that is a testament to parents who have been ahead of the curve and willing to do something for their kids. it is encouraging there are brick-and-mortar and online options to the point we can get to a critical mass pumping out 6% of graduates in this country to be part of a leadership change for the future. host: each of you will have an opportunity to say hi 2-8 and david at the book signing. -- hi to pete and david at the book signing. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2025] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> democracy. it is not just an idea, it is a process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few guarding its basic prince bulls. it is where debates unfold, decisions are made in the nation's course is charted. democracy in real-time. this is your government at work.

this is a cease and, giving you -- c-span giving you your democracy unfiltered. >> you are watching book tv with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. book tv, television for serious readers. >> i'm happy to introduce david l. roll, the author of "george marshall" and "ascent to power," how truman emerged from roosevelt's shadow. a biography of harry truman defense secretary. after serving as assistant director to the bureau of competition at the ftc, he practiced law as a partner and founded a pro bono foundation, a public interest organization

that continues to provide pro bono legal services to social entrepreneurs around the world. he lives in washington, d.c. and is here to present for us today. will you welcome mr. roll. [applause] david: thank you. great to be here. i think this is the third time i have been here. i always love to walk around this place. so inspiring. historians have said and say that harry truman was an accidental president. i made that mistake. but roosevelt's death was no accident. it was expected. it was expected. his own doctors told him he

would not survive a fourth term, but he ran and won anyway. harry truman knew that physically roosevelt had gone to pieces. he said so to a friend. it was an open secret in washington that fdr could die at any time. truman used to 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 house. so all in all, this meant roosevelt's death was expected. it was expected. so, on the late afternoon of april 12, 1945, when truman

accepted a phone call, was told to get to the white house immediately, he knew his ascent to power was anything but accidental. when he set down the phone and talked to the people in the room at the time, his words were, jesus christ and general jackson . why did he put those together? i'm not sure. he knew the president passed away. of course there never would have been an ascent to power for truman if fdr had not, in miserable health, selected truman to be his running mate at the democratic national convention in july of 1944.

therein, as you'll see in my book, lies a tangled tale of chaos and duplicity intentionally orchestrated by fdr. he had already promised two individuals -- they did not know this between themselves -- two individuals for the vice presidency. left-leaning henry wallace, the current vice president, and jimmy roosevelt, probably the most qualified -- jimmy burns, thank you. i have a scholar here in the audience. jimmy burns, probably the most qualified. he was sometimes called the assistant president. then fdr reneged, changed his mind, gave into the choice of

the big city democratic bosses. from roosevelt's train 2000 miles west in san diego on the opening day of the convention, roosevelt chose truman. truman had told everyone including his wife, which is important, that he would never accept, but he did. so a few weeks after the close of that democratic convention in 1944, a hot, humid day in august 1944, fdr invited the nominee, harry truman, to a lunch and photo op at the white house. truman wrote about it to his wife and said, we dined in the

backyard of the white house, the south lawn, under a tree planted planted by old andy jackson. he loved jackson. there is a famous photograph that shows roosevelt and truman sitting at this round under the jackson tree. they had taken off their coats because of the heat. roosevelt was wearing a white starched shirt with a monogram, a slim bowtie lack or dark lou, and a bloodstone ring on his left pinky -- dark blue, and a bloodstone ring on his left pinky. he got that from his father. his eyes were black.

when you saw his photograph, black circles under his eyes. to his right set truman. striped shirt, wide tie. he looked vital. he looked younger than his 60 years. he was casting a warm smile across the table at anna roosevelt boddiger, roosevelt's eldest offspring. when truman -- let me just say their appearances -- let me get to their appearances for a minute. their appearances were very

different just in the description i gave you, but it was more than appearances, they were different in a multitude of ways. fdr, from the harvard white shoe law job, assistant secretary of the navy in world war i. truman could not afford college. could not afford college. 10 years as a missouri dirt farmer. saw combat big time in world war i as an artillery officer, decorated. roosevelt, wheelchair born due to polio, for the rest of his life. an enlarged heart, high blood pressure.

