and i am happy to introduce david rol, who is the author of, george marshall, the hopkins

touch and ascent to power how truman emerged from roosevelt's shadow and remade the world. he's coauthor of lewis and the arming of america, along with keith mcfarland, a biography of harry truman's defense secretary. after serving as an assistant director for the bureau competition at the ftc, role practiced law as a partner. the steptoe and johnson llp and founded lex mundi foundation, a public organization that continues provide pro bono legal services to social entrepreneurs around world. he lives in washington, d.c., and he is here to present us today. will you welcome mr. role. thank you. great to be here. i think this is the third time that i've been here, so i'm great. i love to just walk around this. it's so, so.

so historian have said and say that harry truman was an accidental president. i made mistake but roosevelt's death was no accident. it was expected. it was expected his own doctors told, him that he would not survive a fourth term but he ran and won anyway and harry truman knew that physically roosevelt had gone to pieces he said so to a and it was an open in washington that fdr could die at any time. truman used say to whomever

would listen that he did not want a path to the presidency for himself to run through the back door of the white. and so all in all, this meant that. roosevelt's death was was expected. it was. and so on the late afternoon of april 12th, 1945, i was. 1945 when truman accepted a phone call and was told to, get to the white house immediately. he knew ascent to power was anything but accidental accidental when he set down the phone and talked to the people in the room at the. his words were, jesus christ and

general jackson, why did he put those two together? i'm not sure. he knew that the president passed away. of course, there never would have been an ascent to power for truman if fdr not in miserable health, selected truman to be his running mate at democratic convention in july of 1944, and there in, as you'll see in my book, lies a tangled tale of chaos and duplicity intentionally orchestrated fdr. he had already he had already promised to individus those we didn't know this between them. so but the two individuals, the vice presidency. henry wallace left leaning henry wallace, the current vice

president and jimmy roosevelt, probably the most qualified the. b-word. jimmy byrnes, jimmy byrnes thank you. i jimmy rather. jimmy byrnes. i have a scholar in the audience. jimmy byrnes probably the most qualified and. he was sometimes called the assistant president, but then fdr reneged, changed his mind. he gave in to the he gave in to the choice of the big city democratic bosses. and so from his train, from to train 2000 miles to the west and san diego on the opening day of the convention and roosevelt chose truman. and truman had told everyone, including his wife, which is important including his wife, that he would never accept. but he did.

and so a few weeks, the close of that democratic convention. in 1944, a hot day in august 1944, fdr invited, the presidential or the nominee, harry truman, the nominee to a lunch and a photo op at the white house. truman wrote about it to his wife, bess, and he said, we dined in the backyard of the white house. he called the backyard the lawn under, a tree planted by old andy jackson. he jack's. and there's a famous that shows roosevelt and truman sitting this round table under jackson tree and they'd taken off their coats because of the heat so

they roosevelt was was wearing a white starched shirt with a monogram and of a slim bow tie, black or dark blue and a blood stone on his left pinkie. i researched and he got it from his father. and his his his eyes were. his his eyes were black and they look, you know, when you when you saw his photograph, black circles under his eyes and to his right sent truman and truman was you know striped shirt, white tie. he looked he looked vital. you know, he he was he looked younger than his 60 years. and he was casting warm smile across the table at anna roosevelt, bottega, who was

roosevelt's eldest eldest offspring. so the when when truman when truman. well, let me just say that that they their appearances. let me let me get to their appearances for a minute minute. their appearances very different just in a description i just gave you. but it was more than appearances. they were different in a multitude of ways. fdr, the groton, harvard white shoe law firm. desk job during world war one as assistant secretary of war of of assistant of the navy.

truman could not afford college could not afford college. ten years as a missouri dirt farmer saw combat time in world war one as an artillery officer, a decorated roosevelt wheelchair born due to polio for the of his life. he enlarged heart high blood pressure. truman the essence of good health oozed vitality oozed vitality. roosevelt. known for his heavily forested interior, amassed his thoughts and his feelings. but he was a he was a visionary. truman deliberately. if he he was a linear thinker. said what he thought.

