San Francisco

San Francisco mattered to Harry S. Truman’s early presidency as the planned host city of the United Nations conference and as the setting for an immediate test of postwar diplomacy. Though Truman addressed the gathering by radio rather than appearing there in person, decisions about its opening and Soviet participation became part of his first days in office, when he was still confronting the scale of his responsibilities and the deterioration of relations with the Soviet Union.

The conference and Truman’s first decision

On the day Truman became President, the Cabinet was asked whether the San Francisco Conference on the United Nations would open as scheduled on April 25, just twelve days later. Truman answered emphatically that it would. This was his first presidential decision, and he made it in a room where Franklin D. Roosevelt had often considered the earlier failure to establish the League of Nations. Truman also told the Cabinet he intended to continue Roosevelt’s program, while making clear that final decisions would be his and that he expected support once he had made them.

The conference’s importance was not merely ceremonial. Until that afternoon, the Soviet Union had refused to send its foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov. Joseph Stalin then agreed to send him as a gesture in memory of Roosevelt, after the American ambassador in Moscow urged the idea. Stalin made the decision conditional on a request from the new President; Truman promptly made that request. Molotov’s attendance appeared to mark an early diplomatic breakthrough connected to the San Francisco meeting.

A breakthrough with limits

The agreement did not settle the larger conflicts between the Allies. The gesture changed the immediate prospects for Soviet participation, but it resolved none of the basic difficulties in U.S.–Soviet relations. Disputes over Poland and Soviet conduct in Eastern Europe remained serious, and Winston Churchill and the British government were increasingly apprehensive about Soviet policy. San Francisco therefore stood at once for the possibility of continued international cooperation and for the limits of what a single diplomatic success could achieve.

Truman addressed the United Nations conference by radio hookup. The book characterizes the speech as poor and full of broad, largely empty pronouncements unlike the plainspoken language he normally preferred. The contrast places the conference within a larger uncertainty surrounding his new presidency: he was required to speak for a developing international order while lacking the foreign-policy experience and personal preparation he believed the role demanded.

Narrative significance

San Francisco’s role in the account is chiefly diplomatic rather than personal. The city anchors a conference that Truman chose to keep on schedule, and its approaching opening gave the new President an immediate occasion to act. His request that Molotov attend showed how quickly he could move when a diplomatic opportunity appeared, but the unresolved disputes surrounding the conference prevented that action from serving as a lasting settlement. The location thus marks both continuity with Roosevelt’s international ambitions and the fragile, incomplete character of postwar cooperation.