Very few people would envy the position Harry S. Truman was put in on the day he became President. The death of FDR thrust Truman into the Presidency and he inherited a world in turmoil. An unlikely figure to hold the highest office.
Truman was born in Lamar Missouri on May 8, 1884. He was named after his uncle Harrison and was given the middle initial of S to honor both of his grandfathers. Truman isn’t the only famous person from Lamar. Wyatt Earp was the first Constable of Lamar. His father was a farmer and when he was 6 his family moved to Independence, Missouri. Independence was considered the gateway to the West. The Santa Fe and Oregon trails both began in the area. He didn’t attend school until he was 8 years old. He was an avid reader and loved music. He was a skilled piano player and started taking lessons from the age of 6. He would wake up at 5am to practice. When he was little he would help out his Jewish neighbors with tasks they weren’t permitted to do on Shabbos. This is something I can relate to, as from time to time I too would be called on as a child to help Jewish neighbors for the very same things. Truman attended Independence High School and graduated in 1901. He wanted to attend West Point but Truman had terrible eyesight and had worn glasses since a young child which made getting appointed to the famous institution impossible. He briefly attended a community college and studied bookkeeping, short hand and typing.
He held a number of odd jobs before entering politics. He was a timekeeper for a railroad construction company, and as a clerk for two different banks in Kansas City. Truman gave up his clerk job which paid $100 a month to go back to his family farm to help work. The home was modest and crowded. The work was hard and they days were long but Harry went back home to help his father run the farm. His father died in 1914.
Back in 1905, Truman joined the Missouri National Guard. Knowing his poor eye sight might prevent him from being accepted, he memorized the eye chart! When the US got involved in WWI in 1917, Truman reenlisted, he was 33 years old. He served in France and is the only US President who saw military action in WWI. During his time overseas he wrote to his sweetheart Bess who would eventually become his wife. Captain Harry Truman returned from serving in France and married Bess Wallace, a friend since childhood in June of 1919. Truman joined the reserves after the war ended and eventually rose to the rank of Colonel. To help support his young family, Harry Truman opened a men’s clothing store with a partner. The store unfortunately failed. The economic recession of the 1920s hurt its chances of being successful and Truman found himself in significant debt. He avoided bankruptcy and while it took him years to do so, he eventually paid off all of his debts from the unsuccessful venture.
In 1922, Truman began his time in public office. He was elected as one of three judges in Jackson County court in Missouri. Now, I know what you must be thinking, how could he be a judge… he doesn’t have a legal background. His post was more administrative in nature. He was in charge of the county’s finances and public works projects. In 1934, Harry Truman was elected to the US Senate. He was helped into office by the Pendergast Machine which was the Political machine of Kansas City Missouri. His first term in the senate he voted to support new deal legislation. After he was reelected in 1940, he traveled to a number of military forts to investigate claims of waste in federal spending. What he saw shocked him. He met with Roosevelt who was sympathetic to the findings but didn’t want it known to the public that many of his New Deal agencies were wasting money. Truman would head the committee along with other Senators. It was called the Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program. The committee became popularly known as The Truman Committee. The purpose was to investigate fraud and waste in the war effort. Rumors of profiteering and nepotism in the war effort led to the creation of the committee. The regular addresses and court hearings also helped to make Truman a household name. Journalists in Washington referred to Truman as being one of the ten most important politicians in Washington. Not bad for a guy that came from a small town in Missouri. They looked into the causes of war time shortages, nepotism in hiring, cost overruns and even labor strikes. Investigations by the committee revealed an inadequate inspection process in some of the products being made for the war effort. Just because things needed to be made quickly didn’t mean they could be made poorly. Truman also found that the construction of military housing was overrun with unnecessary costs and instead made the recommendation to have the Army Corps of Engineers in charge of military housing which alone saved 250 million dollars. Truman and the committee encouraged citizens to write into elected officials to report such infractions. The findings of the committee led to the creation of the War Production Board (WPB) in order to centralize war production needs. The committee was not without its critics. The NAACP for example made allegations that there were discriminatory hiring practices. The Committee saved 10 – 15 Billion dollars. Just to put that into context, The Manhattan Project cost 2 billion dollars. Also to give clarity, Truman didn’t know about the war related project that cost 2 billion dollars until he had been President for a number of days.
