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Early career

At a glance: the eisenhower presidency, supreme commander.

• First term as president
• Second term
• Cabinet of Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower

What was Dwight D. Eisenhower’s family like?

Where was dwight d. eisenhower educated, how did dwight d. eisenhower become famous, when was dwight d. eisenhower president, should the united states maintain the embargo initiated by dwight d. eisenhower against cuba.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

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• Table Of Contents

Dwight Eisenhower’s parents, David Jacob and Ida Elizabeth (Stover) Eisenhower, moved their family from Denison , Texas, to Abilene , Kansas, where their forebears had settled in a Mennonite colony. David worked in a creamery, the family was poor, and young Dwight and his brothers were introduced to hard work and a strong religious tradition.

Eisenhower was more interested in sports than in his studies at Abilene (Kansas) High School. He matriculated at the U.S. Military Academy , where he ranked 61st academically out of 164 graduates. He ranked first in a class of 275 at the army’s Command and General Staff School and then graduated from the Army War College .

Eisenhower became famous for his military leadership during World War II . After planning the invasions of North Africa , Sicily , and mainland Italy, he became supreme commander of Allied forces in western Europe (1943) and planned the Normandy Invasion (1944) and the conduct of the war in western Europe until the German surrender (1945).

The 34th U.S. president, Eisenhower served two terms, from 1953 to 1961. His tenure came at the end of fighting in the Korean War but during the Cold War . A period of general economic growth and prosperity , it was the age of the housing, television , and baby booms but also the era of McCarthyism .

What were Dwight D. Eisenhower’s beliefs?

Eisenhower urged economy and honesty in government. His basically conservative views on domestic affairs were reflected in his administration’s “modern Republicanism,” a program that called for reduced taxes, balanced budgets, a decrease in government control over the economy, and the return of certain federal responsibilities to the states.

Whether the U.S. should maintain its embargo initiated by Dwight D. Eisenhower against Cuba is hotly debated. Some say Cuba has not met the conditions required to lift it, and the US will look weak for lifting the sanctions. Others say the 50-year policy has failed to achieve its goals, and Cuba does not pose a threat to the United States. For more on the Cuba embargo debate, visit ProCon.org .

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Dwight D. Eisenhower (born October 14, 1890, Denison, Texas, U.S.—died March 28, 1969, Washington, D.C.) was the 34th president of the United States (1953–61), who had been supreme commander of the Allied forces in western Europe during World War II .

Eisenhower was the third of seven sons of David Jacob and Ida Elizabeth (Stover) Eisenhower. In the spring of 1891 the Eisenhowers left Denison , Texas , and returned to Abilene , Kansas , where their forebears had settled as part of a Mennonite colony. David worked in a creamery; the family was poor; and Dwight and his brothers were introduced to hard work and a strong religious tradition at an early age.

“Ike,” as Dwight was called, was a fun-loving youth who enjoyed sports but took only a moderate interest in his studies. The latter was perhaps a sign of one of his later characteristics: a dislike for the company of scholars. Dwight graduated from Abilene High School in 1909, worked for more than a year to support a brother’s college education, and then entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point , New York , a decision that left his mother, a pacifist, in tears. He excelled in gridiron football but injured a knee in his second year at the academy and was forced to stop playing. In the remarkable class of 1915—which was to produce 59 generals—he ranked 61st academically and 125th in discipline out of the total of 164 graduates.

After being commissioned a second lieutenant, he was sent to San Antonio , Texas, where he met Mamie Geneva Doud ( Mamie Eisenhower ), daughter of a successful Denver meat packer. They were married in 1916 and had two sons: Doud Dwight, born in 1917, who died of scarlet fever in 1921, and John Sheldon Doud, born in 1922.

During World War I Eisenhower commanded a tank training center, was promoted to captain, and received the Distinguished Service Medal. The war ended just before he was to be sent overseas. From 1922 to 1924 he was assigned to the Panama Canal Zone , and there he came under the inspiring influence of his commander, Brig. Gen. Fox Conner. With Conner’s assistance, Eisenhower was selected to attend the army’s Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Then a major, he graduated first in a class of 275 in 1926 and two years later graduated from the Army War College. He then served in France (where he wrote a guidebook of World War I battlefields) and in Washington, D.C., before becoming an aide to Army Chief of Staff Gen. Douglas MacArthur in 1933. Two years later he accompanied MacArthur to the Philippines to assist in the reorganization of the commonwealth’s army, and while there he was awarded the Distinguished Service Star of the Philippines and promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He returned to the United States shortly after Germany’s invasion of Poland initiated the European phase of World War II , and in March 1941 he became a full colonel. Three months later he was made chief of staff of the Third Army, and he soon won the attention of Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall for his role in planning war games involving almost 500,000 troops.

When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, Marshall appointed Eisenhower to the army’s war plans division in Washington, D.C. , where he prepared strategy for an Allied invasion of Europe . Eisenhower had been made a brigadier general in September 1941 and was promoted to major general in March 1942; he was also named head of the operations division of the War Department. In June Marshall selected him over 366 senior officers to be commander of U.S. troops in Europe. Eisenhower’s rapid advancement, after a long army career spent in relative obscurity, was due not only to his knowledge of military strategy and talent for organization but also to his ability to persuade, mediate, and get along with others. Men from a wide variety of backgrounds, impressed by his friendliness, humility, and persistent optimism, liked and trusted him. A phrase that later became one of the most famous campaign slogans in American history seemed to reflect the impression of everyone who met him: “I like Ike!”

Eisenhower was promoted to lieutenant general in July 1942 and named to head Operation Torch , the Allied invasion of French North Africa . This first major Allied offensive of the war was launched on November 8, 1942, and successfully completed in May 1943. Eisenhower’s decision to work during the campaign with the French admiral François Darlan , who had collaborated with the Germans, aroused a storm of protest from the Allies, but his action was defended by President Franklin D. Roosevelt . A full general since that February, Eisenhower then directed the amphibious assault of Sicily and the Italian mainland, which resulted in the fall of Rome on June 4, 1944.

During the fighting in Italy , Eisenhower participated in plans to cross the English Channel for an invasion of France . On December 24, 1943, he was appointed supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, and the next month he was in London making preparations for the massive thrust into Europe. On June 6, 1944, he gambled on a break in bad weather and gave the order to launch the Normandy Invasion , the largest amphibious attack in history. On D-Day more than 156,000 troops landed in Normandy . Invading Allied forces eventually numbered 1,000,000 and began to fight their way into the heart of France. On August 25 Paris was liberated. After winning the Battle of the Bulge —a fierce German counterattack in the Ardennes in December—the Allies crossed the Rhine on March 7, 1945. Germany surrendered on May 7, ending the war in Europe. Although Eisenhower was criticized, then and later, for allowing the Russians to capture the enemy capital of Berlin , he and others defended his actions on several grounds (the Russians were closer, had more troops, and had been promised Berlin at the Yalta Conference of February 1945). In the meantime, in December 1944, Eisenhower had been made a five-star general.

(Read Sir John Keegan’s Britannica entry on the Normandy Invasion.)

Eisenhower was given a hero’s welcome upon returning to the United States for a visit in June 1945, but in November his intended retirement was delayed when Pres. Harry S. Truman named him to replace Marshall as chief of staff. For more than two years Eisenhower directed demobilization of the wartime army and worked to unify the armed services under a centralized command. In May 1948 he left active duty as the most popular and respected soldier in the United States and became president of Columbia University in New York City . His book Crusade in Europe , published that fall, made him a wealthy man.

Eisenhower’s brief career as an academic administrator was not especially successful. His technical education and military experience prepared him poorly for the post. In the fall of 1950 President Truman asked him to become supreme commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and in early 1951 he flew to Paris to assume his new position. For the next 15 months he devoted himself to the task of creating a united military organization in western Europe to be a defense against the possibility of communist aggression.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th president of the United States, promoted Atoms for Peace at the United Nations General Assembly in order to ease Cold War tensions.

(1890-1969)

Who Was Dwight D. Eisenhower?

Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed U.S. Army chief of staff in 1945. He became the first Supreme Allied Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1951. In 1952 he was elected U.S. president. He served two terms before retiring to Gettysburg in 1961. Eisenhower died on March 28, 1969, at the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Eisenhower was born on October 14, 1890, in Denison, Texas, to David Jacob Eisenhower and Ida Elizabeth Stover Eisenhower. Dwight was the third of his parents’ seven sons. His parents had moved from Abilene, Kansas, to Denison, Texas, before he was born. In Denison, the family lived in a tiny house near the railroad tracks while David cleaned train engines for a living.

When Eisenhower was a year and a half old, his family moved back to Abilene so David could take a better job at his brother-in-law's creamery.

In Abilene, his 10-month-old brother Paul died of diphtheria when Eisenhower was four years old. Despite the tragedy, he formed happy childhood memories in Abilene that he would cherish throughout his life. Among these were his days playing baseball and football at Abilene High School.

After Eisenhower graduated from high school in 1909, he joined his father and uncle at the Belle Springs Creamery while also moonlighting as a fireman. Eisenhower used the money he earned to pay his younger brother Edgar’s tuition at the University of Michigan. The brothers had a deal: After two years, they’d switch places — with Edgar then working to support Eisenhower's college education. Luckily for Edgar, he never had to live up to his end of the deal.

In 1911, Eisenhower landed an appointment at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, where attendance was free of charge. Once again he was a star on the football field until a series of knee injuries forced him to stop playing. In 1915, Eisenhower proudly graduated from West Point and was commissioned as a second lieutenant.

Military Career

For the first few years of Eisenhower's military career, he and Mamie moved from post to post throughout Texas, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In 1917, Mamie gave birth to the couple's first son, Doud Dwight. That same year, the United States entered WWI . Although Eisenhower hoped to be commissioned overseas, he was instead appointed to run a tank training center at Camp Colt in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Throughout the war and afterward, Eisenhower continued to rise through the ranks. By 1920, he was promoted to major, after having volunteered for the Tank Corps, in the War Department's first transcontinental motor convoy, the previous year.

In 1921, tragedy struck at home, when the Eisenhowers' firstborn son, Doud Dwight, died of scarlet fever at the age of three. Mamie gave birth to a second son, John Sheldon Doud, in 1922. That year, Eisenhower assumed the role of executive officer to General Fox Conner in the Panama Canal Zone. In 1924, at Conner's urging, Eisenhower applied to the Army's prestigious graduate school, the Command and General Staff School at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, and was accepted. He graduated first in his class of 245 in 1926, with a firm reputation for his military prowess.

From 1927 to 1929 Eisenhower toured and reported for the War Department, under General John Pershing . After finishing his tour in 1929, Eisenhower was appointed chief military aide under General Douglas MacArthur . From 1935 to 1939 Eisenhower served under MacArthur as assistant military advisor to the Philippines. Eisenhower returned to the United States in early 1940.

Over the next two years, he was stationed in California and Washington state. In 1941, after a transfer to Fort Sam Houston, Eisenhower became chief of staff for the Third Army. Eisenhower was soon promoted to brigadier general for his leadership of the Louisiana Maneuvers. Late that year he was transferred to the War Plans division in Washington, D.C. In 1942, he was promoted to major general. Just months later, he became commander-in-chief of the Allied Forces and led Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa.

On D-Day , June 6, 1944, Eisenhower commanded the Allied forces in the Normandy invasion. In December of that year, he was promoted to five-star rank. After Germany's surrender in 1945, he was made military governor of the U.S. Occupied Zone. Eisenhower then returned home to Abilene and received a hero's welcome. A few months later, he was appointed U.S. Army chief of staff. In 1948, he was elected president of Columbia University, a position he held until December of 1950 when he decided to leave Columbia to accept an appointment as first Supreme Allied Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization . While in Paris with NATO, Eisenhower was encouraged by Republican emissaries to run for president of the United States.

U.S. Presidency

In 1952 Eisenhower retired from active service and returned to Abilene to announce his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination. On November 4, 1952, after winning the election by a landslide, Eisenhower was elected the United States' 34th president. His domestic policy picked up where Franklin Roosevelt 's New Deal and Harry Truman 's Fair Deal programs left off. In foreign policy, Eisenhower made reducing Cold War tensions through military negotiation a main focus of his administration.

In 1953 he orchestrated an armistice that brought peace to South Korea's border. Also that year, Eisenhower made his famous "Atoms for Peace" speech at the United Nations General Assembly. The United States and Russia had both recently developed atomic bombs, and the speech promoted applying atomic energy to peaceful uses, rather than using it for weaponry and warfare. In 1955, Eisenhower met with Russian, British and French leaders at Geneva to further quell the threat of atomic war.

In 1956 Eisenhower was a reelected to a second term, winning by an even wider margin than in his first election, despite the fact that he had just recently recovered from a heart attack. Over the course of his second term, Eisenhower continued to promote his Atoms for Peace program. In his second term, he also grappled with crises in Lebanon and the Suez.

Accomplishments during his two terms include creating the U.S. Information Agency, and establishing Alaska and Hawaii as states. Eisenhower also supported the creation of the Interstate Highway System during his time in office. His other distinctions include signing the 1957 Civil Rights Act and setting up a permanent Civil Rights Commission. Eisenhower was additionally responsible for signing the bill to form the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) .

Poised to leave office in January of 1961, Eisenhower gave a televised farewell address in which he warned the nation against the dangers of the Cold War "military-industrial complex."

Following his presidency, Eisenhower retired to a farmhouse in Gettysburg with his wife, Mamie. Although he had resigned his commission as a general when he became president, when he left office his successor, President Kennedy, reactivated his commission. He also kept an office at Gettysburg College for the remainder of his life, where he held meetings and wrote his memoirs.

Eisenhower died on March 28, 1969, at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C., following a long period of suffering from a heart-related illness. In addition to a state funeral in the nation's capital, a military funeral was held in Eisenhower's beloved hometown of Abilene, Kansas.

Watch "Dwight D. Eisenhower: Commander-in-Chief" on HISTORY Vault

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Dwight D. Eisenhower
• Birth Year: 1890
• Birth date: October 14, 1890
• Birth State: Texas
• Birth City: Denison
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th president of the United States, promoted Atoms for Peace at the United Nations General Assembly in order to ease Cold War tensions.
• World Politics
• World War II
• U.S. Politics
• World War I
• Journalism and Nonfiction
• Astrological Sign: Libra
• Command and General Staff School
• United States Military Academy at West Point
• Abilene High School
• Interesting Facts
• President Dwight D. Eisenhower graduated first in his class at the Command and General Staff School at Ft. Leavenworth in 1926.
• Death Year: 1969
• Death date: March 28, 1969
• Death State: Washington, D.C.
• Death Country: United States

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Dwight D. Eisenhower Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/political-figures/dwight-d-eisenhower
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: April 13, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
• There must be no second class citizens in this country.
• If a danger exists in the world, it is a danger shared by all—and equally…if a hope exists in the mind of one nation, that hope should be shared by all.
• You know, farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.
• Change based on principle is progress. Constant change without principle becomes chaos.
• The only way to win the next world war is to prevent it.
• You have got to have something in which to believe. You have got to have leaders, organization, friendships, and contacts that help you to believe that, and help you to put out your best.
• The essence of leadership is to get others to do something because they think you want it done and because they know it is worthwhile doing.
• The peace we seek and need means much more than mere absence of war. It means the acceptance of law, and the fostering of justice, in all the world.
• Americans, indeed, all free men, remember that in the final choice a soldier's pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner's chains.
• There is—in world affairs—a steady course to be followed between an assertion of strength that is truculent and a confession of helplessness that is cowardly.
• There must be no second-class citizens in this country.

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Dwight D. Eisenhower

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 7, 2019 | Original: October 27, 2009

As supreme commander of Allied forces in Western Europe during World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower led the massive invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe that began on D-Day (June 6, 1944). In 1952, leading Republicans convinced Eisenhower (then in command of NATO forces in Europe) to run for president; he won a convincing victory over Democrat Adlai Stevenson and would serve two terms in the White House (1953-1961). 

During his presidency, Eisenhower managed Cold War-era tensions with the Soviet Union under the looming threat of nuclear weapons, ended the war in Korea in 1953 and authorized a number of covert anti-communist operations by the CIA around the world. On the home front, where America was enjoying a period of relative prosperity, Eisenhower strengthened Social Security, created the massive new Interstate Highway System and maneuvered behind the scenes to discredit the rabid anti-Communist Senator Joseph McCarthy. Though popular throughout his administration, he faltered in the protection of civil rights for African Americans by failing to fully enforce the Supreme Court’s mandate for the desegregation of schools in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

Eisenhower’s Early Life and Military Career

Born in Denison, Texas , on October 14, 1890, Dwight David Eisenhower grew up in Abilene, Kansas , as the third of seven sons in a poor family. To the distress of his mother, a devout Mennonite and pacifist, young Ike (as he was known) won an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York , and graduated in the middle of his class in 1915. While stationed as a second lieutenant in San Antonio, Texas, Eisenhower met Mamie Geneva Doud. The couple married in 1916 and had two sons, Doud Dwight (who died of scarlet fever as a small child) and John.

Did you know? At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, General Eisenhower was among those who opposed the use of the atomic bomb against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He argued that Japan was on the verge of surrender already and that being the first to use such a fearsome new weapon would damage U.S. prestige in the international community just as it had reached its highest point.

World War I ended just before Eisenhower was scheduled to go to Europe, frustrating the young officer, but he soon managed to gain an appointment to the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Graduating first in his class of 245, he served as a military aide to General John J. Pershing , commander of U.S. forces during World War I, and later to General Douglas MacArthur , U.S. Army chief of staff. During his seven years serving under MacArthur, Eisenhower was stationed in the Philippines from 1935 to 1939.

Eisenhower in World War II

Eisenhower returned soon after Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland sparked the outbreak of World War II in Europe. In September 1941, he received his first general’s star with a promotion to brigadier general. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor that December, U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall called Eisenhower to Washington , D.C. to work as a planning officer. Beginning in November 1942, Eisenhower headed Operation Torch, the successful Allied invasion of North Africa . He then directed the amphibious invasion of Sicily and the Italian mainland in 1943 that led to the fall of Rome in June 1944.

Made a full general in early 1943, Eisenhower was appointed supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in December of that year and given the responsibility of spearheading the planned Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. On D-Day (June 6, 1944), more than 150,000 Allied forces crossed the English Channel and stormed the beaches of Normandy; the invasion led to the liberation of Paris on August 25 and turned the tide of the war in Europe decisively in the Allied direction. Having risen from lieutenant colonel in the Philippines to supreme commander of the victorious forces in Europe in only five years, Eisenhower returned home to a hero’s welcome in 1945 to serve as chief of staff of the U.S. Army.

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Ike’s Road to the White House

In 1948, Eisenhower left active duty and became president of New York City’s Columbia University. His brief return to civilian life ended in 1950, however, when President Harry S. Truman asked him to take command of the new North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in Europe. In that position, Eisenhower worked to create a unified military organization that would combat potential communist aggression around the globe.

In 1952, with Truman’s popularity sagging during the ongoing war in Korea, leading Republicans approached Eisenhower and persuaded him to make a run for president. After mixed results in primary elections against the Republican front-runner, Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio , Eisenhower resigned his commission in the Army and returned from his NATO base in Paris in June 1952. 

At the party’s national convention that July, he won the Republican nomination on the first ballot. Under the slogan “I Like Ike” and with Senator Richard M. Nixon of California as his running mate, Eisenhower then defeated Adlai Stevenson to become the 34th president of the United States. (Eisenhower would beat Stevenson again four years later in a landslide to win reelection, despite health concerns after suffering a heart attack in 1955.)

