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Despite being an ardent student of history, Truman is having trouble researching and writing about his own presidency. He mentions in this letter a number of people from his administration and the major World War II conferences, except the one he attended at Potsdam, Germany. “Byrnes book on [Yalta]” probably refers to James F. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1947). Truman is upset that the Eisenhower administration is adopting a part of his administration’s agricultural policy—the Brannan Plan, named for his Secretary of Agriculture—and a part of his national health-care proposal.
January 28, 1954
Dear Dean:
I have been working on the opening chapter of my purported memoirs. I have tried to place myself back into the position I was in on April 12, 1945. I have read letters to my mother and sister, to my brother and to my cousins. I have read telegrams to and from Churchill and Roosevelt, to and from Stalin and Roosevelt. I’ve read memos I made of visits to the White House from April 12th back to July, 1944. I’ve read Ike’s, Leahy’s, Churchill’s, Grew’s, Cordell Hull’s books. Memos from Hopkins, Stimson, Asst. & Acting Secretary of State Dean Acheson, reports from Marshall, Eisenhower, King, Bradley. Communiqués of Tehran, Cairo, Casablanca, Quebec, Yalta, Byrnes book on it, etc., etc., ad lib[itum], and still I am living today and cussing the budget (Gen. Motors Budget), wondering at the deceit and misrepresentation in the handling of security risks, the adoption of the Brannan Plan for wool—wool of all things, accepting a corner of my health plan.
So you see the past has always interested me for use in the present and I’m bored to death with what I did and didn’t do nine years ago.
But Andrew Johnson, James Madison, even old Rutherford B. Hayes I’m extremely interested in as I am King Henry IV of France, Margaret of Navarre, Charles V, Philip II of Spain, and Charlie’s Aunt Margaret.
Wish to goodness I’d decided to spend my so called retirement putting Louis XIII, Gustavus Adolphus, Richelieu and five tubs of gold together instead of writing about me and my mistakes. Anyway I made no mistake in my Great Secretary of State.
Hope you’re not too bored with this explosion but I had to blow off to you, and you, therefore, are the fall guy. My best to Mrs. Acheson and all the family.
Sincerely,
Harry
Acheson expresses unsentimental views on the importance of power, and balances of power, in world affairs. “Wallace and Hurley” are Henry A. Wallace, Vice President of United States (1941–45), and Patrick J. Hurley, Secretary of War (1929–33), personal representative of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on various missions during World War II, and U.S. ambassador to China (1944–45). The “Berlin fiasco” Acheson refers to is the failure of a recent meeting in Berlin of the foreign ministers of the four occupying powers in Germany to reach any agreement regarding the unification of Germany. The so-called New Look in American foreign policy, which Acheson derides, was announced in a speech by Secretary of State Dulles on January 12, 1954. It was based on “a great capacity to retaliate” with atomic weapons. The EDC is the European Defense Community, a plan, never ratified, to create a single military organization composed of forces from the continental-European NATO member countries, including, most important, France and Germany.
February 5, 1954
Dear Mr. President,
What a joy your letter brought to Alice and me! I took it home and read it to her. Right at the start we stopped at “Charlie’s Aunt Margaret.” I, in my ignorance, claimed that it was a general expression for anyone not involved in your memoirs. Alice said, Not at all—that you knew, and when you said his Aunt Margaret, you meant it.
So down came the Britannica and, sure enough, there she was—the daughter of the Emperor Maximilian and Charlie’s aunt all right. I have been trying her out on some of my high brow friends, and their degree of error is very comforting to me.
From the whole letter we could picture you full of energy and eager to get your hands on the work of building for the future with all your resources of knowledge of the past and understanding of the present. Whenever you want to blow off steam, we claim priority on being blowee, as the lawyers would say.
I know how bored you get in concentrating upon your own actions years ago. In a way I have been doing the same thing in these group discussions at Princeton and I do find that one can only do about so much a day—to do too much at a time gives me a strange dreamlike sensation of living in two periods almost at once.
