No. 33
Little White House, Key West, FL
November 16, 2019
Historically, Harry S Truman is
viewed as one of the most honest presidents to hold the office. But he tiptoed around
the border of corruption early in his political career.
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| Harry S. Truman (Source: National Portrait Gallery) |
His political mentor was Tom Pendergast,
the “boss” of Kansas City politics in the 1920s and 1930s. Pendergast, who was
connected to organized crime, handpicked Truman to run as judge of Jackson
County, Missouri, in 1922. Truman, who had failed in every business he had tried,
felt that he had no choice but to accept. And he won. As a judge, Truman
never took money dishonestly, but he averted his eyes when Pendergast’s cronies
accepted illicit money.
Pendergast then picked Truman to run for
the U.S. Senate in 1933, even though Truman had no national political
experience. Again, Truman went along, and Pendergast’s political machine helped
him win the close election. Truman was mocked as “the senator from
Pendergast.”
And when his name was advanced as a
possible running mate to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Truman didn’t want to run
because he would have to divulge that his wife, Bess, was on his Senate payroll
to the tune of $4,500 year — and wasn’t doing much to earn that salary.
(That salary would be worth $66,800 today.)
In 1939, Pendergast was convicted of tax
evasion and went to federal prison. Truman’s political career sailed on
without him.
*
* *
Harry Truman was born on May 8, 1884, to
a farm family. As he was growing up, he had to work odd jobs because his father
had lost all the family money on wheat futures. Harry graduated from high
school but never attended college. But he was a voracious reader. He claimed to
have read all the books in his hometown library in Independence, Missouri.
When the United States entered the Great
War (World War I), Truman cheated on his eye exam so he could fight. He went
off to France and became the captain of an artillery unit during the
Meuse-Argonne Offensive of 1918.
After the war, he tried a number of jobs
with limited success. He was a payroll clerk for the Santa Fe Railroad and then
a bank clerk. Later, he and a partner then opened a haberdashery shop in
downtown Kansas City, but it went out of business.
And then Pendergast came calling.
Once hostilities began in Europe,
now-Sen. Truman sensed that U.S. industrial suppliers might be less than
honest. He first investigated procurements at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri and
then started visiting other installations. In all, he drove 10,000 miles
investigating fraud and waste. In 1941, Truman got a resolution passed to
set up a Senate committee — the Committee on Waste of Industrial War Production
(also known as the Truman Commission) — to investigate inefficiency and graft
in wartime production. As the chairman of the committee, Truman held 70
hearings and appeared on the cover of Time Magazine on March 8, 1943.
His work saved billions of dollars. He
did such a good job that FDR’s advisers suggested that Truman be named as his
running mate for the Democratic ticket.
FDR agreed, and they won. It was to be
FDR’s last term.
Truman did not spend much time with the
four-term president once their term started on Jan. 20, 1945, but when he did
meet with him, he was stunned at how weak FDR appeared. He said to a friend, “I
am concerned about the president’s health. I had no idea he was in such feeble
condition. His hands are shaking and he talks with considerable difficulty. It
doesn’t seem to be any mental lapse of any kind, but physically, he’s going to
pieces. “ (A.J. Baime, 2017).
By April 12, FDR was dead.
Suddenly Truman was president. When he next
saw Eleanor Roosevelt, he asked, “Is there anything I can do for you?” She
replied: “Is there anything we can do for you, Harry? For you are the one
in trouble now.”
Truman was stunned to be president. “I’m
not big enough for this job,” he confided to a friend. And later he said, “Last
night the whole weight of the moon and stars fell on me.” (Baime, 2017)
Fortunately, the war in Europe was going
well. On April 15, the Allied troops liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration
camp in northern Germany, and other camps the same week.
Bergen-Belsen has special significance to
Tom. His Hungarian great aunt, Ibi Farkas, was imprisoned there. In
1986 she told him that when they were freed, the survivors were all “csont
emberek” or skeletons.
