BY THE TIME of the surrender, Eisenhower had become the symbol of the forces that had combined to defeat the Nazis, and of the hopes for a better world. His worldwide popularity was immense. He inspired a confidence that can only be marveled at, rather than accurately measured. In the months following the surrender at Reims, whenever a big job had to be done, his name just naturally came up. Edward R. Murrow told President Truman that Eisenhower was the “only man in the world” who could make the United Nations work. Sidney Hillman, the labor politician, said that Eisenhower was the “only man” who could guide Germany into a democratic future. Alan Brooke told Eisenhower that if there were another war, “we would entrust our last man and our last shilling to your Command.”1 Democratic and Republican politicians alike felt that Eisenhower was the “only man” who could win for them in 1948. Truman himself, in July 1945, told Eisenhower, “General, there is nothing that you may want that I won’t try to help you get. That definitely and specifically includes the presidency in 1948.”2
Eisenhower’s personal desire was for a quiet retirement with perhaps a bit of writing and lecturing. But fulfillment of that desire had to wait another sixteen years, because the nation continued to call him to her service, on the grounds that he was the “only man” who could do the job and it was therefore his “duty” to accept. He served in five positions—as head of the American Occupation Zone in Germany, as Chief of Staff, as president of Columbia University, as the Supreme Commander of NATO, and as President of the United States. In each instance, he accepted the responsibility reluctantly, or so at least he told himself, his friends, and the public. There can be no doubt, however, that he enjoyed the challenge, the stimulation, and the satisfaction that his work provided, and that he was, from age fifty-four to age seventy, too active, too involved, too alive, to simply retire. Nor was he immune to the pleasures of power and its uses.
But although Eisenhower’s postwar career led to eight years at the pinnacle of world power, it was the case for Eisenhower, as it had been for Washington and Grant before him, that after the war the great moments of his life were behind him. Despite their success in politics, nothing that happened to Washington after Valley Forge and Yorktown, and nothing that happened to Grant after the Wilderness and Appomattox, could surpass those experiences for drama, importance, or personal satisfaction. So too for Eisenhower—nothing could ever surpass D-Day and Reims.
• •
When news of the surrender was flashed around the world, it was, in Churchill’s words, “the signal for the greatest outburst of joy in the history of mankind.” For Eisenhower, the weeks that followed were full of activity—making arrangements with the Russians, occupation duties, diplomatic difficulties, redeploying the American troops in Europe to the Pacific, entertaining visiting VIPs—but most of his energy went into a hectic, exhausting, satisfying, prolonged celebration.
It began on May 15, when he accepted an invitation to spend a night in London. John, Kay, Jimmy Gault, and Bradley joined him. They took along eighteen bottles of the best champagne in Reims, ate a buffet supper at the Dorchester Hotel, then went to the theater. Kay’s mother was a part of the party, and Kay sat beside the general in their box at the theater, which resulted in a famous photograph and added to the gossip about their relationship. It was the first time Eisenhower had seen a show or eaten in a restaurant in three years, indeed his first public appearance since July 1942, and he was astonished to discover how famous and popular he had become. People at the theater cheered, shouted, and called out, “Speech, Speech!” when they saw him. From his box in the balcony he rose and said, “It’s nice to be back in a country where I can almost speak the language.”3
The grand centerpiece of the victory celebration came in June, at Guildhall, in the City of London. Churchill insisted that Eisenhower participate in the formal celebration and ignored Eisenhower’s request that the ceremonies “be such as to avoid over-glorification of my own part in the victories of this Allied team.” Attention centered on Eisenhower. He was told that he would make the principal speech, to a large audience that would include every high-ranking military and civil official in the United Kingdom, in a historic hall filled with British pomp and circumstance at its most extreme and impressive, and that he would receive the Duke of Wellington’s sword. He took the assignment with the utmost seriousness, because “this was the first formal address of any length that I had to give on my own.” He worked on the speech nightly for three weeks, read it aloud innumerable times to Butcher, Kay, and anyone else who would listen. Butcher suggested that he memorize it, which would give the appearance of spontaneity and allow him to speak without wearing his spectacles. Eisenhower agreed.4
The ceremony was held in the morning on June 12. An hour or so before it began, Eisenhower went for a walk in Hyde Park, alone, to collect his thoughts. He was spotted, then surrounded by a mob of well-wishers (it was the last time in his life he ever attempted to go out alone in a city). He had to be rescued by a policeman. From the Dorchester, he and Tedder rode into the City of London in a horse-drawn carriage, past the destruction and rubble around St. Paul’s, to bomb-scarred Guildhall. Eisenhower received the sword from the bewigged Lord Mayor of London.
Then Eisenhower began his speech by saying that his sense of appreciation for the high honor being done him was tempered by a sense of sadness, because “humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in blood of his followers and sacrifices of his friends.” He spoke of the great Allied team and insisted that he was only a symbol, that the awards and acclaim he was receiving belonged to all the team.
“I come from the very heart of America,” he said. He spoke of the differences in age and size between Abilene and London, but then pointed to the kinship between them. “To preserve his freedom of worship, his equality before law, his liberty to speak and act as he sees fit . . . a Londoner will fight. So will a citizen of Abilene. When we consider these things, then the valley of the Thames draws closer to the farms of Kansas.” Then, again, he referred to “the great team” that he had led. “No man alone could have brought about [the victory]. Had I possessed the military skill of a Marlborough, the wisdom of Solomon, the understanding of Lincoln, I still would have been helpless without the loyalty, vision, and generosity of thousands upon thousands of British and Americans.”5
The London newspapers the following day, in what Eisenhower called “an excess of friendly misjudgment,” compared the speech to the Gettysburg Address. After he finished, Churchill took him to the balcony to greet a crowd of thirty thousand in the streets below. “Whether you know it or not,” Eisenhower responded to the demands for a speech, “I am now a Londoner myself. I have as much right to be down in the crowd yelling as you have.” Butcher, the professional public-relations man, was impressed. “[Ike’s] words,” he said, “came as naturally as if he had rehearsed them for a week.”6
• •
Eisenhower was the focus of ceremonies in Prague, Paris, and other European capitals, and most of all in the United States. Together with Marshall, he made detailed plans for the return home of his top commanders, so that Bradley, Patton, Hodges, Simpson, and the corps and division commanders would each get their share of the applause of a grateful nation. He himself came home last, because Marshall insisted that anyone who came after Eisenhower would be distinctly anticlimactic.
Eisenhower’s triumphant return took place in late June. Huge crowds greeted him and he made numerous speeches. The most important was to a joint session of Congress. Marshall sent him a draft of a speech to read at the Capitol; Eisenhower thanked him for it but said he preferred to speak extemporaneously. The result was a speech full of platitudes and eternal verities, but it was spoken with such sincerity and emotion that it quite overcame the audience. The politicians gave General Eisenhower a standing ovation that was the longest in the history of Congress, and there was not a man in the hall who did not think to himself how wonderful General Eisenhower would look standing at that podium as President Eisenhower.
Later that day, John joined his father for the flight to New York. As they settled into their seats, Eisenhower commented, “Well, now I’ve got to figure out what I am going to say when I get there.” There were an estimated two million people in his audience outside City Hall. His theme was “I’m just a Kansas farmer boy who did his duty,” and The New York Times acclaimed his speech as “masterful.”7
He was in great demand as a speaker. Invitations came in a flood, from the rich, the famous, the heads of worthy organizations and old universities, friends; everyone wanted him to speak. All the causes were good ones; he hated to say no to any of them. But as he told a friend, “One of my greatest horrors is a garrulous general.”8 So far as possible, he held his speechmaking down to a minimum, and except for the Guildhall address he put in a minimum amount of preparation. He usually hit the right note. In Abilene, twenty thousand people (four times the city’s population) gathered in City Park to welcome him home. “Through this world it has been my fortune, or misfortune, to wander at considerable distances,” Eisenhower said. “Never has this town been outside my heart and memory.”9
In brief, whether as a writer, or formal speaker, or testifying before congressional committees, or making an impromptu talk to a street crowd, or just riding in an open car, waving his hands like a prizefighter and grinning broadly, and whether in Prague or Paris or London or New York, Eisenhower was a tremendous success. His first words when he stepped off the plane in Washington on June 18 made headlines the next day—“Oh, God, it’s swell to be back!” Trailing along behind his triumphant parade in New York, Butcher heard numerous comments—“He waved at me.” “Isn’t he handsome?” “He’s marvelous!” In Washington, Dr. Arthur Burns, an economist at George Washington University, watched Eisenhower drive past in his convertible, caught the friendliness he projected, turned to his wife and said, “This man is absolutely a natural for the Presidency.”10
• •
Thus did the celebration of the victory add to the already widespread talk about Eisenhower for President. During the war, Eisenhower had responded to such suggestions with a snort or a grunt. When Truman said he would support Eisenhower for the Presidency in 1948, Eisenhower laughed at the idea and replied, “Mr. President, I don’t know who will be your opponent for the presidency, but it will not be I.”11 It was an interesting choice of words, as the sentence seemed to identify Eisenhower as a Republican (a subject on which there was intense speculation), and indicated that Eisenhower was shrewd enough to realize that whatever Truman was saying in 1945, Truman himself would be a candidate in 1948.
