Truman

by David McCullough

In a quandary over a middle name, Mattie and John were undecided whether to honor her father or his. In the end they compromised with the letter S. It could be taken to stand for Solomon or Shipp, but actually stood for nothing, a practice not unknown among the Scotch-Irish, even for first names.

In three hours more ammunition was expended than during the entire Civil War—and at an estimated cost of a million dollars per minute.

By the time the epidemic ran its course, vanishing mysteriously early in 1919, the number of deaths in the United States reached 500,000, including 25,000 soldiers, or nearly half the number of American battlefield deaths in the war.

His opposition to a third term, however, was entirely sincere. The idea went against his fundamental political faith. “There is no indispensable man in a democracy,” he wrote privately. “When a republic comes to a point where a man is indispensable, then we have a Caesar. I do not believe that the fate of the nation should depend upon the life or health or welfare of any one man.”

Truman spoke his mind in a way no one could fail to understand and that would not be soon forgotten. “If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia,” he said, “and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.”

The documenting of waste and mismanagement in the construction of Army camps had been comparatively easy work, a way to give the committee credence in about the least time possible, which was why Truman had started with the camps. The larger work—more difficult, more time-consuming, more important, and much more risky politically—was the investigation of defense production, the gathering of facts, figures, specific detail, and no end of opinion on the building of ships and warplanes, on ordnance plants, automobile plants, labor unions, government contracts, the roles played by the giant corporations and small business, the stockpiling of vital materials. And what the committee turned up was extremely alarming: bad planning, sloppy administration, sloppy workmanship, cheating by labor and management, critical shortages everywhere.

The things Truman had said in the Senate in earlier years about the evils of big banks, big insurance companies, big corporations had been said in earnest. He had never really known any industrialists or heads of giant corporations, most of whom were Republicans. He had never counted such people among his personal or political friends.

America’s phenomenal productivity was what would turn the tide against Germany and Japan. It would prove the decisive factor in the war, and Truman was to give too little credit to the vast majority of patriotic business people and industrialists who were making this happen. At times, in what he wrote and said, he made it seem as though the committee and its investigators were the only ones doing their duty. He didn’t believe that, of course. Also, from what he and his investigators were finding, it is easy to understand why he might have felt as he did.

Stewart was among the first to appear on the day of the hearing, March 23, 1943, and he provided some of the most damaging of all testimony, as well as a touch of unintended humor, when Hugh Fulton encouraged him to explain how exactly the system worked: FULTON: In other words . . . you would make up a chemical analysis which you thought would fit what the steel should have been. STEWART: That is right. FULTON: And how would you deal with that in that particular record book? STEWART: In order to keep our records so that we would know when it was an incorrect heat number, we would enter it in this book in pencil. FULTON: How were the other entries made? STEWART: They were made in ink. FULTON: And did you, in addition to making them in pencil, put any prefix letter in front of them? STEWART: It was a common practice to put an “F.” FULTON: What did “F” mean? STEWART: Fake. FULTON: You told our investigator originally that it meant phone. STEWART: That is right. FULTON: But now under oath you desire to state it meant fake? STEWART: That is correct. The investigator was a stranger to me and I was sort of pressed for something to say at the moment.

Wow

Worn down at day’s end, he would complain to Bess that the pressures on him had begun to tell again. She knew of his headaches and exhaustion and worried he might push himself to the point of collapse. Witnesses at the hearings got on his nerves far more than he let on, he told her. He talked of just going away somewhere and reading Shakespeare and Plutarch “over and over and over.”

In the Senate, where he was always well liked, he had achieved a new stature, even among liberals who, until now, had regarded him as pleasant enough and conscientious, but bland. “The man from Missouri,” remembered Claude Pepper, “had dared to say ‘show me’ to the powerful military-industrial complex and he had caught many people in the act.”

He made no pretense at being superior in any regard. He did not seem to need the limelight, flattery, or a following. He did not want to be the President.

Bess, now in her fifties, looked plumper and more matronly by the year, and was enjoying Washington as she never had. The stepped-up pace of wartime agreed with her. He had put her on the office payroll, a not uncommon practice, but one he had criticized others for, most notably Tuck Milligan during his first Senate race. Her salary was $2,400. Truman worried about damaging publicity if ever this were known, but the extra income made a difference. How much real work she did would remain a matter of opinion among the staff, none of whom were as well paid. At one point he advised her privately to “only just drop in and do some signing” of letters. “It helps all concerned.” She was working also at the USO one day a week, and reportedly “reveled” in the excitement he was causing on the Hill.

