ON SUNDAY MORNING, December 15, 1941, Eisenhower arrived at Union Station in Washington. He went immediately to the War Department offices in the Munitions Building on Constitution Avenue (the Pentagon was then under construction) for his initial conference with the Chief of Staff. After a brief, formal greeting, Marshall quickly outlined the situation in the Pacific—the ships lost at Pearl Harbor, the planes lost at Clark Field outside Manila, the size and strength of Japanese attacks elsewhere, troop strength in the Philippines, reinforcement possibilities, intelligence estimates, the capabilities of America’s Dutch and British allies in Asia, and other details. Then Marshall leaned forward across his desk, fixed his eyes on Eisenhower’s, and demanded, “What should be our general line of action?”
Eisenhower was startled. He had just arrived, knew little more than what he had read in the newspapers and what Marshall had just told him, was not up to date on the war plans for the Pacific, and had no staff to help him prepare an answer. After a second or two of hesitation, Eisenhower requested, “Give me a few hours.”
“All right,” Marshall replied. He had dozens of problems to deal with that afternoon, hundreds in the days to follow. He needed help and he needed to know immediately which of his officers could give it to him. He had heard great things about Eisenhower, from men whose judgment he trusted, but he needed to see for himself how Eisenhower operated under the pressures of war. His question was the first test.
Eisenhower went to a desk that had been assigned to him in the War Plans Division of the General Staff. Sticking a sheet of yellow tissue paper into his typewriter, he tapped out with one finger, “Steps to Be Taken,” then sat back and started thinking. He knew that the Philippines could not be saved, that the better part of military wisdom would be to retreat to Australia, there to build a base for a counter-offensive. But the honor of the Army was at stake, and the prestige of the United States in the Far East, and these political factors outweighed the purely military considerations. An effort had to be made. Eisenhower’s first recommendation was to build a base in Australia from which attempts could be made to reinforce the Philippines. “Speed is essential,” he noted. He urged that shipment of planes, pilots, ammunition, and other equipment be started from the West Coast and Hawaii to Australia immediately.
It was already dusk when Eisenhower returned to Marshall’s office. As he handed over his written recommendation, he said he realized that it would be impossible to get reinforcements to the Philippines in time to save the islands from the Japanese. Still, he added, the United States had to do everything it could to bolster MacArthur’s forces, because “the people of China, of the Philippines, of the Dutch East Indies will be watching us. They may excuse failure but they will not excuse abandonment.” He urged the advantages of Australia as a base of operations—English-speaking, a strong ally, modern port facilities, beyond the range of the Japanese offensive—and advised Marshall to begin a program of expanding the facilities there and to secure the line of communications from the West Coast to Hawaii and then on to New Zealand and Australia. “In this,” Eisenhower said, “. . . we dare not fail. We must take great risks and spend any amount of money required.”
Marshall studied Eisenhower for a minute, then said softly, “I agree with you. Do your best to save them.” He thereupon placed Eisenhower in charge of the Philippines and Far Eastern Section of the War Plans Division (WPD). Then Marshall leaned forward—Eisenhower recalled years later that he had “an eye that seemed to me awfully cold”—and declared, “Eisenhower, the Department is filled with able men who analyze their problems well but feel compelled always to bring them to me for final solution. I must have assistants who will solve their own problems and tell me later what they have done.”1
Over the next two months Eisenhower labored to save the Philippines. His efforts were worse than fruitless, as MacArthur came to lump Eisenhower together with Marshall and Roosevelt as the men responsible for the debacle on the islands. But throughout that period, and in the months that followed, Eisenhower impressed Marshall deeply, so deeply that Marshall came to agree with MacArthur’s earlier judgment that Eisenhower was the best officer in the Army.
Marshall was not an easy man to impress. He was a cold, aloof person—“remote and austere,” Eisenhower called him—a man who forced everyone to keep his distance. Franklin Roosevelt had tried at their first meeting to slap him on the back and call him “George,” but Marshall drew back and let the President know that the name was “General Marshall,” and “General Marshall” it remained. He had few intimate friends. When he relaxed he did it alone, watching movies or puttering in his garden. He kept a tight grip on his emotions and seldom displayed any sign of a sense of humor. His sense of duty was highly developed. He made small allowance for failings in others, but to those who could do the work, Marshall was intensely loyal. He also felt deep affection toward them, though he seldom showed it.
Hardly anyone, for example, could resist Eisenhower’s infectious grin and he was known throughout the Army by his catchy nickname, but Marshall did resist. In all their years together, Marshall almost always called him “Eisenhower” (except after November 4, 1952, when he called him “Mr. President”).
Marshall slipped only once, at the victory parade in New York City in 1945, and called him “Ike.” “To make up for it,” Eisenhower recalled with a smile, “he used the word ‘Eisenhower’ five times in the next sentence.”2
For his part, Eisenhower always called Marshall “General.” After the years with MacArthur, he found Marshall to be the ideal boss, both as a man to work for and as a teacher. In October 1942, he told an assistant, “I wouldn’t trade one Marshall for fifty MacArthurs.” He thought a second, then blurted out, “My God! That would be a lousy deal. What would I do with fifty MacArthurs?” As he later wrote more formally, Eisenhower conceived “unlimited admiration and respect” for Marshall, and came to have feelings of “affection” for him.3 Marshall came to have the dominant role not only in Eisenhower’s career, but also in his thinking and in his leadership techniques. He was the model that Eisenhower tried to emulate; he set the standards Eisenhower tried to meet.
The two men, although ten years apart in age, had much in common. Marshall had the build and grace of an athlete, was about Eisenhower’s height (six feet), and was equally well proportioned. He had been a football player in college. He was a great fan of Fox Conner and a student of military history. Like Eisenhower, he loved exploring the Civil War battlefields and habitually illustrated his points or strengthened his arguments by drawing on examples from past battles and campaigns. The way he exercised leadership coincided nicely with Eisenhower’s temperament. He never yelled or shouted, almost never lost his temper. He built an atmosphere of friendly cooperation and teamwork around him, without losing the distinction between the commander and his staff—there was never any doubt as to who was the boss.
