The Sublime Commander

By Donald Morrison

EISENHOWER: SOLDIER, GENERAL OF THE ARMY, PRESIDENT-ELECT

by Stephen E. Ambrose; Simon & Schuster; 637 pages; $22.95

In the minds of some scholars, he was a mediocre President, indifferent to the civil rights movement, spineless in the face of McCarthyism, slow of wit and out of touch with the currents of upheaval swirling beneath the calm surface of the 1950s. To more and more students of the era, however, Dwight David Eisenhower was a canny leader who brilliantly outmaneuvered subordinates and statesmen. Author and Biographer Stephen E. Ambrose can claim a seat in each camp.

A professor of history at the University of New Orleans and an editor of Eisenhower's papers, Ambrose is a careful, thorough critic of Ike as citizen, soldier and President. But he is also something of a fan, beguiled by a figure who was "decisive, well disciplined, courageous, dedicated ... intensely curious about people and places, often refreshingly naive, fun-loving--in short a wonderful man to know or be around."

There is indeed much to admire in a man who overcame such an obvious lack of promise. As a boy in Abilene, Kans., Ike excelled at little beyond football. At West Point, from which he graduated in 1915 an unimpressive 61st in a class of 164, he excelled at little beyond football. As a young Army officer, he excelled at little beyond coaching the unit football team. World War I ended before Eisenhower could get to Europe, and in the shrunken interwar Army, he was stuck at the rank of major for 16 years. His career going nowhere, Eisenhower almost left the Army to become military-affairs editor of a newspaper chain.

A few of his superiors, however, saw in the young officer qualities that did not leap from his 201 file. He had a grin that could melt the coldest commanding officer. He could write a mean memo, a talent then, as now, in short supply in the Army. He could take an abandoned field at Gettysburg, Pa., and turn it into a tank corps training camp with impressive speed and imagination, and without benefit of tanks. Douglas MacArthur picked Eisenhower in 1935 to help him build an army for the soon-to-be-independent Philippines. At the outbreak of World War II, General George Marshall, newly appointed Army Chief of Staff, tapped the 51-year-old colonel to be one of his top aides.

As a result, Ike almost missed that war too. Marshall insisted that he stay in the Pentagon drafting battle plans; Eisenhower lobbied to be sent to the front. Marshall finally relented and shipped him to England in 1942 to command U.S. forces there, even though he had never seen combat. Photogenic, affable and straight-talking, he turned out to be a press agent's dream--but a disaster as a strategist. Ike was too deferential to the British in North Africa and overly cautious in the Italian campaign; he became bogged down in squabbling with General Charles de Gaulle and Admiral Jean Darlan over France's fate. But he learned fast, and by December 1943, when he took command of all Allied forces for the Normandy landing, Ike was sure and decisive. But he was not always right. Too many days and lives were squandered at Arnhem in 1944, argues Ambrose, when the Allies should have been trying to seize Antwerp. That would have opened up the European port nearest Germany's heartland and, he asserts, ended the war months sooner. Even worse, as the Wehrmacht collapsed, Eisenhower turned his armies toward the Alps instead of racing the Soviets to Berlin, a blunder that left a lasting imprint on the map of Europe.

In diaries, memoirs and postwar interviews, Eisenhower was not entirely candid about the war. He blandly insisted that Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery had been a pleasure to work with; Ambrose describes Eisenhower as perpetually furious at the British leader's surliness and reluctance to go on the offensive. For years Ike claimed that he had been hostile to the Soviets from the first; his biographer depicts him as so eager to prove American good faith at war's end that he never challenged the idea of Soviet troops in Germany.

On the whole, however, Ambrose remains a fan. He finds kind words even for some of Eisenhower's more forgettable episodes, like his postwar presidency of Columbia University: though often criticized for his reclusiveness, lack of sophistication and reluctance to stand up for academic freedom, Eisenhower launched more new programs in a 2 1/2-year span than most of his predecessors. Some of his highest, and lowest, moments came in the 1952 presidential race, which he entered with feigned reluctance. The candidate did not have the nerve to repudiate Wisconsin's red-baiting Joseph McCarthy--even after he smeared General Marshall, Ike's patron--but otherwise took firm command of the campaign. He did, for instance, shrewdly overrule professional advice that he ignore the South and avoid making peace with his Republican rival, isolationist Senator Robert Taft of Ohio. He rejected right-wing Republican demands for a drastic escalation of the Korean conflict, and instead sealed his election victory with a single, mostly meaningless but nonetheless brilliant declaration: "I shall go to Korea."

The Eisenhower of Eisenhower is a tower of appealing contradictions: ambitious but diffident; short-tempered but generous; flirtatious with his wartime driver Kay Summersby, but, Ambrose insists, scrupulously faithful to Wife Mamie. Surveying his subject's pre-White House career, Ambrose concludes, "It can be argued that no man elected to the presidency was ever better prepared for the demands of the job."

That rather breathtaking assertion will be argued in detail in Volume II of Ambrose's ambitious, two-part biography. If the sequel is as fond, closely researched and persuasively fair as Volume I, then the soldier from Abilene--stuck at the rank of major-but-misunderstood President for 14 years since his death--is due for a promotion. --By Donald Morrison

Excerpt

He awoke at 3:30 a.m. A wind of almost hurricane proportions was shaking his trailer. The rain seemed to be traveling in horizontal streaks. He dressed and gloomily drove through a mile of mud to Southwick House for the last meeting. It was still not too late to call off the [Normandy] operation ... The ships were sailing into the Channel. If they were to be called back, it had to be done now. The Supreme Commander was the only man who could do it. Eisenhower thought for a moment, then said quietly but clearly, 'O.K., let's go.' And again, cheers rang through Southwick House.

Then the commanders rushed from their chairs and dashed outside to get to their command posts. Within 30 seconds the mess room was empty, except for Eisenhower." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.