Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 - December 26, 1972) was an American statesman who served as the 33rd President of the United States (1945-1953), taking the office upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. A World War I veteran, he assumed the presidency during the waning months of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. He is known for implementing the Marshall Plan to rebuild the economy of Western Europe, for the establishment of the Truman Doctrine and NATO against Soviet and Chinese Communism, and for intervening in the Korean War. In domestic affairs, he was a moderate Democrat whose liberal proposals were a continuation of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, but the conservative-dominated Congress blocked most of them.

After his wartime service, Truman returned to Independence, where he married Bess Wallace on June 28, 1919. The couple had one child, Mary Margaret Truman.  Shortly before the wedding, Truman and Jacobson opened a haberdashery together at 104 West 12th Street in downtown Kansas City. After brief initial success, the store went bankrupt during the recession of 1921. Truman did not pay off the last of the debts from that venture until 1934, when he did so with the aid of a political supporter. Jacobson and Truman remained close friends, and Jacobson's advice to Truman on Zionism later played a role in the U.S. government's decision to recognize Israel.  With the help of the Kansas City Democratic machine led by Tom Pendergast, Truman was elected in 1922 as County Court judge of Jackson County's eastern district--this was an administrative rather than judicial position, somewhat similar to county commissioners elsewhere. (At the time Jackson County elected a judge from the western district (Kansas City), one from the eastern district (Jackson County outside Kansas City), and a presiding judge elected countywide.) Truman was not re-elected in 1924, losing in a Republican wave led by President Calvin Coolidge's landslide election to a full term. Two years selling automobile club memberships convinced him that a public service career was safer for a family man approaching middle age, and he planned a run for presiding judge in 1926.  In 1926, Truman was elected presiding judge with the support of the Pendergast machine, and he was re-elected in 1930. Truman helped coordinate the Ten Year Plan, which transformed Jackson County and the Kansas City skyline with new public works projects, including an extensive series of roads and construction of a new Wight and Wight-designed County Court building. Also in 1926, he became president of the National Old Trails Road Association (NOTRA). He oversaw the dedication in the late 1920s of a series of 12 Madonna of the Trail monuments honoring pioneer women, which were installed along the trail.  In 1933, Harry S. Truman was named Missouri's director for the Federal Re-Employment program (part of the Civil Works Administration) at the request of Postmaster General James Farley. This was payback to Pendergast for delivering the Kansas City vote to Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election. The appointment confirmed Pendergast's control over federal patronage jobs in Missouri and marked the zenith of his power. It also created a relationship between Truman and Roosevelt's aide Harry Hopkins and assured Truman's avid support for the New Deal.  Vice President Henry Wallace was popular among Democratic voters, but he was viewed as too far to the left and too friendly to labor for some of Roosevelt's advisers. The President and several of his confidantes wanted to replace Wallace with someone more acceptable to Democratic Party leaders and Roosevelt's advisors, knowing that Roosevelt might not live out a fourth term. Outgoing Democratic National Committee chairman Frank C. Walker, incoming chairman Hannegan, party treasurer Edwin W. Pauley, strategist Ed Flynn, Chicago Mayor Edward Joseph Kelly, and lobbyist George E. Allen all wanted to keep Wallace off the ticket. Roosevelt told party leaders that he would accept either Truman or Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. State and city party leaders strongly preferred Truman, and Roosevelt agreed. Truman did not campaign for the Vice-Presidential spot, though he welcomed the attention as evidence that he had become more than the "Senator from Pendergast".  Truman's nomination was dubbed the "Second Missouri Compromise" and was well received. The Roosevelt-Truman ticket achieved a 432-99 electoral-vote victory in the election, defeating the Republican ticket of Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York and running mate Governor John Bricker of Ohio. Truman was sworn in as vice president on January 20, 1945.  Truman's brief vice-presidency was relatively uneventful. On April 10, 1945, Truman cast his only tie-breaking vote as President of the Senate, against a Robert A. Taft amendment that would have blocked the postwar delivery of Lend-Lease Act items contracted for during the war. Roosevelt rarely contacted him, even to inform him of major decisions; the President and Vice President met alone together only twice during their time in office. In one of his first acts as vice president, Truman created some controversy when he attended the disgraced Pendergast's funeral. He brushed aside the criticism, saying simply, "He was always my friend and I have always been his." He had rarely discussed world affairs or domestic politics with Roosevelt; he was uninformed about major initiatives relating to the war and the top-secret Manhattan Project, which was about to test the world's first atomic bomb. He was also photographed with actress Lauren Bacall sitting atop the piano at the National Press Club as he played for soldiers.  Truman had been vice president for 82 days when President Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. That afternoon, Truman presided over the Senate as usual. He had just adjourned the session for the day and was preparing to have a drink in House Speaker Sam Rayburn's office when he received an urgent message to go immediately to the White House. Truman assumed President Roosevelt wanted to meet with him, but Eleanor Roosevelt informed him her husband had died after suffering a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Truman's first concern was for Mrs. Roosevelt. He asked if there was anything he could do for her, to which she replied, "Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now!"  As a Wilsonian internationalist, Truman strongly supported the creation of the United Nations, and included Eleanor Roosevelt on the delegation to the UN's first General Assembly. With the Soviet Union expanding its sphere of influence through Eastern Europe, Truman and his foreign policy advisors took a hard line against the USSR. In this, he matched U.S. public opinion, which quickly came to believe the Soviets were intent upon world domination.  Although he had little personal expertise on foreign matters, Truman listened closely to his top advisors, especially George Marshall and Dean Acheson. He won bipartisan support for both the Truman Doctrine, which formalized a policy of Soviet containment, and the Marshall Plan, which aimed to help rebuild postwar Europe. To get Congress to spend the vast sums necessary to restart the moribund European economy, Truman used an ideological argument, arguing that Communism flourishes in economically deprived areas. As part of the U.S. Cold War strategy, Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 and reorganized military forces by merging the Department of War and the Department of the Navy into the National Military Establishment (later the Department of Defense) and creating the U.S. Air Force. The act also created the CIA and the National Security Council. In 1952, Truman secretly consolidated and empowered the cryptologic elements of the United States by creating the National Security Agency (NSA).  In theory, the CIA had the purview to gather, process, and analyze national security information from around the world. The CIA's legacy was not lost on Truman, he wrote a letter to the Washington Post in December 1963, calling for the CIA's responsibilities to be scaled back significantly: "For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas."  Truman was torn about China, where the Nationalists and Communists were fighting a large-scale civil war, because the Nationalists had been major wartime allies and had large-scale popular support in the United States, along with a powerful lobby. General George Marshall spent most of 1946 in China trying to negotiate a compromise, but failed. He convinced Truman that the Nationalists would never win on their own, and that a very large-scale U.S. intervention to stop the Communists would significantly weaken U.S. opposition to the Soviets in Europe. By 1949, the Communists under Mao Zedong had won the civil war, the United States had a new enemy in Asia, and Truman came under fire from conservatives for "losing" China. Answer this question using a quote from the following article:

What was the National Security Act?
The act also created the CIA and the National Security Council.