 Dwight D. Eisenhower 34th President of the United States
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Dwight D. Eisenhower 34th President of the United States
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Dwight D. Eisenhower was born October 14, 1890 in Denison, Texas.
His great-grandparents had emigrated to the United States in 1741 sailing from the Netherlands to Delaware. As farmers, they settled in Pennsylvania. Dwight's grandfather was a Mennonite* preacher of a community known as the River Brethren. The Eisenhowers opposed slavery, but did not fight in the Civil War because they were pacifists who didn't believe in fighting. Some of them, however, did go against the church's teaching and fought in the Union Army.
Eisenhower's parents, David and Ida married in 1885 and David's parents gave them $2000 and 160 acres of land. Unlike the rest of his family, David refused to speak German to his wife and children. He thought they would have more opportunities if English was their primary language. They opened a store, which failed, then moved to Texas first to Tyler, then Denison where Dwight their third son was born two years later, followed by four more sons.
Later Eisenhowere would say the family was poor, but they never knew it. Dwight helped out by going door to door selling vegatables from their garden. Each son had a small plot in the family garden to raise produce to sell.
In school Ike loved history and neglected his other studies and chores to study Greek and Roman History. His mother didn't like for him to read books about war and the military, and once she took the books and locked them in a closet.
When he was a freshman in high school he fell and scraped his knee. When it became infected, the doctor said his leg would have to be amputated. Ike could not bear to think of losing his leg. He begged his brother Edgar to stop them if they tried to remove it. His parents finally agreed that the leg should have a chance to heal on its own. It did heal and Ike's leg was saved.
Ike and his brother Ed planned to put each other through college by each working to pay for the other's expenses. Ike worked to support his brother for two years in a creamery* where Mr. Eisenhower worked. At the creamery he pulled 300 pound blocks of ice which were used to cool the milk and butter.
After that he decided to further his own education. He applied at the Naval Academy, but at age 20 was too old to be accepted. However, he had an opportunity to enroll in the military academy at West Point. Many military leaders had been trained at West Point. George Washington had used it as his headquarters, and Thomas Jefferson had started the military academy there in 1802.
Though his education was free, he had just enough money for the deposit and transportation to the school. He arrived with $5 in his pocket. He was not a model student and frequently got into trouble because he wouldn't follow all the rules and regimentation*.
After his graduation from the military academy he was assigned as a second lieutenant at Fort Sam Houston. He wanted to serve in combat in France, but they assigned him to be a teacher training the troops and also he was the football coach.
When he met Mamie Doud, they were instantly attracted to each other. They became engaged and decided to marry soon because due to trouble in Mexico, Ike was going to be reassigned. Right before the wedding he was promoted to first lieutenant and began earning $20 more a month which was a welcome addition to the $141.67 a month which he received.
After they were married they traveled to visit Ike's parents and Mamie was surprised at how differently their families lived. She had been raised in an aristocratic* family and Ike's family had been poor.
Their first son, Doud Dwight died at age three of scarlet fever. The following year their son John was born.
The United States had been drawn into World War 1 by the sinking of the liner the Lusitania on May 7, 1915 by a German submarine. There were 128 Americans among the 2000 civilians who died when the ship sank.
The newest weapon the army had at that time was the armored tank and Eisenhower was assigned to train soldiers in tank warfare. Earlier in their quest to learn everything about the tank, he and George Patton disassembled a tank, put it back together, and drove it.
Several years later Eisenhower served under General Fox Conner in Panama and then Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines. During this time Germany, Italy, and Japan formed a group which was known as the Axis. They began invading other countries. The dictator Adolph Hitler was the German leader. Eisenhower was certain the Americans would be drawn into the conflict. The isolationists* said America should not enter the war unless the country was attacked. That attack came on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. More than 2300 people died and another 2000 were wounded.
When World War 2 started he was promoted to brigadier general and returned to the United States. His next promotions were to major general, then Commander in Chief of the Allied Forces in North Africa.
Eisenhower addressing the paratroopers prior to D Day
During World War 2 the landing on the coast of Normandy was crucial to the Allies winning the war. The maneuver was called by the code-name Operation Overlord. It involved tens of thousands of U.S., British, and Canadian soldiers. The landing was called D-Day. Eisenhower had been responsible for planning the invasion of Europe.
When he met with the troops he told them, "Don't worry, you have the best equipment and the best leaders." A sergeant replied, "We ain't worried, General."
Thousands of soldiers died in the battle, but the campaign was noted as successful.In December 1944 a battle took place in Belgium. It was called the Battle of the Bulge because the Germans pushing back the allied troops caused a bulge in the Allied line on war maps.
Fierce fighting continued for months, but the war with Germany was over on May 7, 1945 when Germany surrendered. People over the world celebrated the Victory in Europe (V-E Day).
He returned as a hero to the United States. Eisenhower was overwhelmed with the receptions he received in England and in America. He said, "I'm just a Kansas farmer boy who did his duty."
Harry Truman was now President of the United States. It was his decision to use the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war with Japan. Over 100,000 people were killed, and the Japanese surrendered. World War 2 had ended.
After the war was over, it was Eisenhower's job to demobilize* the army. 7 million men and women were discharged from the service and allowed to go home.
Five years later President Truman appointed him to be the supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
After retiring from the Army as a Five-star General he became president of Columbia University, but people wanted him to run for President of the United States. He didn't want to, but after seeing the response of the people he decided to seek the Reublican nomination.
1952 Presidential Campaign Button
The Republican slogan was We Like Ike . He won the nomination over Robert A. Taft, then chose Richard Nixon to be his running mate. I Like Ike campaign buttons were distributed.
When he was campaigning, ads were created that showed him talking to ordinary Americans. These ads were run on television before and after the very popular I Love Lucy show. In 1952 one newspaper poll found Eisenhower to be the most admired living American. People thought of him as "the man who won the war".
1952 Electoral Vote Results
Eisenhower won by a landslide* over the Democratic nominee, Adlai Stevenson. When the election was over he had 34 million votes and Stevenson had 27 million. By electoral votes he had 442 and Stevenson had 89.
In 1956 he again faced Stevenson and Eisenhower won that election by 9 1/2 million votes. He had 457 electoral votes and Stevenson had 73. His popularity had only increased during the four years he was in office.
After World War 2 ended, the United States became embroiled* in the war in Korea. An "arms race" of development of nuclear weapons was entered into by the United States and Russia and China (who were Communist countries). Eisenhower worked to stop the spread of Communism.
At the same time in America, Joseph McCarthy was falsely accusing many Americans of being Communists. Eisenhower quietly worked to stop McCarthy's "witch-hunt"* in 1954.
In May of 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court in a case called Brown vs the Board of Education of Topeka ordered schools to desegregate and allow black and white children to attend school together. Racial segregation was ruled unconstitutional.
Historians fault Eisenhower for not taking a strong stand to guarantee civil rights. He disagreed with the judicial order to desegregate the schools because he thought the problem would be resolved in time without government interference, but he finally implemented the order by sending federal troops into Little Rock so that African American children could attend classes there.
Photo courtesy Billy Hathorn (Creative Commons)
During his presidency one of his major improvements for the country was the development of an interstate highway system. As a young lieutenant colonel he had seen firsthand how hard it was to move Amry convoys across the country on the narrow highways. He proposed, and Congress passed the Federal Aid Highway Act and funded it with an initial $175 million for an interstate highway system.
The estimated cost for completing it would be $27 billion. It was such an enormous amount they finally passed legislation for a federal gasoline tax to pay for the system. The final cost was $129 billion and the elaborate system was made up of 47,000 miles of highways joining major cities all over the nation. A person could travel from coast to coast without ever seeing a stop light.
Photo Flickr user Adam Fagen - Statue of Eisenhower in the U.S. Capitol
In September 1955 Eisenhower had a heart attack. Thousands of get-well cards began arriving at the hospital. While he was recovering, Mamie answered all the cards and letters personally.
Dwight D. Eisenhower died on March 28, 1969 when his heart failed. He was buried in Abilene, Kansas, the town where he had grown up.
Though he was a military man, he always felt the conflict between war and his early religious training. He warned against having a military that had too much clout and influence*. He foresaw a time when the military-industrial complex would have undue and misplaced power. He once said,
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Dwight D. Eisenhower April 16, 1953
This biography by Patsy Stevens, a retired teacher, was written September 13,2012.
