by A. J. Baime
“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent,” Churchill said, using the term iron curtain publicly for the first time. “Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow.”
Many historians would mark Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech as the first public admittance that the Cold War had begun.
It was just four months after Churchill’s speech that a B-29 Superfortress of the 509th Bombardment Group roared over a sapphire lagoon full of empty US Navy ships near Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. Aboard the decks of the ships were animals tied in place—pigs, goats, and thousands of rats, among others—so that scientists could study the effects of an atomic airburst on their bodies. Bombardiers let loose a bomb of the type used on Nagasaki; it had GILDA painted on it in slim black letters, and also a photograph of Rita Hayworth—star of the new film Gilda—from an Esquire magazine, pasted to its iron body. The Gilda shot was no secret; it made the covers of newspapers worldwide, and its fallout was politically radioactive, exacerbating tensions with Moscow.
This was the bomb that had provided the footage for Truman’s lunch viewing in the White House.
Two weeks after the viewing, on July 23, Henry Wallace came to see Truman, wanting to talk about the bomb and the Russia situation. The timing was no coincidence; the following day, another atomic test was scheduled to take place. Wallace arrived at the White House just after noon and was shown in for a 12:30 p.m. meeting.
Ever since the 1944 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, when Wallace had been pushed off the ticket to make room for Truman as the VP candidate, the two men were terribly uncomfortable in each other’s presence. Truman was embarrassed. Wallace was bitter. In the White House on the night of April 12, 1945, when Harry Truman spoke the thirty-five-word oath to assume the power of the presidency, Wallace was standing roughly ten feet away, his eyes like lasers pointed at Truman’s hand as it rested on the Bible. From Wallace’s point of view, it should have been him and not Truman sworn in that night. In the aftermath, Truman and Wallace did their best to contain their mistrust of each other.
That was about to change.
Wallace hand-delivered Truman a letter he had written to the president. “I have been increasingly disturbed about the trend of international affairs since the end of the war,” the letter read, “and I am even more troubled by the apparently growing feeling among the American people that another war is coming and the only way that we can head it off is to arm ourselves to the teeth.”
Wallace made cogent points: “Atomic warfare is cheap and easy compared with old-fashioned war. Within a very few years several countries can have atomic bombs and other atomic weapons.”
“Having more bombs—even many more bombs—than the other fellow is no longer a decisive advantage.”
“The very fact that several nations have atomic bombs will inevitably result in a neurotic, fear-ridden itching-trigger psychology in all the peoples of the world.”
Wallace pleaded with Truman to change US policy toward Russia, “to find some way of living together.” This would “reassert the forward-looking position of the Democratic Party in international affairs, and finally, would arrest the new trend toward isolationism and a disastrous atomic world war.”
Truman was immediately suspicious. The next morning, he brought this letter to his staff meeting. “It looks as though Henry [Wallace] is going to pull an Ickes,” Truman said, referring to former Interior secretary Harold Ickes, who had quit his post and publicly attacked the administration a few months earlier. Truman had every reason to be concerned.
* * *
At 11 a.m. on September 10, Wallace again visited the Oval Office, to talk over a speech he intended to give two days later at Madison Square Garden. Truman appeared distracted; he was weathering the fifth day of a nationwide maritime strike, as well as a truck drivers’ strike in New York City. The Wallace meeting lasted only fifteen minutes, but its impact would imperil Truman’s standing for years to come. According to Wallace’s account, he pulled out his Madison Square Garden speech and began reading it, page by page. Truman nodded as Wallace read, uttering “That’s right” and “Yes, that is what I believe.”
Wallace wrote in his diary, “The President apparently saw no inconsistency between my speech and what [Secretary of State James] Byrnes was doing,” referring to negotiations the secretary of state was holding with the Soviets and others, in Paris. According to Truman’s version of the Wallace meeting, Truman had “no time to read the speech,” but was pleased Wallace was “going to help the Democrats in New York by his appearance.”
On the morning of September 12 Wallace released his speech to the press, before it was to be delivered that night. Truman held his weekly press conference at 4 p.m., unaware that the reporters present had already obtained the text of Wallace’s address.
“Mr. President,” one called out, “in a speech for delivery tonight, Secretary of State—I mean Commerce—Wallace—[laughter]—has this to say about the middle of it, ‘When President’—”
Truman interrupted. “Well now, you say the speech is to be delivered?”
“It is, sir.”
“Well, I . . . I can’t answer questions on a speech that is to be delivered.”
“It mentions you, which is the reason I ask, sir,” the reporter continued. “In the middle of the speech are these words. ‘When President Truman read these words [Wallace’s speech], he said that they represented the policy of this administration.”
“That is correct,” Truman said. He went on to say that he “approved the whole speech.”