As I look back over your administrations I do not see much to regret in any of the great decisions, but do see many, many times when I am amazed at the boldness, courage and insight of decisions. Comparing those years with the present, I am amazed too, by the way in which we assumed that vigorous leadership was just normal and how in the face of the most awful brawls with the hill you made the Congress do things which the present crowd would not dream of attempting.
The problems which tended to defy solution came, I think, from an erroneous decision which you inherited, and from another which you were swept—almost forced—into making or agreeing to in 1945.
The inherited error was the total destruction of Japanese and German military power and, in the case of Germany, of any German state at all. This completely withdrew all local containing power on both sides of Russia. Our own great power might have acted in large part as a substitute if we had not dispersed that in 1945–6.
Power is at the root of most relationships—by no means the only factor, but one of vast importance. A balance of power has proved the best international sheriff we have ever had. Many of our troubles—or perhaps better to say, many troubles—came from the dissolution of our power and the destruction of any balance capable of restraining the Russians from acts which weakened the West greatly, although we did deter them from direct attack on us or Europe. This is an interesting field to speculate about. For instance, how much did Stalin change his plans about China and Korea when, to what must have been his utter amazement, our army, navy and air force simply melted away. Crooked as he was, I think his talks with Wallace and Hurley must be read in the light of our power at the time he was talking—not that he was sincerely adopting a line of action on which any one could or should rely, but I doubt whether he believed that we would permit him to adopt any other course and then we had the power to make our will effective without the necessity of using the power.
These thoughts I write during a day spent without food or water having my insides X-rayed. This leads to contemplation but not to powerful flights of imagination. I hope this is to be the wind-up of almost a year of trying to get rid of some amoebae that I collected somewhere probably in Africa or South America.
When this Berlin fiasco is over—and it seems to be following the exact pattern of the Paris meeting of 1949—some attention ought to be given to the “new look,” that precious intangible—“the initiative”, which, believe it or not, is exercised by “retaliation”, etc., etc. This is in reality the policy we had to follow before you began the rearmament in 1950—and at a time when we had the monopoly of the atomic bomb.
I should think it unwise to raise the matter strongly while Berlin is still going. Partly not to attack a man who is representing us abroad, and partly because Dulles may well be crawling out of this speech now if he really hopes to get the French and Italians to ratify the E.D.C. Also I am not sure that people’s minds generally would be as open to an analysis by you or me, as they would to some one who would not be charged with responding to defend their own work against direct action. If Stevenson would do it and stay on the line he would get a real audience and then Senators and Congressmen could pick it up. Sam Rayburn would be an ideal person to do it.
Our trip to Antigua this January, although shorter, was in some ways more fun than last year. We felt better and we had our daughter Jane Brown from Milwaukee with us, who is a pretty good vacation just in herself. We had a great time swimming, eating, laughing and drinking some g
ood rum together. Everyone returned brown and happy.
Our deepest affection to you and Mrs. Truman. We hope her hand has recovered and that all is well. I wish I were seeing you in N.Y. tonight.
Most sincerely,
Dean
In 1954 Eugene Meyer bought Robert R. “Bertie” McCormick’s Washington Times-Herald and merged it with the Washington Post. “Snyder” is John W. Snyder, Secretary of the Treasury. The Tenth Inter-American Conference, held in Caracas, Venezuela, was in progress at this time. Sullivan & Cromwell is the New York City law firm where John Foster Dulles was a partner before he became Secretary of State. “Puck’s exclamation” in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
St. Patrick’s Day, 1954
Dear Dean:
Well, here you are due for another explosion. I’ve read your good letter of February 5th time and time again. It gave me a lift and as a result I’ve become more philosophical about my situation. Maybe I should go on a fast as you had to! Hope they caught that bug.
I was thinking of history and government when I wrote you before and I still spend time thinking about both. Our fatal instinct has not been eliminated by science and invention. We, as individuals, haven’t caught up physically or ethically with the atomic age. Will we?
