In planning the invasion of France, Eisenhower’s skill and experience shone. Not only did he attack the operation with his usual logistical and planning talent, but he had to fight strong headwinds from none other than Churchill, who never liked the prospect of an invasion of France and thought it likely to end in disaster. By now Eisenhower was an old hand at dealing with strong personalities: his days were full of exchanges with men such as Patton and the always difficult British combat commander Gen. Bernard Montgomery, to say nothing of Churchill and Roosevelt. In planning for Overlord Ike revealed a growing confidence in himself and his powers as supreme commander. He fought ferociously with the British and American air services, demanding that they limit assaults on Germany and instead dedicate air power to destroying rail lines into Normandy. He fought with Churchill and Brooke, who still wanted to keep pressing in Italy when he wanted troops diverted from the Mediterranean for Overlord. He fought with everyone to get more landing craft to carry as large a force as possible onto the Normandy beaches, even though this required him to delay the operation for an additional month.
Tellingly, he won these battles and imposed his will on the operation. He was consumed with the challenges of directing 6,000 ships that would carry 150,000 soldiers across miles of roiling sea to be thrown against mines, tank obstacles, barbed wire, and concrete bunkers filled with thousands of well-prepared German defenders. In conference with his commanders and in public, he exuded confidence, but privately he agonized. “No one who does not have to bear the specific and direct responsibility of making the final decision as to what to do,” he wrote three days before D-Day, “can understand the intensity of these burdens.”37
He could occasionally lay down these heavy cares at the small home he occupied, called Telegraph Cottage, hidden in the then-remote suburbs southwest of London, near Richmond Park. Here he found time to unwind, play cards with his band of devoted aides, listen to records, stroll in the garden, and rest. In those days at Telegraph Cottage, among his ersatz family, he developed an amorous reliance on his pretty Irish driver and helpmate Kay Summersby. At a time of immense stress and anxiety, Eisenhower welcomed the attentions and ministrations of this lively young woman who gave him something else to think about than war. It is unknown if their friendship ever became sexual; the story is veiled by the fog of war. To say that they were for a time devoted to and dependent on one another is enough. The supreme commander did not live like a viceroy, nor behave like one. He was no MacArthur. He knew at any moment a turn in the fortunes of war would bring him ignominy and defeat, and he seemed never to forget the “grisly, dirty, tough business” that lay ahead.38
Eisenhower’s burdens hardly abated once the Normandy landings began in June 1944. Overlord started auspiciously, and within three weeks over a million Allied soldiers were ashore in France. But 60 divisions of well-trained and determined Germans did not break and run. It took all summer until a combination of overwhelming air, artillery, and ground assaults shattered the German defenses; by September 1944 France was cleared of Germans, Paris had been liberated, and the Allies had pushed on into Belgium. But an inexcusable delay in seizing the vital river approaches to the port of Antwerp meant that until November 1944, Allied armies could not be resupplied except by vehicles from the Normandy beachheads. Without fuel, weapons, and replacement soldiers, progress ground to a halt, and the Allied armies bogged down in a long winter war on Germany’s doorstep. The war that Eisenhower hoped might end by Christmas had another six months left.
Hitler’s fateful gamble in December 1944—the counteroffensive through the thinly defended Ardennes Forest in eastern Belgium that would go down as the Battle of the Bulge—confronted Eisenhower with his last great test of the war. Hitler sent a quarter of a million troops into a weak American sector, hoping to divide the Allied armies, race to the sea, and retake Antwerp. For perhaps six days the situation was dangerous, though not catastrophic. Eisenhower’s cool handling of the crisis revealed yet again that by the end of 1944 he had learned how to manage such moments without succumbing to panic. He “acted instantly and with the greatest vigor,” according to his admiring chief of staff, Gen. Walter Bedell “Beetle” Smith. If Eisenhower was surprised by the attack, it was because its chances of success were so slim. Hitler’s westward penetration created a menacing bulge in the Allied line, but it also opened up both German flanks to counterattack, as Eisenhower anticipated. “It is easier and less costly to us to kill Germans when they are attacking than when they are holed up in concrete fortifications in the Siegfried Line,” he assured Butcher. “The more we can kill in their present offensive, the fewer we will have to dig out pillbox by pillbox.”39
With fighter-bombers pummeling the Germans from the air and a stalwart American defense on the ground, especially at surrounded Bastogne, the bulge was contained, then destroyed. This was desperate fighting in freezing temperatures, with a terrible harvest of lives. But it was the endgame: failure in the Ardennes cost Hitler dearly. Since D-Day the Germans had lost 400,000 casualties, while 860,000 soldiers had surrendered. If victory in Normandy had ensured the liberation of France, victory in the Ardennes ensured the defeat of the Third Reich. By January 1945 Eisenhower could say that he had broken Hitler’s army in the West.
