Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman, President of the U.S., 1945-1953. Grew up in the small town of Independence, Missouri, doing farm chores and studying history and Latin classics in high school. He did not go on to college, but tried banking and then went into farming to help his father, who had suffered business failure. In France during World War One, Truman rose to the rank of artillery captain. He returned to Missouri, first as a farmer, later as owner of a men's clothing store. After failure of the store and numerous other setbacks Truman, aged 38, found his vocation -- politics.

In 1922 he ran for judge in Jackson County, was elected, was defeated two years later, but in 1926 ran again and was elected presiding judge. Although he was a protege of Thomas J. Pendergast, boss of the corrupt Kansas City Democratic machine, Truman established a reputation for competence and honesty. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1934 and re-elected in 1940 even though by that time Pendergast was in jail. He became nationally known during World War II as chairman of the special Senate watchdog committee to investigate defense contracts, and in 1944 President Roosevelt chose him to be his Vice Presidential running mate.

Succeeding to the Presidency upon FDR’s death in April, 1945, Truman had no experience in foreign policy and had not even been informed of the Manhattan Project, which was then close to completing the atomic bomb. He was attending a conference in Potsdam, Germany, with Stalin and Churchill when, on July 16, the first atomic bomb was successfully tested in New Mexico. On July 25 he authorized Secretary of War Henry Stimson to drop the completed atomic bombs on Japan. The first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, the second on Nagasaki on August 9. Russia invaded Japanese Manchuria the same day and on August 14 Japan surrendered.

In January, 1950, responding to news of the first Soviet atomic test, Truman ordered an accelerated program to develop the hydrogen bomb, a weapon potentially one thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb. Less than three years later he gave the go-ahead for the first U.S. thermonuclear test, at Eniwetok Island in the Pacific.

Despite being the only U.S. President to order use of an atomic bomb and the President who led the nation into the thermonuclear age, Truman had profound doubts about nuclear weapons. He refused to order dropping of a third atomic bomb over Japan, telling his cabinet that he did not want to "kill any more kids." He declined to authorize use of the bomb in Korea despite hints that he might do so, and during the Berlin crisis of 1948-1950 he told subordinates that the bomb was not a military weapon but a device to kill women and children. He never admitted regret over using the atomic bomb, but said that it must never again be used in war.

― Priscilla McMillan