Dwight D. Eisenhower

• 1. Introduction

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  Dwight David Eisenhower drafted a message he hoped no one would ever read. On the eve of the D-Day landings on the 6th of June 1944, he wrote a short statement taking full personal responsibility if the assault on Normandy failed. 'If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone,' he wrote. The landings succeeded. But that unread note tells you something about the man who planned them. How did a boy from Abilene, Kansas, whose mother believed warfare was 'rather wicked', become the supreme commander of the greatest military alliance the world had seen? And how did a general who had never personally seen combat earn the respect of front-line commanders across two continents? This is the story of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States, the man they all called Ike.

• 2. The Abilene Years

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  Eisenhower was born David Dwight Eisenhower in Denison, Texas, on the 14th of October 1890, the third of seven sons. His mother reversed his two forenames shortly after birth to avoid having two Davids in the family. She named him Dwight after the evangelist Dwight L. Moody. All seven brothers carried the nickname 'Ike' as a shortened form of Eisenhower; by World War II, only Dwight still answered to it.

  The family had roots in a German village called Karlsbrunn, and the name Eisenhauer, meaning 'iron hewer' or 'iron miner', had been anglicized by the time they settled in Pennsylvania in 1741. His father David had been a college-educated engineer, but a general store he owned in Hope, Kansas, failed. The family returned to Kansas with $24 to their name and settled in Abilene, where Eisenhower grew up and which he always called his hometown.

  His mother Ida ran the household with religious structure and firm discipline. She had been a member of the River Brethren, a Mennonite sect, and later joined the International Bible Students Association, which became known as Jehovah's Witnesses. The Eisenhower home served as the local meeting hall from 1896 to 1915, though Dwight never joined the congregation. He later described himself in 1948 as 'one of the most deeply religious men I know' while remaining unattached to any 'sect or organization'; he was finally baptized in the Presbyterian Church in 1953.

  It was Ida's collection of history books that first ignited Eisenhower's passion for military history, a detail that carries a quiet irony given that she felt warfare was 'rather wicked'. He became a voracious reader on the subject, and his other early favorites were arithmetic and spelling. A man named Bob Davis, who camped on the Smoky Hill River, taught the young Eisenhower hunting, fishing, cooking, and card playing. That last skill would follow him for the rest of his life.

• 3. West Point and Early Career

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  A near-death experience almost ended Eisenhower's ambitions before they began. As a freshman at Abilene High School, a knee injury developed into a life-threatening leg infection that spread into his groin. The doctor insisted the leg be amputated. Eisenhower refused, and recovered, though he had to repeat his freshman year.

  The path to West Point came through his friend Edward 'Swede' Hazlett, who was applying to the Naval Academy and urged Eisenhower to apply since no tuition was required. Senator Joseph L. Bristow put Eisenhower forward for both academies, but he was beyond the age limit for Annapolis. He accepted an appointment to West Point in 1911. His record there was mixed: academically strongest in English, average elsewhere, with a poor discipline rating from routine rule violations. He made the varsity football team and started at halfback in 1912, the year he tried to tackle the legendary Jim Thorpe of the Carlisle Indians. A torn knee ended his playing career. He turned to fencing and gymnastics, and later served as junior varsity football coach and cheerleader. He said that 'not making the baseball team at West Point was one of the greatest disappointments of my life, maybe my greatest.'

  He graduated in the middle of the class of 1915, a cohort that became known as 'the class the stars fell on' because 59 of its members eventually became general officers. His first posting was Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, where he met Mamie Doud of Boone, Iowa. He proposed to her on Valentine's Day in 1916. A planned November wedding in Denver was moved up to July 1 because of the looming American entry into World War I.

• 4. The War That Passed Him By

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  World War I was, in military terms, Eisenhower's greatest frustration. He immediately requested an overseas assignment when the United States entered the war, and was denied. He was transferred in February 1918 to Camp Meade in Maryland with the 65th Engineers, and his unit was eventually ordered to France. That order too was nullified: the armistice was signed a week before his departure date.

  Instead, Eisenhower commanded a unit that trained tank crews at Camp Colt, his first command. He received the Distinguished Service Medal for this work, though the honor barely softened what he described as depression and bitterness at having missed combat entirely. His stateside contribution was real, however. He demonstrated strong organizational skills and a precise ability to evaluate junior officers and place them optimally. These same talents would define his command style two decades later.

