A model of leadership: 75 years later, we still like Dwight D. Eisenhower
In war and peace, Dwight D. Eisenhower showed courage, wisdom and perseverance.
When Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower received the German surrender, signed by General Alfred Jodl, at the allied headquarters in Reims, France, on May 7, 1945, it was a brief meeting. But they both knew this was a moment freighted with historical significance.
Eisenhower’s grandson, David, thinks he would have felt a sense of relief and elation that day, 75 years ago. He lived with his grandparents, Dwight and Mamie, at their Gettysburg farm in the 1960s. Later, he examined wartime records and interviewed his grandfather’s contemporaries for his book, Eisenhower at War, 1943-45 (1986), which was a finalist for a Pulitzer prize in history.
“I can’t help but think my grandfather became a very different person after this,” Eisenhower, 72, told Inquirer. “It’s the kind of affirmation you could never experience again. I think it changed the way he looked at high responsibility. They were enacting something that would be remembered forever. And I can imagine this was universally felt throughout the Allied forces in Europe.” Jodl signed the surrender at 2.41am in a small windowless room in a converted red-brick high school building. There, in Eisenhower’s war room, Jodl sat at a long wooden table with ashtrays, pencils and the surrender documents laid out for him. Maps detailing troop movements and convoy planning covered the walls.
“With this signature the German people and the German armed forces are, for better or worse, delivered into the victor’s hands,” Jodl said to Eisenhower’s chief of staff, Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith. There was no response. No salutes. Jodl was then taken to Eisenhower’s office.
Jodl, who represented the German High Command, was asked if he understood what he had signed. “Ja,” he replied. “You will, officially and personally, be held responsible if the terms of this surrender are violated,” Eisenhower instructed. “That is all.” Jodl saluted and departed.
Eisenhower, who had overseen the largest amphibious invasion force on D-Day in June 1944, had completed his mission: victory in Europe. It now had to be communicated to London. Eisenhower rejected several draft messages. There was no need for embellishment; the moment spoke for itself: “The mission of this Allied Force was fulfilled at 0241, local time, May 7th, 1945.” Staff had been drafting, typing and retyping the documents in English, French and Russian for days. They were exhausted. Before bed, they celebrated with Veuve Clicquot served in military-issue tin cups. At 11.01pm the next day, May 8, the war in Europe would end. An amended and definitive text was signed at a more formal ceremony in Berlin at 12.16am on May 9, and backdated.
The battle waged by the Allies against the Axis powers since September 1939 was ultimately about freedom from tyranny. The Nazi war machine was as destructive as it was depraved, and its defeat, which once seemed improbable, was now complete. The US was a sleeping giant at the outbreak of war but it had awoken and transformed into a nation with immense military power.
When the media embargo of the surrender was broken early, it was decided that Victory in Europe Day — VE Day — would be celebrated on May 8. It marked the end of the war in Europe that had raged across many countries and razed multiple cities. Homes, businesses and livelihoods were ruined. The economy was wrecked. Millions had been killed, wounded or captured.
There were joyous celebrations across Europe on VE Day as people took to the streets to sing, dance and cheer. In London, revellers climbed on to buses and cars, splashed in the fountains, waved flags and gave the “V for Victory” sign. Winston Churchill addressed Britons via radio and joined the royal family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.
In Australia, celebrations were just as boisterous in the evening of May 7. In Sydney and Melbourne, workers took to the streets as a snowstorm of paper fell from office buildings above. Pubs were full. There was singing and dancing, and conga lines snaking around city corners. On May 8 and 9 the celebrations continued and there were church services and commemorations at war memorials.
But the revelry was somewhat tempered because the war in the Pacific was not over. While the tide against the Japanese had been turned in the Battle of Midway in June 1942, the war went on. It was not until Harry Truman authorised the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki three months later, in August 1945, that the war would end.