In August 1945, an old friend from Fort Sam Houston wrote to say he and others in San Antonio were “ready and anxious to organize an ‘Eisenhower for President’ Club.” Eisenhower replied that he was flattered by the suggestion, “But I must tell you, with all the emphasis I can command, that nothing could be so distasteful to me as to engage in political activity of any kind. I trust that no friend of mine will ever attempt to put me in the position where I would even be called upon to deny political ambitions.” To Mamie, he wrote, “Many people seem astounded that I’d have no slightest interest in politics. I can’t understand them.”12
• •
What he wanted to do was retire. Failing that, he wanted his wife at his side. It was sixteen years before he could achieve the first objective, six months before he realized the second.
Five days after the surrender, Ike wrote his wife to say that he was at work on developing a policy that would make it possible for her to join him in Europe. He wanted her to come as soon as suitable quarters could be found, but warned that it would be difficult and might take time, because “the country is devastated. . . . It is a bleak picture. Why the Germans ever let the thing go as far as they did is completely beyond me!” 13
On June 4, Eisenhower wrote Marshall. He proposed a policy to bring to Germany wives of enlisted men and officers on occupation duty. He then made his personal case. “I will admit that the last six weeks have been my hardest of the war,” he said. “My trouble is that I just plain miss my family.” He said he got to see John, then assigned to the 1st Division, about once a month, which was not enough. As to Mamie, he was worried about her health (she had just entered the hospital, suffering from a persistent cold, her weight down to 102 pounds). In a heartfelt plea, he commented, “The strain of the past three years has also been very considerable so far as my wife is concerned, and because of the fact that she has had trouble with her general nervous system for many years I would feel far more comfortable about her if she could be with me.” 14
Three things stand out about the letter. First, the depth of Ike’s love and concern for his wife. Second, his concern for what people thought of him. Third, his continued subordination of himself to Marshall. Eisenhower was, after all, Marshall’s equal in rank, a five-star general. The other five-star generals—Arnold, MacArthur, and Marshall—had all had their wives at their sides throughout the war. Eisenhower must have known that MacArthur most certainly did not ask Marshall’s permission to have Jean join him at his headquarters. Eisenhower did not have to ask Marshall’s permission in order to live with his wife; all he had to do was tell her to come on over.
Marshall’s response is also extraordinary and caused a subsequent furor. Marshall took the letter to the President for consultation. Truman told him “No,” Mamie could not go, as it would be unfair to all the others. Decades later, long after Truman had broken with Eisenhower and at a time when Truman was approaching senility, the former President told reporter Merle Miller, for his book Plain Speaking, that Eisenhower had written to Marshall in June 1945 asking permission to divorce Mamie in order to marry Kay. According to Truman’s story, he and Marshall agreed that they could never allow such a thing to happen. They told Eisenhower “No,” threatened to ruin his career if he did go through with a divorce, and then destroyed the letter.15
The story was widely reported in 1973, and widely believed, but completely untrue. Eisenhower did not want to divorce Mamie, he wanted to live with her.
Eisenhower’s respect for Marshall and his concern about his own image were so great that, in his response to Marshall’s message turning down his request, he apologized for bothering Marshall with a personal problem. Eisenhower said he understood that “from every standpoint of logic and public relations the thing is impossible.” 16 He then wrote Mamie to give her the bad news and to tell her, “You cannot be any more tired than I of this long separation, particularly at my age.” He said he had talked to John and persuaded him to drop his request for transfer to the Pacific, in order to be around headquarters so that they could be together. “Johnny is really anxious to go to the Pacific,” Eisenhower wrote Mamie, “but he realizes I am lonely and need him.”17
John later wrote that the postsurrender months were “probably the period in my entire life when Dad and I were closest.” He was stationed within a half hour’s drive. “Dad was a lonely man at that time, let down after the excitement of the war,” John recognized, and he tried to help by spending as much time as possible with his father. He went along on trips, including Eisenhower’s whirlwind tour of the States in June.18
That journey was a disappointment to Mamie, because she had to give up her man to the public. When she met her husband’s plane at the Washington airport, she had only the briefest kiss and hug before Ike was hustled off to the Pentagon. For the next eight days, he was constantly making public appearances. Finally, on June 25, Ike, Mamie, John, and Mamie’s parents went to White Sulphur Springs for a week of privacy. But as Ike later wrote Charles Harger of Abilene, “In those few days the reaction from the war months and from a rapid series of celebrations was so great that I really didn’t get to settle down and relax.”19 When Ike got back to Germany, Mamie wrote about her disappointment over the visit and confessed that she was “back down in the dumps.” Ike assured her, “If you’d just once understand how exclusively I love you and long for you then you’d realize how much the week at White Sulphur meant.” He said that as a result of the trip, “My hatred of Washington is even greater than it used to be. Which is saying a lot!” and blamed her depression on the city—“I don’t see how you could help it [living] in Washington.”20
What to do about Kay was becoming a problem. She was not a U.S. citizen and therefore could not retain her commission as a WAC or continue working for Eisenhower. In October, she decided to go to the States to take out citizenship papers. When she returned to Germany, Eisenhower asked General Lucius Clay, in Berlin, to give her a job in his office. He told Clay that “I hope you will find a really good job for her and I know that you will remember that she has not only served me with the utmost faithfulness and loyalty but has had more than her share of tragedy to bear in this war. Incidentally, she is about as close-mouthed a person about office business as I ever heard of.”21 To Smith, Eisenhower confessed that he felt bad about Kay, because he knew that “she feels very deserted and alone.”22
Then, to Kay herself, he dictated a long, businesslike letter that explained why she could no longer work for him. He said he would “not attempt to express the depth of my appreciation for the unexcelled loyalty and faithfulness with which you have worked under my personal direction,” and that he was “personally much distressed that an association which has been so valuable to me has to be terminated in this particular fashion.” After promising to do anything he could to help her get started on a new career, he concluded, “Finally, I hope that you will drop me a note from time to time—I will always be interested to know how you are getting along.” Then he added a handwritten postscript—“Take care of yourself—and retain your optimism.”23
Kay left the WAC, became a U.S. citizen, and moved to New York. In late 1947 she became engaged, set a date for the wedding, and sent Eisenhower an invitation. He politely declined in a warm but formal reply. Kay soon broke her engagement, however, leading Eisenhower to write in his diary on December 2, 1947, “Heard today . . . that my wartime secretary (rather personal aide and receptionist) is in dire straits.” Eisenhower blamed Kay’s emotional problems on the death of Colonel Arnold in North Africa in 1943, and commented, “Too bad, she was loyal and efficient and the favorite of everyone in the organization. . . . I trust she pulls herself together, but she is Irish and tragic.”24
In 1948, Kay published a book about her war experiences, Eisenhower Was My Boss. It was a great success and, along with the fees she earned on a lecture tour, made her financially independent. After Eisenhower moved to New York City, in 1948, Kay managed to “accidentally” run into him near his office; he was curt and, by her later account, dismissed her by saying, “Kay, it’s impossible. There’s nothing I can do.”25
In 1952, Kay married Reginald Morgan, a New York stockbroker. Then came the publication of Plain Speaking (1973), which led Kay to publish a new book of memoirs, Past Forgetting: My Love Affair with Dwight D. Eisenhower. In her introduction, Kay said she had been first surprised, then pleased, to discover from Truman’s story that Eisenhower had wanted to divorce Mamie to marry her. As Eisenhower was by then dead, and she herself was dying of cancer, she said she had decided to tell the whole truth about their famous affair.
