Eisenhower

by Louis Galambos

  4. These numbers and any in the rest of the book are, unless otherwise noted, from Richard Sutch and Susan B. Carter et al., eds., Historical Statistics of the United States, vols. 1–5 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

  5. Dr. Daun van Ee became my co-editor on volumes 15–21 of the Papers. I am deeply indebted to him for bringing his unrivaled knowledge of international relations, military history, and American domestic history to bear on this extended project. He also provided me with detailed suggestions as he read the draft chapters of this book.

  One. Trouble

  1. Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (New York: Free Press, 1960), 11–12, comments: “Among the military the belief in a prescribed career is particularly strong … [and] officers who express too openly their desire to innovate or to criticize are not likely to survive.”

  2. For a recent, exciting exploration of this issue, see Charles E. Neu, Colonel House: A Biography of Woodrow Wilson’s Silent Partner (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). Bear in mind that “identity” is the story you tell about yourself, and “reputation” is the story others tell about you.

  3. Garry L. Thompson, “Army Downsizing Following World War I, World War II, Vietnam, and a Comparison to Recent Army Downsizing,” master’s thesis, US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 2002, 1–28.

  4. On the conservatism of the military, see William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), 195.

  5. See Dwight D. Eisenhower, “A Tank Discussion: Infantry Journal,” reprinted in Eisenhower: The Prewar Diaries and Selected Papers, 1905–1941, ed. Daniel D. Holt and James W. Leyerzapp (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 28–42.

  6. At full strength, an American division at that time included as many as 40,000 men and included brigades of infantry, artillery, and other smaller units. Russell F. Weigley, History of the United States Army (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 386.

  7. Captain D. D. Eisenhower, (Tanks) Infantry, “A Tank Discussion,” Infantry Journal 27 (1920): 453–458, available from the US Army Military History Institute. Eisenhower had been reduced in rank to captain, which was his rank when he submitted the article. Shortly thereafter, he was promoted to major, as noted above.

  8. Dwight D. Eisenhower, At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends (New York: Doubleday, 1967), 173.

  9. On Patton’s unusual background, see Carlo D’Este, Patton: A Genius for War (New York: HarperCollins, 1995); see also Edgar F. Puryear Jr., Nineteen Stars (Washington, DC: Coiner Publications, 1971), 1–10. The army reduced Patton to the permanent rank of captain in 1920, but then promptly promoted him to major.

  10. D’Este, Patton, 289–301.

  11. Forrest C. Pogue, “Foreword,” in Puryear, Nineteen Stars, vii, compared “the flamboyant Patton, the imperious MacArthur, the genial Eisenhower, and the austere Marshall” and said they “are alike in the devotion to duty and their reactions to reversals.”

  12. Despite the reprimand from Farnsworth, Eisenhower apparently wrote “Tanks with Infantry” in May 1921. See Eisenhower: The Prewar Diaries, 35–42, on this document, which is located in the United States Army Military History Institute. The later document was a practical guide to the use of the tank in coordination with the infantry, and its tone was more subdued than that of the article in the Infantry Journal (which was intended to convince and convert its readers).

  13. Dwight married Mamie Geneva Doud in 1916, and their first child, Doud Dwight, nicknamed “Ikky,” was born in 1917. Dwight, who was frequently broke, applied for and received an allowance for Ikky at a time when the child was actually in Denver. Personally, I find it reasonable to believe that Eisenhower did this because he needed the money and that he understood exactly what he was doing.

  14. The army’s efficiency ratings provided a record of an officer’s accomplishments, progress, and problems, as recorded by his commanding officer. They are an important measure of the organizational or formal reputation of a US Army officer. The categories were universal—as one might anticipate in a military bureaucracy—and the reports tended to sift out the upper and lower tails of the inevitable bell curve. See, among others, Mark C. Bender, Watershed at Leavenworth: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Command and General Staff School (Fort Leavenworth, KS: US Army Command and General Staff College, 1990), 13. See also Carlo D’Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), 161–162.

  15. Ike’s biographers customarily note the large number of demerits he received at West Point and the manner in which he was willing to throw down a direct challenge to one of his instructors. Later, he would have trouble on at least two notable occasions with his superior officers, one of whom would give him the type of rating that could create problems in a military career.

