(no audio) - Well, I remember how I heard of it.

I was on the Missouri basketball team, and we were on a train for California, and en route, the news came out that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.

(dramatic music) - [Reporter] We have witnessed this morning a severe bombing of Pearl Harbor by enemy planes, undoubtedly Japanese.

- It took a few days, I think, for it to sink into everybody's mind that we had our hands full.

- [Reporter] And it seemed like a flash out of the blue.

- My dad was very concerned about my being drafted.

He thought that FDR had earlier talked in a meeting about not sending troops overseas, and he wanted to hold him to that.

- I thought of war when I heard of it, that's why I enlisted.

Payback day.

- [Reporter] This means an open declaration of war.

(dramatic music continues) (dramatic music) - [Man] President Truman and Eisenhower grew up about 150 miles away from each other, between Independence, Missouri and Abilene, Kansas.

And they had a lot more in common than I think they realized.

- They were cut from the same cloth and they had very much the same values.

He was born in Denison, Texas, and then they moved to Kansas when he was about two.

Abilene was his town.

He regarded it as idyllic.

But when you hear about some of the things that he went through, because he did come from the wrong side of the tracks, if you will.

He took on a job to deliver ice, to help with the family income because they were dirt poor.

He would deliver to the wealthiest, probably, person in town, and he was not even allowed on the back porch.

The help had to come out and get the ice from him.

He let those things kind of roll off of his back and didn't let it stop him.

I think his mother raised him that way.

He just...

He moved on, and Harry was much the same way.

- He was born in Lamar, Missouri, tiny town.

They spent a brief time in Grandview at my great-great-grandfather Young's farm in Grandview, and then moved to Independence where my great-grandfather, John Truman, set up as a livestock trader and farmer.

After high school, wanted to go to college or wanted to go into either West Point, preferably, or even Annapolis.

He couldn't go to college.

They couldn't afford.

They'd had some financial troubles and couldn't afford to send him to college, so he went to work as a timekeeper, the paymaster on a railroad gang.

They were building a spur of the Santa Fe railroad near Kansas City.

And eventually wound up working in two banks, and he was good at it.

He got raises, got promotions.

One of his roommates was Arthur Eisenhower, Ike's older brother, and worked there until he entered World War I.

(footsteps echoing) - During World War I, Dwight Eisenhower, of course, was in the United States Army.

He was a West Point graduate.

And he never got to go overseas during World War I.

He instead was in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, commanding the Army's New Tank School at what they called Camp Colt.

But Eisenhower, of course, wanted to go overseas, and when he finally was able to get orders sending him overseas to France, the war ended before he could be sent over.

(crowds cheering) (crowds clapping) I think even the experience commanding Camp Colt being in charge of this very new, very young service with armor and tanks, I think that was really incredibly important to the formation of him as a soldier and as a leader.

So he did not fight, he did not command troops in combat in World War I. Harry Truman did.

- Fought through the war, brought everybody home in one piece.

He was an artillery captain.

Went into the clothing business with his old canteen partner, his buddy Eddie Jacobson.

They were in basic training together, ran the only successful canteen.

So they went into business together after the war.

Did very well the first year.

I think they made the equivalent of three quarters of a million dollars with that little store, that little haberdashery.

But then the post-war recession tanked them.

After the haberdashery failed in 1921, '22, Jim Pendergast, Tom Pendergast's nephew, friend of grandpa's, went and told his uncle, he said, "You know, Harry Truman, he'd be great as a judge.

"You should run him for that.

"He's perfect.

He's electable."

And the way that Jim Pendergast put it was that my grandfather had been one officer in the war whose men hadn't wanted to shoot him.

And grandpa went into politics.

- [Steve] Kansas City and Jackson County in the 1930s and the 1940s, these were the days of machine politics, what they called the Kansas City machine.

And it was pretty much impossible to become a public servant or an elected official in those times without having support of the machine.

And so Truman was handpicked by Tom Pendergast to become a county judge in Jackson County.

- [Clifton] The eastern judge for two years.

Lost reelection, the only election he ever lost.

Elected presiding judge for two four-year terms after that.

- [Steve] And he was handpicked to become a United States Senator.

And that forced Truman into a lot of ethical concerns.

And so when he came to Washington, Truman was widely considered to be a corrupt tool of the Kansas City machine.

When you look into Truman's life, it was more complicated than that.

