Kevin Geller - Harry S. Truman

Published in 2018 by Britannica Educational Publishing (a trademark of Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc.) in association with The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc.
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First Edition

Britannica Educational Publishing
J.E. Luebering: Executive Director, Core Editorial
Andrea R. Field: Managing Editor, Comptons by Britannica

Rosen Publishing
Kathy Kuhtz Campbell: Senior Editor
Nelson S: Art Director
Brian Garvey: Series Designer
Alison Hird: Book Layout
Cindy Reiman: Photography Manager
Bruce Donnola: Photo Researcher
Supplementary material by Kevin Geller

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Geller, Kevin, editor.
Title: Harry S. Truman / editor Kevin Geller.
Description: First edition. | New York: Britannica Educational Publishing in Association with Rosen Educational Services, [2018] | Series: Pivotal Presidents: profiles in leadership | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Audience: Grades 712.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016053924 | ISBN 9781680486346 (eBook)
Subjects: LCSH: Truman, Harry S., 18841972Juvenile literature. | PresidentsUnited StatesBiographyJuvenile literature. | United StatesPolitics and government1945-1953Juvenile literature.
Classification: LCC E814 .H3327 2017 | DDC 973.918092 [B]dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016053924

Manufactured in the United States of America

Photo credits: Cover, p. 3 (portrait), pp. 21, 31, 35, 45, 55 Bettmann/Getty Images; cover, p. 3 (background) Underwood Archives/Archive Photos/Getty Images; cover, pp. 1, 3 (flag) iStockphoto.com/spxChrome; p. 6 Everett Collection Historical/Alamy Stock Photo; p. 11 Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images; pp. 12, 57 Popperfoto/Getty Images; pp. 14, 19 Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images; p. 16 Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images; p. 23 Harry S. Truman Library; pp. 24, 44 MPI/Archive Photos/Getty Images; pp. 27, 30 Thomas D. McAvoy/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images; pp. 33, 37 Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images; p. 40 George Skadding/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images; p. 42 Walter Sanders/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images; p. 52 National Archives/Hulton Archive/Getty Images; p. 60 Marie Hansen/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images; p. 63 AP Images; p. 66 Dean Conger/Corbis Historical/Getty Images; interior pages flag Fedorov Oleksiy/Shutterstock.com.

Vice President Harry S. Truman ( left ) is sworn in as the thirty-third president of the United States on the evening of April 12, 1945. Trumans wife, Bess, solemnly witnesses the historic occasion.

I t was late afternoon of a warm spring day. Vice President Harry S. Truman had just finished listening to a Senate debate. He was given a telephone message. It asked him to get to the White House as soon as possible. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs, Georgia, where he had gone for a short rest. That evening, April 12, 1945, at 7:09 p.m., Harry S. Truman took the oath of office as the thirty-third president of the United States. Later President Truman said to several White House newspapermen: I feel as though the moon and all the stars and all the planets have fallen upon me. Please, boys, give me your prayers. I need them very much.

The new president faced many difficulties. The end of World War II was in sight, but American forces were still fighting in Europe and the Pacific. The people at home were supplying the needs of their own fighting forces and helping their Allies at a total cost of nearly $90 billion a year. An atomic bomb had been developed. It was the most powerful weapon the world had ever known. Truman knew that he must decide whether or not to use the bomb in the war with Japan.

Truman had to tackle these momentous challenges in the first months of his presidency. He came into office with great energy, helping to arrange Germanys surrender and then meeting with Allied leaders to discuss the fate of postwar Germany. He also sent a final demand to Japan to surrender or face utter devastation. When Japan did not surrender, Truman authorized the dropping of atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More than 100,000 men, women, and children were killed. This decision remains perhaps the most controversial decision ever made by a US president, one that scholars continue to debate today. Japan surrendered days after the bombs fell.

Victory and peace brought their problems, too. Soon after the end of World War II, a new crisis emerged as the Soviet Union began to expand communism into Eastern Europe. This was the start of the Cold Wara tense, decades-long rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States. Truman led the country through the early years of the Cold War, pledging that the United States would fight the spread of communism throughout the world. This declarationcalled the Truman Doctrinewas put to the test in 1950, when communist North Korea invaded South Korea. Truman ordered US military forces to join the United Nations effort to help South Korea. The Korean War dragged on past the end of Trumans presidency.

Truman was plunged into the presidency at a key moment in US history. Readers of this book will understand the character, intellect, and politics that shaped this pivotal leader, one whom many scholars now rank among the countrys best presidents.

H arry S. Truman was a plainspoken Midwesterner from Missouri. For years he worked on his familys farm near Grandview, and it was this experience that cultivated one of his most enduring characteristics. It was on the farm that Harry got his common sense, his mother, Martha Truman, once said. He didnt get it in town. After he began a career in public service, many people noted how common sense was fundamental in even the most difficult decisions he made.

T ruman s F amily

Harry S. Truman was born on May 8, 1884, in Lamar, Missouri. He was the son of John Anderson Truman, a cattle trader and farmer, and Martha Ellen Young Truman. A younger brother, John Vivian Truman, called Vivian, was born in 1886, and a younger sister, Mary Jane Truman, followed in 1889.

Truman was born in this farmhouse in Lamar, Missouri. The pine tree ( left ) was planted on May 8, 1884, the day Harry was born.

Harry was named for his mothers brother, Harry Young. He was given the middle initial S (but no name) for his grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young. Trumans great-grandmother, Nancy Tyler Holmes, was a first cousin of John Tyler, tenth president of the United States. It is interesting to know that Tyler was the first vice president to become president by succession (as stipulated by Article II, Section I of the US Constitution), and Truman was the seventh. It was Tyler who insisted that the vice president should actually become the president of the United States and not just acting president when he takes the office of the chief executive.