by Nancy Gibbs
Once Truman went on to win the upset victory of a lifetime, Eisenhower, though he had not voted for him, sent warm congratulations. In all our political history, he wrote, no one ever managed a greater accomplishment “that can be traced so clearly to the stark courage and fighting heart of a single man.” Eisenhower reaffirmed his loyalty and offered his services at any time.
He had reason to be especially grateful: thanks to Truman’s personal intervention, the IRS judged Eisenhower to be a nonprofessional writer and so taxed his income from his war memoir Crusade in Europe at the 25 percent capital gains rate rather than the 75 percent income tax rate, which among other things meant that Mamie Eisenhower got her first mink coat. Eisenhower sent Truman a signed copy, the first volume he gave anyone outside the family.
War Again
It didn’t take long for Eisenhower to get restless at Columbia. “You can call on me at any time for anything,” he wrote to Defense Secretary James Forrestal after six months, and he was ready in February 1949 when Truman asked him to serve as a military advisor. Truman recruited Ike for a new kind of war: a bureaucratic one. He needed someone with Eisenhower’s stature—and skill at mediating between interests and egos—to soothe the vengeful admirals, corral the generals, persuade the various services and their congressional allies to bring the U.S. defense establishment under a more unified command structure when they were still fighting over the color of their uniforms. After a long session with Truman, “the one disturbing thing,” Ike reflected, “is the president and Mr. F. [Forrestal] apparently assume that I have some miraculous power to make some of these warring elements lie down in peace together.”
Truman needed his cantankerous generals to settle down because he would soon need them for some real fighting. On September 23, 1949, the White House revealed that it had evidence that the Soviets had exploded their own atom bomb. A week later, China fell to Mao Zedong’s communist revolutionaries. In the months that followed Albert Einstein warned that “general annihilation beckons,” Los Alamos scientist Klaus Fuchs confessed to espionage, and an obscure, dissolute Wisconsin senator named Joe McCarthy declared that he had a list of two hundred communists at the State Department.
And then, the real test: on June 25, 1950, the North Korean army crashed across the 38th parallel into South Korea, turning the Cold War hot and wrecking Truman’s hopes for a lasting peace. “My father made it clear from the moment he heard the news,” recalled Truman’s daughter, Margaret, “that he feared this was the opening of WWIII.”
An aggressive response to this communist-backed challenge could ignite a wider war in Asia; but a failure to act would signal America’s lack of will to fight. As North Korea’s Soviet-made tanks swept into Seoul, many feared this aggression was being directed by the Kremlin to draw America’s strength and attention away from Western Europe and leave it vulnerable to Soviet conquest. A mere twelve Western divisions were up against 175 Soviet divisions stationed in Eastern Europe. One Western staff officer, asked what the Russians would need to conquer the West, replied: “shoes.”
Eisenhower stood right by Truman’s side; he immediately supported Truman’s decision to rally the United Nations to South Korea’s defense and commit American soldiers to war, denouncing the “outrageous invasion” and calling Truman’s response “inescapable.” The next day he and Marshall had lunch with Truman at the White House, both saying strength and speed were essential. “We encountered good intentions,” Eisenhower recorded, “but I’m not so sure we met full comprehension.”
The months that followed would be among the most punishing of Truman’s presidency. By the beginning of October, thanks to MacArthur’s daring raid at Inchon, American and South Korean forces had retaken the country back to the 38th parallel; but the decision to try to destroy the North Korean army and reunify the country by force brought 260,000 Chinese troops pouring into the fight. Truman flew fifteen thousand miles to meet with MacArthur at Wake Island; the general would only give him a two-hour briefing, and was too busy to have lunch. Eisenhower’s private doubts about Truman’s military capacity grew. Poor Harry, he concluded, is “a fine man who, in the middle of a stormy lake, knows nothing of swimming. Yet a lot of drowning people are forced to look to him as a lifeguard. If his wisdom could only equal his good intent.”
