Harry S. Truman Trivia
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50 free Harry S. Truman trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Harry S. Truman trivia quiz covers the Missouri farmer and failed haberdasher who became the 33rd president of the United States 82 days into a vice presidency he barely got to use. The easier questions handle the landmarks: his home town of Independence, the middle initial that stands for nothing, the death of Franklin Roosevelt, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the desk sign and the newspaper headline that got the 1948 election wrong. The harder end goes deeper into the presidency and the man: the Truman Committee that put him on the cover of Time, the Kansas City boss who made his career, the Potsdam Conference, the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, the executive order that desegregated the armed forces, the recognition of Israel eleven minutes after it was declared, the firing of Douglas MacArthur, the Blair House assassination attempt, the steel seizure the Supreme Court struck down and the angry letter he sent a music critic about his daughter's singing. There are also questions on Bess and Margaret Truman, his library in Independence and the Medicare card he received from Lyndon Johnson. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for Truman, his family, his policies and the events of his presidency before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this quiz, our Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt and World War II pages are the natural next stops.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who won the 1952 election to succeed Truman as president?
Dwight Eisenhower
Dwight Eisenhower followed Truman, the 33rd president, into office; a 1947 diary entry shows Truman had once offered to run as the general's vice president on a Democratic ticket.
Q 02What does the 'S' in Harry S. Truman stand for?
Nothing in particular
Nothing in particular: his parents settled on a bare S as a compromise between the names of his two grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young.
Q 03In which Missouri town did Truman grow up and later retire after his presidency?
Independence
Independence: the family moved there in 1890, and at the First Presbyterian Sunday school young Harry met Bess Wallace, the girl he would marry in 1919.
Q 04Which instrument did young Truman practise at five o'clock every morning?
Piano
Piano: he practised two hours before school and dreamed of becoming a concert pianist, later admitting that as a boy he was 'kind of a sissy'.
Q 05Why was Truman refused an appointment to West Point?
Poor eyesight
Poor eyesight kept him out: nearly blind without his thick glasses, he got into the Missouri National Guard in 1905 by memorizing the eye chart.
Q 06In World War I, Captain Truman led what kind of unit into action in France?
An artillery battery
An artillery battery: Battery D of the 129th Field Artillery was known as the regiment's unruliest, yet Captain Truman took it through the Meuse-Argonne fighting without losing a man.
Q 07What kind of shop did Truman open in Kansas City after returning from World War I?
A haberdashery
A haberdashery: the men's clothing store he ran with army friend Eddie Jacobson failed in the early-1920s slump, and Truman refused bankruptcy, paying off his share of the debts over some fifteen years.
Q 08Which office, his first, did Truman win in 1922 with the backing of Kansas City's Democratic machine?
County Court judge of Jackson County
County Court judge of Jackson County was an administrative job, not a judicial one: Truman handled budgets and roads like a commissioner, lost the seat in 1924 and came back as presiding judge in 1926.
Q 09Which Kansas City political boss backed Truman's rise, leaving him branded the boss's own senator?
Tom Pendergast
Tom Pendergast ran Kansas City's Democratic machine until a 1939 tax-evasion conviction; Truman stayed loyal, and as the new vice president in 1945 drew criticism for attending the disgraced boss's funeral.
Q 10During his 1948 campaign, what scornful label did Truman pin on the Republican-led 80th Congress?
The Do-Nothing Congress
The Do-Nothing Congress: Truman recalled it for a special session in July 1948, daring Republicans to pass their own platform, and happily agreed when a reporter called the result a do-nothing session.
Q 11The wartime Truman Committee, which made him a national figure, investigated what?
Waste in defense contracts
Waste in defense contracts: before proposing the committee he set out alone in his own car to inspect army camps for himself. Its hearings went on to save taxpayers billions of dollars.
Q 12Whom did Truman replace as Franklin Roosevelt's running mate on the 1944 Democratic ticket?
Henry A. Wallace
Henry A. Wallace was too liberal for party leaders, who feared the ailing Roosevelt might not survive a fourth term. Wallace ran against Truman in 1948 and won no electoral votes.
Q 13Truman had been vice president only 82 days when Roosevelt died at which retreat?
Q 21The Truman Doctrine of March 1947 initially pledged aid to which two countries?
