Historical Figure
Dwight D. Eisenhower
1890–1969
World War II general, U.S. president from 1953 to 1961
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"Farewell Address" — January 17, 1961
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Biography
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. Earlier, during World War II, he became a General of the Army, and was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe. Eisenhower planned and supervised two of the most consequential military campaigns of the War: Operation Torch in the North Africa campaign in 1942–1943 and the invasion of Normandy in 1944.
Timeline
The story of Dwight D. Eisenhower, told in moments.
Commands Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa. He's never seen combat. He was a staff officer for 27 years. Marshall and Roosevelt pick him over 366 more senior officers because he's a coalition builder. The British, the French, and the Americans all trust him.
D-Day. Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force. 156,000 troops cross the English Channel. He writes a note in his pocket taking full blame if the invasion fails. It doesn't fail. But he keeps the note.
Elected president in a landslide over Adlai Stevenson. "I Like Ike." He's running as a Republican but he's really running against Robert Taft's isolationism. He wants NATO to hold. It holds.
Sends the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas. Nine Black students need to enter Central High School. Governor Faubus has called out the National Guard to block them. Eisenhower federalizes the Guard and sends paratroopers. The students walk in.
Signs the Federal-Aid Highway Act. 41,000 miles of interstate highways. The largest public works project in American history. He got the idea in 1919, when a military convoy took 62 days to cross the country on dirt roads. He saw the German autobahn in 1945. The two memories converge.
Farewell address. Three days before leaving office, he warns the nation about the "military-industrial complex." A five-star general, a war hero, a two-term president, using his last public words to say: watch the defense contractors. Nobody expected it.
Dies at Walter Reed Hospital. He is 78. His last words: "I want to go. God, take me."
In Their Own Words (20)
I'm going to command the whole shebang.
Comment to his wife Mamie, after being informed by George Marshall that he would be in command of Operation Overlord, as quoted in Eisenhower : A Soldier's Life (2003) by Carlo D'Este, p. 307, 2003
[James R. Killian] saw Eisenhower a few months before his death. The former President asked about "my scientists" and said, "You know, Jim, this bunch of scientists was one of the few groups that I encountered in Washington who seemed to be there to help the country and not themselves."
Quoted in Rabi, Scientist and Citizen (2000) by John S. Rigden, p. 251, 2000
It is my personal conviction that almost any one of the newborn states of the world would far rather embrace Communism or any other form of dictatorship than acknowledge the political domination of another government, even though that brought to each citizen a far higher standard of living.
As quoted in Eisenhower and the Suez Crisis of 1956 (1995) by Cole C. Kingseed, p. 27, 1995
Steady, Monty. You can't speak to me like that. I'm your boss.
Response to violent criticism by Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein about Eisenhower's broad front tactics before Operation Market Garden, as quoted in Arnhem — A Tragedy of Errors (1994) by Peter Harclerode, p. 27 and BBC documentary D-Day to Berlin, on Eisenhower's aircraft at Brussels airport on 10 September 1944., 1994
When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing and as we sat there in the warmth of the summer afternoon on a river bank, we talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up. I told him that I wanted to be a real major league baseball player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he'd like to be President of the United States. Neither of us got our wish.
As quoted in Baseball's Greatest Quotes (1992) by Paul Dickson; cited in "Game Day in the Majors" at the Library of Congress, 1992
Artifacts (15)
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