Now all of MacArthur’s promises of having the boys “home by Christmas” were gone. The general wanted a naval blockade of China, permission to bomb Manchuria and mainland cities, an all-out counterattack, including the use of nuclear weapons. Joe McCarthy called on Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Marshall to resign, and for Truman to be impeached. Truman meanwhile shared the fear of his Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, General Omar Bradley, who warned Congress that expanding the Korean War would involve America in “the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.”
Supreme Allied Commander, Redux
The day after the Chinese entered the war, Truman tracked down Eisenhower, who was on a train in Ohio, and asked him to come see him. The president now needed more than Eisenhower’s friendship and advice; he needed him back in uniform, eventually overseas to lead the West once more but first at home to persuade a reluctant Congress and public to embrace the kind of entangling alliances that America had so long resisted.
The Western powers had signed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization pact more than a year earlier, to provide for the common defense against the Soviet threat: but it was more an idea than an army, until Korea brought home the need to take collective security seriously and put in place a real force under a unified command. The member countries were now committed to mutual defense—and Eisenhower, Truman said, was the unanimous choice to serve as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander. Eisenhower was more than ready to be back at the center of history: “I consider this to be the most important military job in the world,” he told his son John. When a friend suggested that maybe Truman was taking advantage of him, Ike retorted that “I rather look on this effort as about the last remaining chance for the survival of Western civilization.”
Truman knew Eisenhower was the only person who stood even a chance of getting twelve countries to work together; to persuade them to reinvest in their military strength rather than count on hiding beneath America’s nuclear umbrella; and to solve the hard practical and political question of rearming Germany. Truman also knew he would need every watt of Eisenhower’s star power to sell the idea that this level of commitment abroad was essential to national security.
“You know, that little guy is truly amazing,” Acheson told a State Department colleague after discussing the appointment with Truman. “I think he was conscious of the fact, that maybe by making this decision, he was creating a future President of the United States, who might be a Republican.” But, Acheson said, “He didn’t bat an eye. He said, ‘If that’s what we need, that’s what we need.’”
Only from this distance can we savor the moment when a sitting president deployed a future one to battle a former one. For into the fray stormed Hoover, seventy-six, who had emerged from his long exile to take his place as the elder statesman of the Republican Party. Just because Hoover and Truman were partners in reinventing government did not mean they agreed on everything—especially America’s foreign policy posture. They had worked successfully on humanitarian relief in Europe. But Hoover always worried that Europe wanted a free ride back to recovery under America’s protective wing. In a national radio address on December 20, 1950, Hoover offered the conservative counterargument to Truman’s expansive policy. Rather than sending troops and treasure overseas, he argued, America should rely on its air and naval power to create “a Gibraltar of Western Civilization” at home. Not a dime or a soldier should be sent to Europe until its nations had shown a willingness to defend themselves.
And so the gauntlet was thrown down, with Truman and Eisenhower and the internationalists on one side, against Hoover, Taft, and the isolationists on the other.
Eisen
hower had always respected Hoover, and the two spent some time over the summer at the elite enclave of Bohemian Grove—where, among other things, Hoover introduced Eisenhower to a rising star named Richard Nixon. But Eisenhower was appalled by Hoover’s vision. Though he was a man “I’ve admired extravagantly . . . I am forced to believe he’s getting senile.” But he too was concerned about America making a commitment to defend countries that hadn’t the stomach to fight for themselves. He told Truman the first task was to assess Europe’s appetite: at the beginning of January 1951 he clasped hands with Truman, Acheson, and Marshall at National Airport, kissed Mamie goodbye, and set off at Truman’s behest on a thirteen-thousand-mile trip to visit twelve capitals in eighteen days. “He would have to persuade a war-weary, unconfident Western Europe that it must make sacrifices and get ready to fight again,” declared Time. “He would have to do it while his own country’s councils were divided about his task.”
