1890-1969, U.S. World War II General and President
Dwight D. Eisenhower was born to a poor family in Denison, Texas, and there was little about Ike (his boyhood nickname, based on a guttural shortening of his last name) that suggested his future as a victorious commander in a world conflict and the political leader of a superpower.
Graduating from West Point (the navy had been his first choice) in 1915, Eisenhower ranked 61st academically and 125th in discipline out of a total of 164 graduates—not a sterling record by any measure; but at the academy, he learned that leadership was not an innate talent. "The one quality that can be developed by studious reflection and practice is the leadership of men," he wrote in 1943.
Eisenhower's practical education as a military officer advanced slowly and without great distinction. During
World War I, he failed to receive the combat experience he wanted and served instead as the commander of Camp Colt, a tank training center in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. From 1922 to 1924, he was stationed in the Panama Canal Zone and came under the tutelage of Brigadier General Fox Conner. Conner recommended Eisenhower for the command and general staff school in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he was graduated first in his class in 1926. He became an aide to General
Douglas MacArthur, and in 1933 went with MacArthur to the Philippines where he helped reorganize the republic's army. His relationship with MacArthur was nothing like his friendship with Conner. Late in life, Eisenhower said that "probably no one has had more, tougher fights with a senior than I had with MacArthur."
In March 1941, Eisenhower was promoted to colonel, and three months later he was named chief of staff of the Third Army. His rise up the army career ladder suddenly accelerated. After coming to the attention of General
George C. Marshall, the army chief of staff, Eisenhower was promoted to brigadier general and, after the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor, was transferred to the army's war plans division. In a few months, he was promoted again—this time to major general—and placed in charge of the operations division of the War Department. Marshall, who liked and trusted Eisenhower, decided in June 1942 to appoint him to be commander of all U.S. troops in Europe. One month later he won another promotion to lieutenant general and took command of Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa.
It was his first assignment as a combat commander, and his lack of battlefield experience bothered other officers. To Sir
Bernard Montgomery, the British Eighth Army commander, Eisenhower seemed like "a very nice chap" who knew "nothing whatever about how to make war or to fight battles." The invasion of North Africa, and especially the American defeat at Kasserine Pass, revealed that some of the criticism of Eisenhower was justified. The early campaign, which lasted from November 1942 to March 1943, was poorly coordinated and badly implemented. On the battlefield, the Allied command structure was confused and inadequate. Eisenhower, who spent much of his time focusing on political and logistical problems, could not galvanize his forces.
But Ike learned quickly from the lessons of Tunisia. He was promoted to full general in February 1943, and in the summer he launched an Allied invasion of Sicily and in September an amphibious assault on the Italian mainland at Salerno. Thinking the risks too high, however, he called off an airborne operation intended to capture Rome. The invasion of Italy turned into a stalemate, with the Allied armies a long way from Rome. It also underscored how caution and uncertainty plagued Eisenhower in situations that called for audacity and decisiveness. For all his failures, though, Eisenhower had learned how to be a general.
In December 1943, he was appointed supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, and he soon arrived in England to direct plans for an invasion of France across the English Channel. Eisenhower became the very real power behind Operation Overlord in nearly all its complicated aspects. His experience in Africa and Italy gave him the foundation for building and maintaining a massive coalition army. In preparing for
D-Day, Eisenhower demonstrated his true talent for diplomacy and for forging agreements among the Allied leadership.
But the stress of being the supreme commander, of always trying to remain optimistic in the face of what actually seemed to be impending disaster, took its toll on Eisenhower. His blood pressure soared, and his doctors worried that his hypertension was worsening. Their concern was well founded: he regularly smoked four packs of cigarettes and drank fifteen cups of coffee a day. "I seem to live on a network of high tension wires," he wrote to his wife.
In the campaigns that followed D-Day, Eisenhower wrestled with ambitious and contentious generals under his command. Montgomery hoped to be named the sole ground commander. Two American generals,
George Patton and
Omar Bradley, could not abide Montgomery and sought to undercut his role in the campaign.