Eisenhower’s Domestic Policy

As a moderate Republican, Eisenhower was able to achieve numerous legislative victories despite a Democratic majority in Congress during six of his eight years in office. In addition to continuing most of the New Deal and Fair Deal programs of his predecessors (Franklin Roosevelt and Truman, respectively), he strengthened the Social Security program, increased the minimum wage and created the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. In 1956, Eisenhower created the Interstate Highway System, the single largest public works program in U.S. history, which would construct 41,000 miles of roads across the country.

During Eisenhower’s first term, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade violated the civil liberties of many citizens, culminating in a series of sensational televised hearings in the spring of 1954. To preserve party unity, Eisenhower refrained from publicly criticizing McCarthy, though he privately disliked the senator and worked behind the scenes to diminish McCarthy’s influence and eventually discredit him. Eisenhower was even more hesitant, however, in the realm of civil rights for African Americans. 

In 1954, in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional. Eisenhower believed that desegregation should proceed slowly, and was reluctant to use his presidential authority to back up the enforcement of the Court’s verdict, though he did send federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 to enforce integration of a high school there. Eisenhower did sign civil rights legislation in 1957 and 1960 providing federal protection for black voters; it was the first such legislation passed in the United States since Reconstruction .

Why Eisenhower Sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock After Brown v. Board

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How Eisenhower Secretly Pushed Back Against McCarthyism

Though silent in public, President Dwight D. Eisenhower worked behind the scenes to discredit Senator Joseph McCarthy and his red‑baiting tactics.

Eisenhower’s Foreign Policy

Soon after taking office, Eisenhower signed an armistice ending the Korean War . Aside from sending combat troops into Lebanon in 1958, he would send no other armed forces into active duty throughout his presidency, though he did not hesitate to authorize defense spending. He also authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to undertake covert operations against communism around the world, two of which toppled the governments of Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954. In 1954, Eisenhower decided against authorizing an airstrike to rescue French troops from defeat at Dien Bien Phu, avoiding a war in Indochina, though his support for the anti-communist government in South Vietnam would sow the seeds of future U.S. participation in the Vietnam War .

Eisenhower sought to improve Cold War-era relations with the Soviet Union , especially after the death of Josef Stalin in 1953. In July 1955, when Eisenhower met with British, French and Russian leaders in Geneva, Switzerland, he proposed an “open skies” policy, in which the United States and Soviet Union would conduct air inspections of each other’s military programs; the U.S.S.R. rejected the proposal, though it won international approval. Under the rising threat of Soviet nuclear weapons technology, Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles did succeed in strengthening NATO and in creating the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) to combat communist expansion in that region.

Dwight D. Eisenhower: Legacy and Post-Presidential Life

Though U.S.-Soviet relations remained relatively cordial throughout his presidency, including a summit meeting with Premier Nikita Krushchev in 1959, the Soviet shooting of a U.S. U-2 reconnaissance plane in May 1960 dashed Eisenhower’s hopes for a treaty before he left office. In his farewell address of January 1961, Eisenhower spoke of the dangers inherent in what he called the “military-industrial complex.” 

Due to the combination of national defense needs with advances in technology, he warned, a partnership between the military establishment and big business threatened to exert an undue influence on the course of the American government. His warnings would go unheeded, however, amid the ongoing tensions of the Cold War era.

While weathering criticism from both left and right, Eisenhower enjoyed high approval ratings throughout his administration. After leaving office in January 1961, he retired to his farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania . He worked largely on his memoirs and would publish several books over the following years. He died on March 28, 1969, after a long illness.

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The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC 20500

Dwight D. Eisenhower

The 34th President of the United States

The biography for President Eisenhower and past presidents is courtesy of the White House Historical Association.

Bringing to the Presidency his prestige as commanding general of the victorious forces in Europe during World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower obtained a truce in Korea and worked incessantly during his two terms (1953-1961) to ease the tensions of the Cold War.

Bringing to the Presidency his prestige as commanding general of the victorious forces in Europe during World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower obtained a truce in Korea and worked incessantly during his two terms to ease the tensions of the Cold War. He pursued the moderate policies of “Modern Republicanism,” pointing out as he left office, “America is today the strongest, most influential, and most productive nation in the world.”

Born in Texas in 1890, brought up in Abilene, Kansas, Eisenhower was the third of seven sons. He excelled in sports in high school, and received an appointment to West Point. Stationed in Texas as a second lieutenant, he met Mamie Geneva Doud, whom he married in 1916.

In his early Army career, he excelled in staff assignments, serving under Generals John J. Pershing, Douglas MacArthur, and Walter Krueger. After Pearl Harbor, General George C. Marshall called him to Washington for a war plans assignment. He commanded the Allied Forces landing in North Africa in November 1942; on D-Day, 1944, he was Supreme Commander of the troops invading France.

After the war, he became President of Columbia University, then took leave to assume supreme command over the new NATO forces being assembled in 1951. Republican emissaries to his headquarters near Paris persuaded him to run for President in 1952.

“I like Ike” was an irresistible slogan; Eisenhower won a sweeping victory.

Negotiating from military strength, he tried to reduce the strains of the Cold War. In 1953, the signing of a truce brought an armed peace along the border of South Korea. The death of Stalin the same year caused shifts in relations with Russia.

New Russian leaders consented to a peace treaty neutralizing Austria. Meanwhile, both Russia and the United States had developed hydrogen bombs. With the threat of such destructive force hanging over the world, Eisenhower, with the leaders of the British, French, and Russian governments, met at Geneva in July 1955.

The President proposed that the United States and Russia exchange blueprints of each other’s military establishments and “provide within our countries facilities for aerial photography to the other country.” The Russians greeted the proposal with silence, but were so cordial throughout the meetings that tensions relaxed.

Suddenly, in September 1955, Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in Denver, Colorado. After seven weeks he left the hospital, and in February 1956 doctors reported his recovery. In November he was elected for his second term.

In domestic policy the President pursued a middle course, continuing most of the New Deal and Fair Deal programs, emphasizing a balanced budget. As desegregation of schools began, he sent troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, to assure compliance with the orders of a Federal court; he also ordered the complete desegregation of the Armed Forces. “There must be no second class citizens in this country,” he wrote.

Eisenhower concentrated on maintaining world peace. He watched with pleasure the development of his “atoms for peace” program–the loan of American uranium to “have not” nations for peaceful purposes.

Before he left office in January 1961, for his farm in Gettysburg, he urged the necessity of maintaining an adequate military strength, but cautioned that vast, long-continued military expenditures could breed potential dangers to our way of life. He concluded with a prayer for peace “in the goodness of time.” Both themes remained timely and urgent when he died, after a long illness, on March 28, 1969.

For more information about President Eisenhower, please visit Dwight D. Eisenhower Library and Museum

Learn more about Dwight D. Eisenhower’s spouse, Mamie Geneva Doud Eisenhower .

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Biography Online

Dwight Eisenhower Biography

David was born to a large family (he had six brothers) in Kansas in 1890. From an early a, e he was interested in outdoor sports and military history. Despite his mother’s objection to war, he continued his military studies and later joined the military academy at West Point.

He graduated in 1915,  but to his disappointment was initially denied permission for an overseas posting. In 1918, he finally went to France, but, to his great disappointment, didn’t see any action; instead, he was responsible for a training a new tank corps.

After the war, along with George S.Patton , he became more interested in tank warfare, investigating their optimal use in a fast-moving war. However, the military top-brass were dismissive of this innovation and Dwight had to hold back from publishing more work on the use of tanks.

In the inter-war years, he served with a succession of generals, such as J.Pershing, Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall. Due to his strong administrative qualities, he was gradually promoted, reaching Brigadier General in October 1941.

By the end of November 1942, Eisenhower had been appointed the Supreme Commander of the Allied Force in North Africa, and he was given command over Operation Torch seeking to remove the Axis forces from North Africa. After the defeat of the Axis in Africa, he also oversaw the successful invasion of Sicily, and later Italy.

By the end of 1943, President Roosevelt decided that Eisenhower would make the best candidate to be the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, this meant Eisenhower would have the overall command for the forthcoming D-Day invasion, codenamed Operation Overlord.

This gave Eisenhower as many political difficulties as military. But, Eisenhower proved adept at managing the different egos and Allied nations involved in the assault on mainland Europe. He had to deal with prickly generals such as the British Bernard Montgomery , and fellow American General S.Patton . At one point, Eisenhower severely reprimanded Patton for slapping a soldier suffering from shell shock.

Eisenhower had the capacity to disagree strongly with generals and politicians, such as  Winston Churchill, without ever threatening their relationship and the alliance. The D-Day invasion proved successful, though the advance on Berlin proved harder and more costly than many hoped. Eisenhower was always conscious of the personal cost involved, and was conscious of his responsibilities to individual soldiers, frequently visiting divisions of solider.

After the German surrender, Eisenhower was responsible for the Allied sections of occupied Germany. He sought to find evidence of crimes against humanity by leading Nazi’s and allowed more humanitarian aid into suffering German civilians.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Eisenhower was initially hopeful that friendly relations could be maintained with the Soviet Union. However, by mid-1947, tensions between East and West increased, and Eisenhower came to support the policies of Soviet containment.

In 1952, Eisenhower was encouraged to stand as Republican Presidential candidate. Although previously not engaged in politics, he agreed to stand and campaigned on the simple slogan ‘I Like Ike’ becoming the first Republican candidate for 20 years to win office. He stood on a simple platform of anti-communism, anti-corruption, and anti-big government. He favoured a form of ‘progressive conservatism’ – maintaining and extending existing social security legislation but trying to maintain frugal government spending.

Helped by a booming post-war economy, the 1950s was an era of prosperity and economic expansion, and this helped maintain his popularity. One of his big achievements was the creation of an interstate highway, which improved motor transport between different cities.

However, during his presidency, cold war tensions remained. Attempts to halt the nuclear arms race came to nothing, and Eisenhower allowed the military to have an increased reliance on nuclear weapons rather than conventional weapons.

In 1954, Eisenhower articulated the ‘domino theory’ – The idea that if Communists were allowed to prevail in one country, it would soon spread throughout the region. This doctrine proved very important, as, during this era, the CIA became increasingly involved in plotting foreign coups and working to undermine Communist and left-leaning governments. This included restoring the Shah to power in Iran and plotting the bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, which was left to John F.Kennedy to carry out.

One of the great successes of his administration was signing an armistice in the Korean war in 1953. He also severely criticised his former Allies – Britain, France and Israel for their invasion of the Suez canal. The intervention of the Americans was key in creating a humiliating reverse for the British, French and Isreali’s. Eisenhower was a strong supporter of the United Nations and used the UN to criticise the Russian invasion of Hungary.

Despite a strong anti-communist foreign policy, Eisenhower became increasingly dismayed by the anti-communist ‘witch hunt’ of Senator McCarthy. Eisenhower covertly sought to undermine McCarthy’s influence.

On the issue of civil rights, Eisenhower sought to end segregation in the army. He also sent in state troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to defend the end of segregation in schools.

In his last speech, he both warned of the enemies abroad, and the misuse of power at home.

“We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose and insidious in method…” and warned about what he saw as unjustified government spending proposals and continued with a warning that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex.” “we recognize the imperative need for this development … the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist … Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Personal Life

Eisenhower married Mamie Geneva Doud of Boone, Iowa, on July 1, 1916.  They had two sons, one of whom died in childhood of scarlet fever. Eisenhower declared himself to be a religious man, but not affiliated with any particular sect. He was instrumental in having the US adopt the motto ‘In God we Trust’ in 1956.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Dwight Eisenhower”, Oxford, UK.  www.biographyonline.net . Published 16 Dec. 2012. Last updated 18 Feb 2018.

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Dwight D. Eisenhower

Bringing to the presidency his vast experience as commanding general of the victorious forces in Europe during World War II, Dwight Eisenhower oversaw the growth of postwar prosperity. In a rare boast he said, “The United States never lost a soldier or a foot of ground in my administration.... By God, it didn’t just happen—I’ll tell you that!”

Born in Texas on October 14, 1890, brought up in Abilene, Kansas, Eisenhower was the third of seven sons. He excelled in sports in high school, and received an appointment to West Point. Stationed in Texas as a second lieutenant, he met Mamie Geneva Doud, whom he married in 1916. They had two sons, Doud Dwight, who died at two, and John.

In Eisenhower’s early army career, he excelled in staff assignments, serving under Generals John J. Pershing and Douglas MacArthur. After Pearl Harbor, General George C. Marshall called him to Washington to work on war plans. He commanded the Allied Forces landing in North Africa in November 1942; on D-Day, 1944, he was supreme commander of the troops invading France.

After the war, he became president of Columbia University, then took leave to assume supreme command over the new NATO forces being assembled in 1951. Republican emissaries to his headquarters near Paris persuaded him to run for president in 1952. “I like Ike” was an irresistible slogan; Eisenhower won a sweeping victory over Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson.

Negotiating from military strength, he tried to reduce the strains of the cold war. In 1953, the signing of a truce brought an armed peace along the border of South Korea. The death of Stalin the same year caused shifts in relations with the Soviet Union.

In Geneva in 1955, Eisenhower met with the leaders of the British, French, and Soviet governments. The president proposed that the United States and Soviet Union exchange blueprints of each other’s military establishments and “provide within our countries facilities for aerial photography to the other country.” But the Soviets vetoed his “Open Skies” proposal.

In September 1955, Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in Denver, Colorado. After seven weeks he left the hospital, and in February 1956 doctors told him he was well enough to seek a second term, which he won by another landslide over Stevenson.

In domestic policy the president pursued a middle “modern Republican” course, continuing most of the New Deal and Fair Deal programs and seeking a balanced budget. As desegregation of schools began, he sent troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, to assure compliance with the orders of the Supreme Court but resisted pleas from civil rights champions to welcome publicly the court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision.

During his last two years in office, Eisenhower tried to make “a chip in the granite” of the cold war. He welcomed Nikita Khrushchev to Camp David and planned to meet the Soviet leader at a four-power Paris summit the following spring to seek ways to reduce their antagonism. But just before the meeting, the Soviets shot down an American U-2 spy plane over their territory, which scuttled the summit and reinflamed cold war passions on both sides.

In his Farewell Address, Eisenhower surprised many Americans by warning them to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” which he found a potential danger to American liberties. Disappointed by his failure to turn over the presidency to a Republican successor, he and Mamie retired to their farm beside the Gettysburg battlefield. After years of cardiac illness, he died in Washington, D.C., on March 28, 1969.

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U.S. Presidents / Dwight D. Eisenhower

1890 - 1969

Dwight d. eisenhower.

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Dwight Eisenhower — 34th President of the United States

October 14, 1890–March 28, 1969

Dwight David Eisenhower was the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II and the 34th President of the United States, serving from 1953 1961.

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Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower Biography

Dwight David Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States and the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during the Second World War. Eisenhower was born in 1890 and attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Although he graduated before the United States entered the First World War, he never received the combat command in France that he coveted. Instead, Eisenhower served in administrative assignments under such military luminaries as John J, Pershing, Fox Conner, and Douglas MacArthur until the U.S. entered the Second War War. His crowning military achievement was planning, organizing, and commanding the invasion of German-occupied France on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Following the war, Eisenhower served two terms as President of the United States from January 20, 1953, to January 20, 1961. His middle-of-the-road policies proved popular with most Americans. Eisenhower is often remembered for creating the nation’s interstate highway system, using federal troops to expand civil rights in the South, and guiding the United States through the Cold War without losing one soldier in combat or one foot of American soil during his eight years in office.

Dwight Eisenhower Quick Facts

• Date of Birth: Dwight Eisenhower was born on October 14, 1890, in Denison Texas. His parents were David J. and Ida Stover Eisenhower.
• Date of Death: Eisenhower died on March 28, 1969.
• Nickname: His nickname was “Ike.”
• President of the United States: Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States.
• Famous Slogan: The popular slogan for his presidential campaigns was “I Like Ike.”

Dwight Eisenhower Early Life and Career

Dwight David Eisenhower was born October 14, 1890, in Denison, Texas. He was the third of seven sons born to David J. and Ida Stover Eisenhower. Two years after Dwight’s birth the family moved to Abilene, Kansas, where David worked as a mechanic at a local creamery. 

Known locally as Little Ike, young Eisenhower enjoyed the outdoors where he developed a lifelong love of fishing. Like his brothers, Eisenhower attended local public schools where he developed an early and lasting interest in military history. In 1909, Little Ike graduated from Abilene High School where he was a bright student and talented athlete.

Two years after leaving high school, Eisenhower received an appointment to the United States Military Academy, much to the chagrin of his mother who as a Mennonite was a religious pacifist.

West Point Cadet

Eisenhower entered West Point on June 4, 1911. Not a particularly stellar student, he excelled in athletics. By his second year, Eisenhower was the starting halfback on the academy’s varsity football team until a severe knee injury ended his athletic career.

Academically, Eisenhower was an above-average student who especially enjoyed his English studies. A bit of a mischievous prankster, Eisenhower piled up more than the usual number of demerits for his behavior at the academy, including his penchant for smoking.

On June 15, 1915, Eisenhower graduated from West Point, ranked sixty-first out of 164 cadets in one of the more outstanding classes in the academy’s history. Later known as “the class the stars fell on,” fifty-nine members of the class of 1915 eventually achieved the rank of general.

Family Life

After graduating from West Point, Eisenhower was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army and deployed to Fort Sam Houston near San Antonio, Texas. In October 1915, he met nineteen-year-old Mary Geneva “Mamie” Doud, a native of Boone, Iowa, who was vacationing at her family’s winter home in San Antonio. The young lieutenant and Mamie hit it off immediately and on Valentine’s Day the following year, they were engaged to be married. The couple wed on July 1, 1916, at the home of Mamie’s parents in Denver, Colorado. Following a brief honeymoon, the pair visited Eisenhower’s parents before settling into married officers’ quarters at Fort Sam Houston. The Eisenhowers’ fifty-two-year marriage produced two children—both boys. 

• Doud Dwight Eisenhower was born on September 24, 1917, in San Antonio, while Eisenhower was stationed at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. Affectionately called Icky, the boy died of scarlet fever on January 2, 1921, while Eisenhower was stationed at Fort Meade, Maryland. The distraught father later reminisced that Icky’s death was “the greatest disappointment and disaster of my life, the one I have never been able to forget completely.”
• Eighteen months after Icky’s death, Mamie gave birth to John Sheldon Doud Eisenhower on August 3, 1922, in Denver, Colorado. Like his father, John attended the United States Military Academy. He graduated on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Afterward, he served in Europe during World War II and in Korea during the Korean Conflict. John remained on active duty with the U.S. Army as a lieutenant colonel until 1963, and he retired from the service as a brigadier general in 1974 after serving as United States Ambassador to Belgium from 1969 to 1971 during President Richard Nixon’s administration. John died on December 21, 2013, at Trappe, Maryland.

Throughout their long marriage, Mamie Eisenhower remained a supportive wife despite the challenges presented by constant moves, long separations, and the responsibilities of being the First Lady of the United States. She died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District of Columbia on November 1, 1979, after suffering a stroke five weeks earlier.

World War I Begins

When the United States entered World War I in April 1917, Eisenhower, who had been promoted to first lieutenant on July 1 of the previous year, requested a combat assignment in Europe. Instead, the army ordered him to remain at Fort Sam Houston training the 57th Infantry. Taking some sting out of his disappointment, the army promoted Eisenhower to captain on May 15, 1917.

In September 1917, the army sent Eisenhower to Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia to train officer candidates to lead troops in the war in Europe that he yearned to fight. A few months later in February 1918, Eisenhower was elated to learn that the army was reassigning him to the 65th Engineers stationed at Camp Meade, Maryland. Placed in command of the 301st Tank Battalion, Eisenhower was ordered to organize and train the unit, which was scheduled to go to Europe the next spring. Soon after the reassignment, Eisenhower received a promotion to major (temporary) on June 17, 1918.

