1
Brief Biography
Dwight David Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas, on October 14, 1890. He was the third of seven sons born to Ida Stover and David Eisenhower. In 1892, the family moved to Abilene, Kansas, a former cattle town at the northern terminus of the Chisolm Trail, which brought cattle from Texas to the Kansas Pacific railway for shipment to eastern markets. Although “Wild Bill” Hickok, the town’s former marshal, was long gone before the Eisenhower family arrived, Abilene’s “Wild West” past inspired Dwight’s lifelong love of history.
After graduating from Abilene High School in 1909, Dwight spent two years working at the Belle Springs Creamery to pay for his brother Edgar’s college education. At his friend Everett “Swede” Hazlett’s suggestion, he then applied to the U.S. Naval Academy. Finding that he was too old for admission to Annapolis, he applied to West Point and was accepted. Ike, as he was commonly known, made the varsity football team his sophomore year but injured his knee midseason and was unable to continue playing. Eisenhower was not a stand-out student, and his occasional disregard of West Point’s strict rules got him in trouble from time to time, but he persevered and graduated in the middle of his class. The West Point class of 1915 later became known as “the class the stars fell on”—fifty-nine of its members earned the rank of general.
While at his first post in San Antonio, Texas, Eisenhower met Mamie Doud, whose family owned a home there. He proposed to her on Valentine’s Day in 1916, and they were married in Denver, Colorado, the following July. Ike and Mamie had two sons. Doud Dwight “Ikky” Eisenhower, born in 1917, died of scarlet fever when he was three years old. John Eisenhower, born in 1922, also graduated from West Point. Like his father, he had a career in the army, serving in Korea and retiring at the rank of brigadier general. President Richard Nixon would later appoint him ambassador to Belgium. John and his wife Barbara Jean Thompson gave Ike and Mamie four grandchildren: David, Barbara, Susan, and Mary.
When the United States entered World War I, Eisenhower requested an overseas assignment, but he was denied and spent the war at various stateside training camps. In 1918, the unit under his command finally received orders for deployment to France, but the armistice was signed a week before their scheduled departure. In the interwar years, Ike served under several prominent generals. These included Fox Conner, Douglas MacArthur, and George Marshall. Eisenhower was executive officer to Fox Conner in the Panama Canal Zone from 1920 to 1924. It was under Conner’s direction that Eisenhower studied military history and theory. Conner called him “one of the most capable, efficient, and loyal officers I ever met.”1 It was on Conner’s recommendation that Eisenhower attended the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, graduating first in his class. In 1932, Ike was assigned as chief military aide to Douglas MacArthur. It was in this capacity that he participated in the infamous clearing of the Bonus March encampment in Washington, DC. Eisenhower later accompanied MacArthur to the Philippines where he served as assistant military adviser to the Philippine government. Eisenhower returned to the United States in 1939.
As the country prepared for war, Eisenhower’s superior officers recognized his abilities and rewarded him with greater responsibility. As a result of his successful participation in the Louisiana Maneuvers, a series of army exercises in 1941 designed to evaluate U.S. readiness for war, Eisenhower was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he was assigned to the general staff in Washington, DC, where he served under the army chief of staff, General George Marshall. During his time in Washington, Eisenhower earned his second and third stars.
In November 1942, after a brief stint in London, Eisenhower was given command of Operation Torch, the American campaign in North Africa. Operation Torch provided Eisenhower with valuable combat command experience, something he had lacked. As the campaign reached its climax in Tunisia, Eisenhower was awarded his fourth star. After the defeat of Axis forces in North Africa, Eisenhower oversaw the invasion of Sicily and the Italian mainland.
President Franklin Roosevelt had intended to appoint Marshall the commander of Operation Overlord, the cross-channel invasion of northern France, but his top military advisers convinced him that Marshall’s presence in Washington was too important to the overall war effort for him to be in the field. On December 7, 1943, returning home from the Big Three conference in Tehran, Roosevelt met with Eisenhower in Tunisia. “Well, Ike,” he said as he was getting into a staff car with the general, “you are going to command Overlord.”2 Two months later, Eisenhower was appointed supreme allied commander, a position he held until the end of the war.
