The Accidental President

by A. J. Baime

  Throughout eastern Europe, the Soviets continued to consolidate power and spread influence. Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia—all these nations became firmly Sovietized. By 1949, the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany had closed off its borders, becoming its own communist country commonly known as East Germany. That same year, the Soviets successfully tested their own nuclear weapon.

  The long period of runaway inflation and economic paralysis that many feared would strike the United States following the war never did. Still, Truman was criticized for his tax policy (“High Tax Harry”), for labor strife, and for his groundbreaking support of civil rights, which did not sit well with many Americans.

  For the rest of his time in office, historic challenges faced the presidency. Today he is remembered for the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, programs that hurled billions of dollars at European countries in an attempt to keep emerging democratic regimes from falling to communism. Truman’s recognition of Israel in 1948 made him the first world leader to embrace the new nation. His administration is remembered for the Berlin Airlift following the Soviet blockade, for the founding of the CIA and the Atomic Energy Commission, and for his role among others in the founding of NATO. He is remembered for firing General Douglas MacArthur in 1951—which set off a firestorm in Washington—and for his role in creating the modern Department of Defense.

  In 1950, in a combined effort with the United Nations, Truman sent troops into Korea to fight Soviet-backed communist forces. The Cold War was no longer a war of posturing and paranoia. Like the “Phony War” of World War II, the Cold War became a real war of death and destruction. Truman was criticized for failing to get consent from Congress, which never declared war. This criticism only heightened when American forces failed to rid the Korean peninsula of communism.

  Truman faced reelection in 1948, against Thomas Dewey of New York. His popularity ratings had plummeted by this time, but as in his 1940 Senate campaign, he surprised everyone, perhaps even himself, by declaring his candidacy and his resolve to win. As in his 1940 Senate campaign, he was given almost no chance at victory. Newspapers and polls unanimously predicted a landslide, but he came out victorious. Perhaps only the presidential election of 2016 surpasses 1948 as the biggest upset in American electioneering history. Truman’s victory moved his daughter, Margaret, to pronounce, “Harry S. Truman was no ‘accidental President,’” for now he had been elected by the American people.

  Still, among all those historic chapters, Truman is remembered first and foremost for his decision to employ atomic weapons—Little Boy and Fat Man, the only two nuclear bombs ever used against human targets. More than seventy years later, this decision remains almost certainly the most controversial that any president has ever made.

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  How many human beings did the two atomic bombs kill? It is impossible to say, and that alone inspires a sense of the weapons’ capacity to annihilate. The United States Department of Energy has estimated the number at 200,000, maybe more, over a five-year span, “as cancer and other long-term effects took hold.” And that is just for the Hiroshima bomb.

  Since August 1945, the atomic bombings have pit moralists against one another. Critics tend to argue with theories, leaving only questions rather than answers. Was the bomb used for political purposes? Was it a power play against the Soviets? Did the Americans race to use it to stop the Soviets from charging farther into the Far East? How deeply did racism toward the Japanese play into the decision? Would Japan have surrendered without the use of the bomb? And if so, when, and after how many more lives lost? To use a colloquialism, the answers to these questions depend on whom you ask.

  General Eisenhower argued against dropping the bomb, in conversations with the president prior to August 1945. There is no record of Admiral Leahy’s opposition prior to Hiroshima, but after the war Leahy wrote: “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons . . . My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was taught not to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

  Leahy’s argument is dubious. Why was it wrong to kill with atomic bombs, when the Americans had been firebombing civilian neighborhoods in Japan for months? (After the war, regarding these firebombing missions, Curtis LeMay wrote, “I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal . . . But all war is immoral, and if you let that bother you, you’re not a good soldier.”)

  The fact remains, almost every advisor to Truman recommended the bomb’s use at the time. Noted Henry Stimson, as he looked back two years later in 1947: “The face of war is the face of death . . . The decision to use the atomic bomb was a decision that brought death to over a hundred thousand Japanese. No explanation can change that fact and I do not wish to gloss it over. But this deliberate, premeditated destruction was our least abhorrent choice.”

  George Marshall, the most respected military mind of his era, later wrote: “I regarded the dropping of the bomb as of great importance and felt that it would end the war possibly better than anything else, which it did, and I think that all the claims about the bombings afterward were rather silly.”

  Churchill provided another point of view in his writings after the war: “The historic fact remains, and must be judged in the after time, that the decision whether or not to use the atomic bomb to compel the surrender of Japan was never even an issue. There was unanimous, automatic, unquestioned agreement around our table; nor did I ever hear the slightest suggestion that we should do otherwise.”

  Eleanor Roosevelt supported Truman’s use of the bomb, and this author has never heard the argument that FDR would have decided against its employment.

  Every person who advised Truman on the matter saw this decision from a different point of view. As for Truman himself, there remains no evidence that he used the bomb for any political reason. He measured the lives that would be lost in a ground invasion of Japan and did the math: “It occurred to me that a quarter of a million of the flower of our young manhood were worth a couple of Japanese cities, and I still think they were and are.”

