by Diana Loski

 Sometimes throughout history, the stars align, and the right person is at the right place at the right time.  On December 7, 1941 with the attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy upon Pearl Harbor, the United States was thrown into a world war.  The man who would become the Supreme Allied Commander in the European Theater was also one who understood the gravity of the situation in the Pacific Theater.  Dwight D. Eisenhower was, on that fateful Sunday, back at the place where one could say he had experienced new beginnings – at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.  The Texas fort had been his first major assignment as a newly graduated officer from West Point.  It was the place where he had met his wife, Mamie.  It was the place where, 35 years later, he heard the grim news of the Pearl Harbor attack, and the war that he had long believed America would not escape had come.  That same day he received a phone call.  He was needed in Washington.  The person who wanted him there was General George Marshall, the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army.¹

When Ike boarded a plane a few days later, he could not have known about the role he would play in the global war.  For his entire life, though he was not aware of it, he had been prepared for it.

From childhood, Ike, born in the middle of a family of six surviving boys, had to learn the art of negotiation.  He also had to learn how to get along with others as well as defend himself, and which incident required diplomacy and which required fighting back.  With his devotedly religious parents who sometimes found themselves at odds with other members of the family, Ike learned how easily controversy emerged – and how to avoid it.  His appointment to West Point was so that, since the family had little money, thus emerged a way to get an education.²

Ike’s experience at West Point served as the polish that cemented the values and devotion to his country that he had already felt throughout his youth.  With his first assignment at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, he met his future wife.  After a courtship of several months, they were married on July 1, 1916.  Just over a year later, their first son, Doud Dwight (or Icky) was born.³

With the marriage and subsequent birth of their son, the Eisenhowers knew that war in Europe was likely going to include Ike on some level.  Though he wanted desperately to go overseas, the assignment given was not to his liking – yet it helped to shape the commander he became.  Because the battlefield at Gettysburg had been made into a national park in 1895, it was largely unchanged.  It closely resembled the Ardennes region of eastern France and Belgium.  It became the perfect training ground for the tank, the new weapon.  Ike was named as the commander of Camp Colt at Gettysburg in the spring of 1918.

In the fall of 1918, the influenza epidemic reached Camp Colt, and soldiers succumbed quickly to the disease.  It was recorded that the town lost 175 to the flu.  Eisenhower quickly learned ways to keep the disease from spreading and implemented them.  The news of the low death numbers from the camp reached his superiors, and Ike sent officers from the camp to teach the other camps how to combat the pandemic.⁴  

Though the Eisenhowers escaped the pandemic, a terrible loss still came to them while stationed soon afterward at Fort Meade in Maryland.  Their son, Icky, died at age 3 from scarlet fever.  Ike later wrote, forty-five years after the loss, “ This was the greatest disappointment and disaster in my life, the one I have never been able to forget completely.  Today, when I think of it, even now as I write of it, the keenness of our loss comes back to me as fresh and as terrible as it was in that long dark day soon after Christmas 1920.”⁵

That terrible tragedy, too, helped to prepare a future commander – one who could relate to loss, and one who would not needlessly sacrifice other people’s sons and daughters.

A year after losing Icky, Mamie was again expecting, and Ike received a new assignment.  Someone else had noticed Ike’s abilities.  He was General Fox Conner, the former aide to General John Pershing during the first World War.  Conner was placed in command of troops to protect the Panama Canal, which was currently under construction through the jungles of Central America.  He wanted Ike with him.  There was resistance from others in command, but Conner insisted.

In the summer of 1922, Mamie returned to Denver to give birth.  Ike spent those endless days with Fox Conner.  Daily they inspected the progress, riding horses for hours and talking.  Conner instructed Ike to study the history of great battles and their leaders.  While Ike had read about the victorious leaders from Alexander the Great and Hannibal to Lee and Meade at Gettysburg, he had vacated studying after West Point.  Conner reignited an interest that would serve Eisenhower in the future.  He also warned Ike, “We cannot escape another great war.  When we go into that war it will be in company with allies.  Systems of single command will have to be worked out.”  He then told Ike the man to command them should be General George Marshall.  Conner called him, “a genius.”⁶

After serving in Panama, the Eisenhowers returned to the states, and Ike attended the Command and General Staff School.  Because of his stint in Panama, he missed attending the Infantry school at Fort Benning in Georgia.  He was concerned, as it was akin to “attending college without going to high school.”  Again, Fox Conner intervened.  He used his influence to get Ike enrolled instead at Fort Leavenworth – a school more highly ranked.  Another old friend stepped in to help, too.  George Patton, a few years older, had already taken the course, and lent Ike his notes.  Ike worked hard, and graduated first in his class in 1926.⁷  

Ike’s next assignment was to prepare a documented history for the American Battlefield Monuments Commission.  By now a competent writer and historian, Ike received an assignment to work for the commission.  The general in charge was the former commander during the recent Great War: General Pershing.  Pershing’s deputy Chief of Staff was Fox Conner.  Again, Ike’s old commander made a suggestion, and Ike was placed in the position.⁸

A trip to the fields of World War I proved necessary for the young protégé, and he and Mamie spent a year in France.  It was a time to reconnect for the couple, and also familiarized the young officer with the place that would see war again.