On D-Day, June 6, 1944, Allied forces under Eisenhower’s command crossed the English Channel and launched a massive amphibious invasion of Normandy. Within two weeks, one million men had seized a stretch of beach sixty miles long and fifteen miles deep. By late August, Allied soldiers had liberated Paris. Soon after, Eisenhower was promoted to general of the army, becoming one of the first four men to wear five stars. Germany, however, was not yet defeated and launched a surprise counteroffensive in December known as the Battle of the Bulge. Although they sustained heavy losses, the Allies regained the offensive and by the spring of 1945 had taken the war into Germany itself.
After Germany’s surrender on May 9, 1945, Eisenhower became the military governor of the American occupation zone. He held this position until November, when he was recalled to Washington to replace Marshall as army chief of staff. In 1948, there was a great deal of public speculation about Eisenhower’s interest in running for president. Both political parties courted him as a potential candidate, but the general declined, saying that he was “not available for, and could not accept, nomination to high political office.”3 This unequivocal statement removed him from consideration in 1948 but did not end speculation about his political future.
That same year, Eisenhower retired from active duty and became president of Columbia University. Holding a civilian job gave him the freedom to speak more openly on issues than he had been able to in the military. While living in New York City, Eisenhower published Crusade in Europe, his World War II memoir. The advance paid to him by Doubleday, the book’s publisher, made him financially secure. While president of Columbia, Eisenhower spent a great deal of time in Washington advising the secretary of defense. Although the position had not been formally created, Eisenhower served as the de facto chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In December 1950, President Harry Truman recalled Eisenhower to active duty, appointing him supreme allied commander of European forces. Ike took a leave of absence from Columbia and went to Paris to undertake the difficult work of building the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He remained there until June 1952, when he returned to the United States and again retired from active duty to pursue the Republican Party’s nomination for president of the United States.
After securing the Republican nomination, Eisenhower went on to defeat Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic Party candidate, by an Electoral College vote of 442–89, winning 55 percent of the popular vote. Eisenhower was reelected in 1956 by an even larger margin, defeating Stevenson 457–73 with 57 percent of the popular vote. The Republican Party won control of the House and Senate in 1952 but lost both in the 1954 midterm elections and remained in the minority for the rest of Eisenhower’s presidency. This made Eisenhower dependent on support from Democrats to advance his legislative agenda. Despite his party’s difficulties, Eisenhower’s public approval ratings were consistently above 70 percent.
Eisenhower was a hard-working president. Unless he was out of the country or recovering from illness, he met with the cabinet and the National Security Council (NSC) on a weekly basis. In contrast to those of his recent predecessors, Eisenhower’s cabinet meetings were deliberative, rather than merely informational. Members were encouraged to offer their opinions not only in their own area of expertise, but on any subject before the cabinet. Although he spent much of his time listening, there was never any doubt about who was running the meeting. If there was a decision to be made, Eisenhower made it himself. Meetings of the NSC were handled similarly, but Eisenhower was more comfortable with the subject matter here and was more likely to speak up during meetings.
Eisenhower also met with his economic advisers, Republican legislative leaders, and the press on a regular basis—on average every two weeks. Regular meetings with his economic advisers demonstrate the importance Eisenhower placed on fiscal conservatism. The secretary of the treasury and the director of the budget were even included in meetings of the NSC. Eisenhower did not enjoy meeting with the Republican leaders, but he understood the importance of their support for his legislative agenda and kept the meetings on his calendar even though they often frustrated him. When legislation related to foreign policy was on the agenda, he often included the Democratic leadership as well. Eisenhower also gave regular press conferences, averaging twenty-four a year. Unlike his predecessors’, Ike’s press conferences were mostly on the record. By 1955, they were also televised. These new elements meant that they required more advance work with his press secretary.
Preparation for and attendance at all these meetings required a great deal of Eisenhower’s time. By meeting regularly with his top-level appointees, Eisenhower made them feel like part of his team. Allowing them to participate in deliberations also made them more likely to promote and support the resulting policies. These elements also engendered a great deal of personal loyalty. Most of Eisenhower’s original cabinet stayed on the job for his entire first term, and two of them stayed the entire eight years. Only two cabinet positions had to be filled more than twice.4
Eisenhower’s foreign policy was shaped by the Cold War. Like Truman, he committed his administration to containing communism. Eisenhower, however, believed that containment, as practiced by the Truman administration, was economically unsustainable. Hoping to find balance between military security and economic prosperity, Eisenhower initiated a national security policy called the “New Look.” The New Look relied more heavily on nuclear weapons as a deterrent to Soviet expansion. Although nuclear weapons, and the research necessary to develop them, were expensive, they were less so than stationing American troops around the globe. After the Korean Armistice, signed just six months after he took office, Eisenhower kept the United States out of major conflicts for the remainder of his presidency.