Marshall headed a stupendous organization. To do so effectively he needed assistants he could trust. In picking them, he took professional competence for granted and concentrated on personality traits. Certain types were, in his view, unsuited for high command. Foremost among these were those who were self-seeking in the matter of promotion. Next came those who always tried to “pass the buck.” Officers who tried to do everything themselves and consequently got bogged down in detail were equally unsatisfactory. Men who shouted or pounded on the desk were as unacceptable to Marshall as men who had too great a love of the limelight. Nor could he abide the pessimist. He surrounded himself with men who were offensive-minded and who concentrated on the possibilities rather than the difficulties.
In every respect, Eisenhower was exactly the sort of officer Marshall was looking for. Eisenhower himself, as Supreme Commander and later as President, used Marshall’s criteria in picking his subordinates.
• •
The first three months of 1942 were terribly trying on Eisenhower. Until February 7, he lived with Milton and Helen in Falls Church, Virginia, but he never saw the house in daylight. His driver would pick him up before dawn to take him to his office on Constitution Avenue, and bring him back at 10:30 P.M. or later. He wolfed down his meals, often no more than a hot dog and coffee, at his desk. When he got to Falls Church, Helen would have a snack for him, and he would wake up his nephew and niece for a chat before going to bed himself. Always thoughtful, he arranged to send flowers to Helen for a big dinner party he could not attend, and had an aide purchase Christmas presents for the children.
But he missed Mamie and was delighted when she came up to Washington in February and found a small apartment at the Wardman Park Hotel. Mickey, who drove the family Chrysler east from Texas, was shocked when he first saw Eisenhower: “He was more tired-looking than I’d ever seen him; all of his face was tired. His voice was tired, like his face.”4 Small wonder; on February 22 Eisenhower noted that he had gone to a Sunday dinner in honor of two visiting Chinese and that this was the “longest I’ve been out of the office in daytime since coming here ten weeks ago today.”5
Part of the strain was due to the nature of his job. He wanted to be in the field, with troops, not behind a desk. “My God, how I hate to work by any method that forces me to depend on someone else,” he complained. Considering the whole Washington-in-wartime scene, he remarked, “There’s a lot of big talk and desk hammering around this place, but very few doers. They announce results in advance in a flashy way and make big impressions, but the results often don’t materialize, and then the workers get the grief.”6
• •
On March 10, David Eisenhower died. His son could barely take the time to record the fact in his diary. The following day, Eisenhower wrote that “war is not soft, it has no time to indulge even the deepest and most sacred emotions.” That night he quit work at 7:30 P.M., noting, “I haven’t the heart to go on tonight.” On March 12, the day of the funeral in Abilene, he closed his office door for a half hour, to think about his father and to compose a eulogy. He praised his father for his “sterling honesty, his pride in his independence, his exemplary habits” and for his “undemonstrative, quiet, modest” manner. “I’m proud he was my father,” Eisenhower wrote, and then expressed his only regret—“It was always so difficult to let him know the great depth of my affection for him.”7
• •
Worn-out, angry at his country for not having prepared for the war, angry at MacArthur and the Navy for the way they were fighting it, angry at being stuck in Washington, one day Eisenhower almost lost his temper completely with Marshall. It happened on March 20, in Marshall’s office. Marshall and Eisenhower had settled a detail about an officer’s promotion. Marshall then leaned forward to say that in the last war, staff officers had gotten the promotions, not the field officers who did the fighting, and that he intended to reverse the process in this war. “Take your case,” he added. “I know that you were recommended by one general for division command and by another for corps command. That’s all very well. I’m glad that they have that opinion of you, but you are going to stay right here and fill your position, and that’s that!” Preparing to turn to other business, Marshall muttered, “While this may seem a sacrifice to you, that’s the way it must be.”
Eisenhower, red-faced and resentful, shot back, “General, I’m interested in what you say, but I want you to know that I don’t give a damn about your promotion plans as far as I’m concerned. I came into this office from the field and I am trying to do my duty. I expect to do so as long as you want me here. If that locks me to a desk for the rest of the war, so be it!”
He pushed back his chair and strode toward the door, nearly ten paces away. By the time he got there he decided to take the edge off the outburst, turned, and grinned. He thought he could see a tiny smile at the corners of Marshall’s mouth.8
Whether Marshall smiled or not, Eisenhower’s anger returned full force after he left the office. He went to his desk and filled his diary with his feelings. The thought of spending the war in Washington, missing combat again, was maddening. It seemed so unfair. Marshall’s cold, impersonal attitude just added to the anger. He cursed Marshall for toying with him; he cursed the war and his own bad luck.
The next morning, Eisenhower read what he had written, shook his head, and tore the page out of his diary, destroying it. Then he wrote a new entry. “Anger cannot win, it cannot even think clearly. In this respect,” he continued, “Marshall puzzles me a bit.” Marshall got angrier at stupidity than anyone Eisenhower had ever seen, “yet the outburst is so fleeting, he returns so quickly to complete ‘normalcy,’ that I’m certain he does it for effect.” Eisenhower envied Marshall that trait and confessed, “I blaze for an hour! So, for many years I’ve made it a religion never to indulge myself, but yesterday I failed.”9
A week later Marshall recommended Eisenhower for promotion to major general (temporary). In his recommendation to the President, Marshall explained that Eisenhower was not really a staff officer, but was his operations officer, a sort of subordinate commander. Surprised and delighted, Eisenhower’s first reaction was “This should assure that when I finally get back to the troops, I’ll get a division.” Decades later, in his memoirs, he wrote that he “often wondered” if his outburst and the way in which he had been able to control his emotions and end the session with one of his big lopsided grins had led Marshall to take a greater interest in him.10
Perhaps, but unlikely. Marshall had already been pushing Eisenhower ahead, increasing his responsibilities at a rapid pace. In January, he had taken Eisenhower along as his chief assistant to the first wartime conference with the British, and had given Eisenhower the task of preparing the basic American position on organization and strategy for global war. In mid-February he made Eisenhower the head of WPD, and thus his principal plans and operations officer. On March 9, as a part of a general reorganization of the War Department, WPD was renamed the Operations Division (OPD), and given expanded functions, with Eisenhower as its commanding officer. This steady progress surely indicated that Marshall, with or without that display of what MacArthur called “Ike’s damn Dutch temper,” thought Eisenhower’s potential unlimited.
