Politicians From Texas

"It seems fair to say that the very qualities which made Eisenhower a successful Supreme Commander prevented him at this time from becoming a successful commander in the field His great talent lay in holding the Allied team together, and in reconciling the interests of the different nations and services. In the situation which had now developed, however, Eisenhower's conscientious tolerance and inclination to compromise were liabilities. The occasion called for a man with a bold plan, a Commander-in-Chief who knew what was essential and had the will to impose his strategic ideas without regard for personalities or public opinion."

"Furthermore, being an honest and modest man, Eisenhower was conscious of his lack of experience in the tactical handling of armies, and this gave him a sense of professional inferiority in dealing with men like Montgomery and Patton who had been through the mill of command at every level. Because he had no philosophy of battle which he himself had tested in action, Eisenhower was reluctant to impose his ideas, unless the decision was one which he, as Supreme Commander, had to make. As a general rule, he tended to seek the opinions of all and to work out the best compromise. When he could gather his commanders and advisers around the conference table, he had a remarkable capacity for distilling the counsel of many friends into a single solution, but, when his commanders were scattered over France, he was open to persuasion by the last strong man to whom he talked."

"Dwight Eisenhower, with Churchill and Stalin removed from the world scene, became clearly its most imposing figure — a distinction only Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson (briefly in 1919) had achieved. Eisenhower was also the first television president, visible virtually every night on the home screen. After Eisenhower, any president was to be the single most familiar figure to every American, far more so than anyone's mayor or senator or governor."

"Intent to move away from the Cold War as a national emergency, Eisenhower ended up institutionalizing it as policy and doctrine. On the Korean War, the new president simply got lucky. Stalin’s death removed the last hindrance for a negotiated armistice. But Eisenhower believed that projections of US strength would prevent what he saw as Soviet adventurism in the future. Confirming Truman’s overall containment strategy, Eisenhower wanted to reinforce it by increasing US nuclear capacity and readiness. He also upgraded the CIA’s covert operations and used them to overthrow governments the president saw as inimical to US Cold War interests, such as in Iran in 1953 and in Guatemala the following year. Eisenhower saw the Cold War as a total contest that would last for a long time, and in which US purpose and readiness would remain the critical element. But the new president also believed, firmly, that the United States could fight the Cold War without making too many compromises with regard to its domestic affairs."

"If Europeans hungered for recovery, Americans longed for stability. For more than twenty years, US voters had faced one emergency after another: the Great Depression, the New Deal, wars in Europe and Asia, and the Cold War. In 1952 they voted for stability and normality under General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first professional military man to head the US government since Ulysses S. Grant in the 1870s and the first Republican president since the onset of the national crises. Eisenhower was an internationalist and a Cold Warrior who believed that the United States needed to confront the USSR and Communism worldwide. In his campaign, he had argued for the need to win in Korea and for “rolling back” Communism in Europe and Asia. But his main rhetoric was intended to assure Americans that they were safe under his leadership, and that the United States would defeat its enemies if it put its own house in order through national unity, fiscal discipline, a strong defense, and clear international priorities."

"Dwight D. Eisenhower was a reluctant politician. His decision to run for president in 1952 was rooted in a deep concern over the scope of the domestic debate about how best to respond to the Communist challenge."

"He'll sit here and say, "Do this! Do that! And nothing will happen. Poor Ike—it won't be a bit like the Army. He'll find it very frustrating."

"The decision to weigh Lieut. Gen. Patton's great services to his country, in World War I and World War II, from these shores to Casablanca and through Tunisia to triumph in Sicily, on the one hand, against an indefensible act on the other, was Gen. Eisenhower's. As his report shows, General Eisenhower in making his decision also considered the value to our country of General Patton's aggressive, winning leadership in the bitter battles which are to come before final victory. I am confident that you will agree with me that Gen. Eisenhower's decision, under these difficult circumstances, was right and proper."

"We ought to invite Eisenhower to Moscow sometime. I want to meet him."