Whether she told the “whole truth” or not, no one can tell. If she did, then General Eisenhower was sexually impotent throughout the war. Kay’s book, as a whole, was a vivid and moving account of a wartime romance that was both frustrating and exciting. Nowhere did she claim too much for her own role in his life, but she was always around, a keen and sensitive observer who was, for her part, deeply in love with her boss. Whether Eisenhower loved her in turn or not is less certain, although obviously he had strong feelings about her. In fact, she was the third most important woman in his life, behind only his mother and his wife. But he never thought of marrying Kay, and Kay knew that all along. Mamie, meanwhile, was naturally resentful about Kay, and even Ike, who was so inept in such matters, realized that he could not have both Mamie and Kay. In that circumstance, he unhesitatingly chose Mamie.
No matter how successfully, coldly, even cruelly, he thereafter avoided Kay, the Eisenhower-Summersby romance was too good a story to disappear, and over the years the various rumors and gossip continued to irritate Mamie. When Plain Speaking and Past Forgetting were published, she was so upset that she authorized John to publish Eisenhower’s wartime letters to her, which had previously been sealed. The book that resulted, Letters to Mamie, established conclusively that throughout the war years, when Eisenhower was with Kay, his love for Mamie was constant. Throughout the war, his sustaining force was the thought that when it was over he and Mamie could live together again. He loved Mamie for half a century.
But loving Mamie did not necessarily preclude loving Kay. At least, loving her under the special situation in which they lived from the summer of 1942 to the spring of 1945. He was lucky to have her around, and the Allies were lucky she was there. The best advice in attempting to pass any judgment on the Eisenhower-Summersby relationship was that given by Hughes to Tex Lee back in 1943. “Leave Kay and Ike alone. She’s helping him win the war.”26
• •
Eisenhower’s occupation headquarters were in the I. G. Farben offices in Frankfurt. His hatred for the Nazis led him to issue strict orders forbidding any fraternization of any kind under any circumstances.
In taking such a tough stance, Eisenhower was expressing accurately the spirit of his operating instructions, which were contained in a document called JCS 1067 (Joint Chiefs of Staff Paper #1067) which had been sent to him on April 26. JCS 1067 was based on the assumption that all Germans were guilty, although some were more guilty than others. It forbade any fraternization between the occupying forces and the Germans. It called for the automatic arrest of large numbers of Germans who had participated in various Nazi organizations. It insisted on denazification, primarily by removing Nazis from public office or positions of importance in public and private enterprises.
It was an impossible policy to enforce, especially the parts about fraternization and the elimination of former Nazis from all positions of responsibility. Eisenhower was slow to realize these obvious truths. Human nature, however, forced him to change his views, first of all with regard to nonfraternization. There was no way in the world to keep GIs whose pockets were bulging with cigarettes and candy away from German girls when most German boys were in P.O.W. camps—where they were suffering terribly because of Eisenhower’s insistence that they receive no more food than displaced persons being held in camps. It was Stalin who told his troops that in Germany only the unborn were innocent, but Eisenhower’s policies were based on the same principle. The GIs, however, saw little blond, hungry kids, not guilty Nazis, and acted acccordingly.
In June, Eisenhower admitted that it was almost impossible to enforce the nonfraternization rules in the case of small children, and he of course recognized that it was simply silly to forbid soldiers to talk to or give candy bars or chewing gum to German children. Finally, in July, official orders on nonfraternization were amended to include the phrase “except small children.” Ultimately the nonfraternization policy became a major embarrassment and was quietly dropped.
Denazification, however, was pursued with sustained vigor, and with the enthusiastic backing of General Eisenhower. His insistence on its application, in fact, was so strong that it led to a breakup of his friendship with Patton.
In Eisenhower’s view, if it was a mistake to regard all Germans as guilty, it was certainly correct to regard all Nazis as guilty. In a series of general orders, he directed that no one who had ever been associated with the Nazi party be allowed to hold any position of importance in the American zone. His subordinates in the field complained that the policy was unrealistic. Patton, in command in Bavaria, was the most outspoken. On August 11, he wrote Eisenhower that “a great many inexperienced or inefficient people” were holding positions in local government “as a result of the so-called de-Nazification program.” Patton said that “it is no more possible for a man to be a civil servant in Germany and not have paid lip service to Nazism than it is possible for a man to be a postmaster in America and not have paid at least lip service to the Democratic Party, or the Republican Party when it is in power.”27
Patton continued to use Nazis to run Bavaria. On September 11, Eisenhower wrote Patton a letter that was designed to set him straight on the issue. “Reduced to its fundamentals,” Eisenhower told Patton, “the United States entered this war as a foe of Nazism; victory is not complete until we have eliminated from positions of responsibility and in appropriate cases properly punished, every active adherent to the Nazi party.” He insisted that “we will not compromise with Nazism in any way . . . The discussional stage of this question is long past . . . I expect just as loyal service in the execution of this policy . . . as I received during the war.”28
Eisenhower followed up the letter with a personal visit to Patton to emphasize his concern. He said he wanted to extend denazification to cover the whole of German life, not just public positions. But Eisenhower could not convince Patton; as he reported to Marshall, “The fact is that his own convictions are not entirely in sympathy with the ‘hard peace’ concept and, being Patton, he cannot keep his mouth shut either to his own subordinates or in public.”29
Patton was trying his best to stifle himself. “I hope you know, Ike, that I’m keeping my mouth shut,” he protested. “I’m a clam.” But he opened up on September 22, at a press conference. A reporter asked him why reactionaries were still in power in Bavaria. “Reactionaries!” Patton exploded. “Do you want a lot of communists?” After a pause, he said, “I don’t know anything about parties. . . . The Nazi thing is just like a Democratic and Republican election fight.”30
The remark caused a sensation. Eisenhower ordered Patton to report to him in Frankfurt. Patton did so. On the day he arrived, Kay recalled, “General Eisenhower came in looking as though he hadn’t slept a wink. I knew at once he had decided to take action against his old friend. He had aged ten years in reaching the decision . . . When General Patton came in, followed by Beetle, the office door closed. But I heard one of the stormiest sessions ever staged in our headquarters. It was the first time I ever heard General Eisenhower really raise his voice.”31
Eisenhower tried to convince Patton that denazification was essential to the making of a new Germany. Patton tried to convince Eisenhower that the Red Army was the real threat and that the Germans were the real friends. Red-faced, furious, shouting, dealing with the most basic issues, the two old friends reached an impasse. Eisenhower was almost horrified by some of Patton’s views on the Russians, and by his loose talk about driving the Red Army back to the Volga. He later told his son that he would have to remove Patton “not for what he’s done—just for what he’s going to do next.” Eisenhower and Patton parted in cold silence. The next day, Eisenhower relieved Patton as commander of the Third Army and put him in a paper command, head of a Theater Board studying lessons from the war. According to one of his biographers, as Patton reflected on the disintegration of his friendship with Eisenhower, he “believed he saw the truth of Henry Adams’ phrase that a friend in power is a friend lost.”32
On October 12 Eisenhower held a press conference in Frankfurt. The New York Times reported that he spoke “emphatically, and at times bitterly against the Nazis” and insisted that denazification was being carried out.33 And it certainly was true that the arrest, trial, and punishment of former Nazis went much further in the American zone than in any of the other three zones. The Americans brought charges against some three million Germans, actually tried two million of them, and punished nearly one million.
All around him, in Frankfurt, in Berlin, in his trips through Germany and Europe, he saw the horrible destruction of war. Germany was pulverized almost beyond belief or repair. “The country is devastated,” he told Mamie. “Whole cities are obliterated; and the German population, to say nothing of millions of former slave laborers, is largely homeless.” His inspection trips to German cities, to former concentration camps, to current displaced persons’ camps, and his practical and immediate responsibility for handling the problems involved gave him an awareness of the consequences of war that caused him to swear to himself “never again.” He told Mamie, “I hope another American shell never has to be fired in Europe,” while to a friend he said, “Certainly Germany should not want to see any more high explosives for the next hundred years; I am quite sure that some of the cities will never be re-built.”34
Worst damaged of all the nations of Europe was Russia. If Eisenhower had thought that nothing could compare to Germany, he learned better in August, when he flew from Berlin to Moscow, at only a few hundred feet of altitude. He did not see a single house standing intact from the Russian-Polish border to Moscow. Not one.
The development of the atomic bomb added to his conviction that war had become too terrible to ever again be a viable option. He hated to hear talk about the “next war” and would not allow his staff or subordinates to indulge in it. This was the major reason he was so furious with Patton, whose irresponsible talk about driving the Red Army beyond the Volga appalled Eisenhower.
