Harry Truman was born in his family's small frame house in
Lamar,
Missouri in 1884. Truman had no middle name so his parents apparently gave him the middle initial S. to appease two family relatives whose names started with that letter. When Truman was six years old, his family moved to
Independence, Missouri. His two biggest interests were reading and playing the piano. He read four or five histories or biographies a week and acquired an exhaustive knowledge of great
military battles and of the lives of the world's greatest leaders. After he served in
World War I he settled down in
Kansas.
Truman's political career began as a small machine politician in Kansas. He joined the Pendergast political machine, which at that time was running the political scene in his area. He soon rose though the ranks, however his association with the Pendergast's would eventually be brought back up and would be used to attempt to smear him. He was elected to various small political offices and performed his job with his characteristic efficiency. Soon he was asked to run for the U. S. Senate by the Pendergast machine. Once elected to the Senate, he befriended two of the more influential senators and together they formed various commissions. The most notable of the committees was known as the Truman Committee because Truman formed it. The committee investigated defense contractors and how the money was spent. After a very successful period in the Senate, Truman was nominated as a moderate as Roosevelt's vice president. He saw very little of the president during his time in office. Roosevelt left for the Yalta conference and then traveled to Warm Springs and there he died. Truman assumed office, however he spent the next several weeks figuring out what went on at the Yalta conference and other parts of the Roosevelt administration. Soon he learned of the atomic bomb and authorized its use on Japan after they refused to surrender.
The post war problems of his presidency were probably the toughest. The economy was threatening a downturn, and restoring itself to depression era lows. However even with the limited support from the Republican congress, Truman was able to contain inflation and restore the economy to a booming period. The next term for Truman was highlighted by the Cold War and the McCarthy trials. Even though Truman was under great stress during this time, he never resorted to the mudslinging that his opponents used. After Truman's two terms in office, he retired to his house in Kansas.