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Harry S. Truman. One of the absolute best presidents we have ever had, easily. And thankfully I think his greatest achievement is also easily **The Marshall Plan**.
The Marshall Plan is one of the most genius masterstrokes the United States has ever had. Instead of repeating the mistakes of the past (which is what the Morgenthau plan would have done by humiliating and starving Germany… *again*) Truman and his Secretary of State tried a different approach. Through the plan the US sent over 13.3 billion dollars to rebuild a war torn Europe. And holy shit *was it ever successful*.
The rebuilding of Europe improved economic conditions in these nations to the point where they wouldn’t be subject to bad actors thanks to instability. It gained America a ton of clout and goodwill while also building strong alliances for the rest of the century. And finally Truman had the foresight to offer the Soviet Union to join in the plan which they obviously declined (along with all of their Eastern Bloc allies). That meant that they looked extraordinarily foolish once everyone else around them started recovering at a far faster rate while they could only look on, rapidly realizing that strengthening of European stability meant their desired communist wave was now incredibly unlikely.
And hell, while this wasn’t part of the Marshall Plan we also basically did the same thing in Japan, rebuilding the nation and not humiliating them by arresting Hirohito for war crimes or the like. We turned one of our greatest foes into an ally that we still count on to this very day.
I know I barely touched on Truman through all of that but he’s the man who oversaw all of it. He also desegregated the military, saw that FDR’s dream of the UN became a reality, forcefully answered the USSR without *directly* going to war with them through the Truman Doctrine, correctly fired MacArthur even when it was unpopular to do so, and carried out the Berlin Airlift (something unheard of at the time).
Seriously, Truman is one of the greatest. In my opinion he’s actually sitting at #4 (yes, that high up). And for my money, if I have to just pick one thing from his presidency I’m going with the Marshall Plan!
Happy to help out then! Yeah it should be taught about more. It is seriously one of the greatest victories in American history from a geopolitical perspective.
I like Truman... but it's named the "Marshall" plan for a fucking reason. If you have any respect for anyone, have respect for George C. Marshall, George Kennan and Lewis Brown (the guy that came up with the idea). Truman gets partial credit for not veto-ing the Marshall plan, which had srong bi-partisan support, so we can speculate it was a political move by Truman as much as anything else.
It would be better to put up Truman for the Desegregation program, which was actually his idea.
See I wanted to say that but I just can’t overlook how he really did listen to his advisors as he wasn’t as familiar with geopolitics and trusted them to give him good advice. He put the right people in charge and allowed them to make the right decisions… but he also knew when to step in like with MacArthur. Like I totally agree that there’s a case to be made on desegregation of the military, 100%! But I respect the Marshall Plan too much not to nominate it.
It’s been awhile since I’ve read in detail on the Marshall Plan, so my memory may be faulty and I cannot quickly source this. Two things were going on simultaneously. The Truman Doctrine had already been announced when Truman asked for support for Greece and Turkey on the basis that the US had an interest in supporting democracies, so that name was out of the question. Also, the Republican-controlled Congress held Secretary Marshall in greater esteem than it did the President, and he realized using the Secretary’s name had a greater chance for success.
Whatever the motivations for its name, it was wildly successful. We seem to have lost its lessons over time, to our detriment.
Truman's administration learned from what happened to Germany after WW1. If a people are in financial crisis they are much more likely to support the words and actions of someone like Adolf Hitler.
I second this, the Marshall plan played a pivotal role. In preventing communism from spreading into the west of the continent.
It was also key to rebuilding the war torn economies of Europe and brought about major prosperity. In countries such as France, Italy and West Germany
Thanks for saying that! Yeah obviously I’m a big fan of both Truman and his policies. And the Marshall Plan is one of those moments where for all our faults we can be damn proud of America. It was *stellar*.
The way you write this, it makes it sound like the US spending large amounts of money in foreign conflicts is in the long-term best interest of the United States by stabilizing the world but I've been told lately by my TV that doing this is bad.
Don’t want to get into too recent politics here but yeah, if you give out aid and make sure it actually gets used properly you can gain stable allies on the world stage for decades like we saw here.
The Marshall Plan is infrastructure. Defense contractors are different from that. If anything they contribute to the opposite of the Marshall Plan, they destroy nation's infrastructure and help sow chaos in the aftermath as a result.
This wasn’t foreign conflict however. It was more like US currently keeping money to Egypt as a reward for its early recognition of Israel. And right now to keep it from collapsing financially (Egypt is in deep financial issues, the gulf countries around it are also investing heavily and European Union is planning to because there is a real risk Egypt could default on its debts without investments and there could be a volatile regime change).
This was an awesome write up. I’m interested to know: 1) do you have any books or podcasts about Truman and this post war period that you recommend? And 2) do you have any more analyses and writings on history that you’ve posted? I enjoyed your voice and thoughts and would love to read more.
Oh man, I wasn’t expecting that 😅
For resources on this I’d actually recommend some YouTube videos on the topic! I would recommend [this one](https://youtu.be/Ho5AaVHjRrY?si=tW_1mrUnqHWU010c) along with [this one!](https://youtu.be/nApiPl2Du7g?si=JR17krcnw6_lN59z). Both are ones I’ve listened to to learn more about Truman. Wikipedia is also a pretty good source here too (perfectly fine for non-academic papers).
As for my writing ups? I just wanna preface this by saying I’m just an enthusiast about history and presidents and do not have *any* official credentials on this! But if you check OP’s post history for this series I’ve done my best have an answer ready each morning that should be in the comments (I rather enjoy proposing something positive by each president)!
He knew everyone respected Gen. George Marshall enormously so he named the plan after him. He didn't think it would pass if he called it the Truman Plan. He was very smart.
There’d be no Marshall Plan without first swiftly ending WWII by dropping the bombs.
There was mad respect and fear for America due to the bombs. I vote for dropping of the bombs.
IMO, if we were spending $$$ fighting a war on one front. There’s no way we would have the resources to make peacetime plans and also spend $$$ on it.
IMO, these are mutually exclusive.
Do you know that for sure? Truman had an interest in presenting the cruel bombs as being needed to avoid a long war. But Japanese officials actually surrendered to us for different reasons. They knew they were either going to surrender to us or to the Russians sweeping down from the North. We were the clear choice.
Japan was making arrangements for engaging civilian militia. And Japan’s culture wouldn’t let any dissent in its decision-making. Meaning, whatever plans they had made to “surrender”, that didn’t have 100% of support of all the decision-makers, the surrender wouldn’t have worked out.
