United States Declaration of War on Germany and Italy

The United States Declaration of War on Germany and Italy marked a turning point in the nation’s participation in the war and found Harry S. Truman rushing to the Senate for a joint session. His diary preserves the journey that brought him there and the personal longing he recorded as the country entered another conflict.

The Journey to the Senate

After Bess Wallace Truman told him that the Secretary of the Senate had called about a joint session, Truman set out without a car or driver. From a hotel in Columbia, he arranged a flight to St. Louis: they left at 4:50 and reached the airport at 5:35, covering 130 miles in about 40 minutes. His onward travel proved more difficult. After trying to get flights to Chicago and Memphis, he boarded an 11 p.m. plane to Pittsburgh and spent the night awake, listening to the radio.

Truman arrived home at 5:30 in the morning. Harry Vaughan met him at the airport with his car, and Bess was already up making breakfast. Truman slept until ten, then went to the Senate. The day’s proceedings, he noted, were quite an occasion—one that listeners could follow on the radio.

Declaration and Reaction

Truman recorded that on the 11th the United States had to accept another invitation from Germany and Italy. The diary’s wry word, “invitation,” gives the declaration a personal, rueful edge without diminishing its gravity. His account places the event amid the urgent Senate business that had summoned him to Washington.

The Battery He Remembered

After noting the declaration, Truman wrote, “Goodness knows where it will end. I wish I was 30 and in command of a Battery. It would be a lot easier….” The wish sets his present role as a senator against the directness he associated with military command. The entry ends not with a prediction about the war, but with that unresolved contrast: a national decision made in the Senate, and a veteran’s longing for a more immediate part in the struggle.