The Age of Eisenhower

by William I Hitchcock

  The writing on the advent of the civil rights movement is vast. The most accessible treatment of the whole scene is Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters, which covers the period 1954–63. On the role of the Eisenhower administration in advancing civil rights legislation, David Nichols has published an excellent study, A Matter of Justice, which might be a trifle too fulsome in its praise for Eisenhower. Nichols’s work has superseded two earlier works that were based on only limited access to sources from the Eisenhower Library: Richard Kluger, Simple Justice, a monumental study of the Brown decision that gives little attention to Eisenhower and Brownell, and Robert Burk, The Eisenhower Administration and Black Civil Rights, which is especially strong on the desegregation of Washington, D.C., and the military but less good on the Brown case. James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education is superb.

  Herbert Brownell’s memoir Advising Ike should be consulted as a crucial source for civil rights policy, especially the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act. Important documents have been published in a 20-volume series, Michal R. Belknap, ed., Civil Rights, the White House and the Justice Department, 1945–1968 and in The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. On the role of LBJ in the passage of the Civil Rights Act, see Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Robert Caro’s monumental study, Master of the Senate. On Little Rock, see Elizabeth Jacoway, Turn Away Thy Son. Frederic Morrow, who worked in the Eisenhower White House on minority affairs, wrote two poignant memoirs; Black Man in the White House and Forty Years a Guinea Pig offer frank, and often bitter, commentary on the racial attitudes of the Eisenhower team. The global ramifications of America’s racial problems are illuminated by Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line, and Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights. The African American press, especially the Baltimore Afro-American, the Chicago Defender, the Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the Pittsburgh Courier, covered civil rights politics with particular skill.

  Among the excellent new scholarship on the confluence of American ideals, commerce, and religion in the 1950s, see Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt; Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands; Kevin Kruse, One Nation under God; and Wendy Wall, Inventing the “American Way.” One of the best essays on Eisenhower’s pro-business ideology is Robert Griffith, “Dwight Eisenhower and the Corporate Commonwealth.” On the rise of the new right in the 1950s, see David Farber, The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism; Sam Tanenhaus, The Death of Conservatism; and Geoffrey Kabaservice, Rule and Ruin. Arthur Larson, Ike’s speechwriter, tried to summarize the chief themes of moderate Republicanism in A Republican Looks at His Party. Carl Bogus recounts William F. Buckley’s scorn for Eisenhower’s centrism in Buckley.

  The twin crises of 1956, Suez and Hungary, have been extensively studied. The best attempt to knot the story together and see it as Eisenhower experienced that year is David Nichols, Eisenhower 1956; see also Alex von Tunzelmann, Blood and Sand. Eisenhower’s handling of Suez and the rise of the Eisenhower doctrine are expertly evaluated in Salim Yaqub, Containing Arab Nationalism, and Ray Takeyh, The Origins of the Eisenhower Doctrine. Michael Doran, in a tendentious work titled Ike’s Gamble, criticizes Eisenhower for failing to back up the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion. Eisenhower’s relationship with Anthony Eden is best viewed through the documents: see Peter Boyle, The Eden-Eisenhower Correspondence. Eden’s mendacious memoir, Full Circle, should be supplemented by the more candid diary of his private secretary Evelyn Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez. The best single volume on the crisis is Keith Kyle, Suez.

  The most useful and well-researched monographs on the Sputnik effect are Robert Divine, The Sputnik Challenge, and Yanek Mieczkowski, Eisenhower’s Sputnik Moment. The best history of the space race remains Walter McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth. For an elegant and brilliant analysis of nuclear history, see McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival. Fred Kaplan captured the world of the nuclear theorists and intellectuals of the 1950s in Wizards of Armageddon. David Alan Rosenberg gives a superbly detailed analysis of nuclear strategy in “The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945–1960.” For a lively narrative about the making of the ICBM, see Neil Sheehan, A Fiery Peace in a Cold War. Two fine studies of the missile gap debate are Peter Roman, Eisenhower and the Missile Gap, and Christopher Preble, John F. Kennedy and the Missile Gap. James Killian’s memoir, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, is a crucial insider’s view of how Ike used science. For hair-raising factual data on nuclear weapons, see the extraordinary book edited by Stephen Schwartz, Atomic Audit.

  The most useful works on Khrushchev are William Taubman, Khrushchev; Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War; and Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower. Also very revealing are Khrushchev’s own memoirs. Harold Macmillan’s memoir of this period, Riding the Storm, is essential to see the European perspective. Henry Cabot Lodge’s account of Khrushchev’s visit in The Storm Has Many Eyes is quite dull compared to the real-time reports he sent back to Washington as the trip unfolded. For behind-the-scenes details on the Khrushchev visit, see Wiley Buchanan, Red Carpet at the White House. A lively account of U.S.-Soviet relations in this period is Michael Beschloss, Mayday.

