Harry Truman

Harry S Truman (1884–1972) was the thirty-third President of the United States (1945–1953). As Vice President, he succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died less than three months after he began his fourth term.

During World War I Truman served as an artillery officer. After the war he became part of the political machine of Tom Pendergast and was elected a county commissioner in Missouri and eventually a United States Senator. After he gained national prominence as head of the wartime Truman Committee, Truman replaced vice president Henry Wallace as Roosevelt's running mate in 1944.

Truman's presidency saw dramatic shifts in the country's foreign and domestic policies. On the foreign side, Truman oversaw the final defeat of the Axis, with the fall of Germany in May, 1945, and the surrender of Japan in August, 1945. The latter saw the deployment of the first atomic bombs. Truman also brought the U.S. into the United Nations, helped implement the Marshall Plan, and instituted the Truman Doctrine of containment of communism, laying the foundation of the Cold War. This policy eventually led to America's intervention in the Korean War.

At home, the shift from a wartime to a peacetime economy was difficult, and Truman faced substantial opposition. He was elected in his own right in 1948, infamously defeating his opponent Thomas Dewey, to the surprise of pundits. He left office in 1953 with the lowest approval ratings afforded any president before that time.

Harry Truman in The Man With the Iron Heart
Harry Truman was suddenly thrust into the presidency when Franklin D. Roosevelt died in April, 1945. Truman faced several difficult decisions. While the European theater of World War II was winding down, Japan had signalled its intention to fight to the bitter end. The war in Europe officially ended in May, 1945, with the surrender of Germany. In actuality, the war erupted again almost immediately, as the German Freedom Front, under the leadership of Reinhard Heydrich, launched a resistance movement against the Allied forces occupying the country. The casualties inflicted against American troops began to wear away at public support for the occupation.

While Germany continued to simmer, the war against Japan continued at full boil. Shortly after taking office, Truman was informed of the development of the atomic bomb. Fearing the loss of life that could arise from the invasion of the Japanese home islands, Truman ordered the deployment of a bomb against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively in August, 1945. Japan immediately surrendered.

However, Germany was quietly deteriorating. Nearly 1000 American soldiers had been killed since the war officially ended (including General George Patton). The mother of one of those killed, Diana McGraw, gathered together other people who'd lost loved ones, and began protesting the Truman Administration. December, 1945 proved to be the most difficult period for Truman. The GFF destroyed the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg just as various Nazi officials were to go on trial for war crimes, and then issued a film featuring kidnapped private Matthew Cunningham pleading for the withdrawal of troops in exchange for his life. McGraw's Mothers Against the Madness in Germany protested outside the White House. Her group was joined by various legislators, both Republicans and Democrats.

Witnessing the protest, Truman himself approached McGraw, and argued the threat that both the Nazis and the Soviet Union (America's former ally) posed to the peace. Unfortunately for him, Truman took far too condescending a tone, which helped shore up McGraw's own self-assurance that the lives lost were too a high a price. Nor could he dislodge her belief that the atomic bomb would be easily deployed should either Germany or the USSR become a threat.

Truman continued this line of argument publically throughout 1946. He dismissed the notion that McGraw's view was gaining momentum with the American people, and waived off the possibility that the Republicans would ride the issue to Congressional victory in the fall. He also asserted that foreign policy was set by the executive, and so scoffed angrily at the idea that Republican Congress could (much less would) order the troops home.

The year 1946 didn't start much better for Truman. American troops very nearly had their hands on Heydrich after the guerrilla leader personally oversaw the kidnapping of a group of German physicists from British custody. Tom Schmidt of the Chicago Tribune grew ever more critical of the Administration, dispensing with much civility. Then the GFF was able to collect a quantity of radium that had been abandoned by those same scientists in Hechingen, and detonated it as part of a bomb in the American compound in Frankfurt. This attack came just as the Allies were making their second attempt to try German war criminals.

With these black marks on the record, the Republicans were able to take back the House and the Senate in November, 1946. In the meantime, America's allies Britain and France were subjected to attacks by the GFF on their home soil. While Truman issued statements of solidarity, it did nothing to change the American voters' minds. The ascension of the Republicans emboldened American troops abroad. By January, 1947, draftees were actively protesting in the streets of occupied Germany, demanding to go home.

By February, 1947, Truman had begun his first conflict with the Congress, vetoing a budget that cut off funding for the occupation by the end of the year. Truman vetoed it, and then held a press conference asserting that the broader American population supported him, even if it didn't do so loudly. While Congress did not have the votes to override the veto, this was at best a small victory for Truman. On July 4, 1947, Indianapolis City Councilman Gus van Slyke was assassinated at an anti-occupation rally. Within hours, Republican Congressman Everett Dirksen had whipped a protest rally in Washington, DC into a frenzy with the news. The crowd did not committ any acts of violence, although Tom Schmidt, who was covering the crowd, feared that it might storm the White House.

Truman suffered another set back days later when the GFF once again prevented the trials of several prominent Nazi leaders. This time, the trials were to be held in Berlin, and managed by the Soviet Union. However, a GFF Werewolf seized an American C-47 and crashed it into the courthouse. Truman gave a radio address condemning the GFF and the Republican Congress. He also warned that the Nazis had been in the early stages of their own atomic bomb in 1945, and that they could build their own if left to their own devices.

Unfortunately, these warnings went unheeded. The Truman Administration saw no choice but to begin the pullout of American soldiers in the Fall of 1947. Happily, Reinhard Heydrich was finally located and killed by American troops, although the Administration's critics saw this as even greater reason to pull out troops, while Truman worried that killing Heydrich wasn't really the death of the GFF. This fear proved correct as Joachim Peiper soon picked up where Heydrich left off, launching a series of commericial airline hijackings.

Truman planned to run again in 1948.

Harry Truman in Southern Victory
Harry S Truman was a Senator from Missouri who was elected Vice President of the United States in 1944 on the Democratic ticket with Thomas Dewey.

Truman had served as artillery officer during the Great War. Although the product of a corrupt political machine, Truman was viewed as a straightforward and honest man. A thorough hawk on foreign policy, Truman, as vice president-elect, travelled to the restive state of Florida to encourage U.S. troops to continue their occupation, supporting newly-elected President Dewey's goal of reintegrating the former Confederate States into the Union.

During a brief exchange with Michael Pound, Truman admitted that if Dewey's policy failed, then some future VP would be explaining to Pound's grandchildren how important it was to keep a lid on the CS. When Pound suggested that the problem of rebellious Confederates might by solved by genocidal measures, Truman briskly dissmised the idea, refusing to become a Jake Featherston.