ON MAY 2, 1948, immediately after finishing Crusade, Eisenhower left Quarters No. One. He took a month’s vacation, as William Robinson’s guest, at the Augusta National Golf Club. The vacation provided him and Mamie with a needed rest, and introduced him to a group of men who became and remained his closest friends. “The gang,” as he called the members of the group, were all millionaires whose great passions were playing golf and bridge, and talking politics. With one exception, they were all Republicans. They were also united by their hero-worship of General Ike.
For his part, Eisenhower was impressed by the gang’s business success, appreciated the members’ devotion to him, and enjoyed their easy banter, nonstop flow of jokes, and their eagerness to play golf and bridge with him. He sought their advice on politics, economics, and finance, both in general and with regard to his personal fortunes. He accepted from them many gifts, services, free trips, etc. To the end of his life he spent as much time with the gang as he could possibly spare; when they were separated he carried on an extensive correspondence with the members. With them, he could relax as he could with no one else.
Bill Robinson was the leader of the gang. Ten years younger than Eisenhower, Robinson had met the general in connection with Crusade. A large, beefy Irishman with a keen political sensitivity, Robinson was on intimate terms with nearly every important East Coast Republican. Next in importance was Clifford Roberts, a New York investment banker who took charge of Eisenhower’s personal investments. Robert Woodruff, chairman of the board of Coca-Cola, one year older than Eisenhower, and W. Alton (Pete) Jones, six months younger and president of Cities Service Company, were other members. The only Democrat in the gang was George Allen, a rotund Mississippian who was a close friend of Truman’s and a member of the Democratic National Committee. Ellis (Slats) Slater, four years Eisenhower’s junior and president of Frankfort Distilleries, was the last member of the gang. His wife, Priscilla, became Mamie’s closest friend.
The gang made Eisenhower a member at Augusta, built him a cottage there, and put in a fish pond, well stocked with bass, for his private use. When Eisenhower moved to New York City, in June of 1948, Robinson made him a member of Blind Brook Country Club in Westchester County. Every member of the gang had his own circle of rich and powerful friends; through the gang, Eisenhower met on a social and private basis innumerable members of the American business, financial, publishing, and legal elite, nearly every one of whom, after a few minutes with the general, became an Eisenhower-for-President booster, putting their time, money, energy, experience, and contacts into the cause.
The object of their adulation, however, still insisted that he had no interest in a political career. Democrats who feared that Truman was a certain loser in 1948 continued to try to draft Eisenhower for the Democratic nomination. At Augusta, Eisenhower told Bill Robinson and the gang that he knew the Democrats “were desperately searching around for someone to save their skins,” but that his friends in the Midwest “would be shocked and chagrined at the very idea of my running on a Democratic ticket for anything.” When Robinson said that the right-wing Republicans might turn to MacArthur in order to block Dewey’s nomination, Eisenhower blurted, “My God, anything would be better than that!” But “anything,” he quickly added, did not include an Eisenhower candidacy.1
In late June, the Republicans nominated Dewey. The Democrats were meeting in mid-July. Party bosses implored Eisenhower to allow them to put his name before the convention. Again Eisenhower refused. When Senator Claude Pepper of Florida told Eisenhower that he intended to place Eisenhower’s name before the convention, with or without the general’s permission, Eisenhower wrote Pepper, “No matter under what terms, conditions, or premises a proposal might be couched, I would refuse to accept the nomination.”2 Truman was duly nominated. The furor surrounding Eisenhower subsided.
During the campaign that followed, Eisenhower refused a number of requests that he endorse Dewey, although he told his friends that he was voting for Dewey and expected him to win. He thoroughly enjoyed his freedom from political pressure, for the first time since the end of the war, and—anticipating a Dewey victory, followed by Dewey’s re-election in 1952—believed that he had finally put politics completely behind him. He intended to do a good job at Columbia, retire after a few years, then perhaps do a bit of writing on national and international affairs.
That dream was shattered on election night, 1948. John Eisenhower later described November 2, 1948, as the darkest day of his life, because of the way in which Truman’s upset of Dewey thrust his father’s name back into the forefront of politics.
At Columbia, in June of 1948, the Eisenhowers moved into the president’s home on Morningside Drive. They were unhappy with the home, which was too palatial for their tastes; they spent most of their time on the upper two floors, which the trustees had had remodeled for them into a modern apartment. Eisenhower had a new hobby, painting in oils, which he had taken up at the urging of Churchill and after watching Thomas Stephens paint a portrait of Mamie. He did his painting in his penthouse retreat; usually his subjects were portraits. Admitting that “my hands are better suited to an ax handle than a tiny brush,” he destroyed two out of every three of his attempts. Nevertheless, the activity gave him great pleasure and he tried to spend a half hour a day or more at it, usually between eleven and midnight.3
Time was a problem. The trustees had assured him that no heavy demands would be placed upon him, that he would be free to concentrate on general policy for the university. But after five months on the job, he confided to Bill Robinson that he feared he had made an awful mistake in coming to Columbia. He was appalled at the terrible “demands” on his time; he said he had never realized what a big operation Columbia was, with its “countless numbers” of postgraduate and professional schools. So fully and freely did Eisenhower exercise what he insisted was “the soldier’s right to grouse”4 about his life at Columbia that it has become a standard feature of his biographies to call these the unhappiest and least productive years of his career. And, so the story goes, Columbia suffered as much as the general did. One popular story among the Columbia faculty was to never send the general a memorandum of more than one page, else his lips would get tired.
There was some truth in these judgments. The general and the professors were strange to each other. Grayson Kirk, then a professor of international relations at Columbia, later Eisenhower’s successor as president of the university, noted that “he had a tendency born out of his long military experience to want to have all the problems presented to him in very brief form . . . He would shoot from the hip in order to dispose of the problem . . . He felt it was better to make a decision than to postpone it.” The professors, on the other hand, much preferred discussion—however protracted—to decision.5
Faculty meetings were Eisenhower’s special hell. “He thought they could be deadly dull,” John Krout, dean of the graduate faculty, reported. “He felt, well, here we spent an hour and a half to two hours, we haven’t done a single thing. We’ve done a lot of talking, didn’t amount to much; we haven’t advanced one inch so far as doing anything for the university is concerned.” At first he tried to attend committee meetings on a regular basis, but as the professors talked and talked in more and more detail about less and less consequential subjects, his eyes would glaze over with total boredom, and he soon gave that up, too.6
After almost two years on the job, Eisenhower recorded in his diary, “There is probably no more complicated business in the world than that of picking a new dean within a university.”7 While he was Chief of Staff of the Army, Eisenhower had thought that there could be no bureaucracy in the world that generated so much paper work as the U.S. Army; seven months after coming to Columbia, he wrote, “One of the major surprises . . . is the paper work. . . . I thought I was leaving those mountainous white piles forever.” He tried to insist that every project be presented on one typewritten page, the very idea of which reduced the prolific professors to helpless rage or laughter.8
Columbia was an outstanding university with a brilliant faculty composed of highly sophisticated specialists who were dedicated to their research. They regarded Eisenhower as hopelessly naive. When one scholar told Eisenhower that “we have some of America’s most exceptional physicists, mathematicians, chemists, and engineers,” Eisenhower asked if they were also “exceptional Americans.” The scholar, confused, mumbled that Eisenhower did not understand—they were research scholars. “Dammit,” Eisenhower shot back, “what good are exceptional physicists . . . exceptional anything, unless they are exceptional Americans.” He added that every student who came to Columbia must leave it first a better citizen and only secondarily a better scholar.9 To the faculty, that attitude was embarrassing—Eisenhower made Columbia sound like a high school civics class. When Eisenhower raised nearly a half million dollars for Teachers College to carry out a Citizenship Education Project, and another huge sum for a Chair of Competitive Enterprise, the embarrassment deepened.
