Not so wild about Harry

This story flew under my radar recently, and I only found out about it reading R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr's column this morning. Apparently a previously unknown 1947 Harry Truman diary was found languishing at his presidential library in Missouri, in itself a great historical find that most probably supposed would further American wonder at this wit and intelligence. Instead, the candid writings exposed Truman a crude anti-Semite, writing at one point: "when [the Jews] have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog." Of course, since Truman recognized Israel in 1948, defying the advice of many who said it was politically suicidal, these sentiments have called his motives and principles into question.

Yet some seem to tie themselves in knots trying to rescue HST -- one scholar said Truman's language was merely the common "cultural anti-Semitism" of the times; another added “Truman was often critical, sometimes hypercritical, of Jews in his diary entries and in his correspondences, but this doesn’t make him an anti-Semite. Anyone who played the role he did in creating the state of Israel can hardly be regarded in that way.” So, despite writing confidentially, in the most sincere and honest venue possible (a diary), that Jews were more cruel than Hitler or Stalin, Truman is not an anti-semite? If not, what exactly did he need to say? 1948 is a free pass for wildly intemperate and hateful language?

This brings to mind the diaires of a Truman contemporary, H.L. Mencken, who in his private thoughts savaged Jews and, well, just about everyone. Yet he came out in 1938 and publically rebuked Germany for persecution of the Jews. I am not the first to bring this up, see this, and this, but it is worth asking, what will become of their reputations hereafter? Mencken never recovered from the publication of his diary, yet it seems Truman remains buoyant. The crabby Baltimore columnist can be thrown overboard, but the Cold War Democrat Truman cannot. Is this hypocrisy, a matter of saving the reputations of those ideologically aligned with the left no matter their reckless comments? Or is it a practical matter, of not being able to understand and digest the Cold War era without a heroic Truman, so let's quelch and forget what the diary says to preserve the narrative? In this latter scenario, Truman MUST be a hero; where are we left if he is not? Why are we researching and writing history -- because we want to find out what happened, using the evidence as best we can and limiting our subjectivity as strenuously as possible, or because we want to build a useful narrative for today, emphasizing some things and glossing over others to shape the past as we want it to be? Disturbing questions, all around.