On April 12, 1945, Harry S. Truman was tucking into a bourbon and water in the Senate Cloakroom when he was interrupted by a phone call. It was Roosevelt’s press secretary, who asked Truman to join him as “quickly and quietly” as possible at the White House. “Jesus Christ and General Jackson,” the vice president cussed as he sprinted over. There, his suspicions were confirmed: FDR was dead. Now Harry Truman—son of a mule trader, a failed haberdasher, and a small-town Democrat from Independence, Missouri—was the most powerful man in the world.
Finding Eleanor Roosevelt in her sitting room, he asked, “Is there anything I can do for you?” She looked him in the eye, and replied, “Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.”
Truman hastily withdrew and canceled his weekly poker game. “I guess the party’s off,” he said to his pals.
As VP Truman had only met with FDR twice, and now he would preside during some of the most harrowing and eventful years of the twentieth century. “Being President is like riding a tiger,” he said. “You have to keep riding or be swallowed.”
On May 8, 1945, he celebrated his sixty-first birthday, spent his first full day in the White House, and learned the Germans had signed an unconditional surrender. In July, he represented the United States at the final Big Three summit in Potsdam, Germany, and debated thorny questions about the future of Europe. Then, on August 6, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay released the uranium-235 atomic bomb Little Boy over Hiroshima, Japan, incinerating the city. Three days later, Americans dropped the plutonium-cored bomb Fat Man on Nagasaki, and Stalin sent a million Russian soldiers into Manchuria. On August 14, Japan surrendered.
World War II, the most destructive conflagration in history, was finally over.
In Washington, half a million people “celebrated the winning of the war with a screaming, drinking, paper-tearing, free-kissing demonstration which combined all the features of New Years’ Eve and Mardi Gras,” Yank magazine reported. “Every girl was fair game, and rank was no obstacle….The number of bottles which were passed freely among strangers would have startled anyone.”
President Truman found himself in “a dizzy whirl” but looked forward to the challenge. His wife, Bess, however, confided, “I just dread moving” into the White House. They had met in sixth grade in Independence, Missouri, married in 1919, and had a daughter, Margaret. Bess coveted the anonymity that allowed her to drive her own car and shop for her own food. Suddenly thrust into First Ladyhood, she disliked being compared to Eleanor Roosevelt and had zero interest in the limelight. But the press clamored for information, demanding to know if she’d host parties and what she would wear.
“I’m not the one elected. I have nothing to say to the public,” she said. “Tell ’em it’s none of their damn business.” The message went out: “Mrs. Truman hasn’t quite made up her mind yet.”
Bess had a cool, skeptical temperament that counterbalanced Harry’s folksy charm and quick temper. She was a wise political counselor and played a vital, if largely unacknowledged, role in his career. “Although it went unsuspected by nearly everybody…Bess Truman entered into nearly every decision the president made,” the chief usher, J. B. West, wrote. “She probably had more influence on political decisions than Mrs. Roosevelt had on social issues.” He appreciated Mrs. Truman’s “dry, laconic, incisive and very funny wit….If you weren’t looking for one raised eyebrow, one downturned corner of her mouth, you might miss the joke entirely.”
The staff wagered on whether Bess was calm (“she’s wearing one gun this morning”) or moody (“both guns smoking”). And it didn’t take her long to collide with Henrietta Nesbitt. A good home cook who was fond of soft, warm biscuits, Bess objected to the hard, cold rolls she was served. When the housekeeper assured her the biscuits were home baked, Bess tartly replied, “I believe I know the difference.” It took President Truman’s personal intervention to ensure that his wife’s biscuit recipe was used by the White House kitchen.
Mrs. Nesbitt—whom Margaret Truman called “the Roosevelts’ tyrannical housekeeper”—continued to serve a farrago of tongue, rutabagas, canned stringed beans, and other thrifty menu items that annoyed the Trumans. When Mrs. Nesbitt served Brussels sprouts, the president pushed them aside. When she served them again, she said, “This is how Mrs. Roosevelt did things.” Bess’s ire finally boiled over the day she asked for a stick of butter to take to a potluck. “Oh, no, we can’t let any of our butter go,” wailed Mrs. Nesbitt. “We’ve used up almost all of this month’s ration stamps.” Bess turned to Harry and said, “It’s time to find a new housekeeper.”
The way Mrs. Nesbitt told it, she loyally stuck to her post “until the Trumans got settled,” before deciding to move on. Others said she was fired for insolence.
Mary Sharpe, an assistant housekeeper, took her place. The First Lady approved of Sharpe’s cleanliness almost as much as her wit. One Thanksgiving, Bess announced she wanted to celebrate with a quiet family gathering and “a good traditional menu.” When the press inundated her with dopey questions—“what is Mrs. Truman’s recipe for stuffing?”; “does the President like light or dark meat?”—Bess deputized Sharpe to answer for her. In asking how the presidential turkey would be dispatched, a journalist noted, “In some countries they pour whiskey down the turkey’s throat to make it tender.” Not missing a beat, Sharpe replied, “We pour whiskey down the guests’ throats, and they just think the turkey is tender!” Bess roared with approval.
