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Harry S. Truman

president of the United States from 1945 to 1953; politician (1884–1972)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ11613 ↗
Source-derived summary

Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. As the 34th vice president in 1945, he assumed the presidency upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in April. Truman set up the Marshall Plan to rebuild the badly damaged economy of Western Europe. He established the Truman Doctrine and supported the founding of NATO to contain the expansion of Soviet communism. A member of the Democratic Party, he proposed numerous New Deal coalition liberal domestic reforms, but few were enacted by the conservative coalition that dominated the United States Congress.

Born in rural Missouri, Truman was raised in Independence, Missouri, and during World War I, he fought in France as a captain in the Field Artillery. Returning home, he opened a haberdashery in Kansas City, Missouri, and was elected as a judge of Jackson County in 1922. Truman was elected to the U.S. Senate for Missouri in 1934. Between 1940 and 1944, he gained national prominence as the chairman of the Truman Committee, which aimed to reduce waste and inefficiency in wartime contracts. Truman was elected vice president in the 1944 presidential election and became president upon Roosevelt's death in April 1945.

Editorial summary

“Harry S. Truman” enters the record as president of the United States from 1945 to 1953; politician (1884–1972). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Harry, Truman and president can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1884, 1972, 1945, 1953—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1884-05-08. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Harry, Truman and president.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Harry S. Truman” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Harry, Truman and president provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11613. VIAF identifies the subject as 61561827. The Library of Congress control number is n79029742. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1884, 1972, 1945 and 1953.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Harry S. Truman”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Harry S. Truman primary sources, Harry S. Truman archive and Harry research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Harry S. Truman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.