ABSTRACT
Harry Truman is the American President on whose desk there stood the famous hand-lettered sign The Buck Stops Here. It stopped there constantly. Just in the four years between his accession to the presidency and Israel's creation and admission into the United Nations, he had to make some of the most momentous foreign policy decisions in the modern history of his country and of the world. He had, for example, to decide on the use of the atomic bomb in the winding down of the war against Japan. He had to deal with the nature and mission of the American military governments in Japan, Germany, and Austria. He also had to consider the survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, the rise of Communist China, the expansion of the Russian empire into Eastern and Central Europe, the rehabilitation of Western Europe, the decline and fall of the Dutch, French, and British empires, and the new balance of power in the Middle East.
