Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) was the 33rd President of the United States, who assumed office upon the sudden death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1945, made the fateful decision to use the atomic bomb to end World War II, and established the pillars of American foreign policy at the dawn of the Cold War.

Missouri Farmer, Artillery Captain, and Watchdog Senator

Born in Lamar, Missouri, and raised on a family farm near Independence, Truman was the last American president who did not hold a college degree. Poor eyesight kept him off sports fields as a boy, turning him into an avid reader of history. After working as a railroad timekeeper, bank clerk, and farmer, he memorized the eye chart in 1917 to pass the physical examination for World War I. Serving in France as captain of Battery D in the 129th Field Artillery, Truman steadied his men under German fire in the Meuse-Argonne offensive without losing a single soldier under his command.

After a postwar men's clothing store he opened in Kansas City failed during the 1921 recession, Truman refused to declare bankruptcy and spent the next fifteen years paying off every creditor. Elected to the U.S. Senate from Missouri in 1934, he gained national acclaim during World War II as chairman of the 'Truman Committee,' which rooted out fraud, waste, and defective equipment in defense contracts, saving taxpayers an estimated $15 billion and earning him the 1944 vice-presidential nomination alongside Roosevelt.

Sudden Presidency and the Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb

On April 12, 1945—just eighty-two days into his vice presidency—Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage, thrusting Truman into the Oval Office. 'I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me,' he told reporters the next day. Only after taking the oath of office was Truman fully briefed on the top-secret Manhattan Project led scientifically by J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Following Nazi Germany's surrender in May 1945, Truman traveled to Potsdam, Germany, to meet with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin and issue the Potsdam Declaration demanding Japan's unconditional surrender. After ferocious fighting on Iwo Jima and Okinawa demonstrated the staggering casualties an Allied invasion of the Japanese mainland would entail, Truman authorized the use of atomic weapons to bring the war to a swift end. Following the bombings of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, and Soviet entry into the Pacific War, Japan surrendered, ending World War II.

'The Buck Stops Here' and Architect of the Postwar Order

Determined not to repeat America's post-World War I retreat into isolationism, Truman championed the founding of the United Nations. As tensions with the Soviet Union hardened into the Cold War, he articulated the 'Truman Doctrine' to aid nations resisting communist subjugation, signed the Marshall Plan to rebuild war-torn Western Europe, ordered the Berlin Airlift, and forged the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). At home, he issued Executive Order 9981 in 1948 to abolish racial segregation in the U.S. military, and in 1950 committed U.S. forces under the UN banner when North Korea invaded South Korea.

Famous for the sign on his Oval Office desk reading 'The Buck Stops Here,' Truman retired in 1953 to Independence, Missouri—driving his own car home with his wife Bess—and lived modestly until his death in 1972 at age eighty-eight.