3%, 5% of the graduates in this country that can be part of the leadership change for the future of the nation. >> each of you will have an opportunity to say hello to pete and david at the book signing now. on behalfand i am happy to intre

david el 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 johnson 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 of competition at the ftc, role practiced law as a partner in the steptoe and johnson llp and founded lex mundi pro-bono foundation, a public interest organization that continues to provide pro bono legal services to social enterprise nerves around the world. he lives in washington dc and he is here to present for us today. will you welcome mr. role. thank you. great to be here. this is, i think this is the third time that i've been so i'm great. i always love to just walk

around this place. it's so it's so inspiring. so so 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 that he would not survive a fourth term, but he he ran and won anyway. and harry truman knew that physically roosevelt had gone to pieces. he said so to a friend, and 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. and so, all in all, this meant that roosevelt's death was was expected. it was expected. and so on. the late afternoon of april 12th, 1945, i'm. 1945, when truman accepted a phone call and 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. and why did he put those 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 had not in miserable health selected truman to be his running mate at the democratic national convention in july of 1944. and there in, as you'll see in my book, there lies a tangled tale of chaos and duplicity, intentionally orchestrated by fdr. he had already he had already promised. two individuals who didn't know this between himself. 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 were jimmy burr. jimmy byrnes. thank you. i said, jimmy ross. jimmy byrnes i have a scholar here in the audience. jimmy byrnes probably the most qualified, and he was sometimes called the assistant president. but then fdr reneged, changed his mind, gave in to the he gave in to the choice of the big city, democratic bosses. and so from his train, from roosevelt 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 after the close of that democratic convention and in 1944, a hot, humid day in august, 1944, fdr invited the presidential or is 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 south lawn under a tree planted by old andy jackson. he loved jack's. and there's a famous photograph that shows roosevelt and truman sitting at this round table under the jackson tree and

they'd taken off their coats because of the heat. so they roosevelt was was wearing a white starched shirt with monogram and a slim bow tie, black or dark blue and a bloodstone ring on his left, pinkie, i researched that 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, tie. he looked he he looked vital. you know, he he was he looked younger than his 60 years. and was casting a warm smile across the table at anna

roosevelt bottega, who was roosevelt's eldest eldest offspring. so. the when when went truman. well let me just said that they their parents let me let me get to their appearances for a minute. their appearances were very different just in the description i just gave you. but it was more than appearances. they were different in 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 missouri dirt farmer saw combat at big time in world war one as an artillery officer decorated roosevelt wheelchair or wheelchair borne due to polio for the rest of his life. he enlarged heart high pressure. truman the essence of good health oozed vitality. oozed vitality. roosevelt. known for his heavily forested, amassed thoughts and his feelings. but he was a he was a visionary. truman deliberative.

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

truman, truman, direct, authentic, sincere when truman when truman was sworn in as president. 7:09 p.m. on april 12, 1945. he was totally unprepared just, just think what 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 vice president, he made no. effort to educate himself.

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

thoughts to truman truman. so in the time i have today, i can't possibly cover the whole story of the ascent power. but let me concentrate on three themes, three things that run through my book. and the first is roosevelt's 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 hope i have time to get to that. truman ah, yet roosevelt and the bomb. let's talk about that. and roosevelt shadow and the bomb. shortly after germany surrendered, truman formed what he called was an interim

committee interim, 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 recommendations on the sharing and control atomic energy and whether to use the bomb over japan on june one, 1945, that interim committee report or was delivered to the recommendations and, the set. the basic recommendation was that to save american lives, the united states needed to deploy and detonate an atomic bomb over japan to forces surrender and. it needed to be targeted at a 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. this point about the control and sharing of atomic energy nor was any discussion of the moral 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 and 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. and truman, truman regarded this as roosevelt's legacy, in my view, an unspoken bequest to his successor. so general leslie groves, the head of the manhattan project, used to say that if if you could call it a decision, if truman, if you could call truman having made a decision, it was a decision to not intervene. it was a decision essentially to not upset existing plans. yeah. now, truman truman was the only one who could have said no to the use of atomic bomb and make it stick. but. but.