The professors benefited immediately and immensely from Eisenhower’s ability to raise money, but snobs that they were, they continued to sneer at him. That they could hold in contempt the intellectual powers of the man who had out-thought Rommel, the man who had organized Overlord, told far more about the professors than it did about Eisenhower. Columbia was lucky to have him, even if the faculty never knew it.
• •
After seven years at the center of world events, accustomed to seeing the latest top-secret intelligence every morning, to making decisions involving millions of men, to dealing on a daily basis with men like Churchill and de Gaulle, Eisenhower felt left out at Columbia. He could only comment upon, not shape, events; his decisions affected only a few thousand people; his contacts were social ones with his millionaire friends, not business meetings with heads of government. The worst part was that he seemed to be working as hard as ever, but had little to show for it.
The Truman Administration was anxious to get Eisenhower involved, in part because it was obviously prudent for the Administration to draw upon the general’s reputation and experience, but more to make him a supporter of Administration policy. As a five-star general he was, by law, on active duty for life, and thus available. In 1947 Congress passed the National Defense Act, creating the office of Secretary of Defense and bringing the three services together in a loose federation. In December 1948, Truman asked Eisenhower to come to Washington for “two or three months” to act as a military consultant to the first Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal. Forrestal was involved in the thankless task of trying to bring about some genuine unification among the services.
When Eisenhower arrived in Washington in January 1949, he was appalled. The “Revolt of the Admirals” had broken out; the Navy wanted a much larger share of the Department of Defense’s money than had been appropriated, and went after it by ridiculing the Air Force and the Army, meanwhile demanding a larger role for the Navy. Eisenhower told Swede Hazlett that “our present Navy can scarcely be justified on the basis of the naval strength of any potential enemy.” He thought the Navy’s proposed supercarrier would just be a supertarget. He objected to the Navy’s insistence on a strong Marine Corps. Why, he asked Swede, should the Navy have its own land army of hundreds of thousands of men?10
What bothered Eisenhower most was the way in which the Joint Chiefs were going before Congress as individuals to plead their special cases. Eisenhower feared that “some of our seniors are forgetting that they have a commander in chief.”11 Forrestal was having a terrible time trying to get the Chiefs to concentrate their attention on the Russians, instead of one another.
Eisenhower’s advice to Forrestal was to establish a “majority rule” principle for the JCS. The Chiefs should be free to argue for their services when the budget was being drawn up, but all their votes should be secret, and once decisions had been reached, they should “carry [them] out faithfully, loyally, enthusiastically.” Over the next two years, Eisenhower continued to take the train to Washington once a week; he sent long letters of advice and suggestions on reorganization to Forrestal; he continued to advocate his own program of universal military training; but he was more politely tolerated than listened to, because he always remained an outsider.12 Truman wanted his prestige, not his advice; Forrestal was, in Eisenhower’s words, “nervous, upset, preoccupied, and unhappy.”13 (In May 1949, Forrestal committed suicide.) Meanwhile, the Chiefs continued to bicker, loudly and in public.
In the spring of 1949, Truman asked Eisenhower to serve as the informal chairman of the JCS. The position had no legal basis and, as Eisenhower was in Washington for only a day or two per week, no real clout. He could not possibly keep up with the details of the arguments between the Chiefs, and in that atmosphere, mastery of detail was crucial. He urged Truman to spend more money on defense, but the President insisted on attempting to balance the budget and would not go above $15 billion. Eisenhower had a feeling of déjà vu; “Of course the results [of an inadequate defense policy] will not show up until we get into serious trouble,” he predicted in June 1949. “We are repeating our own history of decades, we just don’t believe we ever will get into a real jam.”14
Being a part-time, informal chairman of the JCS gave Eisenhower maximum exposure and minimum influence, which suited the Truman Administration nicely, but left the general depressed. Despite Eisenhower’s logic, his reputation, and his charm, the Chiefs continued to bicker among themselves. “The bitter fight still goes on,” Eisenhower wrote in his diary. “The whole performance is humiliating—I’ve seriously considered, resigning my commission, so that I could say what I pleased, publicly.”15
• •
For much of his life, Eisenhower had suffered from occasional stomach cramps. The attacks were isolated and capricious and without apparent cause. On March 21, 1949, while he was in Washington, Eisenhower had an acute attack. His friend and personal physician, General Howard Snyder, suspected some form of enteritis (the ailment was in fact chronic ileitis) and kept Eisenhower in bed for a week on a liquid diet. Truman offered Eisenhower the use of the Little White House that he maintained in Key West. Eisenhower accepted the offer and spent three weeks recuperating in the sun. In April, he moved north to Augusta, where he spent the next month with the gang, playing golf and bridge, fishing, and loafing.
While he was at Key West, Eisenhower had been told by Snyder that he would have to cut down from four packs of cigarettes per day to one. After a few days of limiting his smoking, Eisenhower decided that counting his cigarettes was worse than not smoking at all, and he quit. He never had another cigarette in his life, a fact that amazed the gang, his other friends, the reporters who covered his activities, and the public. Eisenhower was frequently asked how he did it; he replied that it was simple, all he did was put smoking out of his mind. It helped, he would add with a grin, to develop a scornful attitude toward those weaklings who did not have the willpower to break their enslavement to nicotine. He told Cliff Roberts, “I nursed to the utmost . . . my ability to sneer.” 16
Shortly after Eisenhower returned to Columbia, John—currently an instructor in English at West Point—and Barbara had their second child, Barbara Anne. The Eisenhowers’ first grandchild, Dwight David Eisenhower II, had been born in 1951. The Eisenhowers were doting grandparents. The general wanted his grandchildren with him for as long and as often as possible; he loved playing with them, teaching them things, buying them presents, giving them lectures. His relationship with his namesake—who was called David, not Dwight—was especially close, and grew even closer as David grew older.
With the coming of grandchildren, Mamie wanted a place of her own more than ever. In thirty-four years of marriage, she had never had one. In the fall of 1950, Eisenhower found one for them, near a farm George Allen had purchased outside Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (Allen later bought up all the land around the Eisenhower farm so that it would be completely protected from encroachment). The farm appealed to the Eisenhowers because of its location, Gettysburg’s historic significance, and the worn-out nature of the soil. Eisenhower looked forward to building the soil back up again, restoring it to the condition it was in when the Eisenhowers first came to Pennsylvania from Germany. Mamie looked forward to restoring the old farmhouse; eventually, however, all but the outer walls had to be torn down and a new home built. Mamie designed it for a retirement home, with large, airy rooms and lovely views. Eisenhower began raising cattle in partnership with Allen.
In the late summer of 1949, Eisenhower severed all his ties with the Administration. The issue was the budget. Truman was determined to cut spending on defense to below $15 billion a year; Eisenhower wanted it raised to $16 billion. Defense Secretary Louis A. Johnson asked Eisenhower to help him distribute the allocation (about $13.5 billion) among the three services. Eisenhower did so, but he fought with Johnson at nearly every step of the way, and when the process ended he asked to be relieved of his assignment. He returned to Columbia, “convinced that Washington would never see me again except as an occasional visitor.” 17
But for a man who expected never to return to Washington to live, and for a man who continued to insist that he had no interest in any political career, Eisenhower was acting suspiciously like a man who in fact planned to be the Republican candidate for the Presidency in 1952. He could not avoid thinking about his intentions, because his friends, and a virtual army of citizens, were urging him to enter the race.