A spry five feet seven, Harry Truman identified as “a meat and potatoes man.” He kept a high-protein, low-calorie diet, consumed “no butter, no sugar, no sweets” and used a rigorous exercise regime to stay one step ahead of the tiger. “A man in my position has a public duty to keep himself in good condition,” he declared. “You can’t be mentally fit unless you’re physically fit.”
He rose at 5:30 every morning and took a brisk two-mile walk. Then he swam laps in the White House pool (installed by FDR), proceeded to the rowing and exercise machines, took a sauna, and then dived back into the pool. Finally, he’d administer himself a one-ounce shot of bourbon, a treatment that men of his generation considered a good way to “get the engine going.”
Bess Truman never fully accommodated herself to life in the White House fishbowl. She had opposed Harry becoming president, and felt “superfluous” when he didn’t consult her on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. She harbored a “smoldering anger,” Margaret wrote, which resulted in an “emotional separation.” Every June, Bess would flee home to Missouri, with her mother and her mother’s Black cook, Vietta Garr (both of whom lived in the White House). After Margaret graduated from college in 1946, she joined Bess in Independence. This left Harry alone in Washington for weeks. Never tempted by other women, he found himself rattling around the mansion. “Never so lonesome in my life,” he scribbled on New Year’s Day 1947 like a mopey teenager.
Truman kept an informal style, but the tradition-bound staff insisted that dinner be served by two tuxedo-clad butlers. Harry played along, but was amused by the ritual:
Had dinner by myself tonight….A butler came in very formally and said, “Mr. President, dinner is served.”…Barnett in tails and white tie pulls out my chair, pushes me up to the table. John in tails and white tie brings me a fruit cup. Barnett takes away the empty cup. John brings me a plate, Barnett brings me a tenderloin. John brings me asparagus, Barnett brings me carrots and beets. I have to eat alone and in silence in a candlelit room. I ring. Barnett takes the plates and the butter plates. John comes in with a napkin and silver crumb tray—there are no crumbs but John has to brush them off the table anyway. Barnett brings me a plate with a finger bowl and doily and John puts a glass saucer and a little bowl on the plate. Barnett brings me some chocolate custard. John brings me a demitasse (at home a little cup of coffee—about two good gulps) and my dinner is over. I take a hand bath in the finger bowl and go back to work. What a life!
At night, the old house creaked and groaned, and the clocks whirred and chimed. No porters or Secret Service men were posted then, and Truman swore he heard ghosts knocking on the door, roaming the corridors, and rummaging through his belongings. “Damn place is haunted sure as shootin’,” he wrote to Bess.
True or not, the Executive Mansion was something of a haunted house. Once again it had suffered from benign neglect, as many of the structure’s load-bearing walls had been removed in stopgap renovations over the years. The structure had become a rickety firetrap, “staying up from force of habit only,” Truman was informed. One day in 1947, the president was taking a bath on the second floor, where the floor “sagged and moved like a ship at sea,” he noted. Directly below him, Bess was hosting a tea for the Daughters of the American Revolution in the Blue Room. When she noticed a large chandelier wavering, the ladies scattered, and the president joked that they had almost witnessed him dropping through the ceiling, as naked as a baby. A few months later, Margaret’s piano sunk a hole through the floor of the First Family’s private quarters.
Before Truman could undertake a renovation, though, he had an election to worry about. In November 1948, the underdog Truman surprised the nation—especially the Chicago Tribune editors who ran the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman”—by defeating Thomas Dewey, the Republican governor of New York, in one of the greatest electoral upsets in American history.
With that essential business out of the way, Truman turned his attention to saving the Executive Mansion. The building was in such bad shape, he was told, that the most expedient approach was to simply build a new White House. But Truman, a self-described American history buff and “architectural nut,” rejected the idea in favor of carefully removing everything from the building’s interior, excavating the basement, pouring a new concrete foundation, erecting a new “skyscraper-strength” skeleton of steel beams, and reinforcing the original sandstone walls. The job took nearly two years and cost some $5.7 million (nearly $53 million today).
When the First Family moved into the revamped White House on March 27, 1952, the building looked almost identical to the original, but was in fact larger, stronger, and more efficient—as if someone had built “a modern office inside a deserted castle,” in the words of John Hersey. The 62 rooms, fourteen baths, and one elevator in 1949 had been expanded to 132 rooms, twenty baths (with showers), five elevators, twenty-nine fireplaces, and two new subbasement service areas, including a bomb shelter. The family quarters in the Executive Residence included 54 rooms and sixteen baths. On the ground floor, the kitchen was outfitted with new appliances; on the second floor, Truman controversially added a balcony behind the portico (purists worried that it disrupted the classical lines of the south facade); the third floor was expanded and a new solarium replaced an old one, affording sweeping views over memorials, the Potomac River, and the Virginia hills. It was the most complete renovation of the White House, which remains essentially the same today.
