<Ul> <Li> World War I </Li> <Li> Western Front </Li> </Ul> <Li> World War I </Li> <P> 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 . He used the veto power 180 times, more than any president since and saw 12 overridden by Congress; only Grover Cleveland and Franklin D. Roosevelt used the veto so often and only Gerald Ford and Andrew Johnson saw so many veto overrides . He is the only world leader to have used nuclear weapons in war . He desegregated the U.S. Armed Forces, supported a newly independent Israel and was a founder of the United Nations . </P> <P> Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri and spent most of his youth on his family's 600 - acre farm near Independence . In the last months of World War I, he served in combat in France as an artillery officer with his National Guard unit . After the war, he briefly owned a haberdashery in Kansas City, Missouri, and joined the Democratic Party and the political machine of Tom Pendergast . Truman was first elected to public office as a county official in 1922, and then as a U.S. Senator in 1934 . He gained national prominence as chairman of the Truman Committee, formed in March 1941, which aimed to find and correct waste and inefficiency in Federal Government wartime contracts . </P>

Who was the us president when ww2 ended