  16. This is a special example of what economists call “path dependency.” Usually the analysis is applied to institutions, but it can also be used to help us understand individual careers—especially those in bureaucratic organizations. On path dependency, see the original work of Paul A. David, Path Dependence and the Quest for Historical Economics: One More Chorus of the Ballad of Qwerty (Oxford: Nuffield College, 1997).

  Two. Abilene

  1. The population of Abilene was 3,057 in 1900.

  2. Dickinson County News, November 18, 1909, Eisenhower Library (hereafter EL).

  3. C. O. Musser to Milton S. Eisenhower, July 10, 1945, EL.

  4. Fred O. Bartlett to George L. McCarty, EL; Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace (New York: Random House, 2012), 5–6.

  5. Michael Korda, Ike: An American Hero (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 56–83. Korda provides an insightful analysis of presidential mythmaking as well as an interesting exploration of the problems David experienced in life. Korda also gives a careful description of David’s Texas sojourn as an “engine wiper.” From page 83: “However much he admired his father—and there was no question that Ike did—there was no getting around the fact that David Eisenhower, despite a college education and an aptitude for engineering, was stuck in a low-paying, menial job.”

  6. The Eisenhowers’ first son, Arthur, was born in 1886, and their second, Edgar (Ed), in 1889.

  7. Bela Kornitzer, The Great American Heritage: The Story of the Five Eisenhower Brothers (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1955), 29–30.

  8. Carlo D’Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), 713–714 nn. 33, 38.

  9. Korda, Ike, 67.

  10. D’Este, A Soldier’s Life, 714 n. 38.

  11. Kornitzer, The Great American Heritage, 52–54.

  12. Abilene Daily Chronicle, April 8, 1903, EL.

  13. Kornitzer, The Great American Heritage, 23.

  14. Dwight D. Eisenhower, At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967), 31.

  15. Kornitzer, The Great American Heritage, 35. Roy Eisenhower, the sixth brother, died before Kornitzer began working on his book.

  16. This was in 1906. Abilene Reflector-Chronicle, May 1, 1962, EL.

  17. Abilene High School yearbook, 1906, and high school grade sheet, 1904–1905, both in EL.

  18. The class system also existed in the high school. Little Ike probably noticed that Herbert Sommers, president of the class for four years, was from the north side of Abilene. Dwight may not have cared, but it seems unlikely that he was entirely oblivious to the difference between the middle-class and working-class families in Abilene. For a different view of the Eisenhower family, see Jonathan W. Jordan, Brothers, Rivals, Victors: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, and the Partnership That Drove the Allied Conquest in Europe (New York: NAL Caliber, 2011). Jordan places the family in the middle class.

  19. Abilene High School yearbooks, 1906 and 1907, EL.

  20. In the April 28, 1952, issue of Life, John “Six” McDonnell, a baseball pitcher who was a local hero, commented on Little Ike’s performance in both baseball and foot
ball.

  21. Abilene High School yearbook, 1909, EL.

  22. Characteristically, when they assigned parts for the class play, The Merchant of Venice, Big Ike was the Duke; Bruce Hurd, then captain of the football team, played Antonio; and Little Ike was Launcelot Gobbo, the ignorant servant to Shylock.

  23. Abilene Reflector-Chronicle, May 1, 1962, EL.

  24. D’Este, A Soldier’s Life, 33; Korda, Ike, 63, 69. After a series of schisms, one part of the sect became the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

  25. The reader can follow this process through the yearbooks for Dwight’s class in Abilene’s high school. The first year, there was an unusually large class of sixty-seven; by 1907, the class was down to forty-five; by 1908, there were thirty-eight students; and only thirty-one made it to graduation.

  26. See Mary P. Ryan, Mysteries of Sex: Tracing Women and Men Through American History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, The Race Between Education and Technology (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009); and Claudia Goldin, “A Brief History of Education in the United States,” in Historical Statistics of the United States, II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

  27. Dwight later explained: “I learned to control my explosions in public.” Interview with Reiman Moran, August 5, 1965, EL.

