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Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as a United States senator from Missouri from 1935 to 1945 and briefly as the 34th vice president in 1945 under Franklin D. Roosevelt.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 – April 12,...
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
President: Harry S. Truman: Deputy: Bernard Montgomery:...
- Presidency
Harry S. Truman's tenure as the 33rd president of the United...
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Overview
- Early life and career
Harry S. Truman served as the 33rd president of the United States from April 12, 1945, to January 20, 1953.
Under what circumstances did Harry S. Truman become president?
Vice President Harry S. Truman was sworn in as president of the United States on April 12, 1945, after the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage.
When did Harry S. Truman approve the development of the hydrogen bomb?
Harry S. Truman authorized the development of the hydrogen bomb in 1950 to maintain an arms lead over the Soviet Union. By the end of the decade, the United States and the Soviet Union had embarked on an arms race of potentially world-destroying dimensions.
What was Harry S. Truman's reaction to communist North Korea's attempt to seize noncommunist South Korea in 1950?
Truman was the eldest of three children of John A. and Martha E. Truman; his father was a mule trader and farmer. After graduating from high school in 1901 in Independence, Missouri, he went to work as a bank clerk in Kansas City. In 1906 he moved to the family farm near Grandview, and he took over the farm management after his father’s death in 1914. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Truman—nearly 33 years old and with two tours in the National Guard (1905–11) behind him—immediately volunteered. He was sent overseas a year later and served in France as the captain of Battery D, a field artillery unit that saw action at Saint Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne. The men under his command came to be devoted to him, admiring him for his bravery and evenhanded leadership.
Returning to the United States in 1919, Truman married Elizabeth Wallace (Bess Truman), whom he had known since childhood; they had one child, Margaret, in 1924. With army friend Edward Jacobson he opened a haberdashery, but the business failed in the severe recession of the early 1920s. Another army friend introduced him to Thomas Pendergast, Democratic boss of Kansas City. With the backing of the Pendergast machine, Truman launched his political career in 1922, running successfully for county judge. He lost his bid for reelection in 1924, but he was elected presiding judge of the county court in 1926, again with Pendergast’s support. He served two four-year terms, during which he acquired a reputation for honesty (unusual among Pendergast politicians) and for skillful management.
In 1934 Truman’s political career seemed at an end because of the two-term tradition attached to his job and the reluctance of the Pendergast machine to advance him to higher office. When several people rejected the machine’s offer to run in the Democratic primary for a seat in the U.S. Senate, however, Pendergast extended the offer to Truman, who quickly accepted. He won the primary with a 40,000-vote plurality, assuring his election in solidly Democratic Missouri. In January 1935 Truman was sworn in as Missouri’s junior senator by Vice Pres. John Nance Garner.
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He began his Senate career under the cloud of being a puppet of the corrupt Pendergast, but Truman’s friendliness, personal integrity, and attention to the duties of his office soon won over his colleagues. He was responsible for two major pieces of legislation: the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, establishing government regulation of the aviation industry, and the Wheeler-Truman Transportation Act of 1940, providing government oversight of railroad reorganization. Following a tough Democratic primary victory in 1940, he won a second term in the Senate, and it was during this term that he gained national recognition for leading an investigation into fraud and waste in the U.S. military. While taking care not to jeopardize the massive effort being launched to prepare the nation for war, the Truman Committee (officially the Special Committee Investigating National Defense) exposed graft and deficiencies in production. The committee made it a practice to issue draft reports of its findings to corporations, unions, and government agencies under investigation, allowing for the correction of abuses before formal action was initiated.
- Alfred Steinberg
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- Harry S. Truman’s Early Years. Harry S. Truman was born on May 8, 1884, in the farm community of Lamar, Missouri, to John Truman (1851-1914), a livestock trader, and Martha Young Truman (1852-1947).
- From County Judge to U.S. Vice President. In 1922, Harry Truman, with the backing of Kansas City political boss Thomas Pendergast (1873-1945), was elected district judge in Jackson County, Missouri, an administrative position that involved handling the county’s finances, public works projects and other affairs.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt Dies In Office. In 1944, as Roosevelt sought an unprecedented fourth term as president, Truman was selected as his running mate, replacing Vice President Henry Wallace (1888-1965), a divisive figure in the Democratic Party.
- Harry S. Truman’s First Administration: 1945-1949. Upon assuming the presidency, Harry Truman, who had met privately with Roosevelt only a few times before his death and had never been informed by the president about the construction of the atomic bomb, faced a series of monumental challenges and decisions.
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, from 1945 to 1953. He became president when President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in office. Truman served as the 34th vice president of the United States for a short time, from January to April 1945.
Feb 19, 2018 · Harry S. Truman died in Kansas City’s Research Hospital at the age of 88, on the day after Christmas 1972. Bess lived nearly another ten years before her death in 1982 at the age of 97. They are buried in the courtyard of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library. This was originally published on February 19, 2018.
Harry S. Truman | The White House. The biography for President Truman and past presidents is courtesy of the White House Historical Association. During his few weeks as Vice President,...