The week of March 8, 1943, “Investigator Truman” was on the cover of Time. In many ways, said Time, the Truman Committee was among the outstanding successes of the entire war effort. It was the “watchdog, spotlight, conscience and spark plug to the economic war-behind-the-lines,” and a heartening sign that even in wartime a democracy could keep an eye on itself.

Career making work

In private, Truman was a man who still, out of old habits of the mouth, could use a word like “kike,” or, in a letter to his wife, dismiss Miami as nothing but “hotels, filling stations, Hebrews, and cabins.” But he spoke now from the heart, and with passing reference to Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms,” made an implied criticism of the President for doing too little to help the Jews. Truman was not among those who refused to believe the Germans capable of such atrocities as were being reported from Europe.

Later estimates were that the Truman Committee saved the country as much as $15 billion. This was almost certainly an exaggeration—no exact figure is possible—but the sum was enormous and unprecedented, and whatever the amount, it was only part of the service rendered. The most important “power” of the committee was its deterrent effect. Fear of investigation or public exposure by the committee was enough in itself to cause countless people in industry, government, and the military to do their jobs right, thereby, in the long run, saving thousands of lives.

The United States was engaged in a crash program to develop the atomic bomb before the Germans perfected one. Marshall described the design of the bomb in some technical detail. Stimson said that if the Germans got this weapon first, they might win the war overnight. They told us that they would need an additional $1,600,000,000 to manufacture the bomb. Because of an overriding necessity for secrecy, they made the unique request that the money be provided without a trace of evidence to show how it was spent. The three legislators agreed to do what was necessary. Senator Truman was told nothing.

“Then he wanted to know if I would help out the ticket if it became necessary by accepting the nomination for Vice President,” Truman recorded. “I told him in words of one syllable that I would not. . . .” And though the idea was talked about with increasing frequency thereafter, Truman, when asked his opinion, always gave the same answer. He wanted to stay in the Senate.

In fact, lately, a distinct chill had been felt at the White House concerning Truman, ever since publication in American Magazine of a ghost-written article about the findings of the committee that Truman had allowed to be published under his name without bothering to read it very carefully. Too late had he discovered how critical it was of the administration’s handling of the war effort. (“Leadership is what we Americans are crying for,” the article said. “We are fighting mad, and ready to tackle any job and to make any sacrifice. . . . All we ask is that we be intelligently and resolutely led.”) He was certain that the President didn’t like him, Truman told friends in the Senate.

Byrnes asked if Truman was serious when he told the newspapers he did not want the vice-presidential nomination. Yes, Truman replied, absolutely. He was not a candidate. Byrnes said he had been given the “go sign” from Roosevelt and would like nothing better than to have Truman make the nominating speech for him at Chicago. Truman accepted at once, saying he would be delighted and would do all he could to line up the Missouri delegation. Clearly he, too, was convinced by this time that Byrnes was both the President’s choice and the best one,

He was determined to stay out of the running, Truman said. He knew his Pendergast background would be dragged out again and he wished none of that. He had worked too hard to build a good name in the Senate. The reporter remarked that as Vice President he might “succeed to the throne.” Truman shook his head. “Hell, I don’t want to be president.” He then described the failures and scorn experienced by every Vice President who had succeeded to the highest office, beginning with John Tyler and overlooking the most obvious example to the contrary, Theodore Roosevelt.

After much talk, McKim told him, “I think, Senator, that you’re going to do it.” What gave him that idea, Truman snapped. “Because,” said McKim, “there’s a little, old ninety-year-old mother down in Grandview, Missouri, that would like to see her son President of the United States.” Truman, in tears, stomped out of the room.

Reflecting on Truman’s frame of mind years later, John Snyder would say that it wasn’t so much that Truman didn’t want to be President but that he didn’t want to succeed Franklin Roosevelt, which was different.

Roosevelt had been given things all of his life—houses, furniture, servants, travels abroad. Truman had been given almost nothing. He had never had a house to call his own. He had been taught from childhood, and by rough experience, that what he became would depend almost entirely on what he did. Roosevelt had always known the possibilities open to him—indeed, how much was expected of him—because of who he was.

Mrs. Roosevelt stepped forward and gently put her arm on Truman’s shoulder. “Harry, the President is dead.” Truman was unable to speak. “Is there anything I can do for you?” he said at last. “Is there anything we can do for you,” she said. “For you are the one in trouble now.”