By May 7, Germany had surrendered. But
there was still the war to prosecute against the Japanese, who showed little
sign of capitulating. The last major battle of World War II, the Battle
of Okinawa (a tiny island in the Pacific) was still raging and wouldn’t be over
until June 22.
Truman was also challenged by an
aggressive Russia. He sought Russia’s help to quickly end the war with Japan
but feared that he would have to give away too much in return. In the countries
it now occupied in postwar Europe, Russia was installing puppet governments and
imprisoning those who stood in the way. On May 12, Truman was with British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill when he visited Westminster College in Fulton,
Missouri, and spoke of the “Iron Curtain” descending on the eastern part of
Europe. Churchill said of the Soviet manipulations in Eastern Europe: “An iron
curtain is drawn down upon their front. We do not know what is going on
behind.”
Many in Truman’s administration trusted
the Russians, but Truman did not.
*
* *
The world didn’t know much about what was
going on behind the Iron Curtin. But Tom’s parents, who grew up in Budapest,
did. Tom’s mother, Marianne, was 14 in the summer of 1945 and his father,
Robert, was 17. In her memoir (Denes, 2000), Marianne writes:
“Immediately after the Russian occupation
… the Hungarian Communist Party under the control of the Red Army started the
process of Sovietization. It forcibly imposed its own point of view. The
democratically elected Smallholders Party became the target of a large-scale
police operation, first the police arrested a minister and several deputies
from the Smallholders Party and in 1947 its secretary general was arrested….
Two years after the end of the war, the most important party in Hungary was
rendered ineffectual. Matyas Rakosi, the secretary general of the Hungarian
Communist Party, officially called the Hungarian Workers’ Party … initiated the
so called ‘salami tactics’ slice by slice successfully eliminating the
remaining opponents such as the Independence Party and the People’s Democratic
Party. [Rakosi] used traditional Soviet methods such as establishing the
police force called AVO and liquidating all non-Communist forces…. It resulted
in the one-party system, total centralization of economic planning,
collectivization in agriculture and vicious propaganda against religious
activities.”
“We were forced to carry internal
passports with our photo marked with every personal data of our lives such as
workplace, occupation, travels, family and political orientation. Every aspect
of [our] lives was regulated and kept on files. First, the large companies were
nationalized.… Later smaller businesses were also confiscated.”
Tom’s father, Robert, writes in his memoir
(Denes, 2005): “It was the constant and unceasing propaganda which was the most
repulsive to most of us. We had to repeat slogans that no one with a trace of
intelligence would believe.”
Both of Tom’s grandfathers had their
businesses confiscated, and each of them had to find a job. Tom’s paternal
grandfather owned an automobile rebuilding business and his maternal
grandfather owned a small construction firm.
Robert writes: “The communist government
struck the final blow at the old middle class during Christmas (1950) and
expropriated their small businesses…. The communist people raided the [auto
shop], roughed up my father, took the store keys away from him and with this,
they confiscated his life’s work. He was not even allowed to take his
jacket with him… Interminable police and court interrogations followed that
raid, going on for weeks and weeks. They accused my father with the
exploitation of the workers and with cheating the government. It was a ridiculous
charade, but it was a very dangerous one, as many other businesses owners were
badly beaten up, tortured, jailed or exiled from the city.… The government also
raided the business of [Marianne’s] father [who] had a small construction
company he was running from the apartment where one room was dedicated as his
office. With that raid the government took the construction businesses
away … they locked and sealed the office room.
Robert’s father, who also had been a
pianist in an orchestra, was able to find low-wage work playing the piano in
cafes and bars for the next 20 years. Marianne’s father was placed in a
state-owed construction company.
In addition, Robert’s family lost their
condo and had to rent it back from the government. The government also
confiscated a room and plopped two strangers into it.
Tom’s parents married in late 1950. His
mother was a ballet dancer and his father an engineer. As Marianne writes,
because of their social background they were “classified as bourgeois and as
such persons, our families and we were not sure how long our jobs or even our
existence in Budapest would last…. At the door of innumerable Budapest
apartments the bell would buzz at dawn. The police came with orders of
deportation for many of the remaining bourgeois families. They were taken to
the countryside to work on the fields and to fill their heads with
Marxist-Leninist doctrine.” To remain in
Budapest, my parents “toed the party line” to keep out of trouble. That
included marching down the main streets of Budapest to “pay homage to Matyas
Rakosi, who stood on the high platform with all of his henchmen … we lived a
lie and against our beliefs.”
