Chapter:
Introduction (2:16)
Part two of a biography of Harry Truman, the 33rd president.
Part two of a biography of Harry Truman, the 33rd president.
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Transcript: Chapter 18
Narrator: In the fall of 1945 America was still celebrating the end of the greatest war in history and Harry S. Truman was the unlikely leader of the world's greatest nation. "Never in my wildest dreams," Truman wrote, "did I ever think or wish for such a position."
David McCullough: He came from an obscure background, without money, without the privilege of education, with no sense that he is a figure of destiny to become in his lifetime the most powerful human being on Earth.
Narrator: He was only a high school graduate, a farmer until he was 33, a haberdasher gone bankrupt at 38. No one in Washington had ever heard of Harry Truman before he was 50.
Victor Reuther: Here was a little haberdasher from Missouri, a small businessman, for him to step in the shoes of the great FDR There was an enormous feeling of letdown.
Narrator: Americans doubted Harry Truman, and Harry Truman had doubted himself, but they had rallied behind him and he had led them to victory. But now even as Americans celebrated, their patriotic harmony was beginning to come apart. Truman would find it easier to lead the country in war than to govern it in peace. He would say "Sherman was wrong, peace is hell."
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