Why Truman Immediately Fired Everyone Who Worked Closely With Roosevelt 

Harry Truman was drinking bourbon with House Speaker Sam Raburn when the phone rang. It was 5:25 p.m. on April 12th, 1945. Steve Early, Roosevelt’s press secretary, was on the line. His voice was shaking. “Come to the White House immediately,” Early said. “And come through the main Pennsylvania Avenue entrance.

” Truman asked what happened. Early wouldn’t say over the phone, “Just come now.” Truman arrived at the White House shortly after. He was rushed upstairs to Eleanor Roosevelt’s study. She put her hand on his shoulder. Harry, the president is dead. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Georgia.

 The man who had led America through the Great Depression and most of a World War II was gone. Harry S. Truman, who had been vice president for exactly 82 days, was now responsible for ending the war and for managing the emerging confrontation with the Soviet Union that would define the next half century. Truman’s first question to Elellanar Roosevelt revealed everything about the situation he was walking into.

 Is there anything I can do for you? Elellanar looked at him with something close to pity. Is there anything we can do for you? You’re the one in trouble now. Truman stood there paralyzed for a moment. He later told reporters that he felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on him. Harry Truman had been vice president for less than 3 months.

 In that entire time, Franklin Roosevelt had met with him privately exactly twice. Roosevelt hadn’t told Truman anything meaningful. Not about military strategy in the Pacific. Not about diplomatic agreements with Stalin and Churchill. Not about the weapon being built in secret that could end the war in a single flash. Truman knew less about what was happening in his own government than most newspaper reporters.

 He had been deliberately kept in the dark by a president who apparently didn’t trust him or didn’t think he needed to know. And now the president was dead. Truman was in charge of ending the largest war in human history and navigating a relationship with Joseph Stalin that would determine whether Eastern Europe lived in freedom or under Soviet occupation for the next half century.

The cabinet meeting the next morning made everything worse. Truman looked around the table at Roosevelt’s inner circle. He realized immediately that most of these men didn’t respect him. They had worked closely with Roosevelt for over a decade. They had shaped the New Deal. They had planned D-Day. They had negotiated with Stalin at Yalta.

Harry Truman was a former habeddasher from Missouri. He had been picked as a vice president, mainly because he wasn’t controversial. To Roosevelt’s people, he was a placeholder who had gotten the job through political accident. Now he was their boss. The atmosphere in the room was frigid.

 Truman wasn’t just a new president to these men. He was an intruder in their exclusive club. The meeting was tense from the start. Secretary of State Edward Statinius started briefing Truman on diplomatic issues. Truman could tell immediately that Statenius was holding back information. He would mention agreements with the Soviet Union, but he wouldn’t explain what Roosevelt had actually promised Stalin.

The worst moment came 13 days after Truman became president. Secretary of War Henry Stimson requested a private meeting with urgent news. Truman assumed it was about the war in Europe or the planned invasion of Japan. Stimson sat down and told Truman about a secret program that had been running for 3 years.

 The United States was building an atomic bomb. The weapon was nearly complete. It would be ready for testing within months. Truman was stunned. $2 billion. 130,000 workers. entire secret cities built in Tennessee and Washington state, the most powerful weapon in human history. And Roosevelt had never mentioned it to his own vice president.

Stimson explained that only a handful of people in the entire government knew about the Manhattan project. Roosevelt had kept it compartmentalized to prevent leaks to Germany or Japan. But the result was catastrophic. Truman had been president for 12 days before anyone briefed him on the full details of the power America was about to possess.

 The power to destroy entire cities with a single bomb. Truman sank back in his chair. The abstract weight of the presidency had just become terrifyingly concrete. He held the power of the apocalypse in his hands and he had to decide how to use it. This was the moment Truman realized the full scale of the problem.

 He wasn’t just uninformed about military strategy. He had inherited a government where massive programs were running without his knowledge. Programs that could change the course of human history. And the people who did know about these programs were Roosevelt’s loyalists. They had no reason to trust the new president. Roosevelt’s cabinet wasn’t just withholding information from Truman.

They were actively trying to preserveRoosevelt’s legacy by continuing his policies without Truman’s input. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morganthaw had plans for post-war Germany that Roosevelt had approved. He expected Truman to simply rubber stamp those plans. Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace was even worse.

 Wallace had been Roosevelt’s vice president from 1941 to 1945 before being replaced by Truman at the convention. He believed he should have been president instead of Truman. Wallace made no secret of his contempt. He continued pushing his own foreign policy ideas, ideas that contradicted Truman’s directions. Attorney General Francis Bidd was another Roosevelt loyalist who treated Truman like a temporary inconvenience.

Bidd had been Attorney General since 1941. He saw himself as the guardian of Roosevelt’s domestic programs. He would attend cabinet meetings and barely acknowledged Truman’s authority. But the most dangerous member of Roosevelt’s cabinet was Secretary of State Edward Statinius. Statenius had been Roosevelt’s personal choice to handle diplomatic relations with Stalin and Churchill.