  28. See note 24 above.

  29. High school grade sheets, 1904–1909, EL.

  30. The reader may be unfamiliar with rhetoricals, a subject that later evolved into speech or public speaking.

  31. Abilene High School yearbook, 1909, EL.

  32. Abilene was overstuffed with reminders that you must earn your bread by the sweat of your brow. The motto of Little Ike’s class in 1905 was “The palm is not gained without the dust of labor.” Abilene High School yearbook, 1905, EL.

  33. Abilene Reflector-Chronicle, May 1, 1962, EL.

  34. When Dwight’s younger brother Roy finished high school, he took a course in pharmacy and later went into business running a drugstore.

  35. See Swede Hazlett’s memo in his letter of May 23, 1944, to DDE, EL. Hazlett’s comment had been prepared for the author Alden Hatch, who was writing a book on General Eisenhower.

  36. Eisenhower, At Ease, 88–90. Also see Evan Thomas, Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World (New York: Little, Brown, 2012).

  37. Today you can also get a presidential appointment and/or one from the vice president.

  38. See Kornitzer, The Great American Heritage, for information on the educations of the Eisenhower brothers. Roy’s drugstore was located in Junction City, Kansas.

  39. In 1914, David left the creamery for a job at the Home Gas Company. This position was better suited to his desires for a decent salary, better working conditions, and social status closer to the one he had always hoped to have. Four years later, he became a manager. After 1926, David worked full-time with the organization’s benefits committee. He retired in 1931. The Voice, February 1931, in EL, shows David in that year wearing a snappy bow tie and looking exactly like the middle-class man he had always aspired to be.

  Three. Locked In

  1. On identity as a personal story—the story we tell ourselves and others—see Robert Hogan, Personality and the Fate of Organizations (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007), 8–9. See also Robert Hogan and Gerhard Blickle, “Socioanalytic Theory,” in Handbook of Personality at Work, ed. N. D. Christiansen and R. P. Tett, 53–70 (New York: Routledge, 2013); and Robert Hogan and Dana Shelton, “A Socioanalytic Perspective on Job Performance,” Human Performance 11 (1998): 129–144.

  2. This, in fact, was the way Eisenhower remembered it in At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends (New York: Doubleday, 1967), 12.

  3. Dwight David Eisenhower to Ruby Norman, EL.

  4. Michael Korda, Ike: An American Hero (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 91. He had “a reputation for being something between a class clown and a rebel against all forms of authority.” Korda’s explanation is that he was “bored” by the classes, really only liked athletics, and knew he was never going to be a high-ranking cadet.

  5. Edgar F. Puryear Jr., Nineteen Stars (Washington, DC: Coiner Publications, 1971), 13, citing “From Plebe to President,” Collier’s, June 10, 1955, 92–93.

  6. His yearbook biography called him “poor Dwight” and said he “merely consents to exist until graduation shall set him free.” Cited in Puryear, Nineteen Stars, 11–12.

  7. Carlo D’Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), 63.

  8. Records 94, Medical Files, Box 4, EL. Eisenhower later added three inches to his height and two pounds to his weight. Eisenhower, At Ease, 7.

  9. D’Este, Eisenhower, 67–71.

  10. Lars Anderson, Carlisle vs. Army: Jim Thorpe, Dwight Eisenhower, Pop Warner, and the Forgotten Story of Football’s Greatest Battle (New York: Random House, 2008), offers considerable detail about Ike’s short football career, which the author juxtaposes to the career of Olympic hero Jim Thorpe for dramatic effect. Ike’s first injury apparently occurred when he tackled Thorpe in a game that Thorpe and his Carlisle team won.

  11. Puryear, Nineteen Stars, 17, citing an interview from May 2, 1963. Also see Korda, Ike, 104: “It’s hard to escape the feeling that after four years as a cadet, Ike approached graduation in a somewhat confused and uncertain state.” I agree but would take out the “somewhat.”

  12. See Puryear, Nineteen Stars, 18–20, for an explanation of Dwight’s role as team cheerleader, and note that he also got the designations “A.B.” (“Area Bird,” for walking off violations) and “B.A.” (“Busted Aristocrat,” for achieving rank and then getting busted).