Wallace delivered the speech that night. Just before he took the stage, one of his political advisers convinced him to excise certain sections, and Wallace obliged. The omitted passages served to make the speech more inflammatory. Wallace called for an about-face in the United States’ relations with Moscow, and the speech came across as pro-Soviet. These two sentences in particular wounded the president: “I am neither anti-British, nor pro-Russian,” Wallace announced. “And just two days ago, when President Truman read these words, he said that they represented the policy of his Administration.”
All over the States and Europe the next day, newspapers carried stories that the Truman administration had suddenly and drastically altered its foreign policy—that the United States would break off close ties with Britain and end its opposition to Soviet expansion. In Paris, where Secretary of State Byrnes was busy negotiating with the Russians, the Wallace speech sparked anger and confusion. Byrnes sent Truman a furious note over the teletype machine, threatening to resign immediately. “You and I spent 15 months building a bipartisan policy . . . ,” Byrnes wrote Truman. “Wallace destroyed it in a day.” Senator Arthur Vandenberg, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was with Byrnes in Paris, and he released a statement criticizing the Truman administration, saying, “We can only cooperate with one Secretary of State at a time.” Humiliated, Truman had to release his own statement that there “has been no change in the established foreign policy of our Government.”
Editorials excoriated the president, and the timing could not have been worse for Truman, as it was just weeks before the 1946 midterm elections. It “grows worse as we go along,” Truman wrote his sister and mother. “Never was there such a mess and it is partly my making.”
On September 18 Wallace met with Truman to discuss the debacle. Truman said that he had been so disturbed by reaction to the speech, he was having sleepless nights. Wallace defended his address.
“The public is profoundly interested in peace,” he said, as he recalled in his diary. “My own mail is running
five to one in favor of my speech. Peace is going to be an issue in this campaign [the 1948 election, two years away]. The people are afraid that the ‘get tough with Russia’ policy is leading us to war. You, yourself, as Harry Truman, really believed in my speech.”
The president was adamant: “I must ask you not to make any more speeches touching on foreign policy. We must present a united front abroad.”
Outside, in the White House press gallery, packs of reporters awaited Wallace, smelling a scoop. “What shall I tell the press when I go out?” Wallace asked Truman. “There are a hundred or more hungry wolves out there.”
Truman summoned his press secretary, Charlie Ross, and together they worded a benign statement that Wallace would refrain from making further speeches on foreign policy.
Less than a week later, a letter Wallace had written to the president in July was leaked to the press. In it, Wallace argued that the Truman administration’s foreign policy could lead to a third world war, and that “there is a school of military thinking” that advocated a “preventive war” against the USSR, before the Soviets had their own bomb.
The Wallace letter was gas on an already smoldering fire. Truman was so upset by it, he sent Wallace a missive, telling him from the gut exactly what he thought. It was so acidic that, when Wallace read it, he called the president.
“You don’t want this thing out [to the press],” he told Truman over the phone.
The president agreed and sent a messenger to retrieve the letter. It was subsequently destroyed; what it said exactly has never been known. Nevertheless, Truman fired Wallace on that day, September 20, 1946, by phone. “I called him and told him he ought to get out,” Truman wrote Bess, who was in Independence at the time. “I believe he’s a real Commy and a dangerous man.”
Later that day, in his regular press conference, Truman said, “I have today asked Mr. Wallace to resign from the Cabinet.”
Reporters were stunned. “There were audible gasps and a stir and a low whistle from one correspondent,” assistant press secretary Eben Ayers wrote in his diary. When the room cleared, Truman spoke aloud, quoting Julius Caesar: “Well, the die is cast.”
Henry Wallace was a former vice president. He was a hero of New Deal liberalism. He was adored by masses of left-wing voters. He was also a potential candidate for 1948, a man who had the power to tear the Democratic Party apart. His firing caused a sensation. “The Wallace thing is getting worse I believe,” Truman wrote Bess, “and I’m getting worried.”
* * *
That fall of 1946, in meetings with the Democratic National Committee chairman Robert Hannegan, the president expressed his concern over the 1946 elections. Truman found no solace when Hannegan asked him not to campaign for any of the Democrats running for Congress. The less voters saw of Truman, Hannegan said coldly, the better. Around this time Truman wrote a philosophical letter to his daughter, Margaret, in Missouri, which included the following observation:
To be a good President, I fear a man can’t be his own mentor. He can’t live the Sermon on the Mount. He must be Machiavelli . . . a liar, double-crosser . . . to be successful. So I probably won’t be, thanks be to God. But I’m having a lot of fun trying the opposite approach. Maybe it will win.
Truman left the White House at 3:30 p.m. on Halloween, bound for Missouri by train, so he could cast his vote in a midterm election he already knew would be devastating to his presidency. Republican congressional candidates nationwide were campaigning effectively with a three-syllable slogan: “Had enough?” Polls showed that Americans had indeed had enough of the Democrats, and that the Wallace mess in particular hurt the party. Truman had come down with a bad cold, and he arrived home in Independence feeling dejected and miserable.
