THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 11, 1996 TAG: 9608120167
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY BROWN H. CARPENTER
LENGTH: 67 lines
MR. TRUMAN'S WAR
The Final Victories of World War II and the Birth of the Postwar World
J. ROBERT MOSKIN
Random House. 411 pp. $30.
The fascination with Harry S. Truman stems in part from the momentous decisions he made upon assuming the presidency after Franklin Roosevelt's death in April 1945.
Within weeks, Truman accepted the unconditional surrender of Germany, quarreled with Churchill over the postwar Russian role in Europe, dueled with Stalin over postwar Europe, slammed the door on Charles De Gaulle's vengeful ambitions in Germany and Italy, and prepared to use the new atomic bomb to force Japan to stop fighting.
Veteran journalist J. Robert Hoskin argues in Mr. Truman's War that the short time between Truman's taking the oath of office and Japan's surrender were pivotal in creating the Cold War and that Truman's actions had lasting consequences.
Hoskin's account, based almost solely on secondary sources, is mediocre, containing neither insight nor offering a profound sense of what it all meant.
The end of such a vast war would obviously be pivotal; decisions made by any of the national leaders would have had far-reaching effects. Several Truman biographies and other histories of those times present superior accounts of how a wartime alliance metamorphosed into deep hostilities.
Had FDR lived longer, he likely would have made many of the same decisions Truman did. It's doubtful that the cruel, paranoid, opportunist Stalin would have ever pursued peaceful coexistence with the West. Likewise, neither American nor British forces could budge the Red Army out of Eastern Europe, Manchuria or northern Korea.
Two chapters of Hoskin's book are noteworthy. One is devoted to Truman's relationship with Free French leader Gen. De Gaulle, a subject generally ignored by other war histories. The mercurial Frenchman threatened to annex part of Italy, demanded recognition as a major power, disobeyed Eisenhower's orders to remove his army from German cities and generally made a nuisance of himself.
The other is the chapter on the decision to use the atomic bomb. The author's account is both fair and succinct. Truman, not a man to agonize long over choices, was faced with a fanatically recalcitrant Japanese government that wouldn't admit defeat and an America thoroughly sick of war and still seething over Pearl Harbor. The bomb was intended to end it quickly and indeed it did.
Those who grew up with the Cold War and were mesmerized by the events in the late 1980s that ended it deserve a more definitive story of those 45 years, complete with its ironies, tragedies, silliness and missed opportunities. More histories should be forthcoming, now that the Russian archives are open and some of the principals are talking.
Mr. Truman's War is not the definitive work on this fascinating subject. MEMO: Brown H. Carpenter is a staff writer. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM, LONDON
Harry S. Truman, center, made history with Winston Churchill, left,
and Joseph Stalin. At the end of World War II, anybody would have.
JOYCE RAVID
J. Robert Moskin brings little insight to this work. by CNB