Tom’s mother and father escaped from
Hungary in 1956 — but that is a story for another president.
*
* *
Truman had no idea that the United States
had developed an atomic weapon. (and neither did many of the people who were
working to build it (Kiernan, 2014)). On April 25, Truman learned of the highly
secret “Manhattan District Project.” It was now his responsibility to decide
whether to use the bomb or simply threaten to use it. He knew that continuing
the war on the Japanese homeland would be unbelievably costly for the United
States. The estimate was a loss of 250,000 to 500,000 U.S. lives. It was too
high of a price to pay.
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| Potsdam Conference Churchill, Truman & Stalin |
In July 1945, Truman sailed across the Atlantic
to meet with Churchill and Soviet Marshall Joseph Stalin in Potsdam, Germany,
just outside Berlin. While the population of Germany were scrounging for
food, water and shelter, the three delegations enjoyed lavish dinners that
included caviar. The meetings did not go well. It didn’t help matters that
Churchill’s party lost the British parliamentary election part-way through the
conference and he was replaced by a new prime minister, Clement Attlee. Stalin
conceded little on the installation of puppet governments in the Eastern
European countries that the Soviets occupied. Stalin also pushed hard for war
reparations from the Germans — a mistake that the Americans did not want to
repeat from World War I. At one point during the conference, Truman was so
despondent over the lack of progress that he considered resigning the
presidency.
Truman also struggled with the Soviets’
role in the war against Japan. When the Potsdam Conference began, the atomic
bomb had not yet been tested. But partway through the conference, Truman got
word that the atomic bomb had been successfully detonated in New Mexico. The
Soviets might not be needed to defeat the Japanese after all.
 |
| Little Boy |
As Truman’s ship was returning to the
United States, the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress, appeared 31,000 feet over
the city of Hiroshima. In its belly was the atomic bomb, strangely named
“Little Boy.” At 8:15 on the morning of August 6, the bomb bay was opened.
When the bomb detonated, people in the
blast zone simply evaporated. Within seconds, 70,000 Japanese were killed. In
the Enola Gay, co-pilot Robert Lewis wrote in the pilot’s log: “My God, what have we done?”
Still, the Japanese refused to surrender
unconditionally.
On August 8, the Soviets declared war on
Japan and sent a million soldiers into Manchuria in northern China.
On August 9, a second, more powerful
atomic bomb named “Fat Man” was dropped on Nagasaki—another 50,000 Japanese were
killed. (The bomb was dropped without specific authorization from Truman,
who was still on the ship.) On August 15, Japan agreed to surrender
unconditionally.
*
* *
But, by 1946, Truman’s popularity was
low. For one thing, he had replaced a very popular Roosevelt, who had been in
office for 12 years. Truman certainly didn’t fit the model of the aristocratic,
confident FDR. Also, post-war inflation was an issue. Labor unions were
pressing for higher wages and often going on strike. And Truman did not support
the unions.
The Democrats lost the 1946 mid-term
elections in both the House and the Senate. The 1946 class included
Republicans Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon as well as Democrat John F.
Kennedy.
Still, Truman pressed ahead with his
agenda. In December 1946, he established a Committee on Civil
Rights. The Democratic Party leaders didn’t support it, nor did the
Southern Democrats. In February 1947, Truman asked Congress for civil
rights legislation. In particular, he wanted to end segregation in the Armed
Services. He was sickened by savage attacks on black WWI vets — including
lynchings. On June 30, Truman addressed a National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) rally at the Lincoln Memorial.