Amazing story

To many it was not just that 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. “Good God, Truman will be President,” it was being said everywhere. “If Harry Truman can be President, so could my next-door neighbor.”

As the morning papers reported, the war thus far had cost 196,999 American lives, which, as Truman knew, was more than three times American losses in his own earlier war. The new total for American casualties in all categories—killed, wounded, missing, and prisoners—was 899,390, an increase in just one week of 6,481, or an average of more than 900 casualties a day. In the Pacific the cost of victory was rising steadily.

“Have confidence in yourself,” Barkley said. “If you do not, the people will lose confidence in you.”

The Russians had two contradictory policies, Harriman began. They wanted to cooperate with the United States and Great Britain, and they wanted to extend control over their neighboring states in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, some within Stalin’s circle mistook American generosity and readiness to cooperate as a sign of “softness” and this had led Stalin to think he could do largely as he pleased. Nonetheless, it was Harriman’s view that the Soviets would risk no break with the United States. Their need of financial help after the war would be too great, and for this reason the United States could and should stand firm on vital issues. Truman said he was not afraid of the Russians and intended to be firm. And fair, of course. “And anyway the Russians need us more than we need them.”

Molotov said the only acceptable basis for Allied cooperation was for the three governments to treat one another as equals. The Poles had been working against the Red Army, he insisted. Truman cut him short. He was not interested in propaganda, Truman said. He wished Molotov to inform Stalin of his concern over the failure of the Soviet government to live up to its agreements. According to Bohlen’s later account, Molotov turned “ashy” and tried to divert the conversation. Truman said he wanted friendship with Russia, but Poland was the sore point. The United States was prepared to carry out all agreements reached at Yalta. He asked only that the Soviet government do the same. In Truman’s recollection of the scene, Molotov responded, “I have never been talked to like that in my life.” “Carry out your agreements,” Truman told him, “and you won’t get talked to like that.”

Roosevelt had left behind no policy in writing other than a brief agreement signed with Churchill at Hyde Park the previous autumn saying only that once the new weapon was ready, “It might perhaps, after mature consideration, be used against the Japanese, who should be warned that this bombardment will be repeated until they surrender.”

Truman could see shattered bridges, railroads, the wreckage of factories, entire cities in ruins, a scarred, burned land where, he knew, people were living like animals among the debris, scavenging for food. The threat of disease and mass starvation hung everywhere. Hundreds of thousands of displaced, homeless, and dispossessed people wandered the country. Not Abraham Lincoln or Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Roosevelt, not any war President in American history, had ever beheld such a panorama of devastation.

perfect confidence and obvious regard for one another. Roosevelt and Churchill had met nine times and exchanged, by Churchill’s count, 1,700 messages. On visits at the White House, the prime minister had made himself so at home that Mrs. Roosevelt decided it was time an official guest residence be established, which led to the acquisition of Blair House.

American and British bombers had laid waste to the city around the clock. Probably fifty thousand people had been killed, five times as many as in the London Blitz. Then, in April, came the Russian artillery and the Russian Army.

They talked briefly of the defeat of Germany, Stalin saying he was sure Hitler was alive and in hiding somewhere in Spain or Argentina. Then, abruptly, and entirely on his own initiative, Stalin said that as they had agreed at Yalta, the Soviets would be ready to declare war on Japan and attack Manchuria by mid-August. He had already assured the Chinese that Russia recognized Manchuria as part of China and that there would be no Soviet interference with internal political matters there. Truman said he was extremely pleased. But Stalin, as if to be sure Truman understood, repeated that by the middle of August the Red Army would be in the war with Japan, “as agreed at Yalta,” to which Truman expressed his every confidence that the Soviets would keep their word.

But Stalin nearly always made a good impression of foreigners. Churchill, who once called Russia “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” and who warned both Roosevelt and Truman repeatedly of the Russian menace to Europe, confessed still to liking Stalin the man. Roosevelt had been convinced almost to the end that he could get along with “Uncle Joe.” “The truth is,” wrote Jimmy Byrnes, recalling Stalin’s performance at Yalta, “he is a very likeable person.”

