7 thoughts on “Give ‘Em Hell Harry”

  1. I’m curious about this statement:

    Over the objections of many in his cabinet, he ordered the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan.

    Who in his cabinet objected?

    2. There were objections from several members of his cabinet (and from some of his top military brass) *after the war* that the A Bomb was uniquely horrifying and immoral. The Navy contingent also thought that Japan could be ‘starved out’ by blockade. Among those were MacArthur, Nimitz, Eisenhower, and Halsey, plus several of the scientists on the Manhattan Project.
      During the war, and before the Japanese surrender, anti-Japanese feeling was deep and intense and anyone (in or out of uniform) who made the argument that the Japanese should be spared at the cost of American blood would have been at the least told to go wait in the hall while the adults talked.
      It is interesting to note that none of those objecting took the time to volunteer to ride an assault boat in Operation Olympic. The most they would have risked was a sprained finger writing “Regret to inform” letters.
      I had an uncle who would have been on one of those boats. Considering how badly Allied intelligence underestimated Japanese willingness to resist, and how far the Japanese had planned to go to turn the landing into a bloodbath (including use of civilians as suicide bombers, poison gas, and massive use of kamikazes) , I’m pretty sure that if Olympic had gone forward my father wouldn’t have got his older brother back.
      If you’re interested, the book “Downfall” by Richard Frank has a lot on the political situation in both Japan and Washington that led to the decision to drop the bombs. So does “Making of the Atomic Bomb” by Richard Rhodes.

  2. The creation of the CIA suppose to be good thing? At first was going to say last good thing CIA did was installing Shah of Iran but that was Military psops prior to CIA.

    1. The CIA was created in response to one of the recommendations of the Pearl Harbor Committee. There was a perceived weakness in US pre-war intelligence – noone was taking all the information available and putting it together to make a (theoretically) coherent picture. A central intelligence analysis body was thought to be necessary.

  3. Harry Truman is definitely a contender in the proto-Trump derby, but I think the winner is Andrew Jackson.

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