- He understood that he was part of a corrupt machine in Jackson County, but he was determined, and we know this from his writings, you know, not to enrich himself, not to financially gain from his position, although he knew that he very well could do that.

But Truman was scrupulously honest and was determined to serve the public interest.

- Pendergast once called him a sucker.

In other words, he wouldn't take the bribes that were available either as a county judge or a United States Senator.

He would draw a line in where he would agree to Pendergast's requests and where he would not.

- In the election of 1940, when he comes back in 1941, that's when the Truman Committee is established.

And it's established because Harry is on the Armed Services Committee, and he goes to the chair and says, "We need to make sure that we're ready for this war "'cause this war is gonna come."

- It's important to remember that the U.S. Army was very small in 1940.

There had been a very strong isolationist movement and an America First movement, as was referred to in the 1930s.

And the U.S. was really woefully unprepared for World War II.

- [Mary Jean] He was an aid to MacArthur in the Philippines.

He apparently had quite a bit of strategic know-how.

- [Todd] And then fast forward to the early days of World War II, as General George Marshall, the Army chief of staff, is recognizing the incredible organizational and administrative talent in Dwight Eisenhower, that sets Eisenhower on the path, of course, to get his first star and then a second star, and then his third and fourth in very rapid succession, and ultimately be appointed as the Supreme Allied Commander for the Normandy invasion.

- And what got Harry Truman really catapulted into the upper reaches of the political landscape, was his service on, what was referred to as the Truman Committee, or the Senate Committee to investigate the National Defense Program.

- He started this committee in early 1941.

He took the taxpayer's money and how it was spent very, very seriously.

And so when he was getting these letters from some of his constituents in Fort Leavenworth tell him that money was being wasted, contractors soaking the government for two, three times what they had made before the war, Truman took that seriously.

And he cared deeply to see that the public's money was spent wisely.

And I think that was the driving force that motivated him to say, "Hey, let's take a look at this.

"Let's investigate this."

He developed a healthy suspicion of the military and its budget that would serve him well in the White House.

(fire roaring) - The day of Pearl Harbor was a Sunday.

And my uncle had picked up my siblings and taken them to church at Sycamore Congregational Church.

And of course, everybody was all abuzz about Pearl Harbor and what that would mean and how awful that was.

And one of my... grandparents, perhaps, or, anyway, was quoted as saying, "It's like your parents are fighting.

"One of them is Japanese and the other is American."

And it was just awful.

- [Roosevelt] We expect to eliminate the danger from Japan, but it would serve us ill if we accomplished that and found that the rest of the world was dominated by Hitler and Mussolini.

So we are going to win the war, and we are going to win the peace that follows.

- There was this executive order, 9066, which was, I guess, put on telephone poles and things in the neighborhood that said all people of Japanese descent must report to someplace.

Topaz was one of 10, I think, concentration camps built for Japanese Americans, right at the onset of World War II.

The country was fearful of the Japanese more than the Germans because there were more people who looked German and not very many people who looked Japanese.

- I applied at North American and they sent me to training school, which is where I met my partner that I had all the way through.

All the time we worked together, we worked on the left bomb bay of a B-25.

She was the riveter on the outside, and I was the bucker on the inside, which means that you hold an iron bar in your hand and you follow the riveter.

You have to have a rhythm to it, or it doesn't work.

We were pretty good, (chuckles) at least we thought we were.

You have to remember that all the propaganda was on winning the war.

And all around that plant, there were signs, electronic signs showing how many planes we built last month, how we're doing this month, you know.

It was almost a race.

- Everybody had something to do with it, not only as the military, but everybody at home.

People were working in all the plants, making all the ammunition, making all the tanks and planes, all your defense industries.

They're just as important as the guy with the gun.

(siren wailing) - [Reporter] You reporter, George Hicks of the ABC.

- [George] Our ship has just gave its warning whistles, and now the slack is coming up in the sky.

(airplane whirring) (artillery firing) Looks like we're gonna have a night tonight.

Give it to them, boys.

Another one coming over.

And close right along side of us is firing on us.

Something burning is falling down through the sky (artillery firing) and circling down.

May be a hit plane.

(bombs exploding) - [Reporter] Two of the architects of the operation kept a watchful eye on proceedings.

- [Eisenhower] People of Western Europe, a landing was made this morning on the coast of France by troops of the Allied Expeditionary Force.

