Lynn Smith: Wild about Harry

When Harry Truman took the oath of office upon FDR’s death in April 1945, it was just 83 days into Roosevelt’s unprecedented fourth term, and the world was still at war. This seemingly unprepared modest Missouri man was thrown into the breach, forced to make decisions that would define the world order for decades to come.

Among his first decisions … relatively unimportant, yet telling … was to invite his mother to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom of the White House, an invitation she loudly rejected. Although he had come from a family of Confederate sympathizers, Truman never shared their disdain for our 16th president, and grew increasingly agitated as Black servicemen returned from World War II and were again, forced into second-class citizenship.

The overwhelming majority of Black veterans had been shut-out from the benefits of the 1944 GI Bill of Rights, and when President Truman addressed the NAACP in June 1947, he became the first president to ever address a civil rights organization. This was very unpopular among southern Democrats, so he knew he was risking his re-election.

In 1948, because he lacked congressional support, he used an executive order to force the desegregation of America’s armed forces. Order 9981 declared: “There shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion and national origin.” This historic gesture, occurring exactly 75 years ago, set the stage for the civil rights advances of the 1950s and '60s, and forever altered our nation’s political and cultural landscape. To this day, the American military is among the most diverse, inclusive, and respected of all American institutions.

In 1945, as the fight against German and Japanese forces was coming to an end, Truman led the Allied powers in peace conferences at Yalta and Potsdam to determine how to divide disputed territories in Europe. In fact, you can draw a straight line between his initial meetings with Churchill and Stalin, through the establishment of the United Nations and NATO, continuing with the Truman Doctrine which redefined American foreign policy, and to the U.S. financed Marshall Plan, which rehabilitated the suffering post-war economies in Europe. With Truman at the helm, the post-war period became an opportunity to create order and stability all over the globe. Democratic institutions would be nurtured, so peace and prosperity could be realized. But first, war refugees had to find a way home.

From his youth, Truman had detested intolerance and discrimination, and had been deeply moved by the plight of millions of homeless after WWII, especially the Jews. He refused to ignore the refugees who’d been liberated from the death camps in Poland, but who now had no homeland to which they could return. So, it came as no surprise when he defied his own State Department, and the United Nations, to recognize the new state of Israel, just 11 minutes after the nation’s creation, in 1948. But even this would not be Truman’s most controversial decision as president.

Americans are generally taught that Truman’s bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki represented the lesser of two evils: If the bombs hadn't been dropped, the war would have dragged on because the U.S. would've been forced to launch a Japanese ground invasion resulting in greater casualties for both Japan and America. But in recent years, our national debates suggest that the bombings of Japan weren't just the end of World War II, but the start of a Cold War that would now include a nuclear arms race. In the must-see movie, “Oppenheimer,” it is argued that Truman wanted a dramatic demonstration of America's power because he was convinced that it would make our country the undisputed master of the post-war order, and that American leadership would ultimately make the world a safer place for everyone.

But, what has never been debated is this: Harry Truman developed a global leadership strategy that was strong, sophisticated, optimistic, and humane. The Truman Doctrine was a roaring success that stopped communism at its World War II borders, and allowed Europeans to recover from the war, safely protected by the newly-constructed American shield. In 1947, Truman voiced his primary reason for ending 150 years of American isolationism, and as you’ll note, it remains the basis for our support of Ukraine now: "The free peoples of the world look to the U.S. for support in maintaining their democratic freedoms. If we falter, we may endanger the peace of the world."

As Truman predicted, ending isolationism has also been good for business: In 2022 alone, U.S. exports to Europe exceeded $350 billion.

— Community Columnist Lynn Smith is a retired wealth management executive who resides in Holland. Contact her at lynn.angleworks@gmail.com. 

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Lynn Smith: Wild about Harry