 He had attended the Yaltta conference in February 1945. Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill had made secret agreements about post-war Europe. Truman asked Statinius directly, “What did Roosevelt agree to at Yaltta?” Statinius gave vague answers. spheres of influence, democratic elections in Eastern Europe, nothing concrete. Truman pressed for specifics.

 What exactly had Roosevelt promised Stalin about Poland, about Germany, about Soviet entry into the war against Japan? Statinius claimed he didn’t have all the details. Truman suspected evasion, but the truth was worse. Even the Secretary of State had been kept in the dark. Roosevelt had excluded Statinius from the private sessions regarding the Far East.

 Truman’s own chief diplomat didn’t know the full extent of the deals. When Truman finally got his hands on the actual documents from Yaltta, he understood why Statinius had been evasive. Roosevelt had made massive concessions to Stalin in exchange for Soviet promises. Promises that Stalin had no intention of keeping. Roosevelt had agreed that Poland would have free and unfettered elections after the war, but he had also agreed that Poland’s government would be friendly to the Soviet Union.

Stalin interpreted this to mean he could install a communist dictatorship in Warsaw, and Roosevelt’s people had let him get away with that interpretation. Roosevelt had promised Stalin that the Soviet Union would receive massive territorial concessions in the Far East. After defeating Japan, the Soviets would get the Cural Islands.

 They would get southern Sackelin. They would get control over key ports in China. This was Chinese territory that Roosevelt was giving to Stalin without even consulting the Chinese government. Most shocking of all, Roosevelt had agreed to let Stalin occupy Eastern Europe with Red Army troops, and he had made no concrete plans for when those troops would withdraw.

 This meant Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria would all be under Soviet military occupation with no clear timeline for liberation. Truman realized that Roosevelt had sold out Eastern Europe to keep Stalin happy. And Roosevelt’s cabinet members knew about these deals. They were now trying to make sure Truman honored them, even though they would lead to Soviet domination of half of Europe.

This was the moment Truman decided Roosevelt’s inner circle had to go. They weren’t working for the president of the United States. They were working to preserve Roosevelt’s legacy, even when that legacy included catastrophic diplomatic mistakes. Truman called in his advisers. He told them he was going to clean house.

 He wanted new people who would be loyal to him. Not to Roosevelt’s memory. His advisers warned him that firing Roosevelt’s cabinet would be politically dangerous. Roosevelt was beloved by the American public. His cabinet members were seen as heroes who had helped win the war. If Truman fired them all at once, the press would accuse him of betraying Roosevelt’s legacy.

 Democrats in Congress would revolt. The public would see it as petty revenge. Truman didn’t care about the political risk. “I’m the president now,” he told his adviserss. “These men need to understand that they work for me or they work for nobody. Truman started with Edward Statinius. In July 1945, Truman replaced him as Secretary of State with James Burns.

Burns was a tough South Carolina politician. Truman knew he could trust him. Burns had no loyalty to Roosevelt and he had no illusions about Stalin’s intentions. He would pursue a harder line against Soviet expansion. Next was Henry Morganthaw. Truman forced him to resign in July 1945. He replaced him with Fred Vincent, a Kentucky congressman.

 Vincent understood that postwar Germany needed to be rebuilt, not destroyed. Morgan thou’s plan would have turned Germany into an agricultural wasteland. Vincent understood that a strong Germanywas necessary to counterbalance Soviet power in Europe. Attorney General Francis Bidd was fired in June 1945. Truman replaced him with Tom Clark, a Texan who would focus on domestic security, not on preserving New Deal programs.

 Commerce Secretary Henry Wallace lasted longer. But by September 1946, Truman finally fired him for publicly criticizing Truman’s foreign policy. Wallace had gone too far. He had openly attacked Truman’s approach to the Soviet Union in speeches. By the end of 1946, almost everyone who had worked closely with Roosevelt was gone.

 Truman had built an entirely new cabinet, a cabinet that was loyal to him, a cabinet that shared his increasingly hard line against Soviet expansion. The political reaction was exactly what Truman’s advisers had predicted. Liberal Democrats accused Truman of betraying Roosevelt’s legacy. The press wrote articles asking if Truman was competent enough to be president.

 Roosevelt loyalists gave interviews. They suggested that Harry Truman was destroying everything FDR had built. Henry Wallace went on a speaking tour attacking Truman’s foreign policy. He argued that Truman was being too aggressive toward the Soviet Union, that Roosevelt would have found a way to cooperate with Stalin.

 Wallace’s speeches drew huge crowds. Crowds of liberals who believed Roosevelt’s vision of post-war cooperation with the Soviets was still possible. Even Elellanar Roosevelt began subtly criticizing Truman’s decisions. She had been gracious to him immediately after FDR’s death. But now she wrote newspaper columns.

