The Accidental President
Page 47
“There was no escaping”: Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: 1945; Year of Decisions (New York: Konecky & Konecky, 1955), p. 11.
“bring [Truman] up-to-date”: “Memorandum to Mr. Connelly,” April 13, 1945, PSF, box 164, Truman Papers.
“The British long for security”: “Special Information for the President,” April 13, 1945, PSF, box 164, Truman Papers.
“from time to time put forward”: Ibid.
“A problem of urgent importance”: Ibid.
“The plain story is this”: Truman, Memoirs, p. 23.
“create democratic institutions”: “Crimea Conference, 1945, Report Signed at Yalta February 11, 1945,” text at Library of Congress website, https://www.loc.gov/law/help/us-treaties/bevans/m-ust000003-1005.pdf.
“There are literally thousands”: John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), p. 139.
“We Americans are not”: Ibid., p. 140.
“I doubt that there have been”: Oral history interview, Jonathan Daniels, p. 57, Truman Library.
“There is a feeling of”: Robert H. Ferrell, ed., Truman in the White House: The Diary of Eben A. Ayers (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991), p. 11.
“I don’t think you ought”: Truman, Memoirs, p. 23.
“Harry, you forget who”: Oral history interview, John W. Snyder, p. 164, Truman Library.
“Did he make that”: Truman, Memoirs, p. 23.
“I think I admired Mr. Roosevelt”: Conversation from the diary of Henry Morgenthau, Jr., April 14, 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/morg/mpd19.pdf.
“Truman has a mind of his own”: Ibid.
“I’m sure this modest man”: Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), p. 881.
“Old and young were crying”: Truman diary, April 13, 1945, PSF, box 68, Truman Papers.
“Now, the real politicking”: Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman (New York: William Morrow, 1973), p. 224.
he prayed that he would be: Truman, Memoirs, p. 37.
tears were rolling from: “Mrs. Truman in Tears,” New York Times, April 17, 1945.
“Dad was terribly nervous”: Truman, Harry S. Truman, p. 224.
“Just a minute, Harry”: Ibid.
“Mr. Speaker”: First speech as president, Harry Truman, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEbkO9a0v-M.
Secret service logged: Presidential Movement Logs, box 1, Records of the U.S. Secret Service, Truman Library.
“Personal and Secret from”: Truman to Averell Harriman, April 16, 1945, MRF, box 2, Truman Papers.
“You’re impugning the loyalty”: W. Averell Harriman and Elie Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin 1941–1946 (New York: Random House, 1975), p. 446.
“The President has left”: Jonathan Daniels, Frontier on the Hudson (New York: Macmillan, 1946), p. 12.
“Little did you think”: Rufus B. Burrus to Harry S. Truman, April 13, 1945, Rufus B. Burrus Papers, box 20, Truman Library.
“You are a good man, Harry”: C. D. Hicks to Truman, April 13, 1945, WHCF:PPF, box 479, Truman Papers.
“You know that I am not”: Eddie Jacobson to Truman, May 10, 1945, WHCF:PPF, box 185, Truman Papers.
“I have had the most momentous”: Harry S. Truman to Martha Ellen Truman and Mary Jane Truman, April 16, 1945, FBPAP:FCF, box 19, Truman Papers.
Chapter 16
“Being President is like”: Harry S. Truman, “The Truman Memoirs,” Life, January 23, 1956.
“It takes about 17 hours”: Decision: The Conflicts of Harry S. Truman, Motion Picture Collection, Truman Library.
“This limousine-infested Capital”: “Truman Walks to Work—Breaking Another Precedent,” newspaper clipping, Victor R. Messall Papers, box 7, Truman Library.
“Good luck, Harry!”: “Truman Starts Another Week at Furious Pace,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 20, 1945.
“capacity for drink”: Diary of Eben A. Ayers, May 4, 1945, excerpted in Robert H. Ferrell, ed., Truman in the White House: The Diary of Eben A. Ayers (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991), p. 18.
“I don’t like the son-of-a-bitch”: Ibid., p. 17.
official meetings schedule: Truman daily calendar, April 17, 1945, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/calendar/main.php?currYear=1945&currMonth=4&currDay=17.
