Upon learning of Franklin Roosevelt's death on April 12, 1945, Harry Truman was reported to have said,

I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me. It was only a slight exaggeration.

The decisions the 33rd president had to make in just the next four months would have

crushed any normal person, managing the German surrender in May 1945,

authorizing the use of the atomic bomb to end the war in the Pacific in August,

and converting the economy from wartime to peacetime

are just a sample of what he had to contend with.

It was also becoming clear that the Soviet Union

was not going to be a partner in the post-war world.

It was going to be an adversary bent on world domination.

Truman wasn't about to let this happen. The first order of business was to save Western Europe.

Eastern Europe was already gone.

As Winston Churchill vividly described in March 1946,

an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent.

Truman agreed with Churchill, committing the United States to containing the Soviet threat.

This became known as the Truman Doctrine.

Around the same time Truman's most trusted advisor, Secretary of State George Marshall, returned from Europe deeply

concerned.

He found Germany and ruins, England bankrupt, and France and Italy and chaos.

Marshall reported it would take an unprecedented effort by the United States

to breathe life into a moribund European economy. Failure to do so would hand

over the continent to the Soviets.

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