The Truman Presidency

The Truman presidency was characterized by an internationalist foreign policy, the Cold
War, and domestic unrest.

Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the 33rd President of the
United States (1945–53), an American politician of the Democratic Party. He served as
a United States senator from Missouri (1935–45) and briefly as vice president (1945)
before he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, upon the death of Franklin D.
Roosevelt. He was president during the final months of World War II, making the
decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman was elected in
his own right in 1948. He presided over an uncertain domestic scene as America sought
its path after the war and tensions with the Soviet Union increased, marking the start of
the Cold War.

The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II

Nazi Germany surrendered on Truman’s birthday (May 8) just a few weeks after he
assumed the presidency, but the war with Imperial Japan raged on and was expected to
last at least another year. After Japan refused surrender, Truman authorized the use of
atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan quickly
surrendered and World War II came to an end on September 2, 1945. Truman approved
the use of atomic weapons to end the fighting and to spare the thousands of American
lives that would inevitably be lost in the planned invasion of Japan and Japanese-held
islands in the Pacific. This decision remains controversial to this day, though it is
considered one of the principal factors that forced Japan’s immediate and unconditional
surrender.

Internationalist Foreign Policy

Truman’s presidency was a turning point in foreign affairs as the U.S. engaged in an
internationalist foreign policy and renounced isolationism. Truman helped found the
United Nations in 1945, issued the Truman Doctrine in 1947 to contain Communism,
and got the $13 billion Marshall Plan enacted to rebuild Western Europe. The Soviet
Union, a wartime ally, became a peacetime enemy in the Cold War. Truman oversaw
the Berlin Airlift of 1948, one of his greatest foreign policy successes, and the creation
of NATO in 1949. He was unable to stop Communists from taking over China. When
communist North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, he sent in U.S. troops and
gained UN approval for the Korean War. After initial successes in Korea, however, the
UN forces were thrown back by Chinese intervention, and the conflict was stalemated
throughout the final years of Truman’s presidency. As part of his U.S. Cold War
strategy, Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, which reorganized the
military and created the CIA and the National Security Council.
On June 25, 1950, Kim Il-sung’s Korean People’s Army invaded South Korea, starting
the Korean War. In the early weeks of the war, the North Koreans easily pushed back
their southern counterparts. Truman called for a naval blockade of Korea, only to learn
that due to budget cutbacks, the U.S. Navy could not enforce such a measure. Truman
promptly urged the United Nations to intervene; it did, authorizing troops under the UN
flag led by U.S. General Douglas MacArthur. The war remained a frustrating stalemate
for two years, with more than 30,000 Americans killed, until an armistice ended the
fighting in 1953. In February 1952, Truman’s approval mark stood at 22% according to
Gallup polls, which was, until George W. Bush in 2008, the all-time lowest approval
mark for an active American president.

Domestic Issues

Domestic bills endorsed by Truman often faced opposition from a conservative

Congress dominated by the Southern legislators, but his administration was able to
successfully guide the American economy through post-war economic challenges. The
president was faced with the reawakening of labor-management conflicts that had lain
dormant during the war years, severe shortages in housing and consumer products,
and widespread dissatisfaction with inflation, which at one point hit 6% in a single
month. Added to this polarized environment was a wave of destabilizing strikes in major
industries. Truman’s response was generally seen as ineffective.

As he readied for the 1948 election, Truman made clear his identity as a Democrat in
the New Deal tradition, advocating national health insurance and the repeal of the Taft-
Hartley Act. He broke with the New Deal by initiating an aggressive civil rights program,
which he termed a moral priority, and in 1948 submitted the first comprehensive civil
rights legislation and issued executive orders to start racial integration in the military and
federal agencies. Taken together, it constituted a broad legislative agenda that came to
be called the ” Fair Deal.” Truman’s proposals were not well received by Congress,
even with renewed Democratic majorities after 1948. The Solid South rejected civil
rights as those states still enforced segregation. Only one of the major Fair Deal bills,
the Housing Act of 1949, was enacted. On the other hand, the major New Deal
programs still in operation were not repealed, and many saw minor improvements and
extensions.

Popular and scholarly assessments of Truman’s presidency initially were unfavorable

but became more positive over time following his retirement from politics. Truman’s
1948 election upset to win a full term as president has often been invoked by later
“underdog” presidential candidates.

Peacetime Politics

Following World War II, Truman faced new political challenges, such as preventing
Soviet expansion and rebuilding a peacetime economy.
Peacetime Foreign Policy

Truman’s presidency was marked throughout by important foreign policy initiatives,

most centered on the desire to prevent the expansion of Soviet influence. As a
Wilsonian internationalist, Truman strongly supported the creation of the United Nations
and included Eleanor Roosevelt on the delegation to the UN’s first General Assembly.
With the Soviet Union expanding its sphere of influence through Eastern Europe,
Truman and his foreign policy advisors took a hard line against the USSR. In this, he
matched American public opinion, which quickly came to view the Soviets as intent
upon world domination.

