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

The Accidental President: Harry Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World, by A. J. Baime, is a political biography of President Harry S. Truman. As the title indicates, it focuses on the months immediately after Truman unexpectedly assumed the presidency in April 1945, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) died soon into his fourth term. The book was published in 2017, and in some respects marks a sequel to Baime’s 2014 work The Arsenal of Democracy, which focused on Roosevelt’s presidency and the efforts to prepare the United States for entry into the war. Baime later revisited Truman in the 2020 audiobook Dewey Defeats Truman, the story of the 1948 election between Truman and New York Governor Thomas Dewey (referencing a famous Chicago Tribune headline that mistakenly called the election for Dewey). The Accidental Presidency can thus be seen as a middle chapter in a trilogy of books, but it is also designed to be accessible as a stand-alone volume. The book received widespread praise from journalists, other biographers, and Truman’s own family, and it has become one of the most popular Truman biographies in decades.

This summary is based on the Kindle edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide contain descriptions of racism and violence, specifically wartime atrocities. The source material contains racist language in direct quotes, which is referenced but not reproduced in the guide.

Summary

The book begins on April 12, 1945, the day that FDR died and Truman took over as 33rd president of the United States. Truman had only assumed the vice presidency that previous January, and FDR mostly kept him at arm’s length at a critical moment in history. The US had entered World War II four years before, after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in September 1941, and now the tide of war was finally turning. Victory against the Axis powers was all but inevitable, as B-29 bombers were incinerating Japanese cities and Western forces poured into Germany from the West as their Soviet allies came into the east. But there were troubling signs of discord among the Allied powers. Under the dictatorship of Josef Stalin, the Soviet Union was liberating territory from Nazi Germany only to impose their own communist puppet governments, seemingly in violation of terms agreed between the “Big Three” leaders—FDR, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Stalin—earlier that year. The fate of Poland in particular proved a sticking point in negotiations, as the Western powers insisted on more democratic representation, while Stalin argued that only communists had popular legitimacy and were free from Nazi influences. Roosevelt was deeply hopeful that the wartime alliance would continue into the peace, lest the world once again succumb to war, but he would not live long enough to decide whether to continue his more conciliatory approach or experiment with a more confrontational one. He passed away while on vacation in Warm Springs, Georgia, and his staff rushed to find Truman, who was drinking whiskey in the office of the Speaker of the House when he received an immediate summons to the White House. If Truman was stunned to hear the news, his wife Bess was devastated, and when the cameras captured him taking the oath of office, she stands next to him with an expression of utter horror. FDR’s presidency had been so long and so influential that Truman had an extremely difficult act to follow, especially when few knew anything about him.

Part 2 describes Truman’s background and the path that led him to the White House. Truman grew up as a farm boy in Missouri, volunteering for the artillery in World War I, before returning home to run a series of businesses, most of which were not successful. After marrying his longtime sweetheart, Bess Wallace (they would have one daughter, Margaret) Truman struck up a friendship with the brother of the local Democratic machine boss, Tom Pendergast, and began his political career as a county judge. He proved capable enough in this position to run for Senate in 1934, with his victory largely credited to the influence of the Pendergasts. Truman won the respect of his Senate colleagues for his joviality, hard work, and honesty. When FDR put out feelers for a new vice presidential candidate in 1944, Truman emerged as a dark horse candidate and, to his surprise, secured the nomination.

Part 3 then finds Truman as president, adjusting to the immense rigors of the office and the skepticism of many around him (including Bess) regarding his fitness for the job. In addition to leading the public mourning for his predecessor, Truman had three principal tasks: transitioning the economy from its wartime footing, managing the relationship with the Soviet Union, and overseeing the potential development of an atomic bomb that would dramatically change the course of the war and world history. The book spends far more time on the latter two, discussing the ongoing San Francisco Conference for the United States, where the victorious powers designed an organization they hoped would help maintain peace and security, as well as Truman’s plans for another conference to discuss lingering postwar concerns. As the bomb becomes more and more of a technological possibility, it raises the moral question of whether to use it—there was little thought regarding the killing of Japanese civilians, but there were concerns that the bomb would unleash a terrifying arms race and end the chance of cooperation between the US and the USSR. Truman sought another postwar conference with Stalin and Churchill, which occurred in the neighborhood of Potsdam in Berlin in July 1945. The Conference made little headway on the main issues dividing the West from the Soviet Union, especially after Churchill lost his bid for reelection and was replaced as UK Prime Minister by Clement Atlee. They did agree on a demand of unconditional surrender from Japan, and the Soviet Union agreed to enter the Pacific War if Japan were to reject that demand. However, the use of atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prompted Japan to surrender, obviating the need for Soviet participation. Truman was exultant and highly popular at the end of the war, but the rest of his presidency would prove to be an even more formidable challenge than his very eventful first four months.