History UsefulNotes / HarryTruman

* The one-man play and film ''Give 'Em Hell, Harry!'' (his campaign slogan in 1948) feature James Whitmore as Truman. A performance of this was filmed in 1976 and Whitmore received an [[AcademyAward Oscar nomination]]. This is one of only three times that every credited cast member received a nomination, the others being ''Theatre/WhosAfraidOfVirginiaWoolf'' and ''Theatre/{{Sleuth}}''.

* Makes a minor appearance at the end of the {{Timeline-191}} AlternateHistory series by HarryTurtledove as the Democratic nominee for vice-president in the post-war election of 1944 (Thomas Dewey is the top half of the ticket). When they pull off a surprise victory against the Socialist Party incumbnent (Charles M. [=LaFollette=]), Truman is seen holding a copy of the ''Chicago Tribune'' with the headline ''[=LaFollette=] Beats Dewey''.

Missouri-born Truman was the last American president who never went to college; he was a very good student in high school and had had his heart set on attending [[MilitaryAcademy West Point]], but his [[BlindWithoutEm extremely poor eyesight]] kept him from getting an appointment; he enrolled in business school and law school later on (you could do that without a degree back then) but didn't have the heart for it (because it wasn't West Point) and dropped out fairly quickly. He is the last American President to never earn a college degree. Despite his eyesight, he managed to serve in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI by memorizing the eye chart, serving in the artillery in the Missouri National Guard. He reached the rank of captain by the time Germany surrendered and the battery under his command did not lose a single man thanks to the Entente Cordiale's massive (more than 3:1 and increasing) superiority in artillery and doctrinal emphasis on counter-battery fire (i.e. anti-artillery artillery fire, something easier when you have more artillery to begin with). His experience in command served as the basis of a political career that would eventually lead him to the Senate in 1935. Between then, he owned a haberdashery (a men’s clothing store) and did various odd jobs after that didn't work out. Somehow, he managed to attract the eye of the UsefulNotes/KansasCity/Jackson County Democratic machine, led by a [[CorruptPolitician somewhat unpleasant fellow]] by the name of Tom Pendergast. Pendergast used his leverage to get Truman elected a county judge (which in Missouri actually means "county commissioner"--the position is legislative rather than judicial), which Truman himself leveraged into appointment as director of one of the state’s New Deal programs during TheGreatDepression. He was elected Senator from Missouri in 1934, against Pendergast's judgment (he backed Truman reluctantly).[[note]]Although Truman benefited from the Pendergast machine, historians are sure Truman was never himself corrupt.[[/note]] In 1941, he was appointed head of what was known as the Truman Committee, which investigated and exposed government waste in the [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII war effort]] and brought Truman to the national spotlight. Roosevelt, impressed by the attention Truman was attracting, chose him as his running mate in the 1944 election; this was nicknamed the “second [[UsefulNotes/JamesMonroe Missouri Compromise]]” by the press.

Less than three months after assuming this new office, Truman suddenly found himself the sitting President after Roosevelt died. Germany, already on the verge of defeat, surrendered weeks after he succeeded (on his 61st birthday, actually), but Japan proved more problematic. The atomic bombs, which were supposed to be used against the Germans, were fully developed just after Germany surrendered. Truman was never told about the Manhattan Project until he was the President (hell, [[UsefulNotes/JosefStalin Stalin]] and his spies knew more about it than he did!), which is very controversial among historians. Truman vowed to continue Roosevelt’s “unconditional surrender” policy, and turned down Japan’s attempts at a conditional surrender. Additionally, all of his military advisors predicted that millions would die, civilian and American soldier alike, if a land invasion was attempted. Despite this, [[UsefulNotes/DwightEisenhower one military advisor]] who '''did''' know about the secret superbomb, when asked by Truman about it, said, "Brilliant new invention, '''don't use it'''". [[note]]Eisenhower's reasoning ''was'' sound: As a seasoned general he was (on principle) opposed to using a ''prototype'' of '''any'''thing in combat where it could kill at least as many of your ''own'' forces as it could of the enemy.[[/note]] Against this backdrop, Truman decided to risk it and approved the atomic bombs that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leading to unconditional surrender. While the merits (if any) of dropping the bombs have been debated for decades, what ''isn’t'' debated is that it led to the Soviet Union escalating their own nuclear research, which escalated the UsefulNotes/ColdWar.

On the domestic front, the economy entered a recession during his first term as the economy tried to adjust to large numbers of returning veterans. Additionally, labor unions that hushed up during the war years started to increase public activity and, in some cases, organize strikes. By the end of the decade, the economy settled down and prosperity and growth was widespread during most of UsefulNotes/TheFifties and UsefulNotes/TheSixties. He also, in a move that added some much-needed help to the growing CivilRightsMovement, desegregated the U.S. military in 1948 because of his disgust over the way African-American war veterans were treated; the fact that it also saved some tax dollars getting rid of that ridiculous redundancy helped sell it too. Truman was the first President to really call for full rights for African Americans - he proposed civil rights legislation to Congress (they were defeated, sadly) and he was also the first to speak in front of the NAACP. During his second term, [[RedScare anti-Communist hysteria]], led from the Senate by Wisconsin Republican Joseph [=McCarthy=], started to spread throughout the nation, leading to the formation of the (infamous) House Un-American Activities Committee. Truman called his domestic policy, which included national health care and civil rights bills, the “Fair Deal,” though the conservative coalition in Congress (Republicans and right-leaning Democrats from the DeepSouth) prevented most of them from getting passed. (Ironically, a universal health care plan far more liberal than that of UsefulNotes/BarackObama was pursued, but defeated in Congress.) Years later, UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson would pass many bills similar to what Truman proposed. In fact, Johnson signed the Medicare bill in Truman’s house and gave the first two Medicare cards to the former president and his wife, Bess.[[note]]And Truman had long been on the verge of ''needing'' Medicare; on account of his meager pre-politics savings (from all his failed business ventures) Truman was all but impoverished upon retiring from the presidency. His only source of income was his army pension, which wasn't very much (just over $100 annually, which wasn't much even then--less than $900 in 2015 dollars). He pulled back up by taking out a loan to write his memoirs, which turned out to be quite successful, but the public was sufficiently appalled by the fact that a past president would have to do that just to live that it gave the impetus for the first-ever presidential pensions.[[/note]]

* PapaWolf: His daughter, Margaret, was an aspiring concert soprano. When one of her concerts was poorly reviewed, he informed the critic that he would need "a new nose and plenty of beefsteak, [[GroinAttack and perhaps a supporter below]]."

