DWIGHT DAVID EISENHOWER was a great and good man. This is an assertion I hope to prove; let me begin by defining the terms.
In 1954, Dwight Eisenhower wrote his childhood friend Swede Hazlett on the subject of greatness. Ike thought greatness depended either on achieving preeminence in “some broad field of human thought or endeavor,” or on assuming “some position of great responsibility” and then so discharging the duties “as to have left a marked and favorable imprint upon the future.”1
The qualities of a great man, he said, were “vision, integrity, courage, understanding, the power of articulation, and profundity of character.” To that list, I’d add two others: decisiveness (the ability to take command, decide, and act) and luck.
The qualities of goodness in a man, I believe, include a broad sympathy for the human condition, that is, an awareness of human weaknesses and shortcomings and a willingness to be forgiving of them, a sense of responsibility toward others, a genuine modesty combined with a justified self-confidence, a sense of humor, and most of all a love of life and of people.
Eisenhower was one of the outstanding leaders of the Western world of this century. As a soldier he was professionally competent, well versed in the history of war along with modern strategy, tactics, and weaponry, decisive, disciplined, courageous, dedicated, popular with his men, his superiors, and his subordinates.
As President, he was a leader who made peace in Korea and kept the peace thereafter, a statesman who safely guided the free world through one of the most dangerous decades of the Cold War, and a politician who captured and kept the confidence of the American people. He was the only President of the twentieth century who managed to preside over eight years of peace and prosperity.
As a man, he was good-looking, considerate of and concerned about others, loyal to his friends and family, ambitious, thin-skinned and sensitive to criticism, modest (but never falsely so), almost embarrassingly unsophisticated in his musical, artistic, and literary tastes, intensely curious about people and places, often refreshingly naive, fun-loving—in short, a wonderful man to know or be around. Nearly everyone who knew him liked him immensely, many—including some of the most powerful men in the world—to the point of adulation.
The aim of this work is to explain and describe this man, to record his accomplishments and failures, his triumphs and shortcomings, his personal life and his personality. In the process, I hope that I convey some sense of what a truly extraordinary person he was, and of how much all of us who live in freedom today owe to him.
This book is basically a condensation of my two-volume biography of Eisenhower. There are some revisions and several new sections. My aim has been to provide a readable one-volume life, free of scholarly paraphernalia and excessive detail on plans, organization of military and government offices, bureaus, Cabinets, and the like.
As I made the condensation, the passage of time and the perspective of the end of the decade let me read the two volumes with fresh eyes. I’ve been struck by how right Ike was about so many things—and how wrong he was on others. Most particularly, I am impressed with his determination to do all that he could to foster the United States of Europe. I did the work of condensing in the evenings in Caen, Normandy. I spent the days walking the battlefield and swimming off the invasion beaches. Visitors from all over Europe come to the American, British, and German cemeteries in ever-increasing numbers. Many of them are students, and they get along with each other so well that I came away convinced that Ike’s dream is on the verge of becoming a reality.
That impression was strongly reinforced by the political activity in Europe in the summer of 1989. Elections were being held for the European Parliament. The campaign was active and positive, and voter turnout was high. Discussion about the future of a united Europe was spirited and imaginative. In 1992, at the least the Europeans will form an economic union, dropping trade barriers, customs duties, and internal passport controls. At a maximum, they will create a common currency and form an all-European army. As readers of this book will see, President Eisenhower made an all-European army one of his top priorities; it all but broke his heart when the French turned it down. Now the idea has been revived and may soon become a reality.
Just before going to Normandy, I taught a course at the University of New Orleans on the Vietnam War, so it was very much on my mind. Reading about Ike’s insistence in early 1944 on the necessity of bombing France to prepare for the invasion, and about his threat to resign if he was not given complete control of the Allied air forces to use as he saw fit, I could not help but note the contrast between him and the American high command in Vietnam. No commander in Vietnam ever threatened to resign if not allowed to fight the war as he thought necessary.
I was also impressed more than ever by Ike’s refusal to send American troops to Vietnam in 1954, and by his warning that the jungles of Southeast Asia would just swallow up our divisions.
As a prophet, he missed badly on the Reagan Revolution. In the mid-fifties, Ike told one of his brothers that if he ever expected to see the elimination of the graduated income tax he certainly planned to live a long time. The brother didn’t quite make it, but he didn’t miss by much.
Ike was also badly wrong in his frequently expressed fears about the effect of Brown v. Topeka. He thought it would lead the South to abandon its public school system altogether. That has not happened—although admittedly in some places, such as my own city of New Orleans, we have come perilously close.
Most of all I was struck by how much Ike has to say to us today. On such fundamental issues as national defense, the relationship between the economy and arms expenditures, the importance of a balanced budget, the need to speak out for freedom everywhere for all men, the wisdom of waiting for the Communist system to collapse because of its inherent internal contradictions, and many others, his words, his thoughts and actions provide leadership for us today just as they did for the generation of World War II and the first decade of the Cold War.
STEPHEN E. AMBROSE
Caen