"The improvement of race relations," Eisenhower wrote in 1953, "is one of those things that will be healthy and sound only if it starts locally. I do not believe that prejudices, even palpably unjustified prejudices will succumb to compulsion. Consequently, I believe that Federal law imposed upon our States... would set back the cause of race relations for a long, long time." At a dinner with Warren in 1954, while the court was deliberating over Brown v. Board of Education, the case that would outlaw school segregation, he told the chief justice that white segregationists were "not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negro."

"Foreign policy is remembering what Dwight D. Eisenhower said as he left office: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."...What Eisenhower said over fifty years ago is even more"

"Eisenhower had about the most expressive face I ever painted, I guess. Just like an actor's. Very mobile. When he talked, he used all the facial muscles. And he had a great, wide mouth that I liked. When he smiled, it was just like the sun came out."

"My dear Mr. President: I was sitting in the audience at the Summit Meeting of Negro Leaders yesterday when you said we must have patience. On hearing you say this, I felt like standing up and saying, "Oh no! Not again. " I respectfully remind you sir, that we have been the most patient of all people. When you said we must have self-respect, I wondered how we could have self-respect and remain patient considering the treatment accorded us through the years. 17 million Negroes cannot do as you suggest and wait for the hearts of men to change. We want to enjoy now the rights that we feel we are entitled to as Americans. This we cannot do unless we pursue aggressively goals which all other Americans achieved over 150 years ago. As the chief executive of our nation, I respectfully suggest that you unwittingly crush the spirit of freedom in Negroes by constantly urging forbearance and give hope to those pro-segregation leaders like Governor Faubus who would take from us even those freedoms we now enjoy. Your own experience with Governor Faubus is proof enough that forbearance and not eventual integration is the goal the pro-segregation leaders seek. In my view, an unequivocal statement backed up by action such as you demonstrated you could take last fall in dealing with Governor Faubus if it became necessary, would let it be known that America is determined to provide -- in the near future for Negroes -- the freedoms we are entitled to under the constitution, Respectfully yours,"

"The first CIA-directed covert operations during Eisenhower's presidency was conducted in Iran. On May 28, 1953, the Iranian prime minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, cabled Eisenhower to ask him for U.S. help in counteracting a boycott of Iranian oil by the international oil companies. The boycott was instituted after Mossadeq nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951. Mossadeq told the president that, if he did not receive U.S. assistance, Iran might be forced to turn to the Soviet Union. Mossadeq's threat turned on Eisenhower's alarm bell. Only two weeks after entering the White House, the new president accepted the advice of the U.S. national security bureaucracy, which insisted that Mossadeq had to be overthrown to ensure continued Western access to Iranian oil and to prevent Iran from becoming a Soviet satellite. Accordingly, on May 28, 1953, Eisenhower rebuffed Mossadeq's plea for assistance, stating that all that was required to settle the crisis was "a reasonable agreement" with the British. Then Eisenhower added a warning of his own. He expressed his hope that, "before it is too late, the Government of Iran will take such steps as are in its power to prevent a further deterioration of the situation.""

"To back up the massive retaliation strategy, the administration intended to give the nation's armed forces a "New Look." It called for major cuts in conventional and a massive buildup of nuclear weapons. During the Eisenhower years, the size of the army and navy was reduced, that of the air force increased- a reflection of the fact that air power, and particularly strategic air power, was going to primary component of the administration's massive retaliation strategy. In June 1953 the U.S. Air Force began ordering the nation's first intercontinental jet bomber, the B-52, which had a capability to deliver hydrogen bombs on Soviet targets. For long-term deterrence, however, the Eisenhower administration placed major emphasis on developing ballistic missiles. In 1955 the president approved the development of the Atlas missile, America's first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and its first intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), the Thor. In 1957 the president approved still another air force ICBM, a solid-fueled missile, the Minuteman, which in the 1960s replaced the manned bomber as the primary component of the nation's strategic forces."