Peace, Eisenhower knew, depended above all on Soviet-American relations. As he explained to Henry Wallace in the summer of 1945, in response to a letter from Wallace congratulating him on his success in getting along with the Russians in Germany, “So far as a soldier should have opinions about such things, I am convinced that friendship—which means an honest desire on both sides to strive for mutual understanding between Russia and the United States—is absolutely essential to world tranquillity.”35 When a reporter asked him at a June press conference about a possible “Russo-American war,” Eisenhower’s face went red with anger. He insisted sharply that there was no possibility of such a war. “The peace lies, when you get down to it, with all the peoples of the world,” he explained, and “not just . . . with some political leader . . . If all the peoples are friendly, we are going to have peace. . . . I have found the individual Russian one of the friendliest persons in the world.”36
It was a theme he would repeat over and over, in speeches, at congressional hearings, in his private letters, in conversation. He was not so naive as to think that friendliness would eliminate the manifold difficulties facing the U.S.-U.S.S.R. relationship, but he was sure that there would be no success without a generally friendly and trusting spirit, while “the alternative to success seemed so terrifying to contemplate” that he insisted on approaching the Russians on the basis of friendship and trust. He hoped that in his contacts and dealings with the Russians in Berlin, where the two nations had to work together, he could establish a “spirit [that would] spread beyond Germany to our own capitals.” If that could be done, “we could eventually live together as friends and ultimately work together in world partnership.”37 He also recognized that a major obstacle would be Russian suspicion and distrust of the United States. He made it a personal goal to do everything he could to alleviate that suspicion and distrust.
On June 5, Eisenhower went to Berlin to meet with the Russians and to establish the Allied Control Council. He immediately struck up a warm friendship with Marshal Grigori Zhukov. Despite the language barrier, the two soldiers got on famously. They respected each other and enjoyed talking about professional matters, political philosophy, and indeed a wide range of subjects. They also found they could work together and quickly reached an agreement whereby the United States troops pulled out of the Russian zone, while the Western powers sent their forces into Berlin.
Over the weeks that followed, Eisenhower and Zhukov were often together. They studied each other’s campaigns, and their admiration one for the other grew apace. Eisenhower told Montgomery that Zhukov “was in a class by himself . . . His narrative of his campaigns (and he was always at the critical point) coupled with his statement of reasons for each action that he took, including his exploitation of weapons and arms in which he had a superiority, his concern for weather, and his care in providing fully for administration before he delivered his blow, all added up to making him a standout.”38 When Zhukov came to Frankfurt for a visit, Eisenhower hosted an elaborate dinner. In a long and flattering toast to Zhukov (“To no one man do the United Nations owe a greater debt than to Marshal Zhukov”), Eisenhower said that what they both wanted was peace, and they wanted it so badly that “we are going to have peace if we have to fight for it. This war was a holy war,” he added; “more than any other in history this war has been an array of the forces of evil against those of righteousness.”39
Stalin too wanted to meet Eisenhower. He told Harry Hopkins in late May that he hoped Eisenhower could come to Moscow on June 24 for the victory parade. Averell Harriman, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, urged Eisenhower to accept and said there was “no doubt that Stalin was anxious to have him.”40 Eisenhower could not make it for the victory parade, but in August he did fly to Moscow, accompanied by Zhukov, who stayed with him throughout his trip. It was a triumphal march, although the devastation everywhere was depressing. Eisenhower saw most of the sights—the Kremlin, the subway, a collective farm, a tractor factory, etc. He attended a soccer game and delighted the crowd by throwing his arm around Zhukov’s shoulder. At a sports parade in Red Square, which lasted for hours and involved tens of thousands of athletes, Eisenhower was invited by Stalin to stand on Lenin’s Tomb, a unique honor for a non-Communist and non-Russian.
Another unique honor came when Stalin apologized to him for the actions of the Red Army in April 1945, when it advanced toward Berlin rather than toward Dresden, as Stalin had told Eisenhower it would. As Eisenhower reported to Marshall, “Stalin explained in detail the military reasons for the last-minute change but said that I had the right to charge him with lack of frankness and this he would not want me to believe.”41
Eisenhower made a strong impression on Stalin. The Russian dictator talked to him at great length, emphasizing how badly the Soviet Union needed American help in recovering from the war. He said that the Russians realized they needed not only American money, but American technicians and scientific assistance. Eisenhower’s sympathetic response was much appreciated by Stalin. When Eisenhower left, Stalin told Harriman, “General Eisenhower is a very great man, not only because of his military accomplishments but because of his human, friendly, kind and frank nature. He is not a ‘grubi’ [coarse, brusque] man like most military,”42
Eisenhower was in his turn impressed by Stalin. He told a New York Times correspondent that Stalin was “benign and fatherly,” and that he sensed “a genuine atmosphere of hospitality.” At a press conference in Moscow, he declared, “I see nothing in the future that would prevent Russia and the United States from being the closest possible friends.” But while he was in Moscow, two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, and suddenly he did see an immediate danger to friendly relations. “Before the atom bomb was used,” he told a journalist, “I would have said yes, I was sure we could keep peace with Russia. Now, I don’t know. I had hoped the bomb wouldn’t figure in this war . . . People are frightened and disturbed all over. Everyone feels insecure again.”43
• •
On November 20, Truman accepted Marshall’s resignation as Chief of Staff and appointed Eisenhower in his place. Eisenhower, meanwhile, came down with a “speaker’s throat,” as he called it; in fact he too had bronchial pneumonia. Nevertheless, he forced himself to fly to Chicago to speak before the American Legion on the subject of postwar defense, then returned to Washington and more testifying. On November 22, the doctors put him into the hospital, at White Sulphur Springs. He stayed there for nearly two weeks. He came out on December 3, on which date he took up his duties as Chief of Staff. As he told Swede Hazlett, in a letter dictated while he was in the hospital, “The job I am taking now represents nothing but straight duty.”44
If being the head of an occupation force in Germany had been a thankless and unwelcome task, being Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army as it demobilized was worse. Eisenhower anticipated, correctly, interminable battles with the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff over the issues of universal military training and unification of the armed services, and battles with Congress over the issues of demobilization and the size and strength of the postwar Army. He entered these conflicts not as a supreme commander with a single overriding goal, but as one among equals in power within the JCS, and as a supplicant in his dealings with Congress. On every major front, he was forced to give way or give in; the contrast between the total victory he had just won in Germany and the agonizing struggles and compromises and retreats he would have to endure as Chief of Staff was complete. Small wonder that shortly after taking up his duties he could write his son, John, that the Pentagon “was a sorry place to light after having commanded a theater of war.”45
Completely new to him was his role as spokesman for the Army. Aside from the Guildhall address, he had never been a public speaker. Now the demands were constant. Every organization in America, it sometimes seemed, wanted him as the principal speaker at its annual meeting, while every congressional committee that had the remotest connection with the War Department wanted the Chief of Staff to testify before it, thus giving the politicians an opportunity to have their picture taken with Eisenhower. In his first year as Chief of Staff, Eisenhower made forty-six major speeches to national organizations, or nearly one per week. He testified before Congress on thirteen occasions. In his second year, 1947, the figures were a little less—thirty and twelve.
The American public loved to hear him speak, and the content and delivery of his speeches could not have done more to add to his luster. The more often he spoke, the more the invitations poured in. He tried to hold his appearances down to a minimum; to one prominent congressman, over the telephone, he said, “Talking Generals are not a very good thing for our country,” and begged to be excused. In 1946, he told a friend, “I have always hated talking Generals—I can’t understand why there is so much pressure put upon me to appear at every kind of gathering to put some more useless words on the air or over the dinner table.”46 But the requests kept coming, and he could not say no to all of them.
The speeches brought Eisenhower in contact with some of America’s richest and most powerful men. Usually the invitations came from the chairman of the board of directors of the various universities or cultural organizations; that chairman (or whatever his title) was typically a wealthy businessman. Like most Americans, these businessmen found Eisenhower’s charm and fame irresistible; unlike the average citizen, they were in a position to get to meet and know him. A few had ulterior motives, a desire to manipulate the general for their own purposes, but most were simply hero-worshipers.
The elite of the Eastern Establishment moved in on him almost before he occupied his new office. Thomas J. Watson of IBM, for example, came to the Pentagon in early March 1946 to meet the general and insist that he speak at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The heads of other great corporations in New York all had their pet project too, and used their position in the organization or university for their initial access to Eisenhower.