and he was criticized, obviously, for 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 was right. and. 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 is was worth a couple of japanese cities cities. roosevelt's shadow, roosevelt shadow and macarthur macarthur. and anticipating the the

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

and so so that that's he did 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 macarthur to the occupation. in the pacific in far east is due to roosevelt. harry truman, saving democracy

in early 1947, early 1947, truman faced a situation similar to what biden is dealing with in ukraine. only for truman it was greece and turkey and soviet inspired communists were threatening. threatening greece with taking over their government against the will of the wishes and the will of their people. and the kremlin was pressuring turkey to amend the treaty governing the turkish straits. and undersecretary of dean acheson and persuaded truman that if greece and turkey should give in to the demands of the soviets, this would endanger security and itself and.

what what acheson was. we are the only nation we are the only nation who have have the 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 17. and 1975, 79, 70, what is it, 1947, 1947, 1947, before a joint session of congress, truman delivered probably the most consequential speech his presidency after. i explained the how to give the get the relief to greece and turkey. he held forth with with what is called the truman doctrine and

and the truman doctrine. basically, he tied american national security to providing assistance to free wherever they were, democracies who are being threatened by autocratic regimes and let me see if i can get the exact words he used. he in his speech, i believe that it must be the policy of the united states to support not free peoples who are resisting subjugation by autocratic regimes and ideologies. that was the truman doctrine and it was radical change in foreign policy. and for the next several decades, actually, even until today, the the principles undergirding the truman doctrine are guided united states non foreign policy for better or for

worse. and sometimes for a worse. his speech mobilized the west, mobilized the west to confront and contain the soviet and spawned the marshall plan natal and the berlin airlift. truman, truman and democracy, civil rights truman and civil rights. oh, truman grew in a racist missouri. i have to say that a former slave state back and forth. he has his two sets of grandparents enslaved africans americans. his mother refused to sleep in the 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 a man named walter white, the head of the acp at the time, suggested to truman, that he needed to 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 of 1947, early june in 1947, on the steps of the lincoln memorial with the howard

university choir singing above him held forth to a crowd of 10,000 acp supporters in their 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 say all americans, i mean all americans. and then he went on to pledge his support for civil rights, beginning with right to a free trial. right to be free to free racial discrimination. and then focused on four or five areas that where 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 would lead the way. so, of course, this was just the beginning, very beginning of his crusade for, civil rights in 19. it was in 19 the next year, 48. 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 only thing he could do was issue executive orders. so he issued two executive orders. one to integrate the armed services of the united, a major a major thing. and the second to to protect federal employees from discrimination in the workplace. now, the south, the south knew that unlike roosevelt, i think truman really meant it, that. and so they 12 southern states a band and the democratic party formed the states rights party or the dixie crats and and truman and his campaign advisers knew that they were going to lose a lot of votes.

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

black america and dawson recruited the third activist and a woman named anna hedman, who was at howard university and. he got her to head up the bit to be the executive director of the committee to reelect. and she she moved into new york to new york, where the headquarters was. and her job was to run that committee and also to focus on donors and to battleground illinois and ohio and actually, meanwhile, stack and dawson on their own dime 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 to reelect throughout america.

these would be well known african-american or black citizens. throughout the various regions were, blacks were living. and so and then a couple of other person i 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 of mobilizing women to vote for truman. but she brought on a woman named vinny's tipton spragg, who was a columnist and a writer for the chicago defender newspaper. and she was brought into the the committee and and she was a she was a india edwards's deputy. and her job was to mobilize the black women's vote. very important people that largely have been ignored india.

edwards was white the rest of them were were black. so i just point this out because they're fairly unknown characters in in the in the elect in the election and the annals of truman's so let me let me get to resilience i can maybe i'll get to it so i'm a michigan so i think that of michigan. okay so but i think truman was as tough as a michigan wolverine. so when he he he did a a preliminary swing and a prelim

and a swing in may of 1948, across the country to kind of hone his truman on the the hannaford then magellan in may of 1948 he organized a train trip across america to the west coast back to hone his campaign skills. he did the fixes the way he spoke and developed a develop a voice that would attract. when the real when the real campaign came up in in the so this was early may yeah and it was a it was sort of a break you know they they're trying to just, you know, figure out how to how to, how to handle him.

