#5 Harry Truman
Harry Truman assumed the presidency on April 12th 1945 after the death of Franklin Roosevelt. Truman faced three major issues as president: how to end of World War II, what role the United States would take internationally and how the United States would adjust domestically after the war.
The war in Europe was already winding down as Germany surrendered less than a month after Truman took office. This still left the war in the Pacific raging on. In July of 1945 the first atomic bomb was successfully tested in the New Mexico desert. At the time Japan still held a vast empire in the Pacific, China and Southeast Asia. The estimated deaths of invading the Japanese homeland was over 250,000 American soldiers and over one million Japanese soldiers and citizens. Truman was given the choice between a costly and drawn out invasion of Japan and using the Atomic bomb to quickly end the war. Truman decided to use the bomb, first on Hiroshima on August 6th 1945 and then on Nagasaki on August 9th. On August 10th Japan declared it’s intention to surrender. The fact that the first bomb didn’t force their surrender says quite a bit about Japanese resolve.
When a well-informed Japanese Army officer in Yokohama was interrogated, he was asked about an allied invasion of Japan: “Could you have repelled this landing?” He answered: “It would have been a very desperate fight, but I do not think we could have stopped you.” He was further asked”What would have happened then?” He replied: “We would have kept on fighting until all Japanese were killed, but we would not have been defeated,” by which he meant that they would not have been disgraced by surrender.
Many have questioned Truman’s decision to use the bomb, but I believe it was the correct one. The biggest argument was that Japan was already basically defeated, so using the bomb was unnecessary. It is true that Japan’s fate was already sealed, but they were either unwilling to accept their defeat or unwilling to surrender under normal circumstances. Others claimed that the use of the bomb was racist, as it wasn’t used on Germany. This completely ignores the fact that Germany surrendered two months before the first successful bomb test. Others claim that it was only used as a show of force to Communist Russia, this was just an advantageous unintended consequence. The use of the bomb to end World War II might have also aided in avoiding a larger nuclear war, as it showed the power and after affects of the bomb. Imagine the destruction if two countries with the bomb fought it out.
After World War II Truman faced a Communist Soviet Union that was bent on controlling much if not all of Europe. In defeating Hitler we gained another power hungry dictator to deal with, Joseph Stalin. The Yalta Conference in some ways drew up the lines in the Cold War. Franklin Roosevelt was naïve about Stalin, believing that he could later charm Stalin into a better deal, and he foolishly gave the Soviet Union dominion over Eastern Europe. Truman held no such illusions about Stalin. When Senator, Truman said that in the event of a war between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, that the United States might want to aid whomever is losing and watch the two fight each other to the death. Truman announced the “Truman Doctrine” which stated that the United States would aid countries fighting against communist domination. He formed NATO to stop a further spread of Soviet domination in Europe and he sent aid to Greece and Turkey under the Truman Doctrine. The Marshall plan further gave over $13 billion in aid to rebuild war torn countries in Europe. When the Soviet Union blockaded West Berlin as a way to force the Western Allies, Truman came up with the ingenious Berlin Airlift. Rather than risk a war with the Soviets he supplied the city via the air. After a year the Soviets relented and withdrew the blockade.
Whereas Truman had an excellent foreign policy in Europe, his policies in Asia were far more mixed. The first issue in Asia was what to do with Japan. From 1945 to 1952 occupation forces in Japan instituted widespread reforms that transformed Japan from an absolute monarchy to a parliamentary system like the United Kingdom. In China Truman made a major mistake in implementing an arms embargo that left the Nationalist Chinese led By Chiang Kai Shek at an disadvantage to the Communist led by Moa Zedong which were backed by the Soviet Union. George Marshall felt that could force a peaceful resolution to the Chinese civil war with this embargo, but his miscalculation led to the fall of the Nationalist on mainland China. Chiang Kai Shek and his forces were forced to flee to Taiwan in December of 1949. People say that Truman was unfairly accused of losing China, but had he followed his own Truman Doctrine and containment policies, the Nationalist wouldn’t have been completely defeated, and might have been able to completely defeat the Communist themselves.
On January 12, 1950 Secretary of State Dean Acheson made a speech before the National Press Club that outline the United State’s defense perimeter in Asia that left out both South Korea and Taiwan. This speech combined with the withdraw of most American Troops in South Korea emboldened the North Koreans, backed by their Soviet allies, to invade the South in the hopes of uniting the peninsula under a communist regime. Truman entered the war without congressional approval as part of a United Nations “police action” to repel the invading forces. Once the United States got the upper hand in the war, it was quickly turned from one to expel the Northern Communist to an offensive war to take the whole Korean Peninsula. The Chinese warned the U.N. forces to not push to the Yalu River, which is the border between Korea and China. MacArthur convinced Truman that the Chinese would not enter the war if the U.N. forces took all of Korea up to the Yalu River. MacArthur was wanting China to enter the war so that an invasion of China could commence. As forces marched towards the river China entered the war, where it eventually stalemated near the 38th parallel. This was the situation that Truman bequeathed to Eisenhower.