By the beginning of April, Eisenhower had 107 officers working directly under him in OPD. As its responsibilities included both plans and operations, OPD was in effect Marshall’s command post, and it was concerned with all Army activities around the world, which gave Eisenhower a breadth of vision he could not have obtained in any other post.
Working in daily contact with the units in the field, as well as preparing plans on grand strategy, gave Eisenhower a realistic sense of the scope of modern war. In late February, he had been complaining in his diary about both MacArthur and Admiral Ernest J. King, Chief of Naval Operations. He called King “an arbitrary, stubborn type, with not too much brains and a tendency toward bullying his juniors.” The outburst led him to write a sentence that described the essence of Eisenhower’s leadership style, both as a general and as President. “In a war such as this, when high command invariably involves a president, a prime minister, six chiefs of staff, and a horde of lesser ‘planners,’ there has got to be a lot of patience—no one person can be a Napoleon or a Caesar.” 11
Eleven years later he made the same point more vividly, when as President-elect he wrote in his diary, “Winston [Churchill] is trying to relive the days of World War II. In those days he had the enjoyable feeling that he and our president were sitting on some . . . Olympian platform . . . and directing world affairs from that point of vantage. But . . . many of us who, in various corners of the world, had to work out the solutions for . . . problems knew better.” 12
Of all the generals, Eisenhower himself came closest to a Napoleonic role, but he would never make such a comparison. Having been a staff officer for so long himself, he was acutely aware of the importance of his staff to him; he was just as acutely aware of the indispensability of the subordinates in the field commands who carried out his orders. He had no false modesty, was conscious of the crucial nature of the role he played, but he never thought of himself as a Napoleon. Always, his emphasis was on the team. The only difference in his Presidency was that he applied the principle on an even wider scale. He was not self-effacing, but realistic, aware that there were definite limits on his powers, and keeping his self-image in perspective.
• •
Throughout the winter and early spring of 1942, Eisenhower continued to move up in Marshall’s esteem. Among other things, Marshall had been impressed by the smooth relations Eisenhower had established with the British at the Arcadia conference, held in Washington from late December to mid-January.
The main concern of Arcadia was to agree on a plan for an offensive in the European Theater in 1942. That Europe would be the main theater was taken for granted, despite MacArthur’s plea that Asia generally and the Philippines particularly should come first. Sitting behind Marshall at the conference, listening daily to discussions of global strategy, Eisenhower’s own views broadened.
At first, he had protested against sending American troops to Northern Ireland, and by implication against the concentration of resources against the European enemy. He managed to stop part of one convoy destined for Ireland and sent it to Australia instead, but that did not satisfy him. “Damn ’em, I tried,” he scribbled in his diary, “but I don’t wear 45s. We’re going to regret every damn boat we sent to Ireland.”13 On January 17, he had wanted to “drop everything else” and go all out in the Far East.14
By January 22, however, a dramatic switch had occurred. “We’ve got to go to Europe and fight,” he wrote, “and we’ve got to quit wasting resources all over the world, and still worse, wasting time.” Arcadia, Marshall’s persuasive abilities, hard military facts, and broadened responsibilities had caused him to change his mind. He criticized the British, the American General Staff (and himself), when he wrote, “Everybody is too much engaged with small things of his own” adding, five days later, “We can’t win by giving our stuff in driblets all over the world.” Piecemeal reinforcement should give way to concentrated counterattacks. Eisenhower now advocated a program of keeping Russia in the war, holding a defensive line in the Far East, and then “slugging with air at West Europe, to be followed by a land attack as soon as possible.”15
By late March, Eisenhower and his staff had a specific plan ready. The code name was Roundup. It called for a force of 5,800 combat airplanes and an eventual total of 48 infantry and armored divisions, half of them British, assaulting the French coast between Le Havre and Boulogne, northeast of the mouth of the Seine River, with a target date of April 1, 1943. Meanwhile raids and forays along the coast should be mounted to harass the Germans. If necessary, Sledgehammer, a suicide operation designed to take the pressure off the Russians in the event a Russian surrender appeared imminent, could be mounted in September 1942. The emphasis, however, was on Roundup, the 1943 cross-Channel assault.
Marshall took Eisenhower’s plan to Roosevelt, who approved and told Marshall to fly to London to obtain British agreement. Marshall left on April 7 for six days of conferences. The British finally agreed to Roundup, although as Marshall told Eisenhower when he returned, many British officers “hold reservations.” Eisenhower noted in his diary, “I hope that, at long last, and after months of struggle by this division, we are all definitely committed to one concept of fighting. If we can agree on major purposes and objectives, our efforts will begin to fall in line and we won’t be just thrashing around in the dark.”16
Marshall returned to Washington worried about the depth of the British commitment to Roundup and about the American commander in London, General James Chaney, who seemed not to understand the urgency of the situation. He decided to send Eisenhower to Britain to see what could be done.
On May 23, Eisenhower flew to Montreal, then on to Goose Bay, Labrador. Bad weather forced him to spend a night and a day at Gander, Newfoundland, where he shot skeet while taking his first day off in half a year.
