Air University Review, September-October 1982

Eisenhower: A Reputation In Transition

The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought: still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect.

Alice’s caution was not shared by the intellectuals of the fifties and sixties, most of whom found it impossible to forgive Eisenhower his double trouncing of Adlai Stevenson, his Denver and Newport vacations, his refusal to get excited about their new domestic priorities, his syntax, his friends, and most of all his golfing. As one result, among the so-called opinion-makers his record as U.S. President became clouded by charges of inattentiveness, especially when compared to allegations of glorious new beginnings in Camelot Glen— beginnings soon thwarted in Dallas, consumed in Lyndon Johnson’s self-immolation over Vietnam, and smothered in Watergate, Kissingerism, and multiple consecutive presidents unschooled in world affairs.

During the 1970s the conventional liberal view of Eisenhower began to shift, slowly at first but with increasing clamor by the opening of the l980s. "Eisenhower revisionism" is now in full swing on many fronts—the man, the general, the president—and once again, as in 1948, 1952, and 1956, there are those at many points on the political spectrum who see in Ike’s example the answers to many of the challenges now facing us. To be sure, the revisionist efforts of Murray Kempton, Arthur Larson, Gary Wills, and Fred J. Greenstein are still too new and multidirectional for any consensus to have revealed itself.¹ And not everyone who has addressed the topic is wholly convinced of its legitimacy. Ronald Steel, for example, writes derisively of this new "age of Ikophilia" and worries aloud that "the nostalgia for Ike is taking place only because we choose to remember the aspects we like and repress the rest."² That’s a fair enough warning but not, as shall become clear, one that I consider entirely justified.

Two aspects of Eisenhower’s personal style are important to understanding the significance to be attached to the publication of his all-too-occasional diary entries between 1935 and 1967.* One was his preference never to be seen in what he did; the other, his lifelong rule to refuse to discuss personalities, to focus all discussion on the issues rather than the people involved.³ Both drove General George S. Patton, Jr., to distraction more than once, and both have had the same effect on many early reviewers of The Eisenhower Diaries. This has resulted in descriptions of this important volume as "a disappointing collection of fragments" in which a few "early forays into candor"—in particular, biting remarks about General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Ernest J. King—ended with his elevation to high command.⁴ However accurate such observations might be, they tend to mask the superb work of Professor Ferrell of Indiana University in gathering these fragments together in one place and presenting them—many published for the first time—in a finely crafted volume that can serve as a model of its kind.

*Robert H. Ferrell, editor, The Eisenhower Diaries (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1981, $19.95), 445 pages.

The entries begin in late 1935 when Major Eisenhower was serving on the staff of General MacArthur, then heading a special mission to the Philippines. They then proceed, intermittently, following no particular pattern, through the war years, the letdown of becoming chief of staff at the end of 1945 ("This job is as bad as I always thought it would be."), the Columbia University, NATO, and presidential years: the postpresidential papers are still closed at the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas. The overall impression one gets is of a man who now and then thought that he would probably some day write his memoirs and that therefore he should keep some notes on matters that would not be automatically available in the official files. Even so, the seeker after "juicy tidbits" will be disappointed. The reader who will not be disappointed is the one who will be satisfied with a close-up picture of Eisenhower’s views on such diverse topics as military parochialism, the necessity for a balance between moral, economic, and purely military power, and the role of force in the nuclear age. (For some examples, see the box on page 89.)

In short, while the gaps may well prove irritating and frustrating to many, what is included adds to our understanding of both the man and his era. (For one example, the reader who will add the diary comments to those already published in volumes VII to IX of The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower will recognize that nothing in General David Jones’s recent critique of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is tainted by original thinking.)⁵ In addition, Professor Ferrell’s introduction, connecting passages, and notes are warm, engaging, witty, and precise—than which no more can be asked of an editor. (His concluding section on sources even goes to the extent of identifying the precise location in the archives, down to and including box numbers and folder titles, of every entry in the volume.) Scholars and researchers have been done a true service, the rest of us even more so.

Three among the recent spate of books focus exclusively on the war years and treat Eisenhower as one player—admittedly the most important—among many. One can be described as truly monumental,* another as important,** and a third as occasionally entertaining but of questionable 1ineage.*** Russell Weigley’s account of the 1944-45 campaign in western Europe contributes mightily to the author’s emerging recognition as the leading military historian in the United States. Most Americans recall that campaign in a series of set-piece images: the landings at Normandy, the breakthrough at Saint-Lô, the "race across France," Patton’s 90-degree left turn to rescue the beleagured garrison at Bastogne, the seizure of a bridge at Remagen, and a final squabble over whether to proceed into Germany on "a broad front" or concentrate forces for a "single thrust to Berlin." Weigley’s most important contribution is to restore the overall campaign to its true dimensions by providing a balanced treatment of all the fighting, in particular the bitter and costly battles along the German frontier. (Who except the survivors and most devout buffs can recall the battles of the Hamich and Monschau Corridors, the Weseling and Ruhr Pockets, the Roer and Cologne Plains, the Saar and Palatinate?)