Truman was known for his honesty and responsibility. Famously, the plaque on his desk stated "The Buck Stops Here," his promise to take full responsibility for all of the actions of the Executive Branch. However, his loyalty to the political friends he appointed sometimes came back to haunt him; some of them were pretty corrupt and caused a few scandals, though Truman himself was never involved. He was also famous for being very plainspoken and "telling it how it is." While he was still President, Truman [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments wrote a very scathing letter]] to a critic who wrote [[PapaWolf a negative review of his daughter’s concert]]. Most famously, when he read [=MacArthur=]'s speech to Congress after he got sacked, Truman turned to the Army Secretary and said [[DeadpanSnarker “Nothing but a bunch of damn bullshit.”]] His wife Bess lived to be 97 years old, making her the longest-lived First Lady. While he was in office, the White House was found to be in such dire shape that it needed immediate emergency renovations. The ''entire interior'' of the building was destroyed and rebuilt, and Truman spent most of his second term in the Blair House, the official state guest house for the President. The exterior of the building was kept intact, though, because it was too iconic to lose. He also built a new second-floor balcony on the House's south side, which is still known as the Truman Balcony.

Truman is most famous, however, for his foreign policy achievements. He passed the Marshall Plan, General and Secretary of State George C. Marshall’s plan to rebuild the nations of western Europe (and prevent the spread of Communism there) by pouring billions of dollars of aid money into their ruined economies. Truman recognized Israel (eleven minutes after they declared independence, actually) [[note]]His involvement in the formation of Israel as a state goes rather deeper than this. During the immediate aftermath of WW2, Britain was nominally in charge of the Palestinian territory and was attempting to reach a conclusion to the issue that allowed a Jewish diaspora into Palestine without completely displacing the resident Palestinians. The Zionist movement wanted them to accelerate Jewish movement into Palestine and basically allow them to form Israel unimpeded, which Britain opposed because of its commitments to the Arab world (and need to maintain a good supply of Arab oil). And all this is to say nothing of the fact that even if the Arab links could be ignored, allowing more Jewish immigration would (1) potentially displace Palestinians, presenting a moral as well as a practical dilemma and (2) perhaps more importantly, incense the Palestinians even further, which was not only bad for the people living there but also cost the already-overstretched British Empire even more men and money at a time that UsefulNotes/ClementAttlee was trying to build more or less the same welfare state Truman wanted to build--but ''succeeding'', and the success didn't come cheap. For various reasons, Britain needed America's backing in trying to pursue a "two-state solution", but Truman, in the depths of his re-election campaign, needed support from the powerful Jewish organisations in the Northeast, and in particular their money. Although most of these organizations were fine with a "two-state" solution, a few weren't, and even among those that were, many American Jewish activists were impatient for the establishment of a Jewish state and regarded the processes the British were engaging in as delaying tactics (which, in fairness, they were) and regarded the Palestinian leadership as obstructionist (and, in fairness, they were rather obstinate). As a result, Truman equivocated, forcing Britain to deal with the problem more or less alone, and dooming the Palestinians to their eventual fate. He did try to support them more after re-elected, but by that point the genie was out of the bottle.[[/note]] and began America’s policy of providing support to that nation. He also did the same to Taiwan after [[RedChina mainland China became communist]]. The Cold War kicked off almost immediately after the war in Europe ended, and Truman supported a policy of the “containment” of communism throughout the world, known as the "Truman Doctrine." This included the founding of several international alliances (most importantly, NATO), organizing the airlift of food and other supplies to West Berlin during the Soviet blockade, and sending American aid to nations that were fighting communism, such as Greece and Turkey. Most famously, he sent American troops as part of a UN-joint military mission into [[UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar Korea]] when the Communist [[UsefulNotes/NorthKorea north]] invaded the democratic [[UsefulNotes/SouthKorea south]]. Led by General UsefulNotes/DouglasMacArthur (who lead American troops on the Pacific front during World War II), the UN forces pushed the North Koreans out of the South and then invaded North Korea in an attempt to free all of the Korean peninsula from communism. [=MacArthur=], however, ignored RedChina’s warning not to approach the border, and Chinese forces got involved and pushed the UN forces back to the 38th parallel. [=MacArthur=] proposed that America [[GeneralRipper directly attacks China with thermonuclear weapons]], which Truman rejected. Afterwards, [=MacArthur=] tried to obtain permission from the Joint Chief of Staff to use nuclear weapons without the president's permission to continue the assault on China, which prompted an angered Truman to fire him. The war in Korea remained a stalemate until UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower negotiated an end to the conflict. The {{CIA}} was also formed during his presidency.

