The Truman Presidency
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the 33rd President of the United States (1945–53), an American politician of the Democratic Party. He served as a United States Senator from Missouri (1935–45) and briefly as Vice President (1945) before he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945 upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was president during the final months of World War II, making the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman was elected in his own right in 1948. He presided over an uncertain domestic scene as America sought its path after the war and tensions with the Soviet Union increased, marking the start of the Cold War.
The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II
Nazi Germany surrendered on Truman's birthday (May 8) just a few weeks after he assumed the presidency, but the war with Imperial Japan raged on and was expected to last at least another year. After Japan refused surrender, Truman authorized the use of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan quickly surrendered and World War II came to an end on September 2, 1945. Truman approved the use of atomic weapons to end the fighting and to spare the thousands of American lives that would inevitably be lost in the planned invasion of Japan and Japanese-held islands in the Pacific. This decision remains controversial to this day. It is thought to be one of the principal factors that forced Japan's immediate and unconditional surrender.
Atomic Bombing of Japan
To bring a quick end to World War II, the U.S. (under Truman's direction) dropped two atomic bombs on Japan.
Internationalist Foreign Policy
Truman's presidency was a turning point in foreign affairs, as the United States engaged in an internationalist foreign policy and renounced isolationism. Truman helped found the United Nations in 1945, issued the Truman Doctrine in 1947 to contain Communism, and got the $13 billion Marshall Plan enacted to rebuild Western Europe. The Soviet Union, a wartime ally, became a peacetime enemy in the Cold War. Truman oversaw the Berlin Airlift of 1948, which was one of his greatest foreign policy successes, and the creation of NATO in 1949. He was unable to stop Communists from taking over China. When communist North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, he sent in U.S. troops and gained UN approval for the Korean War. After initial successes in Korea, however, the UN forces were thrown back by Chinese intervention, and the conflict was stalemated throughout the final years of Truman's presidency. As part of his U.S. Cold War strategy, Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, which reorganized the military, and also created the CIA and the National Security Council.
On June 25, 1950, Kim Il-sung's Korean People's Army invaded South Korea, starting the Korean War. In the early weeks of the war, the North Koreans easily pushed back their southern counterparts. Truman called for a naval blockade of Korea, only to learn that due to budget cutbacks, the U.S. Navy could not enforce such a measure. Truman promptly urged the United Nations to intervene; it did, authorizing troops under the UN flag led by U.S. General Douglas MacArthur. The war remained a frustrating stalemate for two years, with over 30,000 Americans killed, until an armistice ended the fighting in 1953. In February 1952, Truman's approval mark stood at 22% according to Gallup polls, which was, until George W. Bush in 2008, the all-time lowest approval mark for an active American president.
Domestic Issues
On domestic issues, bills endorsed by Truman often faced opposition from a conservative Congress dominated by the Southern legislators, but his administration was able to successfully guide the American economy through the post-war economic challenges. The president was faced with the reawakening of labor-management conflicts that had lain dormant during the war years, severe shortages in housing and consumer products, and widespread dissatisfaction with inflation, which at one point hit 6% in a single month. Added to this polarized environment was a wave of destabilizing strikes in major industries. Truman's response to them was generally seen as ineffective.
As he readied for the 1948 election, Truman made clear his identity as a Democrat in the New Deal tradition, advocating national health insurance and the repeal of the Taft–Hartley Act. He broke with the New Deal by initiating an aggressive civil rights program, which he termed a moral priority, and in 1948 submitted the first comprehensive civil rights legislation and issued Executive Orders to start racial integration in the military and federal agencies. Taken together, it constituted a broad legislative agenda that came to be called the "Fair Deal." Truman's proposals were not well received by Congress, even with renewed Democratic majorities in Congress after 1948. The Solid South rejected civil rights, as those states still enforced segregation. Only one of the major Fair Deal bills, the Housing Act of 1949, was ever enacted. On the other hand, the major New Deal programs still in operation were not repealed, and there were minor improvements and extensions in many of them.
Popular and scholarly assessments of Truman's presidency initially were unfavorable but became more positive over time following his retirement from politics. Truman's 1948 election upset to win a full term as president has often been invoked by later 'underdog' presidential candidates.
Harry S. Truman
33rd President of the United States, Harry S. Truman