Historians ranked up Harry Truman in 2014 as 6th amongst US Presidents. 5/6/2022
33rd President of the USA
Truman born May 8th 1884 in Lamar Missouri , left office in January 1953,
He had no college degree , never had enough money or a house of his own. In his first 4 months saw the collapse of Nazi Germany and the founding of United Nations, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagisaki.
He did every job from the railroads to a clerk at Kansas City Bank and then his family farm at Grandview, Missouri.
1918 at 33 years old Captain in France in WW1
1919Married "Bess" Elizabeth Wallace, sets up home in Independence Missouri
1934 Elected to US senate. Tom Pendergrast was responsible for his Missourian rise and was later imprisoned for fraud. Truman made a point of studying history. He knew nothing about the goings on in the oval office.
1934 Roosevelt opened up the first embassy in Moscow. with Ambassador Charles Eustis Bohlen
1941 Truman Committee set up to investigate Defence spending.
1942 Pentagon building completed.
Allan Drury was the Senate correspondent and book writer.
Henry Morgenthau the secretary of the treasury and Roosevelt had been friends for years.
George Kennan was a young diplomat there who said that he had never considered the Soviet Union to ever be fit as an ally or associate of the US. Averell Harriman was US ambassador to Moscow and he began to warn of the fate of |Poland as elections agreed to a Yalta never took place, no promise of Stalin was kept.. Stalin did not allow US bases to be set up in Hungary as agreed and ousted Romania's leader King Michael and replaced him with General Radescu, a Russian puppet.
Elizabeth Shoumantoff was Roosevelt's portrait painter.
Sam Rayburn was the longest reigning speaker of the House. Henry Stimson Secretary of War .
1933 Labour secretary Francis Perkins appointed, first female ever to the cabinet. Truman kept the cabinet for now.
Truman's first decision was that the UN discussions must go on.
Albert Speer and Hitler on hearing of Roosevelt's death said " the war is not lost" Eisenhower and Bradley and Patton felt it was a critical moment for a rookie president to take over.
Truman `` My father raised us to believe honor is worth more than money and that is why I never got rich." Independence Missouri was the departure point for the Sante Fe , Oregan trial. Truman wore glasses as a kid and was made fun of. His mother bought him a book on the lives of great men. Wanted to go to Westpoint but rejected as a soldier because of bad eyesight.
1827-1837Andrew Jackson was his hero 7th president of the USA he came from common people. Truman's father died leaving him to support his mother.
The Lusitania was carrying munitions, this claim was denied. At 33 he volunteered June 1917, war was an escape from life doomed to failure. He got through the eye test by learning the letters by heart. He became battery commander of 194 soldiers in the Vosges mountains of the Western Front.
After the War he went into business with canteen sergeant Eddy Jacobson, his Jewish friend, and they went bankrupt.
1923 Voted in as a Judge due to Tom Pendergast he established a system of paved roads in Jackson county. He realized that 2 other judges received kick back money but looked the other way.
1931 Japanese troops entered Chinese Manchuria.
1935became Senator campaign on providing roads and a New Deal Democrat.
1937 Roosevelt sparked a controversy for trying to pack the Supreme Court with New Deal voting judges.
Pendergast landed up in jail which was bad for Truman. His next campaign slogan was " Make government more humane with men like Truman"
1940 The US army ranked 18th in size in the world smaller than that of Belgium , Portugal or Switzerland with few than 200,000 men, compaired to 7 million Nazi troops. Roosevelt started appropriating $10.5 billion for it.
1941 Committee to investigate National Defence Program under Truman who conducted hearings with Stimson and chief of staff General Marshall. In July Japan occupied Indo-china and the Americans froze Japan's assets,and embargoed oil to Japan. Once the war started this Senate Committee was called the Truman committee..
1943 Truman appeared on the cover of time for running one of the most useful committees of the time.
1945 Jan With election coming up Truman was chosen for vice president even though he was old he had no enemies and would hurt the ticket the least. FDR was competing against Thomas Dewey the NY Republican candidate for a 4th term This would be the first wartime election since Lincoln beat Mc Clellan in 1964.
As Vice he resigned from the Truman committee; their efforts had saved the taxpayers $15billion. Truman was called the "Missouri Compromise ''
He ran a campaign to support FDR Frank Sinatra and Orson Welles introduced him. His speeches were that in this moment of the world war it was "not the time to change the President '' the irony of this was realised later.
Pendergast died and Truman went to the funeral, even his opponents were surprised at this gutsy move.
