Truman in Retirement-and History
Brooks, Philip C.
lace; at the outset of the Truman presi- dency these liberals believed that the country's leader from Missouri was junk- ing FDR's foreign policies just as he was abandoning the Roosevelt heritage...
...He played active roles roles in the campaigns of 1952 and 1956...
...76 (1970-1971 ), 575-580,856-858...
...He is often thought to have been unprepared for that position, but events proved that he was unprepared only insofar as his current knowledge of Roosevelt's actions was concerned...
...Truman in retirement showed none of the pomposity often associated with "'elder statesmen...
...Harry S. Truman, Mr...
...Trinians) or pathetically (Who's Alraid of Virginia Wolff...
...U. of Missouri Press...
...His experience in World War I combat, on the farm, and in the rough-and-lmnble of local politics contributed to another misunderstanding that was partly of his own making...
...did not fail to mention Carlyle's wife Jane, one of them remarking that Tfiornas 30...
...The new President had turned for advice to FDR's chief of staff, now his own, Ad-miral William D. Leahy...
...In the second period, from July 1957 to June 1966, he spent six-and-a-half days a week in his office at the Tru- man Library close to his home in Inde- pendence, reading, writing, keeping up a massive correspondence, continuing his political interest, and seeing innumerable visitors--leading figures of public life, groups of all kinds, personal friends, and strangers who were often surprised to be able to talk with him...
...From Trust to Terror: The Onset of the Cold War, 1945-1950 (New York, gerating...
...Movies About Schools Every time a college or high school pace, elaborately toting different sized is to be depicted in the movies, we know books, and chattering furiously...
...at the outset of the Truman presi- dency these liberals believed that the country's leader from Missouri was junk- ing FDR's foreign policies just as he was abandoning the Roosevelt heritage in domestic politics.27 The usual demon-stration of Truman's tough attitude toward the Russians is to point to his treatment of Molotov when the Soviet foreign minister passed through Wash-ington in April, 1945, en route to the San Francisco Conference of the United Na-tions.28 It is an interesting speculation to think of one leader reversing the policy of his predecessor, and Schlesinger has pointed out the dramatic temptation (The conclusion of this article will appear in next month's issue...
...Boundaries ancl Access to Berlin," World Politics, vo116 (1963-1964), 1-31 ; David 27...
...The arrange(continued on page 28) 26...
...Roosevelt had hoped for: an institution built to house the papers and other historical materials of himself and his contemporaries, which would become an important research center...
...New York, 1971 ), p. 64...
...General George C. Marshall never really trusted Roosevelt, and the only time Marshall Went to Hyde Park to see the President, despite many invitations, was on the occasion of Roosevelt's funer- al...
...Philip C. Brooks yl President in Retirement and History Harry S. Truman's physical vigor and his habit of regular exercise helped him to survive many years in retirement...
...75, 2155- stirred the revisionists to fury...
...It all reminded the present writer of the feeling that Schlesinger had skewered several of their favorite illusions, to the nineteenth-century raileries from and to Thomas Carlyle in which critics use Gardner's word...
...But Herbert Feis' last book, From Trust to Terror, points out that at this time Harriman was not on the inside of Truman's group of advisors, nor for that matter was Stimson...
...See AHR, vol...
...Truman in 1941 had delivered himself of a snap judgment that Soviet publicists, and the revisionists, would never forget, for shortly after the Germans attacked the Soviet Union he had said he was de- lighted and hoped they would fight each other to the death, with the United States helping whichever side was losing...
...He enjoyed what Mr...
...It produced an utterly 29...
...would admonish them that it was the re- sponsibility of their generation to keep it that way...
...Among the viewpoints that Mr...
...His interest in the Library continued to demonstrate his lifelong historical bent...
...He had never been spoken to like that before, exclaimed Molotov...
...He did not seek to influence the priority of persons whose papers would be sought, nor the equality of ac- cess by all scholars to the Library's holdings...
...He was, in a sense, a history buff -- not an academic historian in any sense (the academicians with their esoteric language sometimes amused him...
...Churchill was after the new pres- ident, for the old Britisher as well as many of the members of Roosevelt's disgruntled official family eagerly antici- pated a more straightforward presiden- cy...
...But Brooklyn College, 1972, done under the direction of Hans L. Trefousse...
...In trying to show that Truman took a hard line after Roosevelt's more subtle approach, the revisionists in one respect have struck some fire, at least some good quotations...
...Citizen, op...
...And stu-dents, individually or in groups, also blunderers, but only insofar as they are The Alternative April 1973...
...At other times he could be so devious, or unable to communicate his purposes, as in his withdrawal of support of James F. Byrnes for the vice-presidential nomi- nation at the Chicago convention in 1944, that to the present day one is uncertain what he originally had in mind, if he had anything in mind...