*Russell F. Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany, 1944-1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University's Press, 1981, $22.50), 800 pages.

**W. W. Rostov's, Pre-Invasion Bombing Strategy: General Eisenhower's Decision of March 25, 1944 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981, $18.00 cloth, $8.95 paper), 166 pages.

***David Irving, The War between the Generals (New York: Congdon & Latter, Inc., 1981, $17.95), 446 pages.

The forty chapters are arranged in five parts: The Armies (1-76); Normandy (77-187); France (189-304); The Disputed Middle Ground (305-574); and Germany (575-730). The overall theme, hinted at strongly in Part One and nailed down in a short Epilogue, can be paraphrased as follows: The American army lacked a clear conception of war, owing largely to an unresolved conflict between the military values of mobility (built into the force structure) and overwhelming power (since Grant, the preferred style of attack whenever possible). Having created an army of mobility at the expense of power, the generals failed to use that mobility in ways that might best have complemented the power-drive strategy (in bold concentrations aimed at deep exploitation). American generalship by and large was competent but addicted to playing it safe; a bolder generalship might have shortened the war.⁶

As is characteristic of all his work, Weigley’s line of argument has an unsettling contemporary relevance that finds more sympathy among lieutenant colonels than among lieutenant generals, a point not lost on Drew Middleton, military correspondent for the New York Times:

[These ideas] should give contemporary planners in the Pentagon much to ponder. The United States Army and Air Force now in Europe have adopted a completely defensive strategy against possible Soviet invasion. But there are gadflies, civilian and military [e.g., Luttwak, Canby, Lind, and assorted junior officers], stinging the strategists with proposals for a more flexible defense that, in the event of an attack, would send armored columns to assail enemy supply lines. Their ideas have merit. But I think that Mr. Weigley, who understands the hierarchical, conservative bent of American military thinking, would agree there is little chance such proposals will be adopted.⁷

One does not have to agree with these arguments to conclude that contemporary planners could benefit from a close reading of this long volume. For Weigley provides much food for thought on our seemingly perennial problems related to manpower (reinforcement, rotation, discipline, courage) and supply of forces in the field. The story of the gasoline shortages is fairly well known, but it is sobering to be reminded that the army came very close to running out of artillery ammunition in 1944, at just about the same time its manpower pool went dry—leading to the desperation employment of black troops in combat roles and the offer of pardons to those imprisoned by courts-martial who would agree to go to the front to fight. Even those, led by the West Germans, who approve fully NATO’s forward defense strategy can find in these pages both insights and sustenance from the German "miracle in the west" when the Allies were stopped cold (no pun) in front of the Rhine River at the end of 1944. (The point that will provide encouragement to no one is contemplating full scale war in western Europe without unrestricted, preplanned access to the territory and resources of France!)

A final virtue of Eisenhower’s Lieutenants is the pictures it provides of the role of personalities in warfare, a favorite theme of Clausewitz but so frequently and rigidly excised from the curricula of our staff and war colleges. The roles played by ego, ambition, jealousy, irritability, etc. cannot be planned for in advance, so they tend to be discounted; but in actuality they are always present and even occasionally decisive. In these respects Weigley’s volume marks a tremendous advance over the nine-volume official history of the campaign. His heroes (Carl Spaatz, Pete Quesada, Patton, "Lightning Joe" Collins, "P" Wood, Lucian Truscott, Manton Eddy, Troy Middleton) are believably drawn. On Eisenhower, he seems to be ambivalent or at least restrained; Omar Bradley does not shine in this account, and Field Marshal Montgomery’s personality drives Weigley to distraction.

Where Weigley grants an important role to individual personality, David Irving’s War between the Generals finds room for nothing else. In a style reminiscent of "Watergate via Woodstein," Irving pieces together "the great cover-up," engineered by Ike and Winston Churchill, of the many disagreements and animosities that separated the Allied generals. Deep Throat in this instance is Major General Everett S. Hughes, friend and West Point classmate (1909) of George Patton, who served Eisenhower as his unofficial eyes and ears and whose almost-illegible diaries "have lain for years under the noses of historians" in the Library of Congress.