truman, the essence of good health, used by -- oozed vitality. roosevelt, known for his heavily forested interior, amassed his thoughts and feelings, but he was a visionary. truman, deliberative. he was a linear thinker, said what he thought. truman loved playing poker with his pals, bourbon, non-smoker. roosevelt, mixed martinis for the children's hour at the end of each day when he was in the white house, chain smoker. he loved juicy gossip with his daughter, anna, who i think extended his life by a year by

getting him into a cardiologist. anna used to say of her father that it was cold -- this is what she said of her father, cold, cunning, calculating, shrewd. truman, direct, authentic, sincere. when truman was sworn in as president 7:09 p.m. on april 12, 1945. he was totally, utterly unprepared. just think what he faced at that moment. a global war, for one. increasingly hostile soviet union. europe in ruins.

the onset of the atomic age. and the organization of the u.n., for starters. he knew nothing about foreign policy. during his 82 days as vice president, he made no effort to educate himself. roosevelt did advise him of the existence of the bomb at that luncheon in august of 1944. no details, nothing of foreign policy, but truman already knew because he was the head of a committee commissioned to investigate the defense industry. his investigators knew about it. did not ever say anything about it.

he was definitely unprepared. if roosevelt before his death had a plan for deploying the atomic bomb, or if he had a vision for the postwar world, he revealed none of those thoughts to truman. in the time i have today i cannot possibly cover the whole story of the ascent to power, but let me concentrate on three themes that run through my book. the first is roosevelt's shadow, how it influenced truman's presidency. the second, truman's focus on democracy, freedom, and civil rights. thirdly, truman's resilience.

i hope i have time to get to that. truman -- roosevelt and the bomb, let's talk about that and roosevelt's shadow and the bomb. shortly after germany surrendered, truman formed what he called an interim committee consisting of henry stimson the secretary of war as chairman and seven civilians. the mandate of the interim committee was to provide recommendations on the sharing and control of atomic energy and whether to use the bomb over japan. on june 1, 1945, that interim committee report was delivered to truman, the recommendations.

the basic recommendation was, to save american lives, the u.s. needed to deploy and detonate atomic bomb over japan to force its surrender. it needed to be targeted at a japanese war plant 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 and sharing of atomic energy. nor was there any discussion of the moral legitimacy of detonating the atomic bomb. truman never wavered. this was the moment in my view

when the decision to use the atomic bomb was made. it had been assumed by all of roosevelt's advisors on his national security team that roosevelt if he lived would deploy the bomb and it was assumed by those who directed the manhattan project that roosevelt would use the bomb. truman regarded this as roosevelt's legacy, and unspoken bequest to his predecessor -- successor. general leslie groves, the head of the manhattan project, used to say that, if you could call truman having made a decision, it was a decision to not

intervene, a decision to not upset existing plans. truman was the only one who could have said no to the use of any atomic bomb and make it stick. he was criticized, obviously, for not saying no. criticized back then, criticized today, criticized probably forever. his rationale, it had to be done to force japanese to surrender. i think he was right. he used to say, truman used to say this about the bomb, he said, a quarter of a million of

the flower of young american manhood was worth a couple of japanese cities. roosevelt's shadow and macarthur. anticipating the surrender 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 in the pacific. why macarthur? roosevelt's shadow. the year before, 1944, roosevelt

was in the hawaiian islands and he elevated douglas macarthur over admirable -- admiral nimmons is the only, main strategist in the pacific. truman as a rookie president was not about to challenge roosevelt's political and military judgment. so that is why he stuck with macarthur and made him the supreme commander. harold, close to roosevelt and truman, a new dealer, in both roosevelt and truman's cabinet, he said that truman had no other

choice and publicly said the blame for appointing macarthur to the occupation in the pacific and far east is due to roosevelt. harry truman saving democracy. in early 1947, truman faced a situation similar to what biden is dealing with ukraine only for truman it was greece and turkey. soviet-inspired communists were threatening brace -- greece with taking over its government against the wishes and the will of its people and the kremlin was pressuring turkey to amend

the treaty governing the turkish straits. under secretary dean atchison, persuaded truman that if greece and turkey should give in to the demands of the soviets, this would endanger national security. and democracy itself. so what atchison said is, we are the only nation who have the funds and resources to break up the soviet play. two months later, i think it might have been march 17, 1947.

