The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World

by A.J. Baime

Ambassador Averell Harriman’s communiqués from Moscow sounded the alarm; the mood in Moscow had suddenly turned paranoiac and sinister. “We now have ample proof that the Soviet government views all matters from the standpoint of their own selfish interests,” Harriman cabled the State Department in early April, just days before Roosevelt’s death. “We must clearly realize that the Soviet program is the establishment of totalitarianism, ending personal liberty and democracy as we know and respect it.” Truman had almost no more knowledge of the international situation than the average American who studied the newspapers. Privately, the president disparaged Truman. “He never regarded the new Vice President as part of his operational relationships,” said Thomas Blaisdell, who worked in Washington’s Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion. “I was custodian of the President’s secret war files,” recalled White House assistant naval aide William Rigdon. “But not once had I been instructed to show any document to the vice president. He simply had not been worked into the Roosevelt administration.”

And Truman campaigned on not needing a novice president at that time!