![[Abridged] Presidential Histories - 33.A) The Truman Committee: An interview with Steve Drummond](https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/episode_images/6525cc0e1e417ed39f762f8124d08715bf80d60045828e7dbdde538ee5b7f9b9.avif)
33.A) The Truman Committee: An interview with Steve Drummond
[Abridged] Presidential Histories
07/17/23
•48m
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"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.
Previous Episode
33.) Harry S Truman 1945-1953
July 5, 2023
•56m
"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
Next Episode
33.B) Truman and the Bomb, an interview with D.M. Giangreco
July 24, 2023
•53m
"16 hours ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima ... It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East" - President Harry S. Truman, Aug. 6, 1945, in his announcement of the first atomic attack in world history
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When Harry S. Truman unexpectedly became president on April 12, 1945, the United States was still in the midst of World War II - but there were plans to hasten its resolution. Secret plans. Atomic plans. In the following four months, the first atomic bombs would be tested in New Mexico and then dropped on the Empire of Japan. Historian D.M. Giangreco, author of the new book Truman and the Bomb: The Untold Story, discusses what Senator Truman knew about the bomb and when he knew it, the casualty forecasts that Truman weighed in his decision to drop the bomb, and whether dropping the bomb ended World War II.
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“The full impact of the war comes more to me, I think, in some respects than it does to anyone in this country. The daily casualty lists are mine. They arrive in a constant stream, a swelling stream, and I can’t get away from them.” - Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, June, 1945
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