How it could be possible at this late date for someone of Irving’s background truly to think he has discovered something new in the intramural squabbling that marred the Grand Alliance is beyond my capacity to imagine. It is to be sure a fact that Churchill, Eisenhower, George Marshall, and Montgomery were at pains during the late forties to downplay and, where possible, ignore—even hide—the intimate details of many disagreements. But in this they eventually failed, and the failure is no longer news; see, for just a few examples, any of the following pages in Weigley: 210, 254, 279-83, 347-50, 442, 504-05, 542-44, 564-66, 642, or 710-13! The revelations that Irving trumpets relate almost exclusively to the seamier sides of life among the conquerors. Thus we have pictures of the infamously flamboyant Lieutenant General J. C. H. Lee, Ike’s deputy for supply, foisted on him by the powers in Washington, dashing about England in his private twelve-car train and later commandeering for his own use the ritziest hotels in Paris; of Bradley, Hodges, and Quesada obtaining hand-made Belgian shotguns under questionable circumstances; of Patton as "a swaggering hothead who womanized ceaselessly and lived in dread of his wife’s finding out." This is Irving’s thirteenth book, and clearly the sensationalism that marred his first (The Bombing of Dresden, 1963) is still in the saddle.

Such accounts of life behind the scenes can be valuable to students seeking to understand the day-to-day atmosphere in which important decisions are reached; the "true history" of the MACV Command Mess in Saigon, for a more recent example, might reveal important matters never found in official accounts. But they can do so only when they are thoroughly documented and based on verifiable sources. Yet here, despite a concluding note on sources, we have not one single footnote and are therefore left to take on faith every single quotation and reconstructed conversation. To show where this can lead, consider the following diary comment of General Patton about a meeting with Ike, Bradley, and Hodges on 2 September 1944. "Ike was very pontifical and quoted Clausewitz to us, who have commanded larger forces than C ever heard of." Now consider Irving’s translation:

He pontificated to them about Clausewitz, the great Prussian military philosopher—who had commanded forces, as Patton remarked in rejoinder, that were neither mechanized nor one quarter so numerous as the 450,000 men under his command alone.

Far too much is added here and error is introduced: Patton’s diary lists several items he himself brought up or commented on at the meeting, and this is not one of them; Patton would never make the error of identifying Clausewitz as a commander, etc. In the attempt to recreate the scene, in short, Irving takes liberties that mislead his readers. What, then, are we to conclude when he reports gossip about illegal smuggling by Lord Tedder or describes General Spaatz as "the kind of general who disliked being separated from his bourbon too long?"⁸ Perhaps Irving should consider a new career writing so-called docu-dramas for commercial television.

Occasionally, nonetheless, Irving’s insights on issues of importance are suggestive. One example concerns the spring 1945 question of whether to engage in a race against the Russians for Berlin. This question, doomed to eternal debate, has again been reopened by Weigley’s suggestion that such a course was indeed feasible. Irving, on the other hand, offers a three-point answer for Eisenhower’s refusal to go along:

[He] checked the directives that had been issued to him by the CCS. They said nothing about capturing Berlin. He decided to give Berlin a miss—he was getting sick and tired of this war anyway. . . . [And besides,] Kansas plainsman Eisenhower feared no Russians—even later he would explain that in their generous instincts, in their healthy, direct outlook on the affairs of workaday life, the Russians bore a marked similarity to the average American.⁹

Neither of these authors makes much of the point that Berlin was well within the previously agreed-on Russian zone of occupation or that where we did penetrate that zone we quickly withdrew after V-E Day. But (1) add that fact to Irving’s comments about Ike’s being tired of the war and fearing no Russians, and then (2) assume his unwillingness to risk further casualties on a prestige target that would probably have to be turned over to the Russians anyway, and then (3) the case for the gamble suggested by Weigley loses force.

Another great controversy treated by both Weigley and Irving is the subject of W. W. Rostow’s Pre-Invasion Bombing Strategy, a most welcome analysis of a topic of indisputable current relevance to a service seemingly forever hung up over targeting questions relating to air interdiction of surface forces. (Weigley’s account captures the essential issues, Irving’s the atmosphere—but with typical excess, referring to "unremitting strife" [sic] between General Spaatz and Sir Arthur Harris and at one point in the debate picturing Harris as "wad [ing] in, fists swinging." Good grief!)

The question at issue in early 1944 was how best to employ the bomber forces to pave the way for the coming invasion—whether to concentrate them on marshaling yards inland from the intended point of assault or, instead, to make oil—in particular aviation gasoline production facilities in Germany—the primary target, thereby forcing an air battle aimed at assuring air superiority prior to the landings. Or at least that’s how the question is usually posed. But as Rostow, an eyewitness to the events he describes, makes clear

on March 25 Eisenhower was presented with false alternatives: marshalling yards versus oil. The true alternatives were oil [production facilities] plus a sustained systematic attack on bridges and [fuel & ammo] dumps, versus marshalling yards [alone].¹⁰

How this came about, why General Spaatz allowed it to happen, why General Eisenhower decided the issue as he did, and how it happened that by D-Day bridges and oil as well as railroad centers had become approved targets are the subjects of this truly engaging memoir.