  This author agrees with historians Stephen Ambrose and Douglas Brinkley, who wrote in their book Rise to Globalism: “The simplest explanation is perhaps the most convincing. The bomb was there. Japan was not surrendering. Few in the government thought seriously about not using it. To drop it as soon as it was ready seemed natural, the obvious thing to do. As Truman later put it, ‘The final decision of where and when to use the atomic bomb was up to me. Let there be no mistake about it. I regarded the bomb as a military weapon and never had any doubt that it should be used.’ ”

  Truman left office amid miserable approval ratings in January 1953, as Eisenhower began his term. The American economy was booming, but global instability, the spread of communism, fear of the nuclear arms race, the Korean War, bipartisan bickering, all of it cast a dark shadow on Truman’s administration at its denouement.

  The day Harry and Bess moved out of the White House, he turned around at the door and waved good-bye to staff members. He had served as president for seven years, nine months, and eight days. He hesitated one last moment before leaving “the Great White Jail,” then repeated a joke he often told. He said, “You know, many times in my despair at the White House, I’ve always wondered whether the nation and the world would have been much better off if Harry Truman, instead of being President of the United States, had played piano at a bawdy house.” “Then,” recalled a photographer who was there that day, “he turned around and left.”

  Through the years, historians have revived Truman’s approval ratings. In 2015 one Boston Globe writer noted, “Harry S. Truman is now considered one of our most succes
sful presidents, rating in the top 10 in every historical survey.” Ironically, Truman’s greatest strength came from what was perceived, on April 12, 1945, as his greatest weakness: his ordinariness. As Jonathan Daniels wrote of Truman, “Americans felt leaderless when Roosevelt died. Truman taught them, as one of them, that their greatness lies in themselves.”

  Harry S. Truman died twenty years after leaving office, the day after Christmas in 1972, at age eighty-eight. Bess Truman followed ten years later, and they are buried next to each other in a courtyard of the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum in Independence, Missouri. At the time of Truman’s death, he was well aware that his legacy was still embattled. While he was president, he kept a quotation of Abraham Lincoln in a leather portfolio on his desk. It read, “I do the very best I know how—the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so to the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right won’t make any difference.”

  Acknowledgments

  * * *

  Completing a book of 160,000 words feels like shepherding 160,000 beloved kittens across a busy highway. I owe a great deal of gratitude to a lot of people. First, I would like to thank the archivists at the research institutions where I visited, most notably the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum in Independence, Missouri; the National Archives in College Park, Maryland; the Library of Congress in Washington, DC; the FDR Presidential Library & Museum in Hyde Park, New York; and the Manuscripts & Archives at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

  Particular gratitude goes to Greg Bradsher at the National Archives, Randy Sowell at the Truman Library, and Professor Jon Taylor at the University of Central Missouri, a wonderful historian and writer whose close read of my manuscript truly helped me get it to the finish line. A special thank-you goes to Lisa Sullivan and the Harry S. Truman Library Institute for a small grant to help in research expenses. (At no time did Ms. Sullivan or anyone from the institute ask to see any part of my manuscript before publication.) My hope is that all of these figures who helped me along the way find value in this book.

  This is my third book with the same editor, publisher, and agent, and that is truly a special thing. My endless gratitude goes to Susan Canavan at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Scott Waxman at the Waxman Leavell Literary Agency. Your belief in me has changed the course of my life, and I will never forget it. Thank you also to everyone at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and the Waxman Leavell agency for all your hard work. Megan Wilson at HMH is a great talent, as is editor Margaret Wimberger, whose careful reads and help shaping my endnotes were invaluable. Endless thank-yous to all of you.

  As I wrote in the acknowledgments for my previous book, my wife, Michelle, is a great force behind everything we do together as a team. Without her, I would still be on page one, not of this manuscript but of everything in my life. Thank you, Michelle! Thank you also to Clayton Baime and Audrey Baime. You are the lights of your parents’ lives. Keep growing and being all you can be. Remember that every day is a blessing and should be savored. Remember every day how much you are loved, and that with this love comes responsibility.

  My father, David Baime (to whom this book is dedicated), and my mother, Denise Baime, read numerous drafts of this manuscript. Both would have made terrific editors. Thank you for always being there, and I hope that this book can be an apology for all I put you through when I was a kid.