it. but when when the ferdinand magellan got to los angeles and truman confronted by jimmy roosevelt, now we're talking about jimmy roosevelt and see the cards were stacked against truman at this point. and i'll tell you why jimmy roosevelt comes into the picture. yeah he at the time a southern revolt and he had the far left of the democratic party was against. the there was a third party candidacy by wallace and there was a stop a dump they it a dump truman movement orchestrated by roosevelt sons. so when the the yeah so with when the trend train reached los angeles jimmy he lived out there

he came in to truman's hotel suite. jimmy roosevelt was an alpha male, 60 for big shoulders. he tried to intimidate truman. there was a secret service man in the room who testified this. truman stuck his finger in roosevelt's chest and said, you said your father asked me to take this job and i'm i'm doing it. he would roll over in his grave if you knew what you were doing to me. and then he just said, that will be all you know. good day. good day. marched him to the door. so. all right, the the the famous whistle stop campaign began on september 17th, 1948, on the ferdinand magellan, again across

the midwest to the far west california, and back and about the middle of october. but and we're talking about his resilience here about the middle of october, bess and harry invited india. edwards, who was on the train to join to join them breakfast. and harry 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 only. and two of them are sitting here and, one of them and one of them is not my wife, which is true she didn't think he could win. and but truman knew. so india edwards got off at every whistle stop and went into the crowd, talked to people, got

a sense of what they were thinking as so so she was all in one of the very, very few people was all in at that time. so you know that, that campaign fall of 1948 was a rip roaring, rollicking roadshow. and the yeah, it the crowds the crowds were surprisingly massive. and they were growing growing as they proceeded across the country. and and i have to say this, but. like trump, truman was a showman. he outrageous undocumented claims he he he just made as he got going that people from the crowd would shout out and they love to egg him on.

give them hell, harry and and he really get he and so he attacked the the the the he called them the wall republicans who were the gluttons of privilege. he continually the do nothing 80th congress was dominated by the republicans. he said he told lies he told lies. the evils of the gop. no question about. and one of the reporters wrote that he got away with murder. but that was truman that he had his voice at that point it was close to, you know. well, it me not so when they were approaching the end of the that the whistle stop campaign as they began to approach it

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 win and and in fact probably almost everyone on the train made mainly the reporters. they they believe the pundits and the polls which predicted that truman didn't have a chance of winning in the final days. and so there was a you know, that was the kind of mood at near the end. now, the last major speech he gave was in harlem, october. ninth. it was the place was packed mostly by blacks. and it it was the only speech that he gave on civil rights throughout the entire campaign. and he sensed, as he as he

advanced to the podium that there was an ominous that he couldn't figure out. and he realized they were praying. yeah, it it it chokes me up at the time because you know, what he said was one of the things he said during his speech was that that he pledged his commission on civil the recommendations of his commission on 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 a.m., you know, dusk after the day after the election, truman was in a hotel west of independence alone. he was wakened by secret service

agent. i think his name was jim raleigh. and he told him this is a 5 a.m. or so of the day after the election. told truman that illinois had delivered its 28 electoral votes to truman. and truman on his glasses and and gotten rose out of bed, said, we've got to be boys. let's let's harness the horses. we have four years of trouble ahead of us. 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 mcgrath, the head of the republican national committee, was there, former

senator and had just gotten a memo from a guy named phillip nash, a young staffer who was monitoring the black vote, and howard mcgrath told truman that he believed it was his opinion that. the reason they won that election at last moment, surprising everyone, it was probably the most surprising election, presidential history and i include you know, trump in that i think more surprising then and then trump's victory in 2016. he believed that the blacks him took were the reason why they won. of course, there are probably several reasons, but that was his opinion. so in conclusion, yeah, this 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 if