Daily, in one form or another, he was asked, “Don’t you want to be President?” He emphatically denied it, in his private conversations with his family, the gang, his other intimate friends; he denied it in his private diary; he denied it in his correspondence; he denied it in every public utterance he made on the subject. There is not a single item in the massive collection at the Eisenhower Library prior to late 1951 that even hints that he would seek the job or that he was secretly doing so.
And yet, his actions could not have been better calculated to put him into the White House. His numerous public appearances, his association with the rich and powerful, and the content of his speeches all increased the demand that he become a candidate. No professional politician could have plotted as successful a campaign for the general as the one he directed himself.
To be a successful candidate, he had to appear not to be a candidate. Until after a nomination, he had to avoid partisanship. His speeches had to be forceful without being controversial, seeking the great middle ground of American politics while avoiding any position on current specific disputes. He needed to make himself visible around the country, not as a candidate pleading for votes but as a public servant speaking out on some great issue on which the majority already agreed. He had to put some distance between himself and the Democrats without appearing ungrateful to FDR and Truman for the opportunities they had given him. He had to have access to men of great wealth, and to assure them that his views, especially on taxes and the economy, were safely conservative. He had to keep his image as the Supreme Commander—tough, decisive, highly intelligent, dignified, a man at ease with Churchill and de Gaulle and the other great men of the age—as well as his image as “Ike”—friendly, outgoing, personable, just plain folks, the Kansas farm boy who retained his modesty and was a bit bemused by all the attention that surrounded him, just a simple soldier trying to do his duty.
All this he did, and it led unswervingly to the White House. Yet at every step of the way he protested that he had no ambition to serve as President. He frequently complained that no one, not even the gang, believed his denials, but then how could they, given his actions? None of this recital of his ambivalent behavior is meant to suggest that he sat down, sometime after the night of Truman’s re-election, and charted a course for himself that had as its goal the White House. Most of what he did in the period from November 1948 to the end of 1950 he would have done even had Dewey won in 1948 and thus ended all talk about Eisenhower for President. But as he knew better than anyone else, his activities kept his political options open. He did not decide that he wanted to be President and gear his actions to that end, but he carefully made certain that the possibility remained open, indeed that it increased. He did not seek the Presidency, but he so successfully managed his public and private life that, more so than any other candidate in American history, save only George Washington, the Presidency sought him.
He said that he would never willingly seek a vote, and he would never consent to becoming a candidate unless there was an overwhelming demand that convinced him it was his duty to run. Then he created the conditions that convinced him.
• •
Eisenhower’s progress toward the White House began the day after Truman’s re-election. Ed Bermingham of Alabama, a highly successful investment broker, asked Eisenhower to be the guest of honor at a dinner in Chicago that would have as its audience the leading businessmen, publishers, and bankers in the Midwest. Eisenhower instantly accepted; his remarks at the dinner about the dangers of big government and big labor, high taxes, and creeping socialism were greeted with sustained applause. Shortly after he returned to New York, he was the honored guest of Winthrop Aldrich of the Chase Manhattan Bank at a dinner party at the Racquet & Tennis Club in Manhattan. When Frank Adams, chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey, asked him to give a little off-the-record talk to his company’s top officials on the “broad economic, political and social problems of the day,”18 Eisenhower accepted the next day. He thus established a pattern that continued, without letup, for the next two years. By the end of that time, there was scarcely a successful businessman, publisher, or financier in the country who had not experienced Eisenhower’s firm handshake, seen that big grin, reacted to that bouncy enthusiasm, been impressed by “Ike’s” grim determination.
Meanwhile, he tried to avoid the politicians, but they came to him, usually secretly, or through an emissary. The man he least wanted to be seen with in public was Governor Dewey. Thus when Dewey asked for a private meeting in July 1949, Eisenhower agreed, but only if Dewey would come in via the back door and without any publicity.
The governor told Eisenhower that he was “a public possession,” that his standing with the citizenry was “likewise public property,” and that he had to “carefully guard” his image so that it could be used “in the service of all the people.” The governor explained that Eisenhower was the “only” man who could “save this country from going to Hades in the handbasket of paternalism, socialism, dictatorship.” Eisenhower replied that he would never “want to enter politics,” that he would never seek a vote, that he would of course do his duty, but that “I do not believe that anything can ever convince me that I have a duty to seek political office.”19 That only made plainer to Dewey what he already knew—that his task was to “convince” Eisenhower where his “duty” lay.
Throughout 1949 and on into 1950, Eisenhower repeatedly stated in his diary, “I am not, now or in the future, going willingly into politics,” but always there was the “unless.” “If I ever do so it will be as the result of a series of circumstances that crush all my arguments, that there appears to me to be such compelling reasons to enter the political field that refusal to do so would always thereafter mean to me that I’d failed to do my duty.” He said he could not believe he could be convinced, and added that “if I should ever, in the future, decide affirmatively . . . it will be because I’ve become oversold by friends.”20 Then he gave his friends every reason to try to so convince him, as he went around the country decrying the state of the nation’s defenses, America’s position in the world, and the drift to socialism and dictatorship.
In July of 1950 he went to the very heart of right-wing Republicanism, the Bohemian Grove, a retreat in California where millionaires gathered each year to talk, listen to speeches, play, drink, relax, and establish contacts. Herbert Hoover was the reigning figure at the Grove; members called him “The Chief.” Eisenhower made the trip on a special train provided for him by the president of the Santa Fe Railroad; in California, he delighted the men at the Grove (including Congressman Richard Nixon, who chatted briefly with Eisenhower at this, their first meeting) by his informality, friendliness, and attacks on the New Deal.
On June 25, 1950, the North Koreans invaded South Korea. Truman reacted immediately; the United Nations adopted an American resolution denouncing the aggression and committing the U.N. to the defense of South Korea, while Truman sent in the U.S. Navy and Air Force, with ground troops to follow.
No one in the Administration thought to invite General Eisenhower to Washington for consultation, but he went anyway, three days after the war began. At the Pentagon he talked with the high command and was disappointed. “I went in expecting to find them all in a dither of effort, engaged in the positive business of getting the troops, supplies, etc., that will be needed to settle the Korean mess,” he wrote in his diary. But “they seemed indecisive.” Eisenhower assured them that he supported Truman’s decision, then emphasized that an “appeal to force cannot, by its nature, be a partial one . . . for God’s sake, get ready! . . . We must study every angle to be prepared for whatever may happen, even if it finally came to the use of an A-bomb (which God forbid).”21
He returned to Washington a week later, to meet with Pentagon officials, testify before a Senate committee, and have lunch with Truman and George Marshall. Eisenhower and Marshall told Truman that they “earnestly supported” his actions, then advised him to put as much strength, as quickly as possible, into Korea. But although Truman and the Pentagon officials assured Eisenhower that in Korea General MacArthur was getting “all he asked for,” Eisenhower felt “there seems no disposition to begin serious mobilizing. . . . [Truman’s] military advisers are too complacent.”22
The mood in Washington in late June and July of 1950 was not at all similar to the mood of urgency and dedication that characterized December 1941. For Eisenhower personally, being an outsider commenting on events without benefit of the latest information, rather than being at the center of the action, as he had been in 1941, was frustrating. But whatever the drawbacks to being an outsider, there were advantages. Eisenhower was in the happy position of being able to give advice without having to make decisions. Thus he could tell Truman to undertake a rapid rearmament program, without having to consider all the President’s legal, economic, and political problems. Thus he could argue—as he did, later, when it became an issue—that he had advised the government to do more in Korea, but had been ignored.