"While Eisenhower personally was immune to McCarthy's charges, he nevertheless tried to insulate his administration against the senator's witch-hunt in the federal bureaucracy by instituting an antisubversive program of his own. In April 1953 the president signed an executive order authorizing the heads of all federal departments and agencies to fire any employee whose loyalty, reliability, or "good conduct and character" were in doubt. Hundreds of federal employees lost their jobs under the new security system, but not a single traitor, spy, or subversive was indicted by the government. The Department of State was particularly hard hit by the Eisenhower security program. Among those who lost their jobs were a number of experts in Chinese affairs, including John Patton Davies and John Carter Vincent. However, they were dismissed, not because they were subversives, but because they had predicted the collapse of the Nationalist government in China and had favored a more realistic policy toward the Chinese Communists. The decline of expertise and morale in the foreign service that resulted from this purge did much to prevent the formation of a realistic policy toward communism, particularly Asian communism, in the years ahead."

"The Cold War deepened and expanded during the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower. While the superpower stalemate was maintained in Europe, the rearmament of West Germany, the Hungarian Revolution, and the status of Berlin were among the issues that aggravated Cold War tensions on that continent during the Eisenhower years. Although Eisenhower kept his promise to end the Korean War, Sino-American relations remained frigid, and, in fact, were aggravated during two crises in the Taiwan Strait. During the Eisenhower years, the United States also became more deeply involved in Indochina and took the first steps down the slippery slope to the Vietnam quagmire. The Cold War also intensified in the Middle East, as a result of Egypt's increasing dependence on the Soviet Union, and in Latin America, culminating in the establishment of the first Soviet client state in the Western Hemisphere, Cuba. During Eisenhower's presidency, the Cold War spread even to sub-Saharan Africa, when the superpowers intervened in the internal affairs of the Congo (now Zaire). The Cold War truly became global during the Eisenhower years. The friction between the United States and the Soviet Union in the Third World became increasingly dangerous as a result of a mushrooming nuclear arms race during Eisenhower's years."

"He was pretty. His eyes were kind and young. One had to wonder whether he was fourteen years old, or a thousand, being so smooth and untouched. A little boy peered out of the man's face. He was funny... I was bewildered... a man, responsible for the life and death of thousands, and yet there was no trace on him? One could be frightened of less, and yet so harmlessly innocent? Yes, innocent was the word... I knew I would remember this meeting the rest of my life, because I had never before met an emptyness like this."

"In The Hidden-Hand Presidency : Eisenhower as Leader, Greenstein attributed part of the public's discontent with presidential performance to the conflict built into the Constitution between the president's apolitical and unifying role as chief of state and his partisan and divisive role as head of government. ... Eisenhower was able to bridge the built-in contradictions of the office and provide an effective leadership style. In his analysis of Eisenhower, Greenstein focused on three classes of variables: the personal properties of the man, his leadership strategies, and his organizational style. Eisenhower's political psychology exhibited antithetical qualities in public and private, a duality well suited for adapting to contradictory public expectations. His leadership strategies involved making his job as chief of state readily visible while covertly exercising much of his public leadership. In parallel fashion, his organizational style focused public attention on the formal machinery but left unpublicized his use of informal organization."

"I LIKE IKE!"

"Sometimes I think your life and mine are under the protection of some supreme being or fate, because, after many years of parallel thought, we find ourselves in the positions we now occupy."

"Of all the many talks I had in Washington, none gave me such pleasure as that with you. There were two reasons for this. In the first place, you are about my oldest friend. In the second place, your self-assurance and to me, at least, demonstrated ability, give me a great feeling of confidence about the future ... and I have the utmost confidence that through your efforts we will eventually beat the hell out of those bastards — "You name them; I'll shoot them!""

"No doubt history will say that Eisenhower was a soldier. For my part, I will remember, above all, his goodness. He was a fundamentally good man who knew how to be loved by the Americans. I was fond of Ike."

"He was a natural choice as the senior American general in Europe. After a year in the field he had much more experience than Marshall. He had a reputation as a good manager of men, a good chair for a committee. A tall, balding figure, Eisenhower ('Ike' to almost everyone) looked at 53 like a school headmaster in uniform- even more so when he donned his round-rimmed spectacles to read. Born in Abilene, Kansas, in 1890, the son of a failed storekeeper, his rise to supreme commander had much of the American dream about it. With no money and a modest mid-West education behind him, he stumbled into an army career in which he quickly showed himself to be an energetic organiser. The First World War ended before he got to Europe. He swore to himself that he would 'make up for this', but he spent a fruitless twenty years stuck at the rank of major. There was nowhere to fight and little to fight with. On the outbreak of war he was posted to the War Department to take over as Deputy for War Plans, but not until August 1942 did he get a field command, Supreme Commander for the Torch landings in North Africa. When he arrived in Africa in November to take up his command he had never seen armed combat. His talents were managerial. His inexperience was self-evident; Brooke complained that he had 'absolutely no strategical outlook'. His strength was his ability to achieve 'good cooperation' from subordinates and allies alike. Such a talent was at a premium in preparing Overlord."