The acrimony surrounding this debate took many years to surface, but it is now fully in the open thanks in part to the 1978 publication (Solly Zuckerman’s autobiography, From Apes to Warlords, a volume revealing personal vanity on a scale that would bring a blush to ft cheeks of a Henry Kissinger or Howard Cosel. Determined to justify the position he had take thirty-four years earlier, Lord Zuckerman confused what he knew with what he assumed challenged the bona fides of other participant: and mumbled incessantly about the "novices he had been required to work with. He still cannot accept the fact that the final result derived from compromise undertaken for reason to which he was not privy.¹¹

In tracing the roots of compromise and acommodation, Rostow takes the reader "into the arena of power, vested interest, and personality where forces quite different from straight-forward intellectual argument were at work. It is in this respect that he performs his most valuable service—and has managed, in the process, to produce a ready-made case study of air interdiction that should be required reading at the staff and war colleges. The equipment and specific targets may be different today, but the arena of decision—strong wills and conflicting opinion—is not, computer-assisted decision-making notwithstanding.

For the most part the revisionist mentioned at the opening of this essay have concentrated on the presidential years from 1953 to 1961, with particular emphasis on Eisenhower’s personal style of leadership (more forceful than then obvious) and his role in foreign and defense affairs. (Indeed, most of the authors appear to be as bored with domestic politics and interparty squabbling as Ike was.)¹² In Ike’s Spies,* Stephen Ambrose starts with the war years and makes a good case for the idea that the freewheeling Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the fifties owed its loose reins in good part to Ike’s wartime experience with the benefits that can accrue to undercover operations. Little is new in the account of intrigues in North Africa, the deception plan for Normandy (Operation Fortitude), or the glories of possessing the Ultra secret—some seized, as at Mortain/Falaise; some squandered, as during the German buildup for the Ardennes counteroffensive in December 1944. But the author’s brisk and sprightly presentation is a big plus. So also are some of his asides: when FDR secretly dispatched diplomat Robert Murphy to England, General Marshall, concerned that Murphy not be noticed while en route, gave him a false name and fake uniform, commenting that "nobody ever pays any attention to a lieutenant colonel."

*Stephen E. Ambrose with Richard H. Immerman, Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1981, $14.95), xi + 361 pages.

Then, following a capsule account of the CIA’s evolution in the Truman years, Ambrose treats the president’s role in the CIA escapades in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Indochina (1953-56), Hungary (1955-56), Indonesia (1958), and involving the U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance flights over the Soviet Union (1956-60). Ambrose makes it clear that the operations of the CIA from 1953 through 1960 were considered small potatoes by the President, entrusted in their operational details to Allen Dulles, but always with the clear understanding that the boss had to be brought in if things got serious.

As invariably happens with covert operations, such was not always the case. Ike’s hidden-hand approach led some subordinates to plan everything so as to assure a case for plausible deniability at the top. One result was the agency-inspired assassination plotting against Fidel Castro and Patrice Lumumba, with which CIA Director Dulles can be connected but regarding which Ike’s knowledge or role cannot be shown. Eisenhower loyalists insist it is inconceivable that he could have ordered up murder plots; Dulles loyalists counter that their man would never have dared move in such matters unless cleared by the president. One suspects that this jury will remain out just as long as the one still trying to decide Henry II’s exact role in Thomas à Becket’s murder in the cathedral at Canterbury on December 29, 1170.

The much-heralded "CIA-inspired coups" in Iran and Guatemala, Ambrose reminds us, were in fact minor involvements that could well have turned out just as they did even had our agents been out of town on vacation. This view accords with that of Ray S. Cline, a former deputy director of the CIA, recently set forth in Cline’s preposterously mistitled The CIA under Reagan, Bush, and Casey;¹³ it is also a timely reminder to writers of the post-Vietgate era who see all-powerful spooks everywhere they look.¹⁴ They should also recall that the late fifties’ legend of CIA invincibility was widely accepted at the time as both necessary and good; James Bond may have been a British agent, but most of his fans were Americans.

Three other recent books treating the presidential years merit brief notice. William Bragg Ewald served as a speech writer in the White House (1954-56), then as an assistant to the Interior Secretary (1957-61), and finally as the research assistant to Ike while the retired president was preparing his memoirs between 1961 and 1965. His Eisenhower the President* is a delightful compilation of anecdotes centering on fifteen different but significant "features of the man and his presidency." The thematic arrangement makes for much jumping around in time, but many of the author’s insights are refreshing and suggestive. Particularly intriguing is the inclusion of numerous tidbits from early drafts of Ike’s presidential memoirs, Mandate for Change and Waging Peace.¹⁵ He struggles manfully with Ike’s weaker moments, as when he failed to come to the defense of George Marshall during the 1952 campaign, his old boss having been outrageously slandered by the likes of Senators McCarthy and Jenner; something about traiterous conduct in having lost China, as if China had ever been anyone’s to lose!

