An engaging new biography of the transition of power between FDR and Truman

From Franklin Roosevelt’s final days through Harry Truman’s extraordinary transformation, this is the enthralling story behind the most consequential presidential transition in US history.

When Roosevelt, in failing health, decided to run for a fourth term, he gave in to the big city Democratic bosses and reluctantly picked Senator Truman as his vice president, a man he barely knew. Upon FDR’s death in April 1945, Truman, after only 82 days as VP, was thrust into the presidency. Utterly unprepared, he faced the collapse of Germany, a Europe in ruins, the organization of the UN, a summit with Stalin and Churchill, and the question of whether atomic bombs would be ready for use against Japan. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was growing increasingly hostile towards US power. Truman inherited FDR’s hope that peace could be maintained through cooperation with the Soviets, but he would soon learn that imitating his predecessor would lead only to missteps and controversy.

Spanning the years of transition, 1944 to 1948, Ascent to Power illuminates Truman’s struggles to emerge as president in his own right. Yet, from a relatively unknown Missouri senator to the most powerful man on Earth, Truman’s legacy transcends. With his come-from-behind campaign in the fall of 1948, his courageous civil rights advocacy, and his role in liberating millions from militarist governments and brutal occupations, Truman’s decisions during these pivotal years changed the course of the world in ways so significant we live with them today.

I seem to be reading an awful lot of books about the early Cold War years, recently. (Only partly for work.) Many of them have felt rather familiar, taking the same or similar approaches to those momentous years and events. David L. Roll’s new history of the transition from FDR to Truman offers something a little bit different, I think. It is an engaging, well-written and well-researched account of one of the most significant administrative changes, focusing on the changes between the two presidents and administrations. A satisfying read.

Ascent to Power “focuses on the transition — the long shadow cast by the dead president, Truman’s struggle to emerge, and how decisions during the years of transition, 1944 through 1948, impacted the people’s who survived the sword.” This may not sound like an original approach to the topic, but Roll’s approach ends up offering a considerable amount of original (at least, new to me) content and analysis. Not only that, he presents the history in accessible, well-crafted prose. Given the incredible range of books that have been published about this period of history, rather than walking through each issue and event, I’m going to focus on what I thought made Roll’s book stand out from the rest.

I particularly liked the early chapters that focused on the differences between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Truman. Roll also does a very good job of setting the scene and establishing the context of the transition, which “was not smooth”: FDR had been president for 12 years, and many Americans “distrusted and ridiculed” the “scrappy… folksy” Truman, who was so different to the patrician, refined, and, well, presidential Roosevelt. Truman was seen as a failed businessman (true) and a machine politician (associated with Kansas’s Pendergast, who was indeed his political patron). Ascent to Power examines not only the foreign policy events and issues of the time, but also the domestic political environment, and the personal impact of Truman’s sudden rise to the presidency.

The way Roll used and compared Truman’s memoirs and the contemporaneous papers (diaries, letters, memos, and so forth.), as well as papers of others, was particularly effective. The author offers some editorializing, but doesn’t prescribe his opinion or reading. The framing of seemingly contradictory opinions or memories from Truman are not presented as indictments, nor as examples of Truman lying.

With a veiled reference to the president’s precarious health, an open secret in Washington, he wrote that “1600 Pennsylvania is a nice address but I’d rather not move in through the back door—or any other door at [age] sixty.”

Here’s an example, which seems particularly apt given the success of Oppenheimer at the box office and on the awards circuit. (Side note: it is an excellent movie, and certainly earned all of its accolades.) Roll reserves some concern and criticism for Truman’s claim, in his memoirs, that he was unaware of the Manhattan Project and atomic bomb prior to being sworn in. As Roll points out, convincingly, Truman’s work on his eponymous Committee (formed in 1941, when he was a senator) must have made him very much aware of the Project. What’s not clear, from Roll’s account, is how much Truman knew about what Oppenheimer et al were actually trying to build or achieve. It’s possible he didn’t know much beyond the fact of its existence, and that the scientists were working on a “gadget” of, as Stimson supposedly informed Truman on the first day of his presidency, “almost unbelievable destructive power”.

On the subject of the transition, Roll digs into the mistakes made by both presidents. For example, despite the contents of a “jaw-dropping memo that was suppressed until 2007,” in which FDR’s personal physician informed him that it was unlikely that the president would be able to complete another four-year term (due to the high probability of suffering heart failure), Roosevelt didn’t do much preparation in that regard. He made, Roll tells us, “made no effort to bring [Truman] up to speed on current foreign relations and domestic issues”, and seems to have been a little checked out when it came to picking Truman in the first place. At the same time, Truman didn’t “insist on being informed by FDR or his staff” about the issues that would most likely dominate his presidency, should he ascend to the office.

“As vice president, Truman did not try to recruit experienced advisers or initiate a relationship with an outside foreign policy expert. As to Roosevelt’s plans for the future, all Truman inherited was the unrealistic hope that he could achieve lasting peace by perpetuating his predecessor’s apparent policy of cooperation and accommodation with the Soviet Union. If FDR actually had a vision for the postwar recovery of Europe and Japan, a stable China, and the conversion of the U.S. to a peacetime economy, he kept such thoughts to himself. Truman was left in the dark.”

Roll has done a fantastic job, throughout the book, of finding, researching, and mining documents to create a broader picture of the key events at the start of the Cold War. His approach provides interesting insight into the personalities involved — from the presidents and other world leaders, to their assistants and aides, there is plenty of engaging content for scholars and general readers. Ascent to Power does an excellent job of giving domestic issues plenty of attention and space, while also putting Truman’s decision-making into the context of wider global events.

To conclude, I would certainly recommend Ascent to Power to anyone interested in learning more about FDR’s final years, Truman’s early struggles as president, and the start of the Cold War. Well written and researched, it’s an engaging and rewarding read.

*

David L. Roll’s Ascent to Power is due to be published by Dutton in North America, on April 23rd.

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Review copy received via Edelweiss