Following the war, Truman’s
administration was committed to repairing the devastated economies of Europe
(and Japan). The USSR and Eastern Europe were also invited to participate,
but they were suspicious of Western motives. The main goal was self-serving —
the U.S. wanted to expand trade. Aid would also help prevent communism from
expanding into Western Europe. The recovery package—which was named after
Secretary of State George Marshall—authorized $16.5 billion (but only $13
billion was spent). The recovery program was a great success and helped build
the U.S. reputation in Europe. In
Germany, Russia blocked Allied aid to the western part of Berlin. So, the U.S.
responded in 1948 by airlifting supplies to the tune of 24,000 tons a day to
keep the residents from starving.
Truman also wanted to limit the spread of
atomic weapons. He proposed to eliminate nuclear bombs if no other country
developed them, but the proposal died at the newly formed United
Nations.
In the Middle East, Truman supported
partitioning Palestine to create a homeland for the Jews. The new nation of
Israel was formed in in May 1948 and was immediately recognized by the United
States.
As the election of 1948 approached,
Truman trailed Republican candidate Thomas Dewey. Truman decided to get on a
train and do a national “whistle stop tour.” For two weeks he stopped in
communities and gave informal speeches from the back of the train — including
one in his pajamas. Overall, the train stopped in 18 states and Truman was
heard by about three million people.
That year many southern Democrats left
the party and formed their own party called the Dixiecrats. The party,
whose goal was preserving racial segregation, was led by South Carolina Gov.
Strom Thurmond. Another party, called the Progressive Party, was led by former
Vice President Henry Wallace. This party touted national health care and
the end of segregation, among other ideas.
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| Truman's upset |
Truman somehow managed to win 303
electoral votes to 189 electoral votes for Dewey. It was a major upset, with
the Chicago Tribune infamously calling the race incorrectly with the
banner headline “Dewey Defeats Truman.” The Democrats also won back majorities
in the House (263-171) and Senate (54-42).
Even though he won, Truman was not
comfortable as president. He said, “A man in his right mind would not want to
be president if he knew what it entails” (Dallek, 2008).
Truman had pledged bold reforms under a
slogan he called a “Fair Deal.” It included national medical insurance, a
higher minimum wage, civil right legislation and repeal of the Taft-Hartley
Act, which restricted the activities of labor unions and which Congress had
enacted over his veto in 1947. But the southern democratic wing of the
party resisted those changes.
Perceived creeping communism in the
United States stoked fear. The House Committee on Un-American Activities,
formed in 1938, relentlessly drove to expose domestic communists. There were
calls for loyalty oaths. One of the committee members was Rep. Richard Nixon, a
fervent anti-communist. Truman could not stand him and said: “All the time I’ve
been in politics, there’s only two people I hate and he’s one” (Dalleck,
2008). In the Senate, Joseph McCarthy stoked fear and controversy by
claiming to have a list of 81 communists in the State Department.
Internationally, the USSR continued to
exert power in Eastern Europe. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
was formed in April 1949 to present a unified front against the USSR. Under the
NATO agreement, the U.S. would come to the aid of any country
threatened. In response, the USSR set up the Warsaw Pact. And in
September 1948, the USSR produced its own atomic bomb. (It was later learned
that the Soviets had been spying on the Manhattan Project.)
World order continued to disintegrate as
Mao Zedong took over China in 1949, causing the Nationalist government to flee
to the island of Taiwan. Not surprisingly, China aligned with the USSR.
In June 1950, the world’s attention
turned to Korea when the North Korean army —separated from South Korea at the
38th parallel after World War II — crossed that parallel.
Truman wanted to stop the aggression as an example to the USSR and China. With
U.S. backing, the young United Nations condemned the attack. Because of
the condemnation, Truman was able to send troops into South Korea as a “police
action” and not as a congressionally authorized declaration of war (Dallek,
2008). Gen. Douglas McArthur, the commander of the forces, beat back the
North Korean invasion by October 1950. When MacArthur pushed north above the 38th parallel,
Chinese troops entered the war with 250,000 to 300,000 troops. MacArthur wanted
to widen the war, but Truman resisted. In fact, MacArthur seemed to be pushing
for war directly with China, thinking it was important to take a stand on
communism in Asia to stop its spread worldwide. Truman viewed MacArthur as
usurping civilian control of military.