The Presidential election of 1944 saw President FDR seek reelection for an unprecedented 4th term. Unlike in 1940, there wasn’t much opposition from his own political party. Truman was selected to replace Henry A. Wallace who served as FDR’s Vice President during his third term. Wallace was formally FDR’s Secretary of Agriculture. FDR’s poor health was evident and leaders within the Democratic party new that when FDR died in office, the Vice President would assume the helm of the government so the selection of the Vice Presidential candidate was of the utmost importance. Democratic leaders thought Wallace was too liberal. Truman was considered a compromise candidate for party leaders. He supported New Deal programs, union leaders liked him, was liked by Conservative democrats and when it came to foreign policy, he supported most of Roosevelt’s policies. Some jokingly referred to Truman as The Missouri Compromise as he was a senator from the great state of Missouri. FDR and Truman won the Presidential election of 1944, but Truman wouldn’t be VP very long. His short stint as VP transformed the role from being inconsequential - one of FDR’s formal VPs once said how being Vice President wasn’t worth a bowl of warm spit. To make the role of VP as more of a key player. FDR didn’t bring Truman in on key issues and the two only met a total of 8 times while Truman was Vice President. Truman wouldn’t make the same mistake when he got his own Vice President after the election of 1948. Truman made the VP a member of the National Security Council, a participant in cabinet briefings and ensured they received regular security briefings. Truman was having drinks with the Speaker of the House when he received a call to get to the White House as quickly and as quietly as possible on April 12, 1945. It was First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who greeted him at the White House and told him of the death of the President. Harry Truman, his wife Bess, their daughter Margaret, Mrs. Roosevelt and a number of members of Roosevelt’s cabinet assembled in the Oval Office of the White office a little over 2 hours after the death of FDR for Truman to take the oath of office. Of becoming President, Truman once stated as though it felt as though the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on him.
Truman didn’t have a Vice President during his first term. This was before the passage of the 25th Amendment and there was no protocol in place to put a new Vice President in place before the election. In 1947, Congress passed the Presidential Succession Act and it changed the original stipulations set out in 1792. In 1886, cabinet members were added to the list of succession. In 1947, the order was changed slightly. Now, the first person after the VP was the Speaker of the House, then the President Pro Tempore of the Senate and then the Secretary of State. The Cabinet members in the order of succession is based on the year that department was created. The most recent cabinet department is Homeland Security and that individual is the last in the line of Presidential succession.
Truman’s Cabinet –Truman was a great administrator. He had a reputation for being able to deliver results on time and under budget. When he first assumed the Presidency, he kept the members of FDR’s cabinet on for the sake of continuity as the US was still waging WWII. As issues arose he replaced cabinet members as needed. delegated a lot, got rid of FDR’s cabinet members, acted as his own chief of staff, didn’t have a great relationship with the press. FDR was tough act to follow in that regard. He tended to appoint friends with whom he had long standing relationships with, had built trust but they were oftentimes not up to the task they were given.
The Secretary of State was George Marshall. He replaced his first appointee who he felt didn’t take a hard enough line with officials from Moscow. Marshall was his most influential cabinet member and served a number of different posts. We will talk more about him when we discuss the Marshall Plan.
By December 24, 1945, there simply weren't enough trains to get soldiers home for Christmas. Many families living near the repatriation Centers invited the returning war heroes to their homes to celebrate Christmas. Local truckers and taxi drivers chipped in to help. There is a wonderful story of an LA Taxi driver driving home WWII vets back home to Chicago. For anyone not familiar with how far this is, that’s a 2,000-mile drive.
Lasted 360 days and was the largest land and sea airlift ever organized. 8 million men and women from multiple theaters of war that spanned 4 continents needed to be brought home. It began on Sept. 6th, just 4 days after VJ Day. On average about 22,000 Americans were brought home every day for almost a year. Demobilization planning started as early as 1943. Military officials understood this would eventually be needed and would be a logistical nightmare. When the war in Europe was over, the U.S. Navy was still very much at war in the Pacific. As a result, the U.S. coast guard, Army and Merchant marines began the work of bringing our soldiers back home. As Christmas approached the slogan “Home Alive by 45” became a popular rally cry. Not everyone could come back at once so a rating system was created. Service men and women accrued a certain number of points of months in service, days in combat, if they had been wounded or not, if they had won certain awards, if they were married and if they had children. The higher the number of points the sooner you came home. The military after all had to transition from wartime to peace time. Not everyone could just go home. Some would be needed for the occupation of Germany; some would need to be transferred to the Pacific theater. This wasn’t popular with everyone and some soldiers stationed in Paris protested the high number of 85 needed in order to go home. Theresa was an exception to the points system, American POWs went to the front of the line to go home. The surrender of Japan just a few months after VJ Day pushed what would become known as Operation Magic Carpet into high gear. Over 700 ships helped to bring American soldiers back home. The types of vessels varied greatly. You have some soldiers who returned home on the famous Queen Mary and most who returned on aircraft carriers.
