The Accidental President
Page 48
“While I felt that the possibility”: Leslie M. Groves, Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project (New York: Da Capo, 1962), p. 69.
“Never in history has anyone”: Ibid., p. 72.
“tube alloys”: Numerous cables, such as Winston S. Churchill to Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 20, 1943, Atomic Bomb File, box 1, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library.
“with the scientists’ prediction”: James F. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947), p. 257.
“By next summer this will”: Vannevar Bush and James B. Conant to Henry L. Stimson, cover letter to memorandum, “Salient Points Concerning Future International Handling of Subject of Atomic Bombs,” September 30, 1944, National Archives. Also quoted in Amir D. Aczel, Uranium Wars: The Scientific Rivalry That Created the Nuclear Age (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2009), p. 204.
“We were up against some”: Stimson diary, March 5, 1945.
“intended by one fell, drastic”: “Huge Reprisal Blow Threatened by Nazis,” New York Times, December 4, 1943.
“sold the president a lemon”: Stimson diary, March 15, 1945.
“I understand that the expenditures”: James F. Byrnes, memorandum for the president, March 2, 1945, Selected Documents on the Topic of the Atomic Bomb, box 1, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library.
“within four months”: Henry L. Stimson, memorandum discussed with the president, April 25, 1945, Stimson Papers.
“A great deal of emphasis”: Groves, report of April 25, 1945.
“be eventually at the mercy”: April 25, 1945, memorandum, Stimson Papers.
“Is that you, Mr. President?”: Transcript of conversation, April 25, 1945, William D. Leahy Papers, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, box 6, National Archives, College Park, MD. Also: Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: 1945; Year of Decisions (New York: Konecky & Konecky, 1955), pp. 89–94.
“I think he [Himmler]”: Ibid.
“The conference began in”: New Yorker, Talk of the Town, May 5, 1945.
“I’m counting on you”: The Diaries of Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., 1943–1946, eds. Thomas M. Campbell and George C. Herring (New York: New Viewpoints, 1975), p. 322.
“great humanitarian”: Harry S. Truman, Address to the United Nations Conference in San Francisco, April 25, 1945, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=12391.
“You members of this Conference”: Ibid.
“It would be a relatively”: Diary excerpted in Arthur Vandenberg, Jr., ed., The Private Papers of Senator Vandenberg (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952), p. 156.
Chapter 20
“Put it there”: “Put It There,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 28, 1945.
“This is the Red Army”: “Hitler’s Redoubt Invaded,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 28, 1945.
“looked more like a giant”: “Juncture of Two Allied Armies on Elbe River Bisects Germany,” Christian Science Monitor, April 27, 1945.
“The last faint, desperate”: Statement by the President Announcing the Junction of Anglo-American and Soviet Forces in Germany, April 27, 1945, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/viewpapers.php?pid=19
“No! No!”: “Cries No! No! As Partisan Shoot Him, Girl Friend,” Washington Post, April 30, 1945.
“The brains which took Fascist”: Ibid.
“understand the meaning of”: Statement by the President on the Surrender of German Forces in Italy, May 2, 1945, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/viewpapers.php?pid=27
“Hitler died at noon today”: “Hitler Dead, Reports Insist,” Daily Boston Globe, April 30, 1945.
“The words were the comments”: Jonathan Daniels, Frontier on the Potomac (New York: Macmillan, 1946), p. 25.
“Mr. President, would you care”: Transcript of press conference, May 2, 1945, PSF:PCF, box 51, Truman Papers.
“Any person guilty”: Press release, April 23, 1945, PSF, box 68, Truman Papers.
“All resistance collapsed”: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (New York: Avon, 1952), p. 458.
more than 50 percent of children: Food for the Liberated Countries, address by Herbert Hoover, May 9, 1945, Henry Lewis Stimson Papers, microfilm reel 112, Yale University Library.
A third of children in Belgium: Ibid.
“It is now 11:59”: Ibid.
“The needs of the liberated”: White House press release re: report of Judge Samuel Rosenman, May 22, 1945, PSF, box 197, Truman Papers.
“I fear terrible things”: Winston S. Churchill to Harry S. Truman, May 11, 1945, Naval Aide to the President File, box 7, Truman Papers.
