Truman (50 page)

Two who helped turn the tide in 1947: Left: Republican Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg shaking hands on March 12, as Truman is about to ask Congress for aid to Greece and Turkey—the speech that introduced the Truman Doctrine; and (opposite) Secretary of State George C. Marshall, the “great one,” as Truman called him, who in a commencement speech at Harvard on June 5 proposed what came to be known as the Marshall Plan.

Eddie Jacobson, a behind-the-scenes key figure in the decision to recognize Israel, talks with his old friend and former business partner.

Chaim Weitzmann, the new president of Israel, presents Truman with the Torah scrolls during a first official call at the White House.

Opposite: In the first address ever made by a President to the NAACP, Truman speaks from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of ten thousand, June 29, 1947.

America’s best-known walker steps out in a 35th Division Reunion parade in Kansas City.

Past 2:00
A.M.
, July 15, 1948, his hands chopping the air, Truman tells cheering convention delegates at Philadelphia, “Senator Barkley and I will win this election…arid don’t you forget that!” His odyssey began in September. Below: From the rear platform of the
Ferdinand Magellan
at Richmond, Indiana, Truman makes one of hundreds of “whistle-stop” speeches.

After Stalin clamped a blockade on Berlin on June 24 (the day Dewey was nominated), Truman launched the Berlin Airlift. Tensions over Berlin continued for months.

Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey and his wife. According to the press, only a miracle or a series of unimaginable Republican blunders could save Truman from defeat.