*William Bragg Ewald, Jr., Eisenhower the President: Crucial Days, 1951-1960 (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1981, $12.95), x + 336 pages.

The author’s tone seems a bit awestruck occasionally, but he was young then and undoubtedly quite caught up in the heady atmosphere of Washington (where some who serve fall prey to mistaking their place for the center of the universe). One can only wish that Ewald’s editor and publisher had not cut back so much on what was obviously a much longer manuscript and allowed space for detailed documentation of all quotations and citations. An annotation technique like Ferrell’s in The Eisenhower Diaries would have doubled this book’s value while adding only marginally to its production cost.

Donald Neff’s Warriors at Suez* tells the story of the most bizarre episode of Eisenhower’s years: the British, French, and Israeli attempt in 1956 to seize the Suez Canal following its nationalization by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser. Both Guy Mollet of France and Anthony Eden of England were totally blind to the emergence of Arab nationalism, convincing themselves that Hitler and Munich had reappeared in the guise of Nasser and the canal. Together with Israeli Premier David Ben Gurion they launched a cynical and ludicrous conspiracy, largely without the knowledge of their respective cabinets, and according to a plan of operations vigorously denounced in advance by the likes of Lord Louis Mountbatten and the brilliant French Major General André Beaufre; commented the latter on seeing the operations plan: "Indubitably, we are now in cloud cuckoo-land."

*Donald Neff, Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower Takes America into the Middle East (New York: The Linden Press/Simon & Schuster, 1981, $17.95), 479 pages.

Eisenhower had difficulty believing either that the British were serious or that Britain and France were in covert collusion with Israel; in addition, he too revealed little understanding of Nasser’s goals, especially after the latter had turned to the Russians for military and economic aid after being turned down by the West. Even more important, neither the president nor his advisors understood that for both Arabs and Jews peace was less important than security; that, "in the final analysis, land was perceived as more important by these two ancient Semitic peoples than peace or even life itself. The Eisenhower Administration did not understand this unyielding attitude on both sides any more than later Administrations did." (p. 124)

As the ensuing opéra bouffe unfolded, "the White House crackled with barrack-room language the like of which had not been heard since the days of General Grant," reported columnist James Reston. Eisenhower’s eventual efforts to help the British save what little face remained theirs to claim speak to his unremitting efforts to seek a balance between extremists in the pursuit of peace. Those given to reading history as an antidote to despair, as proof that no matter how bad things are at the moment they have earlier been worse, will find some solace in this well-told tale. They will also find, as if any more were needed, yet another sobering reminder of the frailty of NATO support for any action that endangers the oil lifeline.

The final book to be mentioned here might well be the best starting place for the general reader seeking only the broad outlines of the postwar topics and themes addressed thus far. In Eisenhower and the Cold War, Robert A. Divine, distinguished diplomatic historian at the University of Texas, presents what must have begun as four lectures, each of which treats a topic of continuing relevance: Eisenhower and the Presidency; Massive Retaliation and Asia; Eisenhower and the Middle East; and Eisenhower and the Russians.* Each chapter is an essay that can stand by itself, and each stresses one or more of the revisionists’ favorite themes: Ike’s serenity under pressure; his control over the allegedly freewheeling Secretary of State John Foster Dulles;¹⁶ his deliberate ambiguity in responding to questions affecting either individuals or on-going activities; his conviction that nuclear weapons had outmoded war for useful purposes; his preference for conciliation over confrontation; and finally his bitter disappointment at having failed to moderate either the Cold War or the nuclear arms race.

*Robert A. Divine, Eisenhower and the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981, $14.95 cloth, $3.95 paper), x + 182 pages.

Part of the reason accounting for the revival of interest in the Eisenhower years is undoubtedly pure nostalgia. United States business and industrial production were at the highest level in peacetime history; the nation was steelmaker to the world; imported cars held a miniscule 0.5 percent of the market; the prime rate hovered around 3 percent and never went past 4.5 percent; the two million unemployed represented less than 3 percent of the labor force; inflation was held to an annual rate of 1.5 percent; the Dow Jones industrials rose from 280 to 615 over Ike’s eight years in office.¹⁷ Eisenhower was genuinely popular and trusted, his Gallup Poll approval rating averaging 64 percent and dropping below 50 percent only twice in 96 monthly polls.