This landing is part of the concerted United Nations plan for the liberation of Europe made in conjunction with our great Russian allies.

I call upon all who love freedom to stand with us now.

Together we shall achieve victory.

- The Letter of Responsibility on D-Day, he dated it July 5th.

And to me, that's somebody under a tremendous amount of stress.

There have been other explanations for it, but I think that's what happened.

I mean, he wrote it that night.

I actually met the guy that wore number 23.

There was a fairly famous picture of the two of them together.

And granddad's looking very, very intense.

And he's looking like this, you know?

And finally, when granddad would've been a hundred years old, the guy was on the USS Eisenhower.

And we had a celebration for granddad on that day.

And he was number 23, and I said, "Ah, you're number 23, who... "I have seen your picture all of my life, "and what in the world was he saying to you that night?

"Because he's so intense and all that."

And he says, "Oh.

"No, he was talking to me about the fishing in Saginaw."

But that's how much he could compartmentalize.

And this was a cast, apparently.

His idea that particular moment was he wanted to convey to the troops what they were fighting for, so he was talking about the fishing in Saginaw.

He was talking about the homes.

He was talking about the kids and all that.

That's what he did that night.

He didn't talk strategy.

- Everybody loved him.

Everybody loved him just like they loved Churchill.

- My mother asked me to take typing in high school, freshman in high school.

And it turned out that that maybe saved my life because when we got to the Battle of the Bulge in Europe, I was one of three of 109 men in our company who was not able to go to the front.

We were back about 30 miles from the front where it was probably 80 to 90% death rate for our company.

- [Reporter] Through a grim and bleak period of several weeks, the enemy, supported by the most devastating of weather conditions, isolated and assaulted the Allied Forces.

(dramatic music) (bombs exploding) - Christmas Eve, 1944, just a few months before the end of the war, we were ready to go over to this little town up in northeast France.

Each truck had a machine gun on about the rear of the truck.

It was gonna go through the enemy territory.

"Sperry," a sergeant yelled out, "man that machine gun on our truck."

A machine gun, I think I've seen one in the pictures somewhere, the movies.

I had no idea that there was gonna be any involvement with me and a machine gun with all my records and all these things.

It's just ridiculous.

Absolutely ridiculous.

So I said, "I don't know anything about a machine gun."

"All you did is you sit in the seat, here's the trigger."

If we ran into enemy fire, I was to man this machine gun.

Well, I guess I could do that, I don't know.

But I said, afterwards, I said, "I thought we were supposed to win this war."

(chuckles) That's what I...

The first thing that came to my mind, "How can I possibly take over a machine gun?"

And, "How are we gonna win this war?"

That was terrible.

- I said, "Hey, Mack, where's the front?"

And he looked at me with an absolutely blank face and just said, "You're on it."

So then I knew I was on it.

(artillery firing) (poignant music) - [Mary Jean] Granddad was going through stopping the Nazis, but he didn't realize the Holocaust was happening.

He was shocked when he found the camps.

- Well, Eisenhower came to look it over and said he wanted all that documented.

He said, "No one will believe this 50 years from now."

And he made the townspeople bury all these people that were stacked up six feet deep.

- I think it was so unbelievable to him.

Your brain will only comprehend so much.

I think it was so unbelievable to him that he felt the need to record it, because he had to witness it, and so should everybody else, because somebody would say it was propaganda someday.

- When we liberated Ahlem, the camp outside of Hanover, the rear echelon troops did what they're supposed to do, which is to investigate and look at things.

But where our job was to fight and to push forward.

And so by the end of that day, we were on the other side of Hanover.

We didn't think anything about it.

But one thing I did remember about it, and I do remember it to this day, was the smell.

The smell of that place, I've come to think of, I'm pretty sure it's the smell of pure evil.

As days went by, information worked its way forward about what it was.

We'd heard, and I know there was an abusive affair, had no idea it was organized murder.

(poignant music continues) Our tanks left a lot to be desired, but we had so many of them, we won, I mean.

The German guy told me, he says, "Well, we ran out of ammunition "before you ran out of tanks."

Really, he was telling the truth.

- So we got over to Berchtesgaden, and that's where the center of the German government was.

Hitler's office, and...

So I went in there right off to check it out, to see if I could liberate anything.

There was nothing left in his office.