On May 25 he made it to Prestwick, Scotland, where a British driver, Mrs. Kay Summersby (a divorcée), a young and attractive Irishwoman with sparkling eyes and a pert smile, extremely chatty but a bit awed by being in the presence of a general, met him. She drove him to an exercise involving landing craft, and they visited the birthplace of Robert Burns and scenes associated with Robert Bruce.
That evening Eisenhower took the train to London, arriving the next morning and spending the day in conference with Chaney and his staff. He was appalled by what he saw. Chaney and his assistants “were completely at a loss,” stuck in a “back eddy,” still wearing civilian clothes, working an eight-hour day, and taking weekends off. They knew none of the British high command and had no contacts with the British government.17
On May 27 Eisenhower observed a field exercise in Kent, under the direction of Lieutenant General Bernard Law Montgomery. Later Eisenhower attended a lecture at which Montgomery explained the exercise. Montgomery wore a field greatcoat which emphasized his own small physical stature and tiny steps. He had a permanent scowl that gave him a crabbed look. He was, by nature, condescending, especially toward Americans, most of whom regarded him with extreme distaste. While he lectured, Eisenhower calmly lit a cigarette. He had taken about two puffs when Montgomery broke off in midsentence, sniffed the air with his nose held high, and demanded, “Who’s smoking?”
“I am,” Eisenhower replied.
“I don’t permit smoking in my office,” Montgomery said sternly.
Eisenhower did not let the bad start color his view of Montgomery. When he got back to the States, he reported that Montgomery was “a decisive type who appears to be extremely energetic and professionally able.”18
During his ten days in Britain, Eisenhower met two other officers with whom he was destined to spend a great deal of time. One was General Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Brooke, a fiery Irishman with impressive credentials, carried throughout the war the handicap of a deep-seated prejudice against the Americans. After his first meeting with Marshall, Brooke had commented that Marshall was “rather overfilled with his own importance,” a unique judgment. Brooke admitted that Marshall was “a pleasant and easy man to get on with [a conclusion he would later change]. But I should not put him down as a great man.”19
Brooke’s comments on Eisenhower, from beginning to end, were similar but more scathing. He put Eisenhower down as an affable type with no strategic sense or command ability. Eisenhower’s own practice was to either say something nice about an associate or not mention him at all, and he seldom mentioned Brooke.
With Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, however, Eisenhower struck up an immediate and lifelong friendship. Mountbatten, young, titled, handsome, wealthy, already had a distinguished record in the Royal Navy, but unlike Montgomery and Brooke, he rather enjoyed Americans and responded with special warmth to Eisenhower. The two men got on famously from their first meeting. What drew them together aside from personality was that both were offensive-minded, committed to the earliest possible attack against the French coast, and thus keenly interested in the development of landing craft. They agreed that the bigger those craft, the better, and they wanted as many as possible. Eisenhower was also much impressed by the way Mountbatten had created a joint staff of British Army, Navy, and Air officers at Combined Operations, an organization that was planning amphibious assault techniques.
• •
On June 3, Eisenhower returned to Washington. He was dissatisfied with what he had seen in London. Except for Mountbatten it was clear that none of the British high command really believed in Roundup, much less Sledgehammer. It was equally clear that Chaney would have to be replaced.
Marshall in fact already had Eisenhower in mind for the job. Churchill had reported to Marshall that the British high command liked Eisenhower personally and were impressed by his dedication to the Alliance. The day before Eisenhower returned from England, Mountbatten had arrived in Washington for a conference; to both Roosevelt and Marshall, Mountbatten praised Eisenhower and said the British were quite ready to work with him as the senior American officer in Britain. Army Air Force Chief of Staff Henry Arnold, who had accompanied Eisenhower to Britain, and Mark Clark, who had also been on the trip, had agreed among themselves that Chaney’s successor “should be Ike.” Arnold had passed this recommendation on to Marshall.20
Not that Marshall needed any urging. For six months he had been in daily, often hourly, contact with Eisenhower. He had given Eisenhower broad responsibilities and a wide scope. Not once had Eisenhower let him down. Eisenhower had become his protégé, showing a remarkable ability to think like Marshall, to anticipate his chief’s wishes, to accept his views and translate them into action. Marshall appreciated the manner in which Eisenhower accepted responsibility and, even more, Eisenhower’s offensive-mindedness, his calm confidence that if the Allies made an all-out effort, they could successfully invade France in 1943. Marshall also felt that Eisenhower could get along with the British better than any other officer in the U.S. Army.
• •
On June 8, Eisenhower took to Marshall a draft directive for the commander of the European Theater of Operations (ETO), a name Eisenhower himself had given the London command. Eisenhower urged “that absolute unity of command should be exercised by the Theater Commander,” who should organize, train, and command the American ground, naval, and air forces assigned to the theater. As Eisenhower handed the draft to Marshall, he asked the Chief to study it carefully because it could be an important document in the further waging of the war. Marshall replied, “I certainly do want to read it. You may be the man who executes it. If that’s the case, when can you leave?” Three days later Marshall appointed Eisenhower to the command of ETO.21
• •
With her husband leaving Washington, Mamie had to move out of their just acquired quarters at Fort Myer. Luckily, she found a small apartment at the Wardman; to save money, she asked Ruth Butcher to share the apartment and the expenses. Harry Butcher, a friend of Milton’s and Ike’s, who had joined the Navy and been commissioned as a lieutenant commander, was going along to London with Eisenhower as the “naval aide”—King had made special arrangements at Eisenhower’s request after Eisenhower explained that he wanted one old, close friend with him.
The weekend before Eisenhower left, John got a leave and took the train from West Point to spend two days with his parents. Father and son discussed life at the Academy, some of the conversations taking place in Eisenhower’s bedroom, as he was flat on his back as a result of taking his typhus, tetanus, smallpox, and typhoid injections all on the same day. When John had to leave, on Sunday afternoon, he hugged his mother, shook hands with his father, and marched down the gravel path to a waiting taxi. At the door he stopped, did an about-face, and—wearing his full cadet uniform—snapped his hand up to his visor in a formal salute. It was more than Mamie could bear; she burst into tears. It was the last family get-together until after the war.
