Eisenhower in War and Peace

As a general, Eisenhower commanded the greatest international undertaking in history. After successful campaigns in North Africa and Sicily, he was selected by Roosevelt to lead the Normandy invasion--a task that required an exceptional ability to work with difficult allies under a multi-national umbrella. FDR recognized Ike's exceptional talent in this respect, and to the surprise of most (including Stalin, Churchill, Stimson, and Hopkins), passed over General Marshall to entrust the task to Eisenhower. Roosevelt's judgment proved correct, and despite the inevitable friction of coalition warfare, Ike waged a masterful campaign which left no ally disappointed. Dwight Eisenhower believed the United States should never go to war unless its national survival was at stake. As president, Eisenhower ended a three-year, no-win war in Korea with honor and dignity; resisted calls for preventive wars against the Soviet Union and China; deployed the Seventh Fleet (with congressional authorization) to protect Formosa from invasion; faced down Khrushchev over Berlin; and restored stability in Lebanon when sectarian violence threatened to pull the country apart. When Britain, France, and Israel seized the Suez canal in 1956, Eisenhower forced them to withdraw, toppling Anthony Eden's government in London, and threatening financial sanctions against Israel. That even-handed approach to the Middle East not only kept the peace but enhanced American prestige throughout the world. On the home front, Ike punctured the Roosevelt coalition, weaned the Republican party from its isolationist past, restored the nation's sanity after the McCarthyite binge of Communist witch hunting, and proved unbeatable at the polls. In 1957, when a United States District Court in Little Rock, Arkansas, ordered the desegregation of Central High, Eisenhower dispatched the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell to enforce the court's order. And Jean Edward Smith authoritatively brings these impressive moments, along with many others, to life in this triumphant biography.