Truman, Harry S 1884-1972
33rd President of the USA

He was born in Lamar, Missouri, and educated in Independence, Missouri. After World War I, in which he served as an artillery captain on the Western Front, he returned to his farm and later went into partnership in a men's clothing store which failed. In 1922 he became judge for the Eastern District of Jackson County in Missouri, and in 1926 presiding judge, a post he held until 1934 when Missouri elected him as a Democrat to the US Senate. He was elected Vice-President in 1944 and became President in April 1945 on the death of President Franklin D Roosevelt. He was re-elected in 1948 in a surprise victory over Thomas E Dewey. During his presidency he took many historically important decisions, including dropping the first atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; pushing through Congress a huge postwar loan to Great Britain (the Marshall Plan); making a major change in US policy towards the USSR, the Truman Doctrine of Communist containment and support for free peoples resisting subjugation; organizing the Berlin Airlift (1948-49); establishing NATO (1949); sending US troops on behalf of the UN to withstand the communist invasion of South Korea (1950). He also established the CIA. In the USA he introduced a liberal programme or 'Fair Deal' of economic reform. He did not stand for re-election in 1952 and retired to Independence. Later he became a strong critic of the Eisenhower Republican administration.

Bibliography: Alfred Steinberg, The Man from Missouri (1962)