Ambrose Stephen E. - Eisenhower: soldier and president

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A LSO BY S TEPHEN E. A MBROSE

Upton and the Army

Halleck: Lincolns Chief of Staff

Ikes Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment

Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy, 19381970

Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945

Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point

The Supreme Commander: The War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower

Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890-1952

Eisenhower: The President

Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944

Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913-1962

Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972

Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitlers Eagles Nest

D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West

Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944May 7, 1945

The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys: The Men of World War II

Comrades: Brothers, Fathers, Heroes, Sons, Pals

Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 18631869

The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany

To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian

SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS

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Copyright 1990 by Stephen E. Ambrose

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

First Simon & Schuster paperback edition 2003

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Cover photograph by Karsh of Ottawa from Woodfin Camp and Associates

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Ambrose, Stephen E.

Eisenhower: soldier and president/

Stephen E. Ambrose.[Rev. ed.]

p. cm.

Condensed version of a two volume work originally published as : Eisenhower. 1983 1984.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 18901969.

2. PresidentsUnited StatesBiography. 3. Generals

United StatesBiography. 4. United States Army

Biography. I. Ambrose, Stephen E. Eisenhower.

II. Title.

E836.A828 1990

973.921092dc20

(B) 90-9701

ISBN-13: 978-0-671-70107-9

ISBN-10: 0-671-70107-X

ISBN-13: 978-0-671-74758-9 (Pbk.)

ISBN-10: 0-671-74758-4 (Pbk.)

ISBN-13: 978-1-4767-4585-5 (eBook)

This is a condensed version of two works originally published as Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect 1890-1952 and Eisenhower: The President.

T O THE MEN OF D-D AY

D WIGHT D AVID E ISENHOWER was a great and good man. This is an assertion I hope to prove; let me begin by defining the terms.

In 1954, Dwight Eisenhower wrote his childhood friend Swede Hazlett on the subject of greatness. Ike thought greatness depended either on achieving preeminence in some broad field of human thought or endeavor, or on assuming some position of great responsibility and then so discharging the duties as to have left a marked and favorable imprint upon the future.

The qualities of a great man, he said, were vision, integrity, courage, understanding, the power of articulation, and profundity of character. To that list, Id add two others: decisiveness (the ability to take command, decide, and act) and luck.

The qualities of goodness in a man, I believe, include a broad sympathy for the human condition, that is, an awareness of human weaknesses and shortcomings and a willingness to be forgiving of them, a sense of responsibility toward others, a genuine modesty combined with a justified self-confidence, a sense of humor, and most of all a love of life and of people.

Eisenhower was one of the outstanding leaders of the Western world of this century. As a soldier he was professionally competent, well versed in the history of war along with modern strategy, tactics, and weaponry, decisive, disciplined, courageous, dedicated, popular with his men, his superiors, and his subordinates.

As President, he was a leader who made peace in Korea and kept the peace thereafter, a statesman who safely guided the free world through one of the most dangerous decades of the Cold War, and a politician who captured and kept the confidence of the American people. He was the only President of the twentieth century who managed to preside over eight years of peace and prosperity.

As a man, he was good-looking, considerate of and concerned about others, loyal to his friends and family, ambitious, thin-skinned and sensitive to criticism, modest (but never falsely so), almost embarrassingly unsophisticated in his musical, artistic, and literary tastes, intensely curious about people and places, often refreshingly naive, fun-lovingin short, a wonderful man to know or be around. Nearly everyone who knew him liked him immensely, manyincluding some of the most powerful men in the worldto the point of adulation.

The aim of this work is to explain and describe this man, to record his accomplishments and failures, his triumphs and shortcomings, his personal life and his personality. In the process, I hope that I convey some sense of what a truly extraordinary person he was, and of how much all of us who live in freedom today owe to him.

This book is basically a condensation of my two-volume biography of Eisenhower. There are some revisions and several new sections. My aim has been to provide a readable one-volume life, free of scholarly paraphernalia and excessive detail on plans, organization of military and government offices, bureaus, Cabinets, and the like.

As I made the condensation, the passage of time and the perspective of the end of the decade let me read the two volumes with fresh eyes. Ive been struck by how right Ike was about so many thingsand how wrong he was on others. Most particularly, I am impressed with his determination to do all that he could to foster the United States of Europe. I did the work of condensing in the evenings in Caen, Normandy. I spent the days walking the battlefield and swimming off the invasion beaches. Visitors from all over Europe come to the American, British, and German cemeteries in ever-increasing numbers. Many of them are students, and they get along with each other so well that I came away convinced that Ikes dream is on the verge of becoming a reality.