  An excellent place to start for a critical assessment of Eisenhower’s policies in the Third World is Robert J. McMahon, “Eisenhower and Third World Nationalism: A Critique of the Revisionists.” See also the fine essays in Kathryn C. Statler and Andrew L. Johns, The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War. On Indonesia, two well-researched studies give a detailed account: Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, Feet to the Fire, and Audrey Kahin and George Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy. Among the many excellent books on the Diem years in Vietnam, see especially Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War; Seth Jacobs, America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam; and Edward Miller, Misalliance. America’s reaction to Castro’s revolution is expertly chronicled in Thomas Paterson, Contesting Castro. For the origins of the March 16, 1960, plan, the CIA’s own secret internal history by Wayne Jackson is extremely useful and should be supplemented with the sources in Peter Kornbluh, Bay of Pigs Declassified. To follow the evolution of the anti-Castro operation, Richard Bissell’s memoir, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, remains useful if self-serving. Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs, contains important interviews, and Jim Rasenberger in The Brilliant Disaster has updated the story with new research in once-classified documents. On Congo, we now have detailed studies, most notably Emmanuel Gerard and Bruce Kuklick, Death in the Congo, which draws on newly released Belgian materials. Larry Devlin’s hair-raising memoir, Chief of Station, Congo, can be combined with the Church Committee report, Alleged Assassination Plots, to complete the sorry picture.

  On John F. Kennedy generally, Theodore Sorensen, Kennedy, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days, benefit from their inside knowledge of Camelot but suffer from hero worship. Biographies by Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life, and Thomas Reeves, President Kennedy, are more circumspect. For the election of 1960, it is hard to top Theodore White, The Making of the President, 1960, though White fell in love with Jack Kennedy and it shows throughout the book. A more recent and well-researched assessment is Edmund F. Kallina Jr., Kennedy v. Nixon. Nixon gives his own somewhat pathetic account in Six Crises. Eisenhower’s reaction to the election, his departure from Washington, and his post-presidential years are lovingly and insightfully recounted in David Eisenhower, Going Home to Glory.

  Also by William I. Hitchcock

  The Bitter Road to Freedom

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  © MICHAEL BAILEY

  WILLIAM I. HITCHCOCK is a professor of history at the University of Virginia and a faculty fellow at the Miller Center for Public Affairs. He is the author or editor of six previous books, including The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe (Free Press, 2008), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, a finalist
for the Mark Lynton History Prize, a winner of the George Louis Beer Prize, and a Financial Times bestseller.

  Visit www.ageofeisenhower.com.

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  ALSO BY WILLIAM I. HITCHCOCK

  The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe

  The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent, 1945–Present

  France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe

  The Human Rights Revolution: An International History (coedited with Petra Goedde and Akira Iriye)

  From War to Peace: Altered Strategic Landscapes in the 20th Century (coedited with Paul Kennedy)

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  NOTES

  ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES

  DDEL

  Dwight D. Eisenhower Library

  DDO

  U.S. Declassified Documents Online (Gale, Cengage Learning)

  FRUS

  U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States

  PDDE

  Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower

  PPP

  Public Papers of the Presidents

  PROLOGUE

  1. Quoted in a short essay in Ike: A Pictorial Biography, 138. Beach was a decorated naval officer with a storied career, including combat at Midway. His 1955 novel, Run Silent, Run Deep, became a hit movie in 1958.

  2. Stevenson in New York Times, September 12 and 20, 1952; Truman quoted in speeches delivered on September 29 and October 30, 1952, PPP: Harry S. Truman, 612 and 1001; Stone, The Haunted Fifties, 6; McCullough, Truman, 914.

  3. Shannon, “Eisenhower as President.”

  4. Mailer, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket.”

  5. New York Times, January 19, 1961; Graebner, “Eisenhower’s Popular Leadership”; Schlesinger Sr., “Our Presidents.” Harrison and Garfield were omitted from the poll due to their short terms in office. On JFK’s reaction, Schlesinger Jr., Journals, 162, 178.

  6. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days, 165, 206, 210.

  7. New York Times, March 29, 1969; “A First Verdict” and “Eisenhower: Soldier of Peace”; Time, cover story, April 4, 1969.

  8. Kempton, “The Underestimation of Dwight D. Eisenhower.”

  9. Wills, Nixon Agonistes, 117, 118, 131.

  10. Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency, 5. Robert Divine in Eisenhower and the Cold War also argues that restraint was a strategy of governance that applied to the foreign policy realm as well.

  11. For a discussion of the way Eisenhower’s reputation was revised in the 1980s, see Immerman, “Confessions of an Eisenhower Revisionist”; McMahon, “Eisenhower and Third World Nationalism”; Rabe, “Eisenhower Revisionism.”

  12. For a comprehensive thematic bibliography, see Boyle, Eisenhower, 183–93.

  13. Speaking with Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, November 24, 1954, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, Ann Whitman Diary Series, box 3, DDEL.

  14. In 1984 Stephen Ambrose published the first major biography that exploited the vast documentary sources available in Abilene. However, in 2010 the Eisenhower Library reported that Ambrose had apparently fabricated a number of interviews with the former president and inserted unsubstantiated quotations in his text. Ambrose’s work has been clouded by controversy ever since. On the Ambrose controversy, see Rives, “Ambrose and Eisenhower”; Rayner, “Channeling Ike.” Earlier accounts include Lyon, Eisenhower; Parmet, Eisenhower and the American Crusades; Beschloss, Eisenhower; Perret, Eisenhower; Brendon, Ike. The most recent biographical studies include Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace; Newton, Eisenhower; and Thomas, Ike’s Bluff. An excellent synthesis is offered by Pach and Richardson, The Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, which is probably the best short book on the 34th president, along with Boyle’s concise and well-informed study, Eisenhower.