1941 Dec Pearl Harbour attack killed 2500 Americans 20 naval vessels and 300 aeroplanes.
1942 April FDR died. We now had a transition from the aristocrat of Hyde Park NY to the little guy from Kansas City. He was the oldest to become president since James Buchanan(1857 -1861) the second from west of the Mississippi since Herbert Hoover.
The US at this stage had 12 million in the military of a population of 140million. US factories were producing 45% of the world's armaments and 50% of the world's goods. Chief of Staff George Marshall was 65 and his military judgement was never challenged.
Henry Stimson was secretary of war at 77. Admiral Leahy was the one who met with the president every morning since Pearl Harbour to explain the situation. It was only now that Truman learned about the Manhattan project
Stalin had only agreed to send Molotov to the San Francisco Convention at the SF Opera House. to start the United Nations as a gesture to Truman while the US was in conflict with the Soviet over the Polish situation. Russia was making the Lublin government a Soviet puppet.
Stalin accused the Americans of sending support to the anti Communist Polish underground. Averille Harriman was the US ambassador in Moscow; said that the Soviets program was the establishment of totalitarianism. he had been chairman of teh Union Pacific Railway and was fantastically rich. George Kennan was his second in command.
On Truman's day10 he received Molotov, the Soviets and US had a head on collision over Poland.
1943Joseph Davies of teh State Dept. wrote "Mission to Moscow '' which was a successful movie.
FDR - did the mass suicide of Saipan indicate that the whole of Japan will choose suicide to surrender?
1813 Blair House had been built to house visiting foreign dignitaries and Truman lived there till the Roosevelts vacated the White House.
Both Churchill and Truman hated dealing with Charles de Gaul.
To the press Truman answered the questions and if he chose not to he said that. There was a wartime ban on horse racing.
Henry Morgenthau the Treasury secretary was the only Jewish cabinet member and he had a vengeance plan against Germany.
Eleanor Roosevelt had radically altered the role of first lady by holding weekly meetings for women reporters and writing her own newspaper columns. Bess Truman would not play any role and was worried that Harry was not up to the job.
Battle of Okinawa, Japanese were using kamakazi planes, boats and suicide swimmers. Admiral Nimitz commanded the US Navy there.
Curtis Le May had his headquarter on Guam and was in charge of the B29 Superfortress that could carry 10 tons of bombs. They had pressurized cabins and the B29 program had cost the taxpayer more than the Manhattan project. Le May used incendary bombs without asking permission. He was known as Iron Ass.
Eisenhower stopped US troops on the Elba as had been agreed with the Soviets. The Federal Government in 1945 had spent $99 billion of this $88 billion had gone to the war.
Truman cabinet meetings were pure substance and he wanted a team and he was a decisive chairman and decision maker.
Robert H Jackson of the Supreme Court was appointed by Truman to be prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials.
The Philippines had been a US colony since 1898. Truman discussed with Rabbi Stephen Wise the issue of displaced Jews of Europe being granted land in Palestine.
The War economy put more African Americans to work than ever before. "Hitler was the one who got us out of the folks kitchen"
June 1942 Stimson and Marshall agreed to leave the running of the Manhattan Project to General Leslie Groves who appointed Robert Oppenheimer to be the director. Oppenheimer chose the barren land outside of Los Alimos where as a youth he had spent his holidays camping and horse riding in New Mexico. They had embarked on theis expensive project without knowing if it would work, but Roosevelt beleived the Nazis were ahead of the US.
In 1945 April Heinrich Himmler submitted surrender proposals to the Red Cross. Himnler had also approached Count Folke Bernadette of Sweden. Russia was surrounding Berlin.
The Allied headquarters was in Reims, France. With the Reichs collapse it was seen that 50% of French children suffered from rickets,70%suffered from reduced growth from malnutrition and a third of Belgium children were tubular. A high probability of pestilence and famine in Europe next winter.
16 members of the Polish underground were invited to Moscow and from there they disappeared. Jan Mararyk the Czechoslovak foreign minister was told by Molotov that he must vote for the Soviet proposal or else.
Every President beside George Washington had resided in the White House. Truman just celebrated 61 years when he entered the White house.
1945 March. In capturing Iwo Jima, America suffered 25,489 casualties, a third of the landing force.
1945 June Okinawa cost 38,000 casualties. What would the cost be to occupy Japan?
Truman always wanted to know the first names of his staff, everyone from his driver to the kitchen workers. He told his Cabinet that he should never have been president but a piano player in a whorehouse. He loved playing poker and young LB Johnson as a congressman joined in.
