NOMINEE: Harry Truman
NOMINATED BY: Condoleezza Rice, Provost, Stanford University
Harry Truman, who had been a little-known and perhaps
ill-prepared Vice President, found himself in 1945 facing the
most daunting of responsibilities: ending World War II and
containing Soviet communism. Truman's foreign-policy leadership
gave the U.S. an unprecedented role in international affairs.
The choices he made, from the Marshall Plan--to economically
strengthen noncommunist nations in the wake of the war--to the
founding of NATO, a peacetime military alliance that would limit
the Soviet sphere of influence and provide an umbrella for
Germany's reconciliation with Europe, fundamentally reshaped the
world and planted the seeds of the Soviet Union's eventual
destruction. -- Condoleezza Rice
|
|
|
