The Highest Calling, page 22
JF: He basically said, “If I run into you, you’ll probably need a beefsteak for your eye, and perhaps a supporter below.” He was very angry. Ordinarily, Truman would not have been able to send the letter. Someone probably would have gotten him to stop. But Truman walked to the mailbox and dropped it in.
DR: One time Truman is reported to have said something like “This is a bunch of horse manure.” Somebody went to Bess Truman, his wife, and said, “Can’t you get him to stop saying that?”
JF: She said, “You know how long it took me to get him to use the word manure?”
DR: Your book is not designed to be a comprehensive look at his entire life, but you do cover it briefly. Where was he born?
JF: He was born outside of Independence, close to Grandview, Missouri.
DR: What did his parents do?
JF: His father was basically ne’er-do-well. He made bad investments. He was a farmer. He almost lost the farm, and the family was bailed out. His mother was an impressive woman, really influential. She had gone to college. She knew music, knew literature. One of the things she gave her son Harry, her favorite, was a set of books, The Lives of Great Men and Famous Women.
If you see a picture of his parents, you’ll see that his father was much shorter than his mother. She was a dominating woman, in the best sense. Harry never stopped writing to her. Right until the day she died, they were constant correspondents. The day that the war ended in Europe, he called his mother. Then she came to Washington and stayed at the White House, her first trip ever on an airplane.
DR: She and his father gave him the name Harry S. Truman. What did the S stand for?
JF: It didn’t stand for anything. It was based on the names of two grandparents, but he just thought he needed a middle initial.
DR: Did he have brothers and sisters?
JF: Yes, he had two siblings whom he wasn’t necessarily close to. John Vivian, called Vivian, was older. Then he had a younger sister, Mary Jane.
DR: Truman had some physical weakness relating to his eyes. He had thick glasses from the time he was a young boy?
JF: He had what he called “flat eyeball,” which isn’t anything unusual. He was basically nearsighted. He always wore thick glasses from the time he was a kid.
DR: Was he a good student?
JF: He was an okay student. He was a very diligent music student. You would see him carrying his music for piano lessons every day.
DR: And was he a good athlete?
JF: No, he didn’t do that. In fact, he was advised not to do that because he could break his glasses.
DR: After he graduated from high school, did he go to college?
JF: No, he didn’t. Later on, he attended some night classes. After high school, he worked as a timekeeper for a construction company, in the mailroom of the Kansas City Star. He worked at a bank. These were not very presidential jobs. Then his father called him and said, “Come help out on the farm,” and he went back to live on the farm and stayed for 10 years.
When Truman became president, Roy Roberts, the managing editor of the Kansas City Star, said, here’s a man who, not so long before, “was still looking at the rear end of a horse.”
DR: When World War I broke out, Harry Truman was in the military. He was in the reserves at some point?
JF: He was called up, yes. He was later promoted to captain. Truman was a Baptist from Missouri. The men he commanded were Irish Catholics from Kansas City, and they loved him. He became a real leader there, and that stayed with him.
DR: Did he come close to getting shot at himself?
JF: No, but he saw combat. He fired artillery.
DR: When the war is over, he goes back to Missouri, and he goes into business with one of his friends from high school, Eddie Jacobson. They were in the military together?
JF: They were friends from the Army. He also went back to pursue a woman, Elizabeth Virginia Wallace—Bess. He had first met her when they were about seven years old. He was completely stuck on her from that moment. He was crazy in love with her.
I think they had a very chaste relationship. Bess agreed to marry him before the war, but Truman said, basically, “Let’s wait, because if I’m wounded I don’t want you to be stuck with a cripple.”
DR: So he goes into a haberdashery business with Eddie Jacobson. How did that go?
JF: It went okay for about two years. Then, through no fault of his, the economy went south, and so did they. The Truman and Jacobson Haberdashery went bankrupt, but Truman did not personally go bankrupt. He paid everything off eventually. It took years and years, but he didn’t want to be thought of as someone who couldn’t pay his debts.
DR: How did he get into politics? What was the first electoral job he had?
JF: It was called an administrative judge. He was basically a county administrator. He was recruited as a candidate by Tom Pendergast, who was the Kansas City Democratic Party boss. Harry Truman had known his nephew Jim Pendergast while he was in Europe, and that helped bring him to Pendergast’s attention. He got elected in 1927.
DR: He runs for reelection, and he loses. Why did he lose, if he was so good at it?
JF: He wasn’t good at elections at that time. That was the only election he ever lost, by the way.
DR: Does he give up, or does he say, “I’m going to run again”?
JF: Pendergast said, “Let’s go for it again,” and Truman ran two more times. He’s Judge Truman, but he never went to law school and wasn’t a lawyer. He was really good at details, such as finding the right level of concrete for highways. When he was courting Bess, he had a Stafford car, and it drove him crazy. He kept being afraid of getting flat tires, so one of the first things he did was to get money for the roads.
DR: He’s the county judge, and he decides he’d like to be a member of Congress?
