Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 - December 26, 1972) was the 33rd President of the United States of America, from 1945-1953. His presidency is associated with the final stages of the Second World War and the early years of the Cold War. Notable events occurring under Truman's presidency are the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the enacting of the Marshall Plan, the founding of NATO, and the Korean War. Truman also serves as the namesake of the Truman Doctrine, which represented a shift in U.S. foreign policy from a nominally isolationist policy to a more openly interventionist one, in which Truman argued that the United States was compelled to assist "free peoples" in their struggles against so-called "totalitarian regimes". The Truman Doctrine was one of the guiding notions of the U.S.'s imperialist, anti-communist efforts at containment and rollback of the Soviet Union and other socialist nations and liberation movements throughout the Cold War.