ExclusiveDwight D. Eisenhower: From D‑Day to D.C.

Welcome to American Legends. My name is Tiffany Brannan. Each culture has its legends, and that could be myths or different stories. But here in America, our greatest legends are the wonderful heroes who are right from our history pages. Now, some of these heroes are very famous, and some are obscure. But each person deserves to be discovered, because each man or woman stands as a great example of how we can be better Americans in our daily lives. Many U.S. presidents have gone from the battlefields of victory to the White House. Being a successful and strategic military leader is often proof that a man can lead the country in times of peace as well and a political function. Today we're going to talk about a president who stood between the end of one era and the beginning of another in a time of great peace and prosperity for our country. George Washington began the entire history of United States presidents by going from being a major general in the United States Army to then the first U.S. president. Almost a century later, General Ulysses S. Grant followed his great victories in the Civil War with becoming a very successful two-term president. In the 20th century, a third president would go from being a major military leader, really the general of entire American forces in a major war, to then becoming a very successful two-term president. Dwight D. Eisenhower holds a lot of records. He was the last president born in the 19th century. Born in the year 1890, he was 62 when he took office in the year 1953, making him the oldest president since James Buchanan back in the 1850s. He also is the only U.S. president to have served in both World Wars. He gave over 200 press conferences during his time in office, the most of any president to that date, and he was the first president to really use the new medium of television. Eisenhower began his service to his country, you could say, with the Army. He was born in Texas, but then raised in Abilene, Kansas. He passed the admittance exams to both West Point and Annapolis, but he was too old for Annapolis, so he ended up going through West Point. He graduated with the class of 1915, which was later called the class on which the stars fell because of that graduating class of 164 men, 59 of them would become generals. From there, Eisenhower began his military career of serving in many different types of posts, all over the country and eventually all over the world. Within a couple of years of his graduation, the United States entered World War I. Eisenhower never managed to serve overseas in that conflict, but he was very involved with the war itself. In 1919, after the war, he was involved with an army transportation convoy across the country, which was intended to show that there wasn't a good system of roadways connecting both coasts. This would have a big influence on him later when he was president and led him to pass in 1956, the Federal Highway Act, which led to the creation of the interstate highway system across the whole country. He felt it was very important as a military man to have a strong system of roadways, not only for civilian use, but to convey military supplies and equipment in the case of a war. He was able to justify this action because of the Cold War that was brewing at the time in the mid-1950s, but it ended up being an invaluable part of our nation's infrastructure for daily peacetime life. He also thought it was important to have good highways because, if necessary, they could act as runways for aircraft. During his 37 years of military service, Eisenhower was stationed in 33 different domiciles all over the country and the world. He served in the Philippines, in the United Kingdom, in Panama, in France, and, of course, in several different military positions in the United States. For instance, he served at three different bases during World War I. It was during World War II that he really got his chance to shine and to show his excellence as a military leader. In 1942, by which point he was a brigadier general, he went to the United Kingdom and served directly under Douglas MacArthur as the U.S. leader of American operations in the European theater during World War II. From there, he went to North Africa in 1943 to be in charge of the operations there against the Axis. Eventually, in 1944, he was promoted to being in charge of all the Allied forces in the European theater. This included leading the charge of the beach in Normandy on D-Day. Because of his success with this daring operation, he was promoted to a five-star general in December of 1944, and he remains one of only five men to hold that position of honor. After the war, he remained in Europe to help with the reestablishment of peacetime there and to be in charge of military positions before returning to the United States, where he acted as chief of state. In 1948, he retired from military service, and he and his wife were able to have their own home for the first time in their married life. They set up their home in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. At this point, he became the president of Columbia University. This proved to not be a great fit, but it did give him his first opportunity to really be involved in some kind of politics. Of course, it wasn't a political position, but he had to deal with different committees on education and the sort of interpersonal relationships that are quite different from the military. But in this position of importance, he encouraged the study of the effects that war has on a nation, and he was shocked that no American institution had ever really done such a study or series of investigations before. Around the same time, many people felt that he should run for president in the year 1948. Truman was president at the time, and many people didn't think he had a good chance of winning a second term. Truman actually suggested that he run for the Republican candidacy that year and that Truman would be his vice president. But Eisenhower felt that a career military man such as himself shouldn't take a political post, especially because he was still involved with some of the post-war cleanups, and people had been rumoring that he should get involved with politics as soon as the war was over, and he thought that would look too much like a conflict of interest. Because reflecting the beliefs of first George Washington, who never associated himself with any political party, then