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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.
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Q 01Harry S. Truman was which number president of the United States?
33rd
He served from 1945 to 1953, taking over from Franklin D. Roosevelt and handing off to Dwight Eisenhower.
Q 02What does the 'S' in Harry S. Truman stand for?
Nothing in particular
His grandfathers were Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young, so the lone letter nodded to both, a common Southern practice at the time.
Q 03In which town was Truman raised, and where he later returned to live after the presidency?
Independence
He was born in Lamar but the family moved to Independence when he was six so he could attend Presbyterian Sunday School.
Q 04Which instrument did young Truman practise at five o'clock every morning?
Piano
He was later famously photographed playing it at the National Press Club with actress Lauren Bacall perched on top.
Q 05Why was Truman refused an appointment to West Point?
Poor eyesight
At his later National Guard induction he read 20/50 in one eye and 20/400 in the other; he reportedly passed a second Army eye test by memorizing the chart.
Q 06In World War I, Truman commanded which unit in France?
Battery D, 129th Field Artillery
The battery had a reputation for discipline problems, yet lost no men under his command and later presented him with a loving cup.
Q 07What kind of shop did Truman open in downtown Kansas City after the war?
A haberdashery
He ran it with Edward Jacobson, a clothing clerk he had known from the army canteen; the store's failure left him in debt for years.
Q 08What was the first job title Truman won with Kansas City machine backing in 1922?
County Court judge of Jackson County
The 'court' was really an administrative county commission, not a judicial bench.
Q 09Which Kansas City political boss backed Truman's rise, leaving him branded the boss's own senator?
Tom Pendergast
Pendergast controlled Kansas City from 1925 to 1939, when a conviction for income tax evasion sent him to federal prison for 15 months.
Q 10Truman was elected to the U.S. Senate in which year?
1934
He was Pendergast's choice for the Democratic primary only after the boss's first four picks declined to run.
Q 11The wartime Truman Committee, which made him a national figure, investigated what?
Waste and profiteering in defense contracts
It reportedly saved as much as $15 billion, and its work put Truman on the cover of Time magazine.
Q 12Whom did Truman replace as Franklin Roosevelt's running mate on the 1944 Democratic ticket?
Henry A. Wallace
Party bosses considered Wallace too far left; four years later Wallace ran against Truman on the Progressive ticket and won zero electoral votes.
Q 13How long had Truman been vice president when Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945?
82 days
Q 21The Truman Doctrine of March 1947 initially pledged aid to which two countries?
Greece and Turkey
Historians often date the start of the Cold War to that speech to Congress on March 12, 1947.
Q 22Roughly how much reconstruction aid did the Marshall Plan supply to Western Europe?
$13 billion
The Soviets answered with their own Molotov Plan for the Eastern bloc.
Q 23Where did George Marshall first outline the European recovery plan that took his name, in June 1947?
Harvard University
Marshall, Truman's secretary of state, was also his principal foreign policy adviser and later won the Nobel Peace Prize.
In that time the two men met alone only twice, and Truman knew nothing of the atomic bomb program.
Q 14Who told Truman at the White House that the president had died?
Eleanor Roosevelt
When Truman asked if there was anything he could do for her, she famously replied that he was the one in trouble now.
Q 15Which secret weapons program did Truman first learn about in detail from Henry Stimson on April 25, 1945?
The Manhattan Project
Stimson described it as 'the most terrible bomb in the history of the world'; Stalin, thanks to espionage, had known about it long before Truman did.
Q 16V-E Day, May 8, 1945, fell on which Truman milestone?
His 61st birthday
He was born on May 8, 1884, in Lamar, Missouri, the eldest child of a farmer and livestock dealer.
Q 17At which July 1945 conference did Truman learn the Trinity test had succeeded?
Potsdam
Held at Cecilienhof outside Berlin, it was the only time Truman and Stalin met face to face.
Q 18Who replaced Churchill as Britain's representative partway through the July 1945 Potsdam talks?
Clement Attlee
Labour's landslide result was announced on July 26 while the conference was still under way.
Q 19Truman authorized atomic bombs against which two Japanese cities?
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
He maintained for the rest of his life that the bombs saved lives on both sides by making an invasion unnecessary.
Q 20Which 1947 act signed by Truman created the CIA and an independent Air Force?
The National Security Act
It also merged the War and Navy departments into what became the Department of Defense.
Q 24How did the Western allies respond when the Soviets blocked ground access to West Berlin in June 1948?
A massive airlift of supplies
General Lucius Clay had proposed sending an armored column instead; the airlift became one of Truman's great foreign-policy successes.
Q 25How soon after Israel declared itself a nation on May 14, 1948, did Truman recognize it?
Eleven minutes
He did so over the objections of Secretary of State George Marshall, who feared it would cost the U.S. Arab oil.
Q 26Executive Order 9981, issued in July 1948, did what?
Desegregated the armed forces
Army Secretary Kenneth Royall was forced into retirement in 1949 for still refusing to comply nearly a year later.
Q 27In June 1947 Truman became the first president to address which organization?
The NAACP
His administration's 1947 report To Secure These Rights laid out a ten-point civil rights agenda.
Q 28What was the name of the presidential rail car from which Truman gave his 1948 'whistle stop' speeches?
Ferdinand Magellan
Bess joined the tour, and Truman introduced her to crowds as 'the Boss'.
Q 29Which newspaper printed the infamous 'Dewey Defeats Truman' headline?
Chicago Daily Tribune
Roughly 150,000 copies rolled off the presses before it was corrected; the paper had once called Truman a 'nincompoop'.
Q 30Where was Truman photographed holding up the erroneous headline?
St. Louis Union Station
He was on his train heading back to Washington and reportedly grinned, 'That ain't the way I heard it!'