“Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg and the Partnership That Created the Free World” by Lawrence J. Haas A Review and Interview of the Author by Ruth King
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Arthur H. Vandenberg (1884-1951) was a respected Republican Senator from Michigan from 1928 to 1951. In 1945 he was the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Harry Truman, formerly a Democratic Senator from Missouri, became Vice President of the United States when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to a fourth term in 1944.
In the Prologue to his original and meticulously researched book, “Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg and the Partnership That Created the Free World,” author Lawrence J. Haas describes the world to which they awoke on April 12, 1945 – the day that FDR died.
World War 11 was approaching its end in Europe as U.S. and Soviet armies swept towards victory. The Nazi regime was collapsing, and in its wake were 40 million dead; millions of displaced survivors; and devastation, starvation, disease, homelessness, and dislocation for those who survived.
Furthermore, the Soviets and their puppet Communist allies throughout Eastern Europe were exploiting the chaos in the hopes of expanding the Soviet empire across Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East.
The accidental President, who was never Roosevelt’s top choice for Vice President to begin with, and Arthur Vandenberg, who had been an isolationist and harsh critic of Roosevelt, his New Deal, and his tilt toward Great Britain before the war, formed an unlikely partnership to forge a revolutionary new American foreign policy in response to the new challenges.
As Lawrence Haas writes:
“Under their leadership from the spring of 1945 to the summer of 1949, the United States would spearhead the birth of a United Nations…; pledge through the Truman Doctrine to defend freedom from Communist threat virtually anywhere in the world; rescue Western Europe’s economy from the devastation of war through the Marshall Plan, and commit itself through the North Atlantic Treaty (which established NATO) to defend Western Europe if the Soviets attacked.”
Their collaboration started with a simple message to a beleaguered Harry Truman in his earliest days on the job. Despite his misgivings, Vandenberg, a prominent and forceful Senator, wrote to the new President: “Good luck and God bless you. Let me help you whenever I can. America marches on.”
How they fought Congress in both parties and how they succeeded is narrated in this informative and highly readable book.
Truman and Vandenberg, who were born just 47 days apart in the spring of 1884, were very different men. They differed widely, for instance, in their styles and in their approach to work and leisure. Truman was blunt, straightforward, and sometimes crass; Vandenberg was deliberative, controlled, egotistical, and often pompous. Both were largely self-educated, with both attending college for only one year before their money ran out. Truman was insecure about public speaking and preferred to deliver off-the-cuff remarks; Vandenberg relished public speaking and prepared his Senate orations with great care. Although they never became close friends, their professional partnership was close, effective and loyal.
Truman favored a tough response, economic aid to devastated Europe and military intervention to halt the Soviet Union.
For his part, Vandenberg knew the Senate, understood partisan rivalry and bitterness, and had abandoned strict isolationism after Pearl Harbor to promote a strong U.S. role in the world. His support for an unpopular President helped propel and implement the major initiatives that reshaped American foreign policy.
During the contentious election of 1948, Vandenberg assumed that Thomas Dewey would win and feared that that might fracture the bipartisan approach to foreign policy. Convinced that bipartisan foreign policy would strengthen America on the world stage, Vandenberg worked behind-the-scenes to ensure that Dewey didn’t do anything to threaten bipartisanship and he also assiduously avoided criticizing Truman.
Although Vandenberg was unhappy about Truman’s choice of Dean Acheson as Secretary of State, after his upset victory in 1948, he remained loyal to his vision of the role of bipartisanship in forging and implementing foreign policy – as he made clear in a Lincoln Day speech in Detroit in early 1949:
”…..It will be a sad hour for the Republic if we ever desert the fundamental concept that politics shall stop at the water’s edge. It will be a triumphant day for those who would divide and conquer us if we abandon the quest for a united voice when America demands peace with honor in the world.”
Truman is respected by historians and pundits with some excellent biographies available. Arthur H. Vandenberg, however, is largely forgotten, and we are in the debt of Lawrence Haas for this excellent reminder of the crucial role he played as Senator and presidential adviser.
The United Nations has largely disintegrated as its sub-agencies, its General Assembly and its Security Council are mostly detrimental to solving conflicts. The Truman Doctrine, instrumental in confronting the Soviet Union, ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. But NATO, the crown jewel of the Truman-Vandenberg alliance, endures.
In January of 1947, Truman wrote, “America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”
As Lawrence Haas proves in detailing their efforts, their hurdles and their ultimate vindication, Truman and Vandenberg had both the courage and imagination to succeed as they approached the challenge at hand.
Mr. Haas has graciously agreed to an interview:
RK: You write that Truman and Vandenberg came together during a particularly partisan time in our politics, even worse than today. How did they do it? What was the key to their relationship and their accomplishments?
