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Post–World War II
Further information: Presidency of Harry S. Truman and Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower
Hoover's official White House portrait by Elmer Wesley Greene
Following World War II, Hoover befriended President Harry S. Truman despite their ideological differences.[255] Because of Hoover's experience with Germany at the end of World War I, in 1946 Truman selected the former president to tour Allied-occupied Germany and Rome, Italy to ascertain the food needs of the occupied nations. After touring Germany, Hoover produced a number of reports critical of U.S. occupation policy.[256] He stated in one report that "there is the illusion that the New Germany left after the annexations can be reduced to a 'pastoral state.'It cannot be done unless we exterminate or move 25,000,000 people out of it."[257] On Hoover's initiative, a school meals program in the American and British occupation zones of Germany was begun on April 14, 1947; the program served 3,500,000 children.