That Stalin was also secretive to the point of imbalance, suspicious, deceitful, unspeakably cruel, that he ruled absolutely and by terror and secret police, that he was directly responsible for destroying millions of his own people and the enslavement of many millions more, was not so clearly understood by the outside world at this point as it would be later. Still, the evil of the man was no secret in 1945. In a February issue, published just before Yalta, Time magazine had noted that Stalin and his regime had deliberately caused the deaths by starvation of at least 3 million peasants and liquidated another 1 million Communists who opposed his policies. Facts are stubborn things, said the article, borrowing a line from Lenin, and these were the facts. Actually the facts were more horrible. Probably 5 million peasants had died; probably 10 million had been sent to forced labor camps.

Stalin himself had told Churchill in 1942 that “ten millions” of peasants had been “dealt with.”

Churchill had been arguing that a premature opening of a second front in France would result in an unjustified loss of tens of thousands of Allied soldiers. Stalin responded, “When one man dies it is a tragedy. When thousands die it’s statistics.”

They turned to Poland, a subject that moved Churchill to talk longer even than usual, and so went the remainder of the session. Truman was exasperated. He could “deal” with Stalin, as he said, but Churchill was another matter. “I’m not going to stay around this terrible place all summer just to listen to speeches,” he wrote that night.

This chapter on the Potsdam conference does not paint Churchill kindly

Some critics and historians in years to come would argue that Japan was already finished by this time, just as Eisenhower had said and as several intelligence reports indicated. Japan’s defeat, however, was not the issue. It was Japan’s surrender that was so desperately wanted, since every day Japan did not surrender meant the killing continued. In theory, Japan had been defeated well before Truman became President. (Studies by the Japanese themselves had determined a year and a half before, by January 1944, that Japan had lost the war.)

And how could a President, or the others charged with responsibility for the decision, answer to the American people if when the war was over, after the bloodbath of an invasion of Japan, it became known that a weapon sufficient to end the war had been available by midsummer and was not used?

Nor had anyone ever doubted that Roosevelt would use it. “At no time, from 1941 to 1945, did I ever hear it suggested by the President, or by any other responsible member of the government, that atomic energy should not be used in the war,” wrote Stimson. “All of us of course understood the terrible responsibility involved . . . President Roosevelt particularly spoke to me many times of his own awareness of the catastrophic potentialities of our work. But we were at war. . . .”

Leahy later said, “I know FDR would have used it in a minute to prove that he hadn’t wasted two billion dollars.”

“The historic fact remains, and must be judged in the after-time,” Churchill wrote, “that the decision whether or not to use the atomic bomb to compel the surrender of Japan was never an issue. There was unanimous, automatic, unquestioned agreement around our table; nor did I ever hear the slightest suggestion that we should do otherwise.”

“I casually mentioned to Stalin that we had a new weapon of unusual destructive force,” Truman remembered. “All he said was that he was glad to hear it and hoped we would make ‘good use of it against the Japanese.’ ”

The fact was Stalin already knew more than any of the Americans or British imagined. Soviet nuclear research had begun in 1942, and as would be learned later, a German-born physicist at Los Alamos, a naturalized British citizen named Klaus Fuchs, had been supplying the Russians with atomic secrets for some time, information that in Moscow was judged “extremely excellent and very valuable.” Stalin had understood perfectly what Truman said. Later, in the privacy of their Babelsberg quarters, according to Marshal Georgi Zhukov, Stalin instructed Molotov to “tell Kurchatov [of the Soviet atomic project] to hurry up the work.” (Also, according to the Russian historian Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin went even further that evening when he cabled Lavrenti Beria, who had overall supervision of the project, to put on the pressure.)

“The President is not going to be content to feed out of anyone’s hand; he intends to get to the bottom of things,” Churchill would say, rubbing his eyes as if to remind himself he was not dreaming. “If only this had happened at Yalta.” But then after a pause, he added sadly, “It is too late now.”)

In a letter to his mother, Truman called the Russians the most pigheaded people he had ever encountered. He knew them now to be relentless bargainers—“forever pressing for every advantage for themselves,” as he later said—and in his diary he left no doubt that he understood the reality of the Stalin regime. It was “police government pure and simple,” he wrote. “A few top hands just take clubs, pistols and concentration camps and rule the people on the lower levels.” Later he would tell John Snyder of an unsettling exchange with Stalin about the Katyn Forest Massacre of 1940. When Truman asked what had happened to the Polish officers, Stalin answered coldly, “They went away.” Still—still—Truman liked him. “I like Stalin. He is straightforward,” he wrote to Bess near the windup of the conference.

In his private assessment, Stalin later told Nikita Khrushchev Truman was worthless.

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