Greece and Turkey
Greece and Turkey had both leaned on British aid, which London announced it could no longer afford. Truman asked Congress for $400 million and pledged to back free peoples resisting subjugation.
Q 22Which wartime ally received the largest share of the Marshall Plan's $13 billion in aid?
Britain
Britain pocketed the largest share of any nation. West Germany, often pictured as the plan's big winner, received considerably less.
Q 23Where did George Marshall first outline the European recovery plan that took his name, in June 1947?
Harvard University
Warm Springs
Warm Springs, Georgia, was where Roosevelt collapsed while sitting for a portrait. In his 82 days as vice president, Truman had met alone with him only twice.
Q 14Who told Truman at the White House that the president had died?
Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt broke the news herself. When Truman asked if he could do anything for her, she turned the question around: what could they do for him, 'for you are the one in trouble now'.
Q 15Which secret wartime project did Truman first learn about in detail from Henry Stimson on April 25, 1945?
The Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project would soon yield 'the most terrible weapon ever known in human history', Stimson's memo warned. As vice president, Truman had been told nothing about it.
Q 16V-E Day, May 8, 1945, fell on which Truman milestone?
His 61st birthday
His 61st birthday came less than a month into his presidency. He opened his victory broadcast by wishing that Franklin Roosevelt had lived to witness the day.
Q 17At which July 1945 conference did Truman learn the Trinity test had succeeded?
Potsdam
Potsdam, just outside Berlin, is where Truman told Stalin about a powerful new weapon. Stalin barely reacted, because Soviet spies had already told him about the bomb.
Q 18Which Labour politician replaced Churchill as prime minister midway through the July 1945 Big Three summit?
Clement Attlee
Clement Attlee took Churchill's seat after Labour's landslide was announced on July 26, with the summit still running. British voters had turned Churchill out within three months of victory in Europe.
Q 19Which Japanese city did Truman agree to strike from the atomic target list because of its cultural importance?
Kyoto
Kyoto topped the target list until Secretary of War Henry Stimson went over the generals' heads to Truman. Nagasaki was added in its place in late July.
Q 20Which 1947 act signed by Truman created the CIA and an independent Air Force?
The National Security Act
The National Security Act was signed aboard Truman's presidential plane, the Sacred Cow, so the Air Force was born on an aircraft. It also put the Army and Navy under one secretary of defense.
Harvard University heard it in a short speech on June 5, 1947. Marshall brought no finished plan: he asked the European nations to draw up their own recovery program and proposed that America pay for it.
Q 24How did the Western allies respond when the Soviets blocked ground access to West Berlin in June 1948?
An airlift of supplies
An airlift of supplies carried food and fuel into West Berlin for more than ten months, and at its height a plane was landing or taking off every 30 seconds. The Soviets lifted the blockade in May 1949.
Q 25How soon after Israel declared itself a nation on May 14, 1948, did Truman recognize it?
Eleven minutes
Eleven minutes after the declaration, the White House announced recognition. Truman overrode Secretary of State George Marshall, whose department feared Arab nations would cut oil supplies in return.
Q 26Executive Order 9981, issued in July 1948, did what?
Desegregated the armed forces
Desegregated the armed forces: Southern senators had threatened to filibuster his civil rights bills, so Truman acted by executive order. The military dragged its feet, but almost all units were integrated by the end of the Korean War.
Q 27In June 1947 Truman became the first president to address which organization?
The NAACP
The NAACP heard him from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Truman came from a Missouri family of Confederate sympathizers, yet he told the rally the federal government must lead on civil rights.
Q 28Truman's 1948 whistle-stop rail car was named for which Portuguese-born explorer?
Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan was an armor-plated Pullman rebuilt for Franklin Roosevelt in wartime, at about double its original weight. Truman turned its open rear platform into his 1948 campaign stage.
Q 29Which newspaper printed the infamous 'Dewey Defeats Truman' headline?
Chicago Daily Tribune
Chicago Daily Tribune editors had to go to press hours early because of a printers' strike. With the votes still uncounted, they trusted the polls that had Dewey winning easily.
Q 30Returning to Washington from Missouri, Truman posed with the 'Dewey Defeats Truman' front page during a train stop in which city?
St. Louis
St. Louis was only a stop on his ride east, two days after the vote. He had reason to beam: the paper's editorial page had called him a 'nincompoop'.