President Truman's relief of General Douglas MacArthur creation of a professional military. This made civilian control increasingly problematic when coupled with the constitutional division of powers between the President as commander-in-chief, and the Congress with its power to raise armies, maintain a navy, and wage wars. In relieving MacArthur for failing to "respect the authority of the President" by privately communicating with Congress, Truman upheld the President's role as pre-eminent. Harry S. Truman became President of the United States on the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945, and won an unexpected victory in the 1948 presidential election. He was the only president who served after 1897
President Truman's relief of General Douglas MacArthur written: MacArthur later wrote that Martin had released the letter "for some unexplained reason and without consulting me", but it had not been marked as being confidential or off the record. The practice of intercepting and decrypting diplomatic messages of friend and foe alike was a closely held secret in the 1950s. In mid-March 1951, Truman learned through such intercepts that MacArthur had conversations with diplomats in Spain's and Portugal's Tokyo embassies. In these talks, MacArthur had expressed confidence that he would succeed in expanding the Korean War into a major conflict resulting in the permanent disposal of the "Chinese