The “Yanks Go Home” posters that greeted him were not auspicious, and the trip was a hard one. He landed in Oslo in a blinding snowstorm, and had a smallpox scare in London that required a vaccination that left his arm sore and swollen for days. As the general moved across the continent, Truman was under siege at home. He once more found himself derided as the Missouri machine pol without so much as a college degree, overwhelmed by forces well beyond his skills. Korea was a catastrophe: the Chinese had pushed MacArthur’s forces back, and the commander was still pressing for an all-out assault. Meanwhile congressional Republicans charged that Truman did not have the constitutional power to send troops to Europe in peacetime.
In his State of the Union address, Truman clung to Eisenhower like a life preserver. Calling him “one of our greatest military commanders,” Truman insisted his mission was “vital to our security. We should all stand behind him, and give him every bit of help we can.”
When Eisenhower returned, he holed up for four days in a cliffside room at the Thayer Hotel at West Point, getting his thoughts on paper. “Few speeches have ever given me so much trouble,” he later admitted, since he needed to capture both Europe’s total weakness and vulnerability, and its spiritual readiness to rebuild. He knew the weight his assessment would carry.
And he also knew that one private meeting he planned as he returned to Washington could be most important of all.
He flew into Washington in an ice storm, to be greeted by a shivering committee of generals, cabinet officials, ambassadors, and President Truman, who wrung his hand and led him to his limousine, shooing off photographers with the warning that “We can’t give this fellow pneumonia.” They had lunch privately at the White House, so Truman could hear the message Eisenhower would deliver to the 82nd Congress and then in a national television appearance. It came down to this: the United States couldn’t afford to let the rest of the world fall to the communists. The defense of the West was both necessary and feasible if only the United States found its will.
“Each of us must do his part,” Eisenhower declared in his national address. “We cannot delay while we suspiciously scrutinize the sacrifices made by our neighbors, and through a weaseling logic seek some way to avoid our own duties.” He was urgent, unwavering, unfailingly optimistic that while the challenge was great, America’s ability to meet it was greater still. “If we Americans seize the lead,” he promised, “we will preserve and be worthy of our own past.”
With that performance, Life magazine declared that he had “once again shown himself to be a foremost symbol of all that is right and good and strong in American policy and purpose.” And in the process, said Time, “he had done for the President what Harry Truman could not do for himself. Ike appeared to have routed the calamity-howlers and the super-cautious—the Hoovers, the Kennedys . . . the Tafts. By the end of the week, congressional opposition to the Administration’s main military plans had all but collapsed. Congress and the people were behind the second Eisenhower crusade.”
But when one looks back at the Great Debate, as it came to be known, one fateful encounter stands out—one that very few people knew about at the time. Even as he took on his NATO assignment, the political pressures on Eisenhower were just as strong as ever; he would have happily shut the speculation down once and for all had he not feared that the hard-line isolationist wing of the Republican Party would prevail in his absence.
So with an eye toward killing two birds at once, he arranged a secret meeting with Ohio senator Robert Taft, himself the son of a president and a leading contender for the 1952 Republican nomination. All Eisenhower wanted from Taft was an assurance that he would help make the collective security of Europe the center of a bipartisan U.S. policy. If Taft agreed, Ike would devote himself to carrying it out, and take himself out of the running for 1952 once and for all. He wrote out a statement in pencil, folded it up, and tucked it in his pocket: “Having been called back to military duty, I want to announce that my name may not be used by anyone as a candidate for President—and if they do I will repudiate such efforts.”
Then he drove over to the Pentagon for the private meeting with Taft. The general and the senator talked for a long time. “I think he may have been suspicious of my motives,” Eisenhower concluded, which would have been natural, since the groundswell beneath an Eisenhower candidacy was clearly visible to even the most cross-eyed political landscaper.
“I used all the persuasion I could, but Senator Taft refused to commit himself,” Eisenhower recalled. Eisenhower didn’t even try to extract a promise for a certain number of troops; just general support for collective security as Europe’s best defense, and America’s vital role in that alliance. But even that was too much for Taft, who feared it would just provoke the Soviets further and drag the United States back into Europe’s ancient battles. After Taft left, the general called his aides back into the room and tore up his statement in front of them.