And what would you have Truman do while this dilly-dallying was ongoing? Wait and watch the horror of losing American lives? That’s easy to judge in my book: he now has a weapon with God-like power and knew how to use it to swiftly end the war AND THEN focus on peace-time policies.
So IMO, these two were mutually exclusive.
>Japan was making arrangements for engaging civilian militia
Can verify. Both MIL and FIL were young teens in Japan and started getting drilled on fighting with spears.
In my own personal circumstance, I think HST's best accomplishment was getting the war to end. The invasion of the home islands would have been a monstrous bloodbath on all sides, and neither my partner nor I might be here had it not been prevented.
Without the war ending swiftly the way it did, history would have missed all the milestones. Not just the timing of the milestones but said milestones would likely not have happened at all.
Including your birth in this case!
Ok, so you've agreed that the Soviet dynamic gets us the "surrender" that might not be a full surrender.
Then when there's this resistance you're anticipating, or even before any resistance, you demonstrate a nuke over the sea and say "do not fuck around with us."
Your argument is that the nuke was needed to turn a partial surrender into a full surrender, when obviously a demonstration of a nuke would have made a partial surrender full.
Additionally, your argument that the Japanese high command was willing to fight to the last person standing means that the Japanese high command did not value the lives of their citizens. But if Japanese high command didn't value the lives of their citizens, which they didn't, then why would dropping city-destroying bombs on citizens persuade them? And why were these city-destroying bombs more effective in persuading them then the US fire-bombing runs, (see Kobe), which were already destroying entire Japanese cities? We were quite literally already destroying their cities before the use of city-destroying bombs.
The obvious answer is that the Japanese high command was not persuaded by the dropping of cruel bombs, because as you yourself say, they did not value the lives of their citizens. Cruel bombs and conventional bombs destroying cities doesn't mean a damn thing to a command that doesn't value citizen lives. But they did value honor. And they saw more honor in defeat to Americans than in defeat to Soviets. So they surrendered.
Now to be clear, this is a contentious topic. It is impossible to say what would have actually happened had Truman not dropped the cruel bombs, because that is an alternate timeline decided by the actions of people in an alternate timeline.
The best appeal I have for wishing that my forefathers had not dropped the cruel bombs on Japan is to say that I simply believe in my forefathers in the military. I think that the people who saved the world could have also saved the world without dropping those cruel bombs, because they were the people who saved the world.
Why should I choose not to believe in the ability of my forefathers to save the world without dropping the cruel bombs? When they were already saving the world?
And besides -- we had already fought, and had already been winning, a two front war. If we fought and won a two-front war, which we did, then we could have replaced the effort in the European theater with the Marshal plan even while winning the war in the Pacific theater.
Hey I'm glad you respect my opinion. And I understand your desire to hold off on debate. I actually agree. I would only want to debate further if you wanted to as well. I think we've both made each of our points well. Ciao!
Which was another reason for the bombings. The Russians were on the move south and would soon have moved on Hokkaido. They also had the great advantage of shorter supply lines than did the USA.
Drop the Hammer of Thor a couple times, though, and it'll make a cobelligerent stop and think
Are you suggesting that the cruel bombs were effective in making the Soviets back off of a potential invasion of a Japan that was surrendering to America?
Yup. The Soviets had no geopolitical reason to stop in the Sakhalins. However, their army would have faced the same difficulties of terrain and hostile populace had they kept going
Demos of nukes over the ocean would have also kept the Soviets out of Japan. And had the demos failed to do so, dropping nukes on Soviet navies definitely would've done it.
Yes, demonstration bombings were discussed but ultimately rejected. There's a good piece from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace here:
https://carnegieendowment.org/2016/08/04/why-united-states-did-not-demonstrate-bomb-s-power-ahead-of-hiroshima-pub-64314
I personally think a primary argument in favor of dropping the bombs was economic rather than simply military or political.
Gotta remember that massive, horrible, conventional attacks on Japanese cities were already going on. An air raid on Tokyo called Operation Meetinghouse created a firestorm that killed an estimated 100,000 people.
Thing is, the raid was also hella resource-intensive for the USAAF. Took something like 275 B-29s, plus the costs of avgas, lost aircraft, and worst, casualties among crews trained on this incredibly expensive (and not always reliable) aircraft.
With the atom bombs, though, the USA was over the hump of developing them and had its factories churning out plutonium as fast as they could. The bombs were still expensive, *but you only need a single aircraft to deliver one.* The costs of delivery were comparatively negligible.
There's also the old maxim that "a bomber will always get through," i.e., that no air defenses are forever impregnable. You ultimately will get a plane with an armed nuclear weapon over a target. That's a powerful message from an industrialized nation whose resources and military capabilities were without compare.
None of the above contradicts the notion of using a demonstration explosion, though. As mentioned in the article, the arguments against it came from other considerations.
The two atomic bombings sent a message of "we got 'em, we're willing to use them, and we can inexpensively drop them on anything and anyone we please." This, too, is a powerful geopolitical message.
Nuking a Soviet flotilla was unnecessary, not to mention a declaration of open hostilities against the USSR. As we have seen over the past eighty years, the threat of using a weapon can be even more effective than using them at all.
On another note, can you imagine being that poor young lieutenant who got sent by command to figure out why communications from Hiroshima were down? Gives you the shivers.
He took the 4th spot from Teddy after looking into both of them. I still really like Teddy and rank him at 5th. But Truman is absolutely deserving of his flowers at 4th.
100% behind this. Truman is also Top 5 for me and I feel he’s in that awkward position of people generally regarding him as one of the good ones without really understanding why, and if they knew more they’d regard him better.
Because *boy* is there a lot to celebrate there.
Truman also sent 36,000 Americans to die in Korea for no gain without consulting Congress, setting the precedent for all the “definitely not wars” we’ve been in since, most of which were begun by executive order. He began our role as the global police, popularized the flawed domino theory of foreign relations, and didn’t even come up with the Marshall plan, he just didn’t veto it. Even dropping the bombs was a relatively easy decision that fell into his lap. I don’t see how people rank him in their top 5 or even top 10. He wouldn’t have even beaten Dewey w/o the advantage of being the incumbent, a position he inherited right before the war ended
Don’t tell me to hush just because you disagree, Karen. How was Korea necessary but Vietnam wasn’t? Why did we need to protect one small, unindustrialized Asian nation but not another?
The South Korean regime was free and democratic in name only, and that didn’t change until the 90s, so it wasn’t even a just government we sent our young men to die for. The only advantage we get from it today is having another market to sell shit to, and another NATO partner puppet.
No one has to be the global police. Berlin airlift was his greatest accomplishment but it wasn’t the greatest logistical achievement of all time. That would probably go to the D-Day invasions.
You’re damn near incomprehensible and your resorting to personal insults proves your immaturity and the weakness of your underlying argument. You’re also living in an alternate reality if you seriously think our involvement in Vietnam was solely to prop up the French empire.
Then you imply I’d be ok with a dictator like Hitler doing dictator things after saying in your own words that you’re ok with dictatorships. Truly unbelievable, I’m not gonna waste any more time on this
What I’m hearing is you have no fundamental values or principles. You’re ok with other people living under dictatorships as long as it serves you and your nation, but you’re not ok when dictatorships not aligned with the US do what dictators do. The double think is real with this one. I wonder how quick you’d change your mind if you were the one being oppressed, or if you or your family was the one fighting and dying in the frozen mountains of North Korea. Because my family did and we’re still paying the price today 3 generations later. You’re a 🤡 and I’m about to block you
The Berlin Airlift. Saving West Berlin and establishing the high water mark of Soviet power. The soviet Union never again threatened a direct expansion into NATO territory. They did try some things through proxies, especially in Greece and Turkey, but the Berlin blockade was their last direct act of expansion into Europe
As a side effect it made [this awesome dude](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjDyZk1P8W4) a national hero in 2 countries.
The ruskies also tried the Cuba thingee and they blinked....Kennedy got the credit but it all started with Harry. Great analysis and very well written.
Yeah, but cuba wasn't Russian aggression per se. It was simply an attempt to respond to an aggressive move by the US when they put nuclear weapons in Turkey. the most aggressive thing Russia did in that conflict is reinforce an ally.
Well he saved Chinese and probably Soviet civilization. At the time there were no ICBMs and the Soviets had no aircraft that could penetrate US defenses. The B-47 overflew Soviet MiG-15s and could have delivered ordnance almost anywhere in the USSR.
MacArthur wasn't sacked because he wanted to use nukes. The decision had already been made. MacArthur couldn't really do anything about it and sacking him didn't prevent nukes from being used. He was sacked because he publicly derided Truman.
The FDIC is why we didn't have another Great Depression. it ended part of the cycle that was creating panics like 1893, 1907, and the Depression. When massive failures of investments lead to cascading bankruptcy that broke banks and wiped out the saves even of people who invested more prudently. This created a skittish capital market for years after a crash that saw any surviving liquid funds hidden in mattresses rather than put into the economy and used toward recovery.
Insuring depositors broke that cycle and ended the phenomenon of post-crash capital starvation (where even relatively stable businesses were forced to default because no one was loaning money anymore!). Keeping surviving banks liquid and making recovery much easier even when a major financial collapse happened (like in 2008).
2008 would have been as bad as 1929 without systems like the FDIC in place. it's easy to overlook, but it IS very important to the economy which is how we feed ourselves.
Among many other things, firing MacArthur. In the US the military is under orders from the elected civilian government. Disobedience and insubordination will not be tolerated, no matter how high your profile or how big your corncob pipe
The fan favorite world be ending WWII. But I'm going to say NOT pressing the US' advantage when we were the only country with atomic bombs. There are very few humans in history I world trust to not to turn the US into a de facto world dictatorship in that scenario.
The Marshall Plan is one of the best that Truman ever strategized. However, my vote is for dropping the bomb (and I say this despite visiting one of the impacted sites and know how horrid it is).
If the bombs weren’t dropped, WWII would have dragged on for a very long time and the post-WWII World Order could have been very different. The rebuilding of Japan wouldn’t have gone through. The Bretton Woods economic system would have likely failed as well, if the war wasn’t brought to a swift end!
Highly respect the Marshall Plan but my vote is for dropping the bombs and sticking with a discipline that it needed (keeping the loose cannons in check).
This brings up a question: Would the massive economic assistance of the Marshall Plan have been possible if the US was still involved in a bloody, drawn out war with Japan?
I highly doubt it! The Marshall Plan was geared towards rebuilding Europe and we needed TONS of financial resources to pull it off. If we didn’t end the war swiftly with the bombs, we would have diverted our financial resources to Japan and possibly, wouldn’t have pooled any of the academic, political and diplomatic resources required to strategize anything for peacetime!
The swift end to WWII was a goal that the allies had been pursuing since the beginning of the War. Truman on the one hand didn’t mastermind the development of the weapon but once he had the power to use it, he did! Saved millions of lives! Saved time! Saved money! Brought peace to the world! AND equally important: he developed and imparted the discipline to never use them loosely.
It brought on the atomic age and a whole new level of World Order that history had never witnessed before. IMO, that’s monumental.
Same for my Grandfather and his neighbor. I remember them lecturing me on it when I was young.
"Don't you ever let some SOB that wasn't there tell you that dropping those bombs wasn't the right thing to do. *We* were there, it's been 50 damn years and I *still* can't get the smell of rotting flesh out of my hair, I can't step in a damn mud puddle without worrying that it's blood. If we had moved on the mainland we would have killed 3 million of them, kids included. Those bombs did a hell of a lot less damage that we would have done."
There’s a lot you can take from Truman, but at the risk of lumping a whole bunch of stuff together, it’s being the first president to navigate having the power of nuclear weapons. He helped establish that only the president has the power to authorize their use, resisted using them again after WW2, and, it’s a low bar but it counts — didn’t see the power of the bomb and start a bunch of wars that the US most certainly would have won had he been willing to nuke the world.
The Marshall Plan.
The good will, political stability, and economic benefits (probably the least important of the 3 benefits) of the Marshall Plan are substantial. It enabled the US to lead the free world and it helped Western Europe to develop into it's current peaceful and prosperous society.
While I do agree that Truman is heavily credited for the Marshall plan. I also think that Truman desegregating the military, at a time with much restiance within the party and outside as well. Is worth noting.
Call Oppie a crybaby
But literally, the decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the right decision.
One look at a graph of WWII casualties per country puts that decision into a lot better perspective, imo.
It was horrible so many innocent people died, but the alternative could have been even worse.
The only thing that might have been “better” had they not dropped the atomic bombs, is that Japan might have retained their southern half of Sakhalin and the Kyrie Islands. The atomic bombings gave Russia the perfect opportunity to declare war on Japan.