But in his hallway, there was something that looked like a hope chest, which I lifted the lid on and discovered it was half full of Der Fuhrer's stationary.

So I promptly liberated that and sent it home.

- [Truman] General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations.

- I'm speaking for a victorious army of almost 5 million fighting men.

They, and the women who have so ably assisted them, constitute the allied expeditionary forces that have liberated Western Europe.

- [Truman] The West is free, but the East is still in bondage to the treacherous tyranny of the Japanese.

The victory won in the West must now be won in the East.

- Well, Jim and I went to a bootcamp together and went aboard ship together.

And he was assigned to one gun mount and I was assigned to another one.

And our bunks were, mine was closer to where his quarter station was, and his was closer to where mine was.

So we talked about, see if we could switch places on the gun mounts.

But before we got switched, I got a chance to go into the radar, which I did, and Jim never did switch.

And one radar they came, it's when they got through and hit that gun mount and wiped out all of the crew.

I did write to his folks and tell them what happened to him, and they were grateful.

And I got a letter back and they thanked me very much.

(bombs exploding) - I was just interested in being where some of the action was, which was probably foolhardy because where I was nobody was shooting at me because my position was plotting where things were going on, but I was not in any way in harm's way.

And if I got with the Fifth Fleet, that was very likely gonna change.

And that's where I went, was from Guam to Okinawa.

The Fifth Fleet was gonna lead the assault on Japan.

- Anyone that was close to Franklin Roosevelt could see that this was a dying man.

Whoever they nominated in 1944, very likely would become president of the United States.

And that Franklin Roosevelt would not survive his fourth term.

And that was apparent to everyone, I think, except Franklin Roosevelt.

He tended to be sort of, I think, ambivalent about the question of his running mate.

But Truman reluctantly agreed to be the nominee as vice president in 1944.

- A job that he did not want.

He often said there was a, the joke was there was a woman who had two sons.

One became a sea captain, the other became vice president of the United States.

Neither one of them was ever heard from again.

He didn't want that job.

Then of course, FDR died on April 12th, '45, and he became president.

- [Reporter] Vice President Harry S. Truman takes the oath of office on April 12th, 1945 and succeeds to the presidency.

(gentle music continues) At Hyde Park, New York, it is a soldier's funeral with all honors to the nation's departed commander-in-chief.

- I think by the time Truman became president, World War II was well on the way to being won at that point.

Eisenhower had led the successful D-Day landings and was well on the way to winning the war in Europe.

And as with many times throughout the war, Americans were writing in to Truman.

They were writing to him from Hanford, Washington or Oak Ridge, Tennessee, or Los Alamos, New Mexico.

And they were saying, "Senator Truman, "they're buying up land all over the place.

"They're spending money like water out here.

"There's a giant thing going on here.

"And something funny is going on."

A couple of times during the war, Truman sent an investigator out to notably Hanford, Washington.

Three days later, George Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army shows up in Truman's office and said, basically, "There's a big giant project going on here, "but it's top secret, and we need you to back off "and we need you to leave it alone."

And Truman honored that request, and he left the project alone.

Strangely, that was to his detriment later when he became president, because Franklin Roosevelt had not told Truman very much at all, if anything, about the Manhattan Project.

Truman had to be brought up to speed very quickly within the first weeks of his presidency.

- The case in June of 1945 with President Truman, was very important meeting on June 18, which actually was the same day that he met Dwight Eisenhower for the first time.

He had a dinner in honor of Eisenhower and presented him a distinguished service award.

But in this meeting I'm referring to, Eisenhower was not present.

It was the same day though, June 18.

There was a warning that was issued from Potsdam, but it was in much more vague terms.

called for the surrender of Japan, or they would face prompt and utter destruction, was the term that was used, issued from Potsdam in July of 1945.

- Let there be no mistake, we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war.

It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July the 26th was issued at Potsdam.

Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum.

If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this Earth.

- [Samuel] The military figures around him almost unanimously advocated for the use of the atomic bomb.

- He wanted advice on how to use it.

The general consensus was, yes, this could shorten the war.

It will forestall an invasion of, hopefully forestall an invasion of mainland Japan.

At the time, it was presented to him, and he thought that this was a way to shorten the war and save lives.

And on both sides, he often said, save American lives, save Japanese lives.

