When Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov arrived at the White House on this day in 1945 en route to the San Francisco conference that set up the United Nations, he thought he was making a courtesy call on President Harry S. Truman, who had assumed the office 11 days earlier, after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Instead, the veteran Soviet diplomat stormed out of the meeting after Truman told him off “in words of one syllable,” as the president later recalled, for breaking deals that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin had cut with his wartime Western allies. Molotov complained that he had never been spoken to that way in his life. “Carry out your agreements and you won't get to be talked to like that,” Truman responded.
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