The operations in March and April 1945 would deliver the coup de grâce: after crossing the Rhine, Allied armies encircled the remaining German divisions in the Ruhr and snapped up 325,000 POWs. Eisenhower was brimming with confidence by now, exulting over the news from the front. Butcher said Ike acted like “a football coach whose team had just won a big victory and he couldn’t help talking about the accomplishments of his players.” Eisenhower wrote Swede Hazlett that he “knew on March 24”—when Allied forces crossed the Rhine—“that the enemy was absolutely whipped. . . . He had not the slightest chance from then on.” By the end of April the German Army had simply disintegrated and over a million soldiers surrendered. On April 30 Hitler shot himself. A week later Gen. Alfred Jodl, chief of the German Army’s General Staff, appeared at Eisenhower’s headquarters in Reims, France. At 2:41 a.m. on May 7 he signed the surrender, effective the next day. The war with Germany was over.40
In a typically unadorned telegram, Eisenhower reported to the Combined Chiefs of Staff the result of his campaign in Europe: “The mission of this Allied force was fulfilled at 0241 local time, May 7, 1945.” He and his staff retired at five o’clock in the morning. When Butcher looked in on Eisenhower a few hours later, he was in bed, awake, thumbing through the pages of a western pulp fiction novel titled Cartridge Carnival.41
CHAPTER 2
* * *
Star Power
“I haven’t the effrontery to say I wouldn’t be president.”
I
THROUGHOUT THREE TERRIBLE YEARS OF toil, Eisenhower had given himself over wholly to his role as leader of the Allied armies. From North Africa to Italy, France, and then Germany itself, he had worked inhumanly long hours and suffered from anxiety, back and stomach problems, hypertension, and rasping respiratory troubles, much aggravated by his smoking four packs of cigarettes a day. He had often daydreamed about retirement in letters to Mamie and his son John. Just before Christmas 1944 he wrote to Mamie, whom he had seen only once in two years, “I sometimes chuckle when I think of how much ‘talking’ you and I will have to do when this is all over. We’ll have to take a three month vacation on some lonely beach—and oh lordy, lordy, let it be sunny.”1
But if he imagined he could slip back into the quiet anonymity of his prewar days, he was wrong. His achievements were too great for that. Even the normally restrained chief of staff of the U.S. Army, General Marshall, exulted in his success, writing a glowing personal tribute to him on V-E Day: “You have completed your mission with the greatest victory in the history of warfare. You have commanded with outstanding success the most powerful military force that has ever been assembled. . . . You have made history, great history for the good of mankind.”2
Wit
hin days of the German surrender, Eisenhower’s headquarters filled up with congratulatory letters from heads of state, generals, friends, and citizens. Prominent among these was an invitation from the British prime minister to receive recognition from the people of London and to be named to the Order of Merit by King George VI. On June 12, 1945, Eisenhower traveled to London to receive the key of the city and to give an address at the bomb-shattered gothic Guildhall, the ancient seat of London’s lord mayor. Eisenhower worked on his Guildhall speech for three weeks, hoping to strike the right notes at this august occasion. He wanted to stress that the war had been won by soldiers, not generals. He wanted to acknowledge that Britons had suffered more acutely and fought longer than Americans during six years of war. And above all he wanted to emphasize that Britain and America together formed the bulwark of freedom that had vanquished tyranny. His instinct at this moment of great personal triumph was to share the glory with others.