• •
On June 19, just before leaving, Eisenhower wrote a friend, Brigadier General Spencer Akin, who was on MacArthur’s staff, a summary of his six months’ experience in WPD-OPD. It had been a “tough, intensive grind,” Eisenhower said, “but now I’m getting a swell command.” It meant the world to him that he had gained Marshall’s confidence, because he felt “the Chief is a great soldier.” Eisenhower described Marshall as “quick, tough, tireless, decisive and a real leader. He accepts responsibility automatically and never goes back on a subordinate.”22 The last point was particularly important; Eisenhower felt that his greatest asset in London would be the knowledge that as long as he did his job, Marshall would stand behind him.
Marshall had almost as high an opinion of Eisenhower, but all of Eisenhower’s achievements, to date, had been as a staff officer serving under strong-willed superiors. All his superiors, including MacArthur, thought he would be a success as an independent commander, but that was only prediction. No one really knew how he would react when commanding on his own, away from the daily influence of a decisive superior. But Eisenhower himself was confident.
• •
On June 24, Eisenhower arrived in England. There were no bands to greet him, no speeches at the airport, no ceremonies. It was almost the last time in his life he would have such a quiet arrival anywhere. On June 24, he was still unknown to the general public, in America as well as in Britain. But the day following his arrival in London, he held a press conference. An announcement was passed out identifying him as the commander of the American forces in Britain.
From that moment forth, his life was dramatically and unalterably changed. He suddenly became a world figure—in the jargon of World War II, a Very Important Person, or VIP. It hardly mattered that his role was more that of an administrator than a commander, or that the numbers of men under him were relatively small (55,390 officers and men). Precisely because there were so few American forces in Britain, in fact, and because they were not involved in combat, Eisenhower received more coverage. His appointment was a front-page story. Every reporter in London, whether British or American, who could do so attended Eisenhower’s first-ever press conference.
Eisenhower proved to be outstanding at public relations. There was, first and foremost, the man himself. He looked like a soldier. He stood erect, with his square, broad shoulders held back, his head high. His face and hands were always active, his face reddening with anger when he spoke of the Nazis, lighting up as he spoke of the immense forces gathering around the world to crush them. To cameramen, he was pure gold—for them a good photo of Eisenhower, whether tight-lipped and grim or laughing heartily, was usually worth at least two columns on the front page. His relaxed, casual manner was appealing, as was the nickname “Ike,” which seemed to fit so perfectly. His good humor and good looks attracted people. Most reporters found it impossible to be in Eisenhower’s presence and not like him.
His mannerisms complemented his good looks. Recording before a newsreel camera for the movie-theater audience back in the States, he spoke with great earnestness directly into the camera, his eyes riveted on the invisible audience. It was a perfect expression of a devotion to duty that he felt deeply, and it electrified viewers. So too did his manner of speaking bluntly about the difficulties ahead, the problems that had to be met and overcome, all followed by that big grin and a verbal expression of Eisenhower’s bouncy enthusiasm.
He habitually used expressions that immediately identified him as just plain folks. He would speak of someone who “knows the score,” someone else as a “big operator,” or he would say, “I told him to go peddle his papers somewhere else.” He called his superiors the “Big Shots.” He made innumerable references to “my old home town, Abilene,” and described himself as a “simple country boy,” sighing and responding sadly to a question, “That’s just too complicated for a dumb bunny like me.”23
Eisenhower, in short, was an extremely likable person who came to the public’s attention at exactly the right moment in the war. Nothing was happening in the European Theater to write about, but London was overrun with reporters looking for copy.
Throughout the war, Eisenhower manipulated the press, for his own purposes and for the good of the Allied cause. He was more aware of the importance of the press, and better at using it, than any other public figure of his day. This recognition was a result of his instincts and his common sense. In addition, he enjoyed meeting with the press, liked reporters as individuals, knew some of them himself from his long years in Washington, called them by their first names, posed for their photographs, flattered them not only by the attention he paid to them but by telling them that they had a crucial role to play in the war. Eisenhower believed that a democracy could not wage war without popular, widespread support for and understanding of the war effort, which only the press could create. At his first press conference, he told the reporters that he considered them “quasi members of my staff,” part of the “team,” a thought that delighted the reporters no end, and he promised to be open and honest with them always.24 Only the most cynical of reporters could fail to respond to such blandishments.
Eisenhower’s sense of public relations extended far beyond himself. He used the press to sell the idea of Allied unity. He believed that Anglo-American friendship was a sine qua non of final victory, and did all he could to make that friendship genuine and lasting. In the summer of 1942, his major effort was to smooth relations between the British public and the American soldiers, airmen, and sailors who were coming to British Isles in ever-increasing numbers—eventually, more than two million came to the United Kingdom.
Eisenhower, the man at the top, was the most important individual in molding the British attitude toward the U.S. Army. He was aware of it, accepted the responsibility, and met it magnificently. London took him to her heart. He was so big, so generous, so optimistic, so intelligent, so outspoken, so energetic—so American.
Besides being good copy personally, he represented the American military machine that was coming to win the war, so inevitably he was a center of attention. His relations with the London press were as good as with the American. The British appreciated reports that he took them as they were, neither trying to ape their mannerisms nor make fun of their ways. They laughed at an item that related Eisenhower’s practice of levying on the spot a fine of twopence on any American who used a British expression such as “cheerio.”
Another favorite London story concerned Eisenhower’s heavy smoking—he consumed four packs of Camels a day. The American ambassador, deeply embarrassed, had told Eisenhower after a dinner party that it was the custom in England not to smoke at the dinner table before the toast to the King had been drunk. Eisenhower’s response was that he would attend no more formal dinners.