On the domestic front, the economy entered a recession during his first term as the economy tried to adjust to large numbers of returning veterans. Additionally, labor unions that hushed up during the war years started to increase public activity and, in some cases, organize strikes. By the end of the decade, the economy settled down and prosperity and growth was widespread during most of UsefulNotes/TheFifties and UsefulNotes/TheSixties. He also, in a move that added some much-needed help to the growing CivilRightsMovement, desegregated the U.S. military in 1948 because of his disgust over the way African-American war veterans were treated; the fact that it also saved some tax dollars getting rid of that ridiculous redundancy helped sell it too. Truman was the first President to really call for full rights for African Americans - he proposed civil rights legislation to Congress (they were defeated, sadly) and he was also the first to speak in front of the NAACP. During his second term, [[RedScare anti-Communist hysteria]], led from the Senate by Wisconsin Republican Joseph [=McCarthy=], started to spread throughout the nation, leading to the formation of the (infamous) House Un-American Activities Committee. Truman called his domestic policy, which included national health care and civil rights bills, the “Fair Deal,” though the conservative coalition in Congress (Republicans and right-leaning Democrats from the DeepSouth) prevented most of them from getting passed. (Ironically, a universal health care plan far more liberal than that of UsefulNotes/BarackObama was pursued, but defeated in Congress.) Years later, UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson would pass many bills similar to what Truman proposed. In fact, Johnson signed the Medicare bill in Truman’s house and gave the first two Medicare cards to the former president and his wife, Bess.[[note]]And Truman had long been on the verge of ''needing'' Medicare; on account of his meager pre-politics savings (from all his failed business ventures) Truman was all but impoverished upon retiring from the presidency. His only source of income was his army pension, which wasn't very much (just over $100 annually). He pulled back up by taking out a loan to write his memoirs, which turned out to be quite successful, but the public was sufficiently appalled by the fact that a past president would have to do that just to live that it gave the impetus for the first-ever presidential pensions.[[/note]]

Truman is most famous, however, for his foreign policy achievements. He passed the Marshall Plan, General and Secretary of State George C. Marshall’s plan to rebuild the nations of western Europe (and prevent the spread of Communism there) by pouring billions of dollars of aid money into their ruined economies. Truman recognized Israel (eleven minutes after they declared independence, actually) [[note]]His involvement in the formation of Israel as a state goes rather deeper than this. During the immediate aftermath of WW2, Britain was nominally in charge of the Palestinian territory and was attempting to reach a conclusion to the issue that allowed a Jewish diaspora into Palestine without completely displacing the resident Palestinians. The Zionist movement wanted them to accelerate Jewish movement into Palestine and basically allow them to form Israel unimpeded, which Britain opposed because of its commitments to the Arab world (and need to maintain a good supply of Arab oil). And all this is to say nothing of the fact that even if the Arab links could be ignored, allowing more Jewish immigration would (1) potentially displace Palestinians, presenting a moral as well as a practical dilemma and (2) perhaps more importantly, incense the Palestinians even further, which was not only bad for the people living there but also cost the already-overstretched British Empire even more men and money at a time that UsefulNotes/ClementAttlee was trying to build more or less the same welfare state Truman wanted to build--but ''succeeding'', and the success didn't come cheap. For various reasons, Britain needed America's backing in trying to pursue a "two-state solution", but Truman, in the depths of his re-election campaign, needed support from the powerful Jewish organisations in the North-east, and in particular their money. As a result he equivocated, forcing Britain to deal with the problem more or less alone, and dooming the Palestinians to their eventual fate. He did try to support them more after re-elected, but by that point the genie was out of the bottle.[[/note]] and began America’s policy of providing support to that nation. He also did the same to Taiwan after [[RedChina mainland China became communist]]. The Cold War kicked off almost immediately after the war in Europe ended, and Truman supported a policy of the “containment” of communism throughout the world, known as the "Truman Doctrine." This included the founding of several international alliances (most importantly, NATO), organizing the airlift of food and other supplies to West Berlin during the Soviet blockade, and sending American aid to nations that were fighting communism, such as Greece and Turkey. Most famously, he sent American troops as part of a UN-joint military mission into [[UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar Korea]] when the Communist [[UsefulNotes/NorthKorea north]] invaded the democratic [[UsefulNotes/SouthKorea south]]. Led by General UsefulNotes/DouglasMacArthur (who lead American troops on the Pacific front during World War II), the UN forces pushed the North Koreans out of the South and then invaded North Korea in an attempt to free all of the Korean peninsula from communism. [=MacArthur=], however, ignored RedChina’s warning not to approach the border, and Chinese forces got involved and pushed the UN forces back to the 38th parallel. [=MacArthur=] proposed that America [[GeneralRipper directly attacks China with thermonuclear weapons]], which Truman rejected. Afterwards, [=MacArthur=] tried to obtain permission from the Joint Chief of Staff to use nuclear weapons without the president's permission to continue the assault on China, which prompted an angered Truman to fire him. The war in Korea remained a stalemate until UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower negotiated an end to the conflict. The {{CIA}} was also formed during his presidency.

'''Harry S. Truman''' (May 8, 1884 -- December 26, 1972) was the 33rd President of the United States (serving from [[UsefulNotes/TheForties 1945]]-[[UsefulNotes/TheFifties 1953]]), following FDR and preceding [[UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower Eisenhower]], and was the eleventh from the Democratic Party. He was the seventh Vice President to succeed to the presidency, taking over from UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt after he died three months into his fourth term. His middle name ''is'' actually [[OneLetterName just an "S"]]; it was tradition among Scots-Irish families to name boys after their grandfathers, and his parents wanted to please both of his grandfathers, “Solomon” and “Shippe,” that way. The Twenty-second Amendment, which limits presidents to a maximum of two complete terms, was ratified while he was in office, but it grandfather-claused him, making him the last president who could have served more than two terms.[[note]]The actual amendment is a bit more nuanced than that; it prohibits any holder of that office from serving more than two full terms ''and more than half of another president's term'', which meant that UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson could technically have run for a second full term in 1968 and would have been above board.[[/note]] He still decided not to run for a third term both to honor UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington’s tradition and because of his massive unpopularity during his second term.[[note]]As did LBJ.[[/note]]

** ''Canned'' eggs, at that...
*** [[http://www.google.com/search?q=%22canned+eggs%22 Oh, they're far from impossible...]]

* InterServiceRivalry: If you want to know what the US military was doing in the Truman Presidency in between the Japanese surrender and the start of the Korean Ŵar, this is it. All three fought for their share of a shrinking budget, and control over the new fanged nukes. The fights between the Navy and the newly created USAF were especially epic.