“slowly and with feeling”: Notes on meeting with S. J. Wolf, B-File, referring to “That Dream Will Come True,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, July 15, 1945, B-File, Truman Papers.
“Good morning”: Transcript of press conference, April 17, 1945, PSF:PCF, box 51, Truman Papers.
“We all knew that Roosevelt”: Oral history interview, Robert G. Nixon, p. 152, Truman Library.
“The first thing I want”: Transcript of press conference, April 17, 1945.
“His first press conferences”: Oral history interview, Jonathan Daniels, p. 77, Truman Library.
“modern noise”: “It is not noise. It is music,” Harry Truman’s Record Albums, Harry S. Truman National Historic Site, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/hstr/learn/historyculture/truman-record-collection.htm.
Madame Tussauds of London: Office of War Information, memorandum re: Madame Tussauds, May 10, 1945, Truman Papers, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/trumanfile/truman-tussaud.htm.
“If Harry Truman can be President”: Program transcript, Truman, WGBH American Experience, PBS.org, www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/.../truman-transcript/.
“Mr. and Mrs. Truman lived so”: “Dear Washington,” Washington Times-Herald, clipping, n.d., Victor R. Messall Papers, box 7, Truman Library.
“He brings to the White House”: “Truman’s Record Shows Practical Prudent Man,” New York Times, April 15, 1945.
“seen a good deal of [Truman]”: Joseph C. Grew to Cecil Lyon, May 2, 1945, quoted in a footnote to Department of State memorandum of conversation, May 19, 1945, Official File, box 1928, Truman Papers.
“When I saw him today”: John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), p. 199.
“Personally,” Leahy wrote: William D. Leahy, I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman Based on His Notes and Diaries Made at the Time (New York: Whittlesey House, 1950), p. 349.
“How do you spell your name?”: Transcript of this press conference, April 17, 1945, Matthew Connelly Papers, Truman Library.
“Back to school and photographers”: Diary of Margaret Truman, April 17, 1945, Margaret Truman Papers, box 13, Truman Library.
“Few citizens of the capital”: “Bess Truman Insists Upon Being Herself,” Washington Post, April 29, 1945.
“My first thought was that”: “Truman’s Home Town Trusts Him as a Leader,” Atlanta Constitution, April 15, 1945.
“If he’d have been voted in”: “Truman’s Mother ‘Not Really Glad,’” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 17, 1945.
“I told them that my family”: Harry S. Truman to Martha Ellen Truman and Mary Jane Truman, April 18, 1945, FBPAP:FCF, box 19, Truman Library.
“Everywhere one hears the remark”: “Man from Missouri,” Fortune, July 1945.
“Few Presidents in history”: Diary of Allen Drury, Allen Drury, A Senate Journal: 1943–1945 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), p. 417.
“Harry Truman is a man of”: Quoted in Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman (New York: William Morrow, 1973), p. 221.
“He shared so many moments”: Margaret Truman, Bess W. Truman (New York: Macmillan, 1986), p. 288.
“She was not sure he could”: Ibid.
Chapter 17
“large numbers of enemy aircraft”: “Jap Suicide Flyers Sink Destroyer at Okinawa,” Los Angeles Times, April 13, 1945.
“but never so extensively”: John Lardner, “A Reporter on Okinawa,” New Yorker, May
19, 1945.
“a branch of hysteria”: Ibid.
“We saw great clouds of black”: “B-29’s Set Great Tokyo Fires,” New York Times, April 14, 1945.
Soon after this mission: “Could Wipe Out Jap Industry, B-29 Head Says,” Washington Post, April 15, 1945.
“You go ahead and get”: Curtis E. LeMay with MacKinlay Kantor, Mission with LeMay: My Story (New York: Doubleday, 1965), p. 347.
“Our attempts to bomb precision”: Curtis E. LeMay to General H. H. Arnold, April 5, 1945, Curtis E. LeMay Papers, box 11, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
“It was against this background”: “Analysis of Incendiary Phase of Operations,” March 9–19, 1945, Headquarters XXI Bomber Command, LeMay Papers, box 37.