When Mountbatten nevertheless invited him to a dinner, Eisenhower said no. When Mountbatten pressed the point and assured Eisenhower he would not have to curtail his smoking, Eisenhower reluctantly agreed to go. After the sherry, the party sat down to soup. As soon as it was consumed, Mountbatten jumped to his feet and snapped, “Gentlemen, the King!” After the toast, he turned to Eisenhower and said, “Now, General, smoke all you want.”25
With such stories making the rounds, and with his picture in the papers frequently, Eisenhower became a great favorite in London. Taxi drivers would wave; people on the street would wish him good luck.
Beyond the rapport he established with the British public, he got on well with British leaders, best of all with Churchill himself. He soon became a regular weekend visitor at Churchill’s country home, Chequers. Eisenhower’s informality appealed to Churchill, and the Prime Minister responded to him in kind. On the evening of July 5, for example, Eisenhower recorded in his diary, “We spent the early part of the evening on the lawn in front of the house, and . . . took a walk . . . into the neighboring woods, discussing matters of general interest in connection with the war.” After dinner, they saw a movie, then talked until 2:30 A.M. Eisenhower slept that night in a bed Cromwell had slept in.26
Mountbatten frequently accompanied Eisenhower on field exercises; when they went south of London they stayed overnight at Mountbatten’s spacious country estate, Broadlands; when they went north, to Scotland, they stayed on his yacht.
Admiral Sir Andrew B. Cunningham was another member of the British elite who, although he had little in common with the self-described “simple Kansas farmboy,” became one of Eisenhower’s close friends. Cunningham was the embodiment of the Royal Navy, a man of dignity and grace, striking in appearance, cool, competent, and aggressive in action. Cunningham, in a postwar tribute, described how he—and most Britons—reacted to Eisenhower: “I liked him at once. He struck me as being completely sincere, straightforward and very modest. In those early days I rather had the impression that he was not very sure of himself; but who could wonder at that? He was in supreme command of one of the greatest amphibious operations of all time, and was working in a strange country . . . But . . . it was not long before one recognized him as the really great man he is—forceful, able, direct and far-seeing, with great charm of manner, and always with a rather naive wonder at attaining the high position in which he found himself.”27
Throughout the war, Eisenhower’s good relations with the British leadership would be one of his great strengths. The friendships included the leading politicians, the RAF generals, the admirals, and the various British staff officers who worked at his headquarters. The only exceptions were the British Army generals, especially their two leaders, Montgomery and Brooke. Otherwise, Eisenhower’s relations with the British could not have been better, or done more good for the cause of Anglo-American unity.
• •
While Eisenhower was trying to sell the idea of Anglo-American unity in July 1942, on the strategic front little unity in fact existed. The British wanted to invade North Africa in the fall of 1942, while Eisenhower—promoted to lieutenant general that month—wanted to prepare for Roundup, the invasion of France, in April 1943. He was also ready to launch Sledgehammer, a late 1942 invasion of Normandy, if it appeared essential to draw German strength from the Eastern Front.
He recognized that Sledgehammer would almost certainly be a suicide operation, but, he wrote, “we should not forget that the prize we seek is to keep 8,000,000 Russians in the war.” To fail to make an effort to help the Red Army if it appeared on the verge of collapse would be “one of the grossest military blunders of all history.”28
But the British would have no part of Sledgehammer. Roosevelt, meanwhile, wanted an offensive somewhere, and the American Army was not strong enough to launch one on its own. Churchill said it was North Africa or nothing in 1942. Roosevelt decided on North Africa.
Eisenhower was deeply depressed by the decision. He thought that the day it was made, July 22, 1942, could well go down as the “blackest day in history.”29 He felt so strongly because he believed the decision for North Africa (code name Torch) represented passive and defensive thinking.
For Eisenhower personally, the decision was a great break, as Marshall decided to make him the commander of Torch. Putting aside his doubts, Eisenhower went to work with a will. He was determined that the first Anglo-American offensive of the war would be a success and that in the process British and American officers would learn to work together. To that end, he established an integrated staff at Allied Force Headquarters (AFHQ).
Eisenhower’s commitment to the Alliance became legendary. Many stories circulated to illustrate it; one concerned the time General Hastings Ismay, Churchill’s chief staff officer, reported to Eisenhower that he had heard of an American officer who, when drinking at Claridge’s, boasted that the Americans would show the British how to fight. Eisenhower “went white with rage.” He summoned an aide and told him to arrange for the officer to report the next morning. As the aide left the office, Eisenhower hissed to Ismay, “I’ll make the son of a bitch swim back to America.”30 The officer was sent home—by boat.
A week later, Eisenhower heard of a fracas between an American and a British officer on the AFHQ staff. He investigated, decided that the American was at fault, ordered him reduced in rank, and sent back to the States. The British officer involved called on Eisenhower to protest. “He only called me the son of a bitch, sir, and all of us have now learnt that this is a colloquial expression which is sometimes used almost as a term of endearment.” To which Eisenhower replied, “I am informed that he called you a British son of a bitch. That is quite different. My ruling stands.”31
AFHQ was located at Norfolk House on St. James’s Square. Eisenhower’s deputy was Mark Clark. The naval commander was Admiral Cunningham, an appointment that delighted Eisenhower. The British ground troops, organized as the British First Army, would be commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Kenneth Anderson. One part of the American contingent would combat-load in Norfolk, Virginia, and sail across the Atlantic directly to its assault beaches. Eisenhower told Marshall he wanted Patton to command that force, and Marshall complied. The American troops coming out of Britain, organized as II Corps, would be led by Major General Lloyd Fredendall. Marshall had made the selection—Eisenhower hardly knew Fredendall—but the Chief assured Eisenhower that Fredendall was one of the best.