Eisenhower’s domestic policy was shaped by what he called the “Middle Way.” According to Eisenhower, the Middle Way was “a liberal program in all of those things that bring the federal government in contact with the individual,” but conservative when it came to “the economy of this country.”5 The Middle Way sought balance between the extremes of the political left and right. Those on the left, he said, believed people were “so weak, so irresponsible, that an all-powerful government must direct and protect” them. The end of that road, he warned, was “dictatorship.” On the right, were those “who deny the obligation of government to intervene on behalf of the people even when the complexities of modern life demand it.” The end of that road was “anarchy.” To avoid those extremes, he said, “government should proceed along the middle way.”6 Eisenhower hoped that his Middle Way philosophy would appeal to moderates in both parties and help to change the direction of the Republican Party, which was becoming more conservative.
Eisenhower overcame serious illness on three occasions during his presidency. He suffered a heart attack in September 1955, making his decision to run for reelection the following year a difficult one. Nine months later, he had an attack of ileitis, a chronic inflammation of the digestive tract, that necessitated surgery. Then, in November 1957, after a particularly stressful period that included the Little Rock desegregation crisis and the Soviet launch of Sputnik, Eisenhower had a mild stroke. After recovering from his stroke, Eisenhower remained in relatively good health for the remainder of his presidency, but the serious nature of his illnesses highlighted the need for a constitutional amendment that would formalize a procedure for the temporary transfer of power to the vice president if the president was incapacitated. The Twenty-fifth Amendment, ratified in 1967, served this purpose.
Ike and Mamie lived in the White House longer than they had lived anywhere else. Their favorite getaways during the presidential years included Augusta, Georgia, where they stayed in “Mamie’s Cottage,” a home reserved for their use at Augusta National Golf Club; and Denver, Colorado, where they stayed in the home of Mamie’s parents. During Ike’s second term, Newport, Rhode Island, replaced Denver as their summer residence. Weekends were often spent at the presidential retreat in Maryland, which Eisenhower named Camp David, after his grandson.
Eisenhower played a minimal role in the 1960 presidential election. Vice President Richard Nixon lost to the Democratic candidate, Senator John Kennedy (MA), in the closest presidential election in history up to that point. Eisenhower, who saw the 1960 election as a referendum on his own presidency, considered Nixon’s defeat his “principal political disappointment.” He later recalled that one of his goals when he decided to run for president “was to unify, and strengthen the Republican Party.” In this, he had failed. “Certainly,” he wrote, “I did not succeed in the hope of so increasing the party’s appeal to the American electorate as to assure a few more years, after 1960, of Republican government.”7
Eisenhower was seventy years old when he left office, the oldest serving president up to that point. After Kennedy’s inauguration, John Eisenhower drove his parents to the retirement home and farm they had purchased in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was the only home that the two of them had ever owned. In March, Kennedy signed an act of Congress restoring Ike’s five-star rank. Eisenhower remained active in Republican politics, campaigning for members of Congress and, reluctantly, for Senator Barry Goldwater (AZ) when he ran for president in 1964. He also consulted with presidents Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson when they requested his guidance. The general wrote three more books: Mandate for Change and Waging Peace, his two-volume presidential memoir; and At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends.
Dwight David Eisenhower died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC, on March 28, 1969. He was seventy-eight years old. After laying in state at the Capitol for two days, his body was moved to Washington National Cathedral for his funeral, which was attended by President Nixon, former president Johnson, and official dignitaries from seventy-eight countries, including ten heads of state or government. After the funeral, Eisenhower’s body was placed on a special train for transport to Abilene, Kansas. At his request, the general was buried in a simple government-issue coffin wearing his World War II army uniform, the army and navy Distinguished Service medals, and the Legion of Merit. His grave is inside a chapel on the grounds of the Eisenhower Presidential Center, a short distance from his boyhood home and the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. Buried alongside him are his son Doud and his wife Mamie, who died in 1979.