  15. “Remarks at the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference November 14, 1957,” American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=10951. For numerical tally of Ike’s attendance at NSC meetings, see NSC meeting, minutes, January 12, 1961, Papers as President, Ann Whitman File, NSC Series, box 13, DDEL.

  16. I am indebted to Farber, The Rise and Fall of Modern Conservatism, for the idea of discipline as a distinctive feature of conservative ideals.

  17. Jeffrey M. Jones, “Obama’s Fourth Year in Office Ties as Most Polarized Ever,” Gallup, January 24, 2013, http://www.gallup.com/poll/160097/obama-fourth-year-office-ties-polarized-ever.aspx.

  CHAPTER 1: ASCENT

  Epigraph: DDE, Mandate for Change, 107.

  1. Childs, Eisenhower, 160.

  2. Wills, Nixon Agonistes, 119.

  3. Diary entry, January 21, 1953, in Ferrell, The Eisenhower Diaries, 225.

  4. Eisenhower’s mother always called him Dwight. Eisenhower reversed the order of his names upon his entry into West Point.

  5. Davis, Soldier of Democracy, 7–45; Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace, 5–11.

  6. DDE, At Ease, 31, 68, 305–6. For further details on religion in the Eisenhower home, see Milton Eisenhower, The President Is Calling, 186–88.

  7. DDE, Mandate for Change, 32.

  8. Davis, Soldier of Democracy, 100–101. See Ambrose and Immerman, Milton S. Eisenhower, 8–30, for a portrait of Abilene in these years.

  9. DDE, At Ease, 5, 7, 12, 16. For details on his West Point days, Davis, Soldier of Democracy, 135–50.

  10. DDE, At Ease, 138, 147–51, 155. Carlo D’Este covered these years very thoroughly in Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life, 109–37.

  11. DDE, At Ease, 185–87. “I can never adequately express my gratitude to this gentleman, for it took years before I fully realized the value of what he had led me through.”

  12. Susan Eisenhower, Mrs. Ike, 33–43; quotation from Hatch, Red Carpet for Mamie, 3.

  13. DDE, At Ease, 181.

  14. Neal, The Eisenhowers, 64; Susan Eisenhower, Mrs. Ike, 66–72. Eisenhower spelled the nickname “Icky,” but Mamie spelled it “Ikkie,” and Susan Eisenhower uses “Ikky.” On the roses, see D’Este, Eisenhower, 156.

  15. “Gruber-Eisenhower Diary,” August 28–September 5, 1929, Holt, Eisenhower: The Prewar Diaries, 84–96.

  16. Diary entry, November 9, 1929, Holt, Eisenhower: The Prewar Diaries, November 9, 1929, 110–11.

  17. “Fundamentals of Industrial Mobilization,” June 16, 1930, Holt, Eisenhower: The Prewar Diaries, 139. This paper appeared in Army Ordnance 11 (July–August 1930): 7–8. Eisenhower’s “Brief History of Planning for Procurement and Industrial Mobilization” of October 1931 is a masterly synthesis of the relationship between industrial production and government procurement for the armed services. His depth of knowledge and growing sophistication is evident in these reports. Holt, The Prewar Diaries, 176–88.

  18. DDE, At Ease, 213–14.

  19. DDE, At Ease, 216–17.

  20. Eisenhower’s frustration in his Philippines post is evident in his diary. See diary entries, April 5 and April 17, 1939, Holt, The Prewar Diaries, 429–31. Further evidence of his deteriorating view of MacArthur can be seen in Ferrell, The Eisenhower Diaries, 7–26. The two men were temperamentally opposite; only Eisenhower’s self-control kept the friction from surfacing. More details on Eisenhower’s period in the Philippines can be found in Holland, Eisenhower between the Wars, 187–203; Lyon, Eisenhower, 68–8
0.

  21. DDE, At Ease, 230–32.

  22. New York Times, February 20, 1942.

  23. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Ordeal and Hope, 339.

  24. Diary entry, January 22, 1942, Ferrell, The Eisenhower Diaries, 44. On Marshall and Eisenhower at this moment, see D’Este, Eisenhower, 284–98.

  25. Diary entry, June 8, 1942, Ferrell, The Eisenhower Diaries, 62.

  26. New York Times, June 26, 1942.

  27. Hastings, Winston’s War, 241–44.

  28. Diary entry, June 25, 1942, Ferrell, The Eisenhower Diaries, 64.

  29. Churchill, The Second World War: The Hinge of Fate, 374–85, 432–51; diary entries, July–September 1942, Ferrell, The Eisenhower Diaries, 70–78.

  30. Raymond Daniell, “He Is Our ‘Eisen’ and This Is Our Hour,” New York Times, November 1, 1942.