaps his most important moment was on 29 December 1975 when, he claims, he woke up in an Arizona hotel room, not knowing how he got there and immediately signed up with Alcoholics Anonymous. He has described himself as “a recovering alcoholic” ever since. Stability returned to his hitherto rather manic life.

Hopkins’ acting range has been astonishing - he has played Hitler, Quasimodo, Picasso and Richard Nixon in his time. Some of his best performances have been in almost art-house roles like Frederick Treves in The Elephant Man (1980) opposite John Hurt’s depiction of Joseph Merrick. He corresponded platonically with Anne Bancroft in 1987’s 84 Charing Cross Road and has an unrequited love affair with Emma Thompson as the repressed butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day (1993). He rocketed to the notice of the mass US audience with his alarming depiction of deranged psychiatrist Dr Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) jeering at Jodie Foster and had a huge hit with the 1998 swashbuckler The Mask of Zorro alongside Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Later triumphs have been his portrayal of New Zealand motor cycle ace Burt Munro in The World’s fastest Indian (2005) and as Odin in superhero saga Thor (2010)

Hopkins scares as Lecter

Hopkins as hero Zorro Senior

                         

Hopkins has a prodigious memory but works with feverish intensity to master his script. He much impressed Steven Spielberg by memorising a long courtroom speech playing John Quincy Adams in Amstad (1997) – Spielberg could not bring himself to call Hopkins “Tony” but addressed him throughout as “Sir Anthony” – Hopkins was knighted in 1993.

Hopkins has lived in Los Angeles since 2007 and is a naturalised US citizen though retaining his British citizenship too. He is notably philanthropic, generously supporting drama schools, projects for prisoners and The National Trust appeal to preserve Snowdonia. He is a devotee of Greenpeace and supports dozens of good causes.

Music has always loomed large in his life since his Cardiff College days and he is an accomplished pianist. He is also a composer and his charming “And the Waltz goes on” featured high in a recent album by Strauss specialist André Rieu. All in all, his is a many-sided talent.

I do not suppose he is a saint and his current wife, exotic Colombian Stella Arroyave, is his third. He does not enjoy the company of “posh actors” and he has been rude about some co-stars, describing Shirley MacLaine as “the most obnoxious actress I have ever worked with”. He is by no means a green room luvvie. Instead he is what we Scots call “a man of parts,” a civilising influence and an undoubted credit to Wales.

SMD

15.08.14

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014