"Eisenhower was known as a harmonizer, a man who could get diverse factions to work toward a common goal... Leadership, he explained, meant patience and conciliation, not "hitting people over the head.""

"Ike's remaining nine years were generally happy ones. He presided over the farm, and Mamie the house at Gettysburg. He painted frequently, a hobby begun at Columbia and pursued without much talent, almost purely for relaxation. There was still the Gang for golf and bridge, Scrabble with Mamie in her sunroom, and there were grandchildren to indulge. The Eisenhowers also began spending the winters at Eldorado Country Club in California's high chaparral, doing much the same things. Being Ike, writing was an obvious recourse. But while Crusade in Europe had been dictated in a blazing three months, Eisenhower now struggled for three years with his White House memoirs, and the two-volume product was not nearly so crisp, bordering on turgid, actually, robbed of energy and coherence by security considerations. But later he bounced back and produced At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends, a look back much more in the spirit of MacArthur's Reminiscences, and accordingly more readable. Unfortunately, Ike's good times were punctuated by heart attacks, one in November 1965 he recovered well enough from to play golf again; but a coronary in April 1968 landed him in his last stop, Walter Reed, ward 8, VIP suite. Here he suffered a third the day after giving a televised speech to the GOP convention in Miami about to nominate Richard Nixon for president. It was from the same sickbed that he watched Nixon win the election and the White House, and then his daughter Julie marry Ike's grandson David, tying these two now presidential families together with bonds of matrimony. For Ike, there was no escape from Nixon. And nothing to do but wait for the end in the suite Mamie had decorated in soft pinks and greens. On March 27, he told his son he wanted to be taken off life support: "I've had enough, John. Tell them to let me go." The next morning he summoned John and grandson David and had them lower the stage and stand at attention while he uttered his last words: "I want to go; God take me," then lapsed into unconsciousness. He died just past noon, March 28, 1969. The next day his body was placed in the Capitol Rotunda, in a standard-issue Army coffin, clad in his Ike jacket uniform, devoid of decorations, only his five stars. Among the mourners was Charles de Gaulle, as promised, with him to the end. The Washington ceremonies concluded, his flag-draped casket was placed on a funeral train for Abilene, where two days later Dwight David Eisenhower was laid to rest on the property of his boyhood home in a simple funeral for just family and close friends, next to the grave of little Icky. A decade later Mamie joined them there. But before she did, when asked by grandson David if she had ever truly known her husband, Mamie replied: "I'm not sure anyone did.""

"Like the others, Ike declined true to form. When he requested that he be returned to his five-star rank- reassuming the identity of general rather than Mr. President, about the only tangible benefit being that he got to keep Sergeant Moaney as his valet- JFK was flabbergasted. But it was completely in character. Dwight Eisenhower was a soldier at the core, and this was the identity he intended to die with. It was largely in this role that he was consulted by his successors, particularly Lyndon Johnson, now the one caught in Vietnam's quicksand. Eisenhower thought he was too involved in the day-to-day running of the war, and advised him to "go for victory," suggestions Johnson was not about to follow."

"In the Pacific we gave our enemies a costly lesson in amphibious warfare, just as in Europe we, with our allies, demonstrated successful coalition warfare. The performance of all branches of the services in Europe under General Eisenhower, in the central and southern Pacific under Admiral Nimitz, and in the southwestern Pacific under General MacArthur brought glory to themselves and to their country."

