Harry S. Truman Library and Museum (public domain)
Truman's desk, with his famous sign reading, "The Buck Stops Here."
Nearly eighty years ago, as the bloodiest conflict in human history drew nearer to its ultimate conclusion, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the nation’s lionized wartime president, suffered a sudden, fatal cerebral hemorrhage.
The fate of millions across the war-ravaged world fell to the ill-equipped hands of Harry S. Truman, vice president for just eighty-two days.
Despite facing perhaps the most perilous set of decisions any president ever had to endure, the thirty-third president fostered the doctrine that defined eight decades of post-war American diplomacy.
Impoverished Upbringing:
Truman was born to an agricultural family on May 8, 1884 in Lamar, Missouri, but after a series of relocations within the state, the Trumans settled in Independence. Not attending formal school until the age of eight, Truman was asked to tend to his family’s farmland throughout his youth.
With the encouragement of his mother, he took an interest in history, literature, mathematics, and music, learning to play the piano at the age of seven. His family lacked sufficient funds to send Truman to conventional university, so he applied to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, but was rejected due to his poor eyesight (which far exceeded modern legal blindness standards in its destitution).
Truman instead returned home to Missouri and enlisted in the state national guard; in order to pass the required eyesight test, he secretly memorized the eye chart before his examination. He stood down in 1911 with the rank of corporal and returned to agriculture.
Romantic Interest:
Shortly after his family arrived in Independence, Truman became involved with Bess Wallace, and the two remained in touch throughout their childhoods. Truman was always interested in Wallace, but the two were unable to become close friends in school, although he frequently offered to carry her books.
In 1910, Truman volunteered to return a plate to the Wallace residence as an excuse to speak with Bess, and the two began a courtship soon after; however, Wallace rejected Truman’s 1911 marriage proposal. He believed that her refusal stemmed from Truman’s low financial status, so he set out to find a more lucrative vocation. As Truman travelled the region in search of work in the mining industry, the couple informally engaged in late 1913.
The Great War:
With the failure of his mining ventures, Truman enlisted in the Army on the day the United States entered World War I. By 1918, Truman had been made a captain and the commander of Battery D, a regiment infamous for its poor discipline. Despite numerous resistance tactics from his soldiers, Truman was successful in restoring order to the platoon.
Truman and his troops were deployed to France for the duration of the war, and in September 1918, the unit became engaged in the Meuse–Argonne offensive, the largest military advance in US history. In the midst of the attack, Truman observed a German artillery battery preparing to attack nearby American troops. Truman’s orders confined him to only order maneuvers relating to his division, but he instead ordered his men to open fire, destroying the German regiment.
Truman’s actions were credited with saving the lives of his neighboring division, but he was still lectured by Colonel Karl D. Klemm for violating his orders. The colonel threatened to court-martial the captain, but he never followed through.
Hostilities of the war ended in November, and not a single soldier died under Truman’s command. The experience provided major boosts to his leadership abilities and his post-war career prospects.
Marriage and Business Venture:
Truman returned to Independence after his military service, and married Bess Wallace in June 1919. The pair had only one child, Mary Margaret Truman.
Shortly before the wedding, Truman and his wartime friend, Edward Jacobson, opened a clothing store in downtown Kansas City. After a short period of success, the venture fell bankrupt in the postwar recession of 1921.
Local Politics:
During The Great War, Truman became friends with Jim Pendergast, whose uncle, Tom Pendergast, was the powerful Democratic political boss of Jackson County and Kansas City. Truman was introduced to the boss, and he was soon recruited to run for judge of Jackson County’s eastern district.
Truman won the election with the aid of Pendergast’s machinations, but he lost his 1924 bid for a second term in the face of a nationwide Republican landslide.
Two years later, Truman was elected presiding judge of Jackson County, and was reelected in 1930. In the role, Truman promoted the Ten Year Plan, a large series of public works projects that transformed the Kansas City skyline and metropolitan area.
“Senator from Pendergast”:
As his final term as judge came to a close, Truman asked Pendergast if he would support him in a campaign for governor or Congress. The boss declined, but later offered to help Truman run for Senate after four other prospective candidates turned him down. Truman narrowly won the Democratic nomination over Congressman John J. Cochran, but easily defeated Republican incumbent Roscoe Patterson in the general election.
Truman was initially a largely overlooked figure of the Senate; his colleagues facetiously referred to him as the “senator from Pendergast” as the boss’s dominance initially loomed over Truman’s Washington career.
J. Hamilton Lewis, the then-deputy senate majority leader, sought to console and motivate the new senator.
“Harry, don’t start out with an inferiority complex,” he said. “For the first six months you’ll wonder how the hell you got here. After that you’ll wonder how the hell the rest of us got here.”
Despite Pendergast’s attempts to control Truman’s Senate votes, the senator refused to listen and instead solely voted his conscience. Throughout his first term, Truman loudly opposed corporate greed and spoke on the dangers of wealthy businessmen influencing national politics.
