Eisenhower in War and Peace

by Jean Edward Smith

  Churchill, who received a copy of Marshall’s message, remained resolute. “I view with profound misgivings the retreat of the American Army to our line of occupation,” he cabled Truman. “I hoped this retreat, if it has to be made, would be accompanied by the settlement of many great things which would be the true foundation of world peace. Nothing really important has been settled yet, and you and I will have to bear great responsibility for the future.”14

  Churchill visualized the Cold War, and may even have been contributing to its onset. Eisenhower hoped that the defeat of Nazi Germany would lay the groundwork for a peaceful world in which the victorious Allies would cooperate. If there was going to be conflict with the Soviet Union—hot or cold—Ike was determined that the United States was not going to be responsible for starting it. As he told Butcher in late May, he thought relations with the Russians were about like American relations with the British at the beginning of the war.

  As we dealt with each other, we learned the British ways and they learned ours. Now the Russians, who have had relatively little contact with the Americans and British, do not understand us, nor do we them. The more contact we have with the Russians, the more they will understand us and the greater will be the cooperation. It should be possible to work with Russia if we will follow the same pattern of friendly co-operation that has resulted in the great record of Allied unity demonstrated first by AFHQ [in North Africa and Sicily] and subsequently by SHAEF. Only now, in peace, the motive for co-operation is the betterment of the lot in life of the common man. If we can create singleness of purpose on this theme, as we did to win the war, then peace should be assured.15

  Eisenhower, Zhukov, and Montgomery celebrating at Ike’s Frankfurt headquarters, June 1945. (illustration credit 16.2)

  On June 5, 1945, Eisenhower met with Zhukov, Montgomery, and de Lattre de Tassigny at Zhukov’s headquarters in Berlin. “The circular conference table was the largest I have ever seen,” wrote Eisenhower. “Each national delegation was assigned a ninety-degree quadrant at the table. The commanders were surrounded by a crowd of military and political assistants.”16 Eisenhower was accompanied by General Lucius D. Clay, his deputy for military government, and his political adviser, Robert Murphy. Zhukov was joined by his deputy, Marshal Vassily Sokolovsky, and Andrey Vyshinsky. “The Russians treated us cordially,” Eisenhower reported to Marshall. “I gave Zhukov, in the name of the President, the Legion of Merit in the grade of Chief Commander and he reciprocated by awarding me the Order of Victory.”17

  The four military commanders signed the formal declaration assuming total power in Germany.b But as Eisenhower anticipated, Zhukov made it clear that any steps to set up control machinery would have to await the Allied withdrawal from the Soviet zone. “There is some justification for Zhukov’s position that he is unable to discuss administrative problems in Germany when he still is not in control and hence not familiar with the problems of the zone for which he will eventually be responsible,” Ike told Marshall. “As a result of my discussion with Zhukov I am optimistic that the Russians will join in some form of control machinery when the withdrawal is accomplished and will agree to our force entering into Berlin concurrently with our withdrawal from their zone.”18 Murphy subsequently cabled the State Department: “For the Depts secret information, I believe that Gen Eisenhower does not consider that the retention of our forces in the Russian zone is wise or that it will be productive of advantages.”19

  Two days after the conference in Berlin, Harry Hopkins stopped off at Eisenhower’s headquarters on his return from Moscow to Washington. Hopkins had arranged with Stalin for the Big Three to meet at Potsdam on July 15, and wanted to discuss the situation in Germany with Ike. Hopkins remained in Frankfurt twenty-four hours, after which he cabled President Truman that he was convinced “the present indeterminate status of date of withdrawal of Allied troops from area assigned to the Russians is certain to be misunderstood by Russia as well as at home.”