"Eisenhower disliked excessively rhetorical flourishes because they betrayed a desire to be ingratiating, or overly persuasive, or too eager for promotion. Fox Conner had drilled him in the army mystique of never seeking or refusing an assignment, and Eisenhower always managed matters so that the assignments sought hum. His gift for being offered jobs he had not asked for would appear almost magical if one did not keep in mind "that alert brain" at work. One of the most tedious and revealing sections of his "diaries" deals with the self-examination he went through to persuade himself to run for President in 1952. Couldn't the man see? the reader keeps asking himself. No, he could not. It was not in his nature to appear to want something; his nature was to be wanted. And so he progressed from obscurity- he first appears in the White House Usher's Diary at two-thirty on February 9, 1942, as "P.D. Eisenhauer"- to greatness. His rise was rocketlike. Within less than two years he went from lieutenant colonel to full general. His exposure to politics in the raw came as rapidly as his promotions. When he was appointed to command the North African expedition, Eisenhower was briefed by Robert Murphy, our diplomatic representative there, on the "bewildering complexities" of the quarrels among not only the French factions but Spanish, Arab, Berber, German, and Russian as well. "Eisenhower listened with a kind of horrified fascination," wrote Murphy, "to my description of the possible complications... The General seemed to sense that this first campaign would present him with problems running the entire geopolitical gamut- it certainly did." What he could not have realized was that it would also place him in the crossfire between two towering political personalities, Franklin Roosevelt and Charles de Gaulle. Say this, too, for Eisenhower: He was able to confront himself, in words and on paper, with the harsh unpleasantness of the work that lay ahead. "The actual fact is," he wrote in a note to his desk pad on May 5, 1942, "that not 1 man in 20 in Govt. (including the W. and N. Depts) realizes what a grisly, dirty, tough business we are in!""

"This was a most unusual man, a veiled man, so seemingly forthright, so ready to volunteer his thoughts, yet in the end so secretive, so protective of his purposes and the hidden processes of an iron logic behind them. A reviewer of his published diaries commented on his "closed, calculating quality" and went on: "Few who watched him carefully indulged the fantasy that he was a genial, open, barefoot boy from Abilene who just happened to be in the right place when the lightning struck." Another perceptive comment was made by the war correspondent Don Whitehead, who covered the European theater and the invasion for the Associated Press. "I have a feeling," Whitehead wrote years later, "that he was a far more complicated man than he seemed to be- a man who shaped events with such subtlety that he left others thinking that they were the architects of those events. And he was satisfied to leave it that way." Eisenhower conveyed warmth but there was a chill inside him. An early sorrow, the death of his first son, had seared his emotional nerve endings. "This was the greatest disappointment and disaster of my life," he wrote, "the one I have never been able to forget completely. Today when I think of it, even now as I write it, the keenness of our loss comes back to me as fresh and terrible as it was that long dark day." He came to question whether attachment to another person was a luxury that could be afforded. In 1947, he was told of the crack-up over personal loss of a wartime associate and wrote in his diary: "makes one wonder whether any human ever dares become so wrapped up in another that all happiness and desire to live is determined by the actions, desires- or life- of the second." The associate in question was Kay Summersby, his driver and secretary, to whom his himself appears to have become attached, and his words bear the mark of a steely will."

"Of Eisenhower's respect for Marshall there can be no doubt; he told Beetle Smith that he wouldn't trade Marshall for fifty MacArthurs. ("My God," the thought came to him, "that would be a lousy deal. What would I do with fifty MacArthurs?") Eisenhower wrote to a friend that Marshall was "a great soldier... quick, tough, tireless and a real leader. He accepts responsibility automatically and never goes back on a subordinate." Eisenhower said that he had conceived "unlimited admiration" for Marshall because of the burden Marshall bore without complaint, being at the same time "rather a remote and austere person." Eisenhower had been known in the Army as "Ike" since the day he entered West Point, but Marshall (except on one occasion) always called him "Eisenhower." The one exceptional lapse into "Ike" so embarrassed Marshall that Eisenhower said he used "Eisenhower" five times in the next sentence to make up for it."

"Eisenhower used to tell me that this place was a prison. I never felt freer."

