Truman, Harry S.

I

Introduction

Truman, Harry S. (1884-1972), 34th Vice-President (1945) and 33rd President of the United States (1945-1953), who initiated the cold war foreign policy of containing communism and continued the modest welfare state established under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. His decisiveness and willingness to accept responsibility for difficult decisions contributed to the trend begun under Roosevelt towards the centralization of power in the executive branch.

II

Early Career

Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri, on May 8, 1884, the son of a livestock trader and farmer. He attended high school in Independence, near Kansas City, held odd jobs and farmed for a time, and served in France during World War I as an artillery battery commander. Returning to the Kansas City area after the war, he married Elizabeth Virginia (“Bess”) Wallace and opened a men's clothing store, which failed in the post-war depression. In 1922 he entered local Democratic politics and was elected judge (commissioner) of Jackson County. With the support of the influential political leader Thomas J. Pendergast he was elected to the US Senate in 1934, where he voted consistently for New Deal legislation. During World War II he came to national prominence as chairman of a Senate investigating committee exposing waste in the war effort. President Roosevelt chose him as his running mate in 1944.

III

Truman as President

On the death of Roosevelt in April 1945, Truman succeeded to the presidency. Although he was a veteran politician and legislator, Truman had no experience in foreign affairs. The ailing Roosevelt had not prepared him to take over a foreign policy that called for using the atomic bomb to bring the war with Japan to a close and for continuing cooperation with the Soviet Union, a US wartime ally.

A

Foreign Policy

Truman had no difficulty carrying out the war strategy, but he was unwilling to make allowances for what Joseph Stalin contended were the Soviet Union's post-war needs. He did not accept Soviet reasons for the establishment of a buffer zone of satellite governments between the USSR and Western Europe—essentially the formation of a Soviet sphere of influence—and he became convinced that Stalin meant to extend Communist influence throughout Europe. By early 1947 Truman had a new foreign policy in the making. In its early stages this policy was called the Truman Doctrine and was confined to economic aid to Greece and Turkey to help those governments resist Soviet influence. In its later stages it was called “containment” and was aimed at blocking Communist expansion anywhere in the world. Under Truman, the Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) were the major manifestations of containment and committed the United States to a role of world leadership it had never before been willing to assume. Implemented in 1947-1948, the Marshall Plan was a massive American-financed reconstruction programme for war-torn Europe. NATO was a military alliance established in 1949 to provide a common defence against potential Soviet military aggression, and it was the first peacetime military alliance the United States had ever joined.

After 1950, Truman's policy was modified in response to the Soviet acquisition of atomic weapons, the defeat by Communist forces of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists in China, and the invasion of South Korea by Soviet-sponsored North Korea. The end of the US nuclear monopoly committed the administration to a nuclear arms race and the development of the hydrogen bomb. The fall of Chiang's government and the Communist action in Korea led Truman to expand his containment policy to include Asia—he committed US troops under United Nations sponsorship to a police action to ensure the territorial integrity of South Korea. Truman was already providing financial aid to the French in Vietnam, who were resisting an independence movement led by the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh.