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Besides the Korean war, Truman had also to face other problems in 1951 and 1952. The so-called "McCarthyism", anti-communistic paranoia was steadily growing, and in April 1952, another nationwide strike was organized, this time by the steel-millers. Since the steel-production was essential for the war, Truman decided to simple seize the steel-mills. The public opinion heavily criticized this method and he was sued for it by the union. The Supreme Court declared, that the seizure had been illegal, and the strikes went on for 7 weeks. The country lost 21million tons of steel and nearly 400$ million wages until Truman gave in and negotiated with the union. Just like after the MacArthur-case his reputation suffered heavily and he decided not to run for another term. Although his diaries prove, that he really never intended to run for a 3rd term, it's also most unlikely that he would have won against Eisenhower who this decided to run, yet not for the Democrats but for the Republicans.
Truman spent his last month in office trying to get his heath insurance program through the Congress, but he failed. He also tried to push the democratic candidate Stevenson, but against Eisenhower, there was not much chance to win, since Eisenhower suddenly started attacks on Marshall and Truman, blaming than for having betrayed the country. In the end, Eisenhower won overwhelmingly by winning in 39 of 48 states including Truman's homeland Missouri.
Truman popularity was still around 30-35% when he left office and he noticed in his diary:
" I wonder how far Moses would have gone if he'd taken a poll in Egypt? It isn't the polls or public opinion of the moment that counts. It's right or wrong."
Thursday, January 15, 1953 Harry Truman held his farewell address to the nation.
It was a good speech without rhetorical flourishes or memorable epigrams, clear, simple and often personal - very typical for Harry Truman.
He summarized brief his first month as President, his sudden replacement of Roosevelt, the German surrender, the Potsdam conference, the Manhattan Project, Hiroshima... no President in history had had to face so many important decisions so quickly or with so little preparation. But it was his job to make decision. Yet it was not for the decisions of his first months in office that he would be remembered.
"I suppose that history will remember my tern in office as the years when the Cold War began to overshadow our lives. I have had hardly a day in office that has not been dominated by this all-embracing struggle. [...] And always in the background there has been the atomic bomb.
But when history says that my term of office saw the beginning of the Cold War, it will also say that in those eight years we have set the course that can win it."
He explained that Korea had been a test, like the Nazi takeover in Austria or the Japanese aggression in Manchuria had been, with the only difference that "this time we've met the test".
Then he made an astonishing precise prophecy concerning the fate of communism:
"As the free world grows stronger, more united, more attractive to men on both-sides of the Iron Curtain [...]there will have to come a time of change in the Soviet world. Nobody can say for sure, when this is going to be, or exactly how it will come about, whether by revolution, or trouble in the satellite states, or by a change inside the Kremlin. [...] I have a deep and abiding faith in the destiny of free men. With patience and courage, we shall some day move on into a new era."
So, this day, Harry S. Truman became a plain citizen again.
The next years, Truman enjoyed being free to move again, and fulfilled himself a lot of dreams. He traveled trough Europe with his wife Bess, he built the "Harry Truman library", he wrote his own memoirs. For the next decades, he always remained in touch with Churchill and Acheson, but also with the Democratic party itself. He died on December 26, 1972 of lung congestion, after a struggle that had lasted for weeks. The next day he was buried in the garden of the "Truman library".
"He was not a hero or magician or a chess player, or an obsession. He was a certifiable member of the human race, direct, fallible, and unexpectedly wise when it counted." wrote Mary McGrory in the Washington Star the next day.
I think, this description fits good. Truman was in some terms typically American, he made strong decisions, and thought in categories of right and wrong. He had faith in his country and believed, that everyone else in the country was as proud as him to live in this great Republic. Truman may have come from a farm, but he was nevertheless very well educated and open minded. Although he had come from the South, he was far more liberal and active on civil rights than some of his democratic colleagues from the North.
His presidency had brought a lot of achievements to the USA and to the World. He stabilized the US economy and prevented another great depression, he fought communism to the last but he managed no to get into another world war. Without Truman's insistence of rebuilding Europe it would have probably fallen to communism. Without Truman, the atomic bomb might have become a conventional weapon, and without him, the WW3 might have come reality. A lot of Americans blame Truman for the Korea War, but in fact, there was no real alternative to it. Truman might not have been another Roosevelt, but in my personal opinion, the world of the nuclear era, would have had no use for another Roosevelt. It needed a man who carefully but fast prepared himself for his decisions and who could learn fast from his failures. It needed a man, who had strong principles, and who was willed to stand for them.
This man was Harry S. Truman.
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