This was a report on President Truman’s efforts to intensify America’s wartime posture. When the article was first read the Korean War had been raging for seven months – with the previous five months bringing the promise of an expanded and prolonged war that became clear to one and all when 250,000 Chinese infantrymen swarmed over their Southern border and immediately engaged UN Forces. Compiled in these columns is a list explaining how the Truman administration, the Pentagon and the officials on the American home front had met the Korean challenge thus far. The article was written in the wake of the President’s 1951 State of the Union Address in which a veritable laundry list of additional requirements were presented to Congress.
The Truman Administration, being an extension of the New Deal, could not help but react to war in the same way that FDR did; we’re not referring to the manner in which the war was prosecuted on the battlefield, but Truman’s vision for the American home front economy. This column lists a few elements that are right out of the FDR playbook that served only to discourage the economic competition that prolonged the Great Depression.