Although he claimed no personal expertise on foreign matters, Truman won bipartisan

support for both the Truman Doctrine, which formalized a policy of Soviet containment,
and the Marshall Plan, which aimed to help rebuild postwar Europe. Truman oversaw
the Berlin Airlift of 1948 and the creation of North Atlantic Treat Organization (NATO) in
1949. To get Congress to spend the vast sums necessary to restart the moribund
European economy, Truman used the ideological argument that Communism flourishes
in economically deprived areas. As part of the U.S. Cold War strategy, Truman signed
the National Security Act of 1947 and reorganized military forces by merging the
Department of War and the Department of the Navy into the National Military
Establishment (later the Department of Defense) and creating the U.S. Air Force. The
act also created the CIA and the National Security Council. In 1952, Truman secretly
consolidated and empowered the cryptologic elements of the United States by creating
the National Security Agency (NSA).

The one time during his presidency when a communist nation invaded a non-communist
one—when North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950—Truman responded by
waging undeclared war.

Transitioning the Economy

The end of World War II was followed by an uneasy transition from war to a peacetime
economy. Little planning had taken place, with officials assuming that it would take a
year to beat Japan once war in Europe ceased, giving them time to create proposals.
With the war’s sudden end and an immediate clamor for demobilization, little work had
been done to plan transition to peacetime production of goods while avoiding mass
unemployment for returning veterans. There was no consensus among government
officials as to what economic course the postwar U.S. should steer.

The president was faced with the reawakening of labor-management conflicts that had
lain dormant during the war years, severe shortages in housing and consumer products,
and widespread dissatisfaction with inflation, which at one point hit 6% in a single
month. Added to this polarized environment was a wave of destabilizing strikes in major
industries. Truman’s response was generally seen as ineffective. A rapid cost increase
was fueled by the release of price controls on most items, and labor sought wage
increases. A serious steel strike in January 1946 involving 800,000 workers—the largest
in the nation’s history—was followed by a coal strike in April and a rail strike in May. The
public was angry, with a majority favoring a ban on strikes by public service workers and
a year’s moratorium on labor actions. Truman proposed legislation to draft striking
workers into the Armed Forces, and in a dramatic personal appearance before
Congress, was able to announce settlement of the rail strike. His proposal passed the
House of Representatives, but failed in the Senate.

Opposition from Republican Congress

In addition to economic woes, because Roosevelt had not paid attention to Congress in
his final years, Truman faced a body where Republicans and conservative southern
Democrats formed a powerful voting bloc. This dissatisfaction with the Truman
administration’s policies led to large Democratic losses in the 1946 midterm elections,
when Republicans took control of Congress for the first time since 1930.

Truman hoped to extend New Deal social programs to include more government
protection and services and reach more people. He was eventually successful in
achieving a healthy peacetime economy, but only a few of his social program proposals
became law. The Congress, which was much more Republican in its membership
during his presidency than it had been during Franklin Roosevelt’s, did not usually share
Truman’s desire to build on the legacy of the New Deal.

The Truman administration did go considerably beyond the New Deal in the area of civil
rights. Although the conservative Congress thwarted Truman’s desire to achieve
significant civil rights legislation, he was able to use his powers as President to achieve
some important changes. He desegregated the armed forces and forbade racial
discrimination in Federal employment. He also established a Committee on Civil Rights.

The Republican Congress significantly curtailed the power of labor unions by the Taft-
Hartley Act, enacted over Truman’s veto. The parties did cooperate on some issues;
Congress passed the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, making the Speaker of the
House rather than the Secretary of State next in line to the presidency after the vice
president. 

Fair Deal

As he prepared for the 1948 election, Truman made clear his identity as a Democrat in
the New Deal tradition, advocating national health insurance, the repeal of the Taft-
Hartley Act, and an aggressive civil rights program. Together, it constituted a broad
legislative agenda that came to be called the “Fair Deal.” Truman’s proposals were not
well-received by Congress, even with renewed Democratic majorities in Congress after
1948.
Although Truman was unable to implement his Fair Deal program in its entirety,
substantial social and economic progress took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
A Census report confirmed that gains in housing, education, living standards, and
income under the Truman administration were unparalleled in American history. By
1953, 62 million Americans had jobs, a gain of 11 million in seven years, while
unemployment had all but vanished. Farm income, dividends, and corporate income
were at all-time highs, and there had not been a failure of an insured bank in nearly nine
years. The minimum wage had also increased while Social Security benefits doubled,
and 8 million veterans had attended college by the end of the Truman administration as
a result of the G.I. Bill, which subsidized the businesses, training, education, and
housing of millions of returning veterans.

The Transition to Peacetime

Following the war, the United States was largely able to maintain economic growth and
resist inflation.

Transitioning to Peacetime Economy

Massive wartime spending doubled economic growth rates, either masking the effects
of or essentially ending the Depression. Businessmen ignored the mounting national
debt and heavy new taxes, redoubling their efforts for greater output to take advantage
of generous government contracts. 