At 9 a.m. on the day of the election, the president, accompanied by his daughter, arrived at Independence’s Memorial Hall. Parting a crowd of hometown fans, he entered a voting booth at 9:03. He showed Margaret how to fill out the ballot, as it was her first time voting. When they were finished, they walked together out of the building. Facing the crowd, Truman said, “Well, the show’s over.”
That night, as Truman rode a train back to Washington, he sat down to enjoy his favorite activity: a game of poker. Also at the table was his press secretary, Charlie Ross, members of the White House press corps including Merriman Smith of the United Press and Tony Vaccaro of the Associated Press, and his aide Clark Clifford. As the voter returns rolled in over the radio, Truman remained composed. The train was nearing Cincinnati when the men learned that a Republican tide was washing over the country. “I was amazed at how calm he seemed in the face of political disaster,” Clifford recorded. “The conventional political wisdom at that point was simple: Harry Truman was a caretaker President.”
When Truman awoke on November 6, he had all the evidence he needed that the nation had lost faith in him. In a landslide, Republicans won majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time since 1928. In the House of Representatives, Republicans now outnumbered Democrats 246 to 188. The Republicans gained thirteen seats in the Senate, including one in Truman’s home state. History had showed that midterm elections could often damage a new sitting president, but few midterms had demonstrated such a complete shift in the tides of power—in Washington and in state capitals from coast to coast. The election was noteworthy for another reason: New faces in Congress included Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, and Richard Nixon of California.
In New York, meanwhile, Republican governor Thomas Dewey was reelected by a margin of 680,000 votes—the biggest majority in state history.
The response in Washington was devastating to the Truman administration. Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas—a member of Truman’s own Democratic Party—called on the president to appoint a Republican as secretary of state, second in line to the presidency, since there was no vice president (Truman had vacated that office when FDR died). Then the president should resign, so there would be a Republican president and unity in Washington.* “I am only suggesting that it would be the best thing for the country as a whole,” Senator Fulbright said. “It probably would be the wisest thing for the President to do . . . It will place the responsibility of running the Government on one party and prevent a stalemate that is likely to occur.”
Newspapers such as the Chicago Sun and the Atlanta Constitution, along with numerous Republican leaders, came out in favor of Fulbright’s proposal. Truman laughed the idea off, calling Fulbright “Senator Halfbright.” But the proposal was taken seriously enough that Charlie Ross had to put out a statement saying Truman would not resign.
Back in the White House, Truman wondered aloud to friends and staffers whether he would stand for election in 1948. He could not use the word reelection, because he had never been elected chief executive in the first place. He called the White House “the Great White Jail,” and said he was looking forward to the end of what felt like a prison sentence.
Around this time, he began to notice something strange in the mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The walls and floors of the White House had begun to creak and moan. At one point Truman borrowed a stethoscope from his staff physician, Dr. Wallace Graham, pressing it up against a wall to hear the building’s unsettling sounds. “The damned place is haunted sure as shootin’,” he told Bess.
Then one day the First Lady became alarmed when she noticed that the five-and-a-half-foot-tall chandelier in the White House Blue Room was trembling. Standing beneath it, she heard the faint jingle of the chandelier’s crystals as they moved seemingly of their own volition. Professionals called in to give the White House a diagnosis found the building structurally unsound. The second floor was caving in. The White House, like the administration, was in a state of historic disintegration.
Part II
The Surging GOP
I will be president. It is written in the stars.
—Thomas Dewey
5
“You Are Getting as Much
Publicity as Hitler”
THE WHITE HOUSE ASIDE, no building in the United States had been the setting for more presidential aspirations than the executive mansion in Albany, New York. Red brick with white trim, the Queen Anne–style residence at 138 Eagle Street was originally constructed in 1856 for a wealthy banker. Two decades later, Samuel Tilden became the first New York governor to move in. In 1876, in one of the closest elections in American history, Tilden lost his bid for the White House to Rutherford B. Hayes. Grover Cleveland lived in the mansion while he was governor, moving to the White House in 1885. During Theodore Roosevelt’s term as New York governor, a gymnasium was added to the home. When Franklin Roosevelt moved in, he had an indoor swimming pool built. FDR served two terms in the residence before his move to the White House.
On the evening of November 4 in 1946—the night before the midterm election—New York governor Thomas Dewey and his wife, Frances, entertained friends and campaign officials in the Albany executive mansion. Staff members scurried about, emptying ashtrays and passing out drinks. At 6:15, from inside the mansion, Dewey delivered a radio speech urging all voters to exercise their right to vote. He compared the “confusion and chaos” in Washington to the “team work Government” in Albany.
The following morning, Dewey and an entourage headed for New York City, where the governor cast his vote at a polling station on East Fifty-First Street. That night, at a Dewey rally, crowds chanted “Dewey for President!” By the time Dewey was back in Albany, he had won a second term as governor, beating the Democratic challenger James M. Mead by a historic margin.