Another part of the reason, however, is rapidly growing concern over foreign and defense policy, the federal budget, and the likelihood of nuclear war—whether "theater," "limited," or all out. To an increasing number of critics, Eisenhower is beginning to look like the last president who had a handle on such matters the president most superbly equipped by experience and temperament for truly consequential decision that the postwar world has seen.¹⁸ And yet, in one of these areas, that concerning nuclear weapons, he failed completely and must bear primary responsibility for leading the public into looking on such weapons as just one more arrow in our quiver. Such was no part of his intent.

Almost immediately following his inaugural he assigned an aide, C. D. Jackson, to prepare a speech informing the world of the new dangers posed by the hydrogen bomb. "Dubbing his assignment Operation Candor, Jackson prepared draft after draft, only to have Eisenhower reject them on grounds that they were too somber and pessimistic." (Ambrose, p. 111) Then, having cut the defense budget from $50 billion to $40 billion, he bowed to the insistence of the Joint Chiefs that their reduced resources would require them to employ nuclear weapons in any major confrontation. NSC 162/2, adopted on 30 October 1953, stated specifically that "in the event of hostilities, the United States will consider nuclear weapons to be as available for use as other munitions." In his "Atoms for Peace" address before the U.N General Assembly two months later, he remarked that atomic weapons have "virtually achieved conventional status within our armed services"; on 13 March 1955, at the height of the crisis in the Formosa/Taiwan Strait and in response to a reporter’s question about the possible use of "tactical atomic weapons," Eisenhower responded: "Now, in any combat where these things can be used on strictly military targets and for strictly military purposes, I see no reason why they shouldn’t be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else." And so it went, by March of 1956 becoming entombed in NSC 5602/1 (entitled "Basic National Security Policy" but nonetheless classified Top Secret).¹⁹

Eisenhower’s penchant for providing broad planning latitude led him to approve such documents, but approval was premised on his holding personal control on the trigger. And the fact was that he had no intention of employing nuclear weapons. He was a finite deterrent man to the core, firmly convinced that an assured capability to obliterate Moscow was all that was needed to hold in check Russian designs against western Europe or the United States. "Massive" retaliation for him was nothing more than retaliation via a few well-placed nuclear weapons. He saw no need for thousands of bombers or missiles to make the threat credible, and never fell for the argument that the United States had to be able to destroy the Soviet Union in order to deter the Kremlin. The so-called bomber and missile gaps of the late fifties he dismissed as nonsense for two reasons: first, he knew, from the U-2 flights, that the Russians had at best a handful of intercontinental ballistic missiles as against our three dozen or so; and second, since a few deliverable weapons would suffice to deter, he worried about a more real and present danger—an uncontrolled arms race that could lead to unmanageable inflation and ultimate bankruptcy. He failed during his lifetime to make these points clear. His calculated ambiguity backfired on him, leading directly toward the results he most feared.²⁰

Our relations with NATO are much in the news these days, exacerbated by differences regarding the proper response to events in Poland, resentments regarding a planned Soviet natural-gas pipeline to the West, and a burgeoning antinuclear movement spawned by the December 1979 decision to deploy nuclear-tipped Pershing II missiles and ground launched cruise missiles, and coupled with genuine fear in Europe about the casualness with which the President and Secretary of Defense have responded to theoretical questions about "theater" nuclear warfare. (In their present mood our allies hardly needed to hear the following comment from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to a Senate defense appropriation subcommittee on 2 March: "Our troops are over there to defend the United States. . . . I’d much rather defend in Europe than somewhere back from Europe.")²¹ Once again there are mumblings in the Senate about withdrawing some of our forces from Europe, bringing back memories of the Mansfield amendments of the early seventies, a movement that eventually failed in 1973 but by a close vote of 51 to 44. What almost no one remembers today, however, is General Eisenhower’s recommendations of 1963 on troop withdrawals.

In a little noticed Saturday Evening Post article entitled "Let’s Be Honest with Ourselves," the retired President recalled that the original purpose for encouraging a coalition in western Europe was to create a means of balancing Soviet power and thereby limit American involvement in European affairs; that this changed in 1950-51 (with the decision to form an integrated military headquarters) to a view that the United States should provide the equivalent of six infantry divisions, "which were to be regarded as an emergency [i.e., temporary] reinforcement of Europe while our hard-hit allies were rebuilding their economies and capabilities for supporting defense." He then proposed that the emergency had been met and that it was time to withdraw five of those six divisions. "One American division in Europe can ‘show the flag’ as definitely as can several." It would also be helpful at this time, he went on

to put all of our troops abroad on a "hardship basis"—that is, send them on shortened tours of foreign duty and without their families, as we do in Korea. Unless we take definite action, the maintaining of permanent troop establishments abroad will continue to overburden our balance-of-payments problem and, most important, will discourage the development of the necessary military strength Western European countries should provide for themselves.²²

A few weeks later (17 November 1963), appearing on ABC’s "Issues and Answers," he presented the same views to a much larger audience, provoking startled responses from representatives of the "eastern establishment"²³ and bidding fair to reopen the whole question of the specific form our European commitment (which he was not about to abandon) should take. The news from Dallas only five days later buried this initiative; it was time to rally round the new president and show support for current policies.

