Eisenhower Read online

  Or could they? When his orders came through, it seemed that nothing had changed. The War Department still had him in the same old category: he was sent once more to Fort Benning, Georgia, as executive officer of the 24th Infantry Regiment—and coach of the post’s football team. If he felt like he was trying to march in knee-deep molasses, well, that would be understandable. Even when the Chief of Infantry opened the way for him to attend the War College, in Washington, DC, there was a caveat: he was told he probably did not have enough command experience to join the general staff. How could Eisenhower not be discouraged?

  But the Grey Eminence was still on his side, refusing to be thwarted. Conner was again able to intervene, providing Ike with an opportunity to acquire a new advocate, a powerful friend. He managed to get Ike an appointment in Washington, DC, to the American Battle Monuments Commission. This might at first glance appear to be a dead-end job. But it gave Eisenhower an opportunity to work directly with General Pershing on a book—a guide and historical account—about the American Expeditionary Force’s battles in France. Eisenhower had not been allowed to take part in those battles, but now he would be able to study them in detail and in close cooperation with the general who was America’s leading hero in the world war.

  Conner’s strategic move pushed Eisenhower into a new position in the army. At last his official military reputation started to change, though more slowly than one might expect. At least his reputation was now edging closer to the capabilities he had and the identity he had molded in Panama and Fort Leavenworth. He was for the first time offered a job with the general staff. But he wisely stayed on the course that Conner charted: he attended the Army War College in 1927 and once again demonstrated a very high level of ability in understanding the materials and problems presented to him and his fellow officers. Then he followed Pershing to Europe to work on the guide to what American forces had accomplished in the Great War.26

  A Dangerous French Interlude

  While his service in France was designed to build on the foundation Conner had helped him create, the duty seemed like a vacation for Ike and for Mamie, who had pressed hard for something more romantic than Kansas or Texas or Panama could offer. For the first time since 1915, Ike had a relatively high degree of independence. He still had a commanding officer, but it was apparent that he had only to satisfy General Pershing in order to make this venture successful.

  That twist in his command structure helps explain why Ike regressed a bit. Forgetting what he had learned about the personal dimensions of higher command, he drifted back into the type of anti-authoritarian behavior that had characterized his years at West Point. He let his personal feelings about Major Xenophen H. Price, his immediate superior, show, marring what should have been another quick step forward in his career. Eisenhower was impatient with Price’s “impossible ideas and methods of operating.” Price, he said, was “old maidish,” and Ike was not interested in flattering a boss he did not respect.27

  When Eisenhower’s contempt bubbled to the surface in France, one of the consequences was the worst efficiency report that he had received in his army career. Major Price summed up Ike’s performance in Europe in primarily negative terms. In certain aspects he was still “excellent,” but in others only “satisfactory.” While he had “great natural ability,” he allowed “family worries” to affect his performance and “had difficulty adjusting to changed conditions existing in France.” He was, Price said, “not especially versatile in adjusting to changed conditions.”28

  Fortunately for Ike, Pershing’s high regard for him and his work trumped the comments of Major Price, so the negative evaluation did not hold Ike back. Pershing, whom Ike admired, was not an easy person with whom to collaborate, but Eisenhower took a strong interest in the commission. Ike mastered the details of the campaigns and the topography. He took a particular delight in walking through the battle sites and understanding on the ground the bloody struggles that had taken place there. His interest showed in the work he produced and Pershing’s favorable response to his report.29

  During the entire time he was with Pershing, Ike only made one serious mistake. It has some significance because it provides a measure of how much he still needed to learn about getting ahead in the US Army. Pershing had produced a draft of his memoir, in the form of a narrative history of the American Expeditionary Force, and asked Eisenhower to read it and offer his advice. Eisenhower promptly went through the manuscript and was shocked to discover that Pershing had written the account in strict chronological order: it was, as a result, unintelligible to any reader except perhaps the author or George Marshall, who had served with Pershing. Eisenhower—who failed to see that he had a political problem, not an intellectual one—tried to reorganize and redraft the history so that it made some sense. This was a serious error.

  Pershing was not happy with the redraft. Disappointed with Ike’s version, he called on George Marshall for help. Marshall immediately recognized what had to be done. He helped Pershing polish his draft and publish it in its gross, unintelligible form. That was what the boss wanted. That was what the boss got from Marshall. Most of those who tried to read Pershing’s publication probably agreed with Ike’s critique, but that was beside the point.30

  Eisenhower had learned a great deal from General Conner. But as the foolishness with Price and the editorial episode with Pershing indicated, he still needed to master the task of understanding when exactly to press a point and when simply to yield because there was no chance to do what he thought was best. In the 1920s, George Marshall was already better at doing this than Ike was. If Ike did not soon learn how to emulate Marshall, it was almost certain to curb his career.

