Harry truman biography cold war medal

President of the United States from 1945 to 1953

"Harry Truman" redirects here. For other uses, see Harry Truman (disambiguation).

Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. Serving as vice president in 1945, he assumed the presidency upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Truman implemented the Marshall Plan in the wake of World War II to rebuild the economy of Western Europe and established both the Truman Doctrine and NATO to contain the expansion of Soviet communism. A member of the Democratic Party, he proposed numerous New Deal coalition liberal domestic reforms, but few were enacted by the conservative coalitio

2022 Harry S. Truman Legacy of Leadership Award

WILLIAM J. BURNS, DIRECTOR, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

The 2022 Harry S. Truman Legacy of Leadership Award was presented on Thursday, April 28, 2022 at Wild About Harry in Kansas City, Missouri.

 
Director Burns’s acceptance remarks at WILD ABOUT HARRY on April 28, 2022 represented only his second public speech as director and came in a week in which the United Kingdom and United States announced further military help for Ukraine. 

GOOD EVENING. It is truly an honor to be with all of you, and it is truly humbling to receive this year’s Truman Legacy of Leadership Award.

Thanks so much, Senator Blunt, for that kind introduction. While I hardly recognize the person you were describing so generously, I am deeply grateful for your model of public service. You have made the people of Missouri proud over many years. You have been a voice of decency and civility in Washington – a city where both those qualities are often in short supply. And you have done remarkable work to strengthen the U.S. intelligence community, as an exceptionally effective member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

As a career diplomat, serving as an ambassador abroad and as a senior official in administrations of both parties, and now as Director of CIA, it has been a genuine pleasure to serve with you. While you may not miss Washington, you will be sorely missed in Washington.

And I want to offer my profound thanks to the Truman Library Institute for this wonderful honor. Harry Truman’s extraordinary example of American leadership has inspired generations of us struggling to do our duty and do our best in the arena, in the complicated world of national security.

As Jeffrey Frank captures so beautifully in his biography, President Truman was an ordinary man thrust into an extraordinary moment – but his common sense, his grasp of history and his willingne

The Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Harry S. Truman, whose presidency included momentous events from the atomic bombing of Japan to the outbreak of the Cold War and the Korean War, told by America’s beloved and distinguished historian.

The life of Harry S. Truman is one of the greatest of American stories, filled with vivid characters—Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Wallace Truman, George Marshall, Joe McCarthy, and Dean Acheson—and dramatic events. In this riveting biography, acclaimed historian David McCullough not only captures the man—a more complex, informed, and determined man than ever before imagined—but also the turbulent times in which he rose, boldly, to meet unprecedented challenges. The last president to serve as a living link between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, Truman’s story spans the raw world of the Missouri frontier, World War I, the powerful Pendergast machine of Kansas City, the legendary Whistle-Stop Campaign of 1948, and the decisions to drop the atomic bomb, confront Stalin at Potsdam, send troops to Korea, and fire General MacArthur. Drawing on newly discovered archival material and extensive interviews with Truman’s own family, friends, and Washington colleagues, McCullough tells the deeply moving story of the seemingly ordinary “man from Missouri” who was perhaps the most courageous president in our history.