- He had been an artillery man in World War I. I think, Truman, with only partial understanding of what this new weapon was, saw the atomic bomb as another weapon, basically a big gun, basically the ultimate artillery piece.

And his main concern was, will it work?

And there was some uncertainty about that.

- The idea bothered him, using that weapon.

The idea of dropping a bomb on a city and killing people bothered him, certainly.

But if it would shorten the war and save lives, it was the decision he was prepared to make.

It's not taken lightly at all.

- During that time, my father and grandfather shared a room together.

Daddy had been out and about, and he came in and the room was completely dark.

And granddad was sitting there.

And he was like, "Whoa."

And he turned on the light and saw granddad there, and he was really surprised, and he said, "Daddy, are you all right?"

And granddad said, "Something incomprehensible is going to happen tomorrow, "and I cannot tell you what it is."

And quite frankly, he had a glass of bourbon and he was cold sober, it was so incomprehensible to him.

(ominous music continues) (atomic bomb rumbling) (atomic continues bomb rumbling) (high-pitch ringing) (high-pitch ringing continues) (atomic bomb rumbling) (atomic continues bomb rumbling) (somber music) (marker clacks) - So when we issued the ultimatum to Japan to surrender, the only answer we got was to go to the devil.

And still there was no reaction.

We learned later that the Japanese cabinet met, and finally there were enough who agreed to surrender to split the cabinet in half, one half in favor of surrender, the other determined to fight on.

In this spirit, the Emperor was finally called on to give his opinion, an unprecedented move.

He didn't want his people to die anymore than he wanted to surrender.

Yet the military was so strong, they still wouldn't notify us of their capitulation, so we had to drop the second bomb on Nagasaki.

That did it.

The dropping of the atom bombs was the only sensible thing to do.

It was the only thing to do.

- We knew that it was gonna be a horror fighting the Japanese.

They would do anything but surrender.

- There was vast relief on the forces in the Pacific, all over the Pacific, that the dropping of the atomic bomb had spared all of us.

It saved me.

And that it not just saved me, but it also saved the Japanese.

- I think we all took the position that he was a hero.

We knew that we would not be having to go to Japan.

I think immediately that we heard, it was an eruption.

Matter of fact, the vibration from the yelling, it was amazing the ship didn't sink.

- I was so filled with joy, I can't explain it to you.

My life was granted back to me, 'cause I knew I'd survived in Europe, 171 consecutive days of full engagement with the enemy.

Okay?

You run out of chances, you really do.

Guys run out of chances.

- It was a pragmatic decision that he felt needed to be made.

And I think that it was a terrible thing, but I do not fault him for doing it.

- I know Eisenhower was critical of that decision because he thought Japan would surrender anyway.

Again, Truman was facing some pretty heavy predicted casualties in an amphibious invasion of the Japanese home island.

So, how could you, in Truman's mind, how could you look at mothers and fathers and wives of soldiers who died in an invasion like that, and knowing that you had a weapon that could have prevented that invasion from ever having to take place.

So I think, President Truman had a lot of pressure on him as well.

But I know Eisenhower was troubled by the use of the atomic bomb on Japan at the end of the war.

- Dwight Eisenhower did not advocate for its use.

In fact, he thought it should not be used.

But Eisenhower was not consulted on the decision.

And it's puzzling, I think, to people why.

And I think the main reason was that Eisenhower was the European Theater general, whereas people like Douglas MacArthur and others were on the Pacific Theater.

As I say, this meeting in June 18, this big strategy meeting, I mean, Harry Truman meets Eisenhower for the first time.

It'd be very possible to include him in this meeting, but he does not in June of 1945.

But Eisenhower, the man of courage that he is, gave unsolicited advice.

He mentioned it at Potsdam.

He came to the Potsdam Conference with President Truman and offered the opinion.

Was, by all accounts, wasn't even asked about it directly, and said, "Mr. President," this is July of 1945 just weeks before the bomb is actually used, "I don't think it's necessary to use the bomb."

In his view, Japan was already the defeated nation, and that the U.S.'s moral standing would go down in the eyes of the world if we were to use this weapon.

And from what he understood about it, Eisenhower was just appalled by it and felt that it was just a terrible weapon that could potentially lead to a nuclear world and potentially a nuclear war.

And so that was Eisenhower's opinion.

He expressed that to his son John.

He felt a depression, is the word I've read, a depression over this subject and felt deeply about it.