The Truman Committee:
In 1939, Pendergast was imprisoned for voter fraud, damaging Truman’s reputation and tanking his reelection chances. Truman blamed Republican judges for Pendergast’s imprisonment, but still faced a steep challenge in the 1940 Senate election. Lacking campaign funds, Truman was challenged for the Democratic nomination by then-incumbent Governor Lloyd Stark, who positioned himself as an opponent of corruption. Through the grueling months-long campaign, Truman narrowly defeated Stark. In the general election, Truman defeated Republican State Senator Manuel Davis by just over two percentage points.
After being reelected, Truman visited various military bases and observed a significant amount of waste and profiteering. He decided to use his chairmanship of the Subcommittee on War Mobilization to investigate financial abuses of the War Department, and a new special committee was created for the exclusive purpose of Truman’s investigation.
Truman’s passionate initiative convinced his colleagues of the necessity of the committee, and he received national media attention for the revealing of widespread waste and fraud in War Department projects. He attempted to probe the Manhattan Project in 1944, but Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson ordered him not to. Overall, Truman’s committee saved the federal government as much as fifteen billion dollars throughout World War II (equivalent to nearly $300 billion in 2025). Truman’s role in the committee did wonders in dispelling his reputation as a corrupt pawn of Tom Pendergast.
“The Second Missouri Compromise”:
By 1944, it was widely speculated that President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s health was in rapid decline, and that he would not survive the full length of his prospective fourth term. Many Democratic leaders were horrified of Henry A. Wallace, the then-incumbent vice president, succeeding Roosevelt due to his liberal policy positions, so they maneuvered to replace him.
President Roosevelt initially supported Wallace’s nomination for a second term, but after it became clear that his nomination was unacceptable, he threw his support behind War Mobilization Director James F. Byrnes. However, labor leaders opposed Byrnes due to his anti-union stances and opposition to civil rights, so Roosevelt instead shifted his support to Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.
Going against the president’s desires, Democratic Party Chairman Robert Hannegan, a longtime friend of Truman, attempted to recruit the Senator for the vice presidential nomination. Truman strongly declined the nomination, but Hannegan persisted and presented Truman’s name to the president. Roosevelt gave Truman his blessing, and he then reluctantly accepted the nomination.
Truman’s nomination was dubbed the “Second Missouri Compromise” due to his acceptability to both Southern and Northern factions, and the Democratic ticket won the general election in a landslide over Republicans Thomas Dewey and John Bricker.
Sudden Succession:
Truman was inaugurated as the 34th vice president on January 20, 1945, and President Roosevelt intended to begin the work of educating Truman on the workings of the executive. However, Roosevelt believed that he had far more time to live than he did in reality, and Truman was left uninformed for the duration of the president’s fourth term.
On April 12, 1945, Truman adjourned the Senate’s daily session and prepared to have a drink in the office of his friend, House Speaker Sam Rayburn, but he received an urgent call to attend the White House. When he arrived, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt informed Truman that her husband had died.
Shocked, Truman asked Roosevelt if there was anything he could do for her.
“Is there anything we can do for you?” she rebuffed. “For you are the one in trouble now!”
Truman was sworn in as president immediately thereafter, and he inherited the perilous task of ending the Second World War.
End of the War:
Within weeks of Truman’s accession, Nazi Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, Truman’s sixty-first birthday. Truman met with British Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Clement Atlee and Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin in the aftermath of the surrender, and it was decided that Europe would be divided into Anglo-American and Soviet spheres of influence. Stalin was cajoled into promising that he would hold democratic elections within Soviet puppet states, but he soon broke his pledge.
In the Pacific theater of the war, Truman was hesitant to launch the previously-planned full-scale invasion of Japan. He believed that if the US and Soviet Union both invaded Japan, the aftermath would grant excessive Soviet control over the region.
Truman instead ordered that two-newly developed atomic bombs be dropped on Japan as a measure to advance the end of the war, making Truman the only human being to ever use nuclear weapons in warfare. The explosions decimated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Truman threatened that more bombs would be dropped if the Japanese did not surrender. After the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, Japan agreed to surrender, ending the most deadly war in the history of humanity.
Truman Doctrine:
In a 1947 address to Congress, Truman laid out his vision of international policy for the postwar era. He advocated for a doctrine of containment against communist influence and recommended that Congress appropriate aid to democratic nations around the world.
Furthermore, Truman spearheaded the founding of the United Nations and NATO as the US moved away its past policy of isolationism. His fervent opposition to Joseph Stalin and Soviet influence is often attributed as the beginning of the decades-long Cold War.
In another future-shaping decision, Truman recognized the State of Israel the day it became a nation in 1948.
Civil Rights and Nomination for a Full Term:
In a move upending the longtime policy of the Democratic Party, Truman ordered the military to be desegregated in July 1948. He drew widespread praise from Northern activists, but angry rebellion from the Southern wing of his party.
At the 1948 Democratic National Convention, Truman was unable to reconcile with the disaffected Southerners, especially after Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey successfully implemented a civil rights plank in the party platform. After Truman was nominated for a full term alongside Senate Leader Alben Barkley, Southerners bolted the party and ran their own presidential campaign under South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond and Mississippi Governor Fielding Wright.