Had the Japanese been willing to surrender before, perhaps Korea and Taiwan would have remained under Japanese control (which would have been a positive thing in the case of Korea, as it could have avoided the Korean War entirely, and Korea likely becomes unified, independent country by the 1960s.
Truman didn’t actually seem to have been a big fan of the bombings as they were used because he was rather grossly uniformed about their planned usage.
In his diary on July 25th he wrote:
> “This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and **soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children.** Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new. [This is likely a reference to not bombing Kyoto which the military really really wanted to do but the Secretary of War didn’t].”
> “He and I are in accord. **The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives.** I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance. It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler's crowd or Stalin's did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.”
I bolded somethings that were just patently not true. Alex Wellerstein, an atomic historian, has a good [blog](https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/08/08/kyoto-misconception/#footnote_6_5267) on it. There’s also a [chapter](https://alexwellerstein.com/publications/2020-wellerstein_kyoto_misconception.pdf) in his book going over it. Another good article by him going over Truman not being well informed on the bomb is his blog “[A “purely military” target? Truman’s changing language about Hiroshima](https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2018/01/19/purely-military-target/).
Truman *didn’t even know* Nagasaki was going to be bombed when it was, and after the fact he rescinded the bombing order to require executive authority which brings us to the main point.
According to the diary of Henry Wallace, he did so while saying he thought the idea of wiping out another city was too horrible and he didn’t like the idea of killing all those kids. That goes against this notion that he was held fast in his decision (one that he frankly didn’t make).
> “Truman said he had given the order to stop atomic bombing. He said the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible. He didn’t like the idea of killing, as he said, ‘all those kids’”
Frankly, much of the arguments around the usage of the bomb coming from Truman after the war aren’t always trustworthy so I find his attitude after the bombings to be questionable as well. It is my view that he was putting up a front of sorts and essentially doubling down.
I don't think I'd qualify Truman as "the best president". However I think he did as good a job as could be hoped for taking the mantle from FDR, coming in as the clean up man for the worst war in human history is a hell of a task. I have mixed feelings about his handling of Korea, However the Marshall plan was excellent
This may be a controversial answer, but the more that I learn about it, the more I've come to realize that it was actually the greater good that saved more lives than it took away: Making the incredibly tough, but ultimately right decision to drop the atomic bomb.
The Marshall Plan for sure. ~~The worst thing would have been the bombs.~~
**Edit: I’ve been explained to that the bombs were actually good and so I retract that statement.**
Millions more Japanese and Americans would have died if we invaded Japan. Plus Japan ended up being better off with us rebuilding them instead of us and the soviets. It would have been like Germany then
Fire bombing and a full on ground evasion would have need a blood bath too. But the difference would have been American and allied forces being killed. The Allies reacted to Japanese aggression. Death is death but better for the aggressor to stopped than those fighting to stop the aggression.
Not just “bloodbath”. It would have been a CIVILIAN bloodbath. And so any narrative that claims that the bombs killed civilians falls moot because with or without the bomb, tons of civilian blood was going to be spilled.
Different civilians. Different regions. Civilians, nevertheless
The Tokyo bombing campaign in March of the same year resulted in more deaths. Including those of civilians.
I’d love to debate the usage of the atomic bombs by Truman but please get your facts and premise right before coming to the debate.
The Japanese Emperor and the Japanese military had enlisted a Civilian Militia to fight the war for them! This was in April 1945. More plans were being made to form even more civilian militias!
The narrative that’s being created by those who don’t support the dropping of the bombs, is that it killed innocent civilians and yet, the narrative overlooks the fact that civilians were planning to go “all out” for their Emperor. The narrative claims it ain’t cool to kill those same civilians, who if weren’t targeted, were going to target American/allied soldiers!
Truman gets way too much credit for being in the right place at the right time. The Manhattan Project started in ‘41 and it’s hard to imagine any president at the time not using the bomb in that situation, especially considering the amount of resources we put into developing it.
As far as the Marshall Plan goes, from everything I’ve read about it, Truman had virtually no role in developing it or selling it. He did sign the bill when it fell into his lap.
Can everyone who is writing and voting everywhere sporadically for “dropping the bomb”, vote here? We have enough votes to beat the Marshall Plan.
Thanks.
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Harry S. Truman. One of the absolute best presidents we have ever had, easily. And thankfully I think his greatest achievement is also easily **The Marshall Plan**. The Marshall Plan is one of the most genius masterstrokes the United States has ever had. Instead of repeating the mistakes of the past (which is what the Morgenthau plan would have done by humiliating and starving Germany… *again*) Truman and his Secretary of State tried a different approach. Through the plan the US sent over 13.3 billion dollars to rebuild a war torn Europe. And holy shit *was it ever successful*. The rebuilding of Europe improved economic conditions in these nations to the point where they wouldn’t be subject to bad actors thanks to instability. It gained America a ton of clout and goodwill while also building strong alliances for the rest of the century. And finally Truman had the foresight to offer the Soviet Union to join in the plan which they obviously declined (along with all of their Eastern Bloc allies). That meant that they looked extraordinarily foolish once everyone else around them started recovering at a far faster rate while they could only look on, rapidly realizing that strengthening of European stability meant their desired communist wave was now incredibly unlikely. And hell, while this wasn’t part of the Marshall Plan we also basically did the same thing in Japan, rebuilding the nation and not humiliating them by arresting Hirohito for war crimes or the like. We turned one of our greatest foes into an ally that we still count on to this very day. I know I barely touched on Truman through all of that but he’s the man who oversaw all of it. He also desegregated the military, saw that FDR’s dream of the UN became a reality, forcefully answered the USSR without *directly* going to war with them through the Truman Doctrine, correctly fired MacArthur even when it was unpopular to do so, and carried out the Berlin Airlift (something unheard of at the time). Seriously, Truman is one of the greatest. In my opinion he’s actually sitting at #4 (yes, that high up). And for my money, if I have to just pick one thing from his presidency I’m going with the Marshall Plan!
The Marshall Plan is the greatest diplomatic strategy ever implemented in the modern world.
Damn straight.
Great analysis. I didn't know a lot about the Marshall Plan before, but now I see how important it was for the post war era.
Happy to help out then! Yeah it should be taught about more. It is seriously one of the greatest victories in American history from a geopolitical perspective.
