by Jim Newton
The demands on Hobby had grown more intense, not less. Her husband, the former Texas governor, was fighting ill health, and she was frantically overseeing the completion of the Salk vaccine for polio and its promise to halt the terrifying disease. Once known as infantile paralysis, polio was a global scourge that first devastated the United States in 1916, when twenty-seven thousand people were paralyzed after being felled by the virus; six thousand died. Year after year, the virus spread and grew in alarming epidemics. In 1952, the year Eisenhower was elected, more than fifty-seven thousand Americans were infected. Parents kept children out of school, forbade them to swim in public pools, prohibited them from mingling in public places.
Jonas Salk’s breakthrough vaccine was subjected to an extraordinary field test during the early 1950s. On April 12, 1955, the tenth anniversary of the death of FDR—himself a victim of polio—scientists confirmed its efficacy. Americans flocked to get the vaccine. Hobby’s department, HEW, oversaw its distribution and early release, thrusting Hobby into the middle of an experiment of nearly unimaginable promise.
With the announcement of the vaccine’s successful field test, families pleaded for access to it. HEW selected six manufacturers that produced the vaccine under provisional rules and then were granted licenses. Distribution began immediately, but on April 26 six children who had been vaccinated were diagnosed with polio. Cutter Laboratories, which had produced those vaccines, recalled its product from the market, but by early May the number of infected children had grown to fifty-two. Although that must be considered in light of the five million who had been vaccinated over those weeks, the whipsawing of public hope and fear was agonizing to the administration and Hobby. HEW called for a halt to vaccinations on May 6 and intensively examined the vaccine and the labs producing it; the interruption was brief, and vaccines soon resumed.
But the stress of that episode, added to her worry for her husband, pushed Hobby to her limit. On July 13, she submitted her resignation, citing “personal reasons of a high order” and explaining that nothing less “could persuade me to leave your Administration.” Eisenhower knew this was coming, but he was saddened nonetheless. “All who knew you as a dedicated, inspired American leader will miss your voice and counsel in Government,” he wrote back the same day, in what he described as “one of the hardest letters I have ever had to write.” “None will miss you more,” he added, “than Mrs. Eisenhower and myself.” When Hobby’s resignation was made public, it was George Humphrey who most memorably captured the administration’s loss. “She is,” Humphrey said, “the best man in the Cabinet.”
It was at that sad instant that Ike packed his bags for Geneva. Before leaving, he spoke briefly to the American people. He was going, the president explained, because no effort in the service of peace could be wasted. “We want peace,” he said. “We cannot look at this whole situation without realizing, first, that pessimism never won any battles, whether in peace or in war.” He was going not to compromise with Communism but rather to exercise tolerance, “to try to see the other fellow’s viewpoint as well as we see our own.” He did not guarantee success but promised to try to change the tone of international relations. “I say to you, if we can change the spirit in which these conferences are conducted we will have taken the greatest step toward peace, toward future prosperity and tranquility that has ever been taken in the history of mankind.” Closing, Eisenhower asked his 165 million fellow Americans to pray for peace that coming Sabbath, to demonstrate to the world that America was a nation not of conquest but of sincerity. “That,” he said, “would be a mighty force.”
The Eisenhower family watched from the second floor of the White House, as did several close friends—Bill Robinson, Bob Woodruff, George Humphrey and his wife, Gordon Moore and his. Ike joined them immediately after his address and could see in their faces, some streaked with tears, the anticipation and hope that surrounded Geneva. Less than an hour later, Ike, Mamie, and John departed for Europe. They stopped in Iceland to refuel and were given an elaborate luncheon; although it was just 7:00 a.m. Washington time, the guests opened the affair with martinis. Mamie and John passed the flight playing Scrabble; Mamie won. As they neared their destination, she fretted about spending the nights at a high altitude, but John checked and discovered, to their surprise, that Geneva was only twelve hundred feet above sea level.
Their stay was a blur of administrative details and important conversation, set in the elegant, ordered streets and plazas of the pleasant Swiss city. As the summit drew near, Eisenhower met with his British and French counterparts for a two-hour discussion at the American headquarters, the “Geneva White House,” as it was known. The European delegations had made their reservations earlier and snapped up all available hotel space in Geneva; the Americans were extricated from an embarrassing homelessness by a Swiss-Scottish couple who agreed to rent their fifteen-room lakeside château to the delegation because “we could hardly refuse to offer it to the President.”