In another blow to Truman’s political standing, former Vice President Henry Wallace founded the third Progressive Party and ran against the president in the general election.
“Dewey Defeats Truman”:
As the general election of 1948 approached, President Truman suffered from a woeful thirty-nine percent approval rating, and nearly every political pundit predicted a landslide victory for Republicans Thomas Dewey and Earl Warren.
As he attempted to dispel the negativity surrounding his campaign, Truman ran a largely unfiltered and blunt campaign. He attacked Dewey by name, a move unprecedented for the time, and criticized him for refusing to make his policy positions clear. Truman also attacked the Republican Party as a whole for their perceived starting of the Great Depression and lackluster congressional agenda.
In July, Truman called a special session of Congress, and asked Republican leaders to act on their policy proposals. GOP Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio blocked all legislation in a move to spite Truman, but the senator played into the president’s hands, allowing Truman to deem the session a “do-nothing Congress.”
In proposals of his own, Truman passionately argued for an expansion of the power of labor unions, the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act (of which Truman’s previous veto was overrode), an expansion of Social Security, increased funding for public housing, and universal healthcare. He dubbed his domestic agenda, “The Fair Deal,” as a spiritual successor to his predecessor’s “New Deal”.
On the eve of election night, pollsters still projected a Dewey victory, but Truman shocked the nation by securing a comfortable victory against his Republican challenger. Infamously, The Chicago Tribune erroneously proclaimed Dewey as the president-elect and failed to correct the statement before publication. In one of the most famous images in electoral history, Truman hoisted the newspaper with a beaming smile.
Second Term and Domestic Shortcomings:
In his January 1949 address to Congress, Truman asked senators and representatives to enact his domestic agenda. As Democrats had won a majority in both chambers in November, the task proved far easier than under the previous Congress.
Congress was successful in increasing the minimum wage, doubling Social Security benefits, increasing veterans’ benefits, and passing the National Housing Act, but those measures were from all that Truman desired. As the president’s approval rating declined to a dismal twenty-two percent, Congress ceased prioritizing Truman’s domestic policy.
Korean War:
In 1950, North Korea, with the support of China and the Soviet Union, invaded the US-aligned South Korea. Truman soon ordered American troops to defend the ally, starting the first proxy-war of the Cold War.
General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of Pacific military operations, wished to use nuclear weapons in order to swiftly win the war. Truman rebuffed, believing that such a decision would ignite a vastly deadly nuclear war. MacArthur then publicly criticized Truman and attacked his authority, motivating Truman to dismiss the general from command.
The move shocked the nation, and Truman faced severe political consequences as his approval dipped further. Still, Truman defended his actions.
“I fired MacArthur because he didn’t respect the office of the Presidency, not because he was a dumb son of a […], although he was. But that’s not against the law for Generals,” Truman said.
As Truman’s second term neared its end, the war reached a stalemate, and many citizens grew frustrated with the lack of progress, largely blaming the president for the failure.
Brief 1952 Campaign and Departure:
In the face of extreme unpopularity, Truman initially sought a third term as president in 1952. Although the 22nd Amendment barring presidents from more than two terms had already been enacted, a grandfather clause existed for Truman.
After an unexpected loss in the New Hampshire primary to Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver, Truman ended his reelection campaign, and ultimately endorsed Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson II to be his successor.
Truman’s unpopularity proved to drag down the Democratic Party as a whole, as Republican General Dwight D. Eisenhower won a landslide victory in the presidential election and the GOP secured majorities in both Houses of Congress.
Truman retired to the Wallace residence in Independence, Missouri.
Retirement and Death:
Although Truman had served in national politics for nearly two decades, he had little personal wealth at the time of his retirement. This was one of the motivating factors behind the Former Presidents Act of 1958, which created a presidential pension and other benefits for executives after leaving office.
The Harry S. Truman Library and Museum was opened in 1957, and Truman spent most of his time in his office within the center. He spent his final years reading, writing, and engaging with local passers by.
When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the law creating Medicare in 1965, Truman was invited to the White House and Johnson gave him and Bess the first ever Medicare cards. With that engagement as an exception, Truman made few public appearances in his retirement.
Truman ultimately died of pneumonia on Dec. 26, 1972 at the age of 88. He was interred at the site of his library and Bess was buried next to him following her death a decade later.
When President Roosevelt died, Truman was completely oblivious and unprepared to the immense volume of world-changing decisions he would soon face. His first months in office were defined by some of the intricate issues any world leader has ever faced, making his presidency potentially the most consequential in history.
Tasked with resolving the most deadly conflict in human history, Truman never faltered in his commitment to peace, democracy, and freedom across the world. Although eternally controversial, his decision to utilize atomic bombs against Japan shortened the length of the war and potentially saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Furthermore, as Joseph Stalin sought to slash democracy and spread communist authoritarianism throughout Europe, it was the Truman Doctrine that helped create the US’s status as the “leader of the free world.”
Although he was mired in historic unpopularity for much of his presidency, Truman’s legacy extensively rebounded in the years following his retirement. Today, Truman is regarded as one of the greatest presidents in American history.