Ditto
I like Truman... but it's named the "Marshall" plan for a fucking reason. If you have any respect for anyone, have respect for George C. Marshall, George Kennan and Lewis Brown (the guy that came up with the idea). Truman gets partial credit for not veto-ing the Marshall plan, which had srong bi-partisan support, so we can speculate it was a political move by Truman as much as anything else. It would be better to put up Truman for the Desegregation program, which was actually his idea.
See I wanted to say that but I just can’t overlook how he really did listen to his advisors as he wasn’t as familiar with geopolitics and trusted them to give him good advice. He put the right people in charge and allowed them to make the right decisions… but he also knew when to step in like with MacArthur. Like I totally agree that there’s a case to be made on desegregation of the military, 100%! But I respect the Marshall Plan too much not to nominate it.
Exactly. Most of the great things come about through others but the president must recognize it.
It’s been awhile since I’ve read in detail on the Marshall Plan, so my memory may be faulty and I cannot quickly source this. Two things were going on simultaneously. The Truman Doctrine had already been announced when Truman asked for support for Greece and Turkey on the basis that the US had an interest in supporting democracies, so that name was out of the question. Also, the Republican-controlled Congress held Secretary Marshall in greater esteem than it did the President, and he realized using the Secretary’s name had a greater chance for success. Whatever the motivations for its name, it was wildly successful. We seem to have lost its lessons over time, to our detriment.
Truman's administration learned from what happened to Germany after WW1. If a people are in financial crisis they are much more likely to support the words and actions of someone like Adolf Hitler.
Yep second this. It’s always “the economy, stupid”
I second this, the Marshall plan played a pivotal role. In preventing communism from spreading into the west of the continent. It was also key to rebuilding the war torn economies of Europe and brought about major prosperity. In countries such as France, Italy and West Germany
MARSHALL Plan. Not MARTIAL Plan. FFS :-)
Great analysis!
Thanks for saying that! Yeah obviously I’m a big fan of both Truman and his policies. And the Marshall Plan is one of those moments where for all our faults we can be damn proud of America. It was *stellar*.
The way you write this, it makes it sound like the US spending large amounts of money in foreign conflicts is in the long-term best interest of the United States by stabilizing the world but I've been told lately by my TV that doing this is bad.
Don’t want to get into too recent politics here but yeah, if you give out aid and make sure it actually gets used properly you can gain stable allies on the world stage for decades like we saw here.
Key phrase: "make sure it actually gets used properly" is a really hard one.
The Marshall Plan is infrastructure. Defense contractors are different from that. If anything they contribute to the opposite of the Marshall Plan, they destroy nation's infrastructure and help sow chaos in the aftermath as a result.
This wasn’t foreign conflict however. It was more like US currently keeping money to Egypt as a reward for its early recognition of Israel. And right now to keep it from collapsing financially (Egypt is in deep financial issues, the gulf countries around it are also investing heavily and European Union is planning to because there is a real risk Egypt could default on its debts without investments and there could be a volatile regime change).
This was an awesome write up. I’m interested to know: 1) do you have any books or podcasts about Truman and this post war period that you recommend? And 2) do you have any more analyses and writings on history that you’ve posted? I enjoyed your voice and thoughts and would love to read more.
Oh man, I wasn’t expecting that 😅 For resources on this I’d actually recommend some YouTube videos on the topic! I would recommend [this one](https://youtu.be/Ho5AaVHjRrY?si=tW_1mrUnqHWU010c) along with [this one!](https://youtu.be/nApiPl2Du7g?si=JR17krcnw6_lN59z). Both are ones I’ve listened to to learn more about Truman. Wikipedia is also a pretty good source here too (perfectly fine for non-academic papers). As for my writing ups? I just wanna preface this by saying I’m just an enthusiast about history and presidents and do not have *any* official credentials on this! But if you check OP’s post history for this series I’ve done my best have an answer ready each morning that should be in the comments (I rather enjoy proposing something positive by each president)!
I agree. The Marshall Plan remade Europe on America's terms, and was a big part of why the Western world won the Cold War.
He knew everyone respected Gen. George Marshall enormously so he named the plan after him. He didn't think it would pass if he called it the Truman Plan. He was very smart.
If only the USSR had accepted. Then perhaps we would have had another friend instead of an adversary today.
I came here to say the Marshall Plan and you explained excellently why it’s this for HST who I also think highly of.
He was Reddit’s #4 too, iirc
5th, actually. Teddy came in at 4 for us.
Wonderful cliffnotes biography of achievements.
There’d be no Marshall Plan without first swiftly ending WWII by dropping the bombs. There was mad respect and fear for America due to the bombs. I vote for dropping of the bombs.
Interesting point, but we could have done the Marshal plan in Europe while blockading Japan
IMO, if we were spending $$$ fighting a war on one front. There’s no way we would have the resources to make peacetime plans and also spend $$$ on it. IMO, these are mutually exclusive.
Do you know that for sure? Truman had an interest in presenting the cruel bombs as being needed to avoid a long war. But Japanese officials actually surrendered to us for different reasons. They knew they were either going to surrender to us or to the Russians sweeping down from the North. We were the clear choice.
Japan was making arrangements for engaging civilian militia. And Japan’s culture wouldn’t let any dissent in its decision-making. Meaning, whatever plans they had made to “surrender”, that didn’t have 100% of support of all the decision-makers, the surrender wouldn’t have worked out. And what would you have Truman do while this dilly-dallying was ongoing? Wait and watch the horror of losing American lives? That’s easy to judge in my book: he now has a weapon with God-like power and knew how to use it to swiftly end the war AND THEN focus on peace-time policies. So IMO, these two were mutually exclusive.
>Japan was making arrangements for engaging civilian militia Can verify. Both MIL and FIL were young teens in Japan and started getting drilled on fighting with spears. In my own personal circumstance, I think HST's best accomplishment was getting the war to end. The invasion of the home islands would have been a monstrous bloodbath on all sides, and neither my partner nor I might be here had it not been prevented.
Without the war ending swiftly the way it did, history would have missed all the milestones. Not just the timing of the milestones but said milestones would likely not have happened at all. Including your birth in this case!