in the history of our presidential politics, the republic. thank you very much. any questions here? come to me. come on up to the mike. we got an academic here. well, of a michigan alum. oh. and retired from the university, pittsburgh. but i have a question. it has to do with the soviet union not deciding to invade japan to the last minute. and had they done the soviet union not deciding to war against japan to the last possible, had they done it earlier, would that have not necessitated the dropping of the bomb if they had been able to be persuaded to go earlier against japan? well, you know, what they did is they went to manchuria. i'm not sure. i don't think that even wanted

to invade the tokyo plane where it would be a mass mass slaughter because every single japanese, every single japanese citizen would be involved in that. so i would say. i don't think that's a reason. and it's a what if you know, it's a what if, right. i think that had to drop the bomb no matter what, you know, hirohito stalling they could not you know, they dropped the bomb in hiroshima and they waited and they waited and waited. and all they got was critic crickets. so i just think they had to do it. okay. thank you. this is just a footnote. putting together a couple of things you said about walter white, the executive secretary of the icp, whom nobody knows anything about anymore. a great story, a great, great american.

i read his autobiography not too long ago, and he said he attended the democratic convention in 1944 and he said that when the time came to ballot, vice president, the delegates, all knew how sick fdr was and they knew without question that they were choosing the next president of the united states. i know. and is really stayed with me. yeah, that's 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 passed and it was in new york city. he passed his white to to upper upper new york society. but he was the head of this this committee. and he was a legendary character. yeah. yes. hi. well, 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 up to pay up to chapter 11. in your book and i have enjoyed every page of it but i do have a question for you. is it a quibble no? it's not a quibble. it's a it's an open question. back when eddie jacobson visited the visited truman two times. and in in your book, you mention that margaret truman pooh poohed 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. but i wanted to get your opinion on. why? margaret truman would have pooh poohed the idea of eddie. it's a mystery. i mean, i really. because it's no question that he was a good friend you know, i

have that photograph off and you see the photograph in there in their later years. you know, he let them in the white house, you know, saturday morning. so and you know eddie was was instrumental in helping truman reach his decision to recognize israel by getting high and weitzman in there twice into into truman's white house so i just don't understand i saw that i thought i just have to mention it. i know bess did not want a -- in her house. now, whether margaret, i never. but i never heard that about margaret. but i know for a fact that she did not. and she did not. she was anti-semitic, okay? and you've mentioned the meeting with walter white and then talked about truman's back round

in terms of civil rights. and then he made this dramatic change. is there other other other significant things that you collaborated with this background that made that happen? yes, it it slowly evolved. it began with a speech when truman was second term as senator at sedalia, missouri. it's 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 it was you know, it was it was nuanced it wasn't very strong, but it called the brotherhood of man. but that was the beginning of his his education, his evolvement of of civil rights. so were a lot of steps that came before the the lincoln memorial speech. but you know, most people don't know about that. lincoln memorial speech, but that was that was just amazing to have happened back then as

early as then. and so, you know, a lot of people say, well might have been politics that drove his and it was partly politics obviously but but he he meant it he meant it and he actually when he sat down after he gave that speech, he whispered to walter white, i mean, every word i said. in the effort to climb out roosevelt's shadow, how many people did truman place in the cabinets say over the four months of before the end of the war, before the end of the year, or, say, on the anniversary. in 46? it took him a long to replace the new deal or the new deal cabinet that he inherited did actually it was harry hopkins who said, you've got to get your own people in here. and even, you know, harry happy's was a new dealer for, you know, but he just said, you know you can't and maybe harry

hopkins in thanks so much some of the people in the cabinet but he said get get rid of these people and so but it took him a long time. and, you know, wallace was the last to go he had to fire wallace. and, you know, but gradually him go and i can't tell you. it went into 1946. i that and i can't remember last when wallace actually got fired but it might yeah. oh when fall of 1465 or 46. yeah. that's what it was the centcom and ruth ickes went out at the same. yeah, yeah, yeah. so it's a little over a years. yeah. it took him a while, it didn't he gradually the first person he i think he did get rid of was frances perkins. and he actually said, i don't want a woman in my cabinet. he didn't say that to her. yeah, he did. he did. i'm sorry. and on that note, we are going

to wrap up this session. thank you very, david.