before a joint session of congress truman delivered probably the most consequential speech of his presidency. after he explained how to get relief to greece and turkey, he held forth with what is called the truman doctrine. the truman doctrine, basically he tied american national security to providing assistance to free peoples wherever they were, democracies being threatened by autocratic regimes. let me see if i can get the exact words he used. he said in his speech, i believe that it must be policy of the united states to support free peoples who are resisting subjugation by autocratic

regimes and ideologies. that was the truman doctrine and it was a radical change in foreign policy. for the next several decades, even until today, the principles undergirding the truman doctrine guided the u.s. non-partisan foreign policy for better or for worse. sometimes for worse. his speech mobilized the west to confront and contain the soviet union. and its bond marshall plan, nato and the berlin airlift. truman and democracy. truman and civil writes. -- rights. truman grew up in racist missouri, i have to say that, a

former slave state. his two sets of grandparents enslaved african americans. his mother refused to sleep in the lincoln bedroom when she visited her son at the white house. there is a story behind that. truman use the n-word liberally throughout his life, deep into his and -- his retirement years. but his views did evolve mid 1947. in early spring that year a man named walter white, the head of the naacp at the time, suggested to truman that he needed to give

a major, and at the time was right, for him to give a major speech on civil rights. a month or two later, early january 1947, on the steps of the lincoln memorial, with the howard university choir singing above him, held forth to a crowd of 10,000 naacp supporters and friends. he began by saying, it is my deep conviction that the nation has reached a turning point in its efforts to guarantee freedom and equality for all americans. when i say all

then he went on to pledge his support for civil rights. beginning with the right to a free trial, right to be free from racial discrimination. and then he focused on four or five areas where they needed to have some civil rights legislation. voting. education. housing. medical care. and equality of opportunity for jobs. and then his last pledge was perhaps most important, he said that he pledged that the federal government would lead the way. so, of course this was just the beginning, very begin pg of his -- beginning of his crusade for civil rights.

in 1948, the next year, was a presidential election year, truman was running. and roosevelt or truman could not convince the 08th congress to -- 80th congress to pass any civil rights legislation. and so the only thing he could do was issue executive orders 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 protect federal employees from discrimination in the workplace. now, the south, the south knew that unlike roosevelt, i think trumans are meant it -- truman really meant it.

and -- so they, 12 southern states abandoned the democratic party. formed the states' rights party or the dixiecrats. troup understand and -- truman and his campaign advisors knew they were going to lose a lot of votes. and so their strategy was to actually mobilize the black vote. obviously can't do it in the south, but throughout the rest of the country. and so three major african-american advocates, activists stepped forward to work on this. and they were largely ignored by truman biking to are a ferres -- boyingraphers -- biographers.

one was the publisher of the chicago defender. and the second was william dawsen, -- dawson, an actual u.s. congressman from chicago. the chicago defender was a black newspaper. the two of them formed the citizens committee, the citizens committee to re-elect truman. and was going to be focused on black america. and then dawson recruited the third activist, a woman named anna hedgeman, who was at howard uniform. and he got her to head up the -- to be the executive director of the committee to re-elect. and she moved into new york where the headquarters was. and her job was to run that committee and also to focus on donors and two battleground states. illinois and ohio.

and actually meanwhile, 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 committee to re-elect. throughout america these would be well known african-american or black citizens throughout the various regions where blacks were living. so -- and then a couple of other persons i should mention. there was a woman named 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 to vote for truman. but she brought on a woman named

venice tiptonsprags who was a columnist and writer for the chicago defender, the newspaper. and she was brought in to the committee. and she was india edwards' deputy. and her job was to mobilize the black women's vote. important pt largely have been very important people that have largely been ignored. india edwards was white. the rest of them were black. so i just point this out because they're fairly unknown characters in the election and the analls of truman's presidency. so let me get to resilience. if i can. maybe i'll get to it. so i'm a michigan guy. i think that michigan -- ok.