The Guildhall had nearly been destroyed by the German incendiary raid of December 29, 1940, an attack that set much of the City on fire and nearly razed St. Paul’s Cathedral. The building had been hastily repaired, its roof still showing temporary patches covering gaping holes. Eisenhower was carried through the city streets in a phaeton drawn by two horses, with his wartime deputy commander, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, at his side. The British government leaders, including Churchill, were there to welcome him.
As Eisenhower mounted the rostrum in the Great Hall, the audience of dignitaries offered him a thunderous ovation. In his speech, during which he struggled to master his emotions, he demonstrated the Eisenhower touch: gracious humility, plainspoken earnestness, and a willingness to give credit to others. “The high sense of distinction I feel upon receiving this great honor from the city of London is inescapably mingled with feelings of profound sadness,” he began, striking the somber note of a battle-weary commander. “Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends.” The honors a warrior may win in battle “cannot hide in his memories the crosses marking the resting places of the dead. They cannot soothe the anguish of the widow or the orphan whose husband or father will not return.” It is impossible to imagine Patton or MacArthur sounding so mournful in this moment of high honor or deflecting the proffered acclaim onto the hallowed memory of fallen soldiers.
Eisenhower repaid the compliment London gave him by recalling the city’s tragic passage through the war. He praised the residents for their courage as they endured Hitler’s air attacks at a time when Americans were still oblivious to the great sacrifices the British were making. He recalled the shock of the green American soldiers who arrived in Britain and saw firsthand what war had done to this proud and defiant people. And he emphasized the common commitment of America and Britain to freedom. In a flourish that linked his humble hometown to the majestic British capital, he declared, “To preserve his freedom of worship, his equality before the law, his liberty to speak and act as he sees fit, subject only to the provision that we trespass not upon similar rights of others—the Londoner will fight. So will the citizen of Abilene!” The speech even melted the icy heart of one of Eisenhower’s most ferocious critics, Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, as he was now, who confided in his diary: “Ike made a wonderful speech, and impressed all hearers in the Guildhall including the Cabinet. . . . I had never realized that Ike was as big a man until I heard his performance today!”3
The warm and heartfelt adoration of London paled in comparison to the reception he received upon his return to the United States. On June 19 more than four million New Yorkers welcomed Eisenhower during a long open-car journey through the streets of the city. All the way down Fifth Avenue, then all the way up Broadway an avalanche of ticker tape and confetti rained down on the beaming general. It was at the time the largest parade crowd in the city’s history. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia proclaimed June 19 “Eisenhower Day” and declared a holiday for city employees, urging New Yorkers to hang flags and give the general a full-throated welcome. In his address at City Hall, Eisenhower paid tribute to the soldiers still on the battlefields of Asia, as well as the productive forces on the home front that had made victory in Europe possible. He insisted, “There is no greater pacifist than the regular officer. Any man who is forced to turn his attention to the horrors of the battlefield, to the grotesque shapes that are left there for the burying squad—he doesn’t want war. He never wants it.” And he called for a great effort to return the world to peace: “As I see it, peace is an absolute necessity to this world.” Americans “should be strong but we should be tolerant. We should be ready to defend our rights but we should be considerate and recognize the rights of the other man.” He had begun his transition from soldier to statesman.4
At this moment of triumph Eisenhower was 55 years old and the world’s best-known and most-respected soldier. He embodied America’s victory over fascism and Nazism. He possessed extraordinary political gifts and had been able to find compromise and consensus among headstrong Allied leaders where rivalry and bickering predominated. Raised in the solitude of the Kansas plains, he now knew every corner of the globe and had worked intimately with great men of state. He remained comfortable in his own skin, a characteristic that made him a natural communicator with the press, with his fellow military commanders, and especially with the soldiers he sent into battle, whose company he loved. For a man of such skills and abilities, the future was his for the asking.