Wartime rationing was officially lifted in September 1945, but prosperity did not
immediately return as the next three years would witness the difficult transition back to a
peacetime economy. Many of the 12 million returning veterans in need of work could not
find it. Inflation became a rather serious problem, averaging more than 10% a year until
1950, and raw materials shortages dogged manufacturing industry. In addition, labor
strikes rocked the nation, in some cases exacerbated by racial tensions due to African-
Americans who had jobs during the war faced with irate returning veterans who
demanded they step aside. The huge number of women employed in the workforce in
the war were also rapidly cleared out make room for their husbands. 

Peacetime Prosperity

Following the Republican takeover of Congress in the 1946 elections, President Truman
was compelled to reduce taxes and curb government interference in the economy. With
this done, the stage was set for the economic boom that, with only a few minor hiccups,
would last for the next 23 years. After the initial hurdles of the 1945-48 period were
overcome, Americans found themselves flush with cash from wartime work since there
was little to buy for several years. The result was a mass consumer spending spree,
with a voracious demand for new homes, cars, and housewares. Increasing numbers
enjoyed high wages, larger houses, better schools, more cars, and home comforts like
vacuum cleaners and washing machines —all designed to make housework easier.
Inventions familiar in the early 21st century made their first appearance during this era.

A Consumer Society

Consumerism represented one of the consequences (as well as one of the key
ingredients) of the postwar economic boom. The initial quest for cars, appliances, and
new furniture after the end of World War II quickly expanded into the mass consumption
of goods, services, and recreational materials during the Fifties. Between 1945 and
1960, gross national product (GNP) grew by 250%, expenditures on new construction
multiplied nine times, and consumption on personal services increased three times. By
1960, per capita income was 35% higher than in 1945, and America had entered what
the economist Walt Rostow referred to as the “high mass consumption” stage of
economic development. Short-term credit went up from $8.4 billion in 1946 to $45.6
billion in 1958. As a result of the postwar economic boom, 60% of the American
population had attained a “middle-class” standard of living by the mid-1950s (defined as
incomes of $3,000 to $10,000 in constant dollars), compared with only 31% in the last
year of prosperity before the onset of the Great Depression. By the end of the decade,
87% of families owned a TV set, 75% a car, and 75% a washing machine. Between
1947 and 1960, the average real income for American workers increased by as much
as it had in the previous half-century.

American Manufacturing

One of the key factors in postwar prosperity was a technology boom. Manufacturing had
made enormous strides and it was now possible to produce consumer goods in
quantities and levels of sophistication unseen before 1945. Acquisition of technology
from occupied Germany also proved an asset, as it was sometimes more advanced
than its American counterpart, especially in the optics and audio equipment fields. The
typical automobile in 1950 was an average of $300 more expensive than the 1940
version, but produced in twice the number. Luxury makes such as Cadillac, which were
largely hand-built vehicles only available to the rich, were now mass-produced and fell
within the price range of the upper middle-class.

Women in the 1950s

Aside from the unfolding Civil Rights Movement, women were forced out of factories at
the end of WWII in favor of returning veterans, and many chafed at the social
expectations to be an idle stay-at-home housewife who cooked, cleaned, shopped, and
tended to children. Alcohol and pill abuse was not uncommon among American women
during the 1950s, something quite contrary to the idyllic image presented in TV shows
such as Leave It To Beaver, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and Father Knows
Best. In 1963, Betty Friedan publisher her book The Feminine Mystique, which strongly
criticized the role of women during the postwar years. It was a best-seller and a major
catalyst of the women’s liberation movement. Sociologists have noted that the “idle
housewife” of the 1950s was the exception in American history rather than the norm,
where women generally did work in some capacity.

Poverty and Inequality

Despite the prosperity of the postwar era, a significant minority of Americans continued
to live in poverty by the end of the 1950s. In 1947, 34% of all families earned less than
$3,000 a year, compared with 22.1% in 1960. Nevertheless, between one-fifth to one-
fourth of the population could not survive on the income they earned. The older
generation of Americans did not benefit as much from the postwar economic boom,
especially as many had never recovered financially from the loss of their savings during
the Great Depression. It was generally a given that the average 35-year-old in 1959
owned a better house and car than the average 65-year-old, who typically had nothing
but a small Social Security pension for an income. Many blue-collar workers continued
to live in poverty, with 30% of those employed in industry in 1958 receiving under
$3,000 a year. In addition, individuals who earned more than $10,000 a year paid a
lower proportion of their income in taxes than those who earned less than $2,000 a
year. In 1947, 60% of black families lived below the poverty level (defined in one study
as below $3000 in 1968 dollars), compared with 23% of white families. In 1968, 23% of
black families lived below the poverty level, compared with 9% of white families. 

Civil Rights

President Truman’s actions on civil rights are seen as early movement in the decades-
long quest for legal equality for African Americans.

Civil Rights Under Truman 

During his administration, Truman made several important contributions to the Civil
Rights Movement. First, he created the President’s Committee on Civil Rights by
Executive Order 9808 on December 5, 1946. The committee was instructed to
investigate the status of civil rights in the country and propose measures to strengthen
and protect them. After the committee submitted a report of its findings to President
Truman, it disbanded in December 1947.