MacArthur was wanting an all out war with China, even if it meant pulling the Soviets into the war. Not being able to convince Truman to give him what he needed to “win the war” in Korea, which consisted of dozens of nuclear weapons, MacArthur turned to public statements to undermine the Truman administration. Truman had no choice but to relieve the popular general of command.
In April of 1950 NSC-68 was issued, which stated that the United States should use military force to contain communism regardless of the strategic or economic value of the country being defended. Truman pledged to defend Taiwan and to support French Forces in Indochina, which planted the seeds of the Vietnam war.
In 1917 the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, which called for the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine. The Declaration was formally approved by the League of Nations in 1922, and passed as a joint resolution in the United States Congress and signed by Warren Harding. When the time was coming for the partition of Palestine and the formation of Israel, Truman backed the process and the United States was the first country to officially recognize Israel as a country. Some historians have faulted Truman for his “choice” of creating a Jewish state in the middle east, and blame him for the subsequent violence. As you can see, it was the British that chose the location, and it was widely backed up by the international community long before Israel became a country.
After World War II Truman was tasked with transitioning from a wartime economy back to a peacetime economy. This was a rough transition, but it was far superior to that after the two other big wars the United States had fought: The Civil War and World War I. After the civil war Andrew Johnson’s policies and defiance of reconstruction set African Americans back over 100 years. Woodrow Wilson allowed the country to go into an economic tailspin and he never demobilized in the two years he served after World War I ended. In 1949 both unemployment increased during the first six months of the year. To fight this slowdown Truman cut taxes and the economy recovered in 1950. Truman did propose his “Fair Deal” domestic program in January 1949, except an increase in the federal minimum wage these measures were largely ignored.
Between 1945 and 1946 there was a large wave of strikes across several industries. The strikes abated until the start of the Korean War. In May of 1946 Truman seized control of the railroads when a national strike was threatened. In April of 1952 Truman seized the Steel Industry. The steel companies to court and won a 6-3 decision stating that Truman’s seizures were unconstitutional. Despite being probably the biggest strike breaking president in history, he salvaged his standing with labor by opposing the Taft-Hartley Act. The Taft-Hartley Act including the following provisions :
- Outlawing the closed shop, which required workers to join a union and to pay dues before they could even be considered for a job
- outlawed secondary boycotts, where a union could force members to boycott a third party company
- Unions were prohibited from charging excessive union dues or initiation fees
- It outlawed “featherbedding” which is forcing companies to pay for work that wasn’t performed
- It imposed the same requirement to bargain in good faith on unions that The Wagner Act had imposed on businesses
- It allowed for right to work states, where people wouldn’t have to be forced to join a union if they didn’t want to
On the front of civil rights Truman created a civil rights committee in 1946. This committee made several recommendations, which Truman supported in his State of the Union speeches in 1947 and 1948, but he never pushed for legislation from Congress. In 1948 Truman made two executive orders, one ordered the desegregation of the military and the other guaranteed fair employment practices in the civil service. It could be argued that Truman’s support for civil rights as well as his opposition to Taft-Hartley were done for political purposes. Once the 1948 election was won, Truman dropped his support of civil rights. Truman had used many of the provisions in the Taft-Hartley Act all the while arguing against it to hold an important democratic constituency, union workers.
Another tactic that Truman used in the 1948 election was to attack the “do nothing” 80th Congress. He used a political ploy to send a bunch of legislative ideas for the Congress to pass in a short time, which he knew was impossible. He didn’t send any fleshed out bills just vague outlines. In reality the 80th Congress passed 906 public bills including many major pieces of legislation including:
- Aid to Greece and Turkey
- The Marshall Plan
- The National Security Act of 1947-restructuring the military and intelligence agencies
- The Taft-Hartley Act (Over Truman’s Veto)
- Tax relief (Over Truman’s Veto)
- Presidential Succession Act of 1947 (Set the current succession for the President)
- Passed the 22nd Amendment limiting Presidents to two terms (Later ratified)
Overall Harry Truman was a very good president. He followed a mostly excellent foreign policy, with the exceptions of losing China and his setbacks in Korea. He presided mostly over prosperity and added little debt to the federal government. He didn’t have much of a domestic legacy due to his “fair Deal” being rejected by both the Republican controlled 80th Congress and the later Democratic controlled 81st & 82nd Congresses, but he did return the United States to a freer market system than the one during the great depression, which aided future economic growth.