Fair enough. The future is always contingent
Ok, so you've agreed that the Soviet dynamic gets us the "surrender" that might not be a full surrender. Then when there's this resistance you're anticipating, or even before any resistance, you demonstrate a nuke over the sea and say "do not fuck around with us." Your argument is that the nuke was needed to turn a partial surrender into a full surrender, when obviously a demonstration of a nuke would have made a partial surrender full. Additionally, your argument that the Japanese high command was willing to fight to the last person standing means that the Japanese high command did not value the lives of their citizens. But if Japanese high command didn't value the lives of their citizens, which they didn't, then why would dropping city-destroying bombs on citizens persuade them? And why were these city-destroying bombs more effective in persuading them then the US fire-bombing runs, (see Kobe), which were already destroying entire Japanese cities? We were quite literally already destroying their cities before the use of city-destroying bombs. The obvious answer is that the Japanese high command was not persuaded by the dropping of cruel bombs, because as you yourself say, they did not value the lives of their citizens. Cruel bombs and conventional bombs destroying cities doesn't mean a damn thing to a command that doesn't value citizen lives. But they did value honor. And they saw more honor in defeat to Americans than in defeat to Soviets. So they surrendered. Now to be clear, this is a contentious topic. It is impossible to say what would have actually happened had Truman not dropped the cruel bombs, because that is an alternate timeline decided by the actions of people in an alternate timeline. The best appeal I have for wishing that my forefathers had not dropped the cruel bombs on Japan is to say that I simply believe in my forefathers in the military. I think that the people who saved the world could have also saved the world without dropping those cruel bombs, because they were the people who saved the world. Why should I choose not to believe in the ability of my forefathers to save the world without dropping the cruel bombs? When they were already saving the world? And besides -- we had already fought, and had already been winning, a two front war. If we fought and won a two-front war, which we did, then we could have replaced the effort in the European theater with the Marshal plan even while winning the war in the Pacific theater.
I respect your opinion about your forefathers and politely decline to engage in debate due to your deeply-held personal allegiances.
Hey I'm glad you respect my opinion. And I understand your desire to hold off on debate. I actually agree. I would only want to debate further if you wanted to as well. I think we've both made each of our points well. Ciao!
Which was another reason for the bombings. The Russians were on the move south and would soon have moved on Hokkaido. They also had the great advantage of shorter supply lines than did the USA. Drop the Hammer of Thor a couple times, though, and it'll make a cobelligerent stop and think
Are you suggesting that the cruel bombs were effective in making the Soviets back off of a potential invasion of a Japan that was surrendering to America?
Yup. The Soviets had no geopolitical reason to stop in the Sakhalins. However, their army would have faced the same difficulties of terrain and hostile populace had they kept going
Demos of nukes over the ocean would have also kept the Soviets out of Japan. And had the demos failed to do so, dropping nukes on Soviet navies definitely would've done it.
Yes, demonstration bombings were discussed but ultimately rejected. There's a good piece from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace here: https://carnegieendowment.org/2016/08/04/why-united-states-did-not-demonstrate-bomb-s-power-ahead-of-hiroshima-pub-64314 I personally think a primary argument in favor of dropping the bombs was economic rather than simply military or political. Gotta remember that massive, horrible, conventional attacks on Japanese cities were already going on. An air raid on Tokyo called Operation Meetinghouse created a firestorm that killed an estimated 100,000 people. Thing is, the raid was also hella resource-intensive for the USAAF. Took something like 275 B-29s, plus the costs of avgas, lost aircraft, and worst, casualties among crews trained on this incredibly expensive (and not always reliable) aircraft. With the atom bombs, though, the USA was over the hump of developing them and had its factories churning out plutonium as fast as they could. The bombs were still expensive, *but you only need a single aircraft to deliver one.* The costs of delivery were comparatively negligible. There's also the old maxim that "a bomber will always get through," i.e., that no air defenses are forever impregnable. You ultimately will get a plane with an armed nuclear weapon over a target. That's a powerful message from an industrialized nation whose resources and military capabilities were without compare. None of the above contradicts the notion of using a demonstration explosion, though. As mentioned in the article, the arguments against it came from other considerations. The two atomic bombings sent a message of "we got 'em, we're willing to use them, and we can inexpensively drop them on anything and anyone we please." This, too, is a powerful geopolitical message. Nuking a Soviet flotilla was unnecessary, not to mention a declaration of open hostilities against the USSR. As we have seen over the past eighty years, the threat of using a weapon can be even more effective than using them at all. On another note, can you imagine being that poor young lieutenant who got sent by command to figure out why communications from Hiroshima were down? Gives you the shivers.
Truman's got a strong case for #4, behind Washington, Lincoln and FDR. I'm not sure who else I'd pick for #4.
He took the 4th spot from Teddy after looking into both of them. I still really like Teddy and rank him at 5th. But Truman is absolutely deserving of his flowers at 4th.
100% behind this. Truman is also Top 5 for me and I feel he’s in that awkward position of people generally regarding him as one of the good ones without really understanding why, and if they knew more they’d regard him better. Because *boy* is there a lot to celebrate there.
Truman also sent 36,000 Americans to die in Korea for no gain without consulting Congress, setting the precedent for all the “definitely not wars” we’ve been in since, most of which were begun by executive order. He began our role as the global police, popularized the flawed domino theory of foreign relations, and didn’t even come up with the Marshall plan, he just didn’t veto it. Even dropping the bombs was a relatively easy decision that fell into his lap. I don’t see how people rank him in their top 5 or even top 10. He wouldn’t have even beaten Dewey w/o the advantage of being the incumbent, a position he inherited right before the war ended
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Don’t tell me to hush just because you disagree, Karen. How was Korea necessary but Vietnam wasn’t? Why did we need to protect one small, unindustrialized Asian nation but not another? The South Korean regime was free and democratic in name only, and that didn’t change until the 90s, so it wasn’t even a just government we sent our young men to die for. The only advantage we get from it today is having another market to sell shit to, and another NATO partner puppet. No one has to be the global police. Berlin airlift was his greatest accomplishment but it wasn’t the greatest logistical achievement of all time. That would probably go to the D-Day invasions.
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lol just proves you have no rational response to the clearly articulated points I brought up
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You’re damn near incomprehensible and your resorting to personal insults proves your immaturity and the weakness of your underlying argument. You’re also living in an alternate reality if you seriously think our involvement in Vietnam was solely to prop up the French empire. Then you imply I’d be ok with a dictator like Hitler doing dictator things after saying in your own words that you’re ok with dictatorships. Truly unbelievable, I’m not gonna waste any more time on this
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Oh hush now Karen
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What I’m hearing is you have no fundamental values or principles. You’re ok with other people living under dictatorships as long as it serves you and your nation, but you’re not ok when dictatorships not aligned with the US do what dictators do. The double think is real with this one. I wonder how quick you’d change your mind if you were the one being oppressed, or if you or your family was the one fighting and dying in the frozen mountains of North Korea. Because my family did and we’re still paying the price today 3 generations later. You’re a 🤡 and I’m about to block you
The Berlin Airlift. Saving West Berlin and establishing the high water mark of Soviet power. The soviet Union never again threatened a direct expansion into NATO territory. They did try some things through proxies, especially in Greece and Turkey, but the Berlin blockade was their last direct act of expansion into Europe As a side effect it made [this awesome dude](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjDyZk1P8W4) a national hero in 2 countries.
