Harry Truman: Dropping the Bomb | 5-Minute Videos

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Who was Harry Truman?

The American people didn’t really know.

He had been vice president for all of 82 days.

And now, on April 12, 1945, upon Franklin Roosevelt’s death, Truman had become the 33rd president of the United States, the commander in chief of the biggest army in the world, in the biggest war in history, and about to make some of the biggest decisions any president would ever make.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Truman asked the late president’s wife Eleanor upon his arrival at the White House to take the oath of office.

“Is there anything we can do for you, Harry? For you are the one in trouble now."

Harry Truman was born on May 8, 1884, in a small farm village in southwestern Missouri. His values — faith, hard work, and common sense — came from the middle of the middle of America. It’s the key to understanding this straightforward, but complex man.

He never finished college – not because he wasn’t capable -- he was a voracious reader of history, biography, and the classics – but because his family needed his income, and family loyalty always came first.

He expected to be a farmer, just like his father and his father’s father.

But that path changed in April 1917, when the United States entered World War I. Truman, then 33, enlisted.

Truman commanded an artillery battery. His unerring tactical instinct and coolness under fire earned him the respect of his men. That loyalty never faded. The friendships he made during the war lasted a lifetime.

Truman returned home transformed: more confident, more worldly, and more ambitious. Now that he