“stick to my guns”: Transcript of phone conversation in The Diaries of Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., 1943–1946, eds. Thomas M. Campbell and George C. Herring (New York: New Viewpoints, 1975), p. 339.
“It is precedent”: Ibid.
“Stick to your guns”: Ibid.
“A serious shadow fell”: Diary excerpted in Arthur Vandenberg, Jr., The Private Papers of Senator Vandenberg (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952), p. 185.
“Bohlen,” Masaryk said: Charles E. Bohlen, Witness to History: 1929–1969 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), p. 214.
Chapter 21
A bill for $419.45: Bill to National Park Service from Woodward & Lathrop, Washington, DC, Financial Affairs File, box 9, Bess W. Truman Papers, Truman Library.
“Cranks are just as likely”: Ira Smith with Joe Alex Morris, Dear Mr. President: The Story of Fifty Years in the White House Mail Room (New York: Julian Messner, 1949), p. 217.
the president’s salary was: Untitled document on president’s salary and White House budget, Eben A. Ayers Papers, box 24, Truman Library.
“Visiting the White House in person”: Margaret Truman, The President’s House: A First Daughter Shares the History and Secrets of the World’s Most Famous Home (New York: Ballantine, 2003), p. 7.
“Everything seems larger”: Ibid., p. 10.
“dark, clunky furniture”: Ibid., p. 212.
“At 0241 hours this morning”: Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, Rheims, France [Eisenhower’s office], to War Department, Washington, DC, cable, May 7, 1945, William D. Leahy Papers, Records of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, box 5, record group 218, National Archives, College Park, MD.
“What is the use of me”: Transcript of telephone conversation, May 7, 1945, ibid.
“I have agreed with the London”: Statement by the President on the Timing of the Announcement of the German Surrender, May 7, 1945, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/viewpapers.php?pid=32.
“I am sixty-one this morning”: Harry S. Truman to Martha Ellen Truman and Mary Jane Truman, May 8, 1945, FBPAP:FCF, box 19, Truman Papers.
“You’re forty years old!”: Transcript of press conference, May 8, 1945, PSF:PCF, box 51, Truman Papers.
“Our victory is but half-won”: Broadcast to the American People Announcing the Surrender of Germany, May 8, 1945, Audio Collection, Truman Library online, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/ww2/veday.htm.
“I can almost hear”: Steve Neal, ed., Eleanor and Harry: The Correspondence of Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman (New York: Citadel, 2002), p. 25.
“at half-pace”: “V-E Day Celebrations in the Nation Are Sporadic,” Wall Street Journal, May 9, 1945.
“There are no words”: Edward R. Murrow, In Search of Light: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow, 1938–1961 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), p. 97.
“Our nation,” Murrow said: Ibid.
“Things have moved at a terrific”: H. S. Truman to M. E. Truman and M. J. Truman, May 8, 1945.
“supervise, regulate, and control”: Notes of an informal meeting of the Interim Committee (meeting minutes), May 8, 1945, Atomic Bomb Collection, Truman Library.
“Gentlemen, it is our”: D. M. Giangreco and Kathryn Moore, Dear Harry: Truman’s Mailroom, 1945–1953 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 1999), p. 282.
“Hiroshima is the largest”: Notes on initial
meeting of Target Committee (meeting minutes), April 27, 1945, National Security Archive online, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/4.pdf.
“thoroughly frightened”: James F. Byrnes, All in One Lifetime (London: Museum, 1960), p. 283.
“We saw, of course, what everybody”: Transcript of conference, Special Committee of the Senate and House of Representatives Which Investigated Atrocities in Germany, May 9, 1945, Henry L. Stimson file, box 2, National Archives, College Park, MD.
“It seems to me that matters”: Winston S. Churchill to Harry L. Truman, May 6, 1945, Naval Aide to the President File, box 7, Truman Papers.
“I am unable to understand”: Truman to Joseph Stalin, May 16, 1945, MRF, box 2, Truman Papers.
“using one excuse or another”: Memorandum for the president, “The Current Situation in Bulgaria,” May 3, 1945, William D. Leahy Papers, Records of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, box 1, record group 218, National Archives, College Park, MD.
“excludes the possibility”: Stalin to Churchill, forwarded to Truman, reprinted in a memorandum for the secretary of state, May 9, 1945, SMOF: Naval Aide to the President Files, box 7, Truman Papers.