  The missed combat would be used against him. In World War II, rivals who had served on the Western Front in 1918, led by General Bernard Montgomery, tried to discredit Eisenhower for his lack of combat experience. The criticism did not stick, but it stung, and Eisenhower was acutely aware of it throughout the war. His response was not to argue the point but to win the respect of front-line commanders through judgment and results.

  After the war, he was assigned in 1919 to a transcontinental Army convoy tasked with testing vehicles and making the public case for better roads. That convoy averaged only 5 miles per hour from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco. The experience lodged in Eisenhower's memory, and improving highways became one of the defining projects of his presidency decades later.

• 5. Mentors, MacArthur, and Manila

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  From 1920, Eisenhower served under a sequence of generals who shaped his thinking in very different ways. His first and most formative mentor was General Fox Conner, under whom Eisenhower served in the Panama Canal Zone until 1924. Conner guided him through intensive study of military history and theory, including Carl von Clausewitz's 'On War'. Eisenhower said in 1962 that 'Fox Conner was the ablest man I ever knew.' Conner's assessment of Eisenhower was equally unambiguous: 'He is one of the most capable, efficient and loyal officers I have ever met.'

  Conner's recommendation sent Eisenhower to the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth in 1925-1926, where he graduated first in a class of 245 officers. The contrast with his mid-ranked West Point finish was striking. His ideas on tank warfare, developed with George S. Patton and Sereno E. Brett, were not welcomed: superiors threatened Eisenhower with court-martial for continuing to publish his proposals on speed-oriented offensive tank deployment, and he relented.

  The assignment that drew the sharpest conflict was his posting to the Philippines in 1935 with General Douglas MacArthur, where Eisenhower served as assistant military adviser to the Philippine government. He chose West Point classmate James Ord to assist, partly because of Ord's upbringing in Mexico and his fluency in the Spanish culture that shaped both Mexico and the Philippines. The philosophical disagreements between Eisenhower and MacArthur over military leadership ran deep. Historians have concluded that the clash actually prepared Eisenhower well for handling the strong personalities of Winston Churchill, George S. Patton, and Bernard Montgomery during World War II. The antipathy between Eisenhower and MacArthur, however, lasted the rest of their lives.

  While in Manila, Eisenhower learned to fly with the Philippine Army Air Corps at Zablan Airfield in Camp Murphy under Captain Jesus Villamor, making a solo flight over the Philippines in 1937, and obtained his private pilot's license in 1939 at Fort Lewis.

• 6. Supreme Commander

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  In December 1943, President Roosevelt chose Eisenhower over General Marshall to serve as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. The decision placed him at the top of the largest military operation ever attempted: the Allied assault on the coast of Normandy, code-named Operation Overlord, executed on the 6th of June 1944.

  The weeks before D-Day were consumed by battles with his own allies. He threatened to resign unless Winston Churchill gave him exclusive command over all strategic air forces for the operation, and Churchill relented. He argued with Roosevelt over using French resistance forces in covert operations before the landings. He squared with Admiral Ernest J. King over King's refusal to provide additional landing craft from the Pacific. He designed a bombing campaign in France in advance of Overlord and fought Churchill's concerns about civilian casualties; Charles de Gaulle argued that the casualties were justified, and Eisenhower prevailed.

  He also had to manage George S. Patton, who had slapped a soldier under his command and later made an ill-judged speech about postwar policy. Eisenhower severely reprimanded Patton both times but kept him in the field, because he needed him.

  The Normandy landings were costly but successful. Two months later, on August 15, the invasion of Southern France followed. On the 20th of December 1944, in recognition of his senior command role, Eisenhower was promoted to General of the Army, the equivalent of Field Marshal in most European armies. When the Germans launched the Battle of the Bulge as a surprise counteroffensive in December 1944, Eisenhower repositioned his armies; improved weather allowed the Army Air Force to engage, and the Allies repelled the attack in early 1945. The Germans finally surrendered on the 7th of May 1945.