Missouri-born Truman was the last American president who never went to college; he was a very good student in high school and had had his heart set on attending [[MilitaryAcademy West Point]], but his [[BlindWithoutEm extremely poor eyesight]] kept him from getting an appointment; he enrolled in business school and law school later on (you could do that without a degree back then) but didn't have the heart for it (because it wasn't West Point) and dropped out fairly quickly. He is the last American President to never earn a college degree. Despite his eyesight, he managed to serve in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI by memorizing the eye chart, serving in the artillery in the Missouri National Guard. He reached the rank of captain by the time Germany surrendered and the battery under his command did not lose a single man thanks to the Entente Cordiale's massive 3:1 superiority in artillery and doctrinal emphasis on counter-battery fire (i.e. anti-artillery artillery fire, something easier when you have more artillery to begin with). His experience in command served as the basis of a political career that would eventually lead him to the Senate in 1935. Between then, he owned a haberdashery (a men’s clothing store) and did various odd jobs after that didn't work out. Somehow, he managed to attract the eye of the UsefulNotes/KansasCity/Jackson County Democratic machine, led by a [[CorruptPolitician somewhat unpleasant fellow]] by the name of Tom Pendergast. Pendergast used his leverage to get Truman elected a county judge (which in Missouri actually means "county commissioner"--the position is legislative rather than judicial), which Truman himself leveraged into appointment as director of one of the state’s New Deal programs during TheGreatDepression. He was elected Senator from Missouri in 1934, against Pendergast's judgment (he backed Truman reluctantly).[[note]]Although Truman benefited from the Pendergast machine, historians are sure Truman was never himself corrupt.[[/note]] In 1941, he was appointed head of what was known as the Truman Committee, which investigated and exposed government waste in the [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII war effort]] and brought Truman to the national spotlight. Roosevelt, impressed by the attention Truman was attracting, chose him as his running mate in the 1944 election; this was nicknamed the “second [[UsefulNotes/JamesMonroe Missouri Compromise]]” by the press.

Missouri-born Truman was the last American president who never went to college; he was a very good student in high school and had had his heart set on attending [[MilitaryAcademy West Point]], but his [[BlindWithoutEm extremely poor eyesight]] kept him from getting an appointment; he enrolled in business school and law school later on (you could do that without a degree back then) but didn't have the heart for it (because it wasn't West Point) and dropped out fairly quickly. He is the last American President to never earn a college degree. Despite his eyesight, he managed to serve in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI by memorizing the eye chart, serving in the artillery in the Missouri National Guard. He reached the rank of captain by the time Germany surrendered and the battery under his command impressively did not lose a single man, which served as the basis of his political career that would eventually lead him to the Senate in 1935. Between then, he owned a haberdashery (a men’s clothing store) and did various odd jobs after that didn't work out. Somehow, he managed to attract the eye of the UsefulNotes/KansasCity/Jackson County Democratic machine, led by a [[CorruptPolitician somewhat unpleasant fellow]] by the name of Tom Pendergast. Pendergast used his leverage to get Truman elected a county judge (which in Missouri actually means "county commissioner"--the position is legislative rather than judicial), which Truman himself leveraged into appointment as director of one of the state’s New Deal programs during TheGreatDepression. He was elected Senator from Missouri in 1934, against Pendergast's judgment (he backed Truman reluctantly).[[note]]Although Truman benefited from the Pendergast machine, historians are sure Truman was never himself corrupt.[[/note]] In 1941, he was appointed head of what was known as the Truman Committee, which investigated and exposed government waste in the [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII war effort]] and brought Truman to the national spotlight. Roosevelt, impressed by the attention Truman was attracting, chose him as his running mate in the 1944 election; this was nicknamed the “second [[UsefulNotes/JamesMonroe Missouri Compromise]]” by the press.

->''"The Buck Stops Here"''\\
--'''Plaque on Truman's desk'''

->''"I'm From Missouri"''\\
--'''Other side of plaque on Truman's desk'''

Truman is most famous, however, for his foreign policy achievements. He passed the Marshall Plan, General and Secretary of State George C. Marshall’s plan to rebuild the nations of western Europe (and prevent the spread of Communism there) by pouring billions of dollars of aid money into their ruined economies. Truman recognized Israel (eleven minutes after they declared independence, actually) [[note]]His involvement in the formation of Israel as a state goes rather deeper than this. During the immediate aftermath of WW2, Britain was nominally in charge of the Palestinian territory and was attempting to reach a conclusion to the issue that allowed a Jewish diaspora into Palestine without completely displacing the resident Palestinians. The Zionist movement wanted them to accelerate Jewish movement into Palestine and basically allow them to form Israel unimpeded, which Britain opposed because of its commitments to the Arab world (and need to maintain a good supply of Arab oil). And all this is to say nothing of the fact that even if the Arab links could be ignored, allowing more Jewish immigration would (1) potentially displace Palestinians, presenting a moral as well as a practical dilemma and (2) perhaps more importantly, incense the Palestinians even further, which was not only bad for the people living there but also cost the already-overstretched British Empire even more men and money at a time that ClementAttlee was trying to build more or less the same welfare state Truman wanted to build--but ''succeeding'', and the success didn't come cheap. For various reasons, Britain needed America's backing in trying to pursue a "two-state solution", but Truman, in the depths of his re-election campaign, needed support from the powerful Jewish organisations in the North-east, and in particular their money. As a result he equivocated, forcing Britain to deal with the problem more or less alone, and dooming the Palestinians to their eventual fate. He did try to support them more after re-elected, but by that point the genie was out of the bottle.[[/note]] and began America’s policy of providing support to that nation. He also did the same to Taiwan after [[RedChina mainland China became communist]]. The Cold War kicked off almost immediately after the war in Europe ended, and Truman supported a policy of the “containment” of communism throughout the world, known as the "Truman Doctrine." This included the founding of several international alliances (most importantly, NATO), organizing the airlift of food and other supplies to West Berlin during the Soviet blockade, and sending American aid to nations that were fighting communism, such as Greece and Turkey. Most famously, he sent American troops as part of a UN-joint military mission into [[UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar Korea]] when the Communist [[UsefulNotes/NorthKorea north]] invaded the democratic [[UsefulNotes/SouthKorea south]]. Led by General UsefulNotes/DouglasMacArthur (who lead American troops on the Pacific front during World War II), the UN forces pushed the North Koreans out of the South and then invaded North Korea in an attempt to free all of the Korean peninsula from communism. [=MacArthur=], however, ignored RedChina’s warning not to approach the border, and Chinese forces got involved and pushed the UN forces back to the 38th parallel. [=MacArthur=] proposed that America [[GeneralRipper directly attacks China with thermonuclear weapons]], which Truman rejected. Afterwards, [=MacArthur=] tried to obtain permission from the Joint Chief of Staff to use nuclear weapons without the president's permission to continue the assault on China, which prompted an angered Truman to fire him. The war in Korea remained a stalemate until UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower negotiated an end to the conflict. The {{CIA}} was also formed during his presidency.