“There should now be no valid”: Truman to Churchill, May 9, 1945, SMOF:MRF, box 1, Truman Papers.
“Mr. President,” he cabled: Churchill to Truman, May 12, 1945, SMOF: Naval Aide to the President File, box 7, Truman Papers.
Chapter 22
“Oh, fiddlesticks!”: Conversation from “President Spends Quiet Day with His 92-Year-Old Mother,” Washington Evening Star, May 12, 1945; “Mother Visits Truman; Goes by Air at 92,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 12, 1945.
“wreathed in smiles”: Ibid.
“She’s certainly a grand old”: “Truman’s Mother Flies to Capital,” New York Times, May 12, 1945.
“Mamma,” Truman said: “Mother Truman—Portrait of a Rebel,” New York Times, June 23, 1946.
“When he was a boy, Harry”: Ibid.
“She is a dear little old”: Diary of Joseph E. Davies, May 13, 1945, Joseph Edward Davies Papers, box 16, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
“Isn’t he a Yankee?”: Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman (New York: William Morrow, 1973), p. 245.
“Nothing they can say about me”: Harry S. Truman to Martha Ellen Truman and Mary Jane Truman, June 19, 1945, FBPAP:FCF, box 19, Truman Papers.
“It is a terrible”: H. S. Truman to M. E. Truman and M. J. Truman, April 29, 1945, FBPAP:FCF, box 19, Truman Papers.
ALWAYS DO RIGHT!: William E. Leuchtenburg, The American President: From Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 321.
“deliberately organized—or disorganized”: Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 29.
“You have no idea”: Oral history interview, Roberta Barrows, p. 56, Truman Library.
“By the way,” Truman said: Oral history interview, Floyd M. Boring, p. 8, Truman Library.
“Now look, I know you”: Barrows oral history, p. 67.
“matching combinations of socks”: Robert H. Ferrell, ed., Truman in the White House: The Diary of Eben A. Ayers (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991), p. 24.
“That would have been too bad”: Schwellenbach quoted in Henry A. Wallace diary, The Price of Vision: The Diary of Henry A. Wallace, 1942–1946, ed. John Morton Blum (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973), p. 478.
“Just a few days after Truman”: Oral history interview, Robert G. Nixon, p. 349, Truman Library.
“You know, I’m almost”: H. S. Truman to Bess W. Truman, August 12, 1946, FBPAP:FCF, box 15, Truman Papers.
“Kentucky bourbon”: “Books of the Times: Memoirs of a (Maybe the) Washington Insider,” New York Times, May 13, 1991.
“guarded his chips as though”: Clark Clifford with Richard Holbrooke, Counsel to the President: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 1991), p. 70.
“Harry Vaughan was as out of place”: Oral history interview, Walter Hehmeyer, p. 74, Truman Library.
“Potomac fever”: Truman, Harry S. Truman, p. 215.
“Mrs. Roosevelt is no longer”: Steve Neal, ed., Eleanor and Harry: The Correspondence of Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman (New York: Citadel, 2002), p. 23.
“I just can’t have him”: Oral history interview, Harry Easley, pp. 111–12, Truman Library.
“Truman brought in a bunch”: Nixon oral history, p. 170.
“How can I bring big”: Ibid.
“The more we see and hear”: “The Truman Poise,” Dallas Times Herald, June 1, 1945.
“I had to learn to say”: Margaret Truman, The President’s House: A First Daughter Shares the History and Secrets of the World’s Most Famous Home (New York: Ballantine, 2003), p. 233.
Dozens of women: “Tea at the White House,” May 24, 1945, guest list, SMOF: White House Social Office Files, box 25, Truman Papers.
“Now stop it”: Margot Ford McMillen and Heather Roberson, Into the Spotlight: Four Missouri Women (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004), p. 124.
“The imperious dowager”: Michael Beschloss, “Harry Truman’s Formidable Mother-in-Law,” New York Times, May 8, 2014.
“meals so gray”: “The First Kitchen,” New Yorker, November 22, 2010.
“Now that’s the way”: David McCullough, Truman (New York: Touchstone, 1993), p. 386.
“challenged the [farm] bloc”: “Truman Sets a Pattern for a Term as President,” New York Times, May 6, 1945.