“the ruthless bombing from the air”: Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Appeal to Russia and Finland to Stop Bombing Civilians,” December 1, 1939, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15845.
“inhuman barbarism”: Ibid.
“home industries carried on”: “Analysis of Incendiary Phase,” LeMay Papers.
“The bombs from a single”: Ibid.
“I’m sweating this one”: St. Clair McKelway, “A Reporter with the B-29s,” New Yorker, June 23, 1945.
“I was a machine”: LeMay and Kantor, Mission with LeMay, p. 218.
“A quick glance at the map”: Arnold to LeMay, April 18, 1945, LeMay Papers, box 11.
“Anything you have seen”: “Allies Free 39,000 in Nazi Horror Camp,” Christian Science Monitor, April 20, 1945.
“There were children”: “2d Army Frees 29,000 in Nazi Horror Camp,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 19, 1945.
“And now, let me tell you”: Edward R. Murrow, In Search of Light: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow, 1938–1961 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), pp. 90–95.
“There is complete economic”: McCloy’s report is excerpted in Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: 1945; Year of Decisions (New York: Konecky & Konecky, 1955), pp. 102–4.
“without drastic action”: Memorandum for the president: “Review of Food Supply,” April 16, 1945, PSF, box 104, Truman Papers.
“Why should we not cross”: Winston S. Churchill to Dwight D. Eisenhower, March 31, 1945, reprinted in Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 6, Triumph and Tragedy (New York: Bantam, 1962), p. 397.
“raise grave and formidable”: Churchill to Franklin D. Roosevelt, April 1, 1945, reprinted in ibid., p. 399.
Eisenhower chose to halt: Covered extensively in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (New York: Avon, 1952). For a concise version, see “Why Eisenhower Halted at the Elbe,” Christian Science Monitor, April 10, 1995.
“The armies had outrun”: Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), p. 566.
“In this atmosphere of disturbance”: McCloy’s report, pp. 102–4.
“Mr. Secretary”: Conversation from Henry Morgenthau, Jr., diaries, April 20, 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/morg/mpd19.pdf.
fiscal year spending for 1945: Memorandum for the president, “Financing the War,” PSF, box 139, Truman Papers.
“public authority must be”: John Maynard Keynes, “An Open Letter to President Roosevelt,” December 16, 1933, http://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/368/368KeynesOpenLetFDRtable.pdf.
“The quickest Cabinet meeting”: Diary of Henry L. Stimson, April 20, 1945, Henry Lewis Stimson Papers, Yale University Library.
“He was very vigorous”: The Price of Vision: The Diary of Henry A. Wallace 1942–1946, ed. John Morton Blum (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973), p. 437.
“a fine man, good looking”: Descriptions of cabinet members from Harry S. Truman to Jonathan Daniels, February 26, 1950 (unsent), published in Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman, ed. Robert H. Ferrell (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1980), p. 174.
“Matt,” Truman barked: Conversation from oral history interview, Matthew J. Connelly, p. 174, Truman Library.
“Miss Tillie, who do you think”: Ibid., p. 175.
“Boy, what a man”: Ibid., p. 176.
“Charlie and I graduated”: Transcript of press conference, April 20, 1945, PSF:PCF, box 51, Truman Papers
“Chief Counsel for the United States”: Executive Order no. 9547, May 2, 1945, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/executiveorders/index.php?pid=734.
“Dear Mamma + Mary”: Harry S. Truman to Martha Ellen Truman and Mary Jane Truman, April 21, 1945, FBPAP:FCF, box 19, Truman Papers.
“legal sheets”: Oral history interview, Roberta Barrows, p. 50, Truman Library.
“I had to know their background”: Ibid., p. 51.
“They are all major”: Oral history interview, Edward D. McKim, p. 176, Truman Library.
“We have interests in”: Edward R. Stettinius to Truman, April 18, 1945, PSF, box 161, Truman Papers.
“We want no Gestapo”: Longhand note, May 12, 1945, PSF:LNF, box 283, Truman Papers.
“Hitler was the one”: A. J. Baime, The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), p. 174.
“Would you comment”: “Truman Stands by Pro-Negro Senate Record,” Chicago Defender, April 28, 1945.