"Now, I needn't remind you, or my fellow Americans regardless of party, that Republicans have shouldered this hard responsibility and marched in this cause before. It was Republican leadership under Dwight Eisenhower that kept the peace, and passed along to this administration the mightiest arsenal for defense the world has ever known. And I needn't remind you that it was the strength and the unbelievable will of the Eisenhower years that kept the peace by using our strength, by using it in the Formosa Straits and in Lebanon and by showing it courageously at all times. It was during those Republican years that the thrust of Communist imperialism was blunted. It was during those years of Republican leadership that this world moved closer, not to war, but closer to peace, than at any other time in the three decades just passed."

"This is senior Dwight David Eisenhower, gentlemen, the terrible Swedish-Jew, as big as life and twice as natural. He claims to have the best authority for the statement that he is the handsomest man in the Corps and is ready to back up his claim at any time. At any rate you'll have to give it to him that he is well-developed abdominally- and more graceful in pushing it around than Charles Calvert Benedict. In common with most fat men, he is an enthusiastic and sonorous devotee of the King of Indoor Sports, and roars homage at the shrine of Morpheus on every possible occasion. However, when the memory of man runneth back to the time when little Dwight was but a slender lad of some 'steen years, full of joy and energy and craving for life and movement and change. 'Twas then that the romantic appeal of West Point's glamour grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him to his doom. Three weeks of Beast gave him his fill of life and movement and as all the change was locked up at the Cadet Store out of reach, poor Dwight merely consents to exist until graduation shall set him free. At one time he threatened to get interested in life and won his "A" by being the most promising back in Eastern football- but the Tufts game broke his knee and the promise. Now Ike must content himself with tea, tiddledywinks and talk, at all of which he excels. Said prodigy will now lead us in a long, loud yell for- Dare Devil Dwight, the Dauntless Don."

"As I discovered in my command and control research in the late fifties, President Eisenhower had secretly delegated authority to initiate nuclear attacks to his theater commanders under various circumstances, including the outage of communications with Washington (a daily occurrence in the Pacific) or a presidential incapacitation (which Eisenhower suffered twice). And with his authorization, they had in turn delegated this initiative, under comparable crisis conditions, to subordinate commanders. To my surprise, after I had alerted the Kennedy White House to this policy and its dangers, President Kennedy continued it (rather than reverse the decision of the “great commander” who had preceded him). So did Presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Carter. So, almost certainly, has every subsequent president to this day, even though in the past several decades there may have been at least nominal “devolution” to some civilian outside Washington. This delegation has been one of our highest national secrets."

"Eisenhower did not participate in the final discussions leading to the demise of Sledgehammer. At their conclusion Marshall summoned Eisenhower to his suite in Claridge's. When Eisenhower arrived, the chief of staff was occupied in the bathroom, and their brief discussion took place through the door. In characteristic fashion Marshall announced that Eisenhower was being given the new title of deputy Allied commander in charge of planning for Torch, and that both he and Admiral King were backing his appointment to command the entire operation. Temporarily in limbo as the commander of American forces, pending the president's approval, Eisenhower reflected on Napoleon's remarks that a general must not permit himself to be impatient or distracted in any manner that would weaken or interfere with the execution of a major plan. When the Combined Chiefs of Staff met on July 25 and the subject of a commander for Torch was raised, the blunt-spoken Ernie King declared that the choice seemed obvious: "Well, you've got him right here," he pointed out. "Why not put it under Eisenhower?" As he would later ascertain, Eisenhower once again had reason to regret his earlier criticism of King, who had become one of his strongest supporters."

"In 1967 Eisenhower was visited at his Gettysburg home by former army chief of staff Gen. Harold K. Johnson. During their conversation Johnson said, "Herodotus wrote about the Peloponnesian War that one cannot be an armchair general twenty miles from the front." Afterward one of his former White House speechwriters, who had been present, asked Eisenhower if he knew the precise wording of the quote. He replied, "First, it wasn't Herodotus but Aemilius Paulanus. Second, it was not the Peloponnesian War, but the Punic War with Carthage. And third, he misquoted." Asked why he didn't correct General Johnson, Eisenhower replied, "I got where I did by knowing how to hide my ego and hide my intelligence. I knew the actual quote, but why should I embarrass him?""