“At the savage intersection”: Clifford and Holbrooke, Counsel to the President,p. vii.
Chapter 23
“the government of any country”: Transcript of the Lend-Lease Act (1941), https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=71&page=transcript.
“Give us the tools and we”: Winston S. Churchill, Give Us the Tools speech, https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=71&page=transcript.
“the most unsordid act”: Charles More, Britain in the Twentieth Century (New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 130.
“one minute or $1 into”: John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), p. 179.
“Deliveries of supplies under”: Memorandum for the president, May 11, 1945, PSF, box 164,Truman Papers.
“Other lend-lease supplies”: Ibid.
the United States had sent 593,259: War Shipping Administration, memorandum for the president, May 12, 1945, PSF, box 164,Truman Papers.
“There can be no post-war”: Gaddis, Origins of the Cold War, p. 196.
“He . . . seemed eager to make”: The Price of Vision: The Diary of Henry A. Wallace 1942–1946, ed. John Morton Blum (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973), p. 437.
“You could go into [Truman’s] office”: Robert J. Donovan, Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945–1948 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1977), p. 24.
“Tell the son of a bitch”: Ken Hechler, Working with Truman: A Personal Memoir of the White House Years (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1982), p. 53.
Yugoslavian forces had hung: Department of State, memorandum of conversation with the president, May 10, 1945, WHCF:OF, file 1928, Truman Papers.
“no less dictatorial”: Memorandum for the president, William J. Donovan, April 30, 1945, Rose A. Conway Papers, box 9, Truman Library.
“In foreign affairs, as in”: Ibid.
“The issue, therefore, is hardly”: Ibid.
“You are no doubt receiving”: Harry S. Truman to Winston S. Churchill, May 11, 1945, MRF, box 2, Truman Papers.
“has all the rights to hold”: Ambassador in Yugoslavia, cable to secretary of state, May 18, 1945, William D. Leahy Papers, Records of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, box 12, record group 218, National Archives, College Park, MD.
“many Italians of all classes”: Department of State, memorandum for the president, “Current Foreign Developme
nts,” May 15, 1945, PSF, box 164, Truman Papers.
“The Yugoslavs are making”: Ibid.
“I am unable and unwilling”: Harry S. Truman to Winston S. Churchill, May 14, 1945, SMOF:MRF, box 2, Truman Papers.
“We had another explosive”: Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: 1945; Year of Decisions (New York: Konecky & Konecky, 1955), p. 243.
“Any country seeking to attack”: The Diaries of Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., 1943–1946, eds. Thomas M. Campbell and George C. Herring (New York: New Viewpoints, 1975), p. 354.
“The idea of a Germany”: George F. Kennan, Memoirs: 1925–1950 (Boston: Atlantic Monthly, 1967), p. 258.
“Sources declare that the Communist”: OSS, memorandum to the president, May 18, 1945, Rose A. Conway Papers, box 9.
“[Dr. Soong] discussed at some length”: Department of State, memorandum of conversation, May 14, 1945, WHCF:OF, file 1928, Truman Papers.
“A future war with Soviet”: Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (New York: Vintage, 1995), p. 139.
“much disturbed”: Diary of Joseph E. Davies, May 13, 1945, Joseph Edward Davies Papers, box 16, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
“these damn sheets”: Ibid.
“The rapid and serious deterioration”: Joseph E. Davies to Truman, May 12, 1945, unsent, Davies Papers, box 16.
“The situation today”: Ibid.
“Ambassador Harriman said that”: Department of State, memorandum of conversation, May 15, 1945, WHCF:OF, file 1928, Truman Library.
“He said that their”: Diary of James Forrestal, May 14, 1945, The Forrestal Diaries, ed. Walter Millis (New York: Viking, 1951), p. 57.
“All agree,” he informed: Henry L. Stimson to Harry S. Truman, May 16, 1945, included in diary of Henry L. Stimson, Henry Lewis Stimson Papers, Yale University Library.
“A solution must be found”: Ibid.
“All of this is a tough”: Ibid.
“The longer the meeting [is] delayed”: Department of State, May 15, 1945, memorandum of conversation.
“We shall probably hold more”: Stimson to Truman, May 16, 1945, included in Stimson diary.