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Harry S. Truman, the thirty-third President of the United States, was born in to a farming family in Lamar, Missouri, on 8th May, 1884. He served from 1945-1953, initially replacing the deceased F.D. Roosevelt. It fell on Truman's shoulders to take World War II to its conclusion and oversee the early years of The Cold War against the Soviet Union, not to mention the Korean War. He also faced many challenges domestically with the shift back to a peace time economy. He died on 26th December, 1972.

Truman will go down in history as a man who took office at a pivotal moment of the 20th Century. After the death in office of Roosevelt, Truman was to oversee the final few months of World War II, and was to make the tough decision to use the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It also fell to him to provide for the rebuilding of Europe in the Marshall Plan.

But with the Nazis finished, the Communist threat was only just getting started. Truman was to set the scene for fifty years of Cold War, with the world on the brink of total nuclear destruction. It was Truman who was there at the creation of NATO, and the doctrine of containment of Communism that he promoted would become known as the Truman Doctrine.

Domestically the end of the war saw a tumultuous time as shortages and strikes began to bite. But foreign affairs were now beginning to seep into internal politics as well. Many Communist sympathisers were relieved of their government posts. Truman will always be seen as a President who was involved in some of the most important events of modern history rather than for anything that he did domestically. The decisions that he made in foreign policy, for better or worse, shaped the world we live in today. They will continue to have effects for many years to come, and that is his legacy.

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