The report, titled To Secure These Rights, presented a detailed ten-point agenda of civil
rights reforms. In February 1948, the president submitted a civil rights agenda to
Congress that proposed creating several federal offices devoted to issues such as
voting rights and fair employment practices. This provoked a storm of criticism from
Southern Democrats in the runup to the national nominating convention, but Truman
refused to compromise, saying: “My forebears were Confederates… but my very
stomach turned over when I had learned that Negro soldiers, just back from overseas,
were being dumped out of Army trucks in Mississippi and beaten.” 
Tales of the abuse, violence, and persecution suffered by many African American
veterans upon their return from World War II infuriated Truman, and were a major factor
in his decision to issue Executive Order 9981, in July 1948, desegregating and requiring
equal opportunity in the Armed Forces. After several years of planning,
recommendations, and revisions between Truman, the Committee on Equality of
Treatment and Opportunity, and the various branches of the military, Army units
became racially integrated.

Another executive order, also in 1948, made it illegal to discriminate against persons
applying for civil service positions based on race. A third, in 1951, established the
Committee on Government Contract Compliance (CGCC) to ensure that defense
contractors did not discriminate because of race.

Truman’s Impact on Civil Rights

Truman’s efforts, including the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, were important
for the burgeoning issue of racism in post-war America. Protection from lynching and
desegregation in the work force was a triumph of conscience for Truman, as he recalled
in his farewell address:

There has been a tremendous awakening of the American conscience on the great
issues of civil rights–equal economic opportunities, equal rights of citizenship, and equal
educational opportunities for all our people, whatever their race or religion or status of
birth.
These “small actions” culminated into the signing of the two executive orders mentioned
above by Truman in 1948, an election year. In light of the growing possibility of war,
addressing the state of black morale in the armed forces was particularly important. The
far-reaching effects that the committee ad hoped for had little impact on the civil rights
of Black Americans in the late 1940s. Historian Howard Zinn argued that the President
failed to use the power given to him by the 14 th and 15th amendments to execute laws
strong enough to combat discrimination. It was not until the Brown vs. Board of
Education decision that the separate but equal doctrine would be overturned and
segregation would be officially outlawed by the U.S. government.

Civil Rights Issues After WWII

Housing segregation was a nationwide problem, persistent well outside the South.
Although the federal government was increasingly involved in mortgage lending and
development in the 1930s and 1940s, it did not reject the use of race-restrictive
covenants until 1950. Suburbanization was already connected with white flight by this
time, a situation perpetuated by real estate agents’ continuing discrimination. In
particular, from the 1930s to the 1960s the National Association of Real Estate Boards
(NAREB) issued guidelines that specified that a realtor
should never be instrumental in introducing to a neighborhood a character or property or
occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individual whose presence will
be clearly detrimental to property values in a neighborhood.
Invigorated by the victory of Brown and frustrated by the lack of immediate practical
effect, private citizens increasingly rejected gradualist, legalistic approaches as the
primary tool to bring about desegregation. They were faced with “massive resistance” in
the South by proponents of racial segregation and voter suppression. In defiance,
African-American activists adopted a combined strategy of direct action, nonviolence,
nonviolent resistance, and events described as civil disobedience, giving rise to the
African-American Civil Rights Movement of 1954-1968.

Jackie Robinson

Jackie Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American Major
League Baseball second baseman who became the first African American to play in the
major leagues in the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when the
Brooklyn Dodgers started him at first base on April 15, 1947. The Dodgers, by playing
Robinson, heralded the end of racial segregation that had relegated black players to the
Negro leagues since the 1880s. Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame
in 1962.

Robinson’s character, his use of nonviolence, and his unquestionable talent challenged
the traditional basis of segregation which marked many other aspects of American life.
He had an impact on the culture of and contributed significantly to the Civil Rights
Movement. Robinson also was the first black television analyst in MLB, and the first
black vice president of a major American corporation, Chock full o’Nuts. In the 1960s,
he helped establish the Freedom National Bank, an African-American-owned financial
institution based in Harlem, New York. In recognition of his achievements on and off the
field, Robinson was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and
Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The Election of 1948

Despite predictions that Republican candidate Thomas Dewey would win the 1948
election, incumbent Democrat Harry Truman was victorious.

The United States presidential election of 1948 was the 41st quadrennial presidential
election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1948. Incumbent President Harry S. Truman,
the Democratic nominee, who had succeeded to the presidency after the death of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945, successfully ran for election for a full term
against Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican nominee.

The election is considered the greatest election upset in American history. Virtually
every prediction (with or without public opinion polls) indicated that Truman would be
defeated by Dewey. The Democratic Party had a severe three-way ideological split, with
both the far left and far right of the Party running third-party campaigns. Truman’s
surprise victory was the fifth consecutive presidential win for the Democratic Party, the
longest winning streak in the history of the party, and second-longest in the history of
both modern parties (surpassed only by the Republicans’ six consecutive victories from
1860 to 1880). With simultaneous success in the 1948 congressional elections, the
Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress, which they lost in 1946.
Truman’s feisty campaign style energized his base of traditional Democrats, consisting
of most of the white South, Catholic, and Jewish voters; he also surprisingly fared well
with Midwestern farmers. Truman’s election confirmed the Democratic Party’s status as
the nation’s majority party.

