by David McCullough.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating Account of the life of “The Buck Stops Here” President
Allow me to begin with my several connections with “Things Truman”.
When my family moved from Kwangchow (also known as Canton) to Hong Kong in 1950, mainland China just turned “red”. I was ten years old. In June that year, the Korean War started. Even young kids knew that the U.S. President was named Truman. Seven years later, in August 1957, I was on board the ocean liner “President Cleveland”, sailing from Hong Kong to San Francisco, on my way to study at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. In reading David McCullough’s book, “Truman”, I found it interesting that, in March, 1952, Harry Truman, who just finished his two terms as President, with wife Bess, and daughter Margaret, were on the “President Cleveland” to Hawaii for their dream vacation.
The Ocean Liner "President Cleveland" on its way from Hong Kong to San Francisco, 8/1957
Fast forward to January 1996, I arrived at Columbia, Missouri to take up the position of Chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Missouri-Columbia. I stayed on the job for 5 years, during which I travelled to Kansas City regularly, since the Department had a satellite program there for which I was also responsible. My family visited the Truman Library in Independence several times. On her visit to Missouri, my daughter, who was studying in Boston at that time, gave me a desk plate containing the words “The Buck Stops Here”. I put it in my drawer. I wondered what my Missouri colleagues in the Department would think if I had the courage to display it on the top of my desk.
Harry Truman was sworn in as the President of the United States when President Franklin Roosevelt died suddenly on April 12, 1945. According to the author, there were several kinds of reactions in the country.
- "The majority of American did not know anything about Truman.
- To many, it was not just the greatest of men had fallen, but that the least of men – or at any rate the least likely of men – had assumed his place.
- In a house at Martung, Germany, three American generals, Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton, sat up much of the night talking about Roosevelt and speculating on the sort of man Truman might be. All three were greatly depressed….”
However, there were also cautious and somewhat upbeat observations, albeit in the minority:
- The New York Times praised his personal qualities and said he had the advantage of having been through the political mill. “He has known the dust and heat of a political campaign, and has learned the art, not to be despised, of seeking that middle course which will appeal to a majority of the voters. He fought with distinction in the first World War; he has been a farmer; he has known firsthand the difficulties of a small businessman. He has had the kind of experience, in short, likely to make a realist sympathetic to the problems of the varied groups than to produce the doctrinaire or the zealot.”
- Roy Roberts of the Kansas City Star, after interviewing the new President for half an hour, wrote a widely syndicated article in which he made much of the fact that Truman was the typical average American. “What a test of democracy if it works!”
After going through McCullough’s book, the reader would be thoroughly well informed to judge whether democracy works. The author began with a lengthy account of Truman’s ancestry, who migrated from Kentucky to Missouri. His grandparents had a farm in Grandview, MO., but moved to Independence when Truman was six, where he grew up. It was noteworthy that Truman did not go to college, but he was fond of reading books. He and his friend Charlie Ross vowed to read the two thousand or so volumes in the town library, and both later claimed to have succeeded. Truman also liked music and learned to play the piano. He went to concerts. He heard Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler’s performance on Scarlartii’s Pastorale and Capriccio and Beethoven’s Piano Sonata 32. He was employed in the mail room of the Kansas City Star, a timekeeper for construction crews in Santa Fe Railway, and clerk at National Bank of Commerce in Kansas City. In 1906, Truman returned to the Grandview farm, where he lived until entering the army in 1917. He fought in France in World War I, holding the rank of Artillery Captain. After the war, he returned to be a farmer, as well as engaging in other small businesses. It was after his business failures that he entered politics. He was elected a judge, and later the presiding judge in the Jackson county court, which at that time was an administrative and not a judicial court. As presiding judge, he helped coordinate the 10 year plan, which included an extensive series of roads and construction of a new County Court building. In 1934, with the support of Kansas City political boss Tom Pendergast, Truman became the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Missouri, which he went on to win. He became the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1944, Vice President in 1945 and President in April 1945.
The bulk of the book is devoted to the account of the earth-shattering events that occurred during President Truman's presidency and the number of momentous decisions he made. These included the declarations of war with Japan and Germany, decision whether to use the atomic bomb, aid to Greece and Turkey and the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, NATO, recognition of Israel, the Berlin Airlift, the Korean War, the firing of General Douglas MacArthur, the Steel Strikes in 1952.
The book contains many uniquely outstanding features:
1. A most successful portrait of Truman as a friend of the common man. At the end of the book, when reading that Truman passed away on December 26, 1972, the reader cannot help feeling that he/she has just lost a dear friend.
2. The book covers several not very well-known facts: the Civil War began in Missouri/Kansas several years before 1860; President Tyler had 15 children, the largest number among Presidents - 8 from first marriage, 7 from second marriage; President Truman and General Marshall disagreed on the policy regarding Israel and Palestine; the year of the birth of Israel (1948) was also the year when an unimaginably daring new bathing suit called the bikini, after the island where the atomic bomb tests were carried out the summer before;
before 1958, the U.S. Federal Government provided no pension or other retirement benefits to former United States presidents.
3. There are horrific descriptions of World War I:
“In 1916, there had been 2 million casualties on the Western Front. In just four months at the Battle of Somme, between July and October 1916, the Germans alone lost more men than were killed in all four years of the American Civil War.”
“The bombardment began long before daylight when the air was chill, at 4:20 a.m., the morning of Thursday, September 26, 1918. Two thousand seven hundred guns opened fire all along the front with a roar such as had never been heard before. In three hours more ammunition was expended than during the entire Civil War – and at an estimated cost of a million dollars per minute.”
The book also illustrates that history is full of dramatic events. One of the most dramatic was the 1948 Presidential Election. Of the 50 highly regarded political writers polled, the well-educated, know-all folks, everyone predicted Dewey the winner, even though nobody liked Dewey and he did not tell the American people anything during the campaign. Sixty- eight years later, in 2016, another generation of journalists and political writers were wrong again. The 1948 wrong prediction was good for the country. The 2016 wrong prediction, not so much, as it resulted in the country getting “the former guy”.
Let me close by listing a number of interesting quotes, mostly by Truman but also by others:
“Harry Truman was an all right fellow. He’s all right from his asshole out in every direction.” – Truman’s first public commendation by Sante Fe Railroad workers
“Stroking a tiger would never make it a kitten.” – Franklin Roosevelt
“Gentlemen, don’t fight the problem, solve it.” - General George Marshall
“No one who accomplished things could expect to avoid mistakes. Only those who did nothing made no mistakes.” - Harry Truman
“It sure is hell to be President.” - Harry Truman
“The human animal and his emotions change not much from age to age. He must change now, or he faces absolute and complete destruction and maybe the insect age or an atmosphereless planet will succeed him.” – Harry Truman
The last quote by Truman is as relevant today as it was when he said it.
Model of the Enola Gay in the National Atomic Museum, Albuquerque, N. M.
World War II Museum in Washington, D. C.
NATO Headquarters, Brussels , Belgium (Source: Wikipedia)
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