so i think truman was as tough as a michigan wolverine. [laughter] so when he -- he did a preliminary swing. a preliminary swing in may of 1948 across the country. to kind of hone his -- truman -- in may of 1948 he organized a train trip across america and to the west coast and back to hone his campaign skills. he needed to fix his -- the way he spoke and develop a voice that would attract when the real

campaign came up in the fall. so this was early may. and it was sort of a -- they were trying to just, you know, figure out how to handle him. but when the ferdinand ma gelon got to los angeles, truman was confronted by jimmy roosevelt. now we're talking about jimmy roosevelt. the cards were stacked against truman at this point. and i'll tell you why jimmy roosevelt comes into the picture. he faced at the time a southern revolt. he had the far left of the democratic party was against him. there was a third party

candidacy by walas and -- wallace and there was a dump, they called it a dump truman movement orchestrated by roosevelt's sons. so when the train reached los angeles, he lived out there, he came into truman's hotel suite. jimmy roosevelt was an alpha male, 6'4", big shoulders, he tried to intimidate truman. there was a secret serviceman in the room who testified to this. truman stuck his finger in roosevelt's chest and said, he said, your father asked me to take this job and i'm doing it. he would roll over in his grave if he knew what you were doing to me. and then he just said, that will

be all. [laughter] good day. good day. and marched him to the door. so. all right. the famous whistle stop campaign began on september 17, 1948. on the ferdinand magelun, again, across the midwest to the far west, california and back. in middle october, bes andujary invited -- bess andujary invited -- and harry invited india edwards who was on the train to join them for breakfast. and harry said during that conversation to india, he said, india, you know, there are only two people who believe i can win this election.

and two of them are sitting here. [laughter] and one of them is not my wife. which is true. she didn't think he could win. but truman knew, india edwards got off at every whistle stop and went into the crowd, talked to the people. and got a sense of what they were thinking. so she was all in. one of the very, very few people who was all in at that time. so that campaign following was a rip-rocking, rollicking road show. and the crowds, the crowds were surprising limassive and they were growing. growing as they proceeded across the country.

i have to say this but like trump, truman was a showman. he made outrageous, undocumented claims. he just made -- as he got going, people from the crowd would shout out and they loved to egg him on, give him hell, harry. and he really -- and so he attacked the -- he called them the wall street republicans who were the gluttons of privilege. he continually attacked the do-nothing 80th congress who was dominated by the republicans. he told lies. he told lies. about the evils of the g.o.p. no question about it. and one of the reporters wrote that he got away with murder.

but that was truman. he had his voice at that point. it was close to -- it reminded me. so when they were approaching the end of the whistle top campaign, everyone except truman was exhausted. clark clifford, one of his major aides, couldn't wait to get off that train. i'm not sure he believed truman would win. and in fact probably almost everyone on the train, mainly the reporters, they believed the pundits and the polls which predicted that truman didn't have a chance of winning in the final days. and so that was the kind of mood near the end. now, the last major speech he

gave was at harlem, october 29. the place was packed. mostly blacks. and it was the only speech he gave on civil rights throughout the entire campaign. and he sensed as he advanced to the podium that there was an ominous silence. he couldn't figure out. and he realized they were praying. a.i. and it chokes me up at the time. because what he said was, one of the things he said during his speech was that he pledged that his commission on civil -- the recommendations of his commission on civil rights would become a living reality.

not during his presidency but it was the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in my view. so on 5:00 a.m. of dusk, after -- the day after the election, truman was in a hotel west of independence, alone. he was awakened by his secret service agent, i think his name was jim rollie. and he told truman, this is at 5:00 a.m. or so the day after the election. told truman that illinois had delivered its 28 electoral votes to truman. and truman put on his glasses and rose out of bed and said, we got 'em beat, boys. let's harness the horses we. four years of trouble ahead of us -- horses. we have four years of trouble

ahead of us. [laughter] and he did. let's not talk about the second term. so that's what he said. then after christmas he brought -- he took his staff and some of his cronies and friends to key west and howard mcgraph, the head of the republican national committee, was there. former senator. and he had just gotten a memo from a guy, a young staffer, who was monitoring the black vote and howard mcgraph told truman that he believed it was his opinion that the reason they won that election at the last moment, surprising everyone, it was probably the most surprising election in presidential history, and i include, you know, trump in that, i think more surprising than trump's victory in 2016, he believed that the blacks took -- were the

reason why they won. of course there were probably several reasons but that was his opinion. so in conclusion, the story of the death, rebirth and transition, and i take the position that this is the most consequential and productive transition from a dying president in the history of our presidential politics and the republic. thank you very much. [applause] >> any questions? come on up to the mic. david: uh-oh. we got an academic here. [laughter] >> michigan alum. and retired from the university of pitts. but i have a question, it has to do with the soviet union not deciding to invade japan until the last minute. and had they done -- the soviet

union not deciding to declare war against japan until the last possible moment. had they done it earlier, would that have not necessitated the dropping of the bomb? if they had been able to be per persuaded to go earlier against japan? david: well, what they did is they went to manchuria. i don't think even they wanted to invade the tokyo plane where it would be a mass, mass slaughter. because every single japanese citizen would be involved in that. so i would say, i don't think that's a reason. it's a what-if. it's a what-if. questioner: right. david: i think that they had to drop the bomb no matter what. you know, hirohida was stalling. they dropped the bomb on hiroshima and they waited and all they got was crickets.