On September 9, nearly two months before election day, pollster Elmo

Roper announced that “Thomas E. Dewey is almost as good as elected…I can think of
nothing duller or more intellectually barren than acting like a sports announcer who feels
he must pretend he is witnessing a neck-and-neck race.” Because of his position in the
polls, Dewey ran a bland, uninspired campaign.

Given Truman’s sinking popularity and the seemingly fatal three-way split in the
Democratic Party, Dewey appeared unbeatable. Top Republicans believed that all their
candidate had to do to win was to avoid major mistakes; in keeping with this advice,
Dewey carefully avoided risks. He spoke in platitudes, avoided controversial issues, and
was vague on what he planned to do as president. Speech after speech was filled with
non-political, optimistic assertions of the obvious, including the now infamous quote
“You know that your future is still ahead of you.” An editorial in The (Louisville) Courier-
Journal summed it up as such: “No presidential candidate in the future will be so inept
that four of his major speeches can be boiled down to these historic four sentences:
Agriculture is important. Our rivers are full of fish. You cannot have freedom without
liberty. Our future lies ahead.”

Truman, trailing in the polls, decided to adopt a slashing, no-holds-barred campaign. He

ridiculed Dewey by name, criticized Dewey’s refusal to address specific issues, and
scornfully targeted the Republican-controlled 80th Congress with a wave of relentless
and blistering partisan assaults. Truman toured much of the nation with his fiery
rhetoric, playing to large, enthusiastic crowds. “Give ’em hell, Harry” was a popular
slogan shouted out at stop after stop along the tour. The polls and the pundits, however,
all held that Dewey’s lead was insurmountable, and that Truman’s efforts were for
naught. Indeed, Truman’s own staff considered the campaign a last hurrah. Even
Truman’s own wife Bess had private doubts that her husband could win. The only
person who appears to have considered Truman’s campaign to be winnable was the
president himself, who confidently predicted victory to anyone and everyone who would
listen to him.

The Chicago Daily Tribune, a pro-Republican newspaper, was so sure of Dewey’s

victory that on Tuesday afternoon, before any polls closed, it printed “DEWEY
DEFEATS TRUMAN” as its headline for the following day. 
The Fair Deal

President Truman’s domestic reform agenda, called the Fair Deal, was a set of
proposals aimed at economic development and social welfare.

The Fair Deal was United States President Harry S. Truman’s ambitious set of
proposals to Congress introduced in his January 1949 State of the Union address. The
term has also been used to describe the domestic reform agenda of the Truman
Administration, which governed the U.S from 1945 to 1953 and marked a new stage in
modern liberalism. Congress was dominated by conservatives during the Truman
administration; however, major Fair Deal initiatives did not become law.

The most important proposals of the Fair Deal were aid to education, universal health
insurance, legislation on fair employment, and repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act. All were
debated at length but ultimately voted down. Nevertheless, some smaller and less
controversial items passed. Additionally, Lyndon B. Johnson credited Truman’s
unfulfilled program as influencing Great Society measures such as Medicare, which
Johnson successfully enacted during the 1960s.

Truman’s Vision

In his 1949 State of the Union address, Truman stated that “every segment of our
population, and every individual, has a right to expect from his government a fair deal.”
Truman’s multitudinous proposed measures included federal aid to education, a large
tax cut for low-income earners, the abolition of poll taxes, an anti-lynching law, a
permanent FEPC, a farm aid program, increased public housing, an immigration bill,
new TVA-style public works projects, the establishment of a new Department of
Welfare, the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, an increase in the minimum wage from 0.40
to 0.75 cents an hour, national health insurance, expanded Social Security coverage,
and a four billion tax increase to reduce the national debt and finance these programs.

Philosophies of the Fair Deal

A liberal Democrat, Truman was determined to continue the legacy of the New Deal and
make his own mark in social policy. The liberal task of the Fair Deal was to spread the
abundant benefits throughout society by stimulating economic growth. In September
1945, Truman presented to Congress a 21-point program of domestic legislation that
outlined a series of proposed actions involving economic development and social
welfare.

Though solidly based on the New Deal tradition of Truman’s predecessor Franklin
Delano Roosevelt in its advocacy of wide-ranging social legislation, the Fair Deal
created a separate identity for Truman. The Depression did not return after the war and
the Fair Deal had to contend with prosperity and an optimistic future. The Fair Dealers
thought in terms of abundance rather than depression scarcity. Economist Leon
Keyserling argued that the liberal task was to spread the benefits of abundance
throughout society by stimulating economic growth. Agriculture Secretary Charles F.
Brannan wanted to unleash the benefits of agricultural abundance and to encourage the
development of an urban-rural Democratic coalition; his plan was defeated by strong
conservative opposition in Congress and his unrealistic confidence in the possibility of
uniting urban labor and farm owners who distrusted rural insurgency. The Korean War
made military spending the nation’s priority and killed most Fair Deal initiatives, but did
encourage the pursuit of economic growth.