JF: Boss Pendergast first suggested he run for Congress, then reneged and said, “No, you can’t run for the House,” which would have been a safe bet. Then Pendergast suggested he try for the U.S. Senate, which was a real long shot. This was 1934. Truman was 50 years old. He had a chance of being a tax collector—which would have paid a lot more, but the job didn’t have a long life span—or he could run for the Senate. He talked to Bess, who said it was his choice.
DR: He runs in a primary, and he wins the primary and the general election?
JF: To the surprise of many people, including Truman himself.
DR: Does he have any real success?
JF: He got along with people. He did not have a distinguished first term. He found his crowd, mostly people from rural communities around the country, with whom he often met in what was called the “Board of Education,” which was Sam Rayburn’s office in the House.
In his second term, he became more active. Before the war, he thought what was needed was a special committee to check waste, fraud, and abuse in the defense industry. The Senate voted him the authority to form the committee, which he was terrific at. He saved the country a lot of money. He was so good that he ended up on the cover of Time magazine. That way he became sort of a national figure.
DR: Franklin Roosevelt decides to run for a fourth term. In his first term, John Nance Garner was his vice president.
JF: First and second. Garner served two terms.
DR: Then Roosevelt had Henry Wallace. After that third term, he decided he didn’t like Wallace anymore, or people thought he was too liberal?
JF: He was maybe too flaky. He was a Buddhist Catholic Jewish Rosicrucian. And he was too fond of the Soviet Union. He had very interesting beliefs.
DR: So Roosevelt says, “I’ve got to get somebody else.” Who recommended Harry Truman? Why was he on the list?
JF: Roosevelt had promised the job to James Francis Byrnes, who had been a senator and, even though he never finished high school, was a Supreme Court justice. Those were the days when a resume didn’t mean what it does today. You could be a Supreme Court justice and not even go to high school.
Then Byrnes became what was being called the “assistant president.” He was in charge of all kinds of domestic programs during the war. Roosevelt basically had promised him the vice presidency, then didn’t keep his word.
DR: A politician didn’t keep his word?
JF: Yes. It had never happened before. But Jimmy Byrnes had real problems.
DR: Who recommended Truman? Did Roosevelt even know him?
JF: He’d met him. Truman was a senator, he would show up at the White House for parties. Roosevelt knew him well enough to say, “Hi, Harry.”
Roosevelt’s advisors said, “This guy makes lots of sense.” Labor didn’t like Jimmy Byrnes. And Byrnes was also a rabid segregationist from South Carolina. Truman was a perfect candidate. He was from a border state, he was a big supporter of the New Deal—a sort of middle choice, and Labor liked him.
DR: The convention was in Chicago. He gets the nomination and he goes on the ticket. Does he realize how unhealthy Roosevelt is?
JF: He doesn’t really talk about it. He had one private meeting with Roosevelt, that’s it. Roosevelt told him nothing. They met for lunch under a tree outside the White House, and Truman noticed Roosevelt’s hand was shaking. The president was clearly not well. Truman didn’t think he was going to die, or didn’t want to admit it to himself, but he could see that Roosevelt was enfeebled.
DR: In those days, the vice president didn’t have an office in the West Wing, didn’t have an office even in the Executive Office complex. The only office the vice president had was in the Senate. So they didn’t actually run into each other.
JF: That’s right. They had one sit-down meal. That was it, apart from cabinet meetings and such.
DR: In April, Franklin Roosevelt has a cerebral hemorrhage and dies. How did Truman get notified about this?
JF: After he was sworn in for his fourth term, Roosevelt went off to Yalta to meet with Churchill and Stalin, and didn’t tell Truman where he was going. When Roosevelt returned, he spoke to Congress, then left for Warm Springs, Georgia. And that’s where he died, suddenly. Truman was in Sam Rayburn’s office when he got a call. “You’d better come over to the White House fast.” I don’t know if they told him what it was, but he knew it was serious, and he rushed over.
DR: He rushed to the White House, and who swears him in?
JF: He was told the president was dead. He was taken upstairs to meet Mrs. Roosevelt, and then he had to be sworn in as quickly as possible.
DR: What did she say to him?
JF: He said, “I’m so sorry,” and she said, “All the burden is on you now.” The chief justice, Harlan Stone, was hurried over, though they had to wait a little bit longer because Truman wanted his wife and his daughter, Margaret, to be there. The Trumans lived in an apartment on upper Connecticut Avenue, and Bess and Margaret had to be brought to the White House to watch him being sworn in.
DR: How many months was Roosevelt president in his fourth term?
JF: Three months.
DR: Truman is sworn in. He lets Eleanor Roosevelt stay in the White House for a while. In those days, vice presidents lived in their own home. They didn’t have a government home?
JF: Yes. He stayed the night at his apartment, then moved to Blair House, which is across Lafayette Park from the White House. He was very nice to Mrs. Roosevelt.
DR: In the beginning he still had to win the war in Europe. It’s getting close to being won, but it’s not technically won yet. After Germany surrenders, in May, there is a conference in Potsdam, outside of Berlin. And now all of a sudden Harry Truman has to show up representing the United States government with Churchill and Stalin. How did that go?
