http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1948
Needless to say, I’d have voted for Harry Truman, one of the best Presidents to ever occupy the White House and recognized the necessity of both a strong foreign policy abroad to resist Stalinist aggression and a strong welfare state to help the American people at home.
Wavering between Wallace and Thomas . . . ah, I’m afraid this is gonna be a close election; going with Truman to be safe.
I chose Truman but I’m surprised that so far nobody’s picked Dewey. As Republicans go, he wasn’t that bad.
No, but the New Deal is still, you know, new; let’s make sure of at least one more Dem term to forestall any efforts at rollback (you know Senator Robert Taft and suchlike want to).
From the perspective of 1948, you’re right and that’s why if I had been alive and of voting age, I would have (like my grandparents) voted for Truman with little hesitation. However, from the perspective of 2014, it’s now hard to believe there was a time the Republicans would nominate Dewey. Today, if someone like him tried to run as a Republican, the party would burn him at the stake.
Also, anybody want to vouch for Wallace?
He might have kept us out of the Cold War.
His Cold War policy might’ve worked better 20 years later but not against Stalin in 1948. He would’ve eaten him for lunch.
Dewey, no hesitation.
Good ol’ Norm for old time’s sake. This was his last run, wasn’t it?
Dewey, as the best shot of getting the mass murderer Truman out of the White House.
Truman all the way, in part BECAUSE he used the Bomb to prevent untold numbers of BOTH American and Japanese deaths.
Don’t feel too bad, you’re not the only one to fall for that horse puckey.
Among the many facts:
Truman PROLONGED the war. He almost certainly could have provoked a Jaoanese surrender in late July 1945 by letting the Russians enter Manchuria earlier than August 6, and by assuring the Emperor’s safety. But Sec. Byrnes convinced him to delay things until the Trinity test, because they felt it was so important to strike fear in Russian leaders through the killing of Japanese civilians with two nuclear bombs. IIRC, around a thousand Americans (plus, of course, about 200,000 Japanese) died due to this delay.
Even if you disbelieve the above, the official estimates of how many American lives were “saved” by “shortening” the war via the two atom bombs started small and increased over the months of late 1945 and early 1946. It started out at about 10,000 (the Strategic Bombing official report, IIRC), then grew and grew without factual justification whenever some official (including Truman himself) talked to a reporter. Much of this hinged on whether a full-scale invasion of the Home Islands would have been necessary. Given the state of the Japanese industrial machinery and much else, the chances that this would have had to happen were slim, even if you discount what I said in #1 (which you shouldn’t).
The potential loss of Japanese lives cannot be overstated. By the end of the war, civilians of both sexes were being drilled as a militia for a last-ditch defense of the Home Islands, and, as there were not enough rifles to go around, most were drilling with bamboo spears. If they had ever had to fight the invading Allies, the gutters would have flooded with Japanese blood.
You might have something of a point. But Alperovitz argues, with quite a bit of evidence, that an Allied reassurance of the Mikado’s titular position would have gone a long way toward preventing this from having to happen at all. Truman was afraid this would smack of “conditional” surrender – but after the bombs dropped and the surrender was about to be signed*, the Allies reassured this anyway!
*BTW, the Japanese surrender document made no mention of the atom bombs, but it did cite the concurrent Soviet Army invasion of Manchuria.
Not to mention that Japan could have been entirely blockaded at that point and starved to death. And of course the bombing would have continued during this process. That’s without an invasion.
The funny thing is, at that point the most violent solutions were the most merciful and the less violent you got the more people would die. The bombs were more merciful than an invasion, and an invasion more merciful than a blockade and bombing campaign.
Heck, by that point in the war we had conventional bombing down to a science. We were killing more people with conventional air raids than nuclear weapons. The raid on Tokyo killed 100,000 people.
Good points, adaher. I think using atomic weapons was its own special brand of atrocity, but in terms of sheer numbers of deaths, or starvation vs. quick death, the other possibilities (and realities, e.g. The to firebombing of Tokyo) you mentioned have their own horrific aspects.
Not totally on topic, but maybe someone can answer this one quickly: Why did the Japanese forces in Manchuria fold so easily? These were tough, battle hardened troops, but the Soviets went through them like a hot knife through butter. Were they starving by then, or had they lost their will to fight?
The Wikipedia article on this looks pretty good to me. It was a combination of factors – the Japanese army was stretched thin (but not starving), partly in preparation for US invasion from the east; the Soviet attack was bigger than expected, especially in the desert west toward the eastern end of Mongolia; and the Japanese Navy was unhelpful, as they thought the occupation of Manchuria was a mistake to begin with.
(Allow me to correct a mistake I made earlier: The timing of the Soviet invasion was not delayed by Truman – it had been set as “three months after German surrender” for quite a while. I was confusing this with Truman’s delay of the Potsdam meeting so it wouldn’t end before the expected date of the Trinity test, so he’d know how bossy he could get with Stalin. Truman’s lame excuse to the Soviets for delaying Potsdam was that he had to wait until the “end of the fiscal year”!)
Late to the poll, but I’m just wild about Harry. It was an amazing comeback win for a good, decent, hardworking man who tackled and overcame huge challenges as President - and to think he won in '48 with his party divided in three! If it were in a novel, you’d never believe it.
My high school U.S. History honors project was on Truman’s decision to use the A-bombs on Japan. I have no doubt that it was the least bad option available to him, and that it saved many more lives than either a blockade or an invasion. Japanese diplomats had put out some peace feelers, yes, but the generals and admirals were still in charge, and they were nowhere close to surrender. Hell, it wasn’t until after word came of the second bomb that the Emperor spoke up in the Supreme War Council and said it was time to make peace, and even then, there was an abortive military coup to try to continue the war.