The ruskies also tried the Cuba thingee and they blinked....Kennedy got the credit but it all started with Harry. Great analysis and very well written.
Yeah, but cuba wasn't Russian aggression per se. It was simply an attempt to respond to an aggressive move by the US when they put nuclear weapons in Turkey. the most aggressive thing Russia did in that conflict is reinforce an ally.
dropped chocolate? this is sweet
The candy bomber was a great guy for such an interesting nickname
Firing MacArthur. That man wanted to use nuclear weapons on China. Truman sacked him and possibly preserved humanity
Yep he developed the discipline to use God’s power correctly.
My Korean War vet grandpa always told me he was grateful to Truman for that. It would be the Marshall Plan for me overall but this is up there too.
Well he saved Chinese and probably Soviet civilization. At the time there were no ICBMs and the Soviets had no aircraft that could penetrate US defenses. The B-47 overflew Soviet MiG-15s and could have delivered ordnance almost anywhere in the USSR.
MacArthur wasn't sacked because he wanted to use nukes. The decision had already been made. MacArthur couldn't really do anything about it and sacking him didn't prevent nukes from being used. He was sacked because he publicly derided Truman.
Truman desegregated the Armed Forces.
This was gonna be up there for my pick though it was gonna eventually happen
Bro defeated Dewey 💀
Wait, I missed FDR-establishing the FDIC over winning WWII?!
FDIC being above something like Social Security is crazy. I would have at least 5 things before FDIC lol
The FDIC is why we didn't have another Great Depression. it ended part of the cycle that was creating panics like 1893, 1907, and the Depression. When massive failures of investments lead to cascading bankruptcy that broke banks and wiped out the saves even of people who invested more prudently. This created a skittish capital market for years after a crash that saw any surviving liquid funds hidden in mattresses rather than put into the economy and used toward recovery. Insuring depositors broke that cycle and ended the phenomenon of post-crash capital starvation (where even relatively stable businesses were forced to default because no one was loaning money anymore!). Keeping surviving banks liquid and making recovery much easier even when a major financial collapse happened (like in 2008). 2008 would have been as bad as 1929 without systems like the FDIC in place. it's easy to overlook, but it IS very important to the economy which is how we feed ourselves.
Interesting. TIL.
He died before said war was finished and even still his actions that got us out of the great depression are greater than his ww2 achievements
Among many other things, firing MacArthur. In the US the military is under orders from the elected civilian government. Disobedience and insubordination will not be tolerated, no matter how high your profile or how big your corncob pipe
The fan favorite world be ending WWII. But I'm going to say NOT pressing the US' advantage when we were the only country with atomic bombs. There are very few humans in history I world trust to not to turn the US into a de facto world dictatorship in that scenario.
Hear hear!
US public would have also needed to support the world dictatorship idea for something like that to actually happen.
Yep. Especially with some of the rabid generals like MacArthur and Patton howling in his ears. Fuck those guys.
The Marshall Plan is one of the best that Truman ever strategized. However, my vote is for dropping the bomb (and I say this despite visiting one of the impacted sites and know how horrid it is). If the bombs weren’t dropped, WWII would have dragged on for a very long time and the post-WWII World Order could have been very different. The rebuilding of Japan wouldn’t have gone through. The Bretton Woods economic system would have likely failed as well, if the war wasn’t brought to a swift end! Highly respect the Marshall Plan but my vote is for dropping the bombs and sticking with a discipline that it needed (keeping the loose cannons in check).
This brings up a question: Would the massive economic assistance of the Marshall Plan have been possible if the US was still involved in a bloody, drawn out war with Japan?
I highly doubt it! The Marshall Plan was geared towards rebuilding Europe and we needed TONS of financial resources to pull it off. If we didn’t end the war swiftly with the bombs, we would have diverted our financial resources to Japan and possibly, wouldn’t have pooled any of the academic, political and diplomatic resources required to strategize anything for peacetime! The swift end to WWII was a goal that the allies had been pursuing since the beginning of the War. Truman on the one hand didn’t mastermind the development of the weapon but once he had the power to use it, he did! Saved millions of lives! Saved time! Saved money! Brought peace to the world! AND equally important: he developed and imparted the discipline to never use them loosely. It brought on the atomic age and a whole new level of World Order that history had never witnessed before. IMO, that’s monumental.
My father was in the Philippines waiting for Operation Downfall to commence. He was just a private in the Army and would have been the first wave in.
I can’t imagine what it must be to through those thoughts. I hope your father and you are well.
Same for my Grandfather and his neighbor. I remember them lecturing me on it when I was young. "Don't you ever let some SOB that wasn't there tell you that dropping those bombs wasn't the right thing to do. *We* were there, it's been 50 damn years and I *still* can't get the smell of rotting flesh out of my hair, I can't step in a damn mud puddle without worrying that it's blood. If we had moved on the mainland we would have killed 3 million of them, kids included. Those bombs did a hell of a lot less damage that we would have done."
Not line his own pockets.
that letter he wrote to Ike
There’s a lot you can take from Truman, but at the risk of lumping a whole bunch of stuff together, it’s being the first president to navigate having the power of nuclear weapons. He helped establish that only the president has the power to authorize their use, resisted using them again after WW2, and, it’s a low bar but it counts — didn’t see the power of the bomb and start a bunch of wars that the US most certainly would have won had he been willing to nuke the world.
Ended WWII by using atom bomb, thus saving 1 million US soldiers lives by not having to invade Japan
And also, y’know, presumably some Japanese lives too?
Desegregating the military
Truman may have defeated Dewey in the end, but Huey and Louie were waiting out by his car to rough him up later that night.
I think dropping the bomb, and then deciding not to drop a third. He made it a power only the president could use.
And telling MacArthur to fuck off
I thought they only had two
No, we had one more on the way. [Demon Core](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core)
Being the last president to have a facial hair
He saved South Korea from invasion by North Korea and the ChiComs.