  I would like to thank my family, whom I can never repay for all their love, understanding, and kindness through the years: Abby Baime, Susan Baime, my Aunt Karen and Uncle Ken Segal (who have always treated me as one of their own), the late Bill Green and the late Mildred Leventhal, my “outlaws” Connie and the late Bill Burdick, Jack and Margo Ezell, my many wonderful cousins and friends of the Crystal/Sabel/Segal clan, and the GG’s Ken and Edna Wheeldon. I would also like to thank so many people in the publishing and movie business who have guided me along the way. These figures include (in no particular order) Jimmy Jellinek, Chris Napolitano, Bob Love, Dave Itzkoff, Adam Thompson, Sam Walker, Lee Froehlich, Steve Randall, Mike Guy, James Kaminsky, Ken Gross, Lucas Foster, Alex Young, Greg Veesor, Scott Alexander, Steven Kotler, Richard Stratton, Amy Grace Loyd, Jon Marcus, John H. Richardson, and so many others. I am so grateful to have had the chance to work with you, and I hope to do so again.

  To paraphrase Geoffrey Chaucer, go little book!

  Notes

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  Note on Research and Perspective

  This book is about the legacy of Harry Truman, but all books have legacies of their own. I think and hope that people who have read many books about Truman will find in this one the following conclusion, which I think sets this book apart in the canon of Truman literature: President Truman did not simply step onto the moving FDR train during his World War II presidency. In fact, he was a far greater agency of change during these four months than other writers have suggested.

  History is in itself a kind of myth. It morphs through time as new ideas and evidence come to light. The dynamics of research can change with the onset of new technologies, which can make certain documentation more important in the eyes of historical chroniclers than others. And then there are the perspectives of storytellers, who can move legacies and place them firmly where they have never been before. As Aldous Huxley once wrote, “The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.” During my three years of research, I relied as much as possible on primary sources and the direct perspectives of as many participants in these events as I could. I wanted the creative process to be akin to recording music on vintage instruments, to make it sound like a thing of the past. Diaries, original documentation, minutes from meetings, official cables—these became beacons in the search for truth. Certainly there were times when I did use secondary sources, but in these instances I tried to use books written by people present in the rooms during the events and conversations I have depicted, such as Harry S. Truman, Margaret Truman, Winston Churchill, James F. Byrnes, Jonathan Daniels, Chip Bohlen, and others.

  Truman wrote in his book Mr. Citizen, “It is my opinion that the only accurate source of information on which to make a proper historical assessment of the performances of past Presidents is in the presidential files.” For this reason, I spent weeks at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, and many more at home accessing files available digitally through the library’s website. In addition, I used the personal papers of other figures, including, but not limited to, Franklin Roosevelt, Henry Stimson, Henry Morgenthau, Curtis LeMay, General Leslie Groves, Admiral William Leahy, Joseph Davies, Bess Truman, Margaret Truman, Mary Jane Truman, Eben Ayers, James Aylward, James Pendergast, Fred Canfil, Matthew Connelly, Jonathan Daniels, Robert Hannegan, Verne Chaney, Victor Messall, Reathel Odum, Joseph Grew, Edwin Pauley, Harry Vaughan, Tom Evans, General Hap Arnold, George Elsey, Dean Acheson, Agnes Wolf, Rufus Burrus, Alonzo Fields, Hugh Fulton, Spencer Salisbury, Edward Jacobson, Edward McKim, Samuel Rosenman, Harold Smith, Monrad Wallgren, Rose Conway, and others. I examined the papers of Truman’s doctor, Wallace Graham, and the diaries of the dentist who made White House house calls in 1945, Bruce Forsyth.

  There were moments during this research when I saw the words “new accession” in the finding aids for manuscript collections. These were exciting moments, for they offered up documents that were not available to the major Truman biographers of a generation ago. The many dozens of oral histories available at the Truman archives also proved invaluable.

  In the end, my goal was to produce a book that Harry Truman would have found factual. Whether or not this is the case, I can never know, but it was the standard that I set for myself.

  I’ve used the following abbreviations for frequently cited series and subseries from the Truman Library:

  FBPAP: Family, Business, and Personal Affairs Papers

  FCF: Family Correspond
ence File

  LNF: Longhand Notes File

  MRF: Map Room File, 1945

  OF: Official File, 1945–1953

  PCF: Press Conference File

  PPF: President’s Personal File, 1945–1953

  PRF: White House Press Release Files, 1945–1953

  PSF: President’s Secretary’s Files, 1945–1953

  SMOF: Staff Member and Office Files

  WHCF: White House Central Files, 1945–1953

  Also note: Oral histories can be found at https://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/oralhis.htm.

  Introduction

  a Washington Post poll ranked him: “New Ranking of U.S. Presidents Puts Lincoln at No. 1, Obama at 18,” Washington Post, February 16, 2015.

  “The Romans must have felt”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt; The Home Front in World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 606.

  “Perhaps not since the dawn”: Diary of Joseph Davies, April 19, 1945, Joseph Edward Davies Papers, box 1:16, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  “by accident”: Truman speaking in the introductory film at Harry S. Truman National Historic Site visitor center, Independence, Missouri.

  “Here was a man who”: Oral history interview, Robert G. Nixon, p. 159, Truman Library.

  “Here was a guy”: Oral history interview, Harry H. Vaughan, p. 52, Truman Library.