Eisenhower’s associates at the Battle Monuments Commission were stunned. Major Xenophon Price, Pershing’s executive officer, thought Ike was passing up a shining future. “Every officer attached to the Commission is going to be known as a man of special merit,” said Price.39
Eisenhower disagreed. Price responded by giving him an exceptionally low efficiency report for his last four and a half months in Paris. Price had previously rated Eisenhower four times over a period of three years, and each rating had been “superior.” His final rating was “satisfactory.” Price acknowledged that Ike possessed a “fine command of the English language,” and that he was “an excellent officer of great natural ability.” But he was stung by Eisenhower’s decision to return to Washington. Price said Ike was “not especially versitile [Price’s spelling] in adjusting to changed conditions” and that he “had difficulty adjusting to Paris.” It was Eisenhower’s lowest rating since he served as a young lieutenant at Fort Oglethorpe in 1917. Its impact on Eisenhower’s career, however, was negligible.d
On September 17, 1929, the Eisenhowers sailed from Cherbourg on the United States Lines’ SS Leviathan—the largest (54,282 tons) and fastest (twenty-six knots) liner afloat. Built in 1913 as the SS Vaterland for the Hamburg-Amerika Line, the ship had been in New York when World War I began and, like the Amerika, had been seized and converted into a troopship by the United States in 1917. The Eisenhowers’ cabin was crammed with flowers and presents from their friends in Paris, but no champagne—a jolting reminder they were back in the land of Prohibition.
* * *
a During World War II, the 24th was relegated to policing up pockets of holdout Japanese troops after the main fighting was over. It took part in the occupation of Japan and was one of the first units ordered into Korea in 1950. But like many units ordered from Japan into Korea, the 24th initially fought badly—so badly, in fact, that it became the subject of a derisive ditty, “The Bugout Boogie”: “When them Chinese mortars begin to thud, the Old Deuce-Four begin to bug.”
According to a study of the regiment published in 1996 by the Department of the Army (William T. Bowers, William M. Hammond, and George L. MacGarrigle, Black Soldier, White Army: The 24th Infantry Regiment in Korea [Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 1996]), the soldiers of the 24th considered it “a ‘penal’ regiment for white officers who had ‘screwed up.’ ” (The quotation appears on this page.)
Ironically, the poor performance of the 24th in Korea played a decisive role in the desegregation of the Army. President Truman had ordered the desegregation of the armed services on July 26, 1948 (Executive Order 9981). The following day, General Omar Bradley, Army chief of staff and Truman’s fellow Missourian, took exception to the president’s order. “The Army is not out to make any social reforms,” said Bradley. “The Army will put men of different races in different companies. It will change that policy when the nation as a whole changes it” (The New York Times, July 30, 1948).
Executive Order 9981 provided that desegregation take place as rapidly as possible, “having due regard to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale,” and Bradley’s demurrer was taken in that context. He repeated the Army’s reluctance to move before society had done so in a prepared statement to the President’s Committee on Equality in the Armed Forces, March 28, 1949, and that is where the issue rested until the Korean War. The Army remained segregated despite the president’s order.
It was the poor showing of the 24th in Korea that broke the logjam. In September 1950, two months after the war began, Major General William B. Kean, commander of the 25th Infantry Division, requested that the Eighth Army disband the all-black 24th Infantry Regiment because of its poor performance. General Matthew Ridgway, commanding the Eighth Army, had long opposed segregation. “It has always seemed to me both un-American and un-Christian for free citizens to be taught to downgrade themselves this way as if they were unfit to associate with their fellows or to accept leadership themselves.” Ridgway’s efforts to desegregate the Eighth Army were stymied temporarily by MacArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo and the Department of the Army. But when he succeeded MacArthur as supreme commander in the spring of 1951, Ridgway forced the issue and ordered the desegregation of the troops in the theater, beginning with the 24th Infantry. This time no one in Washington objected.