Partisan Conflict

The Fair Deal was opposed by the many conservative politicians (Republicans and
Southern Democrats) who wanted the federal government’s role to be reduced. After
World War II, Americans were steadily becoming more conservative, as they were
eager to enjoy prosperity unseen since before the Great Depression.

Therefore, many of Truman’s proposed reforms were never realized. In the 1946
congressional elections, Republicans gained majorities in both houses of Congress for
the first time since 1928 and set their sights on reversing the liberal direction of the
Roosevelt years. Despite this major momentum shift for Republicans, Truman was not
discouraged, and his proposals to Congress became more and more abundant over the
course of his presidency.

However, despite strong opposition, elements of Truman’s agenda did win

congressional approval, such as the public housing subsidies cosponsored by
Republican Robert A. Taft under the 1949 National Housing Act, which funded slum
clearance and the construction of 810,000 units of low-income housing over six years.

Truman was also helped by the election of a Democratic Congress later in his term.
According to Eric Leif Davin, the 1949-50 Congress: “was the most liberal Congress
since 1938 and produced more ‘New-Deal-Fair-Deal’ legislation than any Congress
between 1938 and Johnson’s Great Society of the mid-1960s.”

Lasting Impact of the Fair Deal

Economic Prosperity

Although Truman was unable to implement his Fair Deal program in its entirety,
substantial social and economic progress took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
A Census report confirmed that gains in housing, education, living standards, and
income under the Truman administration were unparalleled in American history. By
1953, 62 million Americans had jobs, a gain of 11 million in seven years, while
unemployment had all but vanished. Farm income, dividends, and corporate income
were at all-time highs, and there had not been a failure of an insured bank in nearly nine
years. The minimum wage had also been increased while Social Security benefits
doubled, and 8 million veterans had attended college by the end of the Truman
administration as a result of the G.I. Bill, which subsidized the businesses, training,
education, and housing of millions of returning veterans.

Millions of homes had been financed through previous government programs, and a
start was made in slum clearance. Poverty was also significantly reduced, with one
estimate suggesting that the percentage of Americans living in poverty fell from 33% of
the population in 1949 to 28% by 1952. Incomes rose faster than prices, which meant
that real living standards were considerably higher than they were seven years earlier.

Civil Rights Achievements

Progress was also made in civil rights, with the desegregation of both the federal civil
service and the armed forces and the creation of the Commission on Civil Rights. In
fact, according to one historian, Truman had “done more than any President since
Lincoln to awaken American conscience to the issues of civil rights.”

Truman’s many proposed civil rights programs were met with resistance by southern
Democrats. All his legislative proposals were blocked. However, he used presidential
executive orders to end discrimination in the armed forces and denied government
contracts to firms with racially discriminatory practices. He also named African
Americans to federal posts. Except for nondiscrimination provisions of the Housing Act
of 1949, Truman had to be content with civil rights’ gains achieved by executive order or
through the federal courts. Vaughan argues that by continuing appeals to Congress for
civil rights legislation, Truman helped reverse the long acceptance of segregation and
discrimination by establishing integration as a moral principle.

Legacy

Despite a mixed record of legislative success, the Fair Deal remains significant in
establishing the call for universal health care as a rallying cry for the Democratic Party.
Lyndon B. Johnson credited Truman’s unfulfilled program as influencing Great Society
measures such as Medicare that Johnson successfully enacted during the 1960s.
An International System

The United Nations

Upon the ratification of the Charter of the United Nations in October 1945, the United
Nations was officially established.

The United Nations (UN) is an international organization whose stated aims are
facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic
development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace. The UN
was founded in 1945 after World War II to replace the League of Nations, stop wars
between countries, and provide a platform for dialogue. It contains multiple subsidiary
organizations to carry out its missions.

Replacing the League of Nations

The League of Nations failed to prevent World War II (1939–1945). Because of the
widespread recognition that humankind could not afford a third world war, the United
Nations was established to replace the flawed League of Nations in 1945. The League
of Nations formally dissolved itself on April 18, 1946, and transferred its mission to the
United Nations: to maintain international peace and promote cooperation in solving
international economic, social, and humanitarian problems.

Headquarters

In December 1945, the U.S. Congress requested that the UN make its headquarters in
the United States. The UN accepted this suggestion and after considering different
sites, constructed the United Nations headquarters building in New York City in 1949-
1950. The UN headquarters officially opened on January 9, 1951, although construction
was not formally completed until October 9, 1952. While the principal headquarters of
the UN remain in New York City, major agencies base themselves in Geneva, The
Hague, Vienna, Nairobi, and elsewhere.

