Truman Administrations - Foreign Issues
Foreign Issues
Truman came to power as World War II (1939–45) neared its end. He supervised the Western Allies' victory in Europe over Hitler, and later in 1945 made the decision to use atomic bombs against Japan, which ended the Pacific War. Recognizing the Soviet Union's reluctance to relinquish its gains in Eastern Europe and its resistance to self-determination for nations it had liberated from the Nazis, Truman then presided over the reorientation of U.S. foreign policy in the opening days of the anti-Soviet Cold War. He matched his rhetoric with action, first in the Berlin crisis of 1948 and then, more dramatically, by going to war to prevent South Korea from falling to a Communist North Korean invasion in 1950.
Truman was the first U.S. president to consider every part of the world relevant to U.S. foreign policy and the first to maintain a large military force and arms industry during peacetime. The late 1940s and...
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