On the basis of his own experience, Eisenhower believed that the most crucial appointment was his chief of staff. He knew the man he wanted, Brigadier General Walter Bedell Smith, currently serving in the War Department as the secretary of the General Staff. Eisenhower sent numerous requests for Smith to Marshall, but Marshall would not let Smith go. The tug-of-war lasted until the end of August, when Marshall finally relented and allowed Smith to go to London.
Smith remained with Eisenhower to the end of the war. He was indispensable. His square jaw and Prussian appearance dominated Eisenhower’s headquarters. He decided who would see the boss and who could not, handled most of the administrative duties, was the “No” man in the office, and frequently represented Eisenhower at meetings, always confident that he was speaking for his boss and represented his thinking. Eisenhower trusted Smith completely and regarded him as a “godsend—a master of detail with clear comprehension of the main issues.” Years later Eisenhower said Smith was like a crutch to a one-legged man, “the perfect chief of staff.”32
Smith was also, as Eisenhower politely put it, “strong in character and abrupt by instinct.” Or, as Eisenhower explained to a British officer, “Remember Beetle [Smith’s nickname] is a Prussian and one must make allowances for it.”33
Smith suffered from an ulcer, and looked it, his face pinched together in constant pain, while his nervous energy kept him in constant motion. Although he could be suave and conciliatory when on a diplomatic mission, he was a terror in his own office, reducing his subordinates to a bundle of shaking nerves. He yelled, bellowed, threatened, and insulted them.
Once when he was holding a conference in his own office his secretary, Ruth Briggs, a gracious lady who later ran for governor of Rhode Island, stuck her head in the door. Smith shouted, “Get the hell out of here.” Without pausing for breath, and before the startled Miss Briggs could withdraw, Smith turned to the officers around the table and declared, “You’ll have to excuse her, gentlemen. She’s an idiot.”34 (After the war, Smith served for a time as the U.S. ambassador to Russia. Eisenhower said he did not approve of professional soldiers serving as diplomats, but then, thinking about the men in the Kremlin having to put up with Smith and his ulcer, he grinned and remarked, “It served those bastards right.”)35
Smith’s most important duty was to be the channel through which the various assistant chiefs of staff at AFHQ communicated with Eisenhower. This duty he handled without strain or fuss. Smith “takes charge of things in a big way,” Eisenhower told a friend shortly after Smith arrived. “I wish I had a dozen like him. If I did, I would simply buy a fishing rod and write home every week about my wonderful accomplishments in winning the war.”36 Smith had two deputies, General Alfred Gruenther, an old friend of Eisenhower’s and one of his favorite bridge partners, and the British Brigadier John F. M. Whiteley; both Gruenther and Whiteley stayed with Eisenhower through the war.
• •
Ike’s life was an unending series of conferences, meetings, debates, trips, and inspections. He was constantly surrounded by people. Yet he complained to Mamie, “This is a lonely existence,” precisely because “I live in a gold fish bowl.”37 He had “no home to go to . . . no exercise, either.” When he was in his hotel room, he found himself constantly wondering, “Why isn’t Mamie here?” He told her he missed her, because “You’re good for me—even for my official efficiency. And please be good to yourself.”38
Like millions of other Americans in World War II, Ike had to face the problem of communicating with his wife for the period of an indefinite separation, with no phone calls allowed for security reasons, when he could not discuss his work and had long since run out of new ways to say, “I love you.” Or, as Ike himself put it, “I take my pen in hand with a feeling of ‘what can I say except to tell her I’m well and just as much in love with her as ever?’ ”39
Ike wrote 319 letters to Mamie during the course of the war (he hated writing by hand, and did so only to Mamie; during one extremely busy period, he dictated a letter, but Mamie’s objections were such that he never did it again). They are love letters of a high quality, not in any literary sense, but in the sense that they provided the reassurance so necessary in a wartime husband-to-wife letter.
“It’s impossible for me to tell you how tremendously I miss you,” he would write, and then assure her that he had her photograph on his office desk, “right in front of my eyes.” He said he thought of her always and wished he could write more often so that she would know “you’re the only person I’m in love with.” On her forty-sixth birthday, he told her, “I’ve loved you for 26 years,” and, “Your love and our son have been my greatest gifts from life.” He worried about her health, and said again and again that he wished she could be with him.
He fantasized about a three-day leave in Miami for the two of them—“I can get all excited just thinking about it”—and about their future. He looked forward to retiring to a rural setting, where “with a few pigs and chickens we can be as happy as a pair of Georgia crackers with a good still! . . . I know that no matter how I fumble the pen . . . you’ll read between the lines that I’m thinking of you, and wishing again that we could have, together, a life in a home of our own.”
Many of his themes were common to men at war. He worried that Mamie was buying too many clothes, and expressed concern about having enough money to pay the income tax. He told her to get the oil changed in the car and to make sure to run it every other day.
He noted the passing of time—“Tomorrow, Sept. 24, Icky would have been 25 years old. Seems rather unbelievable doesn’t it? We could well have been grandparents by this time. I’m sorry we’re not! Lord knows that at times I feel old enough to tack a ‘great, great’ on to it.”
John and his progress at West Point were standard features of the letters. “I’m so tied up in him it hurts,” Ike wrote on August 9. Like every parent, he wondered why John could not write more often. “After all,” Ike wrote, speaking for all fathers, “suppose he’d have had to start at 13 or 14 getting up at 4 or 5 in the morning working through a hot summer day to 9:00 at night—day after day—or doing his winter work with cold chapped hands and not even gloves—maybe he’d think writing a letter wasn’t so terribly difficult!”40
The doings of mutual friends helped fill many a paragraph. Ike usually managed to get in a story about Mickey, or Butch, or Tex Lee. In a typical middle-aged man’s inept way, he had enthusiastically described Kay Summersby to Mamie when he returned from his trip to London in May.