  Hopkins, who had just met with Stalin, and Eisenhower, who had just seen Zhukov, concurred in their assessment. As Hopkins told Truman, “It is manifest that Allied control machinery cannot be started until Allied troops have withdrawn from territory included in the Russian area of occupation. Any delay in the establishment of control machinery interferes seriously with the development of governmental administrative machinery for Germany and the application of Allied policy in Germany.” Hopkins said that a delay of a week or so “would not be disastrous,” but that the withdrawal should be accomplished before the July 15 meeting with Stalin at Potsdam. Hopkins, whose health was failing, said the issue was so serious that he would remain in Europe if the president thought it would be helpful.20

  Hopkins’s message broke the logjam. Whereas Eisenhower had not been able to overcome British resistance in the Combined Chiefs of Staff, Hopkins succeeded in driving home to President Truman the importance of withdrawing Allied forces. On June 11, Truman informed Churchill that he was “unable to delay the withdrawal of American troops from the Soviet zone in order to use pressure in the settlement of other problems.” The president said that SHAEF should be dissolved immediately, and that separate U.S. and British zones under Eisenhower and Montgomery should begin to function forthwith. American troops, said Truman, would commence their withdrawal from the Soviet zone on June 21.21

  Churchill yielded gracefully. “Obviously we are obliged to conform to your decision,” he cabled the president on June 14. “I sincerely hope that your action will in the long run make for a lasting peace in Europe.”22

  On the personal front, Eisenhower’s affection for Kay Summersby crested as the war ended. According to Kay, Ike pledged his love and insisted they go to London, take in a show, and celebrate VE Day. At the theater they were joined in Ike’s box by John and his British date; General Bradley; and Kay’s mother. It was all very public. When the audience demanded that Eisenhower speak, he told them how happy he was to be back in England. “It’s nice,” he said, “to be back in a country where I can almost speak the language.”23 After the theater they adjourned to Ciro’s for dinner and dancing. Again, all very public. “It was hard to tell what step we were doing or what beat Ike was listening to,” Kay remembered. “We were sort of hopping around the floor. But I didn’t care.”24

  Ike and Kay at the Prince of Wales Theater in London. (illustration credit 16.3)

  According to General Lucius Clay, who was Ike’s deputy at the time, “General Eisenhower was under considerable pressure immediately after the war to take up permanent residence in England. A group of leading citizens, led by Jimmy Gault [Sir James Gault, Eisenhower’s British aide], who was very influential in London financial circles, wanted General Eisenhower to live in Britain and had even selected a residence for him.”

  I asked General Clay if that would have involved Kay Summersby. Clay blushed and did not answer. After a significant pause Clay continued: “General Eisenhower was a General of the Army. That was a lifetime appointment. He would never be required to retire. He would always draw his pay and allowances. So living in England was a real possibility.”25

  President Truman told Merle Miller that “right after the war was over, he [Eisenhower] wrote to General Marshall saying that he wanted to be relieved of duty,” so that he could divorce Mamie and marry Kay. According to the former president, Marshall replied harshly that if Ike ever attempted such a thing he would “bust him out of the Army” and make his life miserable. Truman said that before he left office in 1953, he “got those letters from [Eisenhower’s] file in the Pentagon and I destroyed them.”

  When Miller published his interview with President Truman in 1974, the American historical establishment expressed incredulity.26 The reaction was similar to that following the publication of Fawn Brodie’s biography of Thomas Jefferson suggesting that Jefferson and Sally Hemmings had enjoyed a sexual relationship.27 Like Brodie’s book, Truman’s story has the ring of reality. Professor Garrett Mattingly, the distinguished Columbia
University historian who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1959 for The Armada, was stationed in Washington during the war as a junior officer in Naval Intelligence. It was Mattingly’s job to read the outgoing cables from the high command for censorship purposes. In the early 1950s, when Ike was president of Columbia University, Professor Mattingly told his history department colleagues that he had seen Marshall’s cable to Eisenhower. The only difference between Mattingly’s version and Truman’s was that Mattingly recalled Marshall saying that he would relieve Eisenhower as supreme commander if he did such a thing. Truman’s “bust him out of the Army” is a down-home Missouri embellishment. Professor Mattingly died in 1962—well before Truman’s interview with Merle Miller.c