* InterServicesRivalry: If you want to know what the US military was doing in the Truman Presidency in between the Japanese surrender and the start of the Korean Ŵar, this is it. All three fought for their share of a shrinking budget, and control over the new fanged nukes. The fights between the Navy and the newly created USAF were especially epic.

'''Harry S. Truman''' (1884-1972) was the 33rd President of the United States (serving from [[UsefulNotes/TheForties 1945]]-[[UsefulNotes/TheFifties 1953]]), following FDR and preceding [[UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower Eisenhower]], and was the eleventh from the Democratic Party. He was the seventh Vice President to succeed to the presidency, taking over from UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt after he died three months into his fourth term. His middle name ''is'' actually [[OneLetterName just an "S"]]; it was tradition among Scots-Irish families to name boys after their grandfathers, and his parents wanted to please both of his grandfathers, “Solomon” and “Shippe,” that way. The Twenty-second Amendment, which limits presidents to a maximum of two complete terms, was ratified while he was in office, but it grandfather-claused him, making him the last president who could have served more than two terms.[[note]]The actual amendment is a bit more nuanced than that; it prohibits any holder of that office from serving more than two full terms ''and more than half of another president's term'', which meant that UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson could technically have run for a second full term in 1968 and would have been above board.[[/note]] He still decided not to run for a third term both to honor UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington’s tradition and because of his massive unpopularity during his second term.[[note]]As did LBJ.[[/note]]

Truman is most famous, however, for his foreign policy achievements. He passed the Marshall Plan, General and Secretary of State George C. Marshall’s plan to rebuild the nations of western Europe (and prevent the spread of Communism there) by pouring billions of dollars of aid money into their ruined economies. Truman recognized Israel (eleven minutes after they declared independence, actually) [[note]]His involvement in the formation of Israel as a state goes rather deeper than this. During the immediate aftermath of WW2, Britain was nominally in charge of the Palestinian territory and was attempting to reach a conclusion to the issue that allowed a Jewish diaspora into Palestine without completely displacing the resident Palestinians. The Zionist movement wanted them to accelerate Jewish movement into Palestine and basically allow them to form Israel unimpeded, which Britain opposed because of its commitments to the Arab world (and need to maintain a good supply of Arab oil). And all this is to say nothing of the fact that even if the Arab links could be ignored, allowing more Jewish immigration would (1) potentially displace Palestinians, presenting a moral as well as a practical dilemma and (2) perhaps more importantly, incense the Palestinians even further, which was not only bad for the people living there but also cost the already-overstretched British Empire even more men and money at a time that UsefulNotes/ClementAttlee was trying to build more or less the same welfare state Truman wanted to build--but ''succeeding'', and the success didn't come cheap. For various reasons, Britain needed America's backing in trying to pursue a "two-state solution", but Truman, in the depths of his re-election campaign, needed support from the powerful Jewish organisations in the North-east, and in particular their money. As a result he equivocated, forcing Britain to deal with the problem more or less alone, and dooming the Palestinians to their eventual fate. He did try to support them more after re-elected, but by that point the genie was out of the bottle.[[/note]] and began America’s policy of providing support to that nation. He also did the same to Taiwan after [[RedChina mainland China became communist]]. The Cold War kicked off almost immediately after the war in Europe ended, and Truman supported a policy of the “containment” of communism throughout the world, known as the "Truman Doctrine." This included the founding of several international alliances (most importantly, NATO), organizing the airlift of food and other supplies to West Berlin during the Soviet blockade, and sending American aid to nations that were fighting communism, such as Greece and Turkey. Most famously, he sent American troops as part of a UN-joint military mission into [[UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar Korea]] when the Communist [[UsefulNotes/NorthKorea north]] invaded the democratic [[UsefulNotes/SouthKorea south]]. Led by General UsefulNotes/DouglasMacArthur (who lead American troops on the Pacific front during World War II), the UN forces pushed the North Koreans out of the South and then invaded North Korea in an attempt to free all of the Korean peninsula from communism. [=MacArthur=], however, ignored RedChina’s warning not to approach the border, and Chinese forces got involved and pushed the UN forces back to the 38th parallel. [=MacArthur=] proposed that America [[GeneralRipper directly attacks China with thermonuclear weapons]], which Truman rejected. Afterwards, [=MacArthur=] tried to obtain permission from the Joint Chief of Staff to use nuclear weapons without the president's permission to continue the assault on China, which prompted an angered Truman to fire him. The war in Korea remained a stalemate until UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower negotiated an end to the conflict. The {{CIA}} was also formed during his presidency.