“I finally concluded that it might be more effective to keep some aura of mystery around my future plans.”
The Shadow Campaign
About six months later, on a hot August day in the summer of 1951, when the news was slow, New York Times reporter William Laurence decided to ask Truman about that offer he’d made to Eisenhower back in 1948. He’d said he would support Eisenhower if he ever ran for president. Does that promise apply to 1952—when, it should be noted, Truman was still eligible to run again as well?
“It certainly does,” Truman said. “I am just as fond of General Eisenhower as I can be. I think he is one of the great men produced by World War II, and I think I have shown that, by giving him the most important job that is available for his ability.”
“Good Lord,” breathed Laurence, as he slid back to his chair and scribbled in his notebook. The headline practically wrote itself: TRUMAN BACKS IKE FOR PRESIDENT. Then an NBC reporter asked the follow-up: “Does that mean that if Ike wants to be President, you will help him get it?”
Well now, Truman replied, that’s not what he was saying at all. “I don’t think he is a candidate for president on the Democratic ticket,” he said, “and I couldn’t very well help him to be a candidate on the Republican ticket, because I don’t think that would do him any good.” This was an understatement. That summer of 1951, amid a continuing stalemate in Korea, charges of influence peddling, and rising attacks from McCarthy and his henchmen, Truman’s popularity had hit a record low of 24 percent.
Ambassador Averell Harriman, passing through Paris, visited with Eisenhower at NATO headquarters and suggested that Truman wanted to meet with him in Washington. Eisenhower got the impression that this was to be a secret meeting, which seemed ill-advised to him; it was bound to leak, and Congress was caught up debating a military aid bill, which he did not want to get sucked into.
He cabled George Marshall with a top secret message for the president, suggesting a later date. Truman wrote back, by hand, to reassure him: “I had never expected to have a secret meeting with you,” he assured the general. He’d just heard reports that Eisenhower was
“not getting the proper support and cooperation from other departments,” and wanted to help make his job easier. He also didn’t want Eisenhower to be “harassed by these nutty congressional committees. One man is enough for them to pick to pieces—and I’m accustomed to it.”
So it would be some months before the two men met again, by which time the speculation about an Eisenhower candidacy was in full flame. “There are many things I want to talk with you about,” Truman wrote to Eisenhower in late September 1951. “I am sure you and I understand each other. You are doing a grand job.”
When he flew home from Europe the following week to confer with Truman about NATO, Ike said the talks were to be “strictly military.” But there was only one topic on everyone’s mind. Would Truman offer to step aside if Ike agreed to run, and if so, who would take over NATO, and by the way, does anyone know yet if he’s even a Democrat? Collier’s magazine went so far as to offer him $40,000 just to reveal what party he belonged to. Taft had just officially declared his candidacy and had deep party support. But polls showed Eisenhower leading both Truman and Taft by better than two to one.
On November 5, Truman and Eisenhower had lunch at Blair House, where the Trumans lived while the White House was being renovated. Truman showed Eisenhower pictures of the renovations, as though demonstrating what a nice place it would be to call home. Once again Truman offered his full support; the president could deliver him the Democratic nomination with a bow on it, if Ike would just declare himself a candidate.
Truman’s offer, revealed New York Times bureau chief Arthur Krock, was the culmination of a long campaign by Democrats to reel the general into their camp. Party emissaries had flown to Paris some weeks earlier to inform him that he had just to say the word and the nomination was his, with Truman’s support.
Ike’s reply? He had been a Republican all his life, if a nonvoting one. “You can’t join a party just to run for office. What reason have you to think I’ve ever been a Democrat?” He also thought twenty years of Democratic rule was enough; someone had to save the two-party system. Plus his disagreements with Truman’s progressive Fair Deal policies were long and deep. “It never occurred to the President that I might be a Republican,” the general reflected later. “He believed in Democrats so much that he assumed that anyone who had any sense would become a Democrat.”