so -- i just think they had to do it. questioner: ok. questioner: thank you. this is just a foot note. putting together a couple of things you said. about walter white. the executive secretary of the naacp. whom nobody knows anything about anymore. david: a great story. questioner: a great american. i read his auto biography not too long ago. he said he attended the democratic convention in 1944 and he said that when the time came to ballot for vice president, the delegates all knew how sick f.d.r. was and they knew without question that they were choosing the next president of the united states. and that has really stayed with me. david: that's a good point. this walter white guy, he was white actually, but he was black. he was a descendant of slaves. and i think one of the

presidents of the united states sired some of his ancestors. but he actually was white so he -- he was in new york city, he passed as white to upper new york society. but he was the head of this committee. and he was a legendary character. questioner: yes, hi. i grew up in the hudson valley. i'm a member of the truman library institute. i'm a fan of harry truman. and i do -- i upped the chapter -- i'm up to chapter 11 in your book and i've enjoyed every page of it. but i do have a question for you. david: is it a quibble? [laughter] questioner: no, it's not a quibble. it's an open question. back when eddie jacobson visited truman two times and in your book you mentioned that margaret truman poo-pood it and said that

eddie was like hundreds of other people that harry truman knew. however, i don't think harry would have admitted hundreds of other people. but i wanted to see him but i wanted to get your opinion on why margaret truman would have poo-pood the idea of eddie. david: that's a mystery. really. because there's no question that he was a good friend. you know, i have that photograph, you see the photograph in their later years. he let him in the white house saturday mornings and eddie was instrumental in helping truman reach his decision to recognize israel by getting someone in there twice, into truman's white house. so i just don't understand. i saw that and i thought, i just have to mention it. i know that bess did not want a

jew in her house. but i never heard that about margaret. but i know for a fact that she did not -- she was anti-semitic, ok? questioner: you mentioned a meeting with walter white. and then talked about truman's background in terms of civil rights and then he made this dramatic change. is there other significant things that you can elaborate upon in his background that made that happen? david: yes. it slowly evolved. it began with a speech when truman was in his second term as senator in missouri. it was a famous speech he made called the brotherhood of man speech. and it was sort of the first time when he turned the corner on civil rights for african-americans. it was, you know, it was nuanced, it wasn't very strong.

but -- and called the brotherhood of man. but that was the beginning of his education and his einvolvement of civil rights. so there were a lot of steps that came before the lincoln memorial speech. but most people don't know about that lincoln memorial speech. but that was just amazing to have happened back then as early as then. and so, you know, a lot of people say, well, it might have been politics that drove his -- and it was partly politics, obviously. but he meant it. he meant it. and when he sat down after he gave that speech, he whispered to walter white, i mean every word i said. questioner: in the effort to climb out of roosevelt's shadow, how many people did truman replace in the cabinets say over the four months before the end of the war, before the end of

the year or say on the anniversary in 1936? david: it took him a long time to replace the new deal cabinet that he inherited. actually it was harry hopkins who said, you got to get your own people in here. he was a new dealer. he said, get rid of these people. but it took him a long time. and wallace was the last to go. he had to fire wallace. but he gradually let him go and i can't tell you, it went into 1946. i know that. and i can't remember when last, when wallace actually got fired. but it might have -- when? >> fall of 1946. david: fall of 1946? >> a.i.

[indiscernible] it was only a little over a year. david: it took him a while. he gradually, the first person he -- i think he did get rid of was francis perkins. and he actually said, i don't want a won in my cabinet. he didn't say that to her -- a woman in my cabinet. he didn't say that. he didn't say that to her. he did, i'm sorry. >> on that note we're going to wrap up this session. thank you very much, david. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2025] >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america's story and on sundays, book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books d authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more. including mid he