Although ironically, years later, nuclear weapons would become a very important part of Eisenhower's foreign policy as president.

- A lot of the rethinking of this happened afterwards because of the result of the destruction, the death, the radiation.

And people began to back off.

"Well, no, I didn't think "we'd have that many people killed," or, "I don't think that weapon was necessary."

People started to distance themselves from it.

He once told Colonel Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, "Has anybody been giving you trouble "about using that weapon?"

And Tibbets said, "No, sir."

And grandpa said, "Well, if they do, "you tell them it was my decision, not yours, "and you were following orders."

So he always kept, he took and kept responsibility for that decision.

Eisenhower said it about D-Day, is that "I'm responsible for that.

"If it fails, the fault is mine.

"I've organized this."

And my grandfather said the same thing about the atomic bombings.

"That's my decision.

"I take responsibility for that."

- We ran much higher casualties on the Japanese in our fire bombings than we did with the atomic bomb.

But the atomic bomb was all at once.

(imitates a bomb) So, that shock value, just the unbelievable, unimaginable impact all at one time.

- When you saw the pictures and the films, what damage it did, it gave you a funny feeling.

My God, the destruction of that thing and the looks of the people and the cities and everything over there was horrible.

But I thought it was a good maneuver for the United States to get this war over with.

It wasn't pleasant to do, but I think it was the thing to do.

- I have received this afternoon a message from the Japanese government in reply to the message forwarded to that government by the Secretary of State on August 11th.

I deem this reply a full acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, which specifies the unconditional surrender of Japan.

In the reply, there is no qualification.

Arrangements are now being made for the formal signing of the surrender terms at the earliest possible moment.

General Douglas MacArthur has been appointed the Supreme Allied Commander to receive the Japanese surrender.

The proclamation of VJ Day must await upon the formal signing of the surrender terms by Japan.

- I stood watch several times for a director who had a big scope for fire control.

And this friend of mine was up there on duty, and he invited me up to sit and watch with him on the big scope, and then the binoculars, we'd take turns back and forth.

And I could reach out and almost touch them guys with that big scope.

I even saw two guys in white Navy clothes come down and put stuff on the table and move stuff around to get ready for things to sign.

- [Sally] The war was over and everyone was happy the war was over, and there was gonna be no more bombings, no more going down the air raid shelters.

- [Charles] When we got to New York, everybody in New York City seemed to be up there on the docks cheering, waving flags, yelling, singing, and we were just absolutely enthralled to know that we were not gonna go to Japan.

And you can't imagine how happy we were and how happy the people of New York City were when we got there.

- From the first day to the end, there was never any doubt in the mind of any American that I knew that we were gonna win.

Never ever entered into our imagination.

We could lose our lives, we could lose our units, we could lose a lot of things, but we weren't gonna lose the war.

- Winning the war meant that I would be able to return to the kind of life that I had anticipated before the war ever came along.

- As you get older, you realize there's somebody's sons in those planes that are being shot down.

And they really weren't our enemy.

They'd just being told what to do.

You know?

I felt that way after I lost my brother.

- Winning the war would mean peace.

And if you don't win the peace, you haven't won the war.

- You read my grandfather's letters to my grandmother from the front in World War I, he was all for grinding Germany into the dust.

And he actually said it, "Let's just take everything they have.

"Let's kill the officers, the politicians, whatever."

He was really angry at the end of the war.

Well, of course, a quarter century later, now you've got Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and World War II is ending, he wasn't going to make the same mistake, hence the Marshall Plan, NATO as a bulwark against the Soviets, all of that bringing peace and stability to all of Europe.

And of course at that time, General Eisenhower thought the same thing.

I mean, they were in lockstep, I think, on that one.

- Wars never settle problems.

They only create new ones.

When World War II ended, we had devastated countries from one end of the world to the other.

The thing we did then was to set up in every country a program known as the Marshall Plan.

We fed the countries in Europe that were starving.

We furnished all the things that were necessary to restore Europe and make it self-supporting.

If it had not been for the Marshall Plan, I don't know what would've happened.

We, in all probability, would've seen the people of Europe rebelling and bringing on a situation which would've pleased the Russians immensely.

I did not want that to happen.

- And we went to the First Infantry Division in Germany and what we did, and the other countries, build Germany back up.