The one defense-related area of growing concern today that Eisenhower managed with unexampled finesse was the defense budget. For more than two decades now, defenders of proposed defense outlays have been at pains to illustrate decreasing expenditures for defense as compared to the percentage of the budget committed to social programs. This is a fact, the relevance of which, however, is judiciously left unstated. The other fact is that the social programs that now command so large a share of our resources did not then exist. Had he been faced with the necessity of including provision for such programs, Eisenhower would have been even much stricter than he was about defense expenditures. He would have striven mightily to force a balance between conflicting requirements. It is quite simply inconceivable to picture him going along with a $180 billion defense increase married to a $750 billion tax cut, let alone accepting projected deficits such as are now proposed. In a curious way, his struggles, had he been faced with such staggering fiscal problems as we now contend with, might well have resulted in his having made more progress in the field of arms control.

On such conundrums do the Ikophiles ponder as they worry about a secretary of defense who is too frequently interviewed, sometimes even discussing (as one wag put it) "MX missiles a though they were cigarette lighters"; a recent secretary of state clear enough on Europe to be labeled soft by the far right and therefore driven to find opportunities closer by to prove he was hard-nosed; and a president who was perceived during the election campaign as having a respect for the senior military bordering on awe.²⁴ Their concern on this last point is analogous to that of John P. Roche recalling his days as an advisor to Lyndon Johnson: "On numerous occasions I saw L.B.J. with the Joint Chiefs, and the Commander-in-Chief almost snapped to attention and saluted when all those medals filed into the Oval Office. Ike, by contrast, could tell [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral] Radford that he was out of his tree and then relax at the movies."²⁵

Washington, someone has written, is a town so obsessed with the present that anyone who can remember the Eisenhower administration is viewed as understanding the full sweep of human history. To the extent this is true, perhaps it is not too much to hope that the recent reawakening of interest in those far off days might rekindle an interest in promoting an other new look at foreign and defense policies that still, after almost two years of a new administration, have a disconcertingly ad hoc quality about them.

1. See Murray Kempton, "The Underestimation of Dwight D. Eisenhower," Esquire, September 1967, pp. 108-09, 156; Arthur Larson, Eisenhower: The President Nobody Knew (New York: Scribners, 1968); Gary Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969) and The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power (Boston: Little Brown, 1982)—the latter excerpted in the January and February 1982 issues of the Atlantic Monthly; George H. Quester, "Was Eisenhower a Genius?" International Security, Fall 1979, pp. 159-80; Fred J. Greenstein, "Eisenhower as an Activist President: Look at New Evidence," Political Science Quarterly, Winter 1979 80, pp. 575-99. Greenstein is the Henry Luce Professor of Politics, Law, and Society at Princeton and acknowledged leader of the revisionists. His well-argued and generously documented article is the best short summary of the relevant literature. Disappointingly shallow but nonetheless revealing a full 180 degree turn by its author is Arthur Schlesinger’s "The Eisenhower Presidency: A Reassessment," Look, May 14, 1979, pp. 40-49. For the truly serious student, the Eisenhower Library (Abilene, Kansas 67410) offers its Selected Bibliography of Periodical and Dissertation Literature (1981, 162 pages, $3.25), which cites 740 articles in more than 300 journals, along with 550 dissertation titles.

2. See his "Two Cheers for Ike," New York Review of Books, September 24, 1981, pp. 54-57. Even Stephen E. Ambrose, long considered a leading Ikophile, worries that it may indeed be time to blow the whistle on Eisenhower revisionism; see his "The Ike Age," The New Republic, May 9, 1981, pp. 26-28, 30-34.

3. The theme of Kempton’s article (note I): "It was the purpose of his existence never to be seen in what he did." On the second aspect, see the Diaries and the testimony of Ambrose on page 27 of the article cited in note 2.

4. John P. Roche, "Eisenhower Redux," New York Times Book Review, June 28, 1981, p. 12. Roche, who served as a special assistant under President Johnson and is now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, has little patience with several of the books mentioned in this essay. His review of four of them (Ferrell, Ewald, Divine, and Cook) leads with the following right (left?) hook: "These volumes are an ecologist’s nightmare; one shudders at the trees sacrificed for them."

5. Volumes VI to IX were published by The Johns Hopkins University Press on January 29, 1979, copyright 1978. (Volumes I to V, The War Years, appeared in 1970 and revealed a man, in J. Kenneth Galbraith’s words, "firmly and unpretentiously literate." The Johns Hopkins series contains some but not all parts of the diaries for the period December 1941 through February 1948, the period thus far covered; see the discussion in Ferrell’s introduction to the diaries, pp. xv-xvi.)