Zachary Taylor, who wasn't involved in politics during his long military career, Eisenhower was not publicly political because he thought that he should be trying to defend the whole nation and not picking sides. Thus, that's why he was being approached by Democrats like Truman. Now, Truman did end up running himself and winning re-election. Many people felt that 1948 would be his only chance to run because they believed that Truman was not going to win, and his opponent would, and that he would have two terms in office, and then by 1956, at 66 years of age, Eisenhower would be too old to run. But Truman, in fact, won, so he decided not to run again in 1952, and people began to suggest that Eisenhower run again. Now, by this point, he had resigned from being the president of Columbia University, and he was working with NATO, the North America Treaty Organization. He was in charge of this group for only 13 months because he then resigned so that he could run for president. Now, again, he didn't really want to do this, and Truman at first was trying to encourage him to run as the Democratic candidate, and he would really support him. But finally, Eisenhower had to tell him that he decided he was a Republican. And with this news, he became part of the Republican Party and became the candidate. The thing that motivated him to finally run in 1952 was his belief that the main Republican forerunner at this point, Robert Taft, would be a very poor leader. Now, Robert Taft was an isolationist. He strongly felt that the United States needed to mind its own business. As a man who had spent most of his career fighting in foreign wars or acting in diplomatic positions in foreign countries, Eisenhower believed that the strength and peace of the United States was only possible if the world remained strong and free. He was concerned about the growing threat of communism, and it was a very real threat because there were many communist states. And following what Truman had believed, that communism must be contained or blotted out eventually. So he felt that it would be very bad for the nation if Robert Taft was allowed to win. So he finally felt that it was his duty, and the Republican leaders convinced him that the people were calling on him. So he saw it as his next necessary post. He ran, and his opponent was Democrat Adlai Stevenson. Eisenhower ran with the campaign slogan, I Like Ike. Ike was a nickname that he'd had since childhood. He came from a family of seven boys, and all seven of the sons had the nickname Ike, along with an adjective. His nickname had been Little Ike, but as an adult, people just called him Ike. And that slogan represented the fact that not only would he be a good leader, but he was a likable person. He won by quite a landslide, and he became a very liked and popular president. He called his brand of politics moderate conservatism, and he acknowledged that there were some very far-right Republicans who didn't like him. But he said that if some of this far-right extremism were to take over the party, he no longer could associate with it. He was very open-minded when it came to dealing with people from the other side of the aisle. But he was very critical of Truman's policies as he was running. I wouldn't say that he personally attacked the man, he was always a gentleman. But he wanted to make it clear what his positions were and how they differed from Truman. The main campaign point he used to sort of summarize how he opposed Truman's policies was called K1C2, which stood for mainly Korea and communism. Those were the two main points, because Truman had gotten us into the Korean War, which was, you know, not the most successful operation. In fact, it was the first war that's considered that the U.S. actually lost. But Eisenhower's greatest claim to fame and most impressive legacy is the fact that he quite speedily ended the Korean War. Communist China was, of course, supporting the communist faction of North Korea. And within a few months of taking the presidency, Eisenhower was able to end the conflict, some believe by telling the communists that he would use nuclear force against them. So the war was ended and he reestablished the boundaries and managed to call a truce so that although communism wasn't removed from Korea, the communists didn't take over any more of South Korea. Besides ending the Korean War, Eisenhower faced many other threats from communism, both stateside and abroad. This was the era known as the McCarthy era. Senator Joseph McCarthy had his communist trials as he was seeking out the communists in the government positions and in other fields of interest, such as the motion picture industry, literature, journalism, what have you, but most notably the liberal arts. Now, although they both were Republicans, Eisenhower personally didn't support McCarthy and his witch hunt type tactics of getting people to prove that they were communists or admit that they were communists or out their friends as communists. Although of course he was very much against communism, he didn't think that was necessarily the right way to go about it. Although a Republican, Eisenhower continued some of the New Deal policies Roosevelt had begun which were still in place. For instance, social security. He continued to strengthen it. He also was supportive of civil rights and support for the veterans and other military endeavors. Although he didn't believe in increased military spending, he thought that nuclear warfare was a very cost effective alternative to sending a bunch of troops. So he focused on building a stockpile of nuclear weapons that could be used to show strength more than necessarily being used on our enemies. It was also during his time that the Cuban Revolution began and he would put things in place which would later become more problems under Kennedy's administration. While Truman's policy regarding communism was to contain it, Eisenhower sought to completely obliterate it. And he wanted to do that by providing support, both financially and militarily, for the nation's which were under threat of being attacked by communist nations. He had a policy which he called the Eisenhower Doctrine, which was precisely that any Middle Eastern country which was facing the threat of communist invasion or takeover could call upon the U.S. for military support, money, and arms. And several nations did take us up on that. This was most notably a response to the Suez Canal incident in 1956 when