Harry S. Truman

I

Introduction

Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), 33rd president of the United States (1945-1953). Truman initiated the foreign policy of containing Communism, a policy that was the hallmark of the Cold War. He continued the welfare policies established under his predecessor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Truman helped to centralize power in the executive branch, a trend begun under Roosevelt.

Truman’s willingness to accept responsibility for difficult decisions made him one of the most controversial of presidents. Throughout his administration, Truman failed to rally congressional support for most of his program of domestic legislation, called the Fair Deal. However, he did secure sufficient legislative backing to produce an outstanding record in foreign affairs, especially in meeting what most Americans felt was the challenge posed by the rising power of the Communist bloc. During Truman’s administration the United States became a charter member of the United Nations (UN) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); sponsored important foreign policy initiatives known as the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan (officially called the European Recovery Program), and Point Four Program; and assumed a leading role in the fighting in the Korean War (1950-1953).

Truman’s ability to face situations squarely was well illustrated on November 1, 1950. Two Puerto Rican nationalists attempted to assassinate him at Blair House, his temporary residence during renovations at the White House. Truman’s comment: “A president has to expect those things.”

II

Early Life

Harry S. Truman, the oldest of three children born to Martha Ellen Young Truman and John Anderson Truman, was born in his family’s small frame house in Lamar, Missouri, on May 8, 1884. Truman had no middle name; his parents apparently gave him the middle initial S. to appease two family relatives whose names started with that letter.

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When Truman was six years old, his family moved to Independence, Missouri, where he attended the Presbyterian Church Sunday school. There he met five-year-old Elizabeth Virginia (“Bess”) Wallace, with whom he was later to fall in love. Truman did not begin regular school until he was eight, and by then he was wearing thick glasses to correct extreme nearsightedness. His poor eyesight did not interfere with his two interests, music and reading. He got up each day at 5 am to practice the piano, and until he was 15, he went to the local music teacher twice a week. He read four or five histories or biographies a week and acquired an exhaustive knowledge of great military battles and of the lives of the world’s greatest leaders.

III

Early Career

In 1901, when Truman graduated from high school, his future was uncertain. College had been ruled out by his family’s financial situation, and appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point was eliminated by his poor eyesight. He began work as a timekeeper for the Santa Fe Railroad at $35 per month, and in his spare time he read histories and encyclopedias. He later moved to Kansas City, where he worked as a mail clerk for the Kansas City Star, then as a clerk for the National Bank of Commerce, and finally as a bookkeeper for the Union National Bank. In 1906 he was called home to help his parents run the large farm of Mrs. Truman’s widowed mother in Grandview, Missouri.

For the next ten years, Truman was a successful farmer. He joined Mike Pendergast’s Kansas City Tenth Ward Democratic Club, the local Democratic Party organization, and on his father’s death in 1914 he succeeded him as road overseer. An argument soon ended the job, but Truman became the Grandview postmaster. In 1915 he invested in lead mines in Missouri, lost his money, and then turned to the oil fields of Oklahoma. Two years later, just before the United States entered World War I, he sold his share in the oil business and enlisted in the U.S. Army. He trained at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, but returned to Missouri to help recruit others. He was elected first lieutenant by the men of Missouri’s Second Field Artillery.

A

World War I

World War I began in 1914 as a local European war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, when Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the thrones of Austria and Hungary, was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist. Though U.S. President Woodrow Wilson tried to remain neutral, the United States was drawn into the war in April 1917.

Truman sailed for France on March 30, 1918, and as a recently promoted captain was given command of Battery D, a rowdy and unmanageable group known as the Dizzy D. Truman succeeded in taming his unit, and the Dizzy D distinguished itself in the battles of Saint-Mihiel and Argonne. In April 1919 Truman, then a major, returned home, and on June 28 he married Bess Wallace.

The following November, Truman and Eddie Jacobson opened a men’s clothing store in Kansas City. With the Dizzy D veterans as customers the store did a booming business, but in 1920, farm prices fell sharply and the business failed. In the winter of 1922 the store finally closed, but Truman refused to declare bankruptcy and eventually repaid his debts.

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