Dwight D. Eisenhower was a military hero before
he became president. Immensely popular, with an
infectious boyish grin, he represented, like
Abraham Lincoln, an important aspect of the
American tradition. His parents were neither
influential nor wealthy. He grew up in Abilene,
Kansas, a small farming community where his
father managed a creamery. Through sheer force
of intelligence and character, Ike (his nickname
from boyhood) succeeded in passing the highly
competitive entry tests to West Point military
academy. Practically his whole adult life was spent
in the army, his career reaching its peak when he
was appointed allied supreme commander of the
D-Day invasion forces in 1944. He stayed in
Germany for only a few weeks after accepting the
surrender of the Nazi armed forces in May 1945
as American military governor. His European
command was far more than a military one. He
had to handle temperamental Allied generals as
well as American, not to mention statesmen as
varied as Churchill and General de Gaulle. He
succeeded brilliantly, playing a decisive diplomatic
and military role. After three years (1945–8) as
US army chief of staff, and an uncomfortable
spell as president of Columbia University, he was
appointed by Truman in 1951 to the overall
command of the allied forces being organised in
Europe under NATO.
His transition to the political arena, leading to
his nomination as Republican presidential candi-
date in July 1952 at the Chicago Convention, was
swift, having been organised behind the scenes by
influential Republicans such as Senator Henry
Cabot Lodge, Governor Dewey and the financier
Paul Hoffman. Eisenhower allowed himself to be
prevailed upon, despite his misgivings about the
participation of the military in politics: American
history provided the unhappy example of a military
hero turned president – Ulysses S. Grant, whose
administration was wracked by scandal. But there
was another precedent – George Washington, the
wise Founding Father. Eisenhower was persuaded
to follow his crusade in Europe with another cru-
sade, to preserve the two-party system and democ-
racy in the US, to free Americans from excessive
government and, above all, to ensure that the US
would lead the free world against the perils of athe-
istic communism. The Republican Party machine
was dominated by the conservative wing led by
Senator Robert Taft, who not only reflected a
widely held belief that the Truman administration
was soft on communism, but also rather perversely
represented the revived isolationist ‘America first’
patriotism. Eisenhower viewed a return to isola-
tionism and to the ‘fortress America’ mentality as a
disastrous error. He saw it as his duty to meet this
challenge, if his own popularity was all that could
prevail over the Taft forces within the Republican
Party and over the Democratic candidate Adlai
Stevenson in the US at large. In a campaign
marred by personal attacks by the foul-mouthed
Wisconsin Senator McCarthy and by Republican
charges against the failure of the Truman adminis-Chapter 45
THE EISENHOWER YEARS
CAUTION AT HOME AND CONTAINMENT
ABROAD