President Truman understood this. A practiced politician, he had a nose for winners. In mid-July, Truman traveled to Europe to meet with Churchill and Premier Josef Stalin of the Soviet Union at the great postwar conference at Potsdam, Germany. By this time Eisenhower had returned to Europe in his role as commander of the military occupation of the defeated nation, and he welcomed Truman to Germany. The two had met only a few times before, though the president obviously had a high opinion of America’s foremost soldier. Truman had mused in his diary the previous month about the varying quality of U.S. generals: “Don’t see how a country can produce such men as Robert E. Lee, John J. Pershing, Eisenhower and Bradley and at the same time produce Custers, Pattons and MacArthurs.”5
In Berlin, Truman found a moment to talk politics with Eisenhower. “One day,” Eisenhower later recalled, “when the president was riding with General Bradley and me he fell to discussing the future of some of our war leaders.” Eisenhower told Truman he hoped to retire soon. “I shall never forget the president’s answer. . . . Now, in the car, he suddenly turned toward me and said: ‘General, there is nothing that you may want that I won’t try to help you get. That definitely and specifically includes the presidency in 1948.’ ”
It was a striking thing for Truman to say. It may have been meant as a gesture of flattery. Perhaps Truman was still feeling somewhat out of his depth in the new job; he’d been president for only three months. Perhaps he wanted to ingratiate himself with a man who was far better known worldwide and far more popular in America than he was. But it might also be that Truman perceived in Eisenhower what the general did not yet perceive in himself: star power. His countrymen now revered him, world leaders everywhere knew and trusted him, and the end of hostilities with Germany, far from bringing an end to his career, would open up new vistas for the “soldier of democracy.”
Eisenhower was “suddenly struck in his emotional vitals” by this “astounding proposition,” and once the shock had passed he tried to laugh it off. This was the position he adopted whenever the question of a political career came up: he wanted to retire, he said; failing that, he thought he might run a small college, write his memoirs, and do some public speaking. “Nothing could be so distasteful to me as to engage in political activity of any kind,” he wrote one eager supporter in August 1945. His own desire, as he told Marshall that same month, was to find “a remotely situated cottage” in which to hide and “to let someone else have both the headaches and the headlines.”6<
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II
No such luck. The job he now faced as governor of occupied Germany presented him with extraordinary troubles, for the defeated Reich lay prostrate, its cities ruined and clogged with rubble and refugees. “The country is devastated,” Eisenhower wrote Mamie. “Whole cities are obliterated. And the German population, to say nothing of millions of former slave laborers, is largely homeless.” The country faced acute shortages of food and coal for heating and cooking, and millions of war-weary refugees swarmed across the charred landscape. “It is a bleak picture,” he wrote. “In my wildest nightmares I never visualized some of the things now thrown at me.”7
As he tried to navigate these complexities, he was extremely fortunate in having one of the ablest military administrators in the army as his deputy, Lt. Gen. Lucius D. Clay, who bore on his shoulders much of the daily work of running the occupation zone. Clay, the son of a U.S. senator from Georgia and a West Point graduate, had known Eisenhower since they served together in the Philippines. An engineer, Clay had overseen the construction of hundreds of airfields in North America during the war and in 1944 served alongside Eisenhower again in Normandy, winning a Bronze Star for his heroic efforts in getting the Cherbourg harbor up and running after the Germans had mined it. Eisenhower and Clay set up shop in the huge office complex of the chemical giant I. G. Farben (the firm that had manufactured the poison gas used to asphyxiate Jews in Hitler’s extermination camps). Ike hated the job. He came in for sharp criticism from the press for the long delays in getting the troops home, for failing to arrest all the top Nazis, for lapses in delivering food, clothing, coal, and other supplies. Fighting the Germans seemed easier than trying to govern them. He was, as his son John noted, “a lonely man, let down after the excitement of the war.”8
The Age of Eisenhower Page 5