Harry S. Truman
U.S. President 1945–1953, the opening figure of the Cold War order
Also known as: Truman, President Truman
Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt as U.S. President in April 1945 and held the office until 1953. In Quigley's narrative he is the figure on whose desk the institutional architecture of the post-1945 world was assembled — the Marshall Plan, NATO, containment, the atomic monopoly, and the consolidation of the wartime national-security state into peacetime form.
Succession and the unfinished war
Truman's elevation to the presidency in April 1945 came after a long period in which he had been deliberately kept outside the major lines of wartime policy. Quigley notes that the new president had not been informed of the secret Yalta agreements until June 1945, and that his first months in office "required an almost superhuman effort of absorbed attention to get the major lines of policy into his hands" (T&H 833). The result was an administration improvising the closing strategy of the Second World War — the Potsdam Conference, the surrender of Germany, and the atomic bombing of Japan — under a leader still mastering the files. The decision to drop the atomic bomb fell into this opening period: on 24 July Truman "chose the list of possible targets" (T&H 835), and "on the same day Truman told Stalin of the successful test" at Potsdam, doing so "casually" enough that the Soviet leader did not press for details (T&H 836).
The Truman Doctrine and the Cold War order
Quigley argues that the founding documents of the The Cold War American posture — the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, NATO — emerged with less deliberate authorship than later mythology suggests. He quotes Louis Halle's account that "the 'Truman Doctrine' emerged from one incidental sentence buried in a late paragraph of a presidential speech which had been assembled from paragraphs submitted by a number of writers," and that the Marshall Plan was "casually" announced at Harvard (Book Reviews 73). The substantive policy framework — containment, alliance, dollar-anchored reconstruction — nevertheless became the operating system of American foreign policy for the next two decades, and the institutional successor to the wartime apparatus through which Quigley's banker-network analysis is staged in the post-1945 chapters of Tragedy and Hope.
Cited in
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 833 Quigley
Truman had been kept so outside the whole war effort that his first few months as President required an almost superhuman effort of absorbed attention to get the major lines of policy into his hands.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 834 Quigley
The problems which Truman, Byrnes, and their advisers faced in reestablishing the peace of the world were greatly intensified by the obstructionism of the Soviet government.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 835 Quigley
The President on the 18th ordered the second bomb to be dropped on Japan as soon as it was ready, and on July 24th he chose the list of possible targets.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 836 Quigley
On this same day Truman told Stalin of the successful test. There is no doubt that the President, in order to discourage any questions from Stalin, overdid the casualness of his communication.
- book-reviews · p. 73 Quigley
According to Halle, the 'Truman Doctrine' emerged from one incidental sentence buried in a late paragraph of a presidential speech which had been assembled from paragraphs submitted by a number of writers.