By the fall of 1950, Eisenhower clearly needed to get out of Columbia. The nation was at war, the world in crisis, and the old soldier wanted to be in on the action.
His luck held, his opportunity came. In 1949, the United States had joined with the nations of Western Europe in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). European rearmament, almost nonexistent before the Korean War began, was now under way. Truman had committed the United States to a massive program of rearmament and indicated that he would send a goodly portion of the forces raised to Europe, to join in a NATO military organization. Leaders on both sides of the Atlantic unanimously agreed that Eisenhower was the “only man” who could take command of the NATO forces. In October 1950, Truman called Eisenhower to a meeting at the White House, where he “requested” the general to accept the appointment. Eisenhower took the position that “I am a soldier and am ready to respond to whatever orders my superiors” may give.23
It was an ideal appointment. As NATO commander, with headquarters in Paris, he could avoid making any comments about domestic and partisan issues. His return to Europe would insure front-page coverage around the world. He could speak out, forcefully, on the issue closest to his heart, the Atlantic Alliance. He would be in daily working contact with the heads of government of Western Europe, which would only add to his image as one of the world’s leading statesmen. His reputation as the Western world’s greatest soldier would be enhanced. The post put Eisenhower at the center of great events. It represented a challenge worthy of his talents. As he explained to his son, John, “I consider this to be the most important military job in the world.”24 He could renew and strengthen his relations with his many British and French friends, and establish new ones with the West German leaders. His only worry, he said, was his wife; Mamie’s “heart condition deteriorates a bit year by year and I hate to contemplate” forcing her to move once again. But as for himself, he knew he would be happy when he could feel that “I am doing the best I can in what I definitely believe to be a world crisis.”25
Best of all, he would be in a position to preserve the victory he had directed in 1945. The specter of the Europe that he had liberated being overrun and enslaved by the Red Army—a prospect that in late 1950 seemed entirely possible—was too painful to contemplate. He told Swede, “I rather look upon this effort as about the last remaining chance for the survival of Western civilization.”26
But if Truman had provided Eisenhower with a perfect platform, it was still Eisenhower who would have to perform. The job was hardly ceremonial; the challenges were real; there was a definite possibility of failure. The only firm decision that the NATO Council of Ministers had made was that they wanted Eisenhower for the Supreme Command.
But of what? A multinational force? Independent national armies joined together in a loose alliance? How many troops? Where would they come from? Truman had said he intended to send more American divisions to Germany—there were two there already—but Taft and other Old Guard Republicans had challenged the President’s right to ship American troops to Europe in peacetime.
And although few dared to say so publicly, all the NATO partners knew that NATO without German troops would never be able to match the Red Army. Eisenhower himself felt that “the safety of Western Europe demands German participation on a vigorous scale,” but West Germany was not yet sovereign, was not a member of NATO, and in any case the French, Dutch, Belgians, and others were horrified at the prospect of rearming the Germans only five years after they had been liberated from the Nazis. German rearmament was going to be a hard sell. So too would be general European rearmament.
To the Europeans, NATO meant a guarantee that the United States would not desert them, that they could count on the atomic bomb to deter the Red Army. They could see no reason to add a significant military component to NATO, especially when the price would include German rearmament as well as higher taxes and more sacrifices for their economies, at a time when they were just beginning to emerge from the ashes of World War II. Rearmament would merely provoke the Russians, critics said, without creating sufficient strength to repel them—at least without using atomic bombs, which was already assured by American participation in NATO. To succeed as Supreme Commander, Eisenhower would have to persuade the Europeans that the Germans were their allies, not their enemies; that they could build ground and air forces strong enough to hurl back the Red Army; that a genuine military alliance of the NATO partners was, even though unique in history, nevertheless workable.
He was disturbed by American leadership. Taft and his fellow isolationists in the Republican Party were simply hopeless. Truman was not much better. There was no sense of direction, Eisenhower complained, “and poor HST [is] a fine man who, in the middle of a stormy lake, knows nothing of swimming.”27 In late 1950, as the Chinese armies rolled southward in Korea, as the Europeans continued to resist either German or their own rearmament, and as the Americans continued to bicker among themselves about the size of their commitment to NATO, Eisenhower wrote in his diary, “Something is terribly wrong.”28
His friends kept telling him that he was the “only man” who could lead America and the Atlantic Alliance out of its morass. He was finding it increasingly difficult to disagree with them. He still insisted that there were many fine men around and that he wanted no part of politics, but hardly anyone believed him. By December, Eisenhower had been convinced that one more Democratic victory would end the two-party system in the United States, but he was unhappy about Taft. His concern was with Taft’s policies, not on domestic matters, where the two men thought alike, but in foreign affairs, and most of all with Taft’s commitment to NATO (Taft had voted against the treaty).
So, before leaving for Europe, Eisenhower arranged a meeting with Taft. He wanted Taft’s support for NATO; if he got it, he was ready to “kill off any further speculation about me as a candidate for the Presidency.” Before Taft arrived Eisenhower wrote out a statement he intended to issue that evening, if Taft would agree to the principles of collective security and an all-out American commitment to NATO. Eisenhower’s statement read, “Having been called back to military duty, I want to announce that my name may not be used by anyone as candidate for President—and if they do I will repudiate such efforts.”
But the talk with Taft was disheartening. The senator objected to Truman’s program of sending additional American divisions to Europe, said that the President did not have the right to do so. Eisenhower insisted that the President certainly did have such a right. Then Eisenhower asked Taft if he and his followers would “agree that collective security is necessary for us in Western Europe” and would support NATO as a bipartisan policy.
Taft equivocated. He seemed to Eisenhower to be “playing politics,” and appeared to be primarily interested “in cutting the President, or the Presidency, down to size.” He moved the discussion from principle to detail, mumbling several times, “I do not know whether I shall vote for four divisions or six divisions or two divisions.” Eisenhower said he had no interest in such details, that he wanted support for the concept of NATO, but Taft would not respond. After the senator left, Eisenhower called in two aides and in their presence tore up his drafted statement, which was Sherman-like enough to take him out of the presidential race forever. He decided to retain “an aura of mystery” about his plans.29
• •
Eisenhower began his tour as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), with a January 1951 trip that took him to the eleven European capitals of the NATO countries. He started in Paris, where he made a Europe-wide radio broadcast. He took the opportunity to assert his great love for Europe: “I return with an unshakable faith in Europe—this land of our ancestors—in the underlying courage of its people, in their willingness to live and sacrifice for a secure peace and the continuance and the progress of civilization.” He said that he had no “miraculous plans,” and that he brought with him no troops or military equipment, but he did bring hope.30
And his name, the power of which he knew. At the initial NATO planning session, General Lauris Norstad of the U.S. Air Force recalled, “I’ve never heard more crying in my life.” All the staff officers from the various countries said they did not have this, they did not have that, how weak they were. “And I could see General Eisenhower becoming less and less impressed with this very negative approach, and finally he just banged that podium . . . got red faced . . . and said in a voice that could have been heard two or three floors below that he knew what the weaknesses were . . . ‘I know there are shortages, but I myself make up for part of that shortage—what I can do and what I can put into this—and the rest of it has to be made up by you people. Now get at it!’ And he banged the podium again and he walked out. Just turned around, didn’t say a word, just walked out. And believe me there was a great change in attitude. Right away there was an air of determination—we will do it.”31
One of Eisenhower’s goals on the January trip was to get from the Europeans positive commitments to NATO that he could use back in the States to counter Taft and the others who were charging that since the Europeans were unwilling to rearm, the United States should not bear the burden and the cost. In Lisbon, Eisenhower told Prime Minister Salazar that the Europeans would have to develop “the same sense of urgency and desire for unity and common action to preserve peace as existed in the United States,” and asked Salazar to give him “concrete evidence to take back to the American people that the European countries were giving their defense effort chief priority.”32 He repeated these demands at every stop, and he could be blunt and direct in doing so.
