Harry S Truman - The Buck Stops Here

Shortly after passage of the Selective Service Act in 1940, Senator Harry Truman dropped in to see Army Chief of Staff Marshall (Number 5). The Missouri senator had been in the field artillery during World War I, had kept up his service in the reserves, and now wanted to go back into the army to help train new recruits. Bemused, Marshall asked how old he was, and Truman told him he was 56. The Chief of Staff suggested that maybe Truman could be more useful on the home front.

Truman had great respect for Marshall and agreed he was probably right. But how could he be useful on the home front? Truman then thought about the billions being poured into what was still America’s defense program. The idea came to him. Truman got into his beat-up old car and set out on a one-man inspection trip around the country to see for himself how money for defense preparation was being spent.

That trip would result in the creation of the Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program. It would later be known more simply as the Truman Committee. It investigated possible fraud, waste, mismanagement, and corruption in the defense industry and would result in saving hundreds of millions of dollars. It also resulted in Truman winning the respect of fellow senators on both sides of the aisle. 

The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb

Truman’s contribution to the war effort, through his committee work, was most impressive. But that alone would probably not have been enough to justify his inclusion among the top l00 influentials of World War II.

Truman is here for one of the most significant decisions of the war. He made it less than four months after he took office as president: the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan.

We know that approximately 103,000 Japanese lives were lost in the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But we will never know how many lives were spared, not just among the Allies, but among the Japanese as well, by the swift end to this bloodiest of all wars.

Succeeding President Roosevelt

Harry S Truman was born in 1884 in Lamar, Missouri. During World War I, he commanded a field artillery unit of the Missouri National Guard in France. After the war, he and a partner set up a haberdashery shop, but it failed. Truman spent years paying off every penny that he owed.

Truman went into politics, serving several years as a judge in Jackson County, Missouri. In 1934, he was nominated for the U.S. Senate. Thanks to the support of Tom Prendergast, the Democratic Party boss in Kansas City, Truman was elected. In 1940, Truman ran successfully for reelection.

The year 1944 was a critical one in American history. Roosevelt was about to run for a fourth term, but many Democratic leaders feared that he was ill and might not complete his term. They mistrusted Vice President Henry Wallace, who they regarded as an extreme left-winger. The president wrote a letter to convention officials suggesting two alternatives: Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas and Senator Harry Truman. It was the senator who got the final nod and became vice president. Less than three months after the inauguration, Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage and Truman became president.

The Manhattan Project

The new chief executive soon became privy to some of the most important secrets of the war. During his days heading the Truman Committee, he had been tipped off about some kind of suspicious activity in the states of Tennessee and Washington. It appeared that many materials were going into these new plants, but almost nothing was coming out. What was going on?

When Truman began looking into the matter, he was told by legislative leader Sam Rayburn, “Stay away from it, Harry.” He trusted Rayburn and let it go. Now, as president, he understood Rayburn’s warning. Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington, were involved in building a top-secret weapon: an atomic bomb.

Five weeks after Truman became president, Germany was defeated and lay in ruins. Only Japan continued to fight. Now the questions started coming:

• Was it really necessary to drop atomic bombs on Japan?
• Why not warn Japan first?
• Why not arrange for a demonstration to show the power of the weapon?
• Was the bomb so barbarous that it might cause the United States to lose its moral authority in the world?
• With the Soviet Union about to enter the war against Japan, might that be enough to bring the war to a successful conclusion without using the bomb?

Truman looked at the figures for the kamikaze suicide bombers, who crashed their explosive-laden planes into American naval ships. He considered the estimates of American casualties in the forthcoming invasion of the Japanese home islands. Then, as commander in chief, he made the decision to drop a bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Two days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. A week later, the Japanese agreed to surrender.

A Stunning Victory

With the war ended, Truman found himself facing Communist threats to western Europe and the Far East that seriously affected the implementation of the Marshall Plan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the Berlin Airlift, as well as the decision to help South Korea oppose North Korean aggression.

In 1948, Truman won a stunning upset victory over Republican Tom Dewey and Democrats Henry Wallace and Strom Thurmond. The election proved that a Democrat could win the White House without carrying the South.In the earliest days of his presidency, Truman had placed a sign on his desk: “The Buck Stops Here.” The man from Missouri who had never gone to college knew his American history; he knew that people from one state vote for officials in that state, but that all the people vote for president. It was the president who had to make the tough decisions, and Truman made them to the best of his ability.

Harry Truman, the 33rd president of the United States, died in 1972.