It was Eisenhower’s temperament, intelligence and grasp of strategy that made him ideally suited to being the supreme commander of Operation Overlord: the invasion of German-occupied western Europe. Eisenhower had graduated from West Point in 1915 but did not serve abroad during World War I. Much of his military career had been in training, planning, advising and supervising. He had no active combat experience and he had not commanded troops before Operation Torch, the invasion of French North Africa, in November 1942.
Franklin Roosevelt recognised Eisenhower’s organisational and strategic planning capacity, his leadership skills and knack for getting along with brilliant but usually egocentric military leaders and politicians. Eisenhower’s genius was seeing the entire field of command, assessing the challenges and executing a plan for victory. He was single-minded, determined and shunned pomposity and showmanship.
David Eisenhower believes World War II was the central event of his grandfather’s career. Moreover, Dwight Eisenhower ran for president to consolidate the Allied victory and lessen Cold War tensions. An “iron curtain” had descended across Europe. US troops were fighting in Korea. Senator Joseph McCarthy was questioning whether the US had been wrong to align itself with the Soviet Union.
Democrats and Republicans tried to draft Eisenhower. Truman offered to serve as Eisenhower’s vice-president if Eisenhower headed the Democratic ticket in 1948. In May 1952, Eisenhower resigned as NATO Supreme Commander to seek the Republican nomination for president. He was nominated and won the November election in a landslide. He was re-elected four years later by an even bigger margin over two-time Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson. Eisenhower’s approval rating, measured by Gallup, reached 79 per cent in December 1956.
Eisenhower’s wartime leadership influenced how he approached the presidency. Across two terms, from 1953 to 1961, he focused on strategic direction rather than taking operational responsibility for policy development and implementation. In the White House, there were clear lines of communication and responsibility. Decision-making was co-ordinated, streamlined and overseen by an army-style chief of staff.
His signature presidential achievements include the Interstate Highway System, signing the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sending troops to Little Rock to enforce desegregation of schools, establishing NASA, reducing deficits and balancing the budget, governing during a time of relative prosperity and an expanding middle class, ending the conflict in Korea, easing Cold War tensions and avoiding further foreign wars.
The notion that Eisenhower was a largely passive president, which gained currency in the 1960s and 70s, was demolished by Fred Greenstein’s book, The Hidden-Hand Presidency (1982). He documented how Eisenhower used his prestige and popularity to fulfil the symbolic role of head of state and behind the scenes was a shrewd political operator who was very much engaged in key areas.
In December 1968, David Eisenhower married Julie Nixon, the daughter of Richard Nixon, who had served as Eisenhower’s vice-president. David spoke to Nixon at length about the presidency and was given access to his diaries, notes and letters. As the grandson and son-in-law of presidents, he has a unique perspective on political leadership. He wrote about his grandfather’s post-presidential years in his book Going Home to Glory (2010).
Dwight Eisenhower is remembered as genial, friendly, relatable. “I Like Ike”, a campaign song written by Irving Berlin, encapsulated this. He was named the most admired man in America a year before he died in March 1969. David Eisenhower recalled his grandfather being imposing and often unapproachable rather than always amiable. Nevertheless, they were close. Dwight Eisenhower renamed the presidential retreat, Camp David, in honour of his grandson.
“He prepared himself for everything,” David Eisenhower recalled. “This was the foundation for all of the traits you associate with leadership: integrity, determination, ability to think long-range and getting things done. He had moral and physical courage, and empathy. He liked people. He was energetic and gregarious. He was fair. He understood that happiness and success in life grows out of achievement and that achievement comes from hard work.”
In the winter of 1962, Dwight Eisenhower wrote his grandson a letter reminding him “to take your own part but never to be arrogant; to be polite and courteous but never servile; to value true friends above material things, and to be honest and loyal to all those people and those teachings that command your respect”.
It is this character, in war and in peace, that above all personifies that great generation of men and women, soldiers and citizens, who served and sacrificed to fight and win the greatest battle for “peace, progress and prosperity” in the 20th century.
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