Visiting the Harry S. Truman Presidential Museum:
Back onto the main floor, Tyson and I embarked on the linear path through Truman’s administration, starting with the country elbow-deep in the most widespread war the world has ever known. Quite the kickoff, really. The exhibit was mostly old newspapers stretched out and enhanced and back lit for easy-reading access, if one had the time. Yes, most of the papers were dominated by headlines such as, “V-E Day,” “Second Atomic Bombing” and “Japan Surrenders,” but the small articles kept me far more busy. Unexplainably, it was simply impossible to find the birth announcement of Helen Mirren.
Immediately following the newspapers, there was a dark room—actually the whole building had rather soft, or non-existent, lighting—dedicated to the “Decision to Drop the Bomb.” Now I haven’t been to many presidential museums, but I doubt any of the buildings were built to tarnish, scold or unabashedly deride a President’s legacy; and I think that is a problem and a notion that should be fleshed out some other time. As one would expect, for this moment, the museum’s audio clips and presented data took the stance that Truman’s decision was courageous.
However, there was also an admission that one can only be courageous if there is controversy. If dropping the atomic bombs on Japan was obviously the right thing to do, nobody would care Truman made the decision. Not shielding the reality of 1945, the museum also acknowledged racist propaganda in this section and the possible influence it had Americans. What I really appreciated though was the book and pen at a counter asking museum patrons what they thought about the decision to drop the A-bombs. Flipping through the pages, some people were with Truman but most were just signing their names or making shout-outs. There were a couple of doodles, notations and even short essays, but nothing more graphic than a G-rated bathroom stall.
After that, we led ourselves into post-war America, an exhibit of vintage televisions, vintage refrigerators and vintage cardboard cut outs. It seems even presidential museums can’t escape the public’s insatiable demand for 3-D attractions (“It’s like they’re coming right at me!”). Nearby, I wandered into what I assumed was a dedication to Truman’s love for Halloween. The whole next hallway was creepy, with wind sound effects, darker than usual lights, carefully cut ruins, shadows and manufactured despair. I entirely expected a skeleton on a spring to be launched out of a plastic coffin.
-What is this, a haunted house, I sneered out loud.
-It’s post-war Europe, said Tyson.
-Whoops.
Yeah. Kind of bleak. I guess it was necessary to set the stage though for the Cold War origins in the next, much larger, brighter, room. The Cold War gallery had, among other stuff, a nine-screen video display that chopped up archival footage with well-choreographed, editing craft. The Berlin Airlift, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and formation of NATO and the UN are given appropriate weight and credit, including a whole bunch of mini airplanes hanging overhead. Disappointingly, the mini airplanes were just models and not the actual airplanes Truman tried to have airmen fly to Europe.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any exhibits or displays regarding the declassified report NSC-68—the 58-page memo that unnecessarily escalated the Cold War to an apocalyptic discussion. In short, NSC-68 advocated “a policy of calculated and gradual coercion,” a proposed effort to militarily contain both the USSR and the spread of communism worldwide. According the report, its writers and some of its readers, civilization itself was at risk if the Soviet Union was allowed its buffer zones and satellite states. In actuality, the Soviet Union never had the means to launch proper invasions into anywhere they didn’t already have their feet during WWII, nor did they really possess much ambition, what with struggling with their own starving neighborhoods and all. Ultimately, NSC-68 set the stage for the next forty years of American international politics, including (but not limited to) supporting totalitarian, military chieftains who snubbed, or executed, communists or just people they didn’t like and could call communists.
The museum noted the Potsdam Conference, the last meeting between the major Allied forces before the close of the war, but I believe they underplayed the real-life drama of the situation. During the conference, British PM (and anecdotal wizard) Winston Churchill found out that he lost the general election and was replaced by Clement Attlee. This was largely a result from Churchill calling Joseph Stalin a tyrant and proposing that the UK and US invade Russia after defeating Nazi Germany. Yes, people were willing to accept Stalin was a murderous dictator who desperately tried to ally himself with Hitler only a few years earlier, but the British people, and world in general, were just warred-out. On the American side, Truman had ascended to the presidency only months earlier (becoming the first American president not named FDR in over 12 years) and just earlier that week found out about the successful testing of a nuclear bomb in New Mexico.
During the negotiations, Truman told Stalin that America had “a new weapon of unusually destructive force.” Baffling, and even disturbing, President Truman, Stalin appeared disinterested. Though Truman was immediately suspicious, it would take several more years to discover that Stalin had successfully planted Russian spies in the Manhattan Project and, in all real likelihood, knew more about the atomic bombs than President Truman himself.
Still within international affairs, though in a separate exhibit, was the opportunity to explore Truman’s decision to recognize Israel. Like several of the other exhibits up to this point, the display was a detailing of the controversy, though unlike the others, this was a controversy I was only marginally aware existed. I am aware of the contemporary conflict between Israel and Palestine, but I was not aware that Truman’s own administration was divided so sharply; specifically, that George S. Marshall (of the famed Marshall Plan) promised he would never vote for Truman again if America recognized the nation of Israel. Marshall’s thinking was that recognizing Israel meant risking America’s access to Middle Eastern oil reserves and the calamitous results of paying 50 cents per gallon. While America eventually recognized and defended Israel, several Arab countries didn’t. And many still don’t seem comforted that most Americans cannot actually recognize Israel on a world map.
But between Israel, the escalating Cold War, Civil Rights battles and a lulling post-war economy, Truman seemed destined to go down as a one-term president. Any other election result would be the political upset of the century.
Next week on Past Times: The Political Upset of the Century.
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