Mamie responded to the news that this good-looking, lively younger woman was suddenly a part of her husband’s life with a predictable coldness. In his next letter, Ike reassured her: “This time they have assigned me an old time Britisher as a chauffeur. He is safe and sane, and seems to know every nook and cranny of the country.” He never mentioned Kay or her new duties as one of his secretaries.
Ike’s special problem was that his every move was reported on, so Mamie nevertheless knew all about Kay, who was one of the featured members of the “Eisenhower family.” Gossip about the general and his former chauffeur was inevitable. In the summer of 1942, it was also baseless; Kay was engaged to be married, and Ike and Kay never had a moment alone together. But to those who knew them both, it was obvious that they enjoyed each other’s company—telling stories and sharing observations and a laugh—enough so to start the rumors. The gossip may have been on Eisenhower’s mind when he wrote to Mamie on October 27, “I’ve liked some—been somewhat intrigued by others—but haven’t been in love with anyone else and don’t want any other wife.”
Although he could not discuss his work, Ike was able to use his letters to Mamie as an outlet for the kind of complaints only she would understand. He was not getting enough sleep; he was smoking too much; British food was awful; he never got a chance to see a movie. And she was the person to whom he could describe the complexities and demands of his job without seeming to brag: “In a place like this the C.G. . . . must be a bit of a diplomat—lawyer—promoter—salesman—social hound—liar (at least to get out of social affairs)—mountebank—actor—Simon Legree—humanitarian—orator—and incidentally . . . a soldier!” Becoming a bit wistful, he wrote, “Soldiering is no longer a simple thing of shouting ‘Turn boys turn!’ ” To Mamie, he could confess that he was delighted to have “no conferences” on his schedule that day. “I’m getting to hate the sound of that word.”
Most of all, Ike used his wartime letters to Mamie to clear his mind and spend a half hour thinking only of her, and John, and their life together, and not about the war. “When I see the unhappiness here,” he wrote, “I thank the Lord that somewhere, some people, can have their minds relatively free . . . I want you to be happy as you can—and how I wish you were living here! You cannot imagine how much you added to my efficiency in the hard months at Washington. Even I didn’t realize it then; at least not fully—but I do now, and I’m grateful to you.”41
• •
Eisenhower planned to go to Gibraltar on November 2, to take command of the Rock, the best communications center in the area, and direct the invasion from there. Bad weather prevented the flight on November 2 and again on the third; on the fourth, Eisenhower ordered his reluctant pilot, Major Paul Tibbets (by reputation the best flier in the Army Air Forces; he later flew the Enola Gay on the first atomic-bomb mission), to ignore the weather and take off. Six B-17 Flying Fortresses, carrying Eisenhower and most of his staff, got through safely, but only after engine trouble, weather problems, and an attack by a German fighter airplane had been overcome.
After a bumpy landing, Eisenhower went to his headquarters, which were in the subterranean passages. Offices were caves where the cold, damp air stagnated and stank. Despite the inconveniences, Eisenhower got a great kick out of being in actual command of the Rock of Gibraltar, one of the symbols of the British Empire. “I simply must have a grandchild,” he scribbled in his diary, “or I’ll never have the fun of telling this when I’m fishing, gray-bearded, on the banks of a quiet bayou in the deep South.”42
He had little time to gloat or enjoy. British and American troops under his command were about to invade a neutral territory, without a declaration of war, without provocation, and with only a hope, not a promise, that the French colonial army would greet them as liberators rather than aggressors. He hoped he could find a high-ranking French officer who would cooperate, but was frustrated. Disgusted, he exploded, “All of these Frogs have a single thought—‘ME.’ ”43
Patton was leading an invading force that had loaded, combat-ready, in Norfolk, Virginia, thousands of miles away from its destination at Casablanca, where to add to the worries the surf was one of the highest in the world. The British contingent had to sail past Gibraltar, where the Spanish might turn on them. What the French would do, no one knew.
In short, Eisenhower, in his first experience in combat or in command, faced problems that were serious in the extreme, and as much political as military. His staff was at least as tense as he was, and looked to him for leadership. It was a subject he had studied for decades. It was not an art in his view, but a skill to be learned. “The one quality that can be developed by studious reflection and practice is the leadership of men,” he wrote John at West Point.44 Here was his chance to show that he had developed it.
In the event, he not only exercised it, but learned new lessons. It was “during those anxious hours” in Gibraltar, he later wrote in a draft introduction to his memoirs that he finally decided to discard, “that I first realized how inexorably and inescapably strain and tension wear away at the leader’s endurance, his judgment and his confidence. The pressure becomes more acute because of the duty of a staff constantly to present to the commander the worst side of an eventuality.” In this situation, Eisenhower realized, the commander had to “preserve optimism in himself and in his command. Without confidence, enthusiasm and optimism in the command, victory is scarcely obtainable.”
Eisenhower also realized that “optimism and pessimism are infectious and they spread more rapidly from the head downward than in any other direction.” He saw two additional advantages to a cheerful and hopeful attitude by the commander: First, the “habit tends to minimize potentialities within the individual himself to become demoralized.” Second, it “has a most extraordinary effect upon all with whom he comes in contact. With this clear realization, I firmly determined that my mannerisms and speech in public would always reflect the cheerful certainty of victory—that any pessimism and discouragement I might ever feel would be reserved for my pillow. I adopted a policy of circulating through the whole force to the full limit imposed by physical considerations. I did my best to meet everyone from general to private with a smile, a pat on the back and a definite interest in his problems.”45
He did his best, from that moment to the end of his life, to conceal with a big grin the ache in his bones and the exhaustion in his mind.
• •
There was a great deal more that went into Eisenhower’s success as a leader of men, of course. As he put it on another occasion, the art of leadership is making the right decisions, then getting men to want to carry them out. But the words he wrote about his learning experience on the Rock, words that he was too modest to put into the published version of his memoirs, are a classic expression of one of the most critical aspects of leadership, perfectly said by a man who knew more about the subject than almost anyone else.