Most historians agree the Cold War began in the spring of 1947, with the announcement of the Truman Doctrine to curb Soviet expansionism. Europe remained a shambles. Millions of people had been displaced or killed, and the landscape was wrecked. Food—the lack of it, the difficulty of transporting it, and the growing need for it—was an emergency.
Echoing Wilson and Hoover, Truman asked Americans to voluntarily ration their meals in order to send food to the Allies. Founding the Citizens Food Committee, he aimed to send 100 million bushels of American grain to Europe and brought back Meatless Tuesdays and Eggless Thursdays, restricted beer and alcohol production (which require grain), and distributed recipes for dishes such as baked canned salmon topped with crushed potato chips. In solidarity, the First Couple canceled all state dinners for the 1947–48 season. But once again, an idealistic food conservation program broke down in the face of human nature and was quietly shelved.
It was then, in June 1948, that Soviet troops blockaded Berlin, which lay a hundred miles inside their occupied zone in Germany. West Berlin had only enough food to last thirty-six days and was defended by just a few thousand Allied troops. With some 1.5 million soldiers around the city, the Soviets threatened to attack. The United States hinted it would retaliate with atomic bombs. In truth, neither side wanted to start a third world war. But to prevent a crisis, five thousand tons of food would need to reach the city every day. All ground routes were sealed off, and it seemed nearly impossible. But flight paths were clear.
Truman launched Operation Vittles, in which unarmed American and British cargo planes began to fly staples such as milk, flour, baking powder, salt, medicines, coal—and twenty-one tons of candy for children—into West Berlin. Soon, flights were landing there every thirty seconds to deliver 5,000 to 8,000 tons of cargo a day. By the time the Soviet blockade lifted in May 1949, some 278,000 flights had delivered more than 2.3 million tons of food and coal. Dubbed the Berlin Airlift, the operation was one of the West’s most significant humanitarian efforts, and propaganda coups, of the Cold War.
At 9:20 on Saturday evening, June 24, 1950, Harry S. Truman was at home in Missouri when 90,000 North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel in a surprise invasion of South Korea. Fearing World War III, the president rushed back to Washington the next day, for an emergency meeting. It was four o’clock Sunday afternoon when he called to alert the White House staff he was inbound and asked for cocktails and dinner to be served to his war cabinet at Blair House (the president’s guest house, where the Trumans were living during the White House renovation).
Most of the staff had scattered for the weekend. Rushing around Washington in a cab, the chief butler, Alonzo Fields, bought supplies and implored the D.C. police to help round up his cooks and assistants. As the president and thirteen advisers had drinks in the Blair House garden, Fields busied himself making canapés and the staff began to trickle in. By 8:15 they had produced a meal of Truman’s favorite comfort food: fried chicken breast served with currant jelly and cream gravy; shoestring potatoes; buttered asparagus; scalloped tomatoes; hot biscuits; and vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce. In that tense moment, recalled Secretary of State Dean Acheson, the food was “especially excellent.” After dinner, Truman and his advisers huddled over drinks at a long mahogany table, mapping out a strategy for the Korean War.
Contemplating his prospects for the 1952 election, Truman benched himself. Bess wanted to return to Missouri, and Harry found that riding the presidential tiger was exhausting. Scouring a list of potential successors, his eye alighted on General Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower. Though Ike was a Republican, the idea wasn’t totally crazy. In June 1945, Truman had dispatched his executive plane, a Douglas VC-54C Skymaster he called the Sacred Cow, to pluck General Eisenhower from Germany and bring him to Washington. The five-star general was given a hero’s welcome. Just off the front lines, the bald, gap-toothed warrior nodded—stiffly at first and then with growing ease—at the crowd’s thunderous applause.
At a raucous lunch, 1,100 Washingtonians squeezed into the Statler Hotel, where Ike feasted on baked chicken, sipped a Coca-Cola, and enjoyed two giant cakes topped by ice sculptures—one of a bald eagle, the other of a four-engine bomber. That night Truman and Ike dined at the White House and bonded over their midwestern roots in Missouri and Kansas. Truman knew what the general would be hankering for: a home-cooked meal. The dinner was overseen by Bess and Vietta Garr and featured a cornucopia of down-home foods, including corn on the cob, perhaps a country ham, and Ozark apple pudding. Harry and Ike dug in like two farmhands at a “simple and homey…community supper in Missouri,” said an aide.
In 1950, Truman named Eisenhower the commander of NATO forces and two years later urged the general to run as a Democrat. But Ike remained a Republican and defeated the Democratic governor of Illinois, Adlai E. Stevenson. Tensions flared between Truman and Eisenhower, and at Ike’s inauguration the two got into a spat over protocol: what sort of hat to wear (Truman favored a top hat; Eisenhower insisted on a homburg); where they should officially greet, inside or outside the White House; who would sit where on their drive to the Capitol. The goodwill they had created over sweet Ozark apple pudding had soured, irreparably.