Egypt was building and trying to maintain the Suez Canal and then a combination of England, France, and Israel attacked it. Eisenhower was disgusted that they did that and he actually sent military forces to reclaim the Suez Canal for Egypt, which Egypt appreciated. Eisenhower was very supportive of the Republic of China versus the Communist Party of China and he publicly acknowledged Taiwan as this governmental seat of China versus Beijing, which was where the Communist Party was located. He tried to establish friendly terms, really with all nations, by having peace treaties and different meetings with Soviet leaders, Chinese leaders, Taiwanese leaders, and even Korean leaders. Conflict was, of course, nothing new for him because he was such an experienced military man. In 1956, Eisenhower suffered a small heart attack, so it was believed that he wouldn't run again. But he recovered and he did run for a second term and he won by an even greater margin in a rematch against Stevenson. He led the country for another successful four years in which he continued his previous goals of proving civil rights conditions, continuing what Truman began with desegregating the army and desegregating public schools. That was very important for him and he even sent military forces to Little Rock, Arkansas when some black students were attending a previously all-white school and there was a lot of unrest around the situation. In 1959, toward the end of his second term in office, Eisenhower oversaw the admittance of Alaska and Hawaii, the first two non-continental United States and the last two states to be added to the Union. Since he went directly into the military rather than pursuing something like law, Eisenhower didn't have as much of a college education as many other presidents. He also was the last president until Donald Trump to not have held any elected office before a president. The eight years when Eisenhower was in office are remembered as a time of great peace and prosperity. Like many presidents who were in the military before becoming president, like Washington, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and many others, he knew the dangers of war. He knew that war comes at a high price and thus he was eager to keep our nation out of as much war as possible by having a strong presence and by supporting the military, supporting veterans, supporting education. He also founded NASA. He was involved with the beginning of that largely as a response to the fact that the Soviet Union was actively pursuing a space program. So he founded NASA as a civilian space program. But in addition, what he thought was even more important was increasing higher education in the nation, particularly around scientific topics. So he tried to encourage people to know more about science and mathematics. People who advised him said that getting a man on the moon would create great prestige for the United States compared to our enemies. And of course, it was long after Eisenhower's time in office when we finally would send a man to outer space. But even within his own terms, as the space program was being advanced more, Eisenhower began to see it as a great waste of money and resources and that it would be very foolish indeed to waste $40 billion to put a man in outer space when there are plenty of problems here on earth. Eisenhower was a very avid golfer, one of the most avid golfing presidents ever in fact. He loved golf so much that he would even play in the winter and paint his golf balls black so that he could see them against the snow on the course. He loved playing cards indoors, and he called poker the greatest indoor sport. He started playing it back at West Point, but he ended up giving it up because he was very meticulous about keeping track of who would win and who would then owe him money, and people seemed to hold a grudge against the fact that he would want to be paid. So he switched to bridge. And it was said when he was an important military commander that he would often have the people closest in his commands because they were good bridge players. He loved art, and he even took up painting after he saw a portrait of his wife being painted. And during the last 20 years of his life, he ended up painting over 200 paintings. And it was said to have a very traditional classic style. Since he loved sports and the outdoors, his favorite film was Angels in the Outfield from 1949, a rather playful film which merges comedy and some sweet elements of faith. Where angels help baseball players. After he left the White House in 1961, Eisenhower retired to his home in Gettysburg with his wife, where he lived his remaining years until dying in 1969. Eisenhower's quotes from his various speeches or from his writings have a repeated theme that political leaders shouldn't be tyrants or kings, but that they must be servants of the people. For instance, he said, we the people elect leaders not to rule, but to serve. He also said, leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well. He said, the supreme quality of leadership is integrity. Another quote he said, which could have been a response to the growing threat of communism, was, never let yourself be persuaded that any one great man, any one leader, is necessary to the salvation of America. When America consists of one leader and 158 million followers, it will no longer be America. He was noted as being an affable, genial, and kind man, but he used his strong leadership skills that he'd gained from years in the military. And you see that military determination in everything he did. For instance, he said, for every obstacle, there is a solution. Persistence is key. The greatest mistake is giving up. Another wise quote he said is, plans are nothing, planning is everything. You can find out more about Eisenhower's insight to his whole military career by reading the memoirs which he wrote and published after World War II. These memoirs helped give him a bigger national reputation, and they also provided some financial stability for the first time for the Eisenhowers after years of living on the meager military allowance that his family had. Eisenhower is remembered as one of the best presidents, ranked very high, and he was a leader who granted prosperity and security to the American people, appreciated by both sides of the aisle for his moderate conservatism. Thank you for spending this time with me, and I hope you'll join me next time for more American Legends.