truman loved playing poker with his pals. bourbon nonsmoker. roosevelt. next, martinis for his children's hour. for the children's hour. and at the end of each day, he was in the white house. chain smoker. the he loved juicy gossip with his daughter anna, who actually, i think extended his life by a year by getting him into cardiologist and. he used to say of her father that he it was cold. this is what she said. her father cold, cunning, cold, cold, calculating, shrewd, shrewd truman. truman, direct, authentic,

sincere. when truman. when. truman sworn in as president. 17:09 p.m. on april 12, 1945, he was totally unprepared. just just think he faced on that at that moment. a global war, for one. increasingly hostile soviet union. europe in ruins. a the onset of the atomic age and the organization of the u.n. for starters. he he knew nothing about foreign policy. and during his 82 days as president, he made no effort to educate himself. now roosevelt did advise him of

the of the bomb at that luncheon in in in august of 1944. no details nothing about foreign policy. just told him. but actually, truman already knew because he was the of a committee commission to investigate the the defense industry of people in his investigators knew about it. never never obviously never say anything about it. so he was definitely unprepared. now, in if roosevelt if roosevelt before his death had a vision, had had a plan for deploying the atomic bomb, or if he had a vision for for the postwar world. he revealed none of those. to truman.

so in the time i have today i can't possibly cover the whole story of the ascent to power. let me concentrate on three themes. three things that run through my book. and the first is roosevelt shadow, how it influenced truman's presidency. the second is truman's focus. focus on democracy, freedom and civil rights. and thirdly, truman's resilience. i, i have time to get to that. truman ah, yeah. roosevelt and the bomb. let's talk about that and roosevelt's shadow and the bomb. shortly after germany's surrender, truman, what he called was an interim committee. interim committee consisting of

henry stimson, the secretary of war as chairman and seven civilians, and the mandate of the of the interim committee was to provide on the sharing and control of atomic energy and whether to use the bomb over japan. on june one, 1945, that interim committee report was delivered to truman. the recommendations and the except the basic recommendation was to save american lives. the united states needed to deploy and detonate an atomic bomb over japan. the forces surrender and it to be targeted at a a japanese war plan surrounded by workers in a japanese city large city, and

that there should be no advance warning. nothing was said at this point about the control sharing of atomic, nor was there any discussion of the moral legitimacy of detonating the atomic bomb bomb. truman never wavered. this was the moment, in my view, when the decision to use the atomic bomb was made. it been assumed by all of roosevelt's advisors and his national security team that roosevelt, if he lived, would deploy the bomb and it was assume armed by those who directed the manhattan project that would use the bomb.

and truman truman regarded. this as roosevelt's legacy, in my view, and unspoken bequest to his successor. so general leslie groves, the head of the manhattan project, used to say that, if you could call it a decision, you could call truman having made decision. it was a decision to, not intervene. it was a decision essentially to not upset existing plans. now, truman truman was the only one who could have said no to the use of any atomic bomb and make it stick. but. but and he was criticized,

obviously not saying no. criticized back then. criticized today. criticized probably forever. but his rationale. it had to be done to force the japanese to surrender and i think he was right and. he used to say. truman used to say this about the bomb said a quarter of a million of the flower of young american manhood is was worth a couple of japanese cities. roosevelt's shadow roosevelt's and macarthur macarthur. anticipating the the surrender order and occupation of japan.

harry truman made a fateful decision in august of 1945. although he had serious reservations, he appointed general douglas macarthur, supreme commander of allied powers, pacific. why. roosevelt's shadow? the year before 1944, roosevelt was out in hawaiian islands, and he elevated, douglas macarthur over admiral nimitz as the key. the only strategist, the main strategist in the pacific. now, truman, a rookie president, was not about to challenge roosevelt's political and military judgment. and so.

that that's why he he stuck with macarthur and made him the supreme commander, harold ickes, who was close to roosevelt and actually to truman. he was a new dealer. he was in both the cabinet, roosevelt's cabinet and truman's cabinet. he said that truman had no other choice. and he publicly said the blame for appointing to the occupation is in the pacific, in the far east is due to roosevelt. harry truman, saving democracy, an. early 1947 early 1947, truman

faced situation similar to what biden is dealing with in ukraine. only for truman it was greece and turkey and soviet inspired communists threatening threatening threatening greece with taking over their government against the will of the and the will of their people. and the kremlin was pressuring turkey to amend the treaty governing? the turkish straits and undersecretary dean acheson and persuaded truman that if greece and turkey should give in to the demands of the soviets, this would endanger national security and itself.

