The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World

Harry Truman was an American businessman and politician who served as the 33rd president of the United States from 1945 to 1953. Born to a struggling farm family in 1884, there was little to indicate that he would reach the heights of American and international politics. His family dealt with financial troubles for much of Harry’s youth, preventing him from attending college. After an early and largely unsuccessful foray into the oil business, Truman volunteered for the army during World War I, was promoted to captain, and successfully led a battery during the critical Meuse-Argonne offensive. Upon returning home, he married his longtime sweetheart, Bess Wallace, with whom he would have one daughter, Margaret. After attempting to run a haberdashery in Kansas City, Truman was introduced to local politics through an association with the Pendergasts, the dominant family in the local Democratic machine. Through these connections, he served as a local official and then was elected senator in 1934, winning reelection in 1940. In 1944, he was the dark horse candidate to replace Henry Wallace as vice president, and only three months into his term, assumed the presidency when Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. Truman’s presidency was one of the most consequential of the century, as it began with the ending of World War II, first with the German surrender in May and then the use of atomic bombs over Japan in August. The end of the war gave way almost immediately to the beginning of what would be called the Cold War, the increasing tensions with the Soviet Union that would define much of US foreign policy for the next 45 years. Truman helped establish a permanent national security state capable of fighting communism around the world, and he would fight an actual (if undeclared) war against communism in Korea. Truman left office in 1953, followed by Dwight Eisenhower, and although the two had been friendly during Truman’s presidency, Truman would criticize Eisenhower harshly over the eight years of Eisenhower’s presidency. Truman spent most of his later years in Independence, Missouri, dying in December 1972 at the age of 88.