The American Story

by David M. Rubenstein

  He invited Khrushchev to the United States. Khrushchev spent three nights at Camp David. He went to the Eisenhowers’ farm in Gettysburg.

  Eisenhower knew the Soviet Union. He had been a guest of Stalin immediately after the war was over. On the flight from Berlin to Moscow, Eisenhower saw that there wasn’t a house still standing. That convinced him that the Russians didn’t want war, and he proceeded on that basis. Eisenhower also single-handedly forced Great Britain, France, and Israel to withdraw from Egypt after they had seized the Suez Canal in 1956, one week before the American presidential election.

  And he overruled the members of the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs about dropping an atomic weapon to protect the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu [site of the pivotal battle in 1953–54 between French and Viet Minh forces in the First Indochina War], and then to protect the Chinese islands of Quemoy and Matsu. [The islands were attacked during the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1958 that pitted the People’s Republic of China against the Republic of China in Taiwan.]

  Eisenhower said, “You guys must be crazy. We aren’t going to drop an atomic weapon on Asiatic peoples twice in ten years.”

  That’s in foreign policy. Domestically, Eisenhower punctured the bubble of McCarthyism. He built the Interstate Highway System, which we take for granted, and he built it without impacting the federal budget by simply raising the tax on gasoline. The Interstate Highway System cost more than was spent on the entire New Deal from 1933 to 1940, but without impacting the federal budget. He built the Saint Lawrence Seaway together with Canada, opening the Great Lakes to ocean traffic.

  And—I think most importantly—he brought desegregation to the South. He ended segregation in the United States when he sent the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock. [In 1957, three years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision found segregated schools to be unconstitutional, the paratroopers escorted a group of African American students to Little Rock Central High School and kept white protestors under control.]

  That’s eight major achievements just off the top of my head.

  DR: Those are pretty good things. But let me ask you this. Eisenhower rose up because, as you write in your book, he was a very good writer, very disciplined, a hard worker, very articulate, knew how to get things done. Yet as a president he seemed to be a little lazy, some people might say, and he was not very articulate in press conferences. Why did that image take hold, and is it unfair?

  JES: Let me dispute his inarticulateness in press conferences. Whenever Ike misspoke, he was misspeaking deliberately.

  DR: Many people would say that about themselves. I’d say that about myself too.

  JES: For example, on the question of whether he would use an atomic weapon to defend Formosa, he told his press secretary, Jim Hagerty, “Jim, don’t worry about it. I’ll confuse them in the press conference.” At the press conference, he goes on for about three minutes around the topic, totally confusing everyone. Eisenhower wasn’t that concerned about cultivating the press.

  DR: If you were to ask Eisenhower, “What would you consider the greatest accomplishment of your life?” would it be the D-Day invasion or being president of the United States for eight years? Which do you think he was prouder of?

  JES: One of the things I’ve learned writing biography is that you really don’t want to guess what your subject is going to say. But it would seem to me it would be his eight years as the president. D-Day was a one-shot deal.

  DR: Let’s talk about Ike as a young man. He came from a religious family. You point out in the book that his military career was—I won’t say a fluke, but it wasn’t predictable. He lied about his age, and that helped him get into the military academy. While there, he injured his knee and probably shouldn’t have been commissioned. Early in his career, he was almost court-martialed. Was his military career based on having a little bit of luck?

  JES: Eisenhower was always lucky, yes. But let me go back to his military career.

  Eisenhower took a competitive exam for the academy, did very well, and was appointed by Senator Joseph Bristow from Kansas. In his initial correspondence with Bristow, he lied about his age, because he thought he might get into the Naval Academy, which had a lower age limit. When he got to West Point, he found out that he was the proper age and didn’t lie about it.

  As for the knee injury, and later with the court-martial, Eisenhower was very fortunate in many respects. In the 1920s, his career was forwarded enormously by General Fox Conner. The court-martial arose because Eisenhower had claimed his son on his housing allowance—the sum involved was $250—when the son was not living with the Eisenhowers but with relatives back in Iowa.

  Eisenhower was caught. I don’t think he intentionally did it—it was a routine matter. Conner, who had been the chief operations officer for General John J. Pershing in World War I and later became deputy chief of staff, was going to Panama. He wanted to take Ike with him.

  Pershing had just become army chief of staff. Conner saw Pershing, and the court-martial charges against Eisenhower were dropped before they were brought, really. The army’s inspector general simply wrote a letter of reprimand.

  Four additional times during the 1920s, Conner intervened on Eisenhower’s behalf. After serving three years in Panama, Eisenhower came back and wanted to go to the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth—a normal stopping point for career officers. The chief of infantry had passed him over. Conner had him transferred to the Adjutant General’s Corps. He attended Leavenworth as part of the adjutant general’s quota of students and finished first in his class.

  After a miserable stint at Fort Benning, Conner had him transferred to Pershing’s staff in Washington, where he wrote a book on the battles of World War I. Conner intervened again after two years and sent him to the Army War College in Washington, D.C., for a year.