Particularly irksome to Eisenhower and the other American generals was Montgomery's slowness in the field. During the months following Normandy, Montgomery delayed before Caen and failed to take Antwerp and Arnhem. To make matters worse, Montgomery insisted that Eisenhower's strategy was faulty. Eisenhower had ordered the Allied forces to move along a broad front toward the Rhine, while Montgomery argued strenuously for a pencil-line thrust along a narrow front through Belgium and into the Ruhr. Eisenhower refused to waver.
Historians would later debate the merits of this strategy. Some scholars have argued, as did Montgomery after the war, that a narrow-front thrust into Belgium could have ended the war with Germany six months earlier, thus saving thousands of lives. Eisenhower resented such accusations and speculations, especially since victory over Germany ultimately proved to be more difficult—and took longer to achieve—than anyone in the Allied leadership had anticipated.
Other critics have also complained that Eisenhower failed to take Berlin and allowed the Soviets to gain possession of the valuable German capital. In Eisenhower's estimation, winning the race to Berlin might have fulfilled a political objective but it would have forfeited the aims of the Allied military policy—to make sure that a German defeat ended in unconditional surrender. A political challenge to the Soviets over who should rightly capture Berlin would, Eisenhower believed, prolong the war and damage the agreements already hammered out at Yalta by
Franklin Roosevelt,
Joseph Stalin, and
Winston Churchill
Eisenhower was not a perfect general. His grasp of battlefield strategy and tactics was feeble at best, but his understanding of how a coalition army must function kept the Allied forces together and brought about the disintegration of the Third Reich. Over the course of the war, Eisenhower grew as his responsibilities increased; he learned from his mistakes, and he was able to control his personal shortcomings—such as his volatile temper—for the sake of sustaining unity and cohesion. Out of necessity, Eisenhower became a modern warrior—a general who waged war by managing the movement of large armies, coordinating large-scale campaigns, balancing the delicate relations in sensitive multilateral alliances, and keeping everyone focused on the final objective.
In November 1952, Eisenhower ran successfully as the Republican candidate for the U.S. presidency. As commander in chief, Eisenhower drew heavily and constructively on his experience as a military commander. Throughout his two terms as president, he succeeded in keeping the United States out of major conflicts. In July 1953, the new president negotiated a truce for the
Korean War. A year later, Eisenhower forged the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), an alliance aimed at thwarting the spread of Communism in that region. Accepting the division of Vietnam into two nations, North and South, the president kept the United States from becoming embroiled in the disputes over Indochina. His response to the Suez crisis, which effectively blunted the plans of Great Britain and France to invade Egypt, resulted in the Eisenhower Doctrine, which called for U.S. assistance in the Middle East against any Communist aggression. In summer 1958, during his second term, the president sent troops to Lebanon to keep the government out of leftist hands.
It was Communism, in fact, that drove much of the president's "New Look" foreign policy. The modern commander had become a cold warrior. As such, Eisenhower's military acumen enabled him to fight Communism at every turn, but to do so without bringing the world to the brink of destruction. Instead, he resorted to covert actions rather than overt military interventions, particularly in countries in which the Soviet Union seemed to be gaining influence and power. Eisenhower supported or approved several operations carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), and Tibet (1959), and the plans for the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. Yet he took no action when an uprising occurred in East Germany (1953) or when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary (1956). As commander in chief, Eisenhower knew which wars to stop and which ones to fight.
Despite the rising threat of Communism around the world and his firm resolve to prevent its expansion, Eisenhower did not embrace a national security policy based on military buildup or increased defense spending. It did no good, said Eisenhower, to fight Communism by turning the United States into a "garrison state." In his farewell address, he warned against such a future and the growth of "an immense military establishment." The nation, he said, "must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex." When he retired to his farm in Gettysburg, Congress restored him to the rank of General of the Army.
Glenn Lafantasie
Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890-1952 (1983); David Eisenhower, Eisenhower: At War, 1943-1945 (1986); Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (1948).
