It seems safe to say that few people, if any, have come to the presidency of the United States who seem so unqualified for that job, as harry truman did in april of 1945. When he became president , no one knew anything about him. What they did know was not reassuring. It was made worse by the fact that he followed one of the legendary president s in all of american history, franklin d. Roosevelt. In contrast, this little man for from missouri seemed ordinary, even as appearance. Harken back to the days of an earlier president ial misfit, Warren Harding. At least Warren Harding looked like a president. Truman said i look like any other 50 people you meet and he did. He seemed to be hard to caricature, he had no particular distinctive features, sort of generic person. Even his name, by the way, seemed inadequate. Harry s. Truman. You know what the s stood for . Nothing. He simply added the s because he thought his given name was insufficient. He added the s. Did not stand for anything. L
I think there is another reason to look back at potsdam, as we are reentering a world of Great Power Competition and reentering a world where geopolitics seems to have come back to the fore of International Relations thinking. So it is well worth us coming back to this subject. I am glad to have a chance to talk to you about it. I wish it was in person in kansas city. I wish that we were able to do this facetoface, but we will do the very best that we can. The key thing here that i want to return to throughout this presentation is shown by this photograph here of Winston Churchill, harry truman, and Joseph Stalin smiling and shaking hands. And the point that i really want to reiterate here is that these three men and most of the advisors around them did not believe that what they were doing at potsdam was laying the seeds of a cold war. We know from the scholarship of the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond, a lot of historians read potsdam backwards. That is to say they read it as a start of the
By a friend of mine who runs a company in london. I did Everything Possible to resist the offer to make this film. Because it was a complex and frightening and challenging subject. You are dealing with one of the seminal events in World History obviously. There are all kinds of cliches about the world changing. And yet what happened in my case around thoughts buzzing in my brain, did not go away. Almost reluctantly i accepted that and started to make a film. The film, really was exactly as story,cribed, a 24hour a story that starts at 8 15 in andmorning august 5, 1945 ends above a clinic in the middle of hiroshima. It took me to so many different voices and People Places and people and became an obsession, which is a dangerous thing for a filmmaker and nascent writer. I decided after that the subject was something i could not leave and i would write a book about. This is the product. I say that i remember somewhere in my research, i started a journey which took me around the world. It
Surrender of japan, in their reply, there is no qualification. President harry truman on august, 1940 five, announcing japans Unconditional Surrender following the u. S. Department of to atomic weapons, ending world war ii. Culminates with this event 75 years ago. In the midst of what is going on in the country, why is it significant to pause and never this event so long ago . Guest i do not know if it is significant, but it is interesting and that was enough for me. [laughter] significantsay was for me personally, because i, as the host of the sunday talk show, i live and breathe washingtons world today. And one of the joys about researching and writing and now talking about this book, has nothing to do with donald trump. I do not mean that either as praise or denigration. In this world that is highly polarized. A zerosum game, all of that. And it was kind of refreshing to go back to 1945, even though we were in the midst of world war ii. Because, susan, we were all on the same side.
Reply, there is no qualification. That is president harry truman on august, 1940 five, announcing japans Unconditional Surrender following the u. S. Department of to atomic weapons, ending world war ii. Your new book culminates with this event 75 years ago. In the midst of what is going on in the country, why is it significant to pause and never this event so long ago . Guest i do not know if it is significant, but it is interesting and that was enough for me. [laughter] you have to say was significant for me personally, because i, as the host of the sunday talk show, i live and breathe washingtons world today. And one of the joys about researching and writing and now talking about this book, has nothing to do with donald trump. I do not mean that either as praise or denigration. But, we live in this world that is highly polarized. A zerosum game, all of that. And it was kind of refreshing to go back to 1945, even though we were in the midst of world war ii. Because, susan, we were all