Truman supported domestic policies that came to be known as the “Fair Deal,” significant among which were civil rights legislation which he regarded as a moral priority and universal health care. These were not well received by the Republican Congress elected in 1946 or even by the Democrats when they retook Congress in 1948: Southern conservatives — Democrats at the time — can be relied upon to be on the wrong side of history.
In foreign affairs, Truman was a Wilsonian, supporting the creation of the United Nations and took a hard line on the USSR and communism. He promoted the Marshall Plan — funneling huge sums of money to rebuild Europe — using the argument that communism flourishes in economically deprived circumstances. After the War, Berlin was divided into American, French, English, and Soviet sectors. But the whole city was in the Soviet occupied zone of Germany. In 1948, the Soviets blockaded Berlin. Rather than risk war by simply driving troops over land to supply Berlin, the western nations conducted the Berlin airlift, a massive operation delivering food and supplies like coal by air. After about a year, the Soviets relented and Truman’s reputation was enhanced. In 1948, Truman also recognized the State of Israel against the advice of his Secretary of State, George Marshall who felt it would risk access to Saudi oil, weakening the U.S.’s ability to resist the USSR. Truman later wrote of his decision, “Hitler had been murdering Jews right and left. I saw it, and I dream about it even to this day. The Jews needed some place where they could go. It is my attitude that the American government couldn’t stand idly by while the victims [of] Hitler’s madness are not allowed to build new lives.”
The election of 1948 was challenging for the Democrats. The northern Democrats proposed a strong civil rights plank of which Truman supported. He also adopted executive orders integrating the military and federal agencies. Southern conservatives objected. Strom Thurmond splintered and ran on a Dixiecrat ticket. On the left, former Vice-President Henry Wallace ran on the Progressive ticket. The Republican’s Thomas Dewey came to be seen as inevitable. However, Truman campaigned hard and Dewey’s support was probably overstated by polls with sampling problems and which were not taken close enough to the election. The picture of Truman holding up the “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline has become iconic. Truman won 303 electoral votes to Dewey’s 189 and Thurmond’s 39.
In 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea. Truman urged the U.N. to intervene which it did, with General Douglas MacArthur in command. U.S. troops under the U.N. flag poured into Korea and responded to North Korea’s invasion of South Korea by invading North Korea. They pushed the North Koreans back, heading toward the border with China. However, they were caught off guard when the Chinese attacked, and the UN forces were pushed back to the 38th parallel — about where things were before the North Koreans invaded. MacArthur wanted to attack within the borders of China, but Truman did not want to escalate the war, fearing this would lead to direct conflict with the Soviets. MacArthur tried to go around Truman’s back and promoted his plan to the Republican House leader who leaked it to the press. Truman fired MacArthur which was politically very unpopular.
I fired him [MacArthur] because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President … I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.
The war continued on for two years as a stalemate with 30,000 Americans killed. The fighting ended in 1953.
The Cold War got going in a big way. Truman approved for a plan that “called for tripling the defense budget, and the globalization and militarization of containment policy whereby the U.S. and its NATO allies would respond militarily to actual Soviet expansion. . . . for partial mobilization of the U.S. economy to build armaments faster than the Soviets, . . . for strengthening Europe, weakening the Soviet Union, and for building up the U.S. both militarily and economically.” The NATO treaty was approved by the Senate in 1949 with the U.S., Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, Portugal, Iceland, and Canada being the original signatories. In response, the Soviets formed the Warsaw Pact with communist members of central and eastern Europe.
In 1949, the nationalist Chinese forces fell to Mao Tse Tung and the communists and, the same year, the Soviets developed an atomic bomb. Americans were nervous about the Communists, and Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee got Congress active in the Second Red Scare. They conducted character investigations of “American communists” (actual and alleged), and their roles in (real and imaginary) espionage, propaganda, and subversion favoring the Soviet Union—in the process revealing the extraordinary breadth of the Soviet spy network in infiltrating the federal government; the process also launched the successful political careers of Richard Nixon, Robert Kennedy, and Joseph McCarthy. Some of the Red Scare was exacerbated by a turf war between J. Edgar Hoover in the FBI and the CIA.
Truman appointed four Supreme Court Justices, one of whom was Indiana’s Sherman Minton. The New York Times said that Minton’s appointment was an example of cronyism and favoritism for an unqualified candidate. (Indiana Senator William Jenner unsuccessfully led the opposition to his confirmation.)
During Truman’s term, the 22nd Amendment was passed limiting Presidents to two terms. Truman himself was grandfathered and was eligible for a third term. In fact, he allowed his name to be put in nomination in New Hampshire, but he was unpopular at this point and did not do well. He announced at that point that he was not seeking the Presidency, and Adlai Stevenson of Illinois got the nomination. Truman had reached out to Eisenhower to gauge his interest in being the Democratic nominee, but Ike — a long-time military man and, therefore, not a regular member of either party — was more interested in the Republican nomination.
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