Eisenhower’s hopes for an overseas combat command were again dashed just as his outfit prepared to embark for Europe. Army officials decided that Eisenhower’s organizational skills were indispensable and reassigned him to Camp Colt in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to command the newly organized Tank Corps. What would otherwise have been a plum promotion denied Eisenhower the opportunity to command troops during the Great War.

Eisenhower After WW I

In October 1918, the army promoted Eisenhower to lieutenant colonel (temporary) and ordered him to embark for France on November 18. On November 11, 1818, representatives of the belligerent forces signed the armistice that ended World War I hostilities. The army rescinded Eisenhower’s orders to leave for Europe. Instead of the combat assignment Eisenhower yearned for, he spent the next few months discharging most of the men he had trained, and commanding the remnants of his peacetime unit. On June 30, 1920, Eisenhower reverted to his rank of captain in the regular army. Two days later, on July 2, he received a promotion to major.

In the fall of 1919, Eisenhower met George S. Patton who had commanded a tank battalion in France during WWI. The two men shared an enthusiasm for tank warfare that spawned a long friendship. While attending a dinner party hosted by Patton at Fort Meade, Eisenhower met General Fox Conner. Conner was a powerful figure in the peacetime army who had served as General John J. Pershing’s operations officer when Pershing commanded the American Expeditionary Force in Europe during WWI. After the war, Conner served as Pershing’s chief of staff when Pershing became Chief of Staff of the Army. 

Eisenhower at the Panama Canal

In 1921, Conner took command of the 20th Infantry Brigade in the Panama Canal Zone. He selected Eisenhower as his executive officer. During their time in Panama, Conner challenged Eisenhower to become a serious student of military history. Eisenhower later described his three years under Conner’s tutelage as “a sort of graduate school in military affairs.” Recognizing Eisenhower as a dedicated and able learner, Conner described Eisenhower as “one of the most capable, efficient, and loyal officers I have ever met.” Decades later, Eisenhower reminisced that “Fox Conner was the ablest man I ever knew.” 

Congress Reduces the Size of the U.S. Army

During the early 1920s, conservatives in Congress were eager to reduce the size of the nation’s standing army. As the number of officers and enlisted men shrunk, Eisenhower was discharged as a major and reappointed as a captain in the regular army on November 4, 1922. It was not until August 26, 1924, that Eisenhower was once again promoted to the rank of major. Despite Eisenhower’s indisputable talents, he would not receive another promotion for twelve years.

Eisenhower at Command School

In 1925, Conner arranged an appointment for Eisenhower to the Command and General Staff School at Leavenworth, Kansas, a graduate school for military officers. Eisenhower validated his mentor’s faith by graduating first in his class of 245 officers the following year.

Eisenhower’s achievements at the command school and Conner’s influence garnered Eisenhower an assignment on the American Battle Monuments Commission under General Pershing. Pershing put Eisenhower to work compiling a history of the American Expeditionary Forces’ battles on the Western Front during World War I. When Eisenhower completed A Guide to the American Battlefields in Europe in 1927,   a delighted Pershing remarked “What he has done was accomplished only by the exercise of unusual intelligence and constant devotion to duty.”

Assigned to the Staff of General George Moseley

In November 1929, Eisenhower was assigned to the staff of General George V. Moseley who was an executive to the Assistant Secretary of War. In 1930, Eisenhower remained with Moseley when he was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army. When General Douglas MacArthur became the Army Chief of Staff on November 21, 1930, Moseley became MacArthur’s Deputy Chief of Staff, and Eisenhower served as Moseley’s executive officer. MacArthur quickly recognized Eisenhower’s administrative talents and Eisenhower became an unofficial military assistant. 

Bonus Army Marches on Washington 

In May 1932, with the nation in the throes of the Great Depression, some 20,000 to 40,000 jobless WWI veterans descended on Washington, D.C., demanding early payment of military bonuses the federal government awarded to them for their service. Vowing to stay until the bonuses were paid, the veterans occupied buildings and set up camps in several locations near the nation’s capital. Convinced that Communists were inciting the veterans, President Herbert Hoover ordered the D.C. police to remove the trespassers. When violence erupted on July 28, resulting in two deaths, Hoover called in the army. 

Led by MacArthur, Eisenhower and Patton were among the leaders of the force that used tanks and tear gas to drive the veterans off and burn their temporary dwellings. The next day, the Washington Daily News , described the action as “A pitiful spectacle,” to see “the mightiest government in the world chasing unarmed men, women, and children with Army tanks. If the Army must be called out to make war on unarmed citizens, this is no longer America.”

Aide to General Douglas MacArthur

In February 1933, Eisenhower became MacArthur’s chief military aide, a position he held until September 1935. When MacArthur became the Chief Military Advisor to the Commonwealth Government of the Philippines in 1935, Eisenhower followed and remained MacArthur’s aide until December 1939. One year after his arrival in the Philippines, Eisenhower received a promotion to lieutenant colonel on July 1, 1936.

During the roughly ten years Eisenhower served under MacArthur, they developed a mutual respect for each other. MacArthur once described Eisenhower as “the best officer in the Army.” Eisenhower characterized his boss as “decisive, personable, amazingly comprehensive in his knowledge.” Still, the two men often clashed because their personalities differed. The naturally self-effacing Eisenhower had trouble adapting to MacArthur’s bombastic leadership style. Despite their differences, Eisenhower observed that “Hostility between us has been exaggerated. After all, there must be a strong tie for two men to work so closely for so many years.”

General Eisenhower During World War II

In September 1939, German soldiers stormed across the Polish border in a blitzkrieg that stunned the world. Three months later, Eisenhower returned to the United States, where he served at Fort Ord, California, Fort Lewis, Washington, and Fort Sam Houston until December 1941. During that period, as the army ramped up for the possibility of war, Eisenhower received promotions to colonel (temporary) in March 1941, and to brigadier general on October 3, 1941.

December 7, 1941 — Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor

On December 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise air raid against U.S. military forces in Hawaii. The next day, Congress declared war against Japan. The year 1942 was a whirlwind for Eisenhower. Chief of Staff Marshall summoned him to Washington in December 1941 to develop plans for mobilizing the army and conducting the war. Eisenhower impressed Marshall immediately, and he quickly worked his way up the ladder on Marshall’s staff. By February 1942, Eisenhower was chief of the War Plans Division. One month later, on March 27, he was promoted to major general (temporary), a rank appropriate for his important prominent office. Together with Marshall, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Eisenhower helped develop the strategic plan to defeat the Axis powers in Europe before waging an all-out effort against Japan.

Eisenhower Named Commanding General in Europe

Marshall and Eisenhower also agreed that all American forces sent to fight in Europe should be under the command of one man. Eisenhower recommended General Joseph T. McNarney, but with approval from Roosevelt, Churchill, and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, Marshall had Eisenhower promoted to lieutenant general (temporary) on June 7, 1942, and selected him as Commanding General, European Theater of Operations on June 11. Two weeks later, on June 24, Eisenhower arrived in England and took command of all American ground, naval, and air forces in Europe. 

Operation Torch

Working with Marshall and the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, Eisenhower began planning Operation Sledgehammer and Operation Roundup, two Allied invasions of German-occupied France. Opposed by the British, the offensives were designed to relieve pressure on Soviet troops fighting the Nazis in the USSR. To Eisenhower’s dismay, Churchill convinced Roosevelt to postpone the invasion of France in favor of confronting the Germans in North Africa.   

On July 26, 1942, the British and American Combined Joint Chiefs of Staff (CSS) appointed Eisenhower to command all allied troops during the North African Campaign, code-named Operation Torch.

Beginning on November 8, 1942, and ending on November 16, the Allied offensive was successful, but not without problems. Still, Eisenhower demonstrated his ability to coordinate multinational military operations. He also gained invaluable experience organizing and commanding large amphibious invasions, which would serve him well in 1944.

Eisenhower’s success in Africa prompted the War Department to promote him to the temporary rank of general on February 11, 1943.

Operation Husky — Invasion of Sicily

At the urging of Churchill, the Combined Joint Chiefs of Staff postponed a cross-channel invasion of France in favor of further operations in the Mediterranean Sea against German forces on the Island of Sicily. The CSS charged Eisenhower with planning and coordinating the invasion. Code named Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily began on July 9, 1943. Five weeks later, the Allied campaign ended on August 17 when thousands of German and Italian troops evacuated the island. 

At the completion of Operation Husky, the War Department promoted Eisenhower to the permanent rank of brigadier general and major general on August 30, 1943. 

Invasion of Italy

While Allied ground forces were fighting in Sicily, their air forces began bombing mainland Italy. On July 25, 1943, the Italian Grand Council voted Prime Minister Benito Mussolini out of power, and King Victor Emmanuel III ordered him imprisoned. Two weeks later, on September 8, the Italian government surrendered to the Allies. The surrender, however, did not impact the thousands of German troops occupying Italy. 

On September 9, 1943, under Eisenhower’s overall direction, an amphibious invasion code-named Operation Avalanche landed Allied troops at Salerno and Taranto on mainland Italy. It took the Allies over a year to drive the Nazis out of Italy. By that time, Eisenhower had moved on to command a larger invasion.

Operation Overlord

As 1943 drew to a close, the Soviet Union’s Red Army and the German Wehrmacht were engaged in savage fighting on the Eastern Front. Meeting with Churchill and Roosevelt in Tehran in December, Soviet Premier Josef Stalin continued to press the United States and Great Britain to open a new front on Germany’s west. After the conference, British officials finally agreed to take part in an invasion of German-occupied France across the English Channel. 

Most military officials expected Roosevelt to assign Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall the honor of leading the long-anticipated final assault against Germany. Instead, on December 24, 1943, Roosevelt selected Eisenhower to lead Operation Overlord.

June 6, 1944 — The Invasion of Normandy

Assigned the title of Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force, Eisenhower immediately left the Mediterranean Theater and traveled to England where he spent the next six months planning the largest amphibious assault in the history of warfare. Under Eisenhower’s command, on June 6, 1944, over 150,000 Allied troops stormed five beaches in Normandy, France. The successful operation enabled the Allies to establish a foothold on Western European soil and gradually drive east, culminating with Germany’s surrender on May 8, 1945.

As a reward for his accomplishment, Eisenhower received a fifth star when he was promoted to General of the Army on December 20, 1944.

Dwight Eisenhower Post-War Career

Immediately after Germany’s surrender, Eisenhower served briefly as the Military Governor of the U.S. Occupied Zone, in Frankfurt, Germany. On November 19, 1945, President Harry S. Truman appointed him Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, a position held until February 6, 1948. During his tenure as Chief of Staff, Eisenhower oversaw the demobilization of millions of soldiers who saw service during World War II. Five months after his appointment, on April 11, 1946, Eisenhower’s wartime rank of General of the Army became permanent. 

On June 7, 1948, the trustees of Columbia University, appointed Eisenhower as president of the university. He served in that capacity until January 19, 1953, although he was on leave for much of the time, earning him the enmity of many faculty members.

In an informal capacity, Eisenhower served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the newly created defense department.

On December 16, 1950, the member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) unanimously selected Eisenhower as the organization’s first Supreme Allied Commander, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Europe (SHAPE). Eisenhower took leave from Columbia and headed off to Brussels, Belgium. On April 2, 1951, he signed the activation order for Allied Command Europe and he subsequently commanded all NATO forces in Europe until May 30, 1952. 

While serving with NATO in Brussels, Eisenhower began testing the political waters back home. After winning the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary election in March 1952, Eisenhower resigned from his NATO position and returned to the U.S. On May 31, 1952, Eisenhower retired from active military duty and six weeks later, on July 18, he resigned his commission in the U.S. Army.

President Eisenhower

1952 presidential candidate.

On June 4, 1952, Eisenhower announced his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination for President in Abilene, Kansas. His main competitors were Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio who represented old-guard conservatives, and New York Governor Thomas Dewey whom President Harry S. Truman had defeated in the 1948 presidential election. When Republicans assembled for their national convention in Chicago on July 11, 1952, an acrimonious disagreement arose over the seating of delegates. Eisenhower’s team finessed the rules in their candidate’s favor and on July 11, Eisenhower secured the Republican presidential nomination on the first vote on July 11. 

Following the convention’s dramatics, the presidential election held on November 4, 1952, was anti-climactic. The wildly popular Eisenhower swamped the Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson. Eisenhower received 34,075,529 votes (55.2%) to Stevenson’s 27,375,090 (44.3%). In the Electoral College voting, the results were even more one-sided; Eisenhower carried thirty-nine states, receiving 442 electoral votes, compared to Stevenson’s nine states and eighty-nine electoral votes. 

Two weeks after his victory, Eisenhower tendered his resignation as president of Columbia University, effective January 19, 1953, the day before his inauguration as President of the United States.

First Term in Office — January 20, 1953–January 20, 1957

Eisenhower took the oath of office in Washington, D.C., on January 20, 1953. His middle-of-the-road policies enabled him to work well with Congress even though the Democrats held majorities in both houses. 

The major events and achievements of his first four years as president included:

• Creation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
• Enactment of legislation creating the St. Lawrence Seaway, a project that linked the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean via the St. Lawrence River.
• Eisenhower’s authorization for the CIA to kindle the overthrow of the governments of Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954).
• Eisenhower’s administration negotiated an armistice ending the Korean War.
• Eisenhower’s nomination of Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, followed by the Senate’s confirmation.
• The Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of Brown vs. the Board of Education that led to the desegregation of public schools in the U.S. (Although Eisenhower did not support the ruling, he fulfilled his duty as President by enforcing it.)
• Enactment of the Atomic Energy Act promoting the peaceful use of atomic energy.
• The Senate’s censure of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. (Although Eisenhower abhorred McCarthy and his ruthless tactics, he refused to use the power of his office to curb McCarthy.)
• Creation of the Southeast Atlantic Treaty Organization (SEATO).
• Enactment of the Federal Highway Act creating the interstate highway system. (Eisenhower was a strong advocate for improving the nation’s highways.)

As Eisenhower neared the end of his first term, he suffered a serious heart attack on September 23-24, 1955, while vacationing in Denver, Colorado. While hospitalized in Colorado until November 11, he continued in his role as president as he convalesced.

1956 Presidential Candidate

Despite the seriousness of his 1955 heart attack, Eisenhower announced on February 29, 1956, that he would seek a second presidential term. When the Republican Party convened its national convention in San Francisco, California, on August 20, 1956, it was a foregone conclusion that Eisenhower would secure the party’s presidential nomination. During his acceptance speech on August 23, after being unanimously nominated, Eisenhower stressed the theme of the Republican Party as “the party of the future.”

When American voters went to the polls on November 6, 1956, Eisenhower defeated repeat-Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson even more convincingly than he had in 1952. Eisenhower received 35,579,180 popular votes (57.4%) to Stevenson’s 26,028,028 (40%). In the Electoral College voting, Eisenhower carried forty-one states, receiving 457 electoral votes, compared to Stevenson’s seven states and seventy-three electoral votes.

Second Term in Office — January 20, 1957–January 20, 1961

Once again, despite working with a Democratically controlled Congress, Eisenhower’s middle-of-the-road policies enabled him to maintain good relations with the legislative branch. 

The major events and achievements of his second term included:

• Enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first major civil-rights legislation since Reconstruction. The act empowered federal officials to prosecute individuals who conspired to deny or abridge another citizen’s right to vote. 
• Deployment of federal troops to Arkansas to enforce court-mandated integration at Little Rock Central High School. This marked the first time since Reconstruction that a president sent military forces into the South to enforce federal law.
• Deployment of the U.S. Marine Corps into Lebanon at the request of the Lebanese government.
• Creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
• Enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, expanding the enforcement powers of the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
• Severing diplomatic relations with Cuba.

Was Eisenhower a good President?

The American electorate rebuffed Eisenhower’s vice-president Richard M. Nixon, in favor of Democrat John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election. Yet, when the aging general left office on January 20, 1961, his fellow countrymen still liked Ike.

Times were generally good for most white Americans, and although Eisenhower was no champion of civil rights, conditions improved for black Americans because of his determination to enforce the will of Congress and the Supreme Court.

The nation’s economy was purring along and Eisenhower managed to balance the federal budget for half of the eight years he was in office. The interstate highway system, created under his leadership, fueled the economy and made it easier for Americans to visit distant parts of the nation.

After negotiating an end to the Korean War, Eisenhower led the country through perilous times during the Cold War. Despite facing international crises in Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, the man who led the greatest amphibious assault in the history of warfare, and subsequently guided the Allies to victory in Europe, was able to accurately boast “The United States never lost a soldier or a foot of ground in my administration.”

On January 17, 1961, three days before leaving office, Eisenhower addressed the nation on television. During his now-famous farewell address, Eisenhower warned Americans:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

In light of America’s later military involvement in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, his counsel proved to be especially prescient.

Later Life and Death

Following his presidency, Eisenhower returned to private life living at his farm near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Shortly after leaving office, an act of Congress restored him to the rank of General of the Army on March 30, 1961. During his retirement, Eisenhower remained only moderately involved in politics, preferring instead to spend his final years traveling, farming, fishing, oil painting, golfing, and playing bridge. 

By the late-1960s, Eisenhower’s health began to deteriorate rapidly. On April 29, 1968, he suffered a heart attack while golfing in California. Following a two-week hospital stay, he traveled to Bethesda, Maryland, to convalesce at Walter Reed Hospital.

While there, Eisenhower suffered three more heart attacks (June 15, August 6, and August 16, 1968) and underwent surgery for an intestinal blockage on February 23, 1969. Four days following the surgery, he contracted pneumonia, which doctors successfully combated with antibiotics. Still, the former president’s health continued to decline.

On March 28, 1969, after being hospitalized for nearly a year, Major General Frederic Hughes, hospital commander, announced Eisenhower had succumbed to congestive heart failure “after a long and heroic struggle against overwhelming illness.”

Following a three-day state funeral in Washington, D.C., Eisenhower’s body traveled by train to Abilene, Kansas, where it was interred in the Place of Meditation on April 2, 1969.

Significance of Dwight Eisenhower

Dwight Eisenhower was important to the history of the United States for many reasons. He led Allied forces to victory in Europe during World War II and was later elected the thirty-fourth President of the United States. During his eight years in office, Eisenhower championed the construction of the nation’s interstate highway system, used federal troops to expand civil rights in the South, and guided the United States through the Cold War without losing one soldier in combat or one foot of American soil. For many Americans who lived through the Eisenhower Era, he is viewed as an American Hero .

Dwight Eisenhower Accomplishments

• Dwight Eisenhower graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point on June 15, 1915.
• Eisenhower served as an aide to American military luminaries John J. Pershing, Fox Conner, Douglas MacArthur, and George C. Marshall.
• Eisenhower became the commander of all U.S. troops in the European theater of World War II on June 25, 1942.
• Eisenhower commanded the successful invasions of Sicily and mainland Italy in 1943.
• President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Eisenhower as Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe on December 24, 1943.
• Eisenhower commanded the successful invasion of Normandy, France on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
• Eisenhower was promoted to General of the Army (five stars) on December 20, 1944.
• Eisenhower served as the first Supreme Allied Commander, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces from 1951 – 1952.
• Eisenhower served as President of the United States from January 20, 1953, to January 20, 1961.
• Eisenhower championed the construction of the United States Interstate Highway System.