  New Opportunities, New Threats

  In the next few years he would face additional challenges after he returned to the United States. He went from France to a new and special task working with the Office of the Secretary of War and with the deputy chief of staff, Major General George Van Horn Moseley. He was placed in charge of a study of American plans for the wartime mobilization of industry. The nation’s economic performance in 1917 and 1918 had been far from satisfactory. The United States had not been prepared to fight a major war, and it showed. On the industrial front, the government had quickly discovered that it lacked the information it needed to control and redirect the economy. After some misguided attempts to introduce centralized controls, the government turned to a Wall Street investor, Bernard Baruch, who implemented a plan based on the compromises he could persuade the nation’s leading businessmen to make.31

  Ike’s job was to develop plans for a more effective means of controlling the largest industrial economy in the world. He studied the problem systematically, interviewed leaders in industry and government and the military, and developed a plan that was promising enough to gain for Ike a new level of support among some of the nation’s top political and military leaders. Colonel Irving J. Carr, who worked in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War, found Eisenhower to be “an ideal soldier. Especially conscientious and painstaking, frank and open to his superior and wholly loyal in carrying out his missions.” He was, Carr said, “particularly suited for civilian contact in any capacity.”32 Lieutenant Colonel Earl McFarland commented on Ike’s “real literary ability” and noted that he had “greater skill in written expression of thoughts than any other officer of my acquaintance.”33 Major General Moseley added an enthusiastic letter to his file. Moseley pointed out that Eisenhower was “personally commended by the Chief of Staff” and was “qualified to occupy positions of the highest importance in the military service.”34 Ike’s standing in the army was now closely correlated with his promise as a leader.

  His service with the mobilization study, like his service with Pershing in Europe, was moving Eisenhower along the path that Fox Conner had charted. Many of Ike’s evaluations now surpassed the one Conner had given him when he left Panama. The boy from Abilene had become a professional soldier and was maturing into a military officer with
a new capacity for top-level leadership. His new identity was as the perfect staff officer. He had made a decisive transition. Within the army’s highly centralized system, he was positioned to be worthy of the rewards that Conner had urged him to seek and which his success at the Command and General Staff School had led him to expect.

  Then the army dropped another bomb in his lap. In 1932, he received two offers for his next assignment, and once again they involved training and a job teaching and directing army athletics at West Point. If consistency is a virtue, the military bureaucrats making decisions about Eisenhower’s career were preparing themselves to win an international award for their ability to ignore contradictory evidence and hew to an outdated line of reasoning. These repeated rebuffs were creating mounting tension in Eisenhower’s life, a tension that began to create problems with his health. He had experienced a short bout of gastrointestinal distress when he was a cadet, but his Panama epiphany was followed by a series of more serious episodes that proved difficult to diagnose and treat. Were they stress-related? Was he paying a personal price for his charged-up professional ambitions? We cannot be certain (any more than he or his doctors could be), but the correlation is convincing. As is the manner in which the outbreaks continued.35

  Fortunately for Ike, by the time he had to make a decision about his next post, he had a third choice. He had recently gained the enthusiastic support of the most powerful man in the American army, Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur. In his current office since November 1930, MacArthur was still molding his team. He saw in Eisenhower an officer who was a team player, who produced on demand, who had substantial literary ability, and who clearly would strengthen the Chief of Staff’s organization. It was a significant accomplishment in 1931 to have General MacArthur acknowledge Ike’s “outstanding talents” in performing “highly important missions.”36 Now the Chief of Staff asked Eisenhower to serve as his assistant—an offer that was impossible for Ike to refuse.

  As Ike already knew, this new job could be dangerous. He would be under the thumb of an officer far more demanding, difficult, and powerful than Major Xenophon H. Price or even General Pershing. Although it was obvious that one slip might send him back to coaching football at some distant, dusty army post, Ike accepted MacArthur’s offer. Eisenhower would soon have new reasons to wonder whether he had made the right choice.

  Five

  General Douglas MacArthur and Eisenhower confronting the Bonus Army in Washington in 1932. Printed with permission of Getty Images.

  Tested

  Now forty years old and an experienced, well-traveled major, Eisenhower should have been fully prepared to understand and work with any superior officer. But hardly anyone was fully prepared to deal with General Douglas MacArthur, an officer whose personality and accomplishments produced complex mixtures of astonishment, envy, awe, and some fear on the part of those with whom he served. Chief of Staff MacArthur was a combination of Ike’s successful older brother, his fiercely demanding father, and a brilliant war hero, all rolled together in the person of the US Army’s most flamboyant four-star general.1 MacArthur was as likely as any officer in the entire US Army to spark Ike’s pent-up anger and hostility toward authority—especially authority that he could not always respect. It would take patience worthy of Job if Eisenhower was going to avoid a blow-up with MacArthur.

