The legacy of Harry Truman - the feisty Missourian, failed dirt farmer and haberdasher, and product of the Kansas City political machine - was that he stood at the center of, and without hesitation made, some of the most important foreign policy decisions in the history of the United States. He was a true practitioner of his own famous line about the president's responsibilities: "The buck stops here."

That "buck" that hit Harry S. Truman right between the eyes when on April 12, 1945, when he received word that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had died of a cerebral hemorrhage. After only a few weeks in a vice presidency that Truman fully expected would be an easy, responsibility-free four years, the full weight of the presidency fell on his shoulders, and he proved equal to the job.

Truman, who was never previously briefed on the existence of America's atomic bomb, was presented with the means to bring the war with Japan to a sudden and unconditional end. Truman wanted to avoid the many U.S. casualties that would result from a full-scale land invasion of the Japanese homeland. He approved the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, and resulted in the immediate capitulation of the Japanese. Truman spent the rest of his life defending his decision, and the world got its first horrific view of the destructiveness of nuclear weapons.

As leader of the free world's most powerful (and undamaged) post-war country, Truman, through his Secretary of State George C. Marshall, got Congress to approve a post-war $13 billion U.S. aid package helped rebuild Europe's ruined democracies. The Marshall Plan helped rebuild European democracy and was the foundation of America's new relationship with Europe, and the NATO alliance.

Truman was also confronted with the post-war strategy of Stalin and his Communist allies, which was to probe weak spots to keep the Western Allies off balance and to consolidate their hold on what territory they held. Truman shored up two post-war weak spots Turkey and Greece - with money and other assistance. Later, when the Soviets probed further by blockading West Berlin, which relied on ground supplies from through the Soviet occupied German Territory, the American response was immediate and dramatic. The Berlin Airlift was a demonstration of U.S. resolve and continuing logistical prowess, which eventually broke the Soviet will to continue.

Another probe was from the Soviet client state

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