10 Interesting Facts About Dwight Eisenhower

• Eisenhower’s mother was a member of the Mennonite Church and a pacifist.
• Eisenhower was an outstanding athlete who was a starting halfback on the U.S. Military Academy’s varsity football team until a severe knee injury ended his athletic career.
• Eisenhower was the third of seven sons.
• Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas, but he grew up in Abilene, Kansas.
• Eisenhower married his wife of fifty-two years, Mary Geneva “Mamie” Doud, on July 1, 1916.
• Eisenhower described the death of his son, “Icky,” in 1921 as “the greatest disappointment and disaster of my life, the one I have never been able to forget completely.”
• Although Eisenhower dutifully followed orders while breaking up the Bonus March on Washington in 1932, he was critical of Douglas MacArthur’s excessive use of force.
• Eisenhower was an avid fisher, golfer, artist, bridge player, and avocational farmer.
• When not traveling, Eisenhower spent most of his retirement at his farm near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which is now Eisenhower National Historic Site. It is near the location where the Battle of Gettysburg took place in 1863 .
• Although Eisenhower qualified to be buried at Arlington Nation Cemetery, he chose his hometown, Abilene, Kansas as his final resting place.
• Written by Harry Searles

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• M.A., History, University of Delaware
• M.S., Information and Library Science, Drexel University
• B.A., History and Political Science, Pennsylvania State University

Dwight David Eisenhower (October 14, 1890–March 28, 1969) was a decorated war hero, having participated in two World Wars, holding many titles. After retiring from active duty, he entered politics and served as president of the United States from 1953–1961.

Fast Facts: Dwight D. Eisenhower

• Known For : General of the Army in World War II, U.S. President from 1953–1961
• Born : October 14, 1890 in Denison, Texas
• Parents : David Jacob and Ida Stover Eisenhower
• Died : March 28, 1969 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
• Education : Abilene High School, West Point Naval Academy (1911–1915), Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas (1925–1926)
• Spouse : Marie "Mamie" Geneva Doud (m. July 1, 1916)
• Children : Doud Dwight (1917–1921) and John Sheldon Doud Eisenhower (1922–2013)

Dwight David Eisenhower was the third son of David Jacob and Ida Stover Eisenhower. Moving to Abilene, Kansas in 1892, Eisenhower spent his childhood in the town and later attended Abilene High School. Graduating in 1909, he worked locally for two years to aid in paying his older brother's college tuition. In 1911, Eisenhower took and passed the admission exam for the U.S. Naval Academy but was turned down due to being too old. Turning to West Point, he succeeded in gaining an appointment with the aid of Senator Joseph L. Bristow. Though his parents were pacifists, they supported his choice as it would give him a good education.

Though born David Dwight, Eisenhower had gone by his middle name for most of his life. Arriving at West Point in 1911, he officially changed his name to Dwight David. A member of a star-studded class that would ultimately produce 59 generals, including Omar Bradley , Eisenhower was a solid student and graduated 61st in a class of 164. While at the academy, he also proved a gifted athlete until having his career cut short by a knee injury. Completing his education, Eisenhower graduated in 1915 and was assigned to the infantry.

Eisenhower married Marie "Mamie" Geneva Doud on July 1, 1916. They had two sons, Doud Dwight (1917–1921), who died of scarlet fever as a child, and the historian and ambassador John Sheldon Doud Eisenhower (1922–2013). 

Moving through postings in Texas and Georgia, Eisenhower showed skills as an administrator and trainer. With the American entry into World War I in April 1917, he was retained in the United States and assigned to the new tank corps. Posted to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Eisenhower spent the war training tank crews for service on the Western Front. Though he reached the temporary rank of lieutenant colonel, he reverted to the rank of captain following the war's end in 1918. Ordered to Fort Meade, Maryland, Eisenhower continued to work in armor and conversed on the topic with Captain George S. Patton .

In 1922, with the rank of major, Eisenhower was assigned to the Panama Canal Zone to serve as executive officer to Brigadier General Fox Connor. Recognizing his XO's abilities, Connor took a personal interest in Eisenhower's military education and devised an advanced course of study. In 1925, he assisted Eisenhower in securing admission to the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Graduating first in his class a year later, Eisenhower was posted as a battalion commander at Fort Benning, Georgia. After a short assignment with the American Battle Monuments Commission, under General John J. Pershing , he returned to Washington, D.C. as executive officer to Assistant Secretary of War General George Mosely.

Known as an excellent staff officer, Eisenhower was selected as an aide by U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur . When MacArthur's term ended in 1935, Eisenhower followed his superior to the Philippines to serve as a military advisor to the Filipino government. Promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1936, Eisenhower began to clash with MacArthur on military and philosophical topics. Opening a rift that would last the remainder of their lives, the arguments led Eisenhower to return to Washington in 1939 and take a series of staff positions. In June 1941, he became chief of staff to 3rd Army commander Lieutenant General Walter Krueger and was promoted to brigadier general that September.

With the U.S. entry into World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Eisenhower was assigned to the General Staff in Washington where he devised war plans for defeating Germany and Japan. Becoming Chief of the War Plans Division, he was soon elevated to Assistant Chief of Staff overseeing the Operations Division under Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall . Though he had never led large formations in the field, Eisenhower soon impressed Marshall with his organizational and leadership skills. As a result, Marshall appointed him commander of the European Theater of Operations (ETOUSA) on June 24, 1942. This was soon followed by a promotion to lieutenant general.

Based in London, Eisenhower soon was also made Supreme Allied Commander of the North African Theater of Operations (NATOUSA). In this role, he oversaw the Operation Torch landings in North Africa that November. As Allied troops drove Axis forces into Tunisia, Eisenhower's mandate was expanded east to include General Sir Bernard Montgomery 's British 8th Army which had advanced west from Egypt. Promoted to general on February 11, 1943, he led the Tunisian Campaign to successful a conclusion that May. Remaining in the Mediterranean, Eisenhower's command was redesignated the Mediterranean Theater of Operations. Crossing to Sicily, he directed the invasion of the island in July 1943 before planning for landings in Italy.

After landing in Italy in September 1943, Eisenhower guided the initial stages of the advance up the peninsula. In December, President Franklin D. Roosevelt , who was unwilling to allow Marshall to leave Washington, directed that Eisenhower be made Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) which would place him in charge of the planned landings in France. Confirmed in this role in February 1944, Eisenhower oversaw operational control of Allied forces through SHAEF and administrative control of U.S. forces through ETOUSA. Headquartered in London, Eisenhower's post required extensive diplomatic and political skill as he endeavored to coordinate Allied efforts. Having gained experience in coping with challenging personalities while serving under MacArthur and commanding Patton and Montgomery in the Mediterranean, he was well-suited to dealing with difficult Allied leaders like Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle.

After extensive planning, Eisenhower moved forward with the invasion of Normandy (Operation Overlord) on June 6, 1944. Successful, his forces broke out of the beachhead  in July and began driving across France. Though he clashed with Churchill over strategy, such as the British-opposed Operation Dragoon landings in Southern France, Eisenhower worked to balance Allied initiatives and approved Montgomery's Operation Market-Garden in September. Pushing east in December, Eisenhower's biggest crisis of the campaign came with the opening of the Battle of the Bulge on Dec. 16. With German forces breaking through the Allied lines, Eisenhower quickly worked to seal the breach and contain the enemy advance. Over the next month, Allied troops halted the enemy and drove them back to their original lines with heavy losses. During the fighting, Eisenhower was promoted to General of the Army.

Leading the final drives into Germany, Eisenhower coordinated with his Soviet counterpart, Marshal Georgy Zhukov and, at times, directly with Premier Joseph Stalin . Aware that Berlin would fall in the Soviet occupation zone after the war, Eisenhower halted Allied troops at the Elbe River rather than suffer heavy losses taking an objective that would be lost after the end of fighting. With the surrender of Germany on May 8, 1945, Eisenhower was named Military Governor of the U.S. Occupation Zone. As governor, he worked to document Nazi atrocities, deal with food shortages, and aid refugees.

Returning to the United States that fall, Eisenhower was greeted as a hero. Made Chief of Staff on Nov. 19, he replaced Marshall and remained in this post until Feb. 6, 1948. A key responsibility during his tenure was overseeing the rapid downsizing of the Army after the war. Departing in 1948, Eisenhower became president of Columbia University. While there, he worked to expand his political and economic knowledge, as well as wrote his memoir Crusade in Europe . In 1950, Eisenhower was recalled to be the Supreme Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Serving until May 31, 1952, he retired from active duty and returned to Columbia.

Entering politics, Eisenhower ran for president that fall with Richard Nixon as his running mate. Winning in a landslide, he defeated Adlai Stevenson. A moderate Republican, Eisenhower's eight years in the White House were marked by the end of the Korean War , efforts to contain Communism, construction of the instate highway system, nuclear deterrence, founding of NASA, and economic prosperity. Leaving office in 1961, Eisenhower retired to his farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He lived in Gettysburg with his wife, Mamie (m. 1916) until his death from heart failure on March 28, 1969. Following funeral services in Washington, Eisenhower was buried in Abilene, Kansas at the Eisenhower Presidential Library.

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My Journey Through the Best Presidential Biographies

The Best Biographies of Dwight Eisenhower

13 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by Steve in Best Biographies Posts , President #34 - D Eisenhower

≈ 21 Comments

American history , biographies , book reviews , Carlo D'Este , Dwight Eisenhower , Evan Thomas , Fred Greenstein , Geoffrey Perret , Jean Edward Smith , Jeffrey Frank , Jim Newton , presidential biographies , Presidents , Stephen Ambrose

Like many of the presidents whose lives I’ve explored during the past 4+ years, I found Dwight Eisenhower’s pre-presidency more interesting than his years in the White House.

In order to understand Eisenhower’s character and core principles it is tempting to study his actions as Supreme Allied Commander during World War II or his presidential legacy of peace, prosperity and probity.

But the best insight into Eisenhower is gained by observing his evolution under the guidance of Generals Conner, Pershing, MacArthur and Marshall during the formative period of his long military career. This is where Eisenhower was molded, hardened and prepared for not just the D-Day invasion but, ultimately, the presidency.

During the three months I spent with the thirty-fourth president I read eleven books, including four traditional single-volume biographies of Eisenhower, a two-volume series, a series abridgement and four narrowly-focused books.

Somewhat unexpectedly, Eisenhower actually reminds me in many ways of his predecessor, Harry Truman. Both grew up in small-town America, both served in the military, both had a knack for being in the right place at the right time, and both possessed reputations for absolute integrity and no-nonsense leadership. I’m not sure either man would appreciate the comparison, but we can leave that debate for another day…

* “ Eisenhower in War and Peace ” by Jean Edward Smith – This 2012 classic is the most popular of all Eisenhower biographies and was the first biography I read. It also turned out to be my all-around favorite. Readers familiar with Smith’s earlier presidential biographies (“ Grant ” from 2001 and “ FDR ” from 2007) will recognize his writing style and appreciate his consistently comprehensive, colorful and insightful biographies. ( Full review here )

* “ Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life ” by Carlo D’Este – This 2002 biography was written by the author of “ Patton: A Genius for War .”  Given how much I liked this book, it is unfortunate that it is not comprehensive (it covers Eisenhower’s life up through the end of World War II in Europe). The first half of this book was fantastic ; the second half (covering Eisenhower’s military career from about 1942 to mid-1945) was solid but often more focused on the war itself than the future Commander-in-Chief. For readers interested in Eisenhower’s life up through World War II, this is almost perfection. ( Full review here )

* “ Eisenhower ” by Geoffrey Perret – Published in 1999 (two years after his biography of Ulysses S. Grant ), this was the first comprehensive biography of Eisenhower following the completion of Stephen Ambrose’s series in the early 1980s. While there is much to be appreciated about this book (the author’s military background yields some interesting observations about Eisenhower and World War II) the review of his early life is far too brief and the “provocative” portrait of Ike which is promised is never fully revealed. ( Full review here )

* “ Eisenhower: Portrait of the Hero ” by Peter Lyon – When published in 1974, this was reportedly the most comprehensive and detailed biography of Eisenhower available. This biography is not only the oldest and longest of the books on Eisenhower I read, but also proves among the most dense and dry. More frustrating than rewarding, Peter Lyon’s book has been surpassed in nearly every way by more recent biographies of Dwight Eisenhower. ( Full review here )

* “ Eisenhower: The White House Years ” by Jim Newton – Given its title, this 2011 window into Eisenhower’s presidency provides unexpectedly broad coverage of Ike’s life. The author’s background as a journalist is not surprising; the narrative is dynamic and revealing and Newton is able to explain complicated affairs in straightforward language. And although this book is no substitute for a comprehensive biography of Eisenhower (the fascinating story of his military career is hardly touched), it proves invaluable as a non-academic reference on his two-term presidency. ( Full review here )

* “ The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader ” by Fred Greenstein – Published in 1982, this book is a well-known study of Eisenhower’s character and leadership style. To my disappointment it is not a review of Eisenhower’s presidency…but it is a sometimes fascinating look at how he approached the task of managing the nation through a period of relative peace and prosperity. Better-suited to readers already familiar with his presidency, this makes a good second or third book on Eisenhower for devoted fans. ( Full review here )

* “ Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World ” by Evan Thomas – Published in 2012, this book is almost exclusively focused on foreign policy pressures encountered by Eisenhower during his presidency and how he chose to respond. Notwithstanding the book’s dramatic title, readers familiar with Eisenhower will not find much new here. But what is unique is the author’s focus on Eisenhower’s strategy relating to nuclear weapons. This is no substitute for a traditional biography but proves to be an interesting and engaging “ancillary” book on Eisenhower. ( Full review here )

* “ Ike & Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage ” by Jeffrey Frank – Not quite a dual-biography, this 2013 book provides a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the unusual (and often awkward) relationship between Eisenhower and Nixon. Readers seeking full portraits of either man will be disappointed (virtually nothing of their early lives is provided) but Frank adds invaluable texture to their conventional portraits. Readers who are at least somewhat familiar with Nixon and Eisenhower are likely to find this quite compelling as a supplementary read. ( Full review here )

* Stephen Ambrose’s two-volume series: – “ Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect ” (Vol 1) – “ Eisenhower: The President ” (Vol 2)

Volume 1 (published in 1983) was long-considered the “standard” account of Eisenhower’s pre-presidency. This installment provides a useful but generally bland introduction to Eisenhower; it lacks a vivid or engaging literary style and provides uneven coverage of important events. Great in virtually no areas, this volume is at least good in most. ( Full review here )

Volume 2 (published in 1984) covers Eisenhower’s presidency thoroughly . Unfortunately, the narrative is often detailed to the point of exhaustion and, as a result, cumbersome to read. The high point in this volume – and probably the series – comes in its last chapters. The final sixty or so pages are reserved for a discussion of Eisenhower’s post-presidency and an excellent assessment of his legacy. Unfortunately, many readers will be tempted to abandon the series long before these concluding chapters.  ( Full review here )

* “ Eisenhower: Soldier and President (The Renowned One-Volume Life) ” by Stephen Ambrose – This series abridgement was published in 1990 and proves that an abridgement can be better than the sum of its parts. At just less than half the size of the two-volume series, this abridgement is more efficient, far more potent, equally objective and easier to read. Ambrose, an unabashed fan of Eisenhower, is at his best when critical of his hero. But as good as this book is, there are better single-volume biographies of Eisenhower from which to choose. ( Full review here )

[ Added February 2021 ]

* I just finished William Hitchcock’s “ The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s ” which was published in 2018. Supported by a 517-page narrative, this book proves itself a sober, scholarly, methodical and thought-provoking exploration of Eisenhower’s presidency and assessment of his political legacy. Excellent for readers already well-versed with the basics of Ike’s life, this book is less ideal for those seeking a comprehensive and colorful examination of his entire life. ( Full review here )

Best Biography of Eisenhower: “ Eisenhower in War and Peace ” by Jean Edward Smith

Best Bio of Eisenhower’s early life: “ Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life ” by Carlo D’Este

Related Reading : Several readers have requested I share my thoughts on which “supporting characters” during each presidency are compelling enough to warrant a biographical detour. In Eisenhower’s case there are at least ten such individuals. They, and their biographies which I will  someday read, can be found right here !

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21 thoughts on “the best biographies of dwight eisenhower”.

July 17, 2017 at 7:45 pm

Steve – have you considered adding John Foster Dulles to your list of supporting characters? If I may, a few others that you may find interesting around this time period: Thomas Dewey, Averell Harriman, Joseph McCarthy (admittedly not an enlightening or heartwarming choice), and Robert Oppenheimer. Just some thoughts. Feel free to discard.

July 19, 2017 at 5:44 am

I do have Oppenheimer on my “related reading” list and probably should have already added Dewey. Dulles is an interesting name that I’ve thought about but not done anything about – he was never really featured prominently in the biographies I read so I’ll have to think about that one… Harriman I only barely remember seeing referenced so although he might be an interesting subject he would be a stretch in this context. Thanks for the suggestions and do let me know when there are others to think about!

July 19, 2017 at 7:51 pm

You will see Dulles again quite a bit when you get to Nixon, as the two were close in the 1950s. He is not the most flamboyant or interesting character that I have encountered, but I do think he was a significant figure during the Ike era.

August 24, 2017 at 10:01 am

I’d suggest putting Lucius Clay as a supporting character for Truman and/or Eisenhower. He had a remarkably important and largely ignored career. Jean Edward Smith, Stephen has reviewed several of his books, wrote his biography in 1990 and edited Clay’s military papers, which were later published. The biography is fantastic.

September 1, 2017 at 10:19 am

Thanks – I’m intrigued! I hardly remember reading anything about Lucius Clay during the Eisenhower / Truman biographies and yet, if JES has written a biography about him…! I’ll have to look into this as something to add-

September 1, 2017 at 10:31 am

I am fairly certain I never heard his name in any history class. And he never stuck out in any WWII readings. And yet, he was close to Eisenhower. He was in charge of military procurement during WWII, oversaw Germany after the war till 1949 and ran the Berlin airlift. I only found JES’s book after looking Clay up having seen his name briefly referenced while I was researching logistics. He was also active in New Deal public works and quite successful in business after he retired from the military. An amazing life.

Steve, this is a remarkable project and a joy to follow.

September 1, 2017 at 10:43 am

Thanks; it is always a joy getting feedback regarding the project generally and relating to the presidents or “supporting characters” specifically. (And until I got your note I wasn’t even aware there was a JES biography I didn’t already have!)

March 20, 2018 at 11:01 pm

Received “The Age of Eisenhower” today. Haven’t finished it so far, but can already let you know you won’t be a huge fan of the ending. We both like conclusions that offer a good analysis of the individual and their presidency, but this one is very brief. On page 514, Kennedy is assassinated in 1963, and on the next page, Eisenhower dies in 1968, and the book concludes two pages later on page 517. Those two pages offered a great overview, and I wish they had been expanded. Several points he made in those concluding remarks begged for a couple more paragraphs of explanation. The beginning of the book also moves briskly to his presidency (as expected, based on its description). Ike’s presidential election of 1952 begins on page 66, and he’s elected on page 83. Those pages actually offered an excellent overview of that election season. That’s all I’ve read so far. I’ve enjoyed it, despite those caveats.

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July 24, 2018 at 11:11 am

I haven’t looked at your related reading listen for Eisenhower but some of the newer ones released are worth looking at. I agree with J.L Jensen that “The Age of Eisenhower” is worth a read but not perfect. (the cover, however, is perfect) I think that book maybe leans too hard in some spots on Eisenhower’s faith and relationship with Rev. Graham, something I haven’t seen too much of in other books. “Ike and McCarthy” by David Nichols is also one to pick up.

Also, to J.L Jensen, and to you Steve, “Rising Star, Setting Sun” by John T. Shaw is a good look at the transition from Eisenhower to Kennedy and their relationship. If one of Jensen’s critiques of “Age of Eisenhower” is the rushed ending I think this one does a good job of expanding on that.

I’ve been thinking lately that I’m going to read a few books on Nixon, and whenever I move to a new President I always check here for suggestions. Thanks and enjoy your reading.