The passage of the GI Bill in 1944, ensured that soldiers returning from WWII wouldn’t have the same issues as WWI vets. The GI Bill allowed for unemployment assistance, educational program assistance of up to $500 and government backed loans that could be used to buy a home. Many WWII veterans enrolled in colleges and vocational programs and many purchased homes. The baby boom that began in 1945 is no coincidence. Both of my parents are of the baby boomer generation.
US Economy in the post WWII years. The New Deal alone didn’t bring the US out of The Great Depression. The need for the means of war gave US factories a needed boost. Men of fighting age went off to war, women were encouraged to get a job in industries they had once been barred from and told it was their patriotic duty to do so. Unemployment rates were low. The US wasn’t just growing food for Americans but also the world. With soldiers returning from war and needing a job, what would happen to the unemployment rates? How would factories move from wartime production to peacetime production? US Consumers had been encouraged to do without due to war rationing. Many did so happily to do their part in the war effort. They had been saving, and they were ready to buy. Us Consumers were buying big ticket items like homes and cars. They were buying new appliances that saved time on household chores like washers & dryers and dishwashers. There was tremendous economic prosperity.
Residential construction companies also mobilized to capitalize on a similar surge in housing demand, as Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans and the GI Bill gave many (but not all) returning veterans the ability to buy a home. Companies like Levitt & Son, based in New York, found success applying the mass-production techniques of the auto industry to home building. Between 1946 and the early 1960s, Levitt & Son built three residential communities (including
Creation of the CIA – Truman created the CIA in 1947 at first to act as a sort of daily briefing of international news and issues of importance that he needed to know about in order to make informed decisions. The CIA was not born out of thin air but instead grew out of the OSS – which is the Office of Strategic Services which was created during WWII. The OSS was the first centralized intelligence agency in the US. It was in charge of all espionage activities across all branches of the armed forces. It was created by the National Security Act of 1947. The CIA can secretly fund intelligence operations around the globe. The CIA conducts operations around the globe to collect intelligence on global issues and foreign countries in order to brief not only the President & Vice President but also the National Security Council so that they can make the best possible decisions. The CIA is not a law enforcement agency but they do work alongside the Dept. of Defense and law enforcement agencies when needed. The National Security Act put the CIA under the supervision of another new agency, The National Security Council. This was done to make sure the CIA didn’t evolve into something other than what it was intended to be. The National Security Council consists of the President, VP, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Homeland Security, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, The President’s Council, The US Representative to the United Nations… just to give you an idea of who is on the NSC.
Renovation of the White House during Truman’s Presidency changed the White House more than the fire in 1814 during the war of 1812 with the British. Between 1948 – 1952, the White House underwent extensive repairs. After Truman moved into the White House he often complained of floors creaking, hearing popping noises and drapes moving. He even wrote in letters to his wife Bess that he felt the house must be haunted. Engineers would later confirm that the White House wasn’t structurally sound. In 1814, the White House was burned straight to the marble exterior. Over the years the addition of electricity, plumbing and heating had all compromised the structure and some joked that the building remained standing out of habit. The Truman’s moved across the street to Blair House which was used to house visiting dignitaries and purchased by the federal government in 1942. Today Blair house serves as the home of the President elect and their family leading up to the inauguration. While living at Blaire House Truman survived an assassination attempt. The inside of the white house was completely demolished leaving only the exterior walls. New concrete support columns were poured and subbasement levels were excavated. The new lower levels included a secret underground bunker. Truman also made changes to the outside of the building with the addition of a balcony on the second floor which has become known as The Truman Balcony Renovations totaled 5,7 Million dollars. Key pieces of the structure like flooring and carved moldings were saved. When it was completed the White House was no longer a neglected historical relic. It had been restored to its grandeur and the first family moved in before the end of Truman’s second term.
Truman changed the Presidential Seal. Prior to Truman, the eagle on the seal looked toward its left in the direction of weapons of war. Truman changed it so the eagle would be looking towards its right talons which instead held an olive branch.