Morris J. MacGregor, Jr., Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940–1965 436–47 (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, U.S. Army 1981); Matthew B. Ridgway, The Korean War: How We Met the Challenge 192–93 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967).
b The SS America was built in 1905 at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast for the Hamburg-Amerika Line. At 22,225 tons, it was the largest ship of the period, and carried 386 persons in first class, 150 in second, 222 in third, and 1,750 in steerage. When war broke out in August 1914, the Amerika was in port in Boston. It remained there until the United States entered the war in April 1917, whereupon it was seized, renamed the America, and converted to a troopship. After the war it became American property pursuant to the reparations provisions of the Versailles Treaty and was given to the United States Lines, which converted it into a two-class passenger ship. It was seriously damaged by fire while undergoing repairs at Newport News, Virginia, in 1927, and had just been refitted when the Eisenhowers boarded. After service as a troopship in World War II, it was scrapped in January 1957.
c Following the fall of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, France experimented for three years with a constitutional monarchy. Louis XVI remained on the throne with his powers curtailed. But in 1792 he was deposed and executed, and the First Republic was established. Napoléon seized power in 1799 and proclaimed the first French Empire. Historians often assert that Napoléon “interrupted” the work of the revolution and left the outcome in doubt. In 1814 the Bourbon monarchy was restored, only to be overthrown in 1830 in favor of the constitutional monarchy of Louis-Philippe, the duc d’Orléans. The Revolution of 1848 toppled the Orleanist monarchy and established the Second Republic, which ruled France until 1852, when Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (Napoléon’s nephew) mounted a coup and established the Second Empire. Napoléon III (as he was styled) ruled France until Germany’s 1870 victory in the Franco-Prussian War. A period of instability ensued, marked by the tumultuous episode of the Paris Commune of 1871, a legendary benchmark for the Marxist Left, and the provisional government of Adolphe Thiers. The Third Republic was ushered in in 1875 with little prospect of survival but remarkably had endured, always under attack from the monarchist Right (divided into Bourbon and Orleanist factions), the authoritarian Right (successors to the imperial tradition), and the antidemocratic Left, heirs to the spirit of the Commune.
d When Eisenhower returned to Washington as chief of staff in 1946, he inquired what had happened to Xenophon Price. A search of War Department records revealed that he was on active duty with the Corps of Engineers in the rank of lieutenant colonel. Since Price was a year senior in the prewar Army, Eisenhower was shocked. “Why was he only a lieutenant colonel?” he asked. “Bad judgment,” came the reply. “Hell, he’s not that bad,” said Ike, and he ordered Price promoted to colonel. Letter, John S. D. Eisenhower to JES, March 10, 2008.
FIVE
With MacArthur in Washington
This officer has no superior of his age and grade.
—GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR ON EISENHOWER’S EFFICIENCY REPORT, June 30, 1933
After a month’s leave, during which he and Mamie visited Denver and Abilene, Eisenhower reported for duty at the War Department on November 9, 1929. The Army’s general staff, to which he had been appointed, numbered fewer than a hundred officers, most of whom had been handpicked for their assignments—and Ike was no exception. His job was executive assistant to Major General George Van Horn Moseley, the principal military adviser to the assistant secretary of war. George Moseley and Fox Conner were old friends, a year apart at West Point—Conner from Mississippi
, Moseley from Alabama—and each was regarded as a thinking man’s general. They had served together in the Philippines, and both rode with Pershing against Pancho Villa. During the war, Conner had been Pershing’s operations officer (G-3); Moseley was his chief of supply (G-4). When Ike sent a distress call to Conner from Paris in 1929, it is not surprising that he would land on Moseley’s War Department doorstep.1
Under the National Defense Act of 1920,2 the assistant secretary of war was responsible for the Army’s procurement and supply, paralleling Franklin Roosevelt’s task in the Navy Department when he was assistant secretary under Woodrow Wilson. In World War II, the Army post (elevated to undersecretary) would be held by Judge Robert Patterson, who proved to be a production wizard and presided over an unprecedented procurement program virtually without a taint of scandal or cost overrun.