Truman is most famous, however, for his foreign policy achievements. He passed the Marshall Plan, General and Secretary of State George C. Marshall’s plan to rebuild the nations of western Europe (and prevent the spread of Communism there) by pouring billions of dollars of aid money into their ruined economies. Truman recognized Israel (eleven minutes after they declared independence, actually) [[note]]His involvement in the formation of Israel as a state goes rather deeper than this. During the immediate aftermath of WW2, Britain was nominally in charge of the Palestinian territory and was attempting to reach a conclusion to the issue that allowed a Jewish diaspora into Palestine without completely displacing the resident Palestinians. The Zionist movement wanted them to accelerate Jewish movement into Palestine and basically allow them to form Israel unimpeded, which Britain opposed because of its commitments to the Arab world (and need to maintain a good supply of Arab oil). For various reasons, Britain needed America's backing in trying to pursue a "two-state solution", but Truman, in the depths of his re-election campaign, needed support from the powerful Jewish organisations in the North-east, and in particular their money. As a result he equivocated, forcing Britain to deal with the problem more or less alone, and dooming the Palestinians to their eventual fate. He did try to support them more after re-elected, but by that point the genie was out of the bottle.[[/note]] and began America’s policy of providing support to that nation. He also did the same to Taiwan after [[RedChina mainland China became communist]]. The Cold War kicked off almost immediately after the war in Europe ended, and Truman supported a policy of the “containment” of communism throughout the world, known as the "Truman Doctrine." This included the founding of several international alliances (most importantly, NATO), organizing the airlift of food and other supplies to West Berlin during the Soviet blockade, and sending American aid to nations that were fighting communism, such as Greece and Turkey. Most famously, he sent American troops as part of a UN-joint military mission into [[UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar Korea]] when the Communist [[UsefulNotes/NorthKorea north]] invaded the democratic [[UsefulNotes/SouthKorea south]]. Led by General UsefulNotes/DouglasMacArthur (who lead American troops on the Pacific front during World War II), the UN forces pushed the North Koreans out of the South and then invaded North Korea in an attempt to free all of the Korean peninsula from communism. [=MacArthur=], however, ignored RedChina’s warning not to approach the border, and Chinese forces got involved and pushed the UN forces back to the 38th parallel. [=MacArthur=] proposed that America [[GeneralRipper directly attacks China with thermonuclear weapons]], which Truman rejected. Afterwards, [=MacArthur=] tried to obtain permission from the Joint Chief of Staff to use nuclear weapons without the president's permission to continue the assault on China, which prompted an angered Truman to fire him. The war in Korea remained a stalemate until UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower negotiated an end to the conflict. The {{CIA}} was also formed during his presidency.

'''Harry S. Truman''' (1884-1972) was the 33rd President of the United States (serving from [[TheForties 1945]]-[[TheFifties 1953]]), following FDR and preceding [[UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower Eisenhower]], and was the eleventh from the Democratic Party. He was the seventh Vice President to succeed to the presidency, taking over from UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt after he died three months into his fourth term. His middle name ''is'' actually [[OneLetterName just an "S"]]; it was tradition among Scots-Irish families to name boys after their grandfathers, and his parents wanted to please both of his grandfathers, “Solomon” and “Shippe,” that way. The Twenty-second Amendment, which limits presidents to a maximum of two complete terms, was ratified while he was in office, but it grandfather-claused him, making him the last president who could have served more than two terms.[[note]]The actual amendment is a bit more nuanced than that; it prohibits any holder of that office from serving more than two full terms ''and more than half of another president's term'', which meant that UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson could technically have run for a second full term in 1968 and would have been above board.[[/note]] He still decided not to run for a third term both to honor UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington’s tradition and because of his massive unpopularity during his second term.[[note]]As did LBJ.[[/note]]

Less than three months after assuming this new office, Truman suddenly found himself the sitting President after Roosevelt died. Germany, already on the verge of defeat, surrendered weeks after he succeeded (on his 61st birthday, actually), but Japan proved more problematic. The atomic bombs, which were supposed to be used against the Germans, were fully developed just after Germany surrendered. Truman was never told about the Manhattan Project until he was the President (hell, [[JosefStalin Stalin]] and his spies knew more about it than he did!), which is very controversial among historians. Truman vowed to continue Roosevelt’s “unconditional surrender” policy, and turned down Japan’s attempts at a conditional surrender. Additionally, all of his military advisors predicted that millions would die, civilian and American soldier alike, if a land invasion was attempted. Despite this, [[UsefulNotes/DwightEisenhower one military advisor]] who '''did''' know about the secret superbomb, when asked by Truman about it, said, "Brilliant new invention, '''don't use it'''". [[note]]Eisenhower's reasoning ''was'' sound: As a seasoned general he was (on principle) opposed to using a ''prototype'' of '''any'''thing in combat where it could kill at least as many of your ''own'' forces as it could of the enemy.[[/note]] Against this backdrop, Truman decided to risk it and approved the atomic bombs that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leading to unconditional surrender. While the merits (if any) of dropping the bombs have been debated for decades, what ''isn’t'' debated is that it led to the Soviet Union escalating their own nuclear research, which escalated the UsefulNotes/ColdWar.

