San Francisco Conference (1945)

The San Francisco Conference (1945) was an early test of whether the United States would sustain Franklin D. Roosevelt’s commitment to postwar international organization after his death. For Harry S. Truman, the conference’s scheduled opening became his first presidential decision: he affirmed that it would proceed, then pledged to continue Roosevelt’s program. His subsequent radio address to the conference exposed a tension between the decisiveness of that choice and the cautious, ceremonial language of his public remarks.

The first decision

After the presidential ceremony, Truman asked the Cabinet to remain. Steve Early soon reported that the press wanted to know whether the conference would open as planned in twelve days, on April 25. The question carried the weight of an unfinished presidential ambition: the account recalls Franklin D. Roosevelt sitting at the same table, looking toward the portrait of Woodrow Wilson and considering Wilson’s failure to create the League of Nations.

Truman answered emphatically that the conference would proceed. The book identifies this as his first decision as President. He then told the Cabinet he intended to carry on with Roosevelt’s program and hoped its members would remain at their posts. He welcomed their advice, acknowledged that they might disagree with him, and made clear that final decisions would be his and that he expected their support once he had made them. The conference thus became an immediate occasion to assert both continuity with his predecessor and responsibility for his own decisions.

A test of continuity

The Cabinet meeting framed the conference as more than a date on the diplomatic calendar. With Roosevelt’s failure to establish the League of Nations recalled in the room, proceeding with the new conference meant keeping alive an effort to build international cooperation after the war. Truman’s answer was swift, but his remarks also set out how he meant to govern: he would seek advice without surrendering the final decision.

That pledge mattered in the circumstances of succession. Truman had just taken office and was addressing a Cabinet formed under Roosevelt. Rather than delay the conference or signal a break with the previous administration, he publicly committed himself to its program and asked the existing officials to continue their work. The decision was an early declaration of continuity, made in a setting where the unfinished business of an earlier international project remained visible.

The radio address

Truman later addressed the United Nations conference by radio hookup. The book judges the speech poor, describing it as full of broad, largely meaningless pronouncements unlike the plain style he normally preferred. Its language invoked divine guidance, friendly cooperation, and hard work as grounds for confidence that an answer could be found to the problem history had posed.

The contrast is notable: in the Cabinet room, Truman had made a direct decision about the conference’s opening and stated plainly that he would carry on Roosevelt’s program; over the radio, his address relied on formal assurances. The account sets that public language against the more candid formulation he would ordinarily have used: the task was difficult, success uncertain, but the effort would be made. The episode therefore records both his early commitment to the conference and the distance between his private manner of expression and the ceremonial language of a presidential address.