He had known almost none of America’s business leaders before the war; he had met a few of them during the war; by 1947, he had met or at least corresponded with hundreds of them, including a high percentage of the one hundred richest and most powerful. Many became close personal friends. When Ike and Mamie had last lived in Washington, twenty years earlier, their social life revolved around other obscure Army officers and their wives. From 1946 to 1948, however, their social life included almost no Army personnel; instead they spent their evenings and vacation time with Eisenhower’s new, wealthy friends. When they played bridge in the thirties, it was with other majors and their wives; in the late forties, it was with the president of CBS, or the chairman of the board of U.S. Steel, or the president of Standard Oil.
Eisenhower’s relationships with wealthy men grew steadily from 1946 onward, to the point that his friends were almost exclusively millionaires. The effect of these relationships on Eisenhower is a matter of some dispute; his critics charge that they gave him a millionaire’s view of the world and made him staunchly conservative on fiscal and other issues. According to the charge, Eisenhower was overly impressed by rich men, even a bit in awe of them. The truth was, however, more the other way around—the millionaires were awestruck by the general. For his part, Eisenhower enjoyed being with men who had proved themselves, who thought big, who had handled big problems successfully, who knew how to organize and produce, who exuded self-confidence. He also enjoyed what they could give him.
Not money—he never took money from any of his rich friends. But he would accept the use of a cottage in the north woods, or a fishing camp or hunting lodge in the Deep South, and did so often. In 1946, for example, Cason Callaway, a director of U.S. Steel and one of the largest cotton growers in the world, along with Robert Woodruff, chairman of the Coca-Cola Company, entertained Eisenhower at Callaway’s Georgia plantation. The lake was well stocked; the three men caught more than two hundred largemouth bass in an afternoon. The quail hunting was also excellent.
The pattern lasted for the remainder of Eisenhower’s life. He went hunting and fishing frequently, and it was always at the top spots in the country, in the finest conditions that money could buy. So too with his passion for golf—he could indulge it on exclusively top-quality courses. Shortly after he became Chief of Staff, Chevy Chase Club made him a member; other exclusive clubs, in New York, Georgia, and elsewhere, did too. On an income of about $15,000 per year, Eisenhower was able to enjoy, on a regular basis, recreation ordinarily reserved only for the very wealthy.
• •
The Eisenhowers’ living quarters, too, were the best they had ever had. They occupied Quarters No. One at Fort Myer, in the house Marshall had lived in, and before him, MacArthur. It was a large, sprawling, old brick house, with ample room to absorb all Mamie’s furniture and a steady stream of house guests. The grounds were large too, and the Eisenhowers inherited from the Marshalls a chicken flock consisting of three roosters and two dozen Plymouth Rock hens. Eisenhower was delighted to have them—caring for the birds brought out the farmer in him—but soon tragedy struck. In June 1946, Eisenhower began a long letter to Marshall (who was in China), “This is a message of disappointment and disaster. It involves the chickens.” First a rooster had died; then two of the hens; eventually half the flock was gone. Eisenhower called in a veterinarian, built a new coop, added vitamins to the feed, and tried other solutions, but to his dismay the chickens kept dying. Marshall took the news with a soldierly fortitude: “Don’t worry about those hens,” he replied. “Dispose of them if they are a care and a burden.”47
For the first time in twenty years, Eisenhower had a piece of land he could dig up and plant, which he did with gusto. He went right to the top for his seeds. In 1946 they came from Henry Wallace, who had been a famous plant geneticist before he became Secretary of Agriculture, and in 1947 from W. Atlee Burpee himself. He concentrated on corn, tomatoes, and peas for himself, with petunias for Mamie (Burpee named a new strain of petunia the “Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower”). Both years he was so anxious to get started that he planted his garden in mid-March, then had to replant after a late freeze.
He and Mamie were getting along better than ever. They did a great deal of traveling together—they visited every state while he was Chief of Staff—and he loved it, despite his complaints about his brutal schedule, because Mamie went with him. Her doctors had decided that she could be allowed to fly, if the pilot stayed below five thousand feet. They went on a number of overseas journeys, as foreign governments were just as anxious to have Eisenhower as a guest and speaker as were American universities. In 1946 alone, they visited Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, Japan, China, Korea, Brazil, Panama, Mexico, Germany, Italy, Scotland, and England.
Mamie was putting on weight, was up to 130 pounds. In late 1946, Eisenhower told a friend, “Mamie is in better health than I have ever known her to be. The only difficulty is that she has outgrown all her clothes. This is a tragedy for her.” A year later, she still worried about her weight and wardrobe, while her husband was still delighted by her good health. Eisenhower told a friend that “I have been urging her to fulfill a long-held ambition, mainly to buy herself a good fur coat.” She agonized over the choice between a dark ranch-bred mink and a lighter wild mink, which cost twice as much. She eventually chose the cheaper coat.48 Photographs taken while he was Chief of Staff attest to Ike’s good spirits and trim and athletic appearance. The tension that so often showed in his eyes, his face, and his body movements during the war was replaced by a relaxed look and carriage.
With President Truman, Eisenhower’s relations were correct but formal. They never established an intimacy, nor did they work closely together. Marshall had been Roosevelt’s closest adviser on military and strategic matters; Eisenhower’s relationship with Truman was entirely different. Truman did not turn to his Chief of Staff for advice, even on the most major decisions of his Presidency, decisions that had crucial military implications, such as the Truman Doctrine, military aid to Greece and Turkey, or the Russian blockade of Berlin.
The absence of any input from Eisenhower on these and other issues was a bit surprising, because Eisenhower and Truman had so much in common. Both men came from sturdy pioneer stock of small farmers and merchants; they had grown up within 150 miles of each other; Truman and Eisenhower’s older brother Arthur had been roommates in a Kansas City boardinghouse in 1905; both men were internationalists in outlook despite their midwestern backgrounds.
Eisenhower appreciated Truman’s support for genuine unification of the armed forces (Eisenhower himself was such a strong advocate of unification that he proposed a single uniform for the armed services, and a program of sending cadets to Annapolis and midshipmen to West Point for their third year of study). The two men shared the general Army prejudice against the Marine Corps, and, although neither could ever say so publicly, they would have liked to eliminate the Corps (indeed, according to the Marines, that was the chief objective of unification).
But despite all that they had in common, Eisenhower and Truman never became friends; indeed, each man was more than a bit wary of the other. Truman could hardly avoid resenting Eisenhower’s standing with the public. When the two men flew to Kansas City on the presidential plane, the Sacred Cow, on June 6, 1947, for example, it was Eisenhower—not the President—who attracted the reporters at the airport. And it was Eisenhower who delivered the principal address at the homecoming reunion of the 35th Division, even though the 35th was Truman’s old World War I outfit.
• •
Eisenhower called the bomb “this hellish contrivance,”49 and favored international control of the weapon, but all attempts to forge a sane nuclear policy ran afoul of the deepening American suspicion of the Soviet Union. When Eisenhower became Chief of Staff the immediate problem with regard to the atomic bomb was that so much was unknown. How great might the explosive power of the weapon become? How long would it take other nations to make a bomb? What kind of delivery systems could be developed? What would the effect of the bomb be on diplomacy? On traditional warfare? In addition to these and many other questions, Eisenhower and the Joint Chiefs were bothered by a widespread public sentiment that held that atomic bombs made armies and navies obsolete, and that possession of an atomic monopoly by the United States constituted a sufficient defense policy by itself.
The ultimate nightmare was that the bomb would be treated as just another weapon, with every nation free to build as many (and as powerful) bombs as it saw fit. But if the United States insisted on attempting to maintain its monopoly, that is exactly what would happen, and in any case monopoly as a policy had little to recommend it, because the general consensus was that within five years the Soviets would have a bomb of their own.
Attitudes toward atomic policy were so closely interwoven with attitudes toward the Soviet Union that the two cannot be discussed separately; thus this is the appropriate place to examine Eisenhower’s evolving view of the Russians. When he returned from Germany, he remained committed to a friendly, cooperative approach to the Soviets. In November 1945, he was asked while testifying before a congressional committee to comment on the chances of Russia starting a war. He replied, “Russia has not the slightest thing to gain by a struggle with the United States. There is no one thing, I believe, that guides the policy of Russia more today than to keep friendship with the United States.”50
Three days after taking up his duties in the Pentagon, he wrote a warm letter to Zhukov, inviting him to come to the States for a visit in the spring, and expressing the hope that many other Soviet officials could also pay a visit, because such exchanges would promote understanding and confidence. Zhukov replied that he hoped to come; in the meantime, he sent Eisenhower some New Year’s presents, including a large white bearskin rug. In March 1946, Zhukov sent Eisenhower a selection of delicacies from Russia. Eisenhower thanked him, again asked him to come for a visit, and concluded, “I still look upon the hours that I spent in friendly discussion with you as among the most pleasant and profitable that I have ever experienced.”51
By April, however, Zhukov had left Berlin for Moscow, where he stayed only briefly before going on to a command in Odessa. Beetle Smith, whom Truman had appointed ambassador to Russia, reported to Eisenhower that Zhukov had fallen from favor. It was rumored that one reason for Zhukov’s virtual disappearance was his known friendship with Eisenhower. There never would be a Zhukov visit to the United States.