Eisenhower also used the trip to give pep talks to the Europeans. He was at his most dramatic in Paris, where he told Premier Pleven “that the French do not have enough confidence in their own potentialities; that, after all, they have only been defeated once and that the public officials in a country of such glorious traditions should be constantly exhorting the people to again rise to the height of which the French people are capable.” He urged Pleven to “beat the drums to reaffirm the glory of France.” The official recorder noted that “the impression Eisenhower made on M. Pleven was very noticeable. M. Pleven said, ‘I thank you; you have aroused new confidence in me already.’ ” When Eisenhower’s chief of staff, Alfred Gruenther, told him he had been “superbly eloquent,” Eisenhower grunted, “Why is it that when I deliver such a good talk it has to be to an audience of one!”33
Part of the pep talk included urging the Europeans to get along with one another. He asked Prime Minister de Gasperi of Italy, for example, if it was not possible “for the Italians to think in friendly terms about Yugoslavia,” as he had high hopes of eventually including Yugoslavia in NATO in order to strengthen his southern flank. (His overtures to Marshal Tito, a sort of Darlan Deal in reverse, aroused the fury of Republicans, who were upset enough at the thought of helping Europe’s socialist governments. The idea of giving military aid to Communist Yugoslavia made them livid. But Eisenhower in 1951, as in November 1942, would take allies wherever he could find them.) De Gasperi, citing the struggle between Italy and Yugoslavia for control of Trieste, noted that “it was a sad fact that in Europe nations were usually friendly with other nations which were not their neighbors.”34
Two neighbors who shared a long frontier and deep hatreds were France and West Germany. When talking with the French, Eisenhower avoided the delicate subject of German rearmament, but he did begin to lay a basis for the creation of a German army by making a trip to a U.S. air base in West Germany, where he held a press conference. He opened by saying that when he had last come to Germany, “I bore in my heart a very definite antagonism toward Germany and certainly a hatred for all that the Nazis stood for, and I fought as hard as I knew how to destroy it.” But, he added, “for my part, by-gones are by-gones,” and he hoped that “some day the great German people are lined up with the rest of the free world, because I believe in the essential freedom-loving quality of the German people.” When a German reporter pointed out that many Frenchmen wanted a permanently neutralized Germany, Eisenhower replied that “in this day and time to conceive of actual neutrality . . . is an impossibility.” When asked whether he thought a German contribution was essential to the defense of Europe, he hedged a bit, but finally admitted “the more people on my side the happier I will be.”35
In his extensive private correspondence, with the gang, with other millionaires, with politicians and publishers, Eisenhower concentrated on selling NATO. Most of the incoming letters were pleas that he run for the Presidency; his standard reply was that he had no interest in politics and that in any event the job he held was so important that he had to concentrate his full energy and time on it. Then he would launch into a sales pitch for NATO, usually ending by urging the recipient to spread the word.
The word was that “the future of civilization, as we know it, is at stake.” The word was that the true defense of the United States was on the Elbe River. The word was that the American way of life was dependent upon raw materials that could come only from Europe and its colonies, and upon trade and scientific exchanges with Europe and the rest of the free world. The word was that by supporting European rearmament, the United States could buy as much security for itself by spending $1 as it could by spending $4 to build up American forces. The word was that only through collective security could the United States and Europe meet the Soviet threat.36
In his correspondence, Eisenhower dealt directly with the two major objections to American support for NATO. The first was that the Europeans, led by the Labour Party in Britain, were going socialist, which caused many of Eisenhower’s friends to ask, “Why in hell should we support a bunch of pinkos?” Eisenhower reassured them that Europe was fully committed to a free, democratic way of life, that it was not about to go Communist (unless the United States abandoned it), and that “it would be a terrific mistake to demand conformity in all political and economic details. We would soon fall apart!”37
The second objection, far more serious, was that the United States was committing itself to an indefinite defense of Europe, at a tremendous cost that would continually go higher. Eisenhower admitted the force of the objection. “We cannot be a modern Rome guarding the far frontiers with our legions,” he said. He recognized that the economic strength of the United States was the greatest asset the free world had, and he agreed that the expenditure of billions of dollars for defense would, in the long run, bankrupt the United States, thus presenting the Soviets with “their greatest victory.” But he insisted that a program of support for NATO was a short-run proposition. American aid for NATO was essential now, in 1951, but it could be phased out rather quickly. To Ed Bermingham, he flatly declared, “If in ten years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project will have failed.”38
Within Europe, Eisenhower considered morale to be his biggest problem. Less than six years after the most destructive war in history, Europeans just did not want to think about fighting—or building the forces to fight—another war. Further, the figures on ground strength were so stark and discouraging—NATO had only 12 divisions, the Russians 175—that it seemed impossible to stop the Red Army without using atomic bombs, and if the Americans were going to use atomic bombs anyway, why bother to build European ground strength, especially when it would be so expensive, would slow or halt economic recovery, and would only provoke the Russians?
Eisenhower thought that sufficient conventional strength could be built and that it was both mad and immoral to rely upon the atomic bomb. In his talks with the European leaders, Eisenhower attempted to build their confidence. Inevitably, he had to ask them to dig deeper, spend more, but he did so within the context of recognizing political realities. As his principal aide, Andrew Goodpaster, later explained, “He had a great sense of how the governments of the various countries worked and what the practical constraints were on the political leaders that you couldn’t crowd them too far, you couldn’t ask too much of them.”39
Eisenhower therefore emphasized morale, which cost little or nothing to build. “Civilian leaders talk about the state of morale in a given country as if it were a sort of uncontrollable event or phenomenon, like a thunderstorm or a cold winter,” he complained in his diary, while “the soldier leader looks on morale as . . . the greatest of all his problems, but also as one about which he can and must do something.” Thus he continued to urge, cajole, encourage. He asked the governments to remind each and every citizen daily “of his own conceptions of the dignity of man and of the value he places upon freedom; this must be accompanied by the reminder that freedom is something that must be earned every day that one lives!”
On the seventh anniversary of Overlord, Eisenhower went to Normandy to deliver a Europe-wide radio broadcast that reminded the Europeans of what was at stake. “Never again,” he said “must there be a campaign of liberation fought on these shores.”40
• •
Germany remained Eisenhower’s most delicate problem. No matter how successful he was in persuading the other nations of Western Europe to increase their defense spending, his goal of forty divisions was simply unattainable without a German army. Eisenhower had extracted from the French a promise of twenty-four divisions for NATO, but in fact the French had only three divisions in West Germany and six in France, with no immediate prospect of making any further contribution, because ten French divisions were tied down in Indochina in an apparently endless war. Whenever Eisenhower asked the French for more support for NATO, they countered with a request for more American support for their effort in Indochina. “I’d favor heavy reinforcement to get the thing over at once,” Eisenhower wrote in his diary, “but I’m convinced that no military victory is possible in that kind of theater.”41 In his view, the French had to give Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia their independence, then let them fight their own war, while the French Army came home to defend France. But he could not convince any French leader of the wisdom of that course, which meant that the only alternative for NATO was to create a German army, but the French would not allow that either.
