Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman began his life as what many belittled, believing him to be a failure. He was born into a world of obscure poverty in Lamar, Missouri. He grew up for most of his childhood in an equally-obscure village called Independence, also in Missouri. His eyesight confined visibility only to what was immediately in front of him, rendering him unable to join the military or play sports, separating him from two of his greatest passions. He couldn't afford to go to college, trapping him in the miserable life of a bank clerk. But even this profession was stolen from him. In 1906, he had to leave the bank to help out on his father's farm. When Woodrow Wilson realized that US involvement in WW1 had become necessary following the Zimmermann Telegram, Truman opted to serve his country in Europe's curious bloodbath, memorizing an eyechart in order to sneak into the ranks of the armed services. After the war, he worked with his friend Eddie Jacobs to set up a haberdashery in Kansas City, Missouri, which operated only from 1919 to 1922, when a recession forced it to fall apart.

With his sole accomplishments in life now relics of the past, Truman was desperate. He decided to become a judge, working as the judge of the eastern portion of Jackson County, Missouri. He became judge for the entire county in 1927, an office he held until 1934 when he entered the Senate. Truman became a beloved figure in the Senate, as he chaired the titular Truman Committee: The Truman Committee was a small group of Congressmen who worked to fight overspending and inefficiency in the military budget, a topic of vital importance during World War 2. His efforts here saved taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, carving out Truman as one of contemporary America's heroes. When the Democratic Party was looking to replace FDR's controversial vice president Henry Wallace during the 1944 election, Truman was the obvious choice.

By 1944 and 1945. Franklin D. Roosevelt was an emaciated, aching husk of the man inaugurated in 1933. Once a spry man of energy and enthusiasm, Roosevelt was not skinny, tired, and depressed, carrying a puffy face painted with dark circles under his eyes. A fourth term, even if it was necessary for maintaining wartime stability, was obviously too much for the man. On April 12, 1945, Roosevelt randomly died in the middle of preparing a speech for Jefferson Day. Harry S. Truman, who just 2 decades ago was a 40-year-old man devoid of characteristics anyone would admire, was now president of the United States amidst the greatest crisis in human history. As Truman himself would later term it, the Sun, Moon, and all the stars fell onto his lap. Like John Adams after George Washington and Andrew Johnson after Abraham Lincoln, Truman was tasked with living in the shadow of and replacing the image of one of America's greatest presidents. But I would argue Truman did better than both of them!

The first portion of the Truman presidency was actually very flawed in my opinion. It did not match the brilliance and grace of the rest of his tenure. A few weeks after Truman took office, Nazi Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945. Now, only one Axis power was left: Japan. Before dedicating his energy toward Japan, Truman met with the other leaders of the Big 3 - Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union and Winston Churchill of Britain (who was soon replaced by Clement Attlee) - and on August 2, 1945, signed the treaty ending WW2, the Potsdam Agreement. There were great elements of the Potsdam Agreement, such as soliciting Soviet and British support in the war against Japan and the Allied occupation of Germany, setting up the framework for de-Nazifaction. These terms help Truman's score. However, the Potsdam Agreement also allowed Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to deport ethnic Germans, which definitely harms Truman's ranking.

On August 6, and 9, 1945, Truman used nuclear weapons against the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in order to scare Tokyo into surrender. It seemed to work, as Japan accepted the terms of the Potsdam Agreement on August 15, 1945. They also agreed to an Allied occupation on August 28, 1945, and fully surrendered on September 2, 1945. However, there were deeper causes here than simply Truman's use of the nukes. As mandated by the Potsdam Agreement, the Soviet Union declared war on the Soviet Union on August 8, 1945, which historians agree contributed to Japan's surrender. Additionally, mostly due to the war with Moscow and the numerous losses amidst the island-hopping campaign, Japan was likely going to surrender soon regardless of whether or not Truman used nuclear weapons. Even Truman's general and future-President Dwight D. Eisenhower acknowledged this. It was an unnecessary bout of carnage for Truman to use nukes against Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and so that decision hurts his score.