I was a young staff sergeant, and Truman integrated the whole military.

The colonel called us all inside this conference building and he said, "We are not going to have any trouble.

"We're going to stick together and work together, "and that's it."

So, everybody treated everybody right, and it worked.

- He won reelection in 1948 despite that, despite desegregating the military and desegregating hiring in the United States government.

So he basically opened jobs up, and this from a man who had all throughout his life used racial epithets.

And not only for black people, but anybody you could think of, and just the way he talked, the environment that he lived in.

But the basic issue of human rights did not escape him.

- For years and years, the white people had been practically treasonable for the simple reason that they wouldn't give all the citizens of the country civil rights.

The whites, therefore, had been disregarding the constitution.

(bright music) - [Steve] The two men remained cordial and even friends through much of Truman's presidency.

Weirdly, in 1947, Truman suggested that he himself might step aside if Eisenhower wanted to become president.

- "You run as president and I'll be your vice president."

And Eisenhower turned him down politely.

I think he, on more than one occasion, made that offer, and Eisenhower turned him down, and then ran as a Republican.

And Mary Jean Eisenhower told me, years ago, I asked her, "Why did he go Republican?"

And she said, "Basically he thought the Democrats "had been in the White House too long.

"So he thought it was time for a change."

Of course, he had no political affiliation before that as a soldier.

- [Steve] But they remained on good terms all the way up until the election of 1952 in which Truman was stepping aside.

Adlai Stevenson would be the Democratic candidate, and Eisenhower would be the Republican candidate.

This is the time of the Red Scare of Joe McCarthy.

McCarthy had been very critical of George Marshall, Truman's hero, Truman's friend as Secretary of State.

And early on in the campaign, Eisenhower refused to denounce McCarthy.

He refused to stand up for George Marshall.

And Truman took that very, very personally.

And that led to some hard feelings between the two that, in the nature of two very powerful people, one of whom held the office of the presidency, one of whom was running to replace him by criticizing his policies as president, their relationship went south and never fully recovered.

- When granddad started to become inaugurated, Truman told granddad that he would like for him to pull daddy from open combat in Korea.

And he would like him to come to the inauguration.

And granted, kind of thought that was kind of a good idea.

When he communicated with daddy, daddy said, "Absolutely not.

"I don't want to leave open combat "to come to the inauguration, I can't."

And so granddad relayed that to Truman, and Truman did it anyway.

He said, "Why did you do that to me?"

And he said, "Well, I didn't, your president did."

And so that, you know, (imitates record scratching) - It is customary and has become quite a custom for the outgoing President of the United States to have a breakfast for the incoming one called Inaugural Breakfast.

Mrs. Truman had prepared a very fine breakfast in the state dining room, and Mr. Eisenhower was supposed to come to that breakfast, which he didn't do.

- [Steve] During the eight years of Eisenhower's presidency, Truman was not invited to the White House.

- Again, they were great men, but they were capable of bitterness and pettiness.

And they could be sensitive.

They both could be thin-skinned.

- And Mary Jean and I have talked about this.

Sometimes it's funny to us that the two of them got on each other's nerves so badly when they were both raised so much the same way with so much the same values.

- In an oral history with Merle Miller that became the book, "Plain Speaking," Truman said, "No military man gives a damn about money.

"All they care about is how to spend it."

So Truman shared Eisenhower's fears of the huge power between the military and giant defense corporations.

But Truman very strongly believed that these huge corporations and their relationship with the military was a concern.

And it's not all that dissimilar from what Eisenhower would warn about at the end of his presidency.

- [Eisenhower] We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.

The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

- It was kind of prophetic on his part, but he saw a moneymaking war machine and he was afraid people would get caught into it and that it would destroy us.

- I mean, the reality is, and few people know this, except it's out there as public knowledge, frankly, the, what is now called, the Kansas City National Security Campus, that is the official name of the Honeywell operation.

Its purpose is to produce on their website they say 80% of the non-nuclear components for all nuclear weapons that the United States develops.

Back in the day, it produced probably about a 100%.

We're talking 1940s and 1950s.

It's very, very significant in terms what happens in Kansas City since.

And the National Security Campus, the Honeywell plant is such a huge continuing thing.

That plant operates with between seven and 8,000 employees on a daily basis, which makes it one of the largest manufacturing plants.

But that makes it about twice the size in terms of employment of the General Motors plant here, for example.