  13. Russell F. Weigley, History of the United States Army (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 313–341.

  14. Efficiency Reports, 1915, EL.

  15. All of the military evaluations of Eisenhower in this and subsequent chapters are available in EL. While they must be used with caution, they provide many insights into the development of his capacity as a military leader and his likelihood for advancement.

  16. Eisenhower, At Ease, 11–33. If there were further incidents, he apparently did not get caught.

  17. Efficiency Reports, EL.

  18. On the demands, see Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (Glencoe: Free Press, 1960), 175–212.

  19. Susan Eisenhower, Mrs. Ike: Memories and Reflections on the Life of Mamie Eisenhower (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996), 43–49.

  20. These incidents are described with care by D’Este in Eisenhower, 96–97.

  21. Korda, Ike, 109, finds a “sea change” here: “a solid, serious determination to devote himself to his profession, as if he had finally accepted the reality of being an officer in the Army.” I find less change, but change in this same direction.

  22. See especially the efficiency reports by Colonel T. M. Anderson and Colonel Charles Miller in EL.

  23. D’Este, Eisenhower, 127; Eisenhower, At Ease, 136–137.

  24. The appointment was, of course, temporary—that is, limited to the duration of the national emergency.

  25. Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983) 1:62–65. D’Este agrees and adds more detail to the Camp Colt experience: Eisenhower, 127–132.

  26. Efficiency Report, July 30, 1919, EL.

  27. The Distinguished Service Medal, the second-highest medal in the US Army, is awarded for exceptional service involving great responsibilities.

  28. Major Ira C. Welborn, Infantry, to Adjutant General of the Army, April 6, 1920, EL; D’Este, Eisenhower, 137; Jean Edward Smith, Eisenhower in War and Peace (New York: Random House, 2012), 68–69.

  29. Eisenhower, At Ease, 157–166.

  30. Ibid., 180–182.

  31. D’Este, Eisenhower, 133. For the impact on the marriage, see Korda, Ike, 159; Eisenhower, Mrs. Ike, 74, 75.

  32. The financial problem that prompt
ed the second threat made its way into his efficiency reports: “Unfavorable Report IGD, 6/17/21, Reference Signing Vouchers for Quarters When Not Entitled Thereto (IG Files),” EL.

  33. See, for instance, the efficiency reports by Colonel S. D. Rockenbach, in 1921, and Lieutenant Colonel Leon L. Roach, in 1920, EL.

  34. Puryear, Nineteen Stars, 3–5.

  35. For details in regard to Patton’s career, see the excellent biography by Carlo D’Este, Patton: A Genius for War (New York: HarperCollins, 1995).

  36. Ibid., 274–277, 281.

  37. Janowitz, The Professional Soldier, 21–37. Janowitz describes a split between military managers and “heroic leaders, who embody traditionalism and glory.” He discusses at length the military’s resistance to change. Patton was an anomaly; he was a “heroic leader,” but he was also (like Ike) an apostle of change.

  Four. Epiphany

  1. Carlo D’Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), 163, dates the meeting to the autumn of 1919.

  2. Edward L. Cox, Grey Eminence: Fox Conner and the Art of Mentorship (Stillwater, OK: New Forums, 2011), xii.

  3. Ibid., xi–xii, 51, 96–97.

  4. D’Este, Eisenhower, 161ff.

  5. Cox, Grey Eminence, xvii–xviii. In 1894, 5 of the 109 entering cadets were, like Conner, from Mississippi (ibid., 9).

  6. Ibid., xviii.

  7. The comparable position in US corporations would be the chief operating officer (COO); this would not become a common position in business bureaucracies until the multidivisional firm began to replace the unitary or centralized firm as the dominant corporate form for large businesses in the 1940s. See Alfred D. Chandler, Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1962).

  8. While Conner helped Patton along at a crucial stage of his career, Patton’s primary mentor was Lt. Col. Le Roy Eltinge. Carlo D’Este, Patton: A Genius for War (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 203.

  9. Conner delegated to Marshall most of the responsibility for planning the AEF’s offensive against Germany’s Saint-Mihiel salient; he also played a leading role in the planning for the Meuse-Argonne offensive.