Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) had been a captain of field artillery in the First World War. Years after the war, he was elected to a county judgeship in his native Missouri, followed by a US Senate seat in 1934. A decade later, Truman was selected to be Franklin Roosevelt’s running mate in FDR’s third and final re-election campaign. After the pair won a landslide victory, Truman was sworn in as vice president in January 1945.

Three months later, Roosevelt’s sudden death elevated the 60-year-old Truman to the presidency. His inherited challenges were many. He joined with other Allied leaders at the 1945 Potsdam Conference in negotiating terms for the occupation of Germany and surrender of Japan, approved the use of two atomic bombs that ended the war, and navigated post-war tensions with the Soviets in Europe. By 1948, Truman faced several political headwinds, and though he was widely expected to lose his 1948 re-election bid, Truman shocked the country by defeating Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican governor of New York.

During his next term, Truman guided America’s global rise amid the spread of Soviet influence across post-war Eastern Europe. He was a champion of US military and economic aid to democratic countries resisting Soviet aggression, as well as the Marshall Plan that funded reconstruction efforts across Western Europe. In his second term, he managed the developing crisis on the Korean Peninsula, but after his first full term in office expired in 1953, Truman chose not to run for re-election. He retired to Independence, Missouri, and died in 1972.