6. For the briefest statement of the thesis, see pp. 727-29; for a short account of his overall theme, see Russell F. Weigley, "Shaping the American Army of World War II: Mobility versus Power," in Parameters, September 1981, pp. 13-21.

7. New York Times Book Review, June 28, 1981, p. 13.

8. Martin Blumenson, The Patton Papers, 1910-45 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), p. 537; The War between the Generals, p. 270 for quoted lines describing September 1944 meeting; p. 71 for gossip re Tedder; p. 69 for quotation re Spaatz. (On the preceding page, by the way, we are informed that General Spaatz "had a face like a rusty nail.")

9. Irving, pp. 399-400.

10. Rostow, p. 43.

11. For an earlier account of this controversy, see the present writer’s Strategic Bombing in World War II (New York and London, 1976), pp. 18-20, 75-78, and 174-75; for Lord Zuckerman’s querulous comments on that source, see From Apes to Warlords (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), pp. 388-89; for an example of the uproar that followed publication of Lord Zuckerman’s account, see the continuing controversy in the pages of Encounter: November 1978, pp. 39-43; June 1979, pp. 86-89; August-September 1980, pp. 100-02.

12. One recent exception to this generalization is James C. Duran’s A Moderate among Extremists: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the School Desegregation Crisis (Chicago: Nelson-Hall Publishers, 1982), 328 pages.

13. Washington: Acropolis Books Ltd., 1981. This book is subtitled The Evolution of the Agency from Roosevelt to Reagan and is apparently a slightly revised version of Cline’s Secrets, Spies, and Scholars, which originally appeared late in 1976, same publisher.

14. A recent example, directly related to our subject, is Blanche Wiesen Cook’s The Declassified Eisenhower: A Divided Legacy (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1981), xxiv + 432 pages. Cook’s tone ranges from agitated to shrill; she seems convinced that Eisenhower was at all times and in all matters fostering the worldwide pursuit of psychological and economic warfare. Ike is seen as a "captive president" and pronounced guilty by association. (This book should not be confused with Virgil Pinkley’s Eisenhower Declassified, a chatty, informal biography by an old friend: Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1979, 400 pages.)

15. Both published by Doubleday & Company: the first, covering 1953-56, in 1963; the second, covering 1956-61, in 1965. For the tidbits referred to see Ewald’s index entries under Mandate for Change and Waging Peace.

16. If there’s any one topic on which the revisionists agree, it’s the short leash on Dulles. For other recent examples stressing this theme, see Burton I. Kaufman, Trade and Aid: Eisenhower’s Foreign Economic Policy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981); and Bennett C. Rushkoff, "Eisenhower, Dulles, and the Quemoy-Matsu Crisis, 1954-1955," Political Science Quarterly, Fall 1981, pp. 465-80. The popular myth nonetheless persists; in the New York Times for October 4, 1981, James Reston spoke of how Eisenhower left the foreign policy burden primarily to Secretary of State Dulles.

17. See "Why They Liked Ike," in Forbes, January 5, 1981, pp. 16-17.

18. Murray Kempton (note 1) went even further, ending the sentence paraphrased here with the words, "[that] we may ever have had."

19. See Divine, pp. 110-13, 36, 62; Vital Speeches, 1 January 1954, p. 163; Neff, p. 227.

20. See, in support of this unpopular interpretation, Ambrose, Ike’s Spies, pp. 255, 275-78.

21. See Charles W. Corddry, "Recalling of Troops from Europe Suggested," Baltimore Sun, March 3, 1982, p. 4.

22. Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1963, pp. 26-27.

23. On 18 November, New York Times buried its report of the television interview in a short column on page 15. The following day it reported, on page 10, that former Secretary of State Dean Acheson deplored the prospect of another "great debate" on the issue, singling out both the former president and George F. Kennan for raising doubts. On 20 November, James Reston joined the fray in a column headed, "How to destroy the things you love."

24. See Lance Morrow, "Dreaming of the Eisenhower Years," Time, July 28, 1980, pp. 32-33.

25. "Eisenhower Redux"; see note 4.

David MacIsaac (A.B., Trinity College; A.M., Yale University; Ph.D., Duke University) retired from the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel in May 1981 after serving three years on the faculty of Air War College. He is now a staff member at Airpower Research Institute at Air University. He previously taught military history and strategy at the USAF Academy on four assignments between 1964 and 1978 and at the Naval War College. He was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (l978-79) and served with the Air Force Advisory Group in Vietnam. Dr. MacIsaac has been a frequent contributor to the Review.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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