“We are either going to solve this German problem,” Eisenhower believed, “or the Soviets will solve it in their favor.”42 Or as Chancellor Konrad Adenauer put it, “The Western Allies, especially France, have to . . . answer the question of which danger is the greater: the Russian threat or a German contribution to a European defense community.”43 After going through various contortions, including a proposal that the Germans provide the enlisted men while the French supplied the officers, the French finally offered the “Pleven Plan.” The Germans would build an army that would have no unit larger than a division, as part of an integrated NATO force commanded by Eisenhower; the German contribution would be limited to 20 percent of the integrated force.
Eisenhower told Marshall, “The plan offers the only immediate hope that I can see of developing, on a basis acceptable to other European countries, the German strength that is vital to us.” In addition, he had a larger goal. “I am certain that there is going to be no real progress towards a greater unification of Europe except through the medium of specific programs of this kind.”44 In other words, rather than waiting for the creation of a United States of Europe to achieve an all-European army, he felt that by forming the army first, the political unification would naturally follow.
He thought the new supernation should include all the European NATO members, plus Greece, Sweden, Spain, and Yugoslavia. A United States of Europe, he argued, would “instantly . . . solve the real and bitter problems of today . . . It is a tragedy for the whole human race that it is not done at once.” He brushed aside objections. “I get exceedingly weary of this talk about a step-by-step, gradual cautious approach,” he told Harriman. He saw no reason why a “socialist Sweden could [not] live alongside a capitalist Germany” so long as there was a simple bill of rights in the constitution, and the elimination of trade barriers and all economic and political restraint on free movement. He thought the United States could and should go to “any limit” to support such a venture.45
In December 1951, he urged Premier Pleven to issue a call to the European members of NATO “to meet in an official constitutional convention to consider ways and means for promoting a closer union.” Such a “dramatic and inspiring call to action,” he said, would be a great help in getting a European army under way. But although Pleven was the sponsor of the European army idea, and although Eisenhower carefully flattered Pleven, he did not respond.46 The French, in short, could not yet answer Adenauer’s question: Which do you fear most, the Red Army or a new German army?
The British too had to be wooed. They were not so opposed to a German army as were the French, but a united Europe was “anathema to them.” Eisenhower went after the British in his typical fashion—public speeches, private meetings with politicians, and an extensive correspondence with his many friends in the British government. On July 3, 1951, he delivered a major address to the English-Speaking Union at Grosvenor House on Park Lane, to an audience of 1,200 British leaders. Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison introduced him as “the First Citizen of the Atlantic”; Prime Minister Clement Attlee referred to him as “the man who won the war”; the then opposition leader, Winston Churchill, led the standing ovation. The attitude of the audience toward Eisenhower, according to Bill Robinson, who was there, “amounted to worship.”
In his speech, Eisenhower issued a ringing call for a United States of Europe. He recognized the difficulties—“this project faces the deadly danger of procrastination, timid measures, slow steps and cautious stages”—then held out the vision of what could be gained: “With unity achieved, Europe could build adequate security and, at the same time, continue the march of human betterment that has characterized Western civilization. Once united, the farms and factories of France and Belgium, the foundries of Germany, the rich farmlands of Holland and Denmark, the skilled labor of Italy, will produce miracles for the common good.” The next day Churchill told Eisenhower that he was too deaf to have heard the speech, but having now read it, he wanted to say, “I am sure this is one of the greatest speeches delivered by any American in my lifetime.”47
At his home outside Paris, Ike had Mamie with him, as well as Moaney as his valet, Sergeant Dry as his driver, and Colonel Craig Cannon as his personal aide. There was a golf course on the property, and a fish pond well stocked with trout, and room for a vegetable garden. Initially the house was too French for Mamie’s taste, too grand in its appearance, both inside and out, while the plumbing and electricity were unreliable. But after it was fixed up it became one of her favorite homes.
Ike took great pleasure in his garden and his painting. “We have had sweet corn, two kinds of beans, peas, radishes, tomatoes, turnips and beets . . . in great quantity,” he told his son in September, and bragged that “our corn did better than almost any other we have ever planted.”48 His painting abilities had not improved, he told Swede; there was still “no faintest semblance of talent.” But he added that because he could no longer indulge himself in “serious and steady reading,” he needed “some kind of release” and he found it in painting. “For me the real benefit is the fact that it gives me an excuse to be absolutely alone and interferes not at all with what I am pleased to call my ‘contemplative powers.’ ”49
• •
He needed time to contemplate, as the pressure on him to enter politics continued to grow. In the summer of 1951 his friends in the states formed a volunteer organization, Citizens for Eisenhower. Cliff Roberts financed the effort, with help from Ellis Slater, Pete Jones, and the rest of the gang, along with such Republican financiers as John Hay Whitney, L. B. Maytag, and George Whitney, the president of J. P. Morgan and Company. Citizens for Eisenhower then oversaw and encouraged the innumerable Ike Clubs that began springing up around the country. Because the group included no professional politicians, the movement gave the appearance of a spontaneous grass-roots demand.
But as the Ike Clubs boomed, inevitably the professional politicians began to get involved, through letters, telegrams, speeches, and visits to Paris. Eisenhower was polite to all of them. Senator Joseph McCarthy sent him a copy of one of his speeches; Eisenhower made a noncommittal, but friendly, reply. Senator Richard Nixon made a special trip to Paris in late May to meet the general and express his support for NATO.
Insofar as the Ike Clubs claimed to be nonpartisan, and insofar as Eisenhower was so much closer to the Democrats than the Taft-dominated Republicans on foreign policy, and insofar as Eisenhower would be an absolutely sure thing as a Democratic candidate, some Democrats still had hopes of capturing the general. In August 1951, Oregon Democrats filed petitions putting him on the Democratic primary ballot. Eisenhower protested that as SACEUR he could not take a partisan position and asked that his name be removed. Truman, meanwhile, was remaining as mysterious about his plans as Eisenhower was; it was generally acknowledged that he could have the Democratic nomination if he wanted it, but most observers felt he would not have much chance in the general election (his approval rating in the polls was below 30 percent).
In November, when Eisenhower was in Washington for consultation on NATO matters, Truman met him privately in Blair House and there repeated an offer he had made earlier through George Allen—the President would “guarantee” Eisenhower the Democratic nomination and give him his full support. “You can’t join a party just to run for office,” Eisenhower replied. “What reason have you to think I have ever been a Democrat? You know I have been a Republican all my life and that my family have always been Republicans.” Truman pressed the offer; Eisenhower rejoined that his differences with the Democrats over domestic issues, especially labor legislation, were too vast for him to even consider accepting.