July 31, 2018 at 6:49 am

Thanks – I’ll have to look into Shaw’s and Nichols’s books. I do have Hitchcock’s “The Age of Eisenhower” on my follow-up list and am looking forward to reading it.

In the end I found Nixon interesting, but exceptionally frustrating. It wasn’t so much the biographies themselves as it was the tragedy that was his personal and political downfall. Reading about Watergate multiple times simply wore me out 🙂

While none of JFK, LBJ or Nixon displayed a particularly robust moral/ethical compass, I was somewhat surprised to find JFK and LBJ utterly fascinating…but reading Nixon’s story was just draining.

July 31, 2018 at 11:04 am

Agreed on reading about Watergate. I feel the same whenever I see a Nixon documentary…it’s like watching a train crash in slow motion. What makes it more tragic for me is that prior to his presidency, Nixon actually displayed a strong moral/ethical compass. His hardships as a youth and hard work through his early life to be an upright, moral, and honest person are commendable and were impactful on his early life, but then to see how his presidency warped his moral compass, and people around him who lacked moral compasses influenced him in the weakening of his own, is truly a tragic tale. For me, that was a large part of why reading about his fall was so draining. It’s not like it was a natural consequence of who he was growing up, meaning that as I read his life story it came across like a natural continuation of his life trajectory. That wasn’t the case at all. It truly came across as jarring and abnormal compared to the majority of his life previous to the presidency, and left me almost throwing my hands in the air as he sank deeper into the cuckoo’s nest.

September 16, 2020 at 11:12 am

NPR report on new Eisenhower memorial from September 2020: https://www.npr.org/2020/09/15/908427868/for-ike-a-monument-unlike-any-other-eisenhower-memorial-is-dedicated-in-d-c 🙂

June 22, 2021 at 8:38 am

Hello, have you read Michael Korda’s IKE: An American Hero? I wonder what your thoughts are…

June 22, 2021 at 1:50 pm

I haven’t read that one yet. I somehow missed it during my initial jaunt through Eisenhower’s biographies, so I’ve got it on my follow-up list. Since I did find a few Ike bios I really liked, I haven’t considered it urgent I get to Korda’s book soon, but it is definitely on my list to get to at some point.

June 30, 2021 at 7:14 pm

Hello Steve, I am originally from South Korea and found Eisenhower’s efficient handling of the Korean War very interesting. I also have read Ambrose and Hitchcock, but I guess my best one would be Eisenhower: War and Peace by Jean Edward Smith. It was colorful and insightful – I appreciate your recommendation. And since now I am living in Kansas, planning to visit Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene soon!

June 30, 2021 at 7:56 pm

I’d be interested to hear what you think of Ike’s library – it’s one of the few that is so far off my usual routes that I’m going to have to go out of my way to visit. I’m curious whether you think it’s worth a dedicated trip 🙂

August 17, 2022 at 9:08 pm

Definitely give yourself plenty of time for your visit in Abilene. Ike’s library is a real treasure trove for serious research, but the museum part becomes most interesting once you’ve read one of the better biographies listed here. D’Estes’s book is my recommendation. (P.S. Treat yourself to a real old-fashioned chicken dinner at the Brookeville Hotel on the north side of I-70 in Abilene.)

December 18, 2022 at 9:19 pm

Steve, I finally veered off the reservation. Even though I am only on Hayes, I am always looking for future reading at Half Price Books and on line! Was reading your reviews of Ike, while literally sitting in front of the presidential biographies section at HPB, and almost bought the one volume Ambrose book, and then I saw your review where it said his life before World War II is only about 50 pages! Nope, I grabbed Korda’s “IKE” off the shelf, looked it over, checked out some reviews and bought it! I’ll let you know sometime in 2026!

December 19, 2022 at 5:33 am

I just noticed I haven’t visited my Home State since pre-pandemic. Maybe I’ll find a way to get back to Texas by the time you read Korda’s “Ike”!

January 16, 2023 at 1:59 pm

I’m curious about learning more about how Eisenhower accomplished something so bipartisan as building the interstate highway system. Are any of these particularly better than the other in discussing this?

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Dwight D. Eisenhower Biography

Birthday: October 14 , 1890 ( Libra )

Born In: Denison, Texas, United States

Dwight D. Eisenhower was the 34th president of the United States, who reduced Cold War tensions and is known for his 'Atoms for Peace initiative'. Before becoming the president, he was a five-star general in the United States Army and played a pivotal role in the World War II. Eisenhower served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, and successfully planned the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942–43 and the invasion of France and Germany in 1944–45. Belonging to Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry, Eisenhower was born in a religious family in Kansas. After finishing his high school, he joined the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. After graduating from the Army, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant. Gradually rising through the ranks he rose to the highest position in the army. Eisenhower defeated Senator Robert A. Taft for for Presidential candidacy from the republican party and contested the 1952 presidential elections to crusade against "Communism, Korea and corruption". He served as president for two terms and through his initiatives and policies, he made the world a much safer place to live. He played a vital role in ending the Korean War and de-escalated the tensions between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

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Nick Name: Ike, Little Ike, Duckpin, Kansas Cyclone, General Ike

Also Known As: Dwight David Eisenhower, Ike Eisenhower, David Dwight Eisenhower

Died At Age: 78

Spouse/Ex-: Mamie Eisenhower

father: David Jacob Eisenhower

mother: Ida Stover Eisenhower

siblings: Earl D. Eisenhower, Edgar N. Eisenhower, Milton S. Eisenhower

children: Doud Eisenhower, John Eisenhower

Born Country: United States

Presidents Military Leaders

Died on: March 28 , 1969

place of death: Washington, D.C., United States

Cause of Death: Congestive Heart Failure

Ancestry: German American

Ideology: Republicans

U.S. State: Texas

Founder/Co-Founder: NASA, People to People Student Ambassador Program, Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, DARPA, United States Information Agency, The American Assembly, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), President's Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition, Business Counc

education: United States Military Academy

awards: Distinguished Service Medal 1960 - Hoover Medal 1956 - Primetime Emmy Governors Award

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What was dwight d. eisenhower's role during world war ii.

Dwight D. Eisenhower served as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War II.

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After retiring from the active military service, he contested the Republican party nomination against Senator Robert A. Taft. He defeated Taft and announced his candidacy for the U.S president as the Republican Party candidate. Eisenhower defeated Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson by a huge margin and assumed the presidency in 1953.

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Dwight D. Eisenhower

Facts, information and articles about dwight d. eisenhower, wwii general and 34th u.s. president, dwight d. eisenhower facts.

Mamie Geneva Doud

Years Of Military Service

1915-1953 1961-1969

General of the Army

World War II

Accomplishments

Army Distinguished Service Medal (5), navy Distinguished Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Order of the Southern Cross, Order of the Bath, Order of Merit, Legion of Honor.

Dwight D. Eisenhower Articles

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Eisenhower’s education did not come easy to him. Without the necessary financial support to go to college, he decided to write to his senator, Joseph Bristow, to be considered for the Naval Academy or for West Point. Too old for the Naval Academy, West Point accepted him and he entered that school in 1911. He was an average student but excelled in English.

July 1, 1916 he married Mamie Geneva Doud of Iowa. They had two sons, Doud, who died at the age of three of scarlet fever, and John Sheldon Doud. John became the father of Dwight David II, after whom Camp David was named and who married Julie Nixon in 1968.

During WW I, Eisenhower requested to go to Europe but was denied. He became the chief military aid to General MacArthur. He was with MacArthur in the Philippines in 1935, returning to the U.S. in 1939. President Roosevelt elevated Eisenhower’s rank to Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. He proved his leadership when his strategies against Germany, like the landing in Normandy on D-Day, were successful. In 1944 he earned the rank of General of the Army.

In 1952 Eisenhower campaigned for the presidency of the United States and won. At 62, he had been the oldest president to be elected after James Buchanan. He was a two-term president and many of the Interstate Highways were built on his orders. He died March 28, 1969.

Articles Featuring Dwight D. Eisenhower From History Net Magazines

Featured article, president dwight eisenhower and america’s interstate highway system.

Whether it is commuting to work, embarking on the great American road trip or something as simple as receiving a product that has wended its way across hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles of highway, nearly everyone in America benefits from the Eisenhower Interstate System on a day-to-day basis. Most Americans, however, do not know the history behind one of the country’s greatest public works projects, and fewer still understand the motivation of the man whose personal experience and vision brought the massive and challenging project to fruition. The story of the creation of the Interstate Highway System spans two world wars and the life of one of America’s most famous leaders.

In 1919, following the end of World War I, an Army expedition was organized to traverse the nation from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco. The First Transcontinental Motor Convoy (FTMC) left the nation’s capital on July 7, following a brief ceremony and the dedication of the ‘Zero Milestone’ at the Ellipse just south of the White House. Joining the expedition as an observer was a young lieutenant colonel, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Only eight months earlier the Allied powers and Germany had signed an armistice ending World War I, a conflict that is today synonymous with savage trench fighting, the chilling call to ‘fix bayonets!’ and so many blighted and blood-soaked fields. Yet as Secretary of War Newton D. Baker noted during the FTMC’s ceremonial send-off: ‘The world war was a war of motor transport. It was a war of movement, especially in the later stages….There seemed to be a never-ending stream of transports moving along the white roads of France.’

Baker’s important observation factored directly into the departing convoy’s primary objectives. As stated in one official report, those objectives included: ‘To service-test the special-purpose vehicles developed for use in the first World War, not all of which were available in time for such use, and to determine by actual experience the possibility and the problems involved in moving an army across the continent, assuming that railroad facilities, bridges, tunnels, etc., had been damaged or destroyed by agents of an Asiatic enemy.’

At its starting point, the massive convoy consisted of 34 heavy cargo trucks, four light delivery trucks, two machine shops, one blacksmith shop, one wrecking truck, two spare-parts stores, two water tanks, one gasoline tank, one searchlight, one caterpillar tractor, four kitchen trailers, eight touring cars, one reconnaissance car, two staff observation cars, five sidecar motorcycles and four motorcycles, all of which were operated and maintained by 258 enlisted men, 15 War Department staff observation officers and 24 expeditionary officers. By the time the expedition reached San Francisco on September 6 — 62 days after setting out, the convoy had traveled 3,251 miles, at an average of 58.1 miles per day and 6.07 miles per hour.

It was truly an unprecedented undertaking in every regard, and although the mission was a success, the numbers were disappointing if not dismal. According to a report by William C. Greany, captain of the Motor Transport Corps, the convoy lost nine vehicles –‘so damaged as to require retirement while en route’ — and 21 men ‘thru various casualties’ (mercifully there was no mention of fatalities). During the course of its journey, the convoy destroyed or otherwise damaged 88 ‘mostly wooden highway bridges and culverts’ and was involved in 230 ‘road accidents’ or, more precisely, ‘instances of road failure and vehicles sinking in quicksand or mud, running off the road or over embankments, over-turning, or other mishaps due entirely to the unfavorable and at times appalling traffic conditions that were encountered.’

The after-action report of Lt. Col. Eisenhower, one of the 15 War Department staff observation officers, noted: ‘In many places excellent roads were installed some years ago that have since received no attention whatsoever. Absence of any effort at maintenance has resulted in roads of such rough nature as to be very difficult of negotiating.’ Even more vexing, many of what otherwise would have been considered ‘good roads’ were simply too narrow for military vehicles. Others were too rough, sandy or steep for trucks that in some cases weighed in excess of 11 tons. Eisenhower claimed, ‘The train operated so slowly in such places, that in certain instances it was noted that portions of the train did not move for two hours.’

The July 30 entry in the FTMC’s daily log, for example, shows it covered 83 miles in 10 hours through Nebraska, not exactly burning up the track but a good clip nonetheless at about 8 miles per hour. Just three days later, however, the convoy became mired in ‘gumbo roads,’ which slowed the rate of progress to 30 miles in 10 grueling hours — at one point even causing 25 of the expedition’s trucks to go skidding into a ditch. ‘Two days were lost in [the] western part of this state,’ Eisenhower later recorded.

For all involved, the military convoy was a learning experience, a sharp illustration of the disrepair and, more often than not, complete lack of highway infrastructure in many areas of the country, particularly the heartland. The majority of the nation’s roads and highways were simply a mess. Even the Lincoln Highway, the most famous transcontinental highway of its day, had been described as nothing more than ‘an imaginary line, like the equator’!

Eisenhower’s experience with the FTMC provided him with great insight into the logistics of moving large quantities of men and materiel across vast stretches of land and convinced him of the necessity of building and maintaining the infrastructure to do so more efficiently. Yet, as educational as his experience with the convoy had been, it would be dwarfed by the greater and far more serious challenges of World War II.

In November 1942, 21 years after the FTMC and nearly a year after the United States had entered the war, Eisenhower was appointed to command Allied forces in Operation Torch, aimed at evicting the Axis powers from North Africa.

There was much about Operation Torch to dislike from a command standpoint. Given the physical geography and the incredibly poor infrastructure of the lands he and his forces were invading, the operation was a logistical nightmare. Torch required three amphibious landings spread over 800 miles: at Casablanca, on the western coast of Morocco, and at Oran and Algiers, along the Algerian coast in the Mediterranean Sea. Each group was to hit the ground running and make all due haste east, toward the ultimate goal of Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. Unfortunately for the Allies, North Africa was not well suited to the rapid movement of military convoys. The Atlas Mountains, where elevation at places exceeds 13,000 feet, spanned virtually the entire area of operations, and the infrastructure, where it existed, was generally poor at best.

The fact that Casablanca was more than 1,000 miles west of its objective meant a longer, more vulnerable supply line and much slower going when speed was essential. According to historian Stephen Ambrose, many, including Eisenhower, ‘could see no good reason to terminate the seaborne phase of the amphibious assault 1,000 miles away from the objective, which itself was on the coast and could be reached quicker on ship than on foot.’ Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, however, was concerned that if all three landing sites were within the Mediterranean it might tempt Adolf Hitler to invade Spain, giving him the opportunity to blockade the Straits of Gibraltar and strangle the seaborne Allied supply lines.

The race to reach Tunis before it could be reinforced with Axis troops found the Allies at a decided disadvantage. Axis troops moved with ease through Benito Mussolini’s Italy and onto Sicily, approximately 150 miles off the Tunisian coast, little more than a long ferry ride. The Allies, according to Ambrose, were, by comparison, ‘dependent on unimproved dirt roads and a poorly maintained single-track railroad.’ When the Allied heads of state began to lament the slow advance, Eisenhower barked back that, in spite of commandeering every vehicle that would move, he was hindered by the complete absence of organized motor transport. Moreover, the Luftwaffe’s strong presence over the Mediterranean prevented shipping supplies that far into the sea.

According to Ambrose, Eisenhower privately confided to Marshall that his situation was so hodgepodge and patchwork it would ‘make a ritualist in warfare go just a bit hysterical.’ Some did; others got creative. Lieutenant General Sir Kenneth Anderson of the British First Army became so fed up with the logistical situation that he resorted to bringing supplies into the Tunis area by pack mule. Every bit as slow and obstinate as the four-wheeled alternative, a good mule was at least much less likely to break down in the mountains.

Although the Allies failed to beat the Axis reinforcements to Tunis, they did eventually win the race to resupply. Germany was so invested in stalemating the Soviet Union along the Eastern Front that the materiel it was allocating to Afrika Korps represented little more than the barest scraps of an almost incalculably vast resource pool. Ultimately, the fact that Allied supplies had to travel much greater distances to the front weighed little against the sheer volume of output coming from American production capacity at its peak. Operation Torch was a success, albeit belatedly. With French North Africa free from the Axis powers, Eisenhower and the Allies were finally able to turn their attention toward the big picture, namely a full-scale Allied invasion of Europe the following year.

As harrowing and dramatic as any single event during the war could be, D-Day was also, by its very nature, only the beginning of the Crusade in Europe (as Eisenhower later titled the memoirs of his experience in-theater). As jubilant as the Allied forces were after having successfully penetrated Hitler’s so-called Atlantic Wall — the layered network of coastal defenses protecting occupied France — there was an even greater challenge facing them on the other side. Several hundred miles of terrain, which the Wehrmacht had occupied for nearly four years, remained between the Allies and their ultimate objective, Berlin. Much of the worst fighting still lay ahead — not far ahead, either.

Normandy’s famous hedgerows stymied Allied advances almost from the beginning. The densely packed hedgerows and narrow roads slowed tank movements to a crawl, making them easy pickings for German units wielding the Panzerfaust (an early model of rocket-propelled grenade). The great majority of the advancing, therefore, had to be done piecemeal by slow-moving infantry. Nearly two months later, all that the Allies had to show for their efforts to push farther into the Continent was a skimpy front 80 miles wide, extending 30 miles inland at its deepest points. In an ominous throwback to World War I, commanders again began to measure their advances in yards instead of miles.

Once the Allies emerged from hedgerow country, however, the terrain significantly opened up. Lieutenant General George S. Patton was the first to break out, on August 1; by the 6th he was halfway to Paris. ‘The nightmare of a static front was over,’ Ambrose wrote. ‘Distances that had taken months and cost tens of thousands of lives to cross in World War I’ were being crossed in mere hours with minimal casualties. Even so, isolated sections of terrain proved nearly impassable. According to Ambrose, the Hrtgen Forest, ‘where roads were nothing more than forest trails,’ and the Ardennes Mountains, with their ‘limited road network,’ were hell on both tanks and infantry. There would be further setbacks not attributable to infrastructure, primarily the German counteroffensive at the Battle of the Bulge, but the Allies were headed full-bore for the Rhine, while on the Eastern Front the Red Army was bearing down on Berlin.

It was not until the Allies broke through the Western Wall and tapped into Germany’s sprawling autobahn network that Eisenhower saw for himself what a modern army could do with an infrastructure capable of accommodating it. The enhanced mobility that the autobahn provided the Allies was something to behold, and years later was still cause for reminiscing. ‘The old convoy,’ Eisenhower wrote, referring to his experience with the FTMC, ‘had started me thinking about good, two-lane highways, but Germany had made me see the wisdom of broader ribbons across the land.’

Eisenhower’s experience commanding and directing the movements of massive quantities of troops and equipment, added to his early experience with the FTMC, strengthened his recognition that America was sorely lacking in a national highway defense system. In a situation requiring the mass exodus of an entire city or region or the urgent mobilization of troops for purposes of national defense, the federal government, to say nothing of state and local entities, would have been hard-pressed to adequately respond. Moreover, the need for such critical infrastructure became that much more urgent as the Soviet Union eagerly stepped into the power vacuum created by the fall of Nazi Germany. The idyllic Allied notion that all would be right with the world following the death of Hitler and the smashing of the German armies quickly gave way to the painful realization that there is always reason to remain prepared, always someone else to fight.

Not surprisingly, therefore, when Eisenhower became the 34th U.S. president in 1953, he pushed for the building of an interstate highway system. Although Congress had first authorized a national highway system in 1944, it had always been woefully underfunded. Throwing the full weight of his presidency behind the project, Eisenhower declared to Congress on February 22, 1955: ‘Our unity as a nation is sustained by free communication of thought and by easy transportation of people and goods. The ceaseless flow of information throughout the Republic is matched by individual and commercial movement over a vast system of interconnected highways crisscrossing the country and joining at our national borders with friendly neighbors to the north and south.

‘Together, the uniting forces of our communication and transportation systems are dynamic elements in the very name we bear — United States. Without them, we would be a mere alliance of many separate parts.’

More than a year later, on June 29, Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, guaranteeing full, dedicated funding for the project. The National Highway Defense System (NHDS), as it was initially known, has been referred to as one of the ‘Seven Wonders of the United States,’ among other such notable structures as the Golden Gate Bridge, the Hoover Dam and the Panama Canal. What sets the NHDS apart from those wonders, and what Eisenhower addressed as one of its greatest selling points, is the fact that it truly has strengthened and enhanced the Union (including noncontiguous states Alaska and Hawaii, as well as the territory of Puerto Rico). Only the Panama Canal, which similarly made the United States more accessible to itself by greatly reducing the time required to ship goods from coast to coast, can claim anything approaching a similar distinction.

