![[Abridged] Presidential Histories - 33.) Harry S Truman 1945-1953](https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/episode_images/6525cc0e1e417ed39f762f8124d08715bf80d60045828e7dbdde538ee5b7f9b9.avif)
33.) Harry S Truman 1945-1953
[Abridged] Presidential Histories
07/05/23
•56m
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"I don't know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me what happened yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me." - Harry S. Truman, April 13, 1945, the day after Franklin Roosevelt died and Truman was sworn in as president.
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Harry S. Truman was a political late bloomer, first elected to the senate at age 50, and becoming vice president against his own wishes at age 60. That second role lasted just 82 days before president Franklin Roosevelt died and Truman inherited the final months of a world war, and the opening years of a cold war. Follow along as Truman, an uneducated farmer, World War I veteran, and failed businessman, rises to the presidency and grapples with the atomic bomb, global communist aggression, and a rogue general eager to start World War III.
Bibliography
1. Truman – David McCullough
2. FDR – Jean Edward Smith
3. Eisenhower in War and Peace – Jean Edward Smith
Previous Episode
"You are the only man whom in all my life I have met who has repeatedly and in every way done for me what I could not do for myself and nobody else would do." - New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt to Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, 1900
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Theodore Roosevelt didn't reach the top of American politics without a little help from his friends, and no friend was more important than Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, a titan in his own right. Laurence Jurdem, author of The Rough Rider and the Professor (publication date: July 4, 2023), discusses how Roosevelt and Lodge propelled each other to the heights of American politics, and the battles they waged together and against each other once they got there.
Next Episode
33.A) The Truman Committee: An interview with Steve Drummond
July 17, 2023
•48m
"When people create delays for profit, when they sell poor products for defense use, when they cheat on price and quality, they aren't any different from a draft dodger and the public at large feels just the same way about it." - Senator Harry S. Truman, March 31, 1941
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As American war industry roared to life in 1941, Senator Harry S. Truman began receiving letters from concerned constituents. Money was being wasted. Badly. And all over the place. Truman jumped in his car and travelled thousands of miles to investigate first-hand, then formed the senate investigatory committee that would bear his name - The Truman Committee. NPR executive producer Steve Drummond, author of The Watchdog: How the Truman Committee Battled Corruption and Helped Win World War Two, discusses the origin and impact of the Truman Committee, and some of the truly crazy schemes of corruption it unearthed for the American people.
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