Tito was threatening to take Venezia Giulia from Italy under Stalin's instructions; this was a US-Soviet conflict, this remained part of Italy through negotiation. De Gaule in France wanted a piece of Italy that threatened American troops there. France had an agreement to receive Lend Lease after VE day,and Truman sent him a letter threatening to cut this immediately.
1940 winter The Lend Lease Bill started and $50,000 billion had helped 30 countries. When the war in Europe ended the US ships heading to Britain and the Soviets were turned around. The US best interest was to rebuild Germany.
Harry Hopkins was dying of cancer but knew Stalin well and Truman sent him with a message that he knew what he wanted from Stalin. Roosevelt had sent Hopkins to see Stalin shortly after the Nazis invaded Russia. Hopkins got Stalin to agree on the UN veto so overrules Molotov. Hopkins died in Jan 1946.
Curtis Lemay dispatched 550 Superfortresses from the Mariana Island to use incendary bombs, the rules had changed as Americans heard of the cruel treatment of POWs with evidance of torture and beheadings.
The Regent of Iraq Prince Abd al Ilah had a state visit to Truman and offered US airlines the use of Iraq airfields. The British were secretly trying to block these landing rights.
In negotiations with the Soviets Britain's role was no longer primary. We see the effective decline of the British Empire and power.
1945 June Secretary of State Edward Stettinus signed the UN charter in SF with 51 countries. Stettinus now became US ambassador to the UN while James Byrnes took over the State Dept.Alger Hiss, one of the members of the delegation would later in 1948 be accused of being a Soviet spy. Cordell Hull had been the one who had planned the UN and received a Nobel prize for it in 1945
1945 August 14 Japan capitulated . This was 4 months after Truman took office.
Harry Hopkins negotiated for the Polish leaders in London to return to Warsaw, however they lost to Russian puppets in a fraudulent election. US, Britain and Yugslav government signed an agreement so that Venezia Giulia remained Italian.
Joseph Davies was given the post of ambassador extraordinaire; he warned Truman that the worst thing about Communism was their secret police and Gestapo methods.
1945 Potsdam Conference was held in Soviet occupied Germany surrounded by Berlin rubble and the smell of effluvia and unburied dead. Here Truman said I don't just want to discuss, I want to decide. The Russians wanted a share of the German navy that Britain had taken possession of. Millions of Europeans would be dependent on food supplied by the US taxpayer.
The Soviets had seen 24 million of her subjects die in WW2 while China roughly 20 million while the US only 418,500. Thus the Soviets felt entitled to compensation for this blood.
Japan rejected the Potsdam unconditional surrender and sent kamikazes that swarmed over US ships; the Callaghan was the last destroyer in WW2 to sink. Truman had the bomb and did not need to make concessions while Stalin wanted the war in the far East to carry on longer. Stalin wanted a revision of the 1936 Montreux Convention that gave Turkey sole control of the Bosporus straits. Stalin wanted the UN to recognize his puppet regimes in Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria but Truman refused to discuss that.
US intelligence had cracked the Japanese code and read her communications.
No official document exists of Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb. But Truman was given the slogan that he put on his desk " The Buck stops here.' Part of the Marshall Island: The Tinian sugar cane island was converted into an enormous airfield. Sights in Japan were chosen that had not been affected by bombing or had Allied POW camps. Hiroshima hit, but the second bomb was meant for a sight that had cloud cover and Nagasaki was the secondary target.
The US alone would deal with Japan and it was agreed that the Emperor Hirohito would remain in power, and Douglas Mc Author would be the Supreme Commander over Japan.
1945 Sep 2 Japan's capitulation took place on the USS Missouri, the battleship named after Truman's state. The flag that had been on the White house when Pearl Harbour was attacked was the same flag to be used over Tokyo.
There was now chaos in China and it was agreed that the Japanese north of the 38th parallel would surrender to the Russians and south of that to the US.
The predicted post war inflation in the US did not happen. Truman is remembered for the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.
1948 Truman was the first world leader to recognize Israel.
1948 Berlin Airlift which lasted 9 month. The founding of NATO.
1948Reelected against Thomas Dewey so his daughter Margaret said he was no "accidental president"
1948 Harry Truman made one of the biggest contributions to date for racial integration and equality. In issuing Executive Order 9981 Truman ordered the desegregation of the armed forces.
1951 Truman fired General Douglas Mc Authur this led to the creation of the Modern Dept. of Defense.
1953 Eisenhower began his term with a booming US economy.
1972 Truman died aged 88. Bess died 10 years later. His Library Museum is in Independence Missouri.
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