The scope of the NHDS is underscored by its individual components. The longest east-west route, I-90, stretches more than 3,000 miles, linking Seattle to Boston. I-95 serves a similar end for north-south travel: Extending from Miami to Maine, its nearly 2,000 miles of highway cross through 15 states — including all 13 of the original colonies — and the District of Columbia. (It is also estimated to have been the most expensive route to construct, at a cost of nearly $8 billion.) Texas boasts the most interstate mileage within a single state, with more than 3,200; New York claims the most interstate routes, with 29. California is second in both categories, with just under 2,500 miles of interstate on its 25 routes.

The structural achievements involved are no less staggering than the numbers. Although the ‘highway’ is often declaimed as an eyesore at worst and bland at best, the NHDS is actually composed of many unique wonders of modern engineering and ingenuity. Some of the most spectacular cross large bodies of water or ride alongside the Pacific Coast. The Sunshine Skyway Bridge across Tampa Bay, Fla., a so-called cable-stayed bridge, has been lauded by The New York Times for its ‘lyrical and tensile strength’ — indeed rows of small cables attached to two single-column pylons support the weight of the bridge below ‘like the strings of a harp.’

Several interstate routes in California and Hawaii hug the coasts, offering panoramic views of stunning Pacific seaside vistas to passing motorists.

Other achievements in interstate construction are closely associated with the ‘Not In My Backyard’ movement. Many urban areas have ‘gone green’ in recent decades, improving their routes to meet increased environmental concerns and the aesthetic needs of citizens; some projects were even forced to halt construction entirely until such concerns were addressed in advance. Worries about the safety of the endangered and much beloved Florida panther led to the construction of special underpasses along Alligator Alley, the portion of I-75 that connects Naples and Miami in Florida, allowing panthers and other wildlife to cross safely beneath the flow of traffic. One section of I-10 in Arizona that opened in 1990, the Papago Freeway, runs beneath ’19 side-by-side bridges that form the foundation for a 12-hectare [29.6 acre] urban park,’ according to Richard F. Weingroff, a former official at the Federal Highway Administration. Known as the Margaret T. Hance Park, the space was conceived as a unique solution to the vexing problem of how to maintain connections between neighborhoods divided by the interstate. In other areas, simpler concerns required simpler solutions, such as tree-lined medians, noise-reducing berms and walls, lowered speed limits and prohibitions against large trucks.

A frequent complaint leveled against the NHDS is that it has stripped the adventure and romanticism from long-distance traveling. Upon the completion of I-40 (Barstow, Calif., to Wilmington, N.C.), the late CBS News commentator Charles Kuralt observed: ‘It is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything. From the Interstate, America is all steel guardrails and plastic signs, and every place looks and feels and sounds and smells like every other place.’ While the criticism is to an extent justified, it is also true that the NHDS directly serves nearly every major metropolitan area (as well as countless smaller areas of population) and is home to, or otherwise conveniently located near, thousands of tourist destinations across the country.

Some of the most intriguing and impressive tourist stops are those that are not content to simply nestle alongside the highway, but those that, like the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument, literally straddle it. The Archway Monument, a 1,500-ton structure spanning 308 feet acrossI-80 in Kearney, Neb., is a celebration of frontier culture designed to resemble a covered bridge. Built to honor the thousands of pioneers who had followed the arduous route from Missouri to the West Coast during the 19th century, the Archway Monument is a living bridge to history over a modern river of asphalt, a testament to the wisdom of and need for well-planned, well-constructed infrastructure. Eisenhower would have approved of the symbolism.

Whatever else these features may be in and of themselves, they are ultimately incidental to the system’s much more vital main purpose. The NHDS, according to a 1996 report written by Wendell Cox and Jean Love 40 years after Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, was conceived and marketed as the best possible way to facilitate ‘the quick and efficient movement of military equipment and personnel’ in the event of a Soviet invasion or nuclear strike. Inspired by the autobahn, Eisenhower envisioned multilane highways — ‘broader ribbons across the land,’ as he called them — yet even at its narrowest points, the system can still accommodate all but the most cumbersome wheeled or tracked military vehicles. Also, most military bases are situated within close proximity to the NHDS, adding to the already unequaled in-country response capability of the U.S. armed forces — a fact that is every bit as comforting as the fact that there has never been occasion to use this capability to its utmost.

One widely held dual-use-related belief is that one out of every five miles of the NHDS is mandated to be straight and level, capable of functioning as an emergency airstrip. Aside from the fact that, according to Weingroff, ‘no law, regulation, policy, or sliver of red tape requires that one out of every five miles of the interstate highway system be straight,’ it is virtually impossible from an engineering standpoint. The NHDS is composed of nearly 50,000 miles of road, meaning that almost 10,000 miles would need to be straight and level to conform to the supposed one-in-five-mile rule, a figure that is wildly unrealistic. In addition, from an aerial standpoint, an airstrip every five miles is superfluous, given the speed at which modern aircraft travel. Although there are long and level stretches of highway that could function as an emergency landing strip in a pinch, they are nowhere near as evenly parceled out as the one-in-five-mile rule would suggest. (The use of highway infrastructure for an airstrip is not unheard of, however: Nazi Germany did use limited stretches of the autobahn for such purposes during World War II.)

One cannot discuss the NHDS without also mentioning its impact on the U.S. economy. It is, quite literally, the economic engine that drives this country’s prosperity. No other industrialized nation has such a sprawling and comprehensive system of roadways, though many are now seeking to emulate the U.S. model as a means toward becoming more competitive in the international marketplace. One look at the figures in the Cox and Love report and it is not hard to understand why. By 1996 the interstates, comprising just over 1 percent of the miles of public road in this country, carried ‘nearly one-quarter of the nation’s surface passenger transport and 45 percent of motor freight transport.’ During the course of its first 40 years, the system was responsible for an increase of ‘approximately one-quarter of the nation’s productivity.’ Highway transportation and directly related industries accounted for more than 7 million jobs.

Indirectly related industries have felt the uptick, as well. In the restaurant business alone, employment ‘has increased more than seven times the rate of population growth,’ according to the Cox and Love report. By making ‘`just in time’ delivery more feasible’ while simultaneously reducing tractor-trailer operating costs by as much as 17 percent compared with other roadways, the NHDS has played a major role in making the electronic marketplace a workable phenomenon for all parties involved: retailers, delivery companies and consumers alike. Perhaps the most telling figure is the return rate of $6 for every $1 spent on highway construction. Consider also that in the 10 years since those figures were generated, several factors — population expansion, the advent of e-commerce, our national reluctance to fly following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 — have conspired to place an even greater share of traffic onto our nation’s highways. The many differences separating 2006 from 1996 notwithstanding, the conclusion of the Cox and Love report concerning the economic impact of the NHDS remains as true today as the day it was written: ‘By improving inter-regional access, the interstate highway system has helped to create a genuinely national domestic market with companies able to supply their products to much larger geographical areas, and less expensively.’

For most of us, though, the dual-use military features and the economic benefits of the NHDS are barely an afterthought. The interstate is a way to get to work, to go downtown, to shave 30 minutes off the drive to grandma’s house. Often it is the backbone of that uniquely American pastime, the road trip. Sometimes it’s just a headache. Occasionally it becomes a lifeline out of harm’s way.

In 1990 the National Highway Defense System was renamed the Dwight David Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways under an act of Congress signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. As tributes go, it was perfectly appropriate. ‘Of all his domestic programs,’ Ambrose wrote, ‘Eisenhower’s favorite by far was the Interstate System.’

For all its detractors’ criticism, the interstate system, more than any other project in the past 50 years, has encouraged an unprecedented democratization of mobility. It has opened up access to an array of goods and services previously unavailable to many and created massive opportunities for five decades and three generations of Americans. It has made the country more accessible to itself while also making it safer and more secure, outcomes that in almost any other undertaking would prove mutually exclusive. ‘More than any single action by the government since the end of the war, this one would change the face of America,’ Eisenhower wrote in 1963. ‘Its impact on the American economy — the jobs it would produce in manufacturing and construction, the rural areas it would open up — was beyond calculation.’ The clarity of his vision and the resiliency of his words are inarguable. The Eisenhower Interstate System has grown to be valuable beyond its original intent and is a lasting tribute to American ingenuity, ability and strength of purpose.

This article was written by Logan Thomas Snyder and originally published in the June 2006 issue of American History Magazine. For more great articles, subscribe to American History magazine today!

Dwight D. Eisenhower: Douglas MacArthur’s Aide in the 1930s

One of the most enigmatic relationships in modern military history was that of Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur. Their often-turbulent association spanned virtually the entire decade of the 1930s, during which time Eisenhower worked almost exclusively for MacArthur in a multifaceted role of secretary, adviser, staff officer, and, frequently, whipping boy. Theirs was a relationship that began with great promise and ended in a lifelong enmity between two of the most important figures of World War II.

Douglas MacArthur had risen to the army’s highest and only four-star rank in 1930 after a brilliant career that mirrored the exploits of his famous father, Lt. Gen. Arthur MacArthur Jr., who had earned the Medal of Honor on Missionary Ridge, Tennessee, in November 1863. Obsessed with emulating his father, MacArthur became first captain of the Corps of Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy, graduated first in his class, and was recommended for but never awarded the Medal of Honor for his exploits during the Veracruz, Mexico, expedition in April 1914.

MacArthur’s valor under fire in the famed 42nd ‘Rainbow’ Division was legendary and earned him the distinction of being the most decorated American soldier of World War I. As the superintendent of West Point from 1919 to ’22, MacArthur instituted major reforms that finally brought the archaic military academy into the twentieth century.

By contrast, Eisenhower graduated from West Point in 1915 with an indifferent academic record and no firm belief that the army represented a permanent career choice. To his dismay, he spent World War I commanding a tank training center at Camp Colt, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Frustrated by his failure to see combat in France, and convinced his military career might never recover, Eisenhower nevertheless emerged from the war with a glowing reputation as a troop trainer.

He soon came to the attention of Brig. Gen. Fox Conner, perhaps the army’s most brilliant intellectual, who rejuvenated and further sharpened Eisenhower’s already significant appetite for reading and studying history. Under his intense one-on-one tutelage, Eisenhower’s military education began to take shape in the early 1920s in Panama. In the narrow world of the interwar military, where budgets rather than military necessity ruled supreme, Conner was a steady voice of reason who repeatedly warned Eisenhower of future danger from a resurgent and aggressive Germany.

When MacArthur became the army’s youngest-ever chief of staff in 1930, the most highly regarded staff officer in the War Department was a balding forty-year-old major named Dwight D. Eisenhower. That Eisenhower would eventually be chosen to toil exclusively for MacArthur was, in retrospect, inevitable. From the time of his assignment to the general staff in late 1929, his drive, initiative, and seemingly endless capacity for producing well-organized and thoughtful staff work had made Eisenhower an invaluable commodity to the men who ran the War Department. Eisenhower was not only exceptionally loyal to his bosses but was, according to Stephen Ambrose, ‘able to think from the point of view of his chief, a quality both MacArthur and [George] Marshall often singled out for praise. He had an instinctive sense of when to make a decision himself and when to pass it up to his boss.’

Eisenhower was one of MacArthur’s few subordinates who could objectively judge both his virtues and his flaws. Never one to freely dispense praise, Eisenhower’s greatest compliments were reserved for MacArthur: ‘He did have a hell of an intellect! My God, but he was smart. He had a brain .’ All genius has its price, and for MacArthur it was an inviolate belief in his own infallibility. ‘MacArthur could never see another sun, or even a moon, for that matter, in the heavens as long as he was the sun,’ Eisenhower told biographer Peter Lyon.

Eisenhower was by equal measures awed and repelled by MacArthur. Although impressed by his genius, his charm, and his flattery toward a junior officer, he deplored MacArthur’s posturing and unwillingness to accept advice. On balance, however, Eisenhower viewed their relationship as positive.

As it happened, the two men were very heavy smokers, thoroughly addicted to nicotine. They were both ideal candidates for lung cancer. Although neither ever contracted the deadly disease, Eisenhower’s years of smoking undoubtedly contributed to his later health problems.

MacArthur, Harvard professor Samuel Huntington noted, was a general in the tradition of Winfield Scott: ‘brilliant, imperious, cold, dramatic officers deriving their values and behavior from an older, aristocratic heritage and finding it difficult to subordinate themselves to civilian authorities.’ General Harold K. Johnson, U.S. Army chief of staff from 1964 to ’68 and a survivor of the Bataan Death March, viewed MacArthur as ‘a great commander in the tradition of a Caesar. [But] I don’t think that he was the human sort of man that Eisenhower was.’

By contrast, Eisenhower was representative of ‘the friendly, folksy, easygoing soldier who reflects the ideals of a democratic and industrial civilization and who cooperates easily with his civilian superiors,’ according to historian T. Harry Williams. Whereas MacArthur seemed to relish controversy and often dashed boldly into frays, Eisenhower, ‘Speaking less and smiling more than MacArthur…appeared the embodiment of consensus rather than controversy. MacArthur was a beacon, Eisenhower a mirror.’ That two such polar opposites could survive each other without conflict occurs only in fiction. By 1932, although still officially assigned to the office of Assistant Secretary of War Frederick H. Payne, Eisenhower had long since become MacArthur’s de facto military secretary. That year he found himself involved in one of the most disgraceful incidents in American history and the most personally repugnant and controversial event of his military service under MacArthur.

In 1924, Congress had voted to award to some 3.5 million veterans what were called Adjusted Compensation Certificates–basically bonds masquerading as one thousand dollar bonuses due to mature in 1945 (or upon the death of the holder). For some it was the only asset they possessed. As America entered the 1930s, the bread line and the soup kitchen had become national symbols of the Depression, and joblessness, unrest, and privation became the catalyst for the Bonus March on Washington in the summer of 1932. The veterans believed their government had betrayed them by failing to pay the promised compensation for their World War I service. But an unsympathetic Hoover administration turned a blind eye to the plight of the former servicemen and never considered paying the bonus. When the veterans began to mount organized protests, they were stonewalled in the ill-advised belief that to react would inevitably lead to even further unrest.

More than ten thousand veterans, calling themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force, converged on Washington to lobby Congress, some with their families, virtually all with no place to live and no money to afford food or accommodations. A few squatted in unoccupied, condemned buildings along Pennsylvania Avenue not far from the White House, but the largest contingent created an enormous shantytown in the Anacostia mud flats, unofficially known as ‘the Flats’ or ‘Hooverville.’ Violence broke out the morning of July 28, 1932, when District of Columbia police attempted to eject the squatters from downtown. Exceeding Hoover’s orders merely to clear the protesters, the War Department called out armed troops on that fateful July afternoon. Although Eisenhower attempted to dissuade him, MacArthur elected to personally direct the operation dressed in full uniform.

That evening MacArthur was alleged to have ignored a directive from Hoover that the army was not to pursue the protesters across the Anacostia River and clear the shantytown. The Bonus March ended after someone set fire to one the shanties, and as the few remaining veterans and their families fled into the night, Hooverville was consumed by flames. (Decades passed before historical evidence established beyond doubt that the controversial order for the army not to advance on Hooverville never reached MacArthur.)

Eisenhower thought any public comment by the army inadvisable and, as MacArthur prepared to return to the War Department, suggested his boss ought to avoid contact with the press and let the Hoover administration defend the army’s actions. During a late-night press conference, however, MacArthur was unable to resist gloating at having saved the nation from ‘incipient revolution’ by a mob of ‘insurrectionists,’ likening it to the liberation of a nation from tyranny. The press reacted to MacArthur’s outburst with almost universal condemnation.

Eisenhower was chosen to draft the official after-action report that stoutly defended MacArthur and the army; privately, he shared in the general disgust at the army being ordered to attack its own veterans, calling it a pitiful scene. About all he ever publicly said about the incident was that he had counseled MacArthur concerning the impropriety of becoming directly involved. Yet at times his attitude toward MacArthur and the Bonus March seemed rather self-serving, and his few public remarks biographer Piers Brendon described as ‘disingenuous,’ ‘bland,’ and ‘charitable.’ Eisenhower, he believes, was ‘ever ready to sacrifice plain-speaking on the altar of benevolence.’

After loyally defending MacArthur’s actions during the Bonus March for years, however, a truer expression of Eisenhower’s disdain was revealed in 1954 when he noted in his diary: ‘I just can’t understand how such a damn fool could have gotten to be a general.’ He was even more candid later during an interview with Stephen Ambrose: ‘I told that dumb son-of-a-bitch he had no business going down there. I told him it was no place for the Chief of Staff.’

The long-term damage from the Bonus March was incalculable in an era in which the military was already under fire and facing budgetary cutbacks. MacArthur and the army became the public exemplars of an ungrateful nation that rewarded its veterans by gassing, bayoneting, and shooting them. During his long and distinguished military career MacArthur was at the heart of numerous controversies, but none did more to permanently tarnish his reputation, and that of the army he headed, than the Bonus March. Eisenhower had properly anticipated trouble and offered sound advice; MacArthur, perhaps blinded by his own self-importance, had not heeded it. The lamentable result was an unmitigated public relations fiasco at a moment when the army could ill afford to become even further inconsequential.

In February 1933 Eisenhower moved into a tiny alcove no larger than a broom closet behind a slatted door adjacent to MacArthur’s large inner sanctum, to become his principal special assistant and, on occasion, his aide. MacArthur’s method of summoning Eisenhower to his presence was to simply raise his voice. Eisenhower would later write that Douglas MacArthur’spoke and wrote in purple splendor.’ Most of their discussions were really monologues in which MacArthur pontificated and Eisenhower listened, often bemused by his chief’s references to himself in the third person. Whereas George S. Patton Jr. and MacArthur believed they were men of destiny, Eisenhower had no such illusions or aspirations.

MacArthur was squired to Capitol Hill and around Washington in a fancy, chauffeured limousine. Eisenhower, whose business frequently required him to visit Capitol Hill, took a street car or taxi and was humiliated at having to return all leftover change and file a travel voucher for reimbursement. MacArthur ‘never once offered Eisenhower a ride in or use of the car.’ Eisenhower never forgot it, and even after his two terms as president the memories still smarted. ‘No matter what happens later you never forget something like that,’ he confessed to a reporter shortly before his death.

Life with MacArthur was a vivid reminder of the difference between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots.’ More than twenty years after leaving his hometown of Abilene, Eisenhower was still dirt poor and faced career prospects as bleak as the economy. What little hope the military professionals of the 1930s had was vested in Douglas MacArthur, whose reputation for bravery and the reform of West Point was unmatched in the army.

Despite Eisenhower’s admiration for MacArthur, he found himself increasingly dismayed, even appalled, by his superior’s massive ego and pompous behavior. When it came to melodrama, complete with exhortations to duty and invocations to the Almighty, punctuated by exaggerated body language, MacArthur had no equal. Eisenhower was exposed to his full array of ploys and thought MacArthur would have been ‘a great actor.’ MacArthur’s most polished performance was to parade back and forth in front of a large mirror across from his desk, dressed in a Japanese silk dressing gown, an ivory cigarette holder clamped in his mouth, admiring his profile while orating. General Lewis H. Brereton, who served under MacArthur in the Philippines and, later, Eisenhower in Europe, once remarked that MacArthur ‘cannot talk sitting down.’