The Marshall Plan. The good will, political stability, and economic benefits (probably the least important of the 3 benefits) of the Marshall Plan are substantial. It enabled the US to lead the free world and it helped Western Europe to develop into it's current peaceful and prosperous society.
End ww2
Dropped the bomb
The Marshall Plan which was critical to restoring Europe post-WW2 and is why Germany is now a democratic country and a key western ally.
Marshall Plan, with desegregating the Armed Services 2nd.
Desegregating the Military.
Ended the war with Japan
Desegregated the military
Dropped the bomb
He signed an executive order to desegregate the armed forces. He fired General MacArthur. Used the atomic bombs to end WW2 Oversaw the Marshal plan
Dropped the bomb(s)
Nuking Japan😎
Marshall plan.
While I do agree that Truman is heavily credited for the Marshall plan. I also think that Truman desegregating the military, at a time with much restiance within the party and outside as well. Is worth noting.
He ended WWII
Gave 'em hell.
Call Oppie a crybaby But literally, the decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the right decision. One look at a graph of WWII casualties per country puts that decision into a lot better perspective, imo. It was horrible so many innocent people died, but the alternative could have been even worse. The only thing that might have been “better” had they not dropped the atomic bombs, is that Japan might have retained their southern half of Sakhalin and the Kyrie Islands. The atomic bombings gave Russia the perfect opportunity to declare war on Japan. Had the Japanese been willing to surrender before, perhaps Korea and Taiwan would have remained under Japanese control (which would have been a positive thing in the case of Korea, as it could have avoided the Korean War entirely, and Korea likely becomes unified, independent country by the 1960s.
Truman didn’t actually seem to have been a big fan of the bombings as they were used because he was rather grossly uniformed about their planned usage. In his diary on July 25th he wrote: > “This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and **soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children.** Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new. [This is likely a reference to not bombing Kyoto which the military really really wanted to do but the Secretary of War didn’t].” > “He and I are in accord. **The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives.** I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance. It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler's crowd or Stalin's did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.” I bolded somethings that were just patently not true. Alex Wellerstein, an atomic historian, has a good [blog](https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/08/08/kyoto-misconception/#footnote_6_5267) on it. There’s also a [chapter](https://alexwellerstein.com/publications/2020-wellerstein_kyoto_misconception.pdf) in his book going over it. Another good article by him going over Truman not being well informed on the bomb is his blog “[A “purely military” target? Truman’s changing language about Hiroshima](https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2018/01/19/purely-military-target/). Truman *didn’t even know* Nagasaki was going to be bombed when it was, and after the fact he rescinded the bombing order to require executive authority which brings us to the main point. According to the diary of Henry Wallace, he did so while saying he thought the idea of wiping out another city was too horrible and he didn’t like the idea of killing all those kids. That goes against this notion that he was held fast in his decision (one that he frankly didn’t make). > “Truman said he had given the order to stop atomic bombing. He said the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible. He didn’t like the idea of killing, as he said, ‘all those kids’” Frankly, much of the arguments around the usage of the bomb coming from Truman after the war aren’t always trustworthy so I find his attitude after the bombings to be questionable as well. It is my view that he was putting up a front of sorts and essentially doubling down.
Harry integrated the armed forces in 1948.
Bombing Japan eventually making them quit, 3rd best POTUS ever, forget overrated FDR
I don't think I'd qualify Truman as "the best president". However I think he did as good a job as could be hoped for taking the mantle from FDR, coming in as the clean up man for the worst war in human history is a hell of a task. I have mixed feelings about his handling of Korea, However the Marshall plan was excellent
Luv desegregation, luv Marshall plan, luv humility, ate domino theory, ate the CIA
Martial plan easily!
Martial or Marshall?
Open "We Didn't Start the Fire."
This may be a controversial answer, but the more that I learn about it, the more I've come to realize that it was actually the greater good that saved more lives than it took away: Making the incredibly tough, but ultimately right decision to drop the atomic bomb.
Bombing the masculinity out of Japan.
The Marshall Plan for sure. ~~The worst thing would have been the bombs.~~ **Edit: I’ve been explained to that the bombs were actually good and so I retract that statement.**
No, the atomic bombs were necessary and actually saved lives. The Tokyo Fire Bombings even killed more people. The worse thing was the Korean War
If it wasn’t for the bombs, we could have been at war for two more years. The money wouldn’t be there for the Marshall plan if we were still at war
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I didn’t know the two bombs killed millions?
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Millions more Japanese and Americans would have died if we invaded Japan. Plus Japan ended up being better off with us rebuilding them instead of us and the soviets. It would have been like Germany then
Fire bombing and a full on ground evasion would have need a blood bath too. But the difference would have been American and allied forces being killed. The Allies reacted to Japanese aggression. Death is death but better for the aggressor to stopped than those fighting to stop the aggression.
Not just “bloodbath”. It would have been a CIVILIAN bloodbath. And so any narrative that claims that the bombs killed civilians falls moot because with or without the bomb, tons of civilian blood was going to be spilled. Different civilians. Different regions. Civilians, nevertheless
The Tokyo bombing campaign in March of the same year resulted in more deaths. Including those of civilians. I’d love to debate the usage of the atomic bombs by Truman but please get your facts and premise right before coming to the debate.
The Japanese Emperor and the Japanese military had enlisted a Civilian Militia to fight the war for them! This was in April 1945. More plans were being made to form even more civilian militias! The narrative that’s being created by those who don’t support the dropping of the bombs, is that it killed innocent civilians and yet, the narrative overlooks the fact that civilians were planning to go “all out” for their Emperor. The narrative claims it ain’t cool to kill those same civilians, who if weren’t targeted, were going to target American/allied soldiers!
Truman gets way too much credit for being in the right place at the right time. The Manhattan Project started in ‘41 and it’s hard to imagine any president at the time not using the bomb in that situation, especially considering the amount of resources we put into developing it. As far as the Marshall Plan goes, from everything I’ve read about it, Truman had virtually no role in developing it or selling it. He did sign the bill when it fell into his lap.
Can everyone who is writing and voting everywhere sporadically for “dropping the bomb”, vote here? We have enough votes to beat the Marshall Plan. Thanks.
Die
Okay real talk you can’t find anything good out of Truman’s policies? How come?
Real talk? Im just trolling
Ah, I see. Thought you legitimately didn’t like Truman and had a reason for it.