Let’s hope our grandchildren do catch up. That’s a hypothetical statement on my part but not on yours.
Can you imagine old man Dulles trying to make Berlin and Caracas great and statesmanlike victories? Wish old Ben Franklin were alive. He’d give John Foster the Poor Richard treatment—and that is what he needs.
Ike’s rich-man-tax-bill speech was a jim dandy for the Democrats. You see what political and legislative inexperience can do for an amateur—a general! Until he learns how to fight with Congress and beat them to the punch, what chances he had, to take all the fire out of the dragon by tax reductions, foreign affairs. But he let the snolly-gosters tell him what to do. And I have to keep my mouth shut and use all the effort I have to keep from exploding publicly—hence you are the victim.
The tone of my mail has changed completely. It still comes in by the bushel but there’s hardly a mean one in two hundred and it has been as high as five in one hundred. Most of the mean ones quote Bertie McCormick’s editorials and cartoons. How in the world are you and I to survive without the Times-Herald in Washington? Somebody will have to give us hell or we’ll be off the front page for good.
What pleases me most [is] that the alibiers for Ike are having one hell of a time keeping the policies you, Snyder and the former President put into operation under wraps. They can’t play both sides of the street much longer.
What did you think of Caracas? Did we help or hurt ourselves?—Or did Sullivan and Cromwell win a victory for the United Fruit Company and the Bolivian Tin Trust? How has Guatemala been able to keep its monetary unit at par with the dollar when no other country but Canada has? I’m not so sure that dollar diplomacy hasn’t come back into its own.
Please tell Mrs. Acheson that there are a lot of girls in the history books who’ve been overlooked along with Margaret of Austria, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Justinian’s Empress to name a couple. We hear a lot of Elizabeth I, Catherine of Russia, Isabella of Spain, and Cleo of Egypt and the Medici. I like to read of them because they made Puck’s exclamation in Midsummer Night’s Dream so true. Hope you’re well entirely. The Boss and I will see you we hope about May 4th.
Sincerely,
Harry
Acheson enclosed with this letter an article about the New Look foreign policy to be published on March 28, 1954, critical of Secretary of State Dulles. It is titled “ ‘Instant Retaliation’: The Debate Continued,” regarding the Dulles policy of arming Taiwan against China and encouraging rebellion in Soviet-occupied Europe. “Mr. Hull” is Cordell Hull, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of State from 1933 to 1944.
March 26, 1954
Dear Mr. President,
This is only an interim reply to your good letter which delighted me and made me feel that we had had a good talk. I am looking forward to a real one in May.
The enclosed is my only departure from the quiet and happy obscurity of our private life. I became too worked up over the fraud of the New Look to be quiet any longer. This piece does not deal in personalities or quibbling over words but tries to lay out the skeleton of our international situation so that the reader can see what we are talking about and what we must talk about. These facts of life can’t be made to disappear by slick talk. Dulles may fool the people by the unleashing of Chiang, the liberation of the East Europeans, and the new look—all bare faced frauds—but he can’t fool the fates. The mills grind on.
Poor Mr. Hull. I have just learned of Mrs. Hull’s death and go to her funeral tomorrow. How the old man can go on I don’t see. He depended on her for everything.
Our most affectionate greetings to you and Mrs. Truman.
Most sincerely,
Dean
Acheson sent Truman a two-page memorandum, dated April 7, 1954, about agreements between the United States and the United Kingdom on the use of the atomic bomb. Truman presumably needed this information for his memoirs.
Truman visited Washington in May 1954, had dinner with the Achesons, and spoke, on May 10, to the National Press Club. His theme was the need for a bipartisan foreign policy or at least a clearly defined foreign policy. This letter includes a “spasm.” Truman is worried that the Eisenhower administration wants to intervene militarily in Indochina. France had just been decisively defeated by the Viet Minh communists at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Arthur W. Radford was a U.S. Navy Admiral and Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet during World War II and at the outbreak of the Korean War. General Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander of Allied forces in the southwest Pacific during World War II, was in charge of U.N. forces helping South Korea during the Korean War. Admiral Forrest Sherman was Chief of Naval Operations from 1949 until his death in 1951.