Through 1946, Eisenhower deplored the rapidly developing breakdown of relations, the loose talk in the United States about the “inevitability” of conflict between the two systems. On June 11, Truman called a conference at the White House. The Secretary of State and the JCS discussed the possibility of an imminent Russian offensive in Europe. Such talk made Eisenhower angry, as he felt it had no basis in fact. “I don’t believe the Reds want a war,” he told Truman. “What can they gain now by armed conflict? They’ve gained about all they can assimilate.”52
His conclusions were based on practical considerations, not hunches or a sense of trust in the goodness of Soviet intentions. Eisenhower told Truman, forcefully, that the Russians simply were not strong enough to undertake an offensive. At this meeting, and on a number of similar occasions, he demanded evidence, hard evidence. What was there to indicate that the Russians intended suddenly to sweep across Western Europe? He knew from experience the kind of elaborate logistical support there had to be for such an offensive. Where was the evidence of the necessary buildup of supplies in East Germany?
A month later William C. Bullitt, a former ambassador to Russia, sent Eisenhower a copy of his recent book on world affairs. Bullitt was a convinced Cold Warrior and a leader of the anti-Soviet group in the State Department. His views were simple but alarming: “The Soviet Union’s assault upon the West is at about the stage of Hitler’s maneuvering into Czechoslovakia,” he asserted. After thus linking Stalin with Hitler, an increasingly popular analogy in Washington, Bullitt flatly declared, “The final aim of Russia is world conquest.” Eisenhower thought such notions fantastic. He never for a minute believed any such thing. He told Smith that Bullitt’s book was “an excoriation of Russia” and said he could not bring himself to read any more of it.53 Nor did he read George F. Kennan’s famous “Mr. X” article, which also indicated a Russian desire for world conquest.
Montgomery stood with Eisenhower. From his post as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, he wrote Eisenhower in early 1947 that “the Soviet Nation is very, very tired. Devastation in Russia is appalling and the country is in no fit state to go to war.” He thought it would be fifteen or twenty years before the Russians would be able to fight another major war, and argued that in the meantime the English-speaking democracies ought to be building friendly relations with the Soviets, rather than hurling threats and insults. Eisenhower told Montgomery that he heartily agreed.54
Eisenhower’s belief in the vital necessity of peace combined with his faith in international cooperation to make him a strong supporter of the United Nations, far stronger than most of his peers or even his own staff. He expected that the U.N. would establish a genuine peace-keeping force, and that the United States would send a sizable contingent to it. He assigned one of his best officers, General Matthew Ridgway, to the potential peace-keeping force. He was a prudent soldier and was not ready to give up the atomic monopoly until he was assured of an adequate inspection system within the Soviet Union. But he still managed to believe that sooner or later the U.N. would have control of atomic weapons, an outcome he very much favored.
Events, Soviet actions in Eastern Europe, and the climate of opinion around him, however, were steadily eroding Eisenhower’s hopes for an active cooperation with the Soviets. In Poland and elsewhere, the Soviets were acting with high-handed brutality, ignoring the promises they had made in the Yalta Agreements to hold free and unfettered elections in Eastern Europe. In Germany, East and West were growing further apart in their policies with each passing week. In the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were hurling accusations at each other. And in Greece, where a civil war raged, the Soviets appeared to be adopting new methods, “political pressure and subversive tactics” as Eisenhower called them, in an attempt to bring new territories under their control.55 Alarmingly, in February 1947 the British, who had been supporting the Greek monarchists, announced that they were broke and would have to pull out of Greece. Truman and the State Department reacted with speed and vigor, Truman announcing on March 12 the doctrine of containment.
Eisenhower talked with Marshall, who was by then Secretary of State and who had just returned from a meeting of the foreign ministers in Moscow. Marshall, whose own hopes for a new, better world based on cooperation between the victors were as great as Eisenhower’s, and who was by no means anti-Soviet, confessed that getting along with the Russians was beginning to seem impossible. The great problem, Marshall told Eisenhower, was Germany. European recovery, so obviously necessary on humanitarian grounds as well as to prevent the spread of Communism, was dependent on the recovery of German production, but Russian fears of the Germans were so great that they would not allow a German revival. Eisenhower agreed with this analysis, and with Marshall’s more general point that European recovery was crucial to America’s self-interest.
“I personally believe,” Eisenhower wrote in his diary one month before the Marshall Plan was announced, “that the best thing we could now do would be to post 5 billion to the credit of the secretary of state and tell him to use it to support democratic movements wherever our vital interests indicate. Money should be used to promote possibilities of self-sustaining economies, not merely to prevent immediate starvation.”56
By mid-1947, then, Eisenhower was moving, reluctantly and slowly, but nevertheless surely, toward a Cold War position. He had decided that the Soviets were in fact aggressive, although certainly not in the way that Hitler had been. Unlike many Cold Warriors, he did not believe that the Soviets were preparing for war. He continued to insist that peace was possible and essential, even if active cooperation with the Russians was not likely in the immediate future. In the parlance of the day, he was “soft” on the Soviets, much softer than Truman, and much less likely to seek a military solution to the problem of coexistence.
• •
In 1947 the most pleasurable experience in his private life was the addition of a daughter-in-law to the Eisenhower family. John, on occupation duty in Vienna, had fallen in love with Barbara Thompson. Barbara was also an Army brat, the daughter of Colonel and Mrs. Percy Thompson. Preparations for the wedding took six months. Ike liked to pretend that while Mamie was all nerves and excitement, he was calm and indifferent, but in fact he was deeply involved, sending John (in Vienna, on occupation duty) long letters about arrangements, making suggestions on what John should do about his career before and after the wedding, manipulating the ceremony itself, purchasing a small automobile as a wedding present. John was his only child, after all, and this wedding was his only chance to play the father of the groom.
The ceremony was held on June 10, 1947, in the chapel at Fort Monroe, Virginia. Within six weeks of the wedding, Ike was beginning to hint to his son that a grandchild would be most welcome.
• •
For the public Eisenhower, 1947 was dominated by politics, and specifically by demands that he become a candidate for President, an experience he found irksome, irritating, and almost impossible to deal with. During the war, he had been able to brush aside various suggestions that he become a candidate. In 1946, it had not been so easy, as the number of people and groups asking him to run, and their seriousness, increased dramatically. Reporters frequently asked him about running; to them his usual answer was that he could not conceive of any circumstances under which he would enter politics.
Late in 1947, Harry Truman called Eisenhower to his office, where—according to Eisenhower—he made a most remarkable offer. If Eisenhower would accept the Democratic nomination, Truman said he would be willing to run as the vice-presidential candidate on the same ticket. At that time, Truman’s chance for re-election appeared to be nil. Eisenhower assumed that Truman wanted to use him to pull the Democrats out of an impossible hole. The general wanted nothing to do with the Democratic Party; his answer was a flat “No.”
Most of those urging Eisenhower to run assumed that if he did so, he would win in a runaway. Eisenhower did not agree. With no party identification, no political experience, no support or base, no record, and no organization, he doubted that there was any reality to an Eisenhower boom. He either was not fully aware of the depth and extent of his own popularity, or he refused to believe what seemed obvious to others.
That he was sincere in saying that he did not want to follow the examples of Washington and Grant there can be no doubt, but he could not convince others. They assumed that he was being coy. In his diary, he confessed that even his friends would not believe him.
It was a mark of his self-confidence that he never said publicly, or in his private correspondence, that he did not feel qualified for the job. What he did say, emphatically and repeatedly, was that he did not want it. In Vicksburg, Mississippi, on July 4, 1947, at a time when speculation about his political future was intensifying, he replied to a question on the subject, “I say flatly, completely, and with all the force I have—I haven’t a political ambition in the world. I want nothing to do with politics.”57 But even his brother Edgar did not believe him. Neither could Swede Hazlett, who urged him to issue an “unequivocal statement on the subject—one that no one can shoot holes in!”58
What Hazlett, and many others, wanted was the classic Sherman statement, “If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve.” Anything short of that they regarded as equivocal. The fact that he would not make such a statement, combined with the well-known fact that he regarded “duty” as a sacred obligation, together with the widespread feeling that it was his duty to become the nation’s leader, all kept the boom alive.