  It is not unlikely that Eisenhower, as a lifetime General of the Army, with his financial future secure, could have contemplated a life with Kay in Britain. It is certainly conceivable that he could have written to General Marshall in May 1945 to explore the possibility. Should Marshall have replied harshly, and if he had threatened to relieve Eisenhower as supreme commander, with the public humiliation that would have entailed, it is certain that Ike would have dismissed the possibility. Few figures in public life have had Dwight D. Eisenhower’s willpower. A lifetime smoker of three to four packs of cigarettes a day, Eisenhower quit cold turkey while president of Columbia and never touched a cigarette again. If, after hearing from Marshall, he decided against pursuing his romance with Kay, there is no doubt he could have turned on a dime. Eisenhower continued to write affectionate letters to Mamie throughout May, and there is no indication in their correspondence that their marriage was in trouble.d If Eisenhower was considering divorce he played his cards close to his chest. That, too, would have been in character.

  An additional incident offers tangential corroboration. On June 4, 1945, Eisenhower wrote Marshall to suggest that American officers remaining in Germany on occupation duty be permitted to bring their wives from the States.

  General Bradley has been the only senior officer I know who has been an ardent supporter of some such policy, but I am sure that something of this order will eventually have to be done.

  So far as my own case is concerned, I will admit that the last six weeks have been my hardest of the war. I presume that aside from disappointment in being unable to solve in clean-cut fashion some of the nagging problems that seem to be always with us, part of my trouble is that I just plain miss my family.28

  Eisenhower was signaling that his affair with Kay had ended. As Eisenhower biographer Michael Korda has pointed out, the most curious aspect of Ike’s letter is that he felt it necessary to write Marshall in the first place. “If Ike had simply told Mamie to pack her bags and join him, it is hard to imagine that anybody would have been shocked or angered.”29 When Clay succeeded Eisenhower as military governor, he authorized dependents to come to Germany without consulting Washington and caused scarcely a ripple.30

  Eisenhower continued to enjoy Kay’s company so long as he remained in Germany. They went horseback riding, played bridge in the evening, and when Ike visited Hitler’s retreat at Berchtesgaden, Kay accompanied him. They vacationed again at the Dillon estate in Cannes and went on a fishing trip with Bedell Smith and Ethel Westermann. But ambition conquered affection. When Eisenhower returned to Washington to succeed Marshall as chief of staff in November 1945, Kay was the only member of Ike’s personal staff who did not join him. There were no teary good-byes. As Kay has written, “A telex came in from Washington saying that Lieutenant Summersby was dropped from the roster of those scheduled to leave for Washington. There was no explanation. No reason given.”31

  Shortly afterward Kay received a typewritten “Dear John” letter from Eisenhower on War Department stationery.

  Dear Kay:

  I am terribly distressed, first because it has become impossible longer to keep you as a member of my personal official family, and secondly because I cannot come back and give you a detailed account of the reasons.…

  In this letter I shall not attempt to express the depth of my appreciation for the unexcelled loyalty and faithfulness with which you have worked for the past three and a half years under my personal direction.…

  I am sure you understand that I am personally much distressed that an association that has been so valuable to me has to be terminated in this particular fashion but it is by reasons over which I have no control.…

  Finally, I hope that you will drop me a note from time to time—I will always be interested to know how you are getting along.

  In his own hand, Ike added a postscript: “Take care of yourself—and retain your optimism.”32 The postscript notwithstanding, Eisenhower’s letter to Kay is cold-blooded and ruthless. FDR would have been incapable of writing such a missive, and George Patton would have said a warmer good-bye to his horse. With his letter Eisenhower closed the book on his relationship with Kay Summersby. Kay would not completely go away, but Ike had taken the necessary step to restore his marriage to Mamie and resume his career. Eisenhower and his son John have been assiduous in their attempt to minimize the role Kay Summersby played in Ike’s life.e Kay’s wartime diary, for example, which is at the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, is filed under the “Barbara Wyden Papers” (Wyden assisted Kay in writing Past Forgetting), not under “Kay Summersby.”33