Once Ike returned to Washington, he again served in the War Department.  At that time another general noticed and approved of Ike’s skills and unobtrusive demeanor. 

The elections of 1932 changed the Presidency.  The advent of the Great Depression ousted President Herbert Hoover, who was replaced with Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Ike, who was politically diffident, had worked with Hoover’s Chief of Staff until the new administration took over in early 1933.  The new Chief of Staff was General Douglas MacArthur.  He, too, had noticed Eisenhower’s abilities.  MacArthur chose Ike to be his personal military assistant.  In the autumn of 1935 a need arose to help the new Philippine government, which was recently given independent status.  General MacArthur was chosen to aid the new President of that country, Manuel Quezon, in raising a national army.  MacArthur insisted that Ike accompany him.  Ike remembered, “ He said that he and I had worked together for a long time and he didn’t want to bring in somebody new.”  While MacArthur indicated that Ike would only need to be in Manila for about a year, the time increased to four years.  Mamie, who was supportive of her husband, lived in the Philippines much of the time, with their son, John.⁹

To build a military and a government from almost nothing was a gargantuan task. In addition of learning to budget and work tirelessly to help the new Commonwealth, the realization of future invasion by Japan grew imminent.  As the time approached for Eisenhower to leave, Germany had invaded Poland, and World War II had begun.  “ There was an uneasiness about the possibility of war ,” Ike remembered.  Even in faraway Manila, there was division as some supported the Nazi leader and others, which Ike said were “ the rest of us ” knew the terrible danger of the combative and unstable Hitler.  Once war was declared in Europe, Ike approached MacArthur and requested going home to prepare and serve in the war.¹⁰

The general resisted, and told Ike he was making a mistake.  Eisenhower answered, “ because the War Department had decided I was more useful as an instructor in the United States than as a fighting man in World War I, I had missed combat in that conflict.  I was now determined to do everything I could to make sure I would not miss this crisis of our country.”¹¹

He did not miss it.  The skills and experience he had garnered over the years had prepared him.  When General Marshall called him on the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, the man Fox Conner had called “a genius” knew the perfect man to lead the Allies the perilous and long-lasting storm of war.

America was woefully unprepared for the war.  Ike recalled that even Poland, the nation that fell easily into Hitler’s hands, had more trained soldiers and better equipment in their military than America did at the time.  Ike wrote, “ the American people, in their abhorrence of war, denied themselves a military posture….the handicaps were many.”¹²

Ike’s ability to command respect, his devotion to America and to the vanquished, his compassion, and his years of experience from Camp Colt in Gettysburg to the Philippines had prepared him for the greatest test of his life.  Millions of lives were dependent upon the right person for the task.

During the war, many criticized the fact that it took the Allied forces two years before the D-Day invasion and nearly another year to end the war against the Nazis.  It took every minute of those years for the man in charge of the war in Europe to train and prepare the men and women involved, to accumulate the necessary arsenals and to unite the Allies to end an evil empire, while keeping a studied eye on the needs of those in the Pacific Theater. 

While some may believe that Ike rose out of obscurity to his role as Supreme Allied Commander, that was not the case.  The years of preparation with their continuous hardships and triumphs had been instrumental in the making of a commander.  Dwight D. Eisenhower was that commander.  He passed the test, much to the relief of a grateful United States – and an equally grateful world.

We could really use him now.

Sources:  Angelo, Beverly.  First Mothers .  New York: HarperCollins, 2000.  Eisenhower, Dwight D.  At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends .  National Park Service: Eastern Acorn Press, 1998 (reprint, first published in 1967).  Eisenhower, Dwight D.  Crusade in Europe .  New York:

Doubleday & Company, 1948.  Holl, Jack M.  The Religious Journey of Dwight D. Eisenhower:  Duty, God, and Country .  Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Ferdmans Publishing Co., 2021.

End Notes: 

1.  Eisenhower, Crusade , p. 14. 

2.  Angelo, p. 95.  Holl, pp. 31-32, 49. 

3.  Angelo, p. 97-99.  Eisenhower, At Ease , p. 132. 

4.  Eisenhower, At Ease , p. 149. 

5.  Ibid., pp. 181-182. 

6.  Eisenhower, At Ease , pp. 194-195. Eisenhower, Crusade , p. 18. 

7.  Holl, pp. 86-87. 

8.  Ibid. 

9.  Eisenhower, At Ease , pp. 218-219. 

10.  Ibid., p. 231. 

11.  Ibid. 

12.  Eisenhower, Crusade , p. 7.