Eisenhower agonized over his position. He had an intense dislike for partisan politics. The idea of asking people for their support was alien to him, as was the thought of making political deals, fighting for a nomination and election, distributing patronage, and all the rest that goes into party politics. But the nation, from some of its biggest businessmen and most prominent politicians to tens of thousands of former GIs and other ordinary citizens, would not allow him to simply say no. The persistence of the demands that he become a candidate was forcing him to realize that there was no easy way out, and at the same time forcing him to think about what it would be like to be President. He was, after all, within a year of retirement from the Army, with no job prospect in civilian life in hand. He confessed to John that he did sometimes wonder about being the nation’s leader. But daydreaming about being President was much different from running for the office, and if being a candidate implied making political promises and deals, Eisenhower wanted no part of it.
A nomination and election by acclamation, on the other hand, would be a different matter. In that event, he told Beetle Smith, he would be forced to regard service in the White House as his duty. He did not expect that to happen, but if it did by some miracle, he would have to serve. But, he insisted, in an October 1947 letter to Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. who had urged him to run, “No man since Washington has been elected to political office unless he definitely desired it.” To his brother Milton, he said that “we are not children and we knew that under the political party system of this country it would certainly be nothing less than a miracle” if there ever were a genuine “draft” at a nominating convention.59
In January 1948, a group of New Hampshire Republicans entered a slate of delegates pledged to Eisenhower in the March 9 primary. Leonard Finder, publisher of the Manchester Union-Leader, endorsed Eisenhower, then in an open letter to Eisenhower said, “No man should deny the will of the people in a matter such as this.” Eisenhower wrote on his copy of Finder’s letter, “We’ll have to answer—but I don’t know what to say!”
It took him more than a week to compose an answer to Finder. He brought home various drafts every night, making many changes. On January 22, he made his reply public. He said that because the office of the President “has, since the days of Washington, historically and properly fallen only to aspirants,” and as he had made it clear he had no political ambition, he had hoped that the Eisenhower boom would die. It had not. He had not issued a “bald statement” that he would not accept a nomination because “such an expression would smack of effrontery,” and because he did not want to be accused of avoiding his duty. But with actual primary elections coming up, he did not want people wasting their votes, so he had decided he needed to clarify his position.
He then did so in a ringing declaration: “It is my conviction that the necessary and wise subordination of the military to civil power will be best sustained, and our people will have greater confidence that it is so sustained, when lifelong professional soldiers, in the absence of some obvious and overriding reasons, abstain from seeking high political office.” He went on, “Politics is a profession; a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.” He concluded, “My decision to remove myself completely from the political scene is definite and positive.”60
• •
Many people, then and later, assumed that had Eisenhower answered Finder differently, had he agreed to run, he could have had the Republican nomination and the Presidency. The assumption was not tested, but Eisenhower doubted its validity, and he may well have been right. So few states held primaries in 1948 that even had he won them all, he would have gone into the convention with far less than half the delegates pledged to him. Neither Robert Taft nor Thomas Dewey, the leading Republican contenders, were likely to give up without a struggle. Considering how strong a fight Taft made in 1952, it is certainly possible that together with Dewey he could have turned back an Eisenhower nomination in 1948. That is what Eisenhower meant when he told Milton, “We are not children.” He realized that his supporters were amateurs. The professional politicians who were so active in his behalf in 1952 were noticeably absent in 1948. Neither the enthusiasm of the amateurs nor Eisenhower’s standing in the polls (the Gallup Poll found that he was the public’s first choice, regardless of party affiliation) could produce the delegate votes necessary to capture the nomination.
Equally, however, it should be noted that Eisenhower’s rejection of a candidacy in 1948 seemed to take him out of the presidential picture permanently. His assumption was that Dewey would get the Republican nomination, then win the election, and succeed himself in 1952. By the time of the 1956 election, Eisenhower would be sixty-six years old, presumably too old to be a candidate. By saying “No” in 1948, then, Eisenhower believed he was saying “No” for good.
Had he chosen to fight for the nomination in 1948, he had an excellent chance of winning it—from either party. It stretches the truth, perhaps, but only slightly, to say that Eisenhower, in 1948, turned down the Presidency of the United States.
• •
One of the remarkable aspects of the Eisenhower boom was that he never indicated, even to his closest friends, his party preference. Democrats as well as Republicans found it easy to assume that a man as smart as Eisenhower must be a member of their party. (He was aware that this was a factor in his popularity, and that the moment he took a stand on a controversial issue, he would lose the support of most of those on the opposite side.) The only member of the Eisenhower family who had been involved in the Washington scene was Milton, and he had served successfully under both Democratic and Republican Administrations. General Eisenhower was careful never to say a word on domestic political issues, so no one knew where he stood on them. His commitment to internationalism was well known, of course, but at a time when a bipartisan approach to foreign policy was the norm, that stand indicated nothing about party preference.
As a career soldier, he was obliged to avoid commentary on domestic political issues, and keeping silent on such matters as deficit financing, the welfare state, government regulation of industry and agriculture, or race relations was second nature to him. The views that he did hold, he held strongly, but they were consistently in the middle of the political spectrum. Indeed he had a penchant for expressing emphatically and earnestly his belief in values that were so widely accepted and acknowledged as to be commonplace.
“I believe fanatically in the American form of democracy,” he said in a private letter to one of his oldest friends, Swede Hazlett, “a system that recognizes and protects the right of the individual and that ascribes to the individual a dignity accruing to him because of his creation in the image of a supreme being and which rests upon the conviction that only through a system of free enterprise can this type of democracy be preserved.”61 To cynics it sounded like pure corn, and surely, they thought, it must be a put-on. But that was the way Eisenhower talked, in private, with his friends.
When Eisenhower talked or wrote on foreign affairs, he was on firmer ground, and his views were more sophisticated. As noted, he was a proponent of the Marshall Plan before it was announced, and a firm supporter afterward. Senator Taft was not. Taft said American money ought not be poured into a “European T. V.A.” in a “vast giveaway program.” Along with other Republicans, Taft thought that the Europeans had gone too far in the direction of socialism already, and that they would use Marshall Plan money to nationalize basic industries, including American-owned plants. Eisenhower put his emphasis on the joint nature of the plan, which required the Europeans to get together among themselves for self-help. And he said—in a letter to James Forrestal in January 1949—that “a virtual economic union” between the West European states was a precondition to success. He added that “some kind of political accord may have to be achieved among these European countries before they will be willing to make the required economic concessions. . . . A possible practicable approach would be to establish a Combined Chiefs of Staff for the study of common defense problems.” He said that “these things are none of my business and my ideas may be completely screwy,” but he knew that there were “tremendous political obstacles” to be overcome before a common market could be created, and they had to be faced.62 Starting with some form of defensive alliance—in practice, he was suggesting what became NATO—seemed to Eisenhower to be in order. Truman, of course, agreed. In this area, Eisenhower was much closer to the President’s position than to that of Senator Taft.
So too in his developing views on the Soviet Union. By the fall of 1947, Eisenhower’s feelings about the Soviets were running parallel with Truman’s and those of other hard-line Cold Warriors. The Russian repression of the freedoms in Eastern Europe that Eisenhower had fought to preserve, perceived Russian aggression in Greece, Turkey, and Iran, Russian intransigence in Germany and the U.N., all a part of the intensifying Cold War, led Eisenhower to abandon his hope for friendly cooperation and instead to see an inevitable conflict between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.
“Russia is definitely out to communize the world,” he wrote in his diary in September 1947. “It promotes starvation, unrest, anarchy, in the certainty that these are the breeding grounds for the growth of their damnable philosophy.” He felt that “we face a battle to extinction between the two systems.” To win that battle, the U.S. had to oppose Russian expansion, whether it was attempted by direct conquest or through infiltration. Eisenhower wanted to go beyond Truman’s policy of containment, however, and “over the long term to win back areas that Russia has already overrun,” meaning, of course, the liberation of the East European satellites. In addition, America had to help rebuild Western Europe, through the Marshall Plan, because unless their economies were restored, the peoples of Western Europe would “almost certainly fall prey to communism, and if the progress of this disease is not checked, we will find ourselves an isolated democracy in a world controlled by enemies.” In the diary entry, he stated his conclusion as dramatically as he could put it: “To insure the health of American democracy,” he wrote, “unity is more necessary now than it was in Overlord.”63
Although Eisenhower had done a complete turnaround in his attitude toward the Russians, he did not in the process give way to the near hysteria that swept in waves across the country during the early Cold War, or to the view of the Russians as some kind of supermen. When Beetle Smith, U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, wrote from Moscow that if America stood firm, “we have little to fear,” Eisenhower wholeheartedly agreed. “It is a grievous error,” he said, “to forget for one second the might and power of this great republic.”64
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On October 14, 1947, Eisenhower was fifty-seven years old. He would shortly be leaving the Pentagon (Truman had promised him he would not have to serve as Chief of Staff beyond two years). He had rejected politics as a career. As a five-star general, he was technically on active duty for life, and thus drew a salary of $15,000 per year. But he had no savings, owned no property, stocks, or bonds.