  A wartime romance is scarcely a deadly sin. In 1941, Franklin Roosevelt resumed his relationship with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, and Lucy was with FDR when he died at Warm Springs. For twenty years after the president’s death, Roosevelt scholars pooh-poohed the possibility of a presidential romance with Lucy Mercer. “Such rumors,” wrote Harvard professor Frank Freidel, “seem preposterous. They reflect more on the teller than FDR.”34 But the truth eventually emerged, and did not adversely affect FDR’s reputation. As Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the dean of Roosevelt biographers, has noted, “If Lucy Mercer in any way helped Franklin Roosevelt sustain the frightful burden of leadership in the Second World War, the nation has good reason to be grateful to her.”35 The same might be said for Kay Summersby. Major General Everett Hughes, a close friend of both Ike and Mamie, and who was regarded as Eisenhower’s “eyes and ears” at SHAEF, put it in almost identical terms. “Leave Ike and Kay alone,” he once admonished Eisenhower’s aide Tex Lee. “She’s helping him win the war.”36

  Victory celebrations engulfed Europe. Like the Duke of Wellington after Waterloo, Eisenhower was the hero of the hour. He was feted in the pomp and circumstance of London’s Guildhall, and the stately splendor of the Palais de l’Élysée. At the Guildhall, Ike addressed the assembled establishment of Great Britain, was proclaimed an honorary citizen, and was presented with a ceremonial sword bearing the insignia of the Order of Merit, Britain’s highest decoration. In Paris, he placed a wreath on the tomb of the unknown in an elaborate ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe, was named a Compagnon de la Libération, and on behalf of the American people received a sword that had belonged to Napoléon. After a state dinner at the Élysée and another speech, de Gaulle presented him with a platinum cigarette case embossed with five sapphire stars and engraved in de Gaulle’s own handwriting.f There were similar celebrations and decorations bestowed in Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Eisenhower had become the most popular figure in western Europe, and he bore the acclaim with grace, dignity, and a residual midwestern humility.

  De Gaulle presents Eisenhower with a sword of Napoléon’s for the American people. (illustration credit 16.4)

  On June 16, 1945, Eisenhower left Frankfurt for Washington, his first visit home in almost two years. President Truman dispatched the presidential plane, The Sacred Cow, for Ike’s use, and the party stopped for a day in Bermuda so that Eisenhower might have some time in the sun before embarking on his triumphal tour. In Washington, Ike addressed a joint session of Congress, met with President Truman and Secretary Stimson, and was awarded a second oak leaf cluster for his Distinguished Service Medal. Marshall had furnished Eisenhower a prepared
text for his address to Congress, but Ike discarded it and spoke extemporaneously. When Eisenhower talked off the cuff, listeners were always impressed with his warmth and sincerity. When he spoke from a text, he appeared wooden and pedantic.37 Lawmakers were charmed by Ike’s directness and gave him the longest standing ovation in congressional history.38 Was Eisenhower a Democrat or a Republican? That was a question veteran leaders on both sides of the aisle found themselves asking.

  Ike and Mamie in Washington, June 17, 1945. (illustration credit 16.5)

  From Washington, Ike flew to New York, where four to five million people—the largest crowd in the city’s history—turned out to greet him. At City Hall, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia made Eisenhower an honorary citizen, and Ike responded with another informal address. “At one stretch in our trip this morning the mayor told me there were 450,000 schoolchildren watching. Can the parents and the relatives of those children look ten years ahead and be satisfied with anything less than your best to keep them away from the horrors of the battlefield? It has got to be done.”39

  That evening at a dinner in his honor at the Waldorf Astoria, Eisenhower returned to the theme:

  As I see it, peace is an absolute necessity in this world. I believe that we should let no specious argument of any kind deter us from exploring every direction in which peace can be maintained. I believe we 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 others.40