In 1929, the post was held by Frederick H. Payne, a self-made New England millionaire and old-line Hoover Republican, dedicated to fiscal responsibility and enthralled with the social side of official life in Washington.3 Payne’s dilemma was that there was essentially no military procurement in 1929. Working under severe budgetary restraint, the Army had been reduced to 119,000 men, and there was a surfeit of equipment left over from the war. That led Moseley to look to the future. What the Army had on hand would scarcely be adequate in the event of another war. Consequently, at his direction the office of the assistant secretary began to frame an industrial mobilization plan, and Ike was charged with drafting it.
“I am particularly pleased with this detail,” Eisenhower wrote in the diary he had begun to keep. “I am looking forward to the opportunity of learning something about the economic and industrial conditions that will probably prevail in this country in the event of a major war.”4
Eisenhower worked on the project for almost a year. He interviewed industrialists and financiers (including Bernard Baruch), and made an extensive field survey of the possibility of producing synthetic rubber from the guayule bush that grew abundantly in the desert of northern Mexico.5 The resulting 180-page mobilization plan, subsequently known as the M-Day Plan, was comprehensive, surprisingly well-written, and went largely unread.6 It gathered dust on the shelves of the War Department until 1940, and then was bypassed by events.
Nevertheless, Payne and General Moseley were impressed by Ike’s efforts, and Moseley put his appreciation on record. As he wrote Eisenhower afterward, “You possess one of those exceptional minds which enables you to assemble and to analyze a set of facts, always drawing sound conclusions and, equally important, you have the ability to express those conclusions in clear and convincing form. Many officers can take the first two steps of a problem, but few have your ability of expression.”7 a Moseley had become a surrogate for Fox Conner. In his eyes, Ike could do no wrong.
General George Van Horn Moseley, Ike’s sponsor on the army general staff in the early 1930s. (illustration credit 5.1)
Eisenhower, for his part, was captivated by Moseley. As he wrote in his diary, “Among the senior officers in the Army, he [Moseley] has been my most intimate friend and the one for whom I have great admiration and esteem. [He is] a wonderful officer—a splendid gentleman and a true friend. Mentally honest and with great moral courage he is well equipped for any task this gov’t can possibly give him.”8
In his professional capacity, Moseley was unquestionably an outstanding officer. He had done an exemplary job handling the logistics of the AEF, had helped Charles G. Dawes establish the Bureau of the Budget in 1921, and was highly regarded not only by those for whom he worked, but by those who worked for him as well. George Marshall was one of Moseley’s most ardent admirers, believed him to be an unusually perceptive judge of military talent, and consulted him regularly during the war on personnel matters.9 Douglas MacArthur prized Moseley’s organizational ability and considered him one of a handful of close personal friends.10 Eisenhower, writing in retirement, recalled that Moseley “was always delving into new ideas, and he was an inspiration to the rest of us. He was always quick with praise and was ready to take responsibility for any little error or criticism that came our way from outside.”11
But there was a dark side to Moseley. In an Army notorious for its ethnocentrism, George Van Horn Moseley stood out as the exemplar of racist xenophobia, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, and political repression. Indeed, George Patton at his most vitriolic resembled an Episcopal choirboy when compared to Moseley. In the fall of 1930, Moseley officially recommended that the War Department round up all radicals and ship them off to Russia.12 Several years later, speaking to a meeting of reserve medical officers in New Orleans, he castigated the Roosevelt administration’s efforts to provide sanctuary for German and Austrian Jews fleeing Hitler and insisted that the refugees should be accepted “with the distinct understanding that they all be sterilized before being permitted to embark. Only that way can we properly protect our future.”13 Moseley was commanding Third Army at the time, and his knuckles were rapped by the War Department. After he retired in 1938 he became a bitter critic of FDR and the New Deal, saw the possibility of war with Germany as a Jewish conspiracy launched by the great investment banks (which in his view were controlled by Jews), and ultimately came to believe that the Jews of Europe “were receiving their just punishment for the crucifixion of Christ.”14 b