"Eisenhower idolized George Washington for his courage and daring, and for his brilliant speeches. He avidly studied accounts of Princeton, Trenton, and Valley Forge, and was amazed by what he deemed the stupidity of Washington's enemies, who campaigned for his removal as commander in chief of the Revolutionary Army. Eisenhower combined his extraordinary memory with his father's fascination with Greece, and became so conversant with Greek and Roman history that, until old age, he would instantly interrupt and correct anyone who failed to identify correctly a historical date or missed an element of an important battle or campaign. Among the ancients, Eisnehower's principal hero was Hannibal, not only for his military daring but for his mastery of the logistics of his times. He marveled how Hannibal had managed to survive as a historical icon despite being portrayed badly by a legion of unfriendly historians and biographers. The "black hats" included Darius, Brutus, Xerxes, and the evil Roman emperor Nero."

"The Soviet Union hastened to endorse the Bandung principles, and the United States began to ease its hostility toward nonalignment (which Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had denounced as "morally bankrupt"), acknowledge the diminishing appeal of its security pacts, and court independent Third World governments. Vietnam was an exception. The Eisenhower administration, which had refused to sign the Geneva Accords, feared a communist victory in the national elections and a domino effect throughout Southeast Asia. After the French withdrawal, the United States proceeded to build up a client state in the south, allowing President Ngô Đình Diệm to cancel the 1956 elections and to clamp down on his opponents. Contrary to the Geneva Accords, which forbade the Vietnamese from entering foreign alliances or allowing foreign troops into Vietnam, Dulles mobilized the US-led Southeast Asia Treaty Organization to agree to protect South Vietnam against communist aggression. When a popular insurgency, which Diệm contemptuously labeled Viet Cong (Vietnamese communists) erupted in the south two years later and received support from the north, Eisenhower expanded US economic and military aid and personnel on the ground. Between 1955 and 1961 the United States poured more than $1 billion in economic and military aid into the Diệm regime, and by the time Eisenhower left office there were approximately one thousand US military advisers in South Vietnam."

"The new US president, Dwight David Eisenhower, was a veteran of two world wars, the architect of D-Day, and NATO supreme commander between 1950 and 1952; he came to office in 1953 promising a tougher stance toward the Soviet Union."

"By all accounts, Eisenhower was affable, gregarious, and a decent, honorable man who quietly inspired confidence and commanded respect. "Eisenhower wanted to like people," biographer Peter Lyon has written, "so he wanted people to like him; he was distressed when it failed to happen so. His need for a friendly rapport was one reason for his reluctance, so often marked by journalists, to speak ill of anyone." Another reason was a lesson learned in childhood: Angry because he was not allowed to go out on Halloween with the older boys, young Ike beat his knuckles bloody against a tree trunk. That night his mother nursed his hands and, in what he called one of the most valuable lessons of his life, explained how futile was the emotion of hatred. Thereafter, he sought to avoid hating or publicly bad-mouthing anyone. The famous Eisenhower smile reflected his generally sunny, optimistic disposition. At times he grew depressed or exploded in anger, but never for extended periods. A bit superstitious, he carried in his pocket three lucky coins, a silver dollar, a five-guinea gold piece, and a French franc. Eisenhower was a rather poor speaker, notorious for his fractured syntax. Sometimes, however, he hid behind his reputation when he wanted to avoid responding directly to a question."

"The outstanding feature has been the landings of the airborne troops, which were on a scale far larger than anything that has been seen so far in the world. These landings took place with extremely little loss and with great accuracy. Particular anxiety attached to them, because the conditions of light prevailing in the very limited period of the dawn-just before the dawn-the conditions of visibility made all the difference. Indeed, there might have been something happening at the last minute which would have prevented airborne troops from playing their part. A very great degree of risk had to be taken in respect of the weather. But General Eisenhower's courage is equal to all the necessary decisions that have to be taken in these extremely difficult and uncontrollable matters. The airborne troops are well established, and the landings and the follow-ups are all proceeding with much less loss-very much less-than we expected. Fighting is in progress at various points. We captured various bridges which were of importance, and which were not blown up. There is even fighting proceeding in the town of Caen, inland. But all this, although a very valuable first step-a vital and essential first step-gives no indication of what may be the course of the battle in the next days and weeks, because the enemy will now probably endeavour to concentrate on this area, and in that event heavy fighting will soon begin and will continue without end, as we can push troops in and he can bring other troops up. It is, therefore, a most serious time that we enter upon. Thank God, we enter upon it with our great Allies all in good heart and all in good friendship."