  After that, Eisenhower rejoined Pershing in Paris. He spent fourteen months there on the American Battle Monuments Commission. [The commission oversees American war memorials and military cemeteries overseas.] After fourteen months, he felt that he was out of the mainstream of the army.

  Conner intervened for the fifth time, and Eisenhower was assigned to be the military assistant to the assistant secretary of war in the War Department, which was in the old State, War, and Navy Building—what is now the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington. So Fox Conner really was behind Eisenhower’s career in the 1920s, and five times worked to his advantage.

  DR: Eisenhower had an ability to have people promote him and help him. One of those was General Douglas MacArthur. What was the relationship between MacArthur and Eisenhower initially, and then later, when they went to the Philippines?

  JES: Eisenhower was working in the State, War, and Navy Building for the assistant secretary of war when MacArthur became army chief of staff. His office was just down the hall. He saw Eisenhower and installed him as his military assistant. That was in 1931.

  For the next four years, Eisenhower was MacArthur’s military assistant in Washington. He wrote virtually everything that MacArthur signed, including the defense of the attack on the “Bonus Army” marchers. [The Bonus Army comprised World War I veterans who marched on Washington, D.C., in 1932 to ask the government to cash out bonus certificates they had been given during their military service. Troops under MacArthur’s command destroyed the marchers’ encampment.]

  When MacArthur went to the Philippines in 1935, he took Ike with him. They did not command the American Army in the Philippines. They commanded the Philippine Army, although they were still on active duty in the U.S. Army. They were paid additionally by the Philippine government. That continued until 1939.

  Eisenhower’s view of MacArthur began as hero worship in 1931. By 1938 and ’39, it had eroded. In the Philippines, MacArthur spent most of his time in his elegant apartment in the Manila Hotel and left the day-to-day operations to Eisenhower.

  The members of the Philippine legislatu
re decided to introduce legislation abolishing MacArthur’s job and giving it to Eisenhower. Eisenhower found out about it and said, “Gosh, don’t do that.” He then came back to the U.S. on a mission to purchase equipment. While he was gone, MacArthur found out about this piece of legislation. MacArthur believed that Eisenhower was behind it, which he was not. But from that point on, the relationship between the two was poisonous.

  DR: Eisenhower missed World War I. He didn’t get over there, to his regret. There’s been no other chance for him to gain combat experience. When World War II breaks out, we’re not in the war initially. How did Eisenhower manage to go from never having been in combat to leading the D-Day invasion? What qualified him to do that?

  JES: Eisenhower was at Fort Sam Houston as the chief of staff of the Fourth Army when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Immediately afterward, General Marshall ordered him to Washington. When Marshall reorganized the War Department in March of ’42, Eisenhower became head of the Operations Division in the department.

  The United States decided to enter the war, and Marshall and Roosevelt wanted to invade the Continent from Great Britain in November 1942. Eisenhower then, in June of ’42, was sent by Marshall to England to become the head of the American forces in Europe. He was going there simply to get things in order for Marshall to come over and take command in November when the invasion took place.

  Well, the idea of invading Europe in November of ’42 was wishful thinking. The British wanted no part of it. Eventually it was decided that the Americans and the British would invade North Africa in November of 1942.

  General Marshall didn’t want any part of commanding an invasion of North Africa. But Eisenhower was there. He was commanding the European theater, and so it just fell into his lap. He bypassed 250 generals more senior.

  DR: The people who were military-commander types—George Patton, Bernard Montgomery—these were people who actually had combat experience. They were in effect working for Eisenhower during the North African invasion and later during the invasion of Italy. What did they think of Eisenhower as a leader, as a commander?

  JES: Eisenhower was always able to make the decisions that you expected a commander to make. He never waffled. He was never hesitant. Don’t forget, General Marshall had never been in combat either, so I don’t think in the military chain of command that’s all that unusual.

  DR: After the invasion of North Africa more or less works and then the invasion of Italy more or less works, the Allied commanders go back to England and say, “Okay, let’s plan for the D-Day invasion.” Marshall is thought to be the person who is going to do it. How did Eisenhower manage to maneuver so that he actually led the invasion? How did Marshall get outmaneuvered?

  JES: Eisenhower didn’t maneuver it, nor did Marshall. Roosevelt made the decision.

  And you’re quite right. General Marshall believed that he was going to command the invasion when it took place in 1944. Mrs. Marshall was moving their furniture out of Quarters 1 at Fort Myer to their home in Leesburg. He had his desk shipped over to Europe.

  On the way to the Tehran Conference in late 1943, Roosevelt stopped in North Africa to take a judgment of Eisenhower. He was going to spend one day there but really spent three days there and liked what he saw.

  Stalin, at the Tehran Conference, pressed Roosevelt to name a commander. Roosevelt said he would think about it.

  Marshall’s problem was that he was not popular with the British. They did not want Marshall to command the invasion. Churchill did not want Marshall to command the invasion. Roosevelt knew that. He had looked at Eisenhower and felt that Eisenhower, having experienced the North African Campaign and the Sicily Campaign and the landing in Italy, had good credentials as a military commander.