Margaret had nine cavities: Diary of Bruce Forsyth, White House dentist, Bruce D. Forsyth Papers, box 1, Truman Library.
“We all wanted to see Harry”: “Time Out for Cronies,” Washington Star, April 19, 1945, Fred Canfil Papers, box 3, Truman Library.
“I was saying goodbye to”: Quotes in Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevlet: The Home Front in World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1994), p. 618.
“The expression on Mother’s face”: Margaret Truman, Bess W. Truman (New York: Macmillan, 1986), p. 260.
Chapter 18
“I want you to go over”: W. Averell Harriman and Elie Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin 1941–1946 (New York: Random House, 1975), p. 3.
“[Harriman] recognized no interests”: George F. Kennan, Memoirs: 1925–1950 (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1967), pp. 232–34.
“The Soviet Union had two”: Memorandum of conversation, April 20, 1945, PSF, box 164, Truman Papers.
“a barbarian invasion”: Ibid.
“And anyway,” he said: David McCullough, Truman (New York: Touchstone, 1993), p. 371.
“[Truman] added that he intended”: April 20, 1945, memorandum of conversation.
“I gained great respect”: Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy, p. 3.
“It would be a blessing”: John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), p. 159.
“GPU guys”: Oral history interview, Elbridge Durbrow, p. 39, Truman Papers.
“I followed them around”: Ibid.
“Real name is Skriabin”: Department of State memorandum, “Molotov, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich: Biographical Sketch,” April 20, 1945, PSF, box 164, Truman Papers.
“He has always carried out”: Ibid.
“the greatest admiration for”: Department of State, memorandum of conversation, April 22, 1945, PSF, box 164, Truman Papers.
“It was now clear that”: Memorandum of meeting at the White House, “2:00 PM, April 23,” PSF, box 164, Truman Papers.
“It was now or never”: Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy, p. 452.
“The United States government could”: Memorandum of conversation, April 23, 1945, PSF, box 164, Truman Papers.
“How I enjoyed translating”: Charles E. Bohlen, Witness to History: 1929–1969 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), p. 213.
“That will be all”: Ibid.
“I have never been talked to”: Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy, p. 453.
“a head-on collision”: Diary of Henry L. Stimson, April 23, 1945, Henry Lewis Stimson Papers, Yale University Library.
; “I did regret that Truman”: Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy, p. 453.
“I gave it to him straight”: Diary of Joseph E. Davies, April 30, 1945, Joseph Edward Davies Papers, box 16, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
“It would be too bad”: Davies diary, April 30, 1945.
Chapter 19
“There was little”: Robert H. Ferrell, ed., Truman in the White House: The Diary of Eben A. Ayers (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991), p. 14.
“as soon as possible on”: Diary of Henry L. Stimson, April 24, 1945, Henry Lewis Stimson Papers, Yale University Library.
Through a second door: Leslie L. Groves, report of meeting with the president, April 25, 1945, Atomic Bomb Collection, box 1, Truman Library.
“Within four months we shall”: Memorandum discussed with the president, April 25, 1945, Stimson Papers.
“An atom is made up of”: Memorandum for the secretary of war, April 23, 1945, National Security Archives online, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/3a.pdf.
Manhattan District Project: Ibid.
“The successful development”: Ibid.
“the element uranium may be”: Albert Einstein to Franklin D. Roosevelt, August 2, 1939, Significant Documents Collection, box 1, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library.
“Probably no other scientist”: Arthur Holly Compton, Atomic Quest: A Personal Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 30.
“Alex,” Roosevelt said: Godfrey Hodgson, The Colonel: The Life and Wars of Henry Stimson 1867–1950 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), p. 288.
“This needs action”: Ibid.
“Vannevar Bush came in”: Stimson diary, November 6, 1941.
“I would spend so much”: Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Statesman 1945–1959 (New York: Viking, 1987), p. 11.
“The laboratory will be”: Leslie L. Groves to J. Robert Oppenheimer, February 25, 1943, Leslie L. Groves Papers, box 36, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
“My two great loves”: Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Vintage, 2005), caption in photo insert.