The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of racism and violence, specifically wartime atrocities.

On his first full day as president, Truman noticed the massive expansion of his security detail and feared he would no longer have the casual social gatherings he had long enjoyed. The Oval Office still very much bore the imprint of FDR, and everyone wondered how Truman would measure up, as well as how Bess would succeed the incredibly influential Eleanor Roosevelt. Truman’s good friend Eddie McKim found himself intimidated in the company of the president, and Truman realized “this was how it was going to be from now on” (118). Truman was the seventh president to inherit the office upon the death of a predecessor, but he did so at a time when the nation, and its chief executive, wielded extraordinary power. The US had a massive and fully mobilized military, and American manufacturing accounted for roughly half the output of the entire world. The military and civilian leadership Truman inherited from Roosevelt advised the new president to meet with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill as soon as possible; with Nazi Germany on the brink of defeat, plans were now in the works for a ground invasion of the Japanese home islands.