Creation of the UN

The earliest concrete plan for a new world organization was begun under the U.S. State
Department in 1939. Franklin D. Roosevelt first coined the term “United Nations” as a
term to describe the Allied countries. The term was first officially used on January 1,
1942, when 26 governments signed the Atlantic Charter, pledging to continue the war
effort.
On April 25, 1945, the UN Conference on International Organization began in San
Francisco, attended by 50 governments and a number of non-governmental
organizations involved in drafting the United Nations Charter. The UN officially came
into existence on October 24, 1945, upon ratification of the Charter by the five then-
permanent members of the Security Council—France, the Republic of China, the Soviet
Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States—and by a majority of the other 46
signatories. The first meetings of the General Assembly, with 51 nations represented,
and the Security Council took place in London in January 1946. Since then, the UN’s
aims and activities have expanded to make it the archetypal international body in the
early 21st century.

UN Peacekeeping

United Nations Peacekeeping began in 1948. Its first mission was to observe and
maintain the ceasefire in the Middle Easte during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Since then,
UN peacekeepers have taken part in 63 missions around the globe, 17 of which
continue today. The peacekeeping force as a whole received the Nobel Peace Prize in
1988.

Though the term “peacekeeping” is not found in the United Nations Charter, the
authorization for these activities is generally considered to lie in Chapters 6 and 7.
Chapter 6 describes the Security Council’s power to investigate and mediate disputes,
while Chapter 7 discusses the power to authorize economic, diplomatic, and military
sanctions, as well as the use of military force, to resolve disputes. The founders of the
UN envisioned that the organization would act to prevent conflicts between nations and
make future wars impossible; however, the outbreak of the Cold War made
peacekeeping agreements extremely difficult due to the division of the world into hostile
camps. Following the end of the Cold War, there were renewed calls for the UN to
become the agency for achieving world peace, and the agency’s peacekeeping
dramatically increased, authorizing more missions between 1991 and 1994 than in the
previous 45 years combined.

During the Cold War

Throughout the Cold War, tensions on the UN Security Council made it difficult to
implement peacekeeping measures in countries and regions associated with the spread
or containment of leftist and revolutionary movements. While some conflicts were
separate enough from the Cold War to achieve consensus support for peacekeeping
missions, most were too deeply enmeshed in the global struggle.

Though the UN’s primary mandate was peacekeeping, the division between the U.S.
and USSR often paralyzed the organization. In 1956, the first UN peacekeeping force
was established to end the Suez Crisis; however, the UN was unable to intervene
against the USSR’s simultaneous invasion of Hungary following that country’s
revolution. In 1960, the UN deployed United Nations Operation in the Congo (UNOC),
the largest military force of its early decades, to bring order to the breakaway State of
Katanga, restoring it to the control of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by 1964.

The UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) began in 1964 to end the conflict
between the ethnic Greeks and Turks on the island and prevent wider conflict between
NATO members Turkey and Greece. A second observer force, UNIPOM, was
dispatched in 1965 to the areas of the India-Pakistan border that were not being
monitored by the earlier mission, UNMOGIP, after a ceasefire in the Indo-Pakistani War
of 1965. Neither of these disputes had Cold War or ideological implications.

There was one exception to this rule. In the Mission of the Representative of the
Secretary-General in the Dominican Republic (DOMREP), 1965–1966, the UN
authorized an observer mission in a country where ideological factions were facing off.
However, the mission was only initiated after the U.S. intervened unilaterally in a civil
war between leftist and conservative factions. The U.S. consolidated its hold and invited
a force of the Organization of American States (dominated by U.S. troops) to keep the
peace. The mission was approved mainly because the Americans presented it as fait
accompli and because it was not a full peacekeeping force, including only two observers
at any given time and leaving the peacekeeping to another international organization. It
was the first time the UN operated in this manner with a regional bloc.

The UN also assisted with two decolonization programs during the Cold War. In 1960,
the UN sent ONUC to help facilitate the decolonization of the Congo from Belgian
control. It stayed on until 1964 to help maintain stability and prevent the breakup of the
country during the Congo Crisis. In West New Guinea from 1962 to 1963, UNSF
maintained law and order while the territory was transferred from Dutch colonial control
to Indonesia.

After the Cold War

With the decline of the Soviet Union and the advent of perestroika, the Soviet Union
drastically decreased its military and economic support for a number of “proxy” civil
wars around the globe. It also withdrew its support from satellite states. One UN
peacekeeping mission, UNGOMAP, was designed to oversee the Pakistan-Afghanistan
border and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan as the USSR began to
refocus domestically. In 1991, the USSR dissolved into 15 independent states. Conflicts
broke out in two former Soviet Republics, the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict in Georgia
and a civil war in Tajikistan, eventually policed by UNOMIG and UNMOT respectively.

With the end of the Cold War, a number of nations called for the UN to become an
organization of world peace and encourage the end to conflicts around the globe. The
end of political gridlock in the Security Council substantially increased the number of
peacekeeping missions. In a new spirit of cooperation, the Security Council established
larger and more complex UN peacekeeping missions with more non-military elements to
ensure the proper operation of civic functions such as elections. The UN Department of
Peacekeeping Operations was created in 1992 to support the increased demand for
such missions. A number of missions were designed to end civil wars in which
competing sides were sponsored by Cold War players.