  And so, on the way back from Tehran, Roosevelt met with Marshall in Cairo and asked him if he wanted to command the invasion. General Marshall, to his credit, said, “It’s not my decision to make. It’s your decision.” The president said, “In that case, it will be Eisenhower.”

  DR: So the D-Day invasion is being planned. It takes many months to do it. Did Eisenhower ever think we might not win? Did he prepare for that?

  JES: Oh, I think he was prepared for it. Whenever you do something like that, you realize that it’s a very risky business. Eisenhower wrote a letter taking full responsibility for the failure, if it failed. He had it in his pocket and was ready to issue it.

  “General Dwight D. Eisenhower gives the orders of the day…” Ike speaks to U.S. paratroopers in England on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

  But let me go back to North Africa just for a moment. Eisenhower learned in North Africa. He did not know anything about command in warfare until the North African Campaign. It was really a school for Eisenhower in which he learned how to command.

  His three deputy commanders—air, ground, and navy—were British, and Eisenhower learned from them. He learned in Sicily, and he learned in Italy as well. And he had accumulated the lessons from those campaigns, which were not pretty.

  DR: And D-Day succeeded, as we all know. But suppose the Germans had their troops in a different position or Hitler had been more alert to what was going on. Do you think we would not have prevailed?

  JES: It would certainly have been much closer. The German commander, Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, had five panzer divisions in reserve in the general area, and his orders were that he couldn’t mobilize them until Hitler agreed to do so. It took them twenty-four hours to get Hitler to agree and put the panzers in place, and by that time the beachheads were secure.

  There were also nineteen divisions north of the Seine. Hitler did not believe that the invasion that took place on D-Day was a real invasion. He thought it was a fake and that the real invasion would come north of the Seine across the English Channel. And so these nineteen divisions were unavailable to the Germans fighting the landings for the first two weeks of the campaign.

  DR: Let’s talk about Eisenhower’s personal life for a moment. As a young man, Eisenhower married a woman named Mamie Doud. She was from a wealthy family. How was their life together when he was moving around so much?

  JES: Ike met Mamie in November of 1915, just after he graduated from West Point. He was twenty-five. Mamie was nineteen. They were married July 1 the next year. He was stationed at Fort Sam Houston in Texas. Mamie came down and lived with him there. World War I came very quickly after that, and they were transferred out to Fort Meade.

  They did not have quarters at Fort Meade initially, and that became a problem. But during the war itself, that was not a problem.

  It was a much greater problem for them when Ike was sent to Panama after the war. Mamie did not like Panama at all. She came back from Panama to join her parents in Denver. John, their second son, was born in Denver. So the time in Panama was a difficult time for them in the marriage.

  Portrait of Mamie Eisenhower. She and Ike married the year after he graduated from West Point. Their marriage survived his wartime attachment to his driver Kay Summersby.

  After that they were in Washington and Paris, and that was fine. But when Eisenhower went to the Philippines in 1935, Mamie did not go with him for the first year. Mamie stayed in Washington. They lived at the Wyoming apartment building, which you may know is down at the corner of Connecticut Avenue and Columbia Road. They had a very large apartment there. Mamie stayed there for an additional year before she came to the Philippines. Panama and the Philippines were difficult times.

  DR: Now, when he was in England, he had a driver named Kay Summersby. He developed a relationship with her. It was later reported by President Harry S. Truman that Eisenhower had written a letter to George Marshall saying, “I want to leave my wife and marry Kay Summersby.” How did Marshall respond to that?

  JES: Marshall said if he did that, he would relieve him of command, a threat that Eisenhower took literally. Let me go into that a little bit.

  Kay Summersby was Ike’s driver in London in 1942 from the end of June until he went to North Af
rica in November. From that point on, Kay was no longer his driver. She was his executive assistant. In order to get to Eisenhower’s office, you had to go through Kay’s office.

  Kay lived with Ike in the same quarters both in North Africa and outside of London in the country. The Eisenhower family always tried to disguise this by calling Kay his driver. That really insulted Sergeant Leonard Dry, who was actually his driver and who remained his driver for many, many years, even into the presidency.

  Kay was very close to Eisenhower, and Eisenhower did write to General Marshall telling him that he wanted to divorce Mamie, and General Marshall did threaten to relieve him if he did so. Eisenhower at that point simply turned on a dime, and never mentioned it again.

  When he left Germany to come back to the United States in November 1945, Kay, who was still with him, was due to come back with him. The day they were to come back, her orders were changed. She was assigned to General Clay in Berlin and did not come back to the United States until a year later. She called on Eisenhower at the Pentagon. She was in the American Army at the time. And the next day she was ordered to California.

  DR: He was not the only general who may have had a driver. Is that right?

  The prime minister and the future president: Winston Churchill and Ike share a pint at the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg, Virginia, circa 1948.

  JES: I believe everyone did except General Omar Bradley.

  DR: Wow, okay. Let’s talk about what happens after the war is won. Eisenhower comes back and replaces George Marshall as army chief of staff. Truman says, “I don’t want to run for reelection in 1948. Why don’t you come and run as a Democrat?” What does Eisenhower say?