Harry S.

Truman
• Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was
the 33rd President of the United States (1945–1953).
• As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice-president and
the 34th Vice President of the United States, he succeeded to the
presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than
three months after beginning his fourth term.
• During World War I, Truman served as an artillery officer, making him
the only president to have seen combat in World War I (his successor
Eisenhower spent the war training tank crews in Pennsylvania).
• After the war he became part of the political machine of Tom
Pendergast and was elected a county commissioner in Missouri and
eventually a DemocraticUnited States senator.
• After he gained national prominence as head of the wartime Truman
Committee, Truman replaced vice president Henry A. Wallace as
Roosevelt's running mate in 1944.
• Truman faced challenge after challenge in domestic affairs.
• The disorderly postwar reconversion of the economy of the United
States was marked by severe shortages, numerous strikes, and the
passage of the Taft–Hartley Act over his veto.
• He confounded all predictions to win re-election in 1948, helped by his
famous Whistle Stop Tour of rural America.
• After his re-election he was able to pass only one of the proposals in
his Fair Deal program.
• He used executive orders to begin desegregation of the military and to
create loyalty checks which dismissed thousands
of communist supporters from office, even though he strongly opposed
mandatory loyalty oaths for governmental employees, a stance that
led to charges that his administration was soft on communism.
• Truman's presidency was also eventful in foreign affairs, with the end
of World War II and his decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan,
the founding of the United Nations, the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe,
the Truman Doctrine to contain communism, the beginning of the Cold
War, the Berlin Airlift, the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), Chinese Civil War, and the Korean War.
• Corruption in Truman's administration, which was linked to certain
members in the cabinet and senior White House staff, was a central
issue in the 1952 presidential campaign and helped cause Adlai
Stevenson, Truman's successor for the Democratic nomination for
president, to lose to Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1952
presidential election.
• Truman, whose demeanor was very different from that of the patrician
Roosevelt, was a folksy, unassuming president.
• He popularized such phrases as "The buck stops here" and "If you can't
stand the heat, you better get out of the kitchen."
• He overcame the low expectations of many political observers, who
compared him unfavorably with his highly-regarded predecessor.
• At different times in his presidency, Truman earned both the lowest
public approval ratings that had ever been recorded, and the highest
to be recorded until 1991.
• Despite negative public opinion during his term in office, popular and
scholarly assessments of his presidency became more positive after
his retirement from politics and the publication of his memoirs.
• Truman's legendary upset victory in 1948 over Thomas E. Dewey is
routinely invoked by underdog presidential candidates.
• On February 9, 1909, Harry Truman was initiated into Scottish Rite
Freemasonry in the Belton Lodge, Missouri.
• In 1911 he helped establish the Grandview Lodge, and he served as its
first Worshipful Master.
• In 1940, Harry Truman was elected the 97th Grand Master of the
Masons of Missouri. In 1945, he was made a 33° Sovereign Grand
Inspector General and an Honorary Member of the supreme council at
the Supreme Council A.A.S.R. Southern Jurisdiction Headquarters in
Washington D.C. In 1959, he was awarded the 50 year award, the only
U.S. president to reach that anniversary.