LJH: These were not perfect men, not by a long shot, which is what makes the story so interesting. Truman could be mean, crass, and vengeful. In his 1948 re-election campaign, for instance, he campaigned in the most brutal fashion against both Dewey and the Republican-controlled “do nothing” 80th Congress – the very Congress that, with Vandenberg’s leadership, implemented the Truman Doctrine in the form of U.S. aid to Greece and Turkey, enacted the Marshall Plan, and laid much of the groundwork for NATO. Vandenberg could be vain, pompous, and self-centered. He insisted on knowing beforehand what Truman and his team were crafting by way of foreign policy proposals as his price for supporting them, and he always looked for opportunities to fix a supposedly glaring problem with them with a “Vandenberg amendment” that would save the day.
But Truman and Vandenberg never lost sight of the big picture on foreign policy, which was the emerging Soviet threat. And, because they knew that they needed one another to address that threat, they were careful never to do anything that would threaten their personal relationship, which lay at the root of bipartisan foreign policy. Vandenberg seethed privately but bit his tongue publicly during Truman’s attack on the 80th Congress, and he also swallowed hard but accepted the Truman foreign policy appointees whom he did not like. Truman made a point of speaking glowingly about Vandenberg publicly even when campaigning against the 80th Congress, and he massaged Vandenberg’s ego further by bringing him into the Administration’s deliberations on such matters as the Soviet blockade of Berlin in 1948.
Beyond that, Truman and Vandenberg benefited from the assistance of extremely talented colleagues both in the Administration and on Capitol Hill. Truman was fortunate to be aided by such broad-minded and politically savvy advisers as Secretaries of State George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson and top State Department officials Robert Lovett, Averell Harriman, Will Clayton, and George Kennan. Vandenberg was fortunate to work with such frequently cooperative colleagues as Tom Connally, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Charles Eaton, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Even if Truman and Vandenberg were imperfect men, and even if they were fortunate in their colleagues, they were nevertheless true heroes in overcoming the obstacles and addressing the very real threat to U.S. national security. And, as a result, we have been in their debt for nearly 70 years.
RK: Is there anyone in Congress today who could work so closely with a President of a different party without betraying core principles?
LJH: On foreign policy, I think so. Keep in mind that at the very time that Truman and Vandenberg were collaborating on foreign policy, bringing the rank-and-file members of their parties along with them to achieve some truly monumental accomplishments at a time of real peril, Truman and the Republicans were fighting bitterly over domestic policy – taxes, spending, labor policy, housing, and so on. The same could well occur in our time as the two parties battle fiercely over the size and scope of government on the domestic side while working together to address major foreign challenges.
Today, Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, could be very much in the Vandenberg mode, presuming that he had a willing partner in the Oval Office. He is quite conservative on domestic policy and, in fact, proposed a limit on total federal spending that President Obama and congressional Democrats strongly opposed. But he worked closely with the committee’s ranking Democrat, Ben Cardin, on legislation related to Iran’s nuclear program, and he very much wanted to work with the White House. He made some progress on that score, until the President and Secretary of State Kerry shut virtually everybody else out and crafted the global agreement with Iran that, as we well know, won’t actually prevent Iran from developing or acquiring nuclear weapons.
Ed Royce, the California Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also could play a role like Vandenberg if given the chance. Like Corker, Royce is a committed conservative on the domestic front, so he’s not going to agree with Obama on much related to domestic policy. But Royce has worked in bipartisan fashion with Eliot Engel, the ranking Democrat on his committee, on Iran on other issues. He, too, has sought a larger role with the Administration on foreign affairs but, as with Corker, Obama has preferred a more go-it-alone style on Iran and other issues.
Here’s the good news: I think that, historically speaking, Obama will prove an outlier in his foreign policy. That is, I think that unless it’s either Rand Paul or Bernie Sanders – both of whom are quite unlikely – the next President will re-think much of what Obama has done to reduce the U.S. footprint around the world. I think that the Iran nuclear deal, which lacks support in Congress and around the country and doesn’t even carry the force of law, is on the table for serious review. So, too, are Obama’s efforts to work closely with Russia’s ruthless strongman, Vladimir Putin. And, of course, I’m quite sure that the next President will work hard to restore warm relations with our most important ally in the Middle East and the region’s lone democracy – Israel.
RK: In your book, you do not mention Truman’s recognition of Israel in 1948. Was Vandenberg involved in any way?
LJH: Vandenberg played a useful behind the scenes role. As you know, the leading actors in that drama were – in the White House – President Truman, Counsel Clark Clifford, and a handful of other key aides and – at the State Department – Secretary George C. Marshall and a cadre of anti-Zionist, if not anti-Semitic, aides. Over the strong objection of such influential State Department aides as Loy Henderson, Truman strongly supported the establishment of a Jewish state. He also surprised his own State Department as well as the U.S. representatives at the United Nations by recognizing Israel just 11 minutes after its creation.
While Truman was battling the State Department and formulating his position, Vandenberg was pressing Truman to support the plan of a special United Nations committee that called for partitioning Palestine into two states – one for Jews and a second for Arabs. He reached out to his influential Senate Republican colleague, Robert Taft, to craft a Senate Republican position in favor of the U.N. plan.
So, yes, Vandenberg was helpful.
LAWRENCE J. HAAS, A FORMER SENIOR WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL AND AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST, IS SENIOR FELLOW FOR U.S. FOREIGN POLICY AT THE AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY COUNCIL.
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