The conversation that Sunday morning featured Eisenhower at his most commanding, conversant on a wide range of details, relaxed but guarded, thoroughly in control. Ike urged the French prime minister, Edgar Faure, to edit his remarks to emphasize the importance of German unity, and the leaders reviewed such mundane details as the seating chart for the discussions. A French proposal to cut military expenditures and devote some portion of the savings to an international development fund received exhaustive attention, despite Eisenhower’s clear skepticism. Ike then countered with his thoughts on weapons inspection. The meeting segued into lunch, followed by smaller conversations between various leaders and, finally, a private conclave with an old friend, Sir James Gault. Ike and Gault talked about the war, golf, and fishing as Eisenhower permitted himself a moment of quiet before the rush of the summit; the two retired to dinner alone.
The following morning, quiet Swiss crowds welcomed the delegates as the sun glinted through haze across the blue waters of Lake Geneva. Inside the hall, the participants took their places beneath high ceilings that once sheltered the League of Nations. The Western nations had agreed that Eisenhower would chair the gathering, so he spoke first. His remarks revealed little but stressed both his skepticism of past conferences and his flickering hope that this might be different. “I trust that we are not here merely to catalogue our differences,” he said. “We are not here to repeat the same dreary exercises that have characterized most of our negotiations of the past ten years. We are here in response to the peaceful aspirations of mankind to start the kind of discussions which will inject a new spirit into our diplomacy; and to launch fresh negotiations under conditions of good augury.”
The American delegation regarded the opening remarks as a prelude to the day’s main event, a supper for the six-member Soviet delegation—Nikolai Bulganin, Nikita Khrushchev, Molotov, Georgy Zhukov, Andrei Gromyko, and an interpreter—at the Geneva White House. Eisenhower hosted and surrounded himself with his most trusted aides: Dulles, Hagerty, John Eisenhower, and Douglas MacArthur (Dulles’s aide, not the general), along with Ambassador Bohlen and a few others. Mamie joined the group for a drink, then, by prearrangement, slipped out. For the Americans, the evening’s chief fascination was to lay eyes on a mysterious enemy, one whose rhetoric and actions suggested obdurate hatred for American government and society. There was profound uncertainty about this enemy; two years earlier, Stalin was the sole recognized force in Soviet life. With his death, power had dissipated into shadowy corners. Who, Ike wondered, was his genuine counterpart that evening?
Deprived of any meaningful intelligence into the workings of the Soviet government, Eisenhower naturally imagined that Zhukov held power. Ike and Zhukov had met in the rubble of Berlin, and Zhukov in those years occupied a place of stature in Soviet society not unlike that which Eisenhower held in the West: both victors carried the gratitude of a triumphant people. But Ike had returned to a free nation, while Zhukov returned to Stalin’s yoke. Ike had risen to his nation’s presidency, wh
ile Zhukov for a time disappeared. Many in the West, including Ike, feared him dead.
When the Russians arrived, they were pleasant but notably careful and somewhat nervous. “They were jumpy as hell,” John Eisenhower remembered. They drank “very, very little indeed,” he added. Zhukov had only orange juice, Khrushchev was “most abstemious and proper.” The Soviets exuded, if not exactly warmth, at least manners: “Even Gromyko managed by dint of much effort to smile a couple of times.”
Sizing up the Soviet leaders, John Eisenhower demonstrated the acuity that made him such a valuable adviser to his father. Zhukov, he quickly surmised, “appears frightened and worried.” So depleted did he seem that John Eisenhower wondered if he had been tortured: “Whether he was the physical receiver of actual rubber hose or whether he was only put in fear is, of course, not known.” But Zhukov’s presence was mandatory, so much so that he was forced to miss his daughter’s wedding. He was the icebreaker with Ike and wasted no time reminding Eisenhower of their common history, “the bond of truthfulness between soldiers.” John Eisenhower summed up the rest of the Soviet delegation: Bulganin appeared genial but restrained, “being driven and used principally by someone else”; Molotov as opinionated but stifled; Gromyko, notwithstanding his attempts at a smile, as “sour and fanatic.” It was Khrushchev whom Eisenhower’s son spotted as different, “extroverted and on this occasion pleasant. To the casual observer he is unimpressive, but to underestimate this man would be the gravest of errors.”
The evening passed mainly with small talk. Toasts were exchanged, along with pleasantries and compliments to Mamie. The Soviets “left most decorously at approximately eleven o’clock,” and John Eisenhower eagerly sought out Goodpaster to compare notes on the evening. Shrewdly, the young major spied humanity in his country’s adversaries while recognizing the solid, imposing front that the Soviet leaders presented. “I think the fact of contact does serve to remind each side that the other side has problems,” he added. And of his father, John noted: “Unquestionably Dad dominates a meeting between them.”