and so what what acheson said was we are the only we are the nation who have have funds and the resources to break up the soviet play. and so two months later i think it was i think it might have been march. and 1975, 79, 70, what is it, 1947, 1947, 1947, before a joint of congress, truman delivered probably the most consequential speech of his presidency. after explained the how to give the get the relief to greece and turkey, he held forth with what is called the truman doctrine and the doctrine.

basically, he tied american national security to providing assistance to peoples wherever they democracies who are being threatened by autocratic regimes. and let me see if i can get the exact words used. he said in his speech, i believe that it must be the policy of the united states to support free peoples who are resisting subjugate and by autocratic regimes and ideologies. that was the truman doctrine and was a radical change in foreign policy. and for the next several, actually, even until today, the the principles undergirding the truman doctrine doctrine guided the united nonpartisan foreign policy for better or for worse. and sometimes for a worse.

his speech mobilized the west mobilized west to confront and contain the soviet union. and it spawned the marshall plan naito and the berlin airlift. truman. truman and democracy. civil rights. truman and civil rights. oh, truman grew up in a racist missouri. i have to say that a former state back and forth, he has his two sets of grandparents, african-americans, his mother refused to sleep in lincoln bedroom when she visited her son at the white house. there's a story behind that. truman used the n-word liberally throughout his life, deep into

his retirement years. but his views did evolve amid. 1947 and early, early spring that year. a man named walter white, the head of the naacp at the time, suggested to truman. that he needed give a major. the time was right, he said, for him to give a major speech on civil rights. a month or two later. it was early june. of 1947, early june in 1947, on steps of the lincoln memorial with the howard university choir singing above him held forth to

a crowd of 10,000 acp supporters in friends. and he began by saying. it is my deep conviction that the nation has reached a turning point. turning point in its efforts to guarantee freedom and equality for all americans. and then he emphasized and when i all americans, i mean all americans. and then he went to pledge his support for civil rights, beginning with a right to a free trial, right to be free. free from racial discrimination. and then he focused on four or five areas that where they needed to have some us civil rights legislation voting education housing, medical care

and equality of opportunity for jobs. and then his his last pledge was perhaps most important. he said that he pledged that the federal government would lead would lead the way. so, of course, this was just the beginning, very beginning of his crusade for civil rights in 19. and it was in 19. the next year, in 1948, it was a presidential election year. truman was running and. roosevelt or truman could not convinced that 80th congress to pass any any civil rights legislation. and and so the thing you could do was issue executive.

so he issued two executive orders. one to integrate the armed services of the united states. a major a major thing. and the second to to protect federal employees from discriminate nation in the workplace. now the south the south knew that unlike roosevelt i truman really meant it. and so they 12 southern states abandoned the democratic party formed the states rights party or the dixiecrats and truman and his campaign advisers knew that they were going to lose a lot of votes. and so their strategy was to to

actually mobilize the black vote. obviously you can't do it the south but throughout the throughout the rest of the country there. and so three. three major african-american advocates, activists stepped forward to work on this. and were largely ignored by truman biographers and and the first two were jim james us saying stack saying stack, the top publisher of the chicago defender. and the second was william dawson, a in actual u.s. from chicago, the chicago defender, a black newspaper. and the two of them formed the citizens committee. the citizens to reelect truman. it was going to be focused on black america. and then dawson recruited the

third activist and was a woman named anna regiment, who was at howard university and he got her to head up the beat to be the executive director of the committee to reelect him. and she she moved into new york to new york, where the headquarters was. and her job was to run that and also to focus on donors and to battleground states, illinois and, ohio, and actually, meanwhile, stack and dawson on their own dime, they were touring the united states, including the south, trying to raise money, raising money for the campaign and appointing 80 vice chairs of the of the committee reelect throughout america. these would be well known

african-american and or black citizens throughout the various regions were, blacks were living. and so and then a couple of other person should mention there was a woman india edwards. she was in charge of the women's division of the democratic national committee. of course, she was in charge of mobilizing women. vote for truman, but she, on a woman named winnie tipton spragg, who was a columnist and, a writer for the chicago defender newspaper, and she was brought into the the committee. and she was a she was a india edwards's deputy. and her job was to mobilize the black vote. and very important people that largely have been ignored. india. edwards was