Eisenhower was certainly aware of Moseley’s sentiments. In 1934, after Moseley had left the War Department to assume command of the IV Corps Area in Atlanta, Ike wrote:
I miss the talks we used to have on such subjects as “the state of the nation”—and all included matters. So much is happening that is going to be of the utmost significance to our country for generations to come that I would like very much to discuss with you the motives, purposes and methods of some of the actors now occupying the national stage.15
Eisenhower did not share Moseley’s racist dogmatism, and in his subsequent correspondence he ignored the general’s anti-Semitic rants.16 Yet he never took issue with Moseley’s views, and in his memoirs suggested the general had been the victim of bad press coverage. “Many who did not know the man himself may have thought him a reactionary or a militarist. The impression he created was a distortion, I am sure; he was a patriotic American unafraid to disagree with a consensus.”17
As they had done during their previous tour in Washington, the Eisenhowers took up residence at the Wyoming, this time in a spacious two-bedroom suite on the third floor. John attended nearby John Quincy Adams public school, and Mamie reassembled Club Eisenhower in their apartment. An enthusiastic hostess to all who came calling, Mamie was never regarded as a great beauty, recalled her friend Kate Hughes, but “men were very attracted to her. She was direct, honest, sincere, but also flirtatious and lively.”18 In addition to the many visitors passing through Washington, the Eisenhowers’ circle of friends included the Wade Haislips and “Gee” Gerows from the old 19th Infantry at San Antonio, Ike’s brother Milton and his wife, Helen (Milton was a rising star at the Agriculture Department), Ruth and Harry Butcher, who ran the local CBS affiliate WJSV (known to old-time Washingtonians as “When Jesus Saved Virginia”), and the George Pattons. Patton was initially with the office of the chief of cavalry in the War Department, and later with the 3rd Cavalry at Fort Myer.
In addition to the usual Army-Navy Club affairs, the Eisenhowers were members of the Willard Hotel’s Saturday Night Dinner Dance Club, and entertained regularly in the hotel’s posh dining room (where they received a discount). Ike was eager to promote his career, and though still only a major, he and Mamie first invited Assistant Secretary and Mrs. Payne for dinner at the Willard, then the secretary of war, Patrick J. Hurley. As Mamie recalled, “They had been wonderfully kind to us, so we couldn’t see why we shouldn’t return their hospitality.”19
Official Washington was much smaller and more intimate in the twenties and thirties, and Ike’s invitations to Hurley and Payne would not have been considered out of line. Major George Patton, who was equally assiduous
in promoting his career, offered the use of his stable of horses and squash court to Henry L. Stimson when Stimson returned to Washington as secretary of state in 1929. “My dear Mr. Secretary,” Patton wrote on March 29. “Knowing, by previous experience, your fondness for exercise and riding, I am taking the liberty of offering you the use of my horses and squash court, at any time and as often as you may find convenient. The court and the horses are situated at 3000 Cathedral Avenue (the old Newlands Place), not far from the Wardman Park Hotel [where Stimson was staying].” Secretary Stimson graciously accepted the offer. “My dear Major Patton,” he wrote on April 6. “Many thanks for the kind offer.… I had a delightful ride on Gaylord yesterday.” (Gaylord was Patton’s favorite jumper.)20
The Eisenhowers’ private life was a mix of starchy formality and casual relaxation. One Sunday a month Ike donned formal morning dress and he and Mamie paid social calls on the ranking officers of the War Department, left the requisite visiting cards, nibbled dainty cucumber sandwiches, and drank tea—all as prescribed by Washington’s rigid protocol. Other Sundays he and James Ulio, the Army’s future adjutant general, would strike out for the Old Soldiers’ Home and a round of golf.21 At home, Mamie’s maid wore a de rigueur blue-and-white striped uniform in the morning and changed to black for the afternoon and evening.22 Despite the formality, Ike and young Johnnie shared a morning tub of bathwater. John would bathe first while Eisenhower was shaving, then Ike would climb into the bathwater after his son had finished. Evidently it was a way to express the intimacy of childhood that Ike remembered from Abilene, or perhaps to save time by not refilling the bathtub.23
Eisenhower in War and Peace Page 11