Had Eisenhower accepted, given that he had more support from Democratic than Republican voters, he would have won a certain victory, probably bringing a Democratic majority to Congress with him. But he would not consider it. For one thing, the Republican Party had to be saved from itself; for another, there were the general’s personal feelings. As he noted in his diary, “I could never imagine feeling any compelling duty in connection with a Democratic movement of any kind.”50
Taft, meanwhile, was piling up delegates. Equally alarming to Eisenhower’s political supporters, the Citizens for Eisenhower group was plagued by problems—internal bickering, fighting for position, poor organization. On September 4, 1951, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts visited Eisenhower in Paris. He came as a spokesman for numerous East Coast Republicans, and he insisted that it was time to put some professional expertise into the Eisenhower campaign. Getting the nomination would be the hard part, Lodge said. The election was a cinch. Lodge therefore insisted that Eisenhower had to permit the use of his name in the Republican primaries, and to allow professionals to take control of the Citizens for Eisenhower organization. Speed was essential; otherwise Taft soon would have the nomination sewed up. Eisenhower promised to think it over.51
In the States, the professionals were trying to infiltrate the Citizens organization. Lucius Clay sent Eisenhower a series of reports on their activities, all done in a simple code. (“Our Friend up the river” was Dewey; “F” was Harold Stassen; “G” was Taft; “A” was Senator James Duff of Pennsylvania; etc.) Clay was disturbed by their infighting—F would not join up if A was a part of the movement; Our Friend did not like A; and so it went. On a more positive note, Clay reported that “I am convinced that the President will not run if you run. He has made this statement to two separate and reliable persons. He will run if G does, and in my opinion would beat G to a frazzle.”52 Eisenhower responded that he would do whatever duty dictated. He then added that he had been assured by Harold Stassen, who had made a strong bid for the Republican nomination in 1948 and was attempting to do so again in 1952, that at the proper moment he, Stassen, would deliver his delegate votes to Eisenhower. Eisenhower also assured Clay that “you need not worry that I shall ever disregard Our Friend,” then ended with a heartfelt handwritten postscript: “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just forget all this kind of thing?”53
That was obviously impossible. On November 10, Clay met in New York with Dewey, Lodge, and a number of Dewey’s high command from 1948, including his campaign manager, New York lawyer Herbert Brownell, and his economic adviser, Gabriel Hauge. The group agreed to name Lodge as Eisenhower’s campaign manager. Lodge was free of the onus of being a Dewey man (he had supported Arthur Vandenberg in 1948) and had enthusiasm, drive, and professional know-how. As the meeting broke up, Dewey said, “And don’t forget, let’s get a hell of a lot of money.”54
When Eisenhower flew to New York in November, he spent three hours sitting in the airplane at LaGuardia Airport while Mamie went to Morningside Heights to collect a few things. On the plane, Eisenhower held a meeting with the gang. Milton Eisenhower and Clay also were there. Throughout his brief stay in the States, Eisenhower had been harassed by reporters wanting to know his political preference; he had just come from Washington, where he had turned down Truman’s offer; he was exhausted, irritable, and unhappy. But he was also moved by Milton’s position, which was that if the choice before the voters in 1952 was to be Truman or Taft, then “any personal sacrifice on the part of any honest American citizen is wholly justified.” Robinson pointed out that “in no circumstance could you ever avoid the burden of worry over the country’s future course, and there would seem to be fewer frustrations for the leader than there would be for the commentator.” Eisenhower replied that he would respond to a genuine draft, that he would do nothing to bring it about, that he would not repudiate the efforts of the Citizens for Eisenhower, and that he wished the whole thing were over, because he certainly did not want to be President.55
What it came down to was that Eisenhower wanted to be nominated by acclamation, but his friends knew that was impossible. He was expecting too much; he would have to enter the fight for delegates before Taft had them all. Eisenhower refused. He cited his NATO job, the need for him to remain above politics, and—most of all—Army regulations, which forbade a serving officer from seeking political office.
At least, his friends said, allow us to announce that you are a Republican, because Taft’s great advantage in the struggle for delegates was his argument that no one knew what political party the general belonged to. Still Eisenhower refused, but he did agree that Milton could make a statement to the effect that the Eisenhower family had always been Republican.
Growing pressure caused growing resentment. The more he saw of professional politicians, the less he liked them. Shortly after returning to Paris in November, he wrote Robinson, “Every passing day confirms and hardens my dislike of all political activity as a personal participant.”56 Because of that reaction Eisenhower was increasingly ambiguous, increasingly doubtful that he wanted to pay the price of a political career.
He was distressed by reports from Clay of trouble in the organization. Senator Duff was “full of ego and determined to be the ‘anointed.’ ” Duff did not like Lodge; Lodge could not stand Duff; Dewey was doubtful about both Duff and Lodge; no one trusted Stassen; there were difficulties with the finance managers.57 It all made Eisenhower’s head spin.
The pressure mounted. Paul Hoffman, whom Eisenhower admired enormously, wrote him on December 5: “Whether you like it or not, you have to face the fact that you are the one man today who can (1) redeem the Republican party, (2) change the atmosphere of the United States from one impregnated with fear and hate to one in which there will be good will and confidence, and (3) start the world down the road to peace.”58 Clay, Robinson, and dozens of other men Eisenhower respected bombarded him with similar statements. Aldrich sent him a poll taken in Texas that indicated Eisenhower would carry the state by a wide margin.
It was that prospect—that all he had to do was say yes and he could be President, and that as President he could save the country—that kept him from repudiating the efforts in his behalf. That, and his feeling that “the presidency is something that should never be sought, [but] could never be refused.”59
Then, on December 8, what Eisenhower called a crisis arose. Lodge told him that he simply had to return to the States and make a positive announcement or “the whole effort is hopeless.” Eisenhower’s response was immediate and negative. To involve himself in preconvention activity, he said, “would be a dereliction in duty—almost a violation of my oath of office.”60 Therefore, the effort in “which you and your close political associates are now engaged should, logically, be abandoned.” He wanted Lodge to announce that since Eisenhower’s backers had concluded that his nomination without his active participation was impossible, and since “it is impossible for me in my position as a military commander” to campaign, the Citizens for Eisenhower group was being disbanded. In his diary, he outlined these developments, then wrote “Hurrah.”61 As far as he was concerned, it was over—or so it seemed.
Getting out was hardly going to be that easy. Stassen flew over to see him and argue for the cause. Clay wrote a long letter, in effect accusing Eisenhower of going back on his word, given at the LaGuardia Airport meeting, that “if a group could prove it was your duty, on their advice you would return home.”62
Cliff Roberts and Bill Robinson flew over to Paris. He told them that his “feeling midway between aversion and reluctance is 100% real,” and that he was “more devoted to the success of his [NATO] mission than intrigued by the idea of being President.” Then he came down from Olympus, explaining his own political judgment and in the process revealing political calculations of his own.
There were, he said, advantages to his staying at his post and making no political statements. First of all, his success in Europe was the sine qua non of a successful bid for the Presidency. He could not claim success until the late February meeting of the NATO Council of Ministers in Lisbon, or until he had issued his Annual Report, in April. Next, he pointed out that “the seeker is never so popular as the sought. People want what they think that they can’t get.” His nonparticipation in the delegate struggle insured that he had made no deals nor incurred any obligations. If he returned to the States and began to campaign, he would have to take a stand on various emotional issues, which would “alienate more strength than it would develop.” Further, he would be subjected to more direct and severe attacks than his opponents would dare risk while he was SACEUR. By avoiding a debate with Taft, he might be able to prevent a split in the party and a bitter personal rivalry.
These were powerful arguments, and they convinced his friends. Robinson’s conclusion was that “it would seem that there is more to be gained than lost by staying on the job in Europe.”63
Robinson carried back to Lodge the arguments Eisenhower had made against his returning home and announcing that he was a Republican. Lodge was unconvinced. The general’s position, Lodge agreed, would be a positive factor in winning a general election, but it would not help him win the nomination. Lodge’s job was to win delegates, and he could not do so for a man who would not even identify himself as a Republican. Lodge decided to force the issue. On January 6, 1952, he announced that he was entering Eisenhower’s name on the Republican ballot in the New Hampshire primary. In response to questions, Lodge told reporters that Eisenhower was indeed a Republican, that he would accept the Republican nomination if it were offered to him, and that the general himself would confirm these statements.
