Throughout World War II and in the aftermath, persecuted Jews tried to find their way into the British Mandate of Palestine, often deemed illegally by British authorities, as the Royal Navy tried to stop them. On December 14, 1945, the ship Hannah Senesh, carrying 252 refugees, evaded British patrols and beached itself at Nahariya in Palestine. The passengers came ashore via a rope bridge and evaded capture. Large-scale Jewish immigration to Palestine increased regional tensions, which would explode into war in 1948 with the invasion of the newly established State of Israel by its Arab neighbors. Truman was the first US president to be faced with trouble in the Middle East; he would not be the last.

On November 20, 1945, an International Military Tribunal of the victorious Allies began a series of war crimes trials in Nuremberg, Germany, designed to bring prominent Nazis to justice. The very men who had perpetrated some of the most horrific crimes in human history, including the Holocaust and the mass murder of POWs and civilians, now had to stand trial for their deeds. Nuremberg was a fitting site: the very city where Adolf Hitler used to stage the Parteitag, massive Nazi rallies attended by 100,000s of his adoring followers. The trials were a significant turning point for modern international law—a recognition that "following orders" was not a sufficient excuse for brutal and inhuman behavior.

History's greatest war was over, but our story has only just begun.

The Truman Presidency not only had to deal with the legacy of the recently concluded war, it also had to wrestle with new problems at home and abroad: a dangerous international situation, the spread of Communism and Soviet influence, and the pressing need to form a "more perfect union" at home by ensuring equal rights and justice for all. Would the "man from Missouri" rise to the challenge? Would the United States, and the world, enjoy peace and prosperity, or was World War III in the offing?

Allied victory had rescued humanity from a dark future, but for President Truman and his administration, the celebrations were short lived. There were still a number of challenges that remained, including the demobilization of millions of men and women, reshaping the economy without putting millions out of work, growing racial tensions at home, and the looming threat of the nation's burgeoning rivalry with the Soviet Union.

With Japan's defeat, World War II finally came to an end. The formal end of World War II took place in suitably dramatic fashion, with a surrender ceremony on board the USS Missouri on September 2. "This is the day we have been waiting for since Pearl Harbor," said President Truman. "This is the day when Fascism finally dies." Untested and relatively unknown when he became President just over four months ago, Truman had proven himself.

In the hours after Truman drops the bomb on Hiroshima, news reports begin to surface of "a city vanished." As he said on many occasions, Truman never regretted the decision—seeing the bomb as the quickest way to bring an end to the bloodiest war in history. Speaking to the American people via radio, Truman described the bomb as "harnessing of the basic power of the universe," and swore that "we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war."

Even with victory in sight, soldiers, sailors, and airmen continued to die in the Pacific theater. The USS Indianapolis, for example, was torpedoed by Japanese submarine I-58 while transporting parts of the atomic bomb "Little Boy" from San Francisco to Tinian in the Mariana Islands. Three hundred men went down with the ship as she sank. For the other nearly 900 sailors in the water, clinging desperately to their life rafts, the ordeal had just begun.

In July 1945, representatives of the victorious Allies met in the heart of Germany, in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam. It is a new cohort of leaders, while Stalin was still Soviet dictator, the inexperienced Truman and a brand-new British prime minister, Clement Attlee, represented the Anglo-American alliance. Here, in the squalid ruins of a once-great city, the three men lay their plans for their final battle: the conquest of Japan.

World War II had been so horrible that the victorious powers decided that nothing like it must ever happen again. President Roosevelt's dream had been to establish a "United Nations" (UN) organization, in which the peace-loving nations of the world would settle disputes and intervene to punish aggression, but it was Truman who saw it through. On June 26, the UN charter was signed in San Francisco. Would it succeed where previous international organizations had failed and keep the world at peace?

With the war in Europe over, the Allied powers had to turn to the difficult business of governing Germany and the other occupied territories. It was a huge task: to restart a functioning economy for an entire continent, to restore systems of law and government, to bind up the wounds of war. On June 5, 1945, the US, UK, USSR, and France jointly assumed "supreme authority" over German territory. The Third Reich was now dead, and Germany officially passed under the control of the victorious Allies.