On the domestic front, the economy entered a recession during his first term as the economy tried to adjust to large numbers of returning veterans. Additionally, labor unions that hushed up during the war years started to increase public activity and, in some cases, organize strikes. By the end of the decade, the economy settled down and prosperity and growth was widespread during most of TheFifties and TheSixties. He also, in a move that added some much-needed help to the growing CivilRightsMovement, desegregated the U.S. military in 1948 because of his disgust over the way African-American war veterans were treated; the fact that it also saved some tax dollars getting rid of that ridiculous redundancy helped sell it too. Truman was the first President to really call for full rights for African Americans - he proposed civil rights legislation to Congress (they were defeated, sadly) and he was also the first to speak in front of the NAACP. During his second term, [[RedScare anti-Communist hysteria]], led from the Senate by Wisconsin Republican Joseph [=McCarthy=], started to spread throughout the nation, leading to the formation of the (infamous) House Un-American Activities Committee. Truman called his domestic policy, which included national health care and civil rights bills, the “Fair Deal,” though the conservative coalition in Congress (Republicans and right-leaning Democrats from the DeepSouth) prevented most of them from getting passed. (Ironically, a universal health care plan far more liberal than that of BarackObama was pursued, but defeated in Congress.) Years later, UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson would pass many bills similar to what Truman proposed. In fact, Johnson signed the Medicare bill in Truman’s house and gave the first two Medicare cards to the former president and his wife, Bess.[[note]]And Truman had long been on the verge of ''needing'' Medicare; on account of his meager pre-politics savings (from all his failed business ventures) Truman was all but impoverished upon retiring from the presidency. His only source of income was his army pension, which wasn't very much (just over $100 annually). He pulled back up by taking out a loan to write his memoirs, which turned out to be quite successful, but the public was sufficiently appalled by the fact that a past president would have to do that just to live that it gave the impetus for the first-ever presidential pensions.[[/note]]

Truman is most famous, however, for his foreign policy achievements. He passed the Marshall Plan, General and Secretary of State George C. Marshall’s plan to rebuild the nations of western Europe (and prevent the spread of Communism there) by pouring billions of dollars of aid money into their ruined economies. Truman recognized Israel (eleven minutes after they declared independence, actually) [[note]]His involvement in the formation of Israel as a state goes rather deeper than this. During the immediate aftermath of WW2, Britain was nominally in charge of the Palestinian territory and was attempting to reach a conclusion to the issue that allowed a Jewish diaspora into Palestine without completely displacing the resident Palestinians. The Zionist movement wanted them to accelerate Jewish movement into Palestine and basically allow them to form Israel unimpeded, which Britain opposed because of its commitments to the Arab world (and need to maintain a good supply of Arab oil). For various reasons, Britain needed America's backing in trying to pursue a "two-state solution", but Truman, in the depths of his re-election campaign, needed support from the powerful Jewish organisations in the North-east, and in particular their money. As a result he equivocated, forcing Britain to deal with the problem more or less alone, and dooming the Palestinians to their eventual fate. He did try to support them more after re-elected, but by that point the genie was out of the bottle.[[/note]] and began America’s policy of providing support to that nation. He also did the same to Taiwan after [[RedChina mainland China became communist]]. The Cold War kicked off almost immediately after the war in Europe ended, and Truman supported a policy of the “containment” of communism throughout the world, known as the "Truman Doctrine." This included the founding of several international alliances (most importantly, NATO), organizing the airlift of food and other supplies to West Berlin during the Soviet blockade, and sending American aid to nations that were fighting communism, such as Greece and Turkey. Most famously, he sent American troops as part of a UN-joint military mission into [[UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar Korea]] when the Communist [[UsefulNotes/NorthKorea north]] invaded the democratic [[UsefulNotes/SouthKorea south]]. Led by General DouglasMacArthur (who lead American troops on the Pacific front during World War II), the UN forces pushed the North Koreans out of the South and then invaded North Korea in an attempt to free all of the Korean peninsula from communism. [=MacArthur=], however, ignored RedChina’s warning not to approach the border, and Chinese forces got involved and pushed the UN forces back to the 38th parallel. [=MacArthur=] proposed that America [[GeneralRipper directly attacks China with thermonuclear weapons]], which Truman rejected. Afterwards, [=MacArthur=] tried to obtain permission from the Joint Chief of Staff to use nuclear weapons without the president's permission to continue the assault on China, which prompted an angered Truman to fire him. The war in Korea remained a stalemate until DwightDEisenhower negotiated an end to the conflict. The {{CIA}} was also formed during his presidency.

Despite the conga line of domestic and foreign crises during his first term, Truman still ran for reelection in 1948. Few newspapers expected him to win, and several of them already had "Truman lost" stories ready. The ''UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} Tribune'', however, made the mistake of actually printing the story (it didn't help that for the duration of a printers' strike, the ''Tribune'' had to make do with a printing method that required it to publish hours in advance), resulting in the famous "DeweyDefeatsTruman" photo. If you look at the example picture on that page, you can see how happy he is. This unexpected victory can be considered his CrowningMomentOfAwesome, especially when one considers that he had to contend with ''two'' third-party splinter candidacies during his campaign from within the Democratic Party: one from Henry Wallace (a leftist who opposed Truman's anti-Communism) and another from Strom Thurmond (a Southern segregationist who opposed Truman's support for civil rights). His second term, however, was a slew of unpopular decisions and a slide in the polls. Truman became seriously unpopular when the Korean War turned into a stalemate and he sacked [=MacArthur=]; he ended up going as low as ''22%'' in approval ratings, the lowest of all time in the Gallup poll. (Though GeorgeWBush’s ''dis''approval rating would surpass Truman's 67% height.) He decided that he couldn't stand the heat any longer and got out of the kitchen (an expression popularized by Truman, though [[BeamMeUpScotty he spread it around by way of quoting a friend]]), announcing he would not run again in 1952 after he lost the New Hampshire primary. The eventual Democratic candidate, Adlai Stevenson, would lose to DwightDEisenhower, due largely to how unpopular Truman was at the time.[[note]]For that matter, Stevenson ran against Eisenhower again in 1956 and lost by a slightly larger margin than he had done in 1952.[[/note]]

* LockedOutOfTheLoop: During his tenure as Vice President, he suffered from this because the VP was pretty much a placeholder -- even though by that time it was getting noticed that presidents elected in years ending in '''0''' [[UsefulNotes/WilliamHenryHarrison expired]] [[UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln before]] [[UsefulNotes/JamesGarfield their]] [[UsefulNotes/WilliamMcKinley terms]] [[UsefulNotes/WarrenGHarding did]] and FranklinDRoosevelt had been elected in ''194'''0'''''--oh, and he had polio.[[note]]Ironically, this wasn't what killed him. However, the strain of hiding his disability in addition to his longtime smoking habit didn't help.[[/note]] Although Roosevelt knew this, and even suspected he might die in office, a seeming last-minute improvement in his health convinced him he could carry out his term and didn't really need Truman.