 Columns suggesting that her husband would have handled Stalin differently. She implied that Truman was abandoning Roosevelt’s dream. A dream of a peaceful world order maintained by the United Nations. This was the hardest part for Truman. He wasn’t just fighting living political opponents. He was boxing with a ghost. And in the eyes of the public, the ghost was winning.

Truman’s approval ratings dropped. By 1946, a Gallup poll showed only 32% of Americans approved of his job performance. Democrats lost control of Congress in the 1946 midterm elections. Political insiders began quietly discussing whether Truman should even run for reelection in 1948. Some Democrats wanted to find a replacement, but Truman ignored the criticism.

 He continued replacing Roosevelt’s people with his own team. He wasn’t interested in popularity. He was interested in dealing with the reality of Soviet aggression. Aggression that Roosevelt had either ignored or enabled. History proved Truman was right to fire Roosevelt’s cabinet. Every warning Truman received from Roosevelt loyalists about cooperating with Stalin turned out to be catastrophically wrong.

 Henry Wallace had argued that Stalin would allow free elections in Eastern Europe if America just showed more trust. Stalin installed communist dictatorships in Poland, Czechlovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Soviet zone of Germany. There were no free elections. There was only Soviet military occupation and political repression.

Edward Statatinius had insisted that Stalin would honor the Yaltta agreements about democratic governance in Poland. Stalin installed a puppet government in Warsaw. He arrested or executed Polish resistance leaders, leaders who had fought against the Nazis for 6 years. Poland remained under Soviet domination until 1989.

Henry Morganthaw had wanted to prevent Germany from ever rebuilding its industrial capacity. Truman’s decision to reject the Morganthaw plan led to the German economic miracle of the 1950s. A prosperous democratic West Germany became the cornerstone of NATO, the main counterweight to Soviet power in Europe.

The Marshall Plan, which Truman’s new Secretary of State, George Marshall, designed in 1947, rebuilt Western Europe. It prevented communist parties from taking power in France and Italy. If Truman had listened to Roosevelt’s cabinet members who wanted to punish Germany and continue cooperating with Stalin, Western Europe would have been economically devastated and vulnerable to Soviet influence.

Truman’s decision to take a hard line against Soviet expansion led to the Truman Doctrine, to the Berlin Airlift, to the formation of NATO. These policies contained Soviet power. They prevented World War II. Roosevelt’s vision of cooperation with Stalin would have led to Soviet domination of all of Europe. So why did Truman systematically fire everyone who worked closely with Roosevelt? Because those people were still loyal to a dead president’s vision that didn’t match reality.

Roosevelt had believed he could charm Stalin into behaving like a democratic leader. He had given Stalin massive concessions at Yaltta, hoping Stalin would reciprocate with cooperation. Stalin saw Roosevelt’s concessions as signs of weakness, not friendship. By the time Truman became president, the Red Army was already consolidating control over half of Europe.

Roosevelt’s cabinet members couldn’taccept that their beloved president had made catastrophic mistakes. They wanted to preserve Roosevelt’s legacy by continuing his policies of cooperation with Stalin. Even as Stalin was clearly violating every agreement he had made at Yalta, Truman understood something that Roosevelt’s people couldn’t see.

 The world had changed. The Soviets weren’t allies anymore. They were rivals in an ideological struggle that would define the second half of the 20th century. America needed leaders who understood that reality, not dreamers who still believed in Roosevelt’s vision of postwar harmony. Firing Roosevelt’s cabinet was politically risky, but strategically necessary.

 Truman needed people who would help him build a policy of containment against Soviet expansion, not people who would continue trying to appease Stalin in the name of preserving FDR’s legacy. It is never easy to destroy the heroes of the past to save the future. But Truman realized that sometimes loyalty to the dead means betrayal of the living.

The first task of a new leader is to ensure everyone is rowing in the same direction. Roosevelt’s cabinet members were still rowing toward Roosevelt’s vision of cooperation with the Soviet Union. Truman needed them rowing toward a policy of containing Soviet aggression. When the previous leadership’s vision no longer matches reality, the new leader has to make hard choices.

 Truman could have kept Roosevelt’s cabinet to avoid political criticism. Instead, he fired them. He built his own team, even knowing it would hurt him politically. History vindicated that decision through the Truman Doctrine. the Marshall Plan and the formation of NATO, America built a wall against Soviet expansion that held for 40 years.

 None of that would have been possible if Truman had kept Roosevelt’s cabinet. Those men would have continued pursuing Roosevelt’s failed policy of cooperation with Stalin. Truman understood that loyalty to a dead president’s mistakes was worse than the political risk of cleaning house. That is why Truman cleaned house. Not out of spite, not out of jealousy, but because America needed leaders who understood the world as it actually was, not as Franklin Roosevelt had hoped it would be.

 And Truman was willing to take the political hit to make sure that