...He had himself shown qualities of leadership as early as World War I that made him other than average...
...He was not heard to men- tion it again...
...One grandly befuddled teacher, lost in and to his subject of study, unable comically (The Bells o~ St...
...The third period, The Alternative April 1973 during which he was ill fromtime to time, was spent at home, reading, taking his daily walks for most of these years, and still seeing many visitors...
...Judgments made of him often suffer from misunderstanding of a peculiarity of Missouri law in which county administrative officials were known as "'judges...
...For another, he was properly sensitive to the fact that he had been elected Vice- President only because he was on the ticket with Roosevelt, and it would have been presumptuous of him in April, 1945, to have started off on his own presiden- tial policies, foreign or domestic...
...Like many other former presidents he wrote memoirs explaining and justify- ing his actions, and later quite a differ-ent kind of book about his first few years years in retirement...
...For one thing, he was too new at the job to have many detailed opinions on foreign policy...
...75 (1969-70), 1046-1064...
...Truman's retirement was dividhd into three parts: the first, from January 1953 to July 1957, was spent in gettirig reacquainted with private life (never as private as the Trumans would have liked), in travel, and in a busy politichl life...
...56 (1969-1970), 863...
...Tlius, uninformed people often supposed that he had been some kind of justice of the peace instead of the chief administrative official of a county of four hundred thousand people...
...Arthur M. Schlesinger, "Our Presidents: a Rating by Seventy-Five Historians," New York Times Magazine, July 29, 19...
...the Anglo-American Forces from the Soviet Zone of Occupation," M~..thesis at 28...
...31 At the outset Truman's opinions on foreign policy seem to have been so uncertain that at the same time he sent Harry Hopkins to Moscow to assure Stalin of the new ad- ministration's desire to cooperate with the Soviets to achieve European peace he enlisted Joseph E. Davies to go on a mission to see Churchill in England...
...46 (1967-1968), 22-52...
...And he The Great American Column...
...For a third, his actions in the spring of 1945 showed that he wanted to get along with Stalin...
...Trustees, blunderers all, too crass to understand what education is all about...
...a~ The revisionists like to show that at the outset of his presidency Truman was listening to some hard-line advisors (to use a later expression...
...But he was con- suited by innumerable politicians, and every succeeding president came to see him at some time...
...The essay itself will appear in The Truman Period as a Research Field edited by Richard S. KirkendalI...
...On this point, which surely needs a book, see William M. Franklin, "Zonal and Jane deserved each other...
...Gary M. Mar- anell, "The Evaluation of Presidents" an Extension of the Schlesinger Polls," Journal of American Histo~, 17:104-113, June 1970...
...Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, New York, 2 vol., 1955, 1956, Doubleday & Co...
...As compared to Roosevelt, Truman was an enormous breath of fresh air, so open and businesslike...
...Now, as in The Graduate, we usually get the.picture songless to suggest stark modernity, but the conception of a world apart remains unchanged...
...Adam B. Ulam, The Rivals: America and Russia since World War II 1970), pp...
...In addition to relying for diplomatic advice from Admiral Leahy, Truman turned to Byrnes, and almost immediately designated the South Caro- linian to be Secretary of State, after the end of the San Francisco Conference when it would be possible to get the hopelessly naive Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., out of the secretaryship...
...He spent most of his time in the handsome Victorian house in Indepen-dence which has been the Truman home for more than thirty years, and in an office in Kansas City only ten miles away...
...He once wrote that if the "Library had been con- ceived as a memorial to me personally, I would have done everything I could to prevent its establishment during my life- time...I encouraged the building of the Library only because it was to be a cen- ter for the study of all the Presidents and the Presidency as well as the history of the UnRed States...
...The figures who populate these settings are also foreknown to us...
...to make connections with his students or butside realities...
...He saw not only countless changes in politi- cal and social America, but also the completion of a library focused on the years of his career, which became the center of his attention...
...Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson was upset because of the anti-Russian feeling among Truman's advisors, notably Averell Harriman and the latter's Moscow assistant in charge of Russian lend lease, Major General John R. Deane...
...But he put his knowledge of history to serious purpose, adducing historical analogies countless times in connection with his own actions...
...Truman spent nine years at the Library, longer than he was in the White House by nearly two years...
...That article was based on a poll of more than five hundred histor- ians, as against the seventy-five of the poll by Professor Arthur Schlesinger in 1962, which had placed him ninth in greatness...
...Truman knew that the "revisionists" would come, from both the Right and the Left, as they do after every historical period...
...2' Roosevelt was a compromiser, sometimes to the point of dissimulation...
...Mr...
...One football coach, ordin- arily Jim Backus, obsessed, gruff, loud but lovable, another blunderer...