What would he do? Where would he live? In his entire adult life, he had never had to answer those basic questions for himself—the Army had always provided the answer.
Offers he had, an embarrassing number. Major corporations wanted him for president or chairman of the board. They offered some “fantastic sums,” Eisenhower told his father-in-law, but “I will under no circumstances take a position where I could be accused of merely ‘selling a name’ for publicity purposes for a corporation.”65 He therefore thought that the presidency of a small college somewhere would be best. After a few years of that activity, he wanted to go into full retirement. He and Mamie thought they would retire to San Antonio, and spend their summers in northern Wisconsin. He knew of a small cottage on a lake that would be suitable and affordable. Meanwhile, Eisenhower had friends looking for a ranch near San Antonio for him. He eventually found a ranch he wanted, but finally had to turn it down because the price was too high. He confessed that, never having had a mortgage before, he was highly uncomfortable at the thought of committing himself to payments for the next twelve years.
On April 2, 1946, Eisenhower had spoken at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, then stayed at the Waldorf-Astoria as Tom Watson’s guest. Watson was a member of a Columbia University trustees’ committee searching for a president. Watson asked Eisenhower if he would consider taking the job. Eisenhower’s instant reply was that Columbia had asked the wrong Eisenhower—the university should go after Milton, who was an experienced educator. No, Watson said, Columbia wanted the general. Eisenhower said that he would not be available for nearly two years, and that he therefore could not consider the offer at that time.
Thirteen months later, Watson called on Eisenhower. “To my chagrin,” Eisenhower wrote Milton, Watson again offered the Columbia position, urging “the importance of the public service I could perform in that spot” and painting “the rosiest possible picture of what I would be offered in the way of conveniences, expenses, remuneration and so on.” Eisenhower repeated that Milton was the man Columbia wanted; Watson repeated that Columbia wanted the general and pressed for an answer. Eisenhower resented the pressure and told Milton that if Watson forced him to make a quick answer, it would be “No.”66
Watson argued that by accepting the position, Eisenhower could remove his name from political speculation, an idea that appealed to Eisenhower mightily. It should be noted here that the popular impression that Watson and the other wealthy Republican trustees at Columbia wanted Eisenhower in order to begin grooming him for the Presidency of the United States is altogether wrong. In November 1947, Watson “exhortated” Eisenhower to “have nothing to do with this political business,” and in fact Watson and most of the Columbia trustees were Dewey supporters who expected Dewey to win in 1948 and then serve until 1956.67
Eisenhower, who had made so many momentous decisions, found the process of making this one extremely painful. “It was almost the first decision I ever had to make in my life that was directly concerned with myself,” he told Smith. In making it, he “had to struggle against every instinct I had.”68
On June 23. 1947, Eisenhower wrote to Columbia to indicate that if a formal offer were made to him, he would accept. He said that he and Mamie had gone through some definite inner battles and indeed experienced feelings “akin to dismay” at the prospect of living in New York City, but after hours of “anxious and prayerful thought . . . the finger of duty points in the direction of Columbia.” He insisted that the trustees must understand, before they acted, the nature and extent of the verbal agreements he had made with Watson. These included no involvement in purely academic matters, no responsibility for fund raising, no excessive entertaining, and no burdensome administrative details.
What on earth would he do? He would, in his words, “devote my energies in providing internal leadership on broad and liberal lines for the University itself and promote basic concepts of education in a democracy.” On those vague conditions, Columbia asked Eisenhower to become its president, at a salary of $25,000 per year. He accepted. He would take office after commencement in June 1948.69
• •
In the middle of his twenty-seven-month tour of duty as Chief of Staff, Eisenhower had written in his diary, “It has been a most difficult period for me, with far more frustrations than progress.” In October 1946, he complained, “My life is one long succession of personnel, budgetary, and planning problems, and I am getting close to the fed up stage.”70
He was, therefore, glad to be handing the position over to Bradley. The ceremonies took place at noon on February 7, 1948. Just before leaving his office for the last time, Eisenhower dictated a final message. It was addressed “To the American Soldier.” In it, he spoke of his nearly four decades of service, of his pride in the Army and its accomplishments, of the satisfaction his career had brought him. He concluded, “I cannot let this day pass without telling the fighting men—those who have left the ranks and you who still wear the uniform—that my fondest boast shall always be: ‘I was their fellow-soldier.’ ”71
Then he walked across the hall to the Secretary of the Army’s office, where he administered the oath of office to Bradley. President Truman pinned a third Oak Leaf Cluster to Eisenhower’s Distinguished Service Medal. By prior agreement, the Eisenhowers were to stay on at Quarters No. One until they moved to New York City in May. A few days after Bradley’s swearing-in, Eisenhower bought a car, a brand-new Chrysler. The dealer brought it out to Fort Myer. After Mamie approved, Eisenhower wrote a check in full payment. Then he took Mamie by the hand, pointed to the sedan, and said, “Darling, there’s the entire result of thirty-seven years’ work since I caught the train out of Abilene.” He was broke.72
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His prospects, however, were, to say the least, excellent. Aside from his continuing Army salary and the salary he would soon be drawing from Columbia, he had finally managed to set aside some time—February to June 1948—to write his memoirs. Throughout 1946 and 1947, publishers had approached Eisenhower with offers for his memoirs. In December, Douglas Black, president of Doubleday, along with William Robinson of the New York Herald Tribune (a man Eisenhower liked immediately; they quickly became close friends), approached the general to argue that he owed it to “history” to write his memoirs.73 Whenever Eisenhower talked with publishers, they made his head spin with their explanations of options and first serial rights and second serial rights and movie rights and translations and on and on. What Black and Robinson offered was much more appealing to him—a one-shot deal, in which they would pay a flat sum for all rights. Within a few days, Eisenhower discovered that the deal they offered was even more attractive, because Joseph Davies, who was serving informally as Eisenhower’s legal representative in the talks, advised Eisenhower that he would pay a capital gains tax on the money, not a personal income tax.
That seemed too good to be true, but Eisenhower checked with the Undersecretary of the Treasury, who gave him an official ruling, which was that Davies was correct. As a nonprofessional writer, Eisenhower was entitled to pay only a capital gains tax if he sold the manuscript in its entirety, together with all subsidiary rights. It had often been done before, the Treasury assured Eisenhower. Eisenhower then agreed to write his memoirs. Black and Robinson paid him $635,000; he paid $158,750 in taxes; the nearly half million dollars that he got to keep made him a wealthy man.
In preparing himself for the task of writing the manuscript, Eisenhower began by rereading Grant’s Memoirs. It was the best possible choice of a model, and Eisenhower used it well. He gathered together his wartime letters, reports, diary entries, and other documents. He employed three secretaries, and immediately after turning over his job to Bradley, he started writing. Or rather, dictating. His method was to begin at 7 A.M., over breakfast. At lunch, he was often joined by the editors. He would continue dictating until 11P.M. He worked at this sixteen-hour-a-day pace for most of February and all of March and April. It was a blitz, as he called it, one that few men of his age could have done. Or many younger men, either—the determination, self-discipline, and concentration he had to summon to maintain such a schedule was enormous. He never complained, indeed enjoyed reliving the war, and having all that money waiting for him when he finished—the money that would buy him and Mamie that retirement home someday—was highly motivating.
The book itself, Crusade in Europe, published in late 1948, was greeted with almost unanimous critical acclaim, along with praise for its author’s modesty, candor, fairness, tact, and general humanity. It was called the best American military reminiscence (with the possible exception of Grant’s), and “the work of the best soldier-historian since, perhaps, Caesar and his commentaries.”74 Crusade in Europe not only gave Eisenhower financial security; it stood the test of time (it was still selling briskly in the 1980s), and it added immeasurably to his popularity. It was a book worthy of the man and his services to the nation.