That's very significant.

(chuckles) That's all part of the America that was transformed by the World War II experience.

'Cause the United States is very different after World War II than it was before.

World War I had nowhere near the impact on life in America that World War II did.

- [Walter Cronkite] From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1:00 PM Central Standard time.

- I think the story goes that he sat on one of the couches at Blair House after the funeral, after Kennedy's funeral, and he was really upset.

And Truman came over and said, "Have you gotten a plate yet?"

meaning a buffet.

And grandad just kind of went, "Mm."

And he says, "I'll get you one."

And that's how they ended up making up.

They never really agreed or apologized, but they became friends again.

- One of the things that we did with my grandparents for several years was visit Key West during our spring break because grandpa, my grandparents liked to go back down there.

And we were with them in Key West when President Eisenhower died.

And grandpa got the news, and I remember him being visibly upset hearing that President Eisenhower had died.

So by that time, this was somebody for whom grandpa again had a great deal of respect, and was a friend he had just lost.

- Both men are regarded as great presidents or the near-great category, by historians, by scholars, and by the general public.

And part of the reason, I think, is because of the importance of the decisions that the men made at a critical time in our history, the largest war in human history.

And both men were trying to help fix a broken world.

Whether it's the legacy of Israel and the Middle East, whether it's the role of the United States in the world, NATO, for example, which was created under the Truman presidency in which Eisenhower served as Supreme Commander.

These are momentous decisions, and they're timely decisions, and they're decisions that still resonate with us today.

- And it is a remarkable thing that I think the quieting effect of this terribly dangerous weapon has had on the idea of an all-out total war.

- I'm just glad no one has used it again.

And I had hoped that the... the feeling that the bomb was out there would keep wars from breaking out.

But of course it hasn't.

There have just been little wars.

And no war is little.

- It's hard not to look back at an era when the entire nation came together in a bipartisan way to struggle against a common enemy.

It's hard not to worry and be concerned when you see the toxicity and the divisiveness in Washington today.

It's hard not to worry about whether the nation has the will to do that in this day and age.

- History wise, we've had our good guys and our bad guys.

But we always have people who are able to provide our country with the leadership that it needed.

And I'm confident that will always be the case.

- I don't feel confident that it will remain the kind of country that we served.

I'm sure the country itself will survive one way or another.

- I'm confident about the future, but I think it's kind of shaky.

I don't wanna see us get into a, like a dictatorship.

That scares me a little.

- Gotta say I'm concerned.

And I just think the thing, a lot of things are happening now that, for me, the country is not going the right way, I don't think.

- Everyone was so patriotic.

I wish I could say that everyone is patriotic now, you know, over here.

But they're not.

Believing in your government and... knowing they're doing the right thing for you, just the ordinary people, is a lovely thing.

It's a lovely thing.

And I think a lot of the people over here are missing out on something because they're too busy running other people down instead of building them up and helping them.

- Who was it that said about democracy, that it's the worst form of government imaginable except for all the others.

It's flawed, it's a mess, but it's the best system that we have, the most universal system, the system that includes the most people.

And we're always gonna have the fascists, we're always gonna have the dictators who wanna jump up and make everybody do it their own way without getting any argument about it.

So you have to have...

The more democracy you have, the better off you are.

- We must work to bring the nations of the world together.

The best way we can do this, I've always believed, is to dedicate ourselves unswervingly to honest democratic principles.

We must make the ideal of democracy increasingly brighter and more real.

- [Eisenhower] We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - Grandpa was put at number five.

And Mary Jean Eisenhower and I, they, sometimes in polls, they switch places.

So, we talked to each other, "Okay, so whose grandfather's on top now?"

"Well, I don't think that's fair.

He's been there too long.

"I think it's my grandfather's turn.

Nyeah" - On our first anniversary, my husband said to me, this is my second husband, he said to me, "I've got a surprise for you."

He said, "Have you ever heard the song 'Mustang Sally'?"

And I said, "No."

And I still haven't heard it.

- I take lessons from this guy on YouTube.

And I'll just show you quickly the different maneuvers.

This is a forward fist roll.

And you'll notice I switch ways I go on my hands.

♪ Sally ♪ ♪ Guess you better slow ♪ your Mustang down ♪ (boxing bag rattling) - Did you catch the way they switched?

(chuckles) (no audio)