...From the heartfelt nature of the wrath one had 2164...
...In his knowledgeable comments and his judgment in handling people he showed some of the characteristics that had proved valuable to him as president...
...Citizen, New York, 1953, Bernard Gels Associates, 239 p.) Once the institution was extablished, however, he showed the same ability to depend on specialists for operations that had marked his terms as president...
...He was pleased but not boast~l when his attention was called to an article that rated him sev- enth among all the presidents in general prestige, and sixth in "accomplishments of their administrations...
...After 19~ he had reason to be skeptical d polls,and he always said we wouldn't know anyway for fifty years whether or not a man had been a good president...
...An individual with this makeup could drive his straightfor- ward subordinates to distraction, or fury...
...Tru- man enjoyed belittling, in retirement as before, was that strange myopia that causes some people to regard any Mid-dlewesterner--who has not disavowed it--as ipso lacto "average" (used as a...
...Mr...
...Nor was he concerned about the perennial and ever-changing game of "rating the presidents...
...but this opinion had given way to more maturity of thought long before 1945 and the presidency, and there is every reason to believe that despite the little talk ses- sion with Molotov the President loyally undertook to carry out the foreign policy of his predecessor...
...This unprecedented flow of letters to the editor, to which the authors responded article, which still seems to the present writer an admirable piece in every way, with as much heat and sarcasm as l'he critics bestowed...
...His candor and his close affinity with the "'man on the street," plus a good deal of humor, often caused him to speak in a way that many people thought too casual, but which belied both his rather conservative personal character and his great respect for the presidency...
...Davies, to be sure, was a well-known "softie" on communism, who must have made a simply awful impression on Churchill, who when ambassador to Rus- sia prior to the Second World War had justified the purge trials and in his book, Mission to Moscow, described how Stalin was no tyrant, that a child would sit on the dictator's lap and a dog would sidle up to him...
...As is well known, the Prime Minister wanted a showdown with the Russians...
...One dean, president, or headmaster, equally out of things, either because he stands for order in a madhouse (Horse Feathers ). or because he functions as a businessman in the world of ideas...
...I"l of Ivy," an anagram of it...
...All these points have been made many times and are well known...
...When such pictures descending carefully towards ivy-covered snapped on the screen twenty years ago, neo-Georgian buildings, finally settling at they were accompanied by a massive ground level to catch students in clus- male chorus humming "Gaudeamus Igi- ters, all walking at the same ceremonial tur," or, as in the radio program, "Halls term of opprobrium) and dull...
...He was still invoking a regard for history in what was probably his favorite retire-ment activity (aside from politics), talk- ing to groups of young people...
...Those who knew him well always speak of his thoughthdness, his graciousness, and his devotion to friends and family--qualities that went far to explain the loyalty that he inspired among his associates...
...His early extensive reading of history-- especially biographies of the presi-dents --has often been noted...
...Mr...
...And they worried him little when they did come, even though some of them had worked at the Truman Li-brary...
...here, and yet this theory about a change in policies has less to it than meets the eye...
...His quick comments "'from the hip" were usually grounded in deep-set beliefs and principles, and his decisions on firm convictions about what he felt was the right thing to do...
...Tnmmn was conscious that he would have a place in history himself, and to some extent he probably regarded the Library as representative of poster- ity...
...k nowing who his boss was, one must assume tha t the Soviet statesman was exag- 31...
...To Churchill's intense chagrin Truman refused to allow American troops to re-main in the parts of the Soviet-desig-nated zone of Germany into which they had entered in the last days of the war against Hitler...
...In the precisely what the settings will look like: case of high schools, the ivy is removed, a bird's eye view of a great lawned quad- the students walk faster, and the noise rangle, shot at a couple of hundred feet, is at a higher pitch...
...Origins of the Cold War," Foreign Affairs, vol...
...What was important was that he knew and understood the people that were "average" (in the best sense) and communicated with them...
...Although the policies which gained him broad support as president largely con, cerned foreign affairs, his own program dwelt heavily on the needs of the common man...
...Mr...
...Alonzo Hamby, "The Liberals, Truman, and FDR as Symbol and Myth," Jour- Herschler, "The Grand Alliance and Germany - 1945: the Decision to Withdraw nal of American History, vol...
...Only two presi- dents lived to greater ages than he, and only six for longer periods after leaving the White House...
...But to push them into a con- clusion that Truman, whose modus oper- andi was so different, sought to reverse Roosevelt's foreign policy is to make an historical mistake...
...For the article see AHR, vol...
...17-19...
...Study your history," he would advise them, saying that they should learn howAhe greateSt government in .the history of the world got to be that way...
...the Library beiongs to the Government," he told the Director, "and it's all up to you to run it...
Vol. 6 • April 1973 • No. 7