Before their falling-out, MacArthur’s praise for Eisenhower was both heartfelt and genuine. MacArthur valued his subordinate and bestowed plaudits upon Eisenhower in letters of commendation and consistently superior efficiency reports. In 1932 he wrote that Eisenhower was ‘one of the most outstanding officers of his time and service…he has no superior in his grade.’

During the Washington years, Eisenhower’s greatest asset was his pen. He authored anything of substance created by MacArthur or the office of the assistant secretary of war, be it speeches, letters, reports, or staff studies. Despite the drudgery of such staff work, Eisenhower was in the right place and time to be at the forefront of American military policy in the 1930s, an experience he would assimilate and draw upon in World War II. Despite his rather lowly status as a very junior general staff officer, in an era when the general staff was markedly unpopular on Capitol Hill, congressmen and senators were in the habit of contacting Eisenhower directly on matters concerning the War Department.

When it came to manipulating and taking advantage of the bureaucracy, Eisenhower had no peer. He developed a political awareness and a thorough understanding of what it took to survive in the higher reaches of the military and political jungle of the 1930s. Eisenhower’s efficiency as a general staff officer, however, came at a price. His type-A personality, with its explosive temper and relentless intensity in his work, took a heavy toll on his health. The various ailments for which he sought treatment included bursitis in his left shoulder, acute gastroenteritis, colitis, hemorrhoids, influenza, tonsillitis, an acute intestinal obstruction, and constipation; also mild arthritis, kidney problems, a dental disease, recurrent pain in his knee, and, worst of all, severe back pain. His eyesight was affected by long hours of paperwork, and his glasses’ prescription was strengthened. Years later, Ike told his son, John, ‘I always resented the years I spent as a slave in the War Department.’

MacArthur, during his second tour in the Philippines, from 1922 to ’25, had become closely acquainted with Manuel Quezon. The future Filipino president was then deeply involved in the Philippine independence movement as the leader of the Nationalist Party. The MacArthur name was still highly esteemed in the Philippines, and during a trip to the United States in 1935 Quezon implored MacArthur to become his military adviser, and easily persuaded President Franklin D. Roosevelt to send him to the Philippines. Roosevelt not only disliked MacArthur, but also viewed him as a political threat. When his five years as chief of staff ended in 1935, FDR offered MacArthur the opportunity to return to a place he dearly loved. The politically naive MacArthur accepted at once, never seeming to recognize that it suited Roosevelt to have him eleven thousand miles from Washington.

MacArthur resolved that Eisenhower would accompany him to Manila and subjected him to his full repertoire of melodramatics. Ultimately, Eisenhower’s decision had less to do with better pay or an opportunity to satisfy his lifelong yen for duty in the exotic Philippines than it did with the fact that subordinates simply did not say no to Douglas MacArthur, who sweetened the offer by permitting Eisenhower to nominate another officer to accompany them and share in the duties. Eisenhower chose an old friend and West Point classmate, Major James Basevi Ord. Also in MacArthur’s entourage was Captain Thomas Jefferson Davis, familiarly known as ‘T.J.’ He had been MacArthur’s aide since 1927, but was also a close friend of Eisenhower’s, and would faithfully serve as a key member of his staff during World War II.

With few backers to look after his interests in Washington and with no power, MacArthur had gone from a high-profile player to an also-ran. By becoming closely identified with MacArthur’s falling star, Eisenhower also put his own future squarely on the line. Then in his mid-forties and still a lowly major after more than fifteen years in grade, Eisenhower’s prospects were bleak. He entertained no illusions that he was destined for anything more than a modest rank as perhaps a junior general officer in the event of war. ‘He was tying his kite to an officer whose career was finished,’ noted historian Robert H. Ferrell.

MacArthur’s mission was to create and train a Philippine defense force to safeguard a virtually indefensible island nation. By 1936, the urgency faced by the American mission increased with each new act of Japanese aggression in Southeast Asia. Hardly anyone in Washington, however, cared about the Philippines, which were seen as not only extremely hard to defend but of no strategic importance.

MacArthur’s plan for defense of the islands was predicated on the presence of an American battle fleet to discourage a would-be Japanese invasion, yet the War Department’s Plan Orange contained no such provision. MacArthur thus became the architect of a noble but ultimately unachievable undertaking.

Eisenhower and Ord shared the duties of satisfying the divergent demands of MacArthur and Quezon. Eisenhower was already well versed in Philippine problems from his service under MacArthur in Washington. However, it became virtually impossible to persuade Washington to increase the miniscule Philippine budget. Although MacArthur never accepted the premise, it was soon evident to Eisenhower that theirs was a hopeless mission.

One of MacArthur’s conditions for accepting the job was that Quezon promote him to the rank of field marshal in the Philippine army. MacArthur’s willing acceptance of an ersatz field marshal’s commission contradicted American military tradition and appalled Eisenhower. It became one of the primary reasons for their later estrangement. MacArthur thought that such an exalted rank was quite necessary to enhance the prestige of his position. He not only accepted the title, but the extra pay of $3,980 per month, making him the highest paid military officer in the world.

When Quezon formally presented MacArthur with a gold baton as a symbol of his new position, Eisenhower nearly gagged with disgust, terming the ceremony ‘rather fantastic.’ He thought it ‘pompous and rather ridiculous’ for MacArthur ‘to be the field marshal of a virtually nonexisting army.’

Eisenhower adamantly refused to accept Quezon’s attempt to promote him to the rank of brigadier general in the Philippine army. In 1967 Eisenhower recalled to biographer Peter Lyon his furious arguments with MacArthur over what he believed was his superior’s disloyalty to the U.S. Army. ‘You have been a four-star general,’ he told him. ‘This is a proud thing. . . .Why in the hell do you want a banana country giving you a field-marshalship?’ MacArthur not only rejected his pleas but, recalled Eisenhower, ‘Oh, Jesus, he just gave me hell!’

MacArthur’s relations with the Philippine president eventually deteriorated so badly that it was Eisenhower and Ord, not MacArthur, to whom Quezon most often turned for advice. The longer MacArthur remained in Manila the more distant he became from Quezon.

Despite his status as a junior officer, Eisenhower never backed down from confronting MacArthur over policy issues he deemed impractical or impossible to carry out. The Philippine army had no workable logistical system and few qualified officers. Ord and Eisenhower repeatedly urged MacArthur to visit Washington to lobby for his program in person, which he reluctantly did in 1937.

How did Eisenhower manage to challenge one of the U.S. Army’s most autocratic soldiers with virtual impunity? Few officers of any rank ever dared to defy MacArthur, much less with Eisenhower’s vehemence. During MacArthur’s forty-eight-year military career no one ever stood up to him more forcefully than Eisenhower. The reasons had as much to do with Eisenhower’s increasing confidence in his own professional ability as with his belief that MacArthur needed him more than he needed MacArthur. Eisenhower’s flaming temper and his own considerable ego made him a match for MacArthur’s imperiousness. Each was far too stubborn to give in to the other. John Eisenhower believes that both were at fault: ‘Faced with plenty of other frustrations in the job they were trying to perform, neither man seems to have made much effort to realize what the other was going through.’

Even so, Eisenhower’s shouting matches and his defiance verged on outright insubordination. ‘Probably no one had tougher fights with a senior man than I did with MacArthur. I told him time and time again: `Why in the hell don’t you fire me? Goddammit, you do things I don’t agree with and you know damn well I don’t.” That MacArthur could have ruined his career at the stroke of a pen does not seem to have bothered Eisenhower nor, he said, did it occur to him to worry about the possible consequences.

His stormy encounters with MacArthur undoubtedly toughened Eisenhower for the enormous pressures and demands that he would face during World War II. Nevertheless, their deteriorating relations took a heavy toll on Eisenhower who, at times, wished MacArthur had actually sacked him. MacArthur, however, was too shrewd to deprive himself of Eisenhower’s services and ignored their differences.

Jimmy Ord was sent to Washington in 1937 to beg for the loan of field artillery, patrol boats, and other armaments and war materiel for the Philippines from an indifferent War Department. By this time, however, a growing awareness in Washington that Japanese aggression might well lead to war produced an unwillingness by the army to part with any of its meager supplies, and few were sent.

With Ord away, the full workload fell upon Eisenhower, who longed for his friend’s return: ‘The sooner he comes the better for me, I’m tired,’ he later recalled thinking. ‘Over a year and a half at this slavery in this climate and no leave!’

When the position of U.S. high commissioner of the Philippines was created in 1935, Roosevelt selected a powerful political ally, Frank Murphy, to fill it. Relations between the commission and MacArthur’s headquarters grew frosty. Murphy not only disliked MacArthur but also was thought to have been behind an attempt to force the closure of the military mission and MacArthur’s recall to the United States. Eisenhower became fed up with the intrigues. Murphy, he wrote in his diary in July 1937, was’supposed to have written letters home to the President and the Secretary of War demanding relief of mission. O.K. by me!! I’m ready to go. No one seems to realize how much energy and slavery Jim and I put into this d– job.’

The most stressful year of Eisenhower’s service in the Philippines was 1938. The pressures on him worsened, as he became the butt of MacArthur’s frustrations. ‘I’m worn out,’ he wrote. ‘Every time one of these `tempests in a teapot’ sweeps the office I find myself, sooner or later, bearing the brunt of the General’s displeasure. . . .I could be the fair-haired boy if I’d only yes, yes, yes!! That would be so easy too!!’ Ord and Eisenhower again clashed with MacArthur, this time over the latter’s insistence that a number of Filipino army units be assembled for a national parade through the streets of Manila as a means of invigorating public morale. MacArthur had not discussed, much less cleared, his idea with Quezon, and when Ord and Eisenhower informed him that their budget could not possibly stand such a hit without sacrificing funds needed to carry out more important projects, the pair was summarily overruled. When Quezon learned of the plan, he conveyed his displeasure to MacArthur. Embarrassed by the matter, MacArthur lamely denied he had ever ordered his staff to proceed. The chief scapegoats were Ord and Eisenhower. The parade was duly canceled, but the bad feelings between MacArthur and his two assistants were heightened. ‘Never again were we on the same warm and cordial terms,’ recalled Eisenhower.

Eisenhower believed that by failing to back his own staff MacArthur had been disloyal. He was furious at MacArthur for in effect branding him a liar to Quezon, an act he deemed the ultimate disloyalty. ‘I am not a liar,’ he challenged, ‘and so I’d like to go back to the United States right away.’ Realizing that for once he had gone too far, MacArthur placed an arm around Eisenhower’s shoulder and turned on all of his considerable charm, brushing their clash aside with the comment: ‘Ike, it’s just fun to see that damn Dutch temper. . . .It’s just a misunderstanding, and let’s let it go at that.’ In fact, the incident irreparably damaged their relationship. Although Eisenhower restricted voicing his resentments to a small circle of intimate friends, he never forgave MacArthur and later related to his friend Robert L. Eichelberger that the incident had been the last straw in their deteriorating relationship.

Nevertheless, in early 1938 Eisenhower willingly agreed to a one-year extension in Manila at the urging of both Quezon and MacArthur, a decision made more out of loyalty to the president than allegiance to MacArthur. Yet Eisenhower began to suspect that his days in Manila were numbered after MacArthur disputed an increase in Eisenhower’s per diem from the Philippine government. The increase was duly awarded, but Eisenhower thought MacArthur’s opposition hypocritical. Eisenhower’s growing disenchantment was exacerbated by the untimely death of Jimmy Ord in January 1938, the result of a freak airplane accident. Ord’s death left Eisenhower thunderstruck and grieving at the loss of a dear friend whom he had loved like a brother.

Eisenhower had not only lost his friend but also gained a cold-blooded rival. At Eisenhower’s own recommendation, Ord was replaced by Major Richard Sutherland, a dour infantry officer who remained in MacArthur’s service throughout World War II, rising to become his chief of staff. Ruthlessly ambitious, Sutherland was universally disliked and openly schemed to get rid of Eisenhower, who failed to recognize the full extent of Sutherland’s determination to undermine his standing with MacArthur. The perfect opportunity arose in 1938, when Eisenhower returned to the United States for several months. Sutherland filled in for him, and only after he returned to the Philippines did Eisenhower learn that he had lost his job and had been cast into an insignificant role.

On September 1, 1939, war erupted in Europe when Hitler’s armies invaded Poland, using a bogus pretext to crush a valiant but hopelessly outgunned Polish army in a matter of days. Britain and France responded by declaring war against Germany. For the time being the United States remained neutral.

It was clear to Eisenhower that this was a war America could not long avoid. If he was to fulfill his ambition to play a meaningful role before facing an inevitable forced retirement, he had to make something positive happen. His duty in the Philippines brought it home that while he still appeared youthful, he had indeed slipped into middle age and possessed few prospects other than more years of toil for a man for whom he had lost respect. Angry and frustrated, Eisenhower was reminded on a daily basis that his ‘reward’ for more than six years of working for MacArthur was a demotion.

Eisenhower asked to be relieved of his duties in Manila effective in August 1939 and met immediate opposition from both MacArthur and Quezon. However, no amount of persuasion or inducements, including a large cash offer and other perks from Quezon, who dangled a virtual blank check, would dissuade Eisenhower. ‘I’m a soldier. I’m going home. We’re going to go to war and I’m going to be in it,’ he proclaimed.

What conclusions can we draw from the seven years these two strong-willed men served together? For his part, MacArthur was utterly intolerant and unforgiving of those who he believed had betrayed him. Noted Eichelberger, who had known MacArthur since 1911 and served as a corps commander under him during World War II: ‘The most outstanding characteristic of Gen. MacArthur was his vivid hatreds. He talked to me many times about his dislike for FDR and his statements about Gen. Marshall and Gen. Eisenhower were rich, rare and racy.’ Eisenhower’s ‘betrayal’ by leaving his service in 1939 earned him MacArthur’s enmity, which was destined to reach monumental proportions as Eisenhower’s star began to rise during World War II.

Publicly, Eisenhower would later downplay his conflict with MacArthur: ‘Hostility between us has been exaggerated. After all, there must be a strong tie for two men to work so closely for seven years.’ Privately, Eisenhower not only deeply resented his many years of being used like Kleenex, but had grown weary of MacArthur’s shameless politicking and his imperiousness in Washington and Manila that repeatedly obliged Eisenhower to play the intermediary. Their disparities and often stormy clashes notwithstanding, each had profited from the relationship: MacArthur from the services of a brilliant staff officer, and Eisenhower from the experience gained in high-level politics in Washington and Manila that would shortly serve him well.

Despite their divergent personalities, Eisenhower was capable of separating MacArthur’s virtues from his shortcomings. His unflattering observations on MacArthur made between 1932 and ’40 were more the product of frustration than of animosity. Moreover, Eisenhower had been smart enough to realize how much he had to learn from MacArthur, and later told MacArthur’s official biographer that he was ‘deeply grateful for the administrative experience gained under General MacArthur’ that helped prepare him for ‘the great responsibilities of the war period.’

Eisenhower’s intelligence, seemingly unlimited capacity for sheer hard work, and superb organizational skills had proven invaluable to MacArthur, albeit in what was ultimately the losing cause of Philippine military preparedness. Yet Eisenhower left Manila in December 1939 with a great sense of relief and with no expectation that he was poised to assume greater responsibilities. Recalling his Philippine Islands experience in 1941, Eisenhower simply declared, ‘I don’t give a hoot who gets credit for anything in the P.I. I got out clean –and that’s that!’

This article was written by Carlo D’Este and was originally published in the Winter 2003 edition of MHQ . For more great articles, subscribe to MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History today!

• Art History
• U.S. History

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight D. Eisenhower was born on October 14, 1890 to David and Ida Stover Eisenhower in Denison, Texas in the United States of America. The third of seven sons, he grew up in Abilene, Kansas where he excelled in sports in high school. In 1909, he graduated from Abilene High School.

Military Career

While he was working as night foreman at Belle Springs Creamery in 1909, he was encouraged by his friend, Swede Hazlett, to apply to Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Although he passed the entrance exam, he was not accepted because of age ineligibility. In 1911, Kansas Senator Joseph L. Bristow recommended Eisenhower to the US Military Academy at West Point in New York.

Although he did not excel academically at the Academy, Dwight D. Eisenhower still managed to graduate in 1915 in the upper half of his class. He was commissioned at Ft. Sam in Houston, Texas as a second lieutenant after graduation. He met his wife, Mamie Geneva Doud, in October 1915 when he was invited by a fellow soldier, Gee Gerow, to a casual lawn party where the Douds were also guests. They were married on July 1, 1916 at the Doud home in Denver.

He was assigned to different military posts in Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey. He became a father to Doud Dwight in 1917 but the kid died of scarlet fever at age three. He became coach of the football team at St. Louis College while stationed at Ft. Sam Houston and trained new recruits for World War I duty overseas. On August 3, 1922, his second son John Sheldon Doud Eisenhower was born.

Dwight D. Eisenhower served under General Fox Conner as executive officer from 1922 to 1924 in the Panama Canal Zone during which Conner served as Eisenhower’s mentor. Under Conner, Eisenhower began learning about history, philosophy and military science. He was accepted at Command and General Staff School, an elite graduate school of the army, due to Conner’s assistance. He graduated top of his class in 1926.

He learned about cultures, geography and the peoples of Europe when he was assigned to write for the American Battle Monuments Commission under General John Pershing in 1927 in Paris and Washington. In 1933, he served as chief military aide to General Douglas McArthur, then US Army Chief of Staff. He was with General McArthur as assistant military advisor in the Philippines in 1935. In 1939, he was appointed to the 15th Infantry Regiment at Fort Lewis and was promoted to colonel in March 1941.

In June 1941, Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed to Ft. Sam Houston as Chief of Staff to General Walter Krueger of the Third Army. He became known nationwide because of his bold leadership of the Third Army which routed decisively the Second Army in the Louisiana Maneuvers between August and September of that same year. He was promoted to Brigadier General a few months prior to the Pearl Harbor bombing.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was promoted to General of the Army in December 1944. In May 1945, he was appointed Military Governor of the US Occupied Zone when Germany surrendered. He began to earn the respect, affection and admiration of the international community. In June 1945, Eisenhower was accorded a hero’s welcome when he returned to Abilene, Kansas.

In November 1945, he became the US Army’s Chief of Staff. He became President of Columbia University three years later. In December 1950, he took a leave of absence from Columbia University to become Supreme Allied Commander of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) where he helped build the organization along with other allied countries.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Under Eisenhower, the United States of America enjoyed an expanding and strong economy. Unemployment was low, there was little inflation, and there was solid economic growth. Eisenhower increased minimum wage, expanded social security, and organized the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. He had sincere concern for the good of every American.

In 1956, Dwight D. Eisenhower supported and signed the bill authorizing the Interstate Highway System. His justification for the project was the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which was important to the security of Americans during the Cold War. The highways were built on the premise that they were to be used to evacuate citizens and permit the military to move in should large cities be targeted in the event of a future war.

The Eisenhower Doctrine

On January 5, 1957, the Eisenhower Doctrine which referred to Eisenhower’s Speech where he stressed that a country can seek financial or military help from the United States of America if it was threatened by other countries through armed aggression. The speech was made in response to a possible generalized war which was a result of the Soviet Union’s effort to use the Suez Canal to enter Egypt. The Eisenhower Doctrine was used the following year in the Lebanon crisis where the US military intervened upon the request of Lebanon’s president, Camille Chamoun. The doctrine was also used to send financial help to the Kingdom of Jordan.

President Eisenhower’s Accomplishments

The Central Intelligence Agency during Eisenhower’s term was able to depose the leaders of Guatemala, Iran and the Belgian Congo. In cooperation with the British government, he authorized the CIA to help in the overthrowing of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and restoring the Shah of Iran to power.