JF: It went okay. Truman held his own, simply because he was the president of the United States. This was the period when the United States was so incredibly rich, so incredibly powerful, that everyone, particularly Churchill, deferred to him. Churchill treated him almost as if Churchill was a senator seeking aid after a hurricane had hit his state. Everyone had been devastated by the war.
Stalin was a coldblooded fellow. Truman said he liked good old Joe. He believed that the Politburo was in charge, not Stalin.
DR: He called him Uncle Joe?
JF: Only privately. Roosevelt may have also, but Stalin did not like that.
DR: Truman was surprised at how short Stalin was, wasn’t he?
JF: Yes. They were all short. They were all about five-five or five-six. Truman was very sensitive about that. They were all short and sort of tubby. Truman actually wasn’t. But it was a very strange conference, almost like a costume party. Churchill would dress up in a Lord of the Admiralty theme, which he was entitled to. Stalin, who had become Generalissimus Stalin—he made himself Generalissimus—would wear these fancy uniforms. Truman, in the traditional American way, would wear a business suit, but occasionally with a Stetson.
DR: In those days, it took quite a while to get to Potsdam. Did he get there on a plane or a boat?
JF: It was an eight-day trip by boat. Truman did his homework on the way, reading memos, one after another. He had a lot of preparation to do, and he was worried that he wasn’t going to catch up. He studied and studied and studied. This was a very stressful time.
Averell Harriman, the American ambassador in Russia, briefed Truman on Stalin. Truman was already losing patience with Stalin. He felt he was not going to keep his word vis-à-vis the future of Poland, for example.
DR: At Potsdam, Truman hints to Stalin that we have a special weapon that’s more powerful than anything anybody’s ever seen. Because of espionage, didn’t Stalin already know about this weapon?
JF: Yes, he did, possibly even before Truman knew, because there was so much spying going on. Truman arrived on July 15th, 1945. On the 16th, he toured Berlin and saw the wreckage. That was the day he got word that Trinity, the first test of an atomic bomb, had worked. He told Churchill.
DR: On his way back, on the boat, he gets word that the first bomb is ready. Does he have to think about it, or did he say, “Go ahead”?
JF: Let me back up briefly. There were two or three committees. One committee, the “interim committee,” had basically decided, “We are going to use this thing.” There was no debate, no question they were going to use the bomb. Then there was a target committee that chose the place to drop it. They chose Kyoto, which is this beautiful city that has shrines and so on. And Henry Stimson, the secretary of defense, said, “Don’t do it, they’ll never forgive us.” So Hiroshima became the place of choice.
Truman gave the order. The bomb couldn’t be dropped without his order. He wanted to be away from Potsdam, out of Germany. So on August 6th, 1945, while Truman was still aboard his ship, the bomb was dropped.
DR: And that bomb didn’t quite end the war.
JF: No.
DR: So the second bomb was dropped on August 9th, and six days after that, the Japanese surrendered. They were originally supposed to surrender unconditionally, which would have meant the removal and probable execution of the emperor. Why did the U.S. government allow the emperor to stay?
JF: Because that was the only thing that really made sense. How much could you crush them? There was some debate, but Admiral Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff, said, “We’ll be here forever” if they didn’t allow the emperor to stay.
DR: After the war is over, an amazing number of things happen in foreign policy that Truman didn’t get full credit for at the time. NATO was started?
JF: Yes, that came in his second term. A lot of credit for that goes to a Republican senator named Arthur Vandenberg. The nonbinding Vandenberg Resolution offered early support for Europe.
DR: And the CIA was created?
JF: Yes, through the National Security Act of 1947.
DR: There really hadn’t been anything like the CIA. The FBI had been doing some of that before?
JF: Yes. There was Wild Bill Donovan’s organization, the OSS, in World War II, but the FBI wasn’t really doing foreign intelligence.
DR: And the UN was created. Was Truman supportive of that?
JF: Truman was very supportive of the UN, which honored Roosevelt’s commitment.
DR: During that period, the famous Marshall Plan was announced. General Marshall, then the secretary of state, announced it at a Harvard commencement. Why didn’t they call it the Truman Plan?
JF: Truman said to an aide, “If they call it the Truman Plan, it’s going to go belly-up right away.” He was aware that he wasn’t very popular. Truman personally did not have that much to do with the Marshall Plan, though he gave it his full support. But a lot of people realized that if Europe wasn’t helped quickly, it was going to be a human and economic disaster. People like George Kennan, who had been the Russian expert in the State Department, and Dean Acheson, who became secretary of state, and many others realized something had to be done—something that would cost an enormous amount of money. And that led to the Marshall Plan, which is an extraordinary thing. Nothing like it had ever been done before.
DR: Truman mostly got rid of the people that Roosevelt had around him. Who did he appoint instead?
JF: Truman’s cabinet and Supreme Court appointments were pretty mediocre at first. In his first term, he appointed Jimmy Byrnes, who had been close to FDR, secretary of state, almost as a consolation prize for not getting the vice presidency. Byrnes was an undistinguished secretary of state. Truman couldn’t wait until he was gone; in time, he got General Marshall to replace him, and then in his second term he appointed Dean Acheson, who’d been undersecretary to Byrnes.
