Harry S Truman’s first year proved to be a challenging one. In the few weeks between his taking office and VE Day, decisions needed made. The images of liberated Europe were arriving thick and fast as the Nazis continued their retreat to Germany, and with them came horrible truths that would later shape the president’s policies on the Middle East. Alben Barkley, Truman’s future vice-president, visited the newly liberated Buchenwald concentration camp and was photographed with American forces, as they saw the piles of murdered victims. The images renewed the outrage expressed towards the Nazis across America and bred widespread public support for Truman's future policies on Zionism. Although any amount of factors could have brought about the creation of the pro-Israeli stance which to this day still exists in American politics, the main factor was revealed when four middle east envoys, on November 10 1945, visited Truman to discuss the adverse effects of a pro-Zionist policy. He told them, “I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism, I do not have to answer to hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents”.
Truman, though desperate to relieve their misery by pushing for the admission of displaced Jews into British-ruled Palestine, was quite firm on not imposing a “political structure...on the Middle East that would result in conflict”. Although his attitude was that “the American government could not stand idly by while the victims of Hitler’s madness are not allowed to build new lives”, he was also acutely aware that any such antagonisation of the Arabs there would benefit the Soviet government. This, almost immediately after the war, became a growing concern for him, and would eventually become integral to US politics for over 40 years.
The Rise of Communism
On 8 May 1945 Nazi Germany agreed to unconditional surrender. For two weeks in July and August Truman, along with the leaders of the UK (firstly Churchill then Attlee) and Soviet Russia (Joseph Stalin), attended the Potsdam Conference, where Truman pushed for the formation of the United Nations. He was soon to discover, though, that the interests of the Soviet government were becoming incompatible with those of the US. The Communists, despite promising to respect the sovereignty of Nazi-invaded European states, advanced into Greece and Turkey, which prompted Truman and his administration to develop a hard line toward the Soviets.
Truman, he himself confessed, was no expert on foreign matters, but he could see that the rise of the Soviet Union would be dangerous to European stability. To ensure economic, and therefore political, stability his Secretary of State George Marshall promised to fund any plan for regeneration written up by European nations. Truman knew that this would be unpopular among his citizens and, although Marshall’s speech was heard all over Europe, moves were taken to ensure that it stayed out of the American media.
Truman had to struggle against a Republican controlled Congress, but through the use of ideological arguments, largely helped by Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech, he was able to obtain support for the Marshall Plan and his policy of containment which aimed to prevent the “domino effect” of nations falling, one by one, to Communism. The Marshall Plan was one of Truman’s longest lasting legacies, and countries were paying the USA back for 60 years afterwards.
The Atom Bomb
Mainly, though, his criticisms came from the development of the atomic bomb, which was used over Japan in August 1945. Truman had little knowledge of the plans laid out for completing the war, and when the Japanese government refused to accept the terms of the Potsdam Conference he is known to have only then cryptically mentioned the bomb to Stalin, who, through use of Soviet spies in America, had been aware of its development long before the President had been. Truman wrote in his diaries that “we have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world”.
In the space of three days the war was brought to a complete and swift close with the immediate deaths of over 120,000 people when two bombs were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many historians have argued that the use of the bombs was inherently immoral, and this move in the first year of his term was to be the one that followed him long after his retirement. However, thanks to the largely unprovoked attacks on Pearl Harbour by the Japanese towards the end of 1941 he also had many supporters. Eleanor Roosevelt is known to have said that he “made the only decision he could”, one that was necessary to “avoid tremendous sacrifice of American lives” in an invasion of mainland Japan. Over 100,000 American lives had already been lost fighting in World War II’s Pacific Theatre.
It is clear though that Truman wanted a swift end to the war left to him by his predecessor as he saw there was a new enemy - economic turmoil in Europe leading to the rise of one more evil power after the Nazis, this time the Communists. It is easy to understand how the truth of this European problem dictated the formation of most of his policies, including his domestic policy.
Sources:
David McCullough, Truman (Raw Prints, 2008)
David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy (Yale University Press, 1994)
Ole Holsti, Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy (The University of Michigan Press, 1996)
Stephen Lunn - I am a student over here in Northern Ireland, nearing the end of BSc in Music Technology. A freelance writer, I've been providing content ...
