The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World

The Accidental President focuses on the first few months of Truman’s time in office, culminating in the decision to drop the atomic bomb over Japan in August 1945. Truman would remain in office until 1953, and in that time he oversaw a major transformation of American politics in the realm of national security. The United States had typically demobilized in the aftermath of previous wars, confident that its vast distance from other great powers obviated the need for a permanent military establishment. The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 shattered that illusion, and when the end of World War II left the Soviet Union in control of half of Europe, the US made the unprecedented decision to maintain forces in Europe as a deterrent against any attempts by the Red Army to move further westward. In the ensuing years, the government instituted a number of institutional changes, particularly with the National Security Act of 1947. This piece of legislation changed the Department of War into the Department of Defense, the latter term implying a more permanent task of protecting the country even when there is not a war taking place. This act also instituted the National Security Council, a group of civilian and military advisers reporting directly to the president. The council would be led by a National Security Advisor (NSA), an office that did not require congressional approval and thus would be handpicked by the president and placed in the White House, whereas the secretaries of state and defense would have to be based at their own institutions. The NSA also led to the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), turning the wartime Organization of Strategic Services into the first permanent intelligence-gathering organization in American history. It also established the United States Air Force as an independent branch of the armed forces, as it had been subordinate to the army. This new branch was considered particularly important given the development of nuclear weapons, as a B-29 Superfortress had dropped the bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and bombers would be the sole delivery mechanism for atomic bombs until the late 1950s.

In addition to institutional changes, the Truman administration also undertook major steps in its foreign relations. In 1947, as Greece and Turkey were each battling communist insurgencies, the so-called “Truman doctrine” announced support for democratic movements against “totalitarian regimes” (pointedly avoiding the words “communist” or “Soviet” but clearly directed against them). As tensions with the Soviet Union became still more severe, the United States and its Western allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), wherein each member pledged to defend the others in the case of attack (here also the Soviet Union was not specifically mentioned, but was clearly the threat envisioned). All of these institutions would be directed principally toward fighting what became known as the Cold War, the decades-long security competition with the Soviet Union, but they would remain in place after the Cold War came to an end in 1989. Truman’s presidency would therefore become one of the most consequential in history, with reverberations that continue well into the present day.