After WW2, Europe was split between the US and the Soviet Union, with Washington DC being asked to rebuild Western Europe in the wake of the war and Moscow being asked to rebuild Eastern Europe in the wake of the war. Truman went on to launch the Marshall Plan, which provided droves of food, clothing, medicine, financial assistance, and other scarce resources to the western half of Europe. Named after Truman's Secretary of State George Marshall, this policy halted untold amounts of human suffering and spared thousands of lives. For this reason, the Marshall Plan dramatically raises Truman's score, even with the useless appropriation of nukes and the flaws with the Potsdam Agreement in mind. However, this postwar framework - where rebuilding Western Europe was an American responsibility and rebuilding Eastern Europe was a Soviet responsibility - also led to the Cold War. Stalin used his power to set up Leninist puppet states across the Slavic world. While I am highly critical of this imperialist behavior by Stalin, I also dislike Truman's response.

On March 12, 1947, Truman appeared before Congress and gave a speech in which he outlined the Truman Doctrine. Through this foreign policy initiative, Truman said that the US would tolerate the existence of Soviet socialism where it was already present. Any attempt to spread that system, however, would be met with challenges by the United States. With this, the Cold War began. To be fair, the Truman Doctrine wasn't the worst way Truman could assert his opposition to the Soviet Union. Had he actively tried to topple Soviet influence where it already existed, he would be much lower on my list. I despise how authoritarian the Soviet Union was, but it is equally heinous and despotic for the US to tell countries aligned with the USSR what they are to do. In fact, if the Truman Doctrine never existed and the US occasionally decided simply to fight the growth of Soviet influence whenever it was violent or coercive, then I would support the presidents chairing such an effort. But by making such fights the obligation of America, the Truman Doctrine set the path for many 20th-century conflicts.

With all of that in mind, the Marshall Plan and many of Truman's other accomplishments, I believe, easily outweigh the harm caused by his earliest years in office. Even during that disappointing era, Truman had real accolades that maintain his status as a top 5 president. For instance, he was the first world leader to extend diplomatic recognition to the State of Israel. While Truman did approve the use of hydrogen bombs and while I dislike this, he also improved America's relations with the outside world by securing our membership in NATO and in the UN. Domestically, Truman was a huge supporter of civil rights. He and FDR both worked to curtail the abuse of black government employees, with Truman issuing an executive order that desegregated the military. Truman also formally allowed women to join the armed forces. Roosevelt and Truman's dedication to equality for soldiers and government employees helped inspire the Civil Rights Movement.

In order to keep the American economy afloat in the wake of WW2, Truman signed the Employment Act of 1946. This law required the president to, within 10 days of Congress announcing its budget for an upcoming year, submit his plan for economic policy within that same year. The law also founded the Joint Economic Committee to review these presidential economic policy agendas and established the Council of Economic Advisors, i.e. a collection of economists tasked with helping the president on financial issues. The Employment Act of 1946 not only helped the federal government coordinate what became the post-WW2 fiscal prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s but also improved the efficiency and benefits of federal economic legislation ever since its passage. Truman implemented other beneficial economic reforms. For instance, he set up the National School Lunch Program to provide free or at least affordable school meals for impoverished children.

Something people often criticize Truman for is that he didn't do enough to help Chiang Kai-Shek of the Kuomintang Party fight Mao Zedong and the CCP during the Chinese Civil War. As someone who has studied Mao's regime in-depth - from the Great Leap Forward to the purges following the Hundred Flowers Campaign to the Cultural Revolution - I am deeply familiar with the details of Mao's tyranny and incompetence. I absolutely agree that the world would be a better place had Mao never gotten one crumb of political power. That said, Truman was by no means obligated to help China save itself from Maoist despotism. Ultimately, there was one institution with the responsibility of helping China escape Mao, and that institution was China. If America was forced to quell every single problem spotted on the globe, we would never be able to do anything for ourselves! Regardless, Truman did work to prevent Mao from getting into office. He tried to set up peace talks between the KMT and CCP, which is vastly preferable toward violent action.