May 28, 1954
Dear Dean:
Now that the smoke has cleared away somewhat you are in for another spasm. To start with, your dinner was quite the most enjoyable event to Mrs. Truman and me, of the whole visit.
Our conversations with Gen. Marshall gave me a great kick—and by the way, he sent me a grand memo on China which with your White Paper makes a complete and factual record of what took place.
I’ve been working about seventeen hours a day on the book, the mail and the customers who come to see me. We are going over the Potsdam Conference and some of the happenings are fantastic to say the least. On the second day there was an argument about Franco and the German Fleet’s disposal. I finally became exasperated and told Churchill and Stalin that I hadn’t come to Berlin to try Franco although I thought no more of him than Stalin did. If we’d come to Berlin to run a police court, I’d go back home because I had plenty to do there.
When my outburst was translated to Stalin, he roared with laughter and suggested we talk of Poland or some other internationally tough subject. I’d forgotten the incident but Ben Cohen recorded and Jim Blair, now Lieutenant Governor of Missouri, was in to see me and repeated the story to me as I’ve set it down here. Jim was a Lt. Col. in civil government in Italy—I guess it was military government, at the time. I’d sent for him to come to Potsdam and offered him a ride home with me. He refused the ride because he could go home sooner on orders. When Jim arrived at the Little White House, I was having a conference with all the high military—five star generals and admirals, not one there with less than three stars. I invited Jim in and introduced him to Marshall, Leahy, Eisenhower, King, Patton and the rest and while that was going on I told him that I’d just appointed his pet political enemy to a job back in Missouri. He stopped and ripped out a paragraph of swear words (no one has a better vocabulary) and wound up by saying “for God’s sake Senator what in hell did you do that for.” The high brass almost fainted. I knew what Jim would do and I told him that good li
e so he’d blow his top.
In the campaign of 1940 the Missouri politicians had a breakfast for Henry Wallace in St. Louis at which I was present. Our candidate for Governor at that time was Larry McDaniel, now dead. Larry lost the election because he told off color stories from the platform. He was to ride from St. Louis to Jefferson City with Wallace, and Wallace’s secretary cautioned him about his demeanor with Wallace. Larry had nothing to talk about when his stories were shut off so he slept all the way to the Missouri capital. After the luncheon they went on to Kansas City for a dinner. Jim Blair rode from Jefferson City to Kansas City in the front seat and regaled Wallace by damning Republicans and his personal Democratic enemies and telling Wallace a dozen dirty stories. When they arrived and were getting out of the car Henry turned to Larry McDaniel and said “Who did you say that fellow is? He’s the most interesting man I’ve met on this trip.” Larry was fit to be tied because he thought he knew more and better stories than Jim did—without the swear words.
Now look what I’ve done—got off on a side issue instead of what I started to write you about. I believe the reaction to the trip east was good, thanks to the help and good advice I received from you and the boys. The McCarthy side show is causing a lot of shame to our Republican friends. Even the old Saturday Evening Post with its 1896 political background and philosophy “has enough.”
I’m worried about our world situation. We are losing all our friends, the smart but inexperienced boys at the White House are upsetting NATO and throwing our military strength away. Yet they seem to want to intervene in Indo-China. Radford is a MacArthur policy man and always was. That was why I wouldn’t make him Chief of Naval Operations when Sherman was appointed. Let me know how you feel on this subject please.
My best to Mrs. Acheson.
Sincerely,
Harry
The “first class disaster” at Hanoi is the dénouement of the war of liberation against the French in Indochina, leading to the creation of independent Vietnam.
Affection and Trust: The Personal Correspondence of Harry S. Truman and Dean Acheson, 1953-1971 Page 7