Transcript: Chapter 11

NARRATOR: The day after Franklin Roosevelt died, President Harry Truman met with reporters.

"Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now," he told them. I don't know whether you fellows ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me."

Title Card: Part 2 -- THE MOON, STARS, AND ALL THE PLANETS

On his first full day in office, Truman surprised everyone with his show of energy and confidence.

ALONZO HAMBY: Outwardly, Truman works very hard at looking confident, at seeming to be in charge. Privately, he clearly feels quite insecure about his new role. He lets close friends and confidantes know that this is a terrible challenge he faces.

NARRATOR: "I'm scared," he admitted to his mother and sister. "Maybe it will come out all right."

His first chance to prove that he was up to the job came on April 16 when he addressed a joint session of Congress.

RADIO ANNOUNCER: In just a moment you'll hear the voice of Speaker Rayburn as he introduces President Truman.

NARRATOR: Anxious to reassure Americans -- and himself -- Truman fumbled.

He launched immediately into his speech, and all across the country, Americans listening on the radio heard the Speaker of the House correct him by his first name.

SAM RAYBURN: "Just a moment. Let me present you, will you, Harry?"

"Members of the Congress, I have the great pleasure and the high privilege of presenting to you the president of the United States."

TRUMAN: "In his infinite wisdom, almighty God has seen fit to take from us a great man who loved and was beloved by all humanity. No man could possibly fill the tremendous void left by the passing of that noble soul.

NARRATOR: In spite of his nervous slip, the speech was a resounding success. Americans everywhere warmed to this seemingly simple, straightforward man from Missouri.

His small-town, folksy manner stood in striking contrast to the patrician manners of Franklin Roosevelt, and many Americans found the change refreshing.

"After a diet of caviar," an aide said, "You like to get back to ham and eggs."

ROBERT DONOVAN, Journalist: Harry was a fresh and fast and darting about, and, the contrast sort of hit them. Truman was peppery and he'd walk along the street and the truck driver, I remember on one occasion, said, "Good luck, Harry!"

NARRATOR: The press was soon praising him for his candor and cabinet officials for his hard work. Truman, many Americans, were saying was a man of the people.

ROBERT DONOVAN: The thing I remember most is his hand shake. I never felt such a hand shake. It finally dawned on me, this man had -- was a real dirt farmer. He worked behind a plow for ten years.

ALONZO HAMBY: Truman was the ordinary American democrat, small "D." But did the American people want someone who was simply ordinary to lead them? Did they believe that someone of that type could? This is a problem that Truman would face throughout his presidency.

NARRATOR: When Truman took the oath of office, Americans were fighting the greatest war in history. All at once he was commander-in-chief of 16 million men and a terrifying arsenal of warships, tanks, and planes arrayed against the Japanese in the Pacific and Nazi Germany in Europe.

But what he knew about war came from his experience as a soldier in World War I and from books he had read as a child. Americans everywhere wondered how Harry Truman would end the war -- and at what cost.

During Truman's first days in office, Allied armies were sweeping toward Germany: the Soviet Union closed in from the east, the Americans from the west. But with the Nazi's on the verge of surrender, Truman feared that the Soviets could no longer be trusted.

The war-inspired alliance between Russia and America was beginning to come apart.

NARRATOR: On April 22, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov paid a call on the White House. Molotov was a wily diplomat, a hardened veteran of the Russian Revolution.

Truman had been president for just 10 days. He had never negotiated a treaty before, never met a Russian in his life, and knew next to nothing about American foreign policy.

WALTER LAFEBER, Historian: Truman was insecure and ignorant, ignorant not in the sense of being unintelligent. The man was very intelligent. Ignorant in the sense of not knowing what was going on. Of course, nobody really knew what was going on except Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he was dead. The major problem was that the Red Army occupied much of Eastern Europe and was driving towards Berlin. And, consequently, what Truman faced was essentially a Russian occupation of Eastern and part of Central Europe.

NARRATOR: Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin saw the countries of eastern and central Europe as a band of protection against any attempt to invade Russia. Truman feared Stalin would use the Red Army to force them to become Communist.

"Whoever occupies a territory," Stalin said, "also imposes on it his own social system as far as his army can reach."

When Truman and Molotov sat down to talk, the fate of eastern Europe still hung in the balance. Truman believed the Soviets had already violated an agreement negotiated by Roosevelt ... guaranteeing free elections in Poland.

The new president didn't hesitate to tell the Soviet Minister just what he thought.

MARSHALL SHULMAN, Assistant to the Secretary of State: Truman gave him a -- a tongue-lashing -- "Why don't you people behave? Why don't you respect your obligations," and so on. And, according to Chip Bolin, who told me about this, who was the interpreter and was on the scene, said Molotov, in his stiff, ah, way, drew back and said, "I've never been talked to like this." And Truman said to him, "Well, you folks behave and you won't be talked to like this."

WALTER LAFEBER: Truman then walked out of the room, saw a top State Department aide and said to the State Department aide, "I just gave him a straight one-two to the jaw." And then he stopped and looked at this man and said, "Do you think I did right?"

NARRATOR: "I'm here to make decisions," Truman said. "Whether they prove right or wrong, I'm going to make them." Within the next few months, Truman would have to make one of the most terrible decisions in history.

While Nazi Germany was crumbling, the Japanese remained a dangerous, unyielding enemy. They had already taken over fifty thousand American lives, and more and more were dying every day. But America had been developing a weapon that might force the Japanese to surrender. Just 13 days in office, Truman was handed a memorandum by Secretary of War Stimson:

"Within four months," Truman read, "we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history."

Stimson went on to tell Truman about the secret site in New Mexico where scientists had been working round-the-clock for the past two and one-half years to fashion a weapon out of the elemental forces of the universe. But it would still be months, Stimson said, before any one would know whether the atomic bomb would work.

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