The Nuremberg Trials

The Nuremberg Trials were military tribunals that tried Nazi political and military
leadership for alleged crimes committed during the war.

The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals held by the Allied forces of
World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political,
military, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany. The trials were held in the city of
Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany in 1945 and 1946 at the Palace of Justice.

The first and best-known of these trials, described as “[t]he greatest trial in history” by
Norman Birkett, one of the presiding British judges, was that of the major war criminals
before the International Military Tribunal (IMT). Held between November 20, 1945 and
October 1, 1946, the IMT tried 23 of the most important political and military leaders of
the Third Reich. One of the defendants, Martin Bormann, was tried in absentia, while
another, Robert Ley, committed suicide within a week of the trial’s commencement.
Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels were not included in the trials
because all three committed suicide several months before the indictment was signed.
The second set of trials of lesser war criminals was conducted under Control Council
Law No. 10 at the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT); among the second set of
trials were the Doctors’ Trial and the Judges’ Trial.

Creation of the Courts

On January 14, 1942, representatives from the nine occupying countries met in London
to draft the Inter-Allied Resolution on German War Crimes. At the meetings in Tehran
(1943), Yalta (1945), and Potsdam (1945), the three major wartime powers, the United
Kingdom, United States, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, agreed on the
format of punishment for those responsible for war crimes during World War II. France
was also awarded a place on the tribunal. The legal basis for the trial was established
by the London Charter, which was agreed upon by the four so-called “Great Powers” on
August 8, 1945, and which restricted the trial to “punishment of the major war criminals
of the European Axis countries.”

Some 200 German war crimes defendants were tried at Nuremberg, and 1,600 others
were tried under the traditional channels of military justice. The legal basis for the
jurisdiction of the court was defined by the Instrument of Surrender of Germany. Political
authority for Germany had been transferred to the Allied Control Council which, having
sovereign power over Germany, could choose to punish violations of international law
and the laws of war. Because the court was limited to violations of the laws of war, it did
not have jurisdiction over crimes that took place before the outbreak of war on
September 1, 1939.
American Role in Trial

Justice Robert H. Jackson played an important role not only in the trial itself, but also in
the creation of the IMT. He led the American delegation to London that in the summer of
1945 argued in favor of prosecuting the Nazi leadership as a criminal conspiracy.
According to Airey Neave, Jackson was also behind the prosecution’s decision to
include membership in any of the six criminal organizations in the indictments at the
trial, though the IMT rejected this on the grounds that it was without precedent in both
international law and the domestic laws of the Allies.

Thomas Dodd was a prosecutor for the United States. There was an immense amount
of evidence backing the prosecutors’ case, especially since meticulous records of the
Nazis’ actions were kept. The prosecutors had access to records with signatures from
specific Nazis for everything from stationery supplies to Zyklon B gas, which was used
to kill the inmates of the death camps. Dodd showed a series of pictures to the
courtroom after reading the documents of crimes committed by the defendants; these
were gathered when the concentration camps were liberated and depicted the atrocities
performed by the defendants. 

The Trials

The IMT opened on November 19, 1945, in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. The
first session was presided over by the Soviet judge Nikitchenko. The prosecution
entered indictments against 24 major war criminals and seven organizations – the
leadership of the Nazi party, the Reich Cabinet, the Schutzstaffel (SS),
Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Gestapo, the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the “General Staff
and High Command,” comprising several categories of senior military officers. These
organizations were to be declared “criminal” if found guilty.

The indictments were for participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the
accomplishment of a crime against peace; planning, initiating, and waging wars of
aggression and other crimes against peace; war crimes; and crimes against humanity.

Throughout the trials, specifically between January and July 1946, the defendants and a
number of witnesses were interviewed by American psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn. His
notes detailing the demeanor and comments of the defendants were edited into book
form and published in 2004.

The accusers successfully unveiled the background of developments leading to the

outbreak of World War II, which cost at least 40 million lives in Europe alone, as well as
the extent of the atrocities committed in the name of the Hitler regime. Twelve of the
accused were sentenced to death, seven received prison sentences (ranging from 10
years to life in prison), three were acquitted, and two were not charged.
Legacy of the Trials

The IMT is celebrated for establishing that “[c]rimes against international law are
committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who
commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced.” The
Nuremberg Trials initiated a movement for the prompt establishment of a permanent
international criminal court since there were conflicting court methods between
Germany and the U.S. during the trials. More than 50 years later, this led to the
adoption of the Statute of the International Criminal Court. 

The creation of the IMT was followed by trials of lesser Nazi officials and the trials of
Nazi doctors, who performed experiments on people in prison camps. It served as the
model for the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, which tried Japanese
officials for crimes against peace and against humanity. It also served as the model for
the Eichmann trial and for present-day courts at The Hague, for trying crimes committed
during the Balkan wars of the early 1990s, and at Arusha, for trying the people
responsible for the genocide in Rwanda.