Mark Malcomson
Truman: The Challenges of the Post-War World
Summary
No president has ever inherited such daunting foreign policy challenges as Harry Truman. With relatively limited experience in this area, he was faced with some of the most difficult issues in U.S. history. This lecture takes a look at how Truman responded in these situations.
Mark Malcomson
Mark Malcomson has been principal of City Lit since 2011. Previously, he was the Director of Executive Education at London Business School and president of the New York Institute of Finance. He possesses a bachelor of laws from the University of Edinburgh; a diploma in legal practice from the University of Strathclyde; and a masters in international relations from the University of Kent. Mark was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to adult education.
It’s interesting, Ralph. Given the response and the genuine surprise when FDR died, I think people knew he wasn’t well, but I think that subconsciously, they just thought he’s tired. I think certainly, the campaign that was run in 1944, they really covered it up. He stayed running the war from the White House, Truman did a lot of the campaigning. And I don’t think people really understood the nature of just how ill he was. And a sense is, he had probably given, he’d dealt with the great recession, depression, and the second World War, is 12 years. Had he been in full health and had he not had the health issues he had, I think that would’ve been enough for anybody. So, I don’t think it’s surprising.
To be honest, to pick Truman as the vice president, I said this in the other lecture I did, I think part of it was he was the one with least enemies. Every other one of the leading candidates, and Truman, I don’t think was a leading candidate going into that choice, had people in the party that really didn’t want them to become vice president, and therefore heir apparent. And Truman, I think was very much a compromise, and got the role because he was considered to be solid, dependable, reliable, very clear, he was very pro FDRs agenda. And he wasn’t all the other ones, I think literally everybody else else was crossed out and Truman became the kind of last man standing in a way.
I think to get the message over to the Japanese government and the Japanese public of the sheer enormity of the weapons. That is a very good question, but I think it was one of those things, he wanted to make it very clear that this was a game changing weapon. And had it been on a small island off the coast of Japan where the military were, it wouldn’t have had that same effect. Whether I agree with that or not is completely different, but I think it was a shock and awe thing to bring the Japanese to surrender.
He did both, he kept Truman’s cabinet in place, sorry, FDR’s cabinet in place straight away. And then, bit by bit he replaced when vacancies came. He fired some, I have to say, really when he won election in his own right, he appointed his own cabinet of his own men, and it was nowhere near as good. His second cabinet was lacklustre and, to be honest, caused him a lot of the problems, particularly as I said around, you know, not corruption on a massive scale, but just more about the challenges of just not being very good. There were a number of appointments that were distinctly substandard. I think, sorry, I’m kind of blurring a bit now.