So, he fired him.
Gen. MacArthur’s firing was not
popular. When he returned to the U.S., huge crowds turned out to cheer him
— including a ticker tape parade in New York City. Congress got into the act
and held hearings on MacArthur’s firing. Truman’s low approval fell even
further to a meager 23 percent.
In November 1950, Truman nearly lost his
life when two Puerto Rican nationalists tried to kill him. In the ensuing gun
battle, one policeman was killed.
In 1952, steel workers went on strike.
Although Truman usually stood for the common man, Truman believed that the
workers were demanding too large of an increase in their wages. It would
further drive up the price of steel. He tried to nationalize the steel
industry, but the Supreme Court ruled against him. The strike went on for 53
days.
By the time the election of 1952 rolled
around, Truman was exhausted. He had served nearly eight years. He could have
run for a third term because he was not elected to his first term. But he
decided against it.
*
* *
 |
| The Little White House in Key West, FL |
When it was time to visit a site that
represented Truman’s presidency, we learned that the Truman Library in
Independence, Missouri, was closed for a year of renovations (starting in July
2019). While Truman’s home, a national historic site, was still open, we took
the opportunity to go somewhere not as obvious — the Little White House in Key
West, Fla.
Granted, it didn’t hurt that Cathy had
wanted to visit Key West for years. And we went in November, with cold weather
in the DC area. So south we went.
The Little White House was originally an
8,700-square-foot building on a Navy submarine base that housed the base
commandant and the pay master in two units. Built in 1890, it was called
Quarters A and Quarters B (which were later combined into one house). The base
is now called the Truman Annex.
In the fall of 1946, Truman was exhausted
and had a cough that wouldn’t quit. The units were empty, so Admiral Chester
Nimitz recommended the Key West Naval Station for a little R&R. Key West
was warm, the house was on the ocean, it was on a naval base with tons of
security, and the house was empty. What’s not to love?
Truman indeed loved it, got healthy and
said he’d be back.
After that, he visited for a couple weeks
every November-December and February-March, for a total of 175 days of his presidency.
 |
| The Adirondack chairs |
The Little White House is big and yes,
white, and is on a bucolic, gated, tree-lined street, with lots of historic
houses. It has a big lawn with Adirondack chairs, too.
When we visited, the roof was being
renovated, a casualty of Hurricane Irma. (Side note: The Hemingway House a
couple blocks away is the safest house on the island, our tour guide JP told
us, since it is built of 18-inch thick limestone mortar).
Inside, the Little White House features
decor that would fit in a typical beach house: Beige carpeting with tropical
floral prints covering the furniture. The house is open and airy, with a
wraparound porch on the upper level, off the bedrooms. The Trumans had a great
view of the sea at the time. Unfortunately for visitors, the relatively new
naval administration building now blocks most of the view.
Some highlights of the house:
• A cubby hole on the right when you
first enter the living room, which used to be a booth for the Secret Service.
• A poker table with built-in chip
holders and ashtrays. Truman used to play with his guests until late, although
it was never publicized. The living room also has a built-in bar. Truman had a
heart condition, so his doctor ordered him to have a shot of bourbon with his
orange juice every morning, since it was a blood thinner.
• The highly polished silver all around
the dining room. It is called “Admiral Silver” and Truman would use it when he
had barbecues. He would serve hot dogs and hamburgers in it.
• A photo of Truman playing the piano
with a young Lauren Bacall looking down at him from on top of the piano. Bess
Truman wasn’t exactly happy about it.
• The Trumans had separate bedrooms,
which was protocol at the time. The reasoning was that if the president had to
be awakened in the middle of the night, the first lady would not be woken as
well. The tradition ended with Betty Ford, who thought the practice was stupid.
 |
| Truman's Key West garb |
Truman’s bedroom is decorated
presidentially with red and blue and dark wood. He had a desk, which he mostly
used for personal correspondence — specifically, love letters to Bess. One day,
she tossed them all in the fireplace. She explained to him, when he caught her,
that she didn’t want “history” and the entire world reading them one day.