Appraising the Soviets was an essential aspect of the summit, but the underlying purpose was to intimidate or cajole them into easing world tensions. Eisenhower believed that the best chance lay in the unveiling of a bold proposal—one sufficiently imaginative to capture the world’s interest and sufficiently inoffensive to coax Soviet agreement or, at a minimum, to expose Soviet intransigence. Rockefeller’s secret group had been at work on such a stroke for weeks. Now, as the summit participants parried ideas, the young aide rushed to Geneva, arriving on July 20.
Ike met that morning over breakfast with Harold Macmillan and Anthony Eden and lunched with Zhukov. Remembering that the conference had forced Zhukov to miss his daughter’s wedding, Ike and Mamie presented him with a pen set and a portable radio, to be given to his daughter in honor of her marriage. “Zhukov was visibly and I am sure genuinely moved,” recalled John, who attended as well. As for the proposal he was now prepared to present to the summit, Ike still said nothing.
The moment arrived at the afternoon session on July 21. Ike was at ease, relaxed from hitting golf balls that morning with John. He was well briefed by Goodpaster and Radford, among others. The Soviet representatives cycled through their proposal on disarmament, a suggestion that all nations renounce the use of nuclear weapons, knowing that the United States would never agree, both because Americans were convinced the Soviets would break any such agreement at will and, more important, because nuclear deterrence was the cornerstone of Eisenhower’s New Look defense strategy. To renounce that threat was to concede Cold War defeat. The Americans listened patiently but without enthusiasm. Finally, it was Eisenhower’s turn.
Ike spoke not from a prepared speech but from notes. He ticked off general topics for a few minutes, then paused. “Gentlemen,” he began again, “since I have been working on this memorandum to present to this Conference, I have been searching my heart and mind for something that I could say here that could convince everyone of the great sincerity of the United States in approaching this problem of disarmament.”
Now Eisenhower presented Rockefeller’s grand idea: the United States would give to the Soviet Union complete blueprints of all American defense facilities and would open its airspace for reconnaissance photography. “You can make all the pictures you choose and take them to your own country to study.” In return, the United States demanded the same access to Soviet defense facilities. This approach, he predicted, “will open wide the avenues of progress for all our peoples.”
The proposal was simple and simply presented. Having placed it before the delegates, Eisenhower concluded: “A sound peace—with security, justice, wellbeing and freedom for the people of the world—can be achieved, but only by patiently and thoughtfully following a hard and sure and tested road.”
Those final words still hung in the air when a clap of thunder exploded outside the room. The boom was deafening, and the lights blinked off. In the dark and sudden stillness, Eisenhower quipped: “I didn’t know I would put the lights out with that speech.” Ike’s easy humor tickled the Soviet delegation immensely; its burly leadership burst into laughter, roaring as the lights came back up.
For a moment, annihilation receded, and peace seemed possible. The British and the French responded eagerly to Eisenhower’s proposal, which was quickly dubbed “Open Skies.” “I wish the people of the world could have been in this conference room to hear the voice of a man speaking from great military experience,” Premier Faure of France said later. “They would have believed that something had changed in the world.” Even the Soviets seemed receptive. Bulganin agreed that the idea had potential and suggested that the foreign ministers of the four nations convene to work on details. All four nations joined in that proposal. “I thought we had the makings of a breakthrough,” John Eisenhower recalled.
At the conclusion of that afternoon’s talks, Eisenhower mingled with the Soviet leaders over cocktails and in the buffet line. Khrushchev was among those milling about the room, and Ike sought him out. He seemed amiable, but, as Eisenhower recalled later, “there was no smile in his voice.” “I don’t agree with the chairman,” Khrushchev said, bluntly dismissing the endorsement of Open Skies that Bulganin had just offered. Such open disagreement among the Soviet leadership was remarkable, and Eisenhower recognized what it signaled about the relationships between his counterparts. “From that moment until the final adjournment of the conference, I wasted no more time probing Mr. Bulganin,” he wrote. Instead, Eisenhower lobbied Khrushchev, the beginning of their long and infuriating association.
Eisenhower at first imagined that Open Skies might capture Soviet support—the proposal seemed so transparently balanced, so genuinely innovative—and Bulganin’s initial enthusiasm seemed to portend a “breakthrough,” as John Eisenhower put it. But the follow-up meeting of the foreign ministers confirmed Dulles’s skepticism and dashed Ike’s hopes. Later, Ike would recall the missed opportunity with bitterness. “Khrushchev,” Eisenhower wrote in retirement, “does not want peace, save on his