  The two officers were mirror images: “Ike asked to be liked, and he was; MacArthur demanded that he be revered, and he wasn’t. He had no diminutive. Even his wife addressed him as ‘General.’ ”2 MacArthur’s family was upper-class just as surely as Ike’s was working-class.3 While Eisenhower’s family was profoundly pacifist, MacArthur’s was US Army to the bone. His father, General Arthur MacArthur II, won a Medal of Honor for his bravery in battle during the Civil War. In the years that followed, he served in a long list of dreary stations in the western United States, forts that young Douglas loved almost as much as his mother detested them. Throughout these trying years, the outspoken Arthur made some enemies, but he also made some powerful friends, including two men who had served under him and would later become Army Chief of Staff: General Peyton C. March and General John J. Pershing.4

  Their influence would come into play after Douglas did his part by graduating first in the class of 1903 at West Point. Like Ike, Douglas had a taste for analysis and hated the military academy’s dull style of rote learning. Unlike Ike, MacArthur “bent with the system, aware that a lowly cadet could not change it.”5

  He was not perfect. Early on in his career as an officer, he did not always remember how to yield to authority and had some troubling, Ike-like encounters with his superior officers.6 He was given to special pleading, but he learned how to suppress that trait and turned his career around while serving at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Good fortune and a touch of influence later placed him in Washington, DC, in 1912, serving as an assistant to the Chief of Staff, Major General Leonard Wood.

  Promoted to major in 1915, MacArthur remained with the General Staff until the United States entered the world war. Then he became chief of staff of the “Rainbow Division,” so nicknamed because the 42nd Division was stitched together from various National Guard units. Advancing quickly to colonel, MacArthur went to France with the American Expeditionary Force in 1917. Given the opportunity that had been repeatedly denied to Eisenhower, MacArthur served with distinction and experienced the kind of success in combat that most officers dream about but seldom achieve.7 He soon had a chest adorned with medals that attested to his heroism in action. Contemptuous of danger, he frequently led his troops into battle from the front, not from the rear lines. Wounded in action, MacArthur recovered in time to take part in the defeat of the German forces that had earlier pushed almost to Paris. In the critical St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne offenses, MacArthur’s troops pushed deeply into the enemy lines and played an important role in tipping the balance of the war in favor of the Allied armies.8

  Despite the postwar sag in the army, MacArthur continued his relentless ascent. He served as superintendent at West Point, where he did his best to reform an institution that had long been mired in an educational style more suited to America’s Civil War than to the nation’s prominent role in the world politics of the twentieth century. Later, in the Philippines, MacArthur attempted with some success to break down barriers between Americans and Filipinos and to encourage respect in Washington, DC, for Filipino soldiers.9 In 1930, at the age of fifty, he became a four-star general and Chief of Staff of the US Army.

  Like any talented, successful leader, General MacArthur built a team that would serve his interests as well as those of the US Army and the nation. Eisenhower, who was then an assistant to General Moseley, came to his attention, and MacArthur gradually came to use more and more of Ike’s time and energy.10 Upon officially becoming MacArthur’s military assistant, Ike already had a full book of knowledge on the Chief of Staff.

  Fortunately, we can still read that book today. In the middle of June 1932, Ike used his diary to compile sketches of many of those with whom he worked, including his new boss. The evaluations that accompanied each sketch were just what you would expect from a middle-aged officer who was a good poker player. His observations were shrewd and insightful. They provide a window on the weaknesses and strengths of some of the men most important to American military policy in those depression years. They also provide a window on Ike’s personality. Sitting on the bottom ledge of Ike’s evaluations were the assistant secretary of war for air (“A nice little boy”) and a boot-licking colonel who was “slow, if not stupid.” The secretary of war, Patrick J. Hurley, was “jealous and unstable”: “He is not big enough to go higher,” Ike wrote. Up near the top of Eisenhower’s personal grade sheet were three officers. It is no surprise to find that Major General Fox Conner was “a wonderful officer and leader with a splendid analytical mind.” Eisenhower was also a fan of General Moseley, who was “honest,” “straightforward,” and possessed of “great moral courage.”

&nb
sp; Ike had a bit more trouble with General MacArthur. He characterized his new boss as “essentially a romantic figure.” The Chief of Staff was “a genius at giving concise and clear instructions.” He was also “impulsive—able, even brilliant—quick—tenacious of his views and extremely self-confident.” There was clearly some danger here. But Eisenhower noted with pride that the top officer in the service had assured him “that as long as he stays in the Army I am one of the people earmarked for his ‘gang.’ ”11 As it turned out, that would be almost true.

  The Bonus Army Threatens America

  A few weeks later, Ike was probably having some second thoughts about being in MacArthur’s “gang.” The first serious strain in their relations came in July 1932, in the final days of the Bonus Army. In some of the worst months of the Great Depression, ex-servicemen from World War I had marched on Washington, DC, to demand early payment of the bonuses Congress had promised them. But like the rest of the nation, the government was short of money, and so Congress refused. The veterans—many thousands of them—hunkered down in empty government buildings and on the mudflats of the Anacostia River. Seeking to turn a battle into a war of attrition, the vets built a shantytown that protected them from the worst of the winter weather but not, eventually, from General MacArthur and the US Army in which they had served.12