"I cannot, of course, commit myself to any particular details. Reports are coming in in rapid succession. So far the Commanders who are engaged report that everything is proceeding according to plan. And what a plan! This vast operation is undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever taken place. It involves tides, wind, waves, visibility, both from the air and the sea standpoint, and the combined employment of land, air and sea forces in the highest degree of intimacy and in contact with conditions which could not and cannot be fully foreseen. There are already hopes that actual tactical surprise has been attained, and we hope to furnish the enemy with a succession of surprises during the course of the fighting. The battle that has now begun will grow constantly in scale and in intensity for many weeks to come, and I shall not attempt to speculate upon its course. This I may say, however. Complete unity prevails throughout the Allied Armies. There is a brotherhood in arms between us and our friends of the United States. There is complete confidence in the supreme commander, General Eisenhower, and his lieutenants, and also in the commander of the Expeditionary Force, General Montgomery. The ardour and spirit of the troops, as I saw myself, embarking in these last few days was splendid to witness. Nothing that equipment, science or forethought could do has been neglected, and the whole process of opening this great new front will be pursued with the utmost resolution both by the commanders and by the United States and British Governments whom they serve."

"Eisenhower found as I did that the well-springs of humility lie in the field. For however arduous the task of a commander, he cannot face the men who shall live or die by his orders without sensing how much easier is his task than the one he has set them to perform. Throughout the war in Europe Eisenhower frequently escaped SHAEF to tramp into the field and talk to his men. There, like the others of us, he could see the war for what it was, a wretched debasement of all the thin pretenses of civilization. In the rear areas war may sometimes assume the mask of an adventure. On the front it seldom lapses far from what General Sherman declared it to be."

"Anti-Communism contributed to the conservative ethos of the 1950s, an ethos which was reflected in the Republican Eisenhower presidency of 1953–61, as well as in the Menzies administration in Australia (1949–66), and government by conservative parties in Britain (1951–64), Japan (from the end of occupation in 1952 throughout the Cold War) and West Germany (1949–69). The Eisenhower presidency did not simply draw on this ethos. There was also a process of domestic propaganda to secure public support for what were presented as American values and to limit the development of attitudes that might be conducive for Communist propaganda. A sense of vulnerability was important to both government and public in America, and helped give force and commitment to American policy. If such a sense has been a characteristic of all American crises, that does not make the concern that developed and was encouraged from the late 1940s less notable. This concern was to be taken forward as a result of the Korean War (1950–3) in which the American army did not perform that well and was thwarted by Chinese intervention. The strategic situation in the 1950s was poor for the USA because of the Sino-Soviet alliance that followed Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War. The Eurasian land mass was overwhelmingly under the domain of the hostile other side. Once the Soviet Union and China publicly split in the 1960s, then the American strategic situation much improved."

"Sixty years after Eisenhower's Farewell Address, exactly as he predicted, the "weight of this combination" of corrupt generals and admirals, the profitable "merchants of death" whose goods they peddle, and the senators and representatives who blindly entrust them with trillions of dollars of the public's money constitute the full flowering of his greatest fears for our country. Eisenhower concluded, "Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals." That clarion call echoes through the decades and should unite Americans in every form of democratic organizing and movement building, from elections to education and advocacy to mass protests, to finally reject and dispel the "unwarranted influence" of the military-industrial-congressional complex."

"# Task. You will enter the continent of Europe and, in conjunction with the other United Nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces."

"# You are hereby designated as Supreme Allied Commander of the forces placed under your orders for operations for liberation of Europe from Germans. Your title will be Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force."

"The John Birch Society is a good, patriotic society. I don't agree with what its founder said about me, but that does not detract from the fact that its membership is comprised of many fine Americans dedicated to the preservation of our libertarian Republic."

"Get it all on record now – get the films – get the witnesses – because somewhere down the track of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened."