Eisenhower, The Top Figure Army General, The Modest President

This is a portrait of Dwight D. Eisenhower, a young dreamer, charting a course from Abilene, Kansas, to West Point and beyond.

Before becoming the 34th president (two terms from 1953 to 1961), Ike –as he was called– was a five-star general in the U.S. Army during World War II and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe. This book reveals the journey of the man who worked with incredible subtlety to move events in the direction he wished them to go.

In both war and peace, he gave the world confidence in American leadership.

In the war period, Ike commanded the largest multinational force ever assembled to fight German troops in leading the Western powers to victory.

During his presidency, he ended a three-year war in Korea with honor and dignity. Not a single American died in combat for the next eight years.

He resisted calls for preventive war against the Soviet Union and China, faced down Khruschev over Berlin, and restored stability in Lebanon when sectarian violence threatened to pull the country apart.

Eisenhower believed that the United States should not go to war unless national survival was at stake. When Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt to seize the Suez Canal in 1956, he forced them to withdraw even threatening financial sanctions against Israel. When China threatened force against Taiwan, his Joint Chiefs recommended an immediate nuclear response, but he rejected the idea.

Domestically, Eisenhower tamed inflation, slashed defense spending, balanced the federal budget, and worked easily with a Democratic Congress despite being a Republican.

Eisenhower gave the country eight years of peace and prosperity. It doesn’t mean his presidential tenure was not without crises, but he managed crises without overreacting. He made every task he undertook look easy. No other president in the twentieth century can make the claim.

When he died on March 28, 1969, he was buried in a government-issue, eighty-dollar pine coffin, wearing his famous Ike jacket with no medals or decorations other than his insignia of rank.

***

Serpong, 4 May 2025

Titus J.

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