Eisenhower was furious. Lodge’s presumption, he told Roberts, “has caused me a bit of bitter resentment.”64 He sent a sharp letter of rebuke to Clay, then issued a coy statement of his own. He did not directly confirm Lodge’s claim that he was a Republican, but admitted that he did vote for that party. He did not say he would accept a Republican nomination, but did admit that Lodge and his associates had the right “to place before me next July a duty that would transcend my present responsibility.” He did not give his approval to the actions of the Citizens, although he added that all Americans were free “to organize in pursuit of their common convictions.” He ended with a promise: “Under no circumstances will I ask for relief from this assignment in order to seek nomination for political office, and I shall not participate in . . . preconvention activities.”65
But events continued to drive him toward a different course. On January 21, Truman submitted his budget, with its $14 billion deficit, to Congress, which led Eisenhower to dictate an eight-page furious protest in his diary. On February 8, Herbert Hoover joined Taft and sixteen other prominent Republicans in a statement that urged that “American troops should be brought home” from Europe. Which was worse, the danger of bankruptcy or isolation, Eisenhower hardly knew, but he felt he had to stop both trends.
There was also the pressure of being wanted as well as needed. It was the pressure he was apparently waiting to see. His friends and the politicians kept telling him how much the American people yearned for his leadership, and on February 11, he got a dramatic demonstration of how right they were. Jacqueline Cochran, the famous aviator and wife of Floyd Odium, the financier, flew to Paris with a two-hour film of an Eisenhower rally in Madison Square Garden, held at midnight following a boxing match. It had been carefully stage-managed by Eisenhower’s friends and the Citizens. Some fifteen thousand people attended, despite—according to Cochran—a total lack of cooperation from the city officials (all, of course, Democrats). The film showed the crowd chanting in unison, “We want Ike! We want Ike!” while waving “I Like Ike” banners and placards. Eisenhower and Mamie watched in their living room and were profoundly moved.
When the film was over, Eisenhower got Cochran a drink. As they raised their glasses, she blurted out a toast: “To the President.” She later recalled, “I was the first person to ever say this to him and he burst into tears . . . Tears were just running out of his eyes, he was so overwhelmed . . . So then he started to talk about his mother, his father and his family, but mostly his mother, and he talked for an hour.”
Cochran told him that he would have to declare himself and go back to the States, that “I’m as sure as I’m sitting here and looking at you that Taft will get the nomination if you don’t declare yourself.” Eisenhower told her to return to New York and tell Clay to come to Europe for a talk, then added, “You can go tell Bill Robinson that I’m going to run.”66
• •
On March 11, 1952, in the New Hampshire primary, Eisenhower beat Taft and Stassen with 50 percent of the vote to their 38 percent and 7 percent. A week later, in Minnesota, Eisenhower received 108,692 write-in votes while Stassen, his name on the ballot in his home state, got 129,076 (Taft did not run). As Stassen had privately assured Eisenhower of his support at the convention, those delegates could be added to the Eisenhower total. He was on his way.
He was not entirely happy about it. Robert Anderson, a forty-two-year-old Texas lawyer, politician, and financier, who flew to Paris to consult with the candidate about the Federal Reserve Board, found Eisenhower “working himself into physical exhaustion” as he tried to finish his NATO duties and prepare himself for the campaign.67 Eisenhower was not going to go into a battle expecting to lose. He had earlier told Robinson, “If ever I get into this business, I am going to start swinging from the hips and I am going to keep swinging until completely counted out.”68 He was ready to start swinging, although not ready to begin making statements on the issues. As he explained to George Sloan of Chrysler, “A premature consumption of all the ammunition in a battle is certain to bring defeat—everything must be so calculated that the effort constantly increases in its intensity towards its ultimate maximum, which is the moment of victory.”69 Privately, he sent long letters to his business friends, bemoaning high taxes and government bureaucracy; he counted on them to pass the letters around. He met regularly, if secretly, with prominent Republican politicians. He assured Texans that he was on the side of states’ rights in the tidelands oil dispute with the federal government. He assured doctors that he was completely opposed to socialized medicine. He wrote a long, friendly letter to Drew Pearson on the subject of Christianity versus communism. He opened a correspondence with various Republican governors.
He continued to arm himself for battle. He asked experts for background papers on mortgage financing, farm subsidies, public housing, and a myriad of other subjects. He asked John Foster Dulles to give him a statement on the problems of dealing with the Russians. Herb Brownell came over to Paris to assure Eisenhower that Dewey had the New York delegation solidly behind the general, and could deliver other East Coast delegations. The two men discussed the mechanics of a presidential campaign, scheduling, speeches, platforms, organization needs, and such issues as Social Security, race relations, and the budget.
Now he was a full-time candidate, pure and simple. His supporters began to bombard him with advice, telling him what he should say on this or that issue. The advice was often cynical. “It seems necessary to walk around some of the questions presented,” he wrote Milton. “I seem to sense a difference between a man’s convictions and what he believes to be politically feasible.”70 The politicians wanted Eisenhower to “take a stand.” He resisted. “Frankly,” he told Clay, “I do not consider either race relations or labor relations to be issues. And I don’t believe the problems arising within either of them can be ended by punitive law or a statement made in a press conference.”71
When he did express his views, he got into trouble. After his pro-Texas views on the tidelands matter became known, Lodge wrote in alarm—Eisenhower’s stand would hurt him in the Northeast, and he should retreat from a flat endorsement of the Texas claims. Eisenhower replied, “I am compelled to remark that I believe what I believe.” He said the original treaty between Texas and the United States specifically guaranteed the tidelands to the state, which as far as he was concerned settled the matter. He added that he would not “tailor my opinions and convictions to the one single measure of net vote appeal.”72
With all the conflicting advice, with all that Brownell had told him about the rigors of a presidential campaign, with the attacks on him that the Taft people were already launching, with the wrench that came with packing up and moving again, Eisenhower’s mood was glum. “Soon I shall be coming home,” he wrote Cliff Roberts on May 19, “and I really dread—for the first time in my life—the prospect of coming back to my own country.”73
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Why then was he going? Of all the arguments used to induce him to enter the campaign, three were decisive. First was the matter of duty, and the man who had presented that case in a decisive fashion was his brother Milton. Milton had been opposed to his brother’s entering politics and thereby endangering his reputation and his place in history, not to mention the personal sacrifices involved. But when Milton told Dwight that if he did not run, the nation would have to choose between Taft or Truman, and that in the case of such a disaster any sacrifice was justified, Dwight had to agree. Second was the matter of a mandate, and the woman who made it clear to him that he had one was Jacqueline Cochran. “Even though we agree with the old proverb, ‘The voice of the people is the voice of God,’ ” Eisenhower had written Clay, “it is not always easy to determine just what that voice is saying.”74 Cochran’s dramatic presentation of the Madison Square Garden rally convinced him that the people wanted him.
But the most decisive argument was the one put forward by Bill Robinson, sitting in the airplane at LaGuardia Airport. “In no circumstance could you ever avoid the burden of worry over the country’s future course,” Robinson had said, “and there would seem to be fewer frustrations for the leader than there would be for the commentator.”75 The truth was that Eisenhower was not ready to retire or abandon his country to others. At sixty-one years of age, he was in excellent health. Indeed, despite his irritability at being pushed and pulled in every direction, most observers thought that he never looked better. As he had done for the past decade, he was working a twelve- to fourteen-hour day, seven days a week. He was intensely involved, totally active.
And, despite his oft-expressed modesty, he was supremely self-confident, certain that of all the candidates for national leadership, he was the best prepared for the job. Although he never said so, even to himself, he knew that he was smarter, more experienced, and had better principles than his competitors, and thus was the right man to lead America through the world crisis. He wanted what was best for his country, and in the end he decided that he was the best and would have to serve.