  As the Allied armies liberated Nazi concentration camps, Eisenhower anticipated that future deniers would try to recharacterize the atrocities as propaganda. He ordered extensive photo and film documentation of the extermination camps as a pre-emptive measure against Holocaust denial.

• 7. The Presidency

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  Eisenhower ran for president in 1952 partly to block Senator Robert A. Taft, who opposed NATO and sought to undo the New Deal. His campaign slogan was simply 'I Like Ike'. He defeated Democrat Adlai Stevenson II in a landslide with an electoral margin of 442 to 89, the first Republican in the White House in 20 years. He won the 1956 rematch against Stevenson by an even wider margin, taking 457 of 531 electoral votes and 57.6 percent of the popular vote.

  His stated goals in office were to contain the spread of communism and reduce federal deficits. In 1953, he considered using nuclear weapons to end the Korean War and may have threatened China with nuclear attack; China agreed to an armistice in July 1953, which remains in effect. His 'New Look' defense policy prioritized less expensive nuclear deterrence while cutting funding for costly Army divisions. He devised the basic American strategic nuclear doctrine based on a triad of strategic bombers, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

  He signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, authorizing the Interstate Highway System, which remains the largest road construction project in American history. His thinking was shaped directly by that 5-mph 1919 convoy and his experience with the German autobahn. He created NASA in October 1958 in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik in October 1957, and signed the National Defense Education Act to strengthen science and mathematics education. His Science Advisory Committee assembled the Advanced Research Projects Agency in early 1958; ARPA later created ARPANET, a forerunner of the internet.

  He signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent Army troops to enforce federal court orders integrating schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. He covertly opposed Joseph McCarthy and helped end McCarthyism by openly invoking executive privilege. He continued and expanded New Deal programs, extending Social Security benefits to an additional ten million workers.

  In his farewell address, he warned the country about the dangers of massive military spending, particularly the influence of what he called 'the military-industrial complex', a phrase he coined to describe the relationship between government contracts and private military manufacturers. Historical assessments place him among the upper tier of American presidents.

• 8. The Private Eisenhower

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  Eisenhower painted about 260 oils during the last 20 years of his life, beginning at Columbia University after watching Thomas E. Stephens paint a portrait of Mamie. The subjects were mostly landscapes, but also included portraits of Mamie, their grandchildren, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. Art critic Wendy Beckett wrote that his paintings, 'simple and earnest', made her 'wonder at the hidden depths of this reticent president'. Eisenhower himself was skeptical of avant-garde work; in a 1962 speech he denounced modern art as 'a piece of canvas that looks like a broken-down Tin Lizzie, loaded with paint, has been driven over it.'

  His passion for bridge was professional-grade. He learned poker in Abilene, calling it his 'favorite indoor sport', but stopped playing because opponents resented paying him. Bridge became the deeper obsession. After learning the game at West Point, he reportedly played six nights a week for five months. While stationed in the Philippines, he played regularly with President Manuel Quezon, earning the nickname the 'Bridge Wizard of Manila'. An unwritten qualification for an officer's appointment to his staff during World War II was the ability to play bridge, and he played through the stressful weeks before D-Day. He appointed General Alfred Gruenther as his second-in-command at NATO partly because Gruenther was considered the best player in the US Army.

  Bridge expert Oswald Jacoby, who participated in the White House Saturday night bridge games, put Eisenhower's ability precisely: 'The President plays better bridge than golf. He tries to break 90 at golf. At bridge, you would say he plays in the 70s.' The famous bridge popularizer Ely Culbertson described him as 'calm and collected' and said Eisenhower 'never whines at his losses' and 'is brilliant in victory but never commits the bridge player's worst crime of gloating when he wins.'

  His first son, Doud Dwight 'Icky' Eisenhower, died of scarlet fever at the age of three; Eisenhower was mostly reluctant to discuss this loss for the rest of his life. His second son, John Eisenhower, was born in 1922 in Denver. When Eisenhower joined the Augusta National Golf Club in 1948, he became close friends with Augusta National Chairman Clifford Roberts, who also managed the Eisenhower family's investments. Eisenhower painted golf balls black so he could see them against snow, and had a basic golf facility installed at Camp David. On the 26th of August 1959, he became the first president to travel on a jet plane, flying aboard the VC-137A aircraft that would later be designated Air Force One.