References:
Dwight D. Eisenhower by Jean Darby
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From Word Central's Student Dictionary
by Merriam - Webster
(Pronunciation note: the schwa sound is shown by ə)
Mennonite
Pronunciation: MEN- ə-nIt
Function: noun
a member of one of the Protestant groups founded in Holland
in the 16th century and noted for dressing plainly and living simply
creamery
Pronunciation: KREEM-ə-ree
Function: noun
a place where butter and cheese are made or where
milk and cream are sold or prepared
regimentation
Pronunciation: rej-əmən-TA-shən
Function: noun
organization for the purpose of regulation or control
isolationist
Pronunciation: I-sə-LA-shən-ist
Function: noun
one who advocates a national policy of avoiding
international political and economic relations
demobilize
Pronunciation: dih-MO-bə-lIz
Function: verb
to dismiss from military service or to change from
a state of war to a state of peace
landslide
Pronunciation: LAN(D)-slId
Function: noun
an overwhelming victory especially in a political contes
embroil
Pronunciation: im-BROI(e)l
Function: verb
to throw into disorder or confusion or
to involve in conflict or difficulties
witch-hunt
Pronunciation: wich-hənt
Function: noun
a searching out and persecution of persons accused of witchcraft or
the searching out and deliberate harassment of those
(as political opponents) with unpopular views
influence
Pronunciation: IN-floo-ən(t)s
Function: noun
the act or power of producing an effect indirectly or
without apparent use of force or exercise of command
also a dishonest interference with authority for personal gain
aristocracy
Pronunciation: air-ə-STAHK-rə-s/e
Function: noun
an upper class that is usually based on birth and is richer
and more powerful than the rest of society
or persons thought to be better than the rest of the community
an aristocratic (ə-RIS-tə-krat-ik) person
is one who has habits and ideas like those of the aristocracy
Eisenhower: Soldier and President
By Stephen E. Ambrose / Simon & Schuster Trade Sales
Stephen E. Ambrose draws upon extensive sources, an unprecedented degree of scholarship, and numerous interviews with Eisenhower himself to offer the fullest, richest, most objective rendering yet of the soldier who became president. He gives us a masterly account of the European war theater and Eisenhower's magnificent leadership as Allied Supreme Commander. Ambrose's recounting of Eisenhower's presidency, the first of the Cold War, brings to life a man and a country struggling with issues as diverse as civil rights, atomic weapons, communism, and a new global role. Along the way, Ambrose follows the 34th President's relations with the people closest to him, most of all Mamie, his son John, and Kay Summersby, as well as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Harry Truman, Nixon, Dulles, Krushchev, Joe McCarthy, and indeed, all the American and world leaders of his time. This superb interpretation of Eisenhower's life confirms Stephen Ambrose's position as one of our finest historians.
A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution
By David A. Nichols / Simon & Schuster
Eisenhower is often portrayed as an unwilling or passive participant in the Civil Rights movement. In decisive language, David A. Nichols demonstrates that these assumptions are mistaken. Drawing on archival documents, including newly available pages, Nichols takes a look at Eisenhower's work to desegregate the District of Columbia and complete the desegregation of the armed forces. We see how he appointed five pro-civil rights justices to the Supreme Court and progressive judges to lower courts, as well as his work crafting civil rights legislation, building a congressional coalition that passed the first civil rights act in eighty-two years, and maneuvering to avoid a showdown over desegregation of Little Rock Central High.Nichols demonstrates that Eisenhower, though a product of his time and its backward racial attitudes, was actually more progressive on civil rights in the 1950s than his predecessor, Harry Truman, and his successors, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. More a man of deeds than of words and preferred quiet action over grandstanding, his cautious public rhetoric gave a misleading impression that he was not committed to the cause of civil rights. In fact, Eisenhower's actions laid the legal and political groundwork for the more familiar breakthroughs in civil rights achieved in the 1960s. 368 pages, paperback.
A LIBRARY OF
ONLINE BOOKS and BOOK PREVIEWSAmericans Who Tell the Truth
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Dwight D. Eisenhower, Young Military Leader
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Little Ike
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Eisenhower
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General Ike
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Post War United States
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
by Tamara L. Britton (selected pages)
Going Home to Glory: A Memoir of the Life with Dwight D. Eisenhower
by David Eisenhower (selected pages)
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