Bess didn’t visit much, coming with
Truman on only four of his 11 visits. His daughter, Margaret (the famous author
of such mysteries as “Murder in the White House”) came more frequently and is
in a lot of the pictures around the house.
• Downstairs is a piano, which is still
in tune. The piano came with Truman from Washington, on the USS Williamsburg
every visit and had to be tuned. He was an accomplished pianist who once said
he would have liked to have been a concert pianist if he weren’t
president.
When Truman visited Key West the first
time, he took the USS Williamsburg from Washington. But it ran into a hurricane
off Cape Hatteras. He flew every time after that. The Williamsburg still
came down to Key West when he did, though, carrying the piano and providing a
secure phone line to Washington since the government couldn’t trust that the
phone lines to the mainland would be secure.
• Downstairs also has the original “Dewey
beats Truman” Chicago Tribune. You can see a ton of mistakes, from the
production staff’s hurry to rush it out, including part of a paragraph pasted
upside down. The polling had shown Dewey ahead by a lot, so everyone just
assumed Dewey would win.
• It also has a rare 48-state flag.
• And a desk where he conducted most of
his business. The desk holds the famous “The Buck Stops Here” sign. On
the other side it says, “I’m from Missouri.” A Truman aide had seen the sign on
a warden’s desk at an Oklahoma prison and told him he thought his boss might
like one. So, the warden had the prisoners make one for Truman.
But we couldn’t photograph any of it. The
Little White House is an active presidential retreat, meaning current
presidents can use it at any time. So, for security reasons, visitors cannot
take pictures or videos. However, the gift shop sells postcards.
Of course, a sitting president hasn’t
visited in a while. Presidents who have visited include Dwight D. Eisenhower in
1949 and 1955-56, when he traveled to the southernmost point in the U.S. to
recuperate after a heart attack. John F. Kennedy visited in 1962, and Jimmy
Carter’s family came in 1996 and again in 2007 for a 33-person family reunion.
The Clintons also visited in 2005, when Hillary was campaigning for a New York
Senate seat.
The tour ends in the museum, which is
another room in the house. It exhibits mainly pictures and a poster about the
Civil Rights Act covering one wall. The most interesting thing, though, are the
copies of newspapers covering important events during Truman’s time. The museum
has entire front sections of the newspapers, so they’re interesting to read
beyond the main headlines. In addition to the Dewey Beats Truman paper, it has
one from when JFK was shot and another from when Truman died in December 1972.
While the importance of the Little White
House doesn’t show up in many history books, it had a small, but critical role
in Truman’s presidency. First, Truman said the Little White House was his
favorite place on earth, besides his house in Missouri. He figured he
signed his name 200-600 times while in Key West. And while there, he changed the
presidential seal so that the eagle turned its head to look at the olive branch
instead of the sword, to show that the U.S. is a peace-loving nation. And the
Key West agreement created the Department of Defense.
Directions
Truman’s Little White House is located at the Truman Annex
on 111 Front Street in Key West, FL. It
is open from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily.
Tickets are $22.50 for adults and $10.75 for children. Bonus:
If you buy tickets to both the Little White House and the Ernest
Hemmingway House, you will receive a discount.
References
Baime, A.J.
2017. The Accidental
President: Harry S. Truman and the Four
Months the Changed the World.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. New
York, NY.
Dallek, Robert.
2008. Harry S. Truman. Henry Holt and Company. New York NY.
Denes, Marianne.
2000. Reflections: 1931 to 1957. Unpublished memoir. Kalamazoo, MI.
Denes, Robert.
2005. It Wasn’t Easy: A Journey from Budapest to Oshkosh. Unpublished memoir. Kalamazoo. MI.
History
Channel. 2005. The Presidents: The Lives and Legacies of the 43 Leaders of
the United States.
Kiernan, Denise.
2013. The Girls of Atomic City.
Simon & Schuster, New York, NY.
Websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Party_(United_States,_1948)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Committee