Mao took over as the leader of China on October 1, 1949, when he founded the People's Republic of China. About a year prior, in 1948, Truman unexpectedly defeated Republican Thomas Dewey in that year's election. On January 20, 1949, Truman took the oath of office to begin his first and only full term in the White House. 2 weeks before initiating his new tenure, Truman gave his 1949 State of the Union address on January 5 of that same year. In this speech, he launched a campaign of economic and social reforms known as the Square Deal. Named in honor of FDR's famous New Deal, the Fair Deal had 5 goals: Expanding civil rights, expanding the Social Security Administration, providing free healthcare and free homes to poor Americans, providing financial aid to teachers and farmers, and raising the minimum wage. Republican opposition largely stifled the Fair Deal (though Truman was still able to expand public housing and raise the minimum wage), but I think this project would have greatly benefitted the US.

Another reason the Fair Deal wound up incomplete is that a major foreign policy crisis distracted Americans from Truman's domestic agenda. And it is that crisis that I believe holds Truman's best accomplishments and is the main impetus for his status as a top 5 president. On June 25, 1950, with the permission of Joseph Stalin, Kim Il-sung (the leader of North Korea) invaded South Korea, sparking the Korean War. Truman was outraged and, on June 27, 1950, sent troops to help fight off the North Korean ambush. As he made very clear, Truman did not want to topple the North Korean government altogether, as Pyongyang had been subject to Soviet influence before the annunciation of the Truman Doctrine in 1947. However, he was determined to preserve South Korean independence. The war originally went horribly for the US and South Korea. The North Korean military was far better-trained than that of South Korea and no South Korean troops were actually prepared for the attack. 1950 was also one of the hottest summers on record, causing many American soldiers to drink ricefield water littered with feces out of desperation.

Truman and Truman's generals realized they had to take a new approach if they were going to win the war. American and South Korean military leaders ultimately decided to work toward toppling North Korea instead and to do so on North Korean soil. On September 21, 1950, Western forces invaded North Korea through the Inch'on Landings. This was far more successful, and North Korean forces were soon being repelled all the way to the Yalu River, which served as the border between North Korea and China. This, however, threatened to provoke a much broader crisis, which Truman avoided! Mao Zedong began to fear that if US and South Korean forces crossed the Yalu River, they would launch an invasion into China. So, on October 19, 1950, Mao sent Chinese reinforcements to back up North Korea's collapsing position. Truman realized that a global war could be imminent and started to work toward preventing that.

Perhaps the best single decision made by the Truman Administration came in the spring of 1951. On March 8, 1951, Douglas MacArthur (one of America's premiere generals in the Korean War) wrote a letter to Congressman Joseph Martin in which he, MacArthur, admitted that he was planning to provoke China and the Soviet Union into a third world war where the beast of international communism could be slain. Martin wisely revealed the contents of the letter to the press, and the message soon reached Truman. On April 11, 1951, an irate Truman fired his reckless ideologue of a general, saving perhaps hundreds of millions of lives in the process. A few months later, on July 10, 1951, peace talks began. Eisenhower ended the Korean War as a whole in 1953. Through his leadership in the Korean War, Truman both preserved South Korea's independence and prevented nuclear catastrophe!

Harry S. Truman was, in my opinion, one of America's greatest presidents. This is true in spite of his flaws. He did not need to use nukes against Japan and likely wasted lives that did not need to be destroyed in the process. Starting the Cold War was irresponsible and there was no need for a hydrogen bomb when the US military was already as strong as it was. But with all of that in mind, the good still outweighs the bad by orders of magnitude. Truman desegregated the military, let women join the armed forces, helped inspire the civil rights activism of the 50s and 60s through his work, fought for the rights of the working class, provided affordable school lunches to poor students, improved federal economic legislation and planning, tried to resolve the Chinese Civil War, helped Europe rebuild from WW2, and, most importantly, halted the Korean War before it could snowball into World War 3.