Harry Truman's First Year
JR., ADOLF A. BERLE
Harry Truman's First Year Year of Decision. By Harry S. Truman. Doubleday. 596 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by Adolf A. Berle Jr. Former U. S. Assistant Secretary of State; Professor of Law, Columbia...
...Postwar revelations suggest that this could have been done successfully: The Japanese were far weaker than we supposed, and the Russians had far less to offer...
...Judgments must be rapid, even "snap...
...Yet even here hindsight is involved: Only postwar historical material not available to President Truman revealed the extent of Japanese extremity and of their realization that the game was up before the fatal detonation...
...Truman's English and his style come out of the Mark Twain country, Churchill's out of Shakespeare...
...They submit a book as literature...
...The Soviet Union, not unnaturally, made diplomatic hay while the sun shone...
...this was Truman's record...
...This is against all American principles and Mr...
...Obviously these will abide the unending debate of history, and views will change as knowledge grows and perception changes...
...Where Churchill dramatizes himself as Henry V, Truman is much closer to the Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court--a figure, it may be noted, who was created not by a New Englander but by a Missourian...
...We now know the Navy thought not--but certainly it was not strenuous in urging its' opinion...
...He made up his mind, did what he thought was right, judged men instantaneously, settled the questions--and went on to the next...
...The evidence is pretty clear that Truman was worrying about the Soviet attitude...
...In all three phases, discussion is inevitable and desired...
...they submit a statement of their own career...
...The same considerations apply to the handling of affairs in the spring and summer of 1945, leading up to the Potsdam Conference...
...In any case, to have salvaged the European situation would have required complete revision of American policy, so complete as to have probably been politically impossible...
...It is in the main unassailable for what it is: the record of the mind of a man who was making decisions and of the motives and information on which he acted...
...On the other hand, everyone acquainted with the situation realizes now (and most realized then) that it was essential for Truman to replace the old Roosevelt group...
...In any event, the golden moment of fluidity (which is all that victory ever offers to peacemakers) inured primarily to the advantage of Stalin's dictatorship...
...that, instead of deploying toward the East, we should have achieved and maintained in Europe an overpowering force-position and pushed our armies well east of Berlin...
...But I imagine that in the days when Pearl Harbor and the Death March of Bataan were still fresh in the American mind, a politician who proposed settling Europe before closing in on the Japanese--or negotiating peace with Japan--would have been howled out of office...
...President Truman quite simply intended to be boss in his own shop: This is the first Constitutional duty of a President...
...Our Constitution provides that the President, not the Cabinet, shall operate the Executive branch of the Government...
...a high batting average is all that can be done...
...people could like it or lump it...
...It is clear that, in some cases, President Truman's memory plays him false or more likely that he was misinformed at the time, especially in dealing with men...
...John L. Lewis, when he tried to "bluff" the Government...
...those who were associated with Francis Biddle at the time know that Tom Clark was the last man he would have recommended to succeed him as Attorney General...
...Few who know Ambassador Joseph Grew will believe that he took advantage of the new President's advent to push the decision terminating Lend-Lease upon him...
...At all events, the decision was taken: Harry Hopkins was sent with instructions to get Russia into the war, using a baseball bat if necessary...
...The possible head-on collision between the military and labor was averted by capitulation of the railroad unions...
...The world has been struggling with the results ever since...
...He cannot hope to guess right all the time...
...Thinking was dominated in large measure by the assumed military necessities of the Japanese war...
...Henry Steele Commager, for example, thinks that the Truman decision to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima was obviously right...
...As in any historical record, personalities show through the tapestry of official action...
...Yet the fact was and is that no bloc of interests of any kind can be allowed to defy the Government, nullify the laws or flout the courts of the United States...
...James Byrnes, when he conducted international conferences on his own without reporting for instructions...
...Former President Truman is not given to torturing post mortems as to their correctness...
...The President of the United States cannot possibly conduct a long piece of research and make up a balanced judgment on everything he does: The ribbon of events moves too swiftly...
...The real safeguard, therefore, has to be the underlying motivation and philosophy of the man making the decisions, since these eventually control their aggregate...
...The book is good literature...
...Professor of Law, Columbia University Statesmen presenting memoirs perform a treble task...
...This happens in every government...
...But it is one thing to say that, and quite another to assert that, with the knowledge available in the spring of 1945 and under the circumstances then prevailing, the President could have done anything else...
...This is the case with former President Truman's memoirs...
...A part of Washington is almost organized to see to it that misinformation, especially about men, reaches the occupants of high places...
...The wave-beats of pounding drama which Churchill could excite are replaced in Truman's memoirs by the highly personal drama going on in the mind of a man suddenly thrust into one of two or three recognizably key places in world affairs...
...but he wanted the Russians to enter the war against Japan and was prepared to make concessions for that purpose...
...History would have to take care of itself...
...The American Army plumped squarely for the proposition that Russian aid was essential to avoid huge loss of American life...
...he proved a capable negotiator at Potsdam...
...Thus, Henry Morgenthau vanished when he thought he was essential to the conduct of foreign affairs...
...he says the measures proposed were "only as a desperate resort in an extreme emergency where leaders defiantly called the workers out in a strike against the Government...
...Many of these decisions affected the lives of hundreds of millions then, and some affect them still...
...Of longer-range interest is the document as a piece of historical evidence...
...It is probable that even he, like most Americans, underestimated the sardonic cynicism of the Stalin Government and assumed that its word would be good...
...Truman asked Congress to authorize the President to draft strikers into the Armed Forces, and he used the authority he had to call on the Army to assist in operating the trains...
...they submit an organized piece of historical evidence...
...this reviewer believes that a way might have been found to convince the already wavering Japanese that they must surrender without exploding the nuclear weapon...
...And so forth...
...Probably the most difficult decision arose out of the railroad strike in the spring of 1946...
...The President's decision, especially in the railroad situation, has been widely criticized, and it certainly is an extremely dangerous precedent...
...Of greater importance are the main "decisions" of which President Truman writes...
...so also was John L. Lewis in the bituminous coal strike which came shortly after...
...As the author says in closing, the year 1945 was indeed "a year of decisions--a year of many trying and fateful decisions...
...Truman would be the last to claim, I think, that it could compete with Winston Churchill's comparable volumes...
...perhaps it is well that President Truman wastes no words on the courteous camouflage usually interposed in these matters...
...The underlying fact, of course, was that the railroad unions in that instance were wrong...
...This is valid even if he is misinformed: This is what he did do and why he did it...
...He did not like, and made short work of, anyone suspected of failing to recognize this single, solid and immutable fact...
...Truman recognized that fact...
...Harold Ickes, when he was "too big for his breeches...
...There is a difference between judging political decisions made on information then in hand and judging decisions as a separate event in the light of later revealed, but then unknowable, fact...
...It is easy to say in retrospect that we should have adjourned finishing with the Japanese until we had settled Europe...
...In view of the fact that on this record a substantial majority of Americans thereafter elected him President, he has a right to think that most people did like it...
...In domestic affairs, somewhat the same considerations apply...
...In Army reasoning, this involved offering the Soviet Union every inducement to make good on her dubious promise of participation...
...both have their merits but they are completely different...
Vol. 38 • December 1955 • No. 49