* OddFriendship: With HerbertHoover. Despite their deep political differences both men liked and respected each other. After Hoover's death truman wrote the preface for a biography of the late president that ended with the words "Briefly put, he was my friend and I was his."

'''Harry S. Truman''' (1884-1972) was the 33rd President of the United States (serving from [[TheForties 1945]]-[[TheFifties 1953]]), following FDR and preceding [[UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower Eisenhower]], and was the eleventh from the Democratic Party. He was the seventh Vice President to succeed to the presidency, taking over from UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt after he died three months into his fourth term. His middle name ''is'' actually [[OneLetterName just an "S"]]; it was tradition among Scots-Irish families to name boys after their grandfathers, and his parents wanted to please both of his grandfathers, “Solomon” and “Shippe,” that way. The Twenty-second Amendment, which limits presidents to a maximum of two complete terms, was ratified while he was in office, but it grandfather-claused him, making him the last president who could have served more than two terms.[[note]]The actual amendment is a bit more nuanced than that; it prohibits any holder of that office from serving more than two full terms ''and more than half of another president's term'', which meant that LyndonJohnson could technically have run for a second full term in 1968 and would have been above board.[[/note]] He still decided not to run for a third term both to honor GeorgeWashington’s tradition and because of his massive unpopularity during his second term.[[note]]As did LBJ.[[/note]]

On the domestic front, the economy entered a recession during his first term as the economy tried to adjust to large numbers of returning veterans. Additionally, labor unions that hushed up during the war years started to increase public activity and, in some cases, organize strikes. By the end of the decade, the economy settled down and prosperity and growth was widespread during most of TheFifties and TheSixties. He also, in a move that added some much-needed help to the growing CivilRightsMovement, desegregated the U.S. military in 1948 because of his disgust over the way African-American war veterans were treated; the fact that it also saved some tax dollars getting rid of that ridiculous redundancy helped sell it too. Truman was the first President to really call for full rights for African Americans - he proposed civil rights legislation to Congress (they were defeated, sadly) and he was also the first to speak in front of the NAACP. During his second term, [[RedScare anti-Communist hysteria]], led from the Senate by Wisconsin Republican Joseph [=McCarthy=], started to spread throughout the nation, leading to the formation of the (infamous) House Un-American Activities Committee. Truman called his domestic policy, which included national health care and civil rights bills, the “Fair Deal,” though the conservative coalition in Congress (Republicans and right-leaning Democrats from the DeepSouth) prevented most of them from getting passed. (Ironically, a universal health care plan far more liberal than that of BarackObama was pursued, but defeated in Congress.) Years later, LyndonJohnson would pass many bills similar to what Truman proposed. In fact, Johnson signed the Medicare bill in Truman’s house and gave the first two Medicare cards to the former president and his wife, Bess.[[note]]And Truman had long been on the verge of ''needing'' Medicare; on account of his meager pre-politics savings (from all his failed business ventures) Truman was all but impoverished upon retiring from the presidency. His only source of income was his army pension, which wasn't very much (just over $100 annually). He pulled back up by taking out a loan to write his memoirs, which turned out to be quite successful, but the public was sufficiently appalled by the fact that a past president would have to do that just to live that it gave the impetus for the first-ever presidential pensions.[[/note]]

* The one-man play and film ''Give 'Em Hell, Harry!'' (his campaign slogan in 1948) feature James Whitmore as Truman. A performance of this was filmed in 1976 and Whitmore received an [[AcademyAward Oscar nomination]]. This is one of only three times that every credited cast member received a nomination, the others being ''Theatre/WhosAfraidOfVirginiaWoolf'' and ''{{Theatre/Sleuth}}''.
* ''Truman'', a 1995 {{HBO}} feature starring [[Film/ForrestGump Gary Sinise]] in the title role.
* Makes a brief and symbolic appearence getting the first Medicare card in HBO's ''The Path to War'', where {{LBJ}} is portrayed as his spiritual successor.
* In ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}},'' Rorschach frequently expresses admiration for 'decent men' like Truman and his father. It's shown in several in-story documents that he wrote an essay in his youth expressing how good it was that he dropped the bomb, because he saved many more lives by ending World War II. This is particularly ironic given that Rorschach claims to be a moral absolutist and attacks [[spoiler:Veidt]] for killing millions in [[spoiler:a fake 'alien' attack on New York]] to prevent World War III from breaking out.

* In ''Series/{{Mash}}'', it is often mentioned that Truman is President.

'''Harry S. Truman''' (1884-1972) was the 33rd President of the United States (serving from [[TheForties 1945]]-[[TheFifties 1953]]), following [[FranklinDRoosevelt FDR]] and preceding [[UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower Eisenhower]], and was the eleventh from the Democratic Party. He was the seventh Vice President to succeed to the presidency, taking over from FranklinDRoosevelt after he died three months into his fourth term. His middle name ''is'' actually [[OneLetterName just an "S"]]; it was tradition among Scots-Irish families to name boys after their grandfathers, and his parents wanted to please both of his grandfathers, “Solomon” and “Shippe,” that way. The Twenty-second Amendment, which limits presidents to a maximum of two complete terms, was ratified while he was in office, but it grandfather-claused him, making him the last president who could have served more than two terms.[[note]]The actual amendment is a bit more nuanced than that; it prohibits any holder of that office from serving more than two full terms ''and more than half of another president's term'', which meant that LyndonJohnson could technically have run for a second full term in 1968 and would have been above board.[[/note]] He still decided not to run for a third term both to honor GeorgeWashington’s tradition and because of his massive unpopularity during his second term.[[note]]As did LBJ.[[/note]]