Eisenhower became the 1st president to hire a White House Chief of Staff, an idea he got while he was still in the military. After Lyndon Johnson, every president also appointed his Chief of Staff. He was also the 1st US president to appear on color TV. His speech on May 21, 1958 during the dedication of the new studios of WRC-TV in Washington, DC was videotaped. It is believed that this videotape is the oldest surviving videotape.

Post-Presidency

He was best remembered for his presidential farewell speech on January 17, 1961 for his description of the “Military-Industrialization Complex”. He warned against dire consequences to self-government and personal freedoms if power is left unchecked. He retired at Gettysburg Farm in Pennsylvania where days were passed playing golf and painting.

Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote his memoirs, Mandate for Change in 1963, Waging Peace in 1965, and At Ease in 1967. He was often consulted by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson as an Elder Statesman. He often had guests at Gettysburg where he would treat them with home-cooked meals which he did himself. Winter seasons were mostly spent at their Palm Desert, California home.

He indulged in livestock raising and gardening. Afternoons were usually spent with Mamie on the porch, painting, reading, watching their favorite TV programs, and playing cards. In 1967, the farm was donated to the National Park Service. It’s been open to the public since 1980 and known as the Eisenhower National Historic Site.

The Final, Peaceful Days of Dwight D. Eisenhower

The last year of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s life was spent at Walter Army Reed Hospital in Washington, DC due to a weakening heart. He suffered a major heart attack on September 24, 1955 while he was still in office. He developed a left ventricular aneurysm which led to a mild stroke on November 25, 1957. After leaving the White House, he suffered numerous heart attacks which led to the deterioration of his health.

He died on March 28, 1969 due to congestive heart failure. He died peacefully. He was buried in simple chapel in Abilene on the Eisenhower Center grounds. He was also accorded a state funeral at Washington, DC. Full military honors were also given to him at Abilene. He was buried alongside his son, Doud Dwight, their firstborn. His wife Mamie, who died in 1979, was also buried there.

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Dwight D. Eisenhower Biography

Born: October 14, 1890 Denison, Texas Died: March 26, 1969 Washington, D.C. American president, university president, and army officer

Dwight D. Eisenhower was leader of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II (1939–45), commander of NATO, and thirty-fourth president of the United States (1953–61).

Dwight D. Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas, on October 14, 1890, the third of seven sons. Soon after his birth, the family moved to Abilene, Kansas. His family was poor, and Eisenhower early learned the value of hard work, earning money selling vegetables and working for a creamery, a place where milk products like butter and cheese are made or sold.

Although Eisenhower was an average student, he enjoyed studying history. His heros included military figures like George Washington (1732–1799) and Hannibal (247–183 B.C.E. ). He excelled in athletics, particularly football. Eisenhower graduated from Abilene High School in 1909 and then went to work for a year to help pay for his brother's college education. In 1911 he attended West Point Military Academy, where he was more interested in sports, especially football, than in his studies. Eisenhower graduated from West Point in 1915 and married Mamie Doud (1896–1979) the next year.

Army career and command in Europe

Eisenhower's army career was marked by a slow rise to greatness. He graduated first in his class in 1926 from the army's Command and General Staff School. Following graduation, he served under General Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964), becoming MacArthur's aide in the Philippines. Returning to the United States in 1939, Eisenhower became chief of staff of the Third Army. In 1941 he attracted attention with his brilliance in commanding the training of 420,000 American soldiers in Louisiana.

When the United States joined World War II (1939–45) in 1941, Eisenhower became chief of the War Plans Division of the U.S. Army General Staff. He helped with preparations for the war in Europe. In May 1942 he was made supreme commander of the Allied Forces in Europe and traveled to London in June of the same year. (In World War II, the Allied forces—France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and the United States—fought against the Axis forces—Germany, Italy, and Japan.)

Eisenhower's personal qualities were precisely right for his new position. He successfully dealt with British generals and with the strong prime minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill (1874–1965). Eisenhower's post called for an ability to get along with people and yet maintain his own position as leader of the Allied forces. In addition to his ability to gain respect, Eisenhower also showed skill in choosing qualified people to serve under him.

In June 1942 Eisenhower was made the leader of the November 1942 invasion of North Africa. The plan for the invasion of North Africa was to trap the Axis troops led by Erwin Rommel (1891–1944) between British and U.S. forces. By May 1943 the North African operation had succeeded and the Allies had taken control of Africa. Despite British reluctance, Eisenhower began preparing for the June 1944 invasion of Europe at Normandy, France. After the Allies successfully landed in Normandy, Eisenhower led the forces forward triumphantly to defeat the German armies. By spring 1945 the war in Europe was over. Eisenhower became one of the best-known men in the United States and some saw a career in politics in his future.

From Columbia University to the presidency

Eisenhower denied any desire to enter politics and in 1948 left the military to become president of Columbia University. In 1950 he accepted an offer made by President Harry Truman (1884–1972) to become the first commander of the newly formed North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO; an organization formed by many European countries and the United States, who all signed a treaty in 1949 agreeing to defend Western Europe against a possible attack by the Soviet Union). As the commander of NATO, Eisenhower's ability to deal with men of strong and differing opinions was valuable.

Although Eisenhower had not previously claimed any interest in politics, he remained popular with the American public. He became the Republican candidate in the 1952 presidential election and won by a tremendous margin. Throughout 1955 and 1956 he suffered health problems but was able to accept his party's renomination and easily won the 1956 election.

Eisenhower's strength as president was largely based upon his strong character. For most of his presidency, he was compelled to rely upon both Democrats and Republicans. As a leader, Eisenhower shared power with others and often took positions in the center. He was influenced by his secretary of the treasury, George Humphrey (1890–1970), and by his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles (1888–1959).

To classify Eisenhower as liberal (in favor of individual rights) or conservative (in favor of preserving tradition and gradual change) is difficult. He was sympathetic to business and was not in favor of enlarging the role of government in economic affairs. Yet he favored some liberal ideas, such as social security, minimum wage, and the establishment of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Civil rights for African Americans

The most significant development in domestic policy during Eisenhower's years as president came through the Supreme Court. First in 1953, the president appointed Earl Warren (1891–1974) to the post of chief justice. In 1954 the Warren Court declared segregation (separation according to race) in the schools unconstitutional, giving new support to the civil rights movement.

Eisenhower was extremely cautious in carrying out the Supreme Court's decision. Nonetheless, he was forced to take action in 1957 when Arkansas governor Orval Faubus (1910–1994) acted against the court's decision by using national guardsmen to prevent African Americans from entering schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. After various efforts to enforce the law, the president sent federal troops to Little Rock. During his second term, Eisenhower signed laws to enforce desegregation (the process of ending separation according to race), and in 1960 he made resistance to desegregation a federal offense.

Foreign policies

Eisenhower encouraged the strengthening of NATO while also seeking to improve relations with the Soviet Union. During the years since World War II, France, Great Britain, the U.S.S.R., and the United States made little progress on the problem of a divided Germany. (After World War II, Germany had been divided into four different areas, each of which was controlled by a separate country—France, Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. The area occupied by the Soviet Union eventually became Communist East Germany, and the other three areas joined to form West Germany under a democratic government.) A new effort to work out the situation began in 1959, and an international conference was planned. The conference was cancelled when Soviets captured an American spy plane over the Soviet Union.

In Asia Eisenhower worked out a truce with the North Koreans to end the Korean War (1950–53; a war fought between South Korea, supported by the United Nations and the United States, and North Korea). The president's secretary of state negotiated the treaty that created the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). The United States pledged to consult with the members of SEATO and to help meet any threat to peace in Southeast Asia. This treaty was especially significant to Vietnam, which in 1954 was divided into North Vietnam and South Vietnam. North Vietnam came under Communist control, while the anti-Communist South was increasingly supported by the United States.

Meanwhile in Latin America, Cuba was ruled by an increasingly brutal and domineering president, Fulgencio Batista (1901–1973). In 1958, the American government withdrew military support from the Batista regime. A collapse of the government followed, and the Cuban leftist leader, Fidel Castro (1926–), took control of the government. Castro began to develop close ties with the Soviet Union, and relations between Cuba and the United States ended in January 1960.

Eisenhower's death in Washington, D.C., on March 26, 1969, was an occasion for national mourning and for worldwide recognition of his important role in the events of his time. Few presidents have enjoyed greater popularity than Eisenhower. He was widely admired for his strong character and his modesty.

For More Information

Brandon, Piers. Ike: His Life and Times. New York: Harper & Row, 1986.

Brown, D. Clayton. Dwight D. Eisenhower. Springfield, NJ: Enslow, 1998.

Burk, Robert F. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Hero and Politician. Boston: Twayne, 1986.

D'Este, Carlo. Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life. New York: Henry Holt, 2002.

Eisenhower, Dwight D. Crusade in Europe. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1948. Reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Eisenhower, Dwight D. The White House Years: Waging Peace. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963–65.

Jacobs, William Jay. Dwight David Eisenhower: Soldier and Statesman. New York: Franklin Watts, 1995.

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The Eisenhowers

Dwight david eisenhower chronology.

October 14, 1890:  David Dwight Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas, third of seven sons of David Jacob and Ida Elizabeth Stover Eisenhower. He was called Dwight from an early age to avoid confusion with his father.

1892:  The family returned to Abilene, Kansas. In school, Dwight's older brother was nicknamed "Big Ike," and he became "Little Ike."

1909:  Ike graduated from Abilene High School.

1909-1911:  Worked at Belle Springs Creamery, 1909-1911.

June 14, 1911:  Entered United States Military Academy, West Point, New York. The nickname "Ike" followed him to West Point, where the "Little" was dropped.

June 12, 1915:  Graduated and commissioned a Second Lieutenant.

July 1, 1916:  Married Mamie Geneva Doud of Denver, Colorado. 

September 1915-February 1918:  Served with the Infantry in Ft. Sam Houston, Camp Wilson and Leon Springs, Texas and Ft. Oglethorpe, Georgia.

July 1, 1916: Promoted to First Lieutenant.

May 15, 1917: Promoted to Captain.

September 24, 1917:  Ike and Mamie's first son, Doud Dwight was born.

February 1918-January 1922: Served with the Tank Corps in Camp Meade, Maryland, Camp Colt, Pennsylvania, Camp Dix, New Jersey, Ft. Benning, Georgia, and Ft. Meade, Maryland.

June 17, 1918: Promoted to Major (temporary).

October 14, 1918: Promoted to Lieutenant Colonel (temporary).

July 7-September 6, 1919:  Volunteered to participate as a Tank Corps observer in the First Transcontinental Motor Convoy.

June 30, 1920: Reverted to permanent rank of Captain.

July 2, 1920: Promoted to Major.

January 2, 1921:  Doud Dwight, three years old, died after contracting scarlet fever.

August 3, 1922:  Ike and Mamie's second son, John Sheldon Doud Eisenhower was born in Denver, Colorado.

January 1922–September 1924:  Assigned as executive officer to General Fox Conner, Camp Gaillard, Panama Canal Zone. Served in various capacities in Maryland and Colorado until August 1925.

August 19, 1925:  Entered Command and General Staff School, Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas; graduated first in a class of 245, June 18, 1926.

August 1926-January 1927:  Served as executive officer, 24th Infantry Regiment, Ft. Benning, Georgia.

January-August 1927:  Served in Washington, DC, office, writing a guidebook to World War I battlefields for American Battle Monuments Commission, directed by General John J. Pershing.

August 27, 1927:  Entered Army War College, Washington, DC, and graduated June 30, 1928.

July 1928-September 1929:  In charge of guidebook revision and European office, Paris, France.

November 29, 1929-February 1933:  Served as executive officer to General George V. Moseley, Assistant Secretary of War, Washington, DC.

1933-September 1935:  Served as chief military aide to General Douglas MacArthur, Army Chief of Staff.

September 1935-December 1939:  Assigned to General MacArthur as assistant military advisor to the Philippine Government.

July 1, 1936:  Promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.

February 1940-November 1940:  Assigned to General DeWitt Clinton, Commander, 15th Infantry, for a short term in Ft. Ord, California, and then permanently to Ft. Lewis, Washington as regimental executive. Chief of Staff for General Thompson, Commander, 3rd Division, Ft. Lewis until March 1941. Served as Chief of Staff to General Kenyon Joyce, Commander 9th Army Corps, Ft. Lewis, until June 1941. 

March 11, 1941: Promoted to Colonel (temporary).

June 1941-December 1941: Designated Chief of Staff to General Walter Kreuger, Commander 3rd Army, Ft. Sam Houston, Texas. 

September 29, 1941: Promoted to Brigadier General (temporary).

December 1941-June 1942:  Assigned to General Staff, Washington, DC. Named Deputy Chief in charge of Pacific Defenses under Chief of War Plans Division, General Leonard Gerow, December 1941.

February 1942: Designated as Chief of War Plans Division.

March 27, 1942:  Promoted to Major General (temporary).

April 1942:  Appointed Assistant Chief of Staff in charge of Operations Division for General George Marshall, Chief of Staff.

May 1942:  Conducted mission to increase cooperation among World War II allies, London, England.

June 1942 : Designated Commanding General, European Theater, London, England. 

July 7, 1942:  Promoted to Lieutenant General (temporary).

November 1942: Named Commander-in-Chief, Allied Forces, North Africa.

February 11, 1943:  Promoted to General (4 stars) (temporary).

August 30, 1943:  Appointed Brigadier General (permanent) and was promoted to Major General (permanent) on the same date.

December 1943:  Appointed Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Forces.

June 6, 1944:  Commanded forces of Normandy invasion.

December 20, 1944:  Promoted to General of the Army (5 stars). Shortly after the German surrender, May 8, 1945, appointed Military Governor, U.S. Occupied Zone, Frankfurt, Germany.

November 19, 1945:  Designated as Chief of Staff, U.S. Army.

April 11, 1946:  Wartime rank of General of the Army converted to permanent rank.

June 7, 1948:  Inaugurated as President, Columbia University, New York City.

December 16, 1950:  Named Supreme Allied Commander, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Europe, and given operational command of Treaty Organization, Europe and given operational command of U.S. Forces, Europe.

May 31, 1952:  Retired from active service, and resigned his commission July 1952.

June 4, 1952:  Announced his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination for President in Abilene, Kansas.

January 20, 1953-January 20, 1961:  Served two terms as President of the United States; brought armistice to Korean War; promoted Atoms for Peace; dealt with crises in Lebanon, Suez, Berlin, and Hungary; established the U.S. Information Agency; created the Federal Council on Aging; saw Alaska and Hawaii become states; authorized the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Interstate Highway System; signed the 1957 Civil Rights Act, the first civil rights legislation since end of Civil War; sent federal troops to enforce court-ordered integration of Little Rock Central High School; signed the bill creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

January 17, 1961:  Delivered his famous Farewell Address warning the nation of the “military-industrial complex.”

March 1961:  By Public Law 87-3, signed by President John F. Kennedy, Eisenhower returned to active list of regular Army with rank of General of the Army from December 1944.

January 1961-March 1969:  Maintained office at Gettysburg College and residence at his farm near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

March 28, 1969:  Died at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, DC.

April 2, 1969:  Buried in the Place of Meditation, Abilene, Kansas.

Mamie Geneva Doud Eisenhower Chronology

November 14, 1896:  Mamie Geneva Doud was born in Boone, Iowa, the daughter of John Sheldon and Elivera Mathilda Carlson Doud.

August 1897:  The family moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. At age six, she moved with her family to Pueblo, Colorado, and then to Colorado Springs.

1905: The Doud family moved to Denver, Colorado, where they lived at 750 Lafayette. This house remained in the family until after the death of Mamie's mother in 1960. Mamie Doud attended Denver public schools for her elementary education.

1915: Mamie graduated from Miss Wolcott's, a private finishing school attended by daughters of many prominent Denver families.

October 1915:  Mamie met the then Second Lieutenant Dwight D. Eisenhower while visiting friends at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. The Douds had rented a house in San Antonio for the winter.

February 14, 1916:  Ike and Mamie formally announced their engagement. The engagement ring was a miniature copy of Ike's West Point ring, amethyst set in gold.

July 1, 1916:  Ike and Mamie were married at noon in the Doud family home in Denver--the same day Ike received his first army promotion. They had a ten-day honeymoon, spending the first days in Colorado, then a few days visiting the Eisenhower family in Abilene, Kansas.

September 24, 1917:  Their first son, Doud Dwight Eisenhower, was born. He was nicknamed "Little Icky."

General and Mrs. Eisenhower lived in various army posts in the United States and around the world. From their small quarters at Fort Sam Houston, they moved to their first real home--a white pillared fraternity house at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where Ike commanded the Tank Corps Training Center at Camp Colt. After Camp Colt they were transferred to Camp Meade, Maryland, and then to Camp Gaillard in the Panama Canal Zone.

1924:  They returned to Camp Meade, and then moved to Fort Logan, Colorado. Eisenhower then received an appointment to the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, from which he graduated first in his class, in 1926. After Fort Leavenworth, they spent a few months at Fort Benning, Georgia, before Ike was named to serve with the American Battle Monuments Commission. With this new assignment, they took an apartment in Washington, DC, where Mamie remained until 1936, except for a short stay in Paris.

1935:  When Ike was transferred to the Philippines Mamie elected to remain with son John in the U.S. for a year before joining Ike in Manila.

1941:  They returned to the U.S. When the Pearl Harbor attack occurred, Ike was Chief of Staff of the Third Army at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. He was called to Washington immediately and Mrs. Eisenhower established living quarters at the Wardman Park Hotel, where she lived almost continuously throughout the war and General Eisenhower's service overseas. During the General's absence, Mamie shunned publicity and the social whirl by doing volunteer work at servicemen's canteens in Washington and for the Red Cross.

1946-1948:  Resided in Quarters Number 1 on Fort Myer in the Washington area.

July 10, 1947:  John married Barbara Jean Thompson.

1948-1950:  The next major move was to 60 Morningside Drive in New York City where they lived while Ike was president of Columbia University.

March 31, 1948: The Eisenhower's first grandchild, Dwight David Eisenhower II was born. 

May 30, 1949: Ike and Mamie's first granddaughter, Barbara Anne Eisenhower was born.

1950:  Ike was recalled to active duty to serve as head of the NATO military forces as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. They lived in Paris until 1952 when Eisenhower returned to the U.S. to campaign for the presidency.

December 31, 1951: Ike and Mamie's third grandchild, Susan Elaine Eisenhower was born.

1953-1961:  Mamie was a gracious and popular First Lady -- so much so that, beginning in 1952, she appeared every year on the Gallup Poll's list of the Ten Most Admired Women in America.

December 21, 1955: The Eisenhower's fourth grandchild, Mary Jean Eisenhower was born.

1961-1979: After eight years in the White House, the Eisenhowers retired to the farm they had purchased in 1949. This home at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was the first one they actually owned. After the General's death in 1969, Mamie continued living on the farm, with extended winter vacations in California and Georgia, until she took an apartment in Washington, DC, when her health began to fail in the late 70's.

Although she lived and traveled all over the world, Mrs. Eisenhower always remained a person who was most happy at home surrounded by her family. She enjoyed babysitting her grandchildren. Playing canasta, mahjong, or bridge with her friends was a favorite pastime. She had a lifelong interest in fashion and developed a flair that was strictly the "Mamie Look" -- from her feminine dresses to her trademark bangs. In her later years, Mrs. Eisenhower enjoyed answering the many letters she received from the public and assisted in fund-raising activities for several institutions and charities, including the Eisenhower Memorial Hospital in Palm Springs, California.

November 1, 1979:  Mamie Doud Eisenhower died in Washington, DC and was buried beside her husband and first son in the Place of Meditation in Abilene, Kansas.

U.S. Presidents: United in Service Take a look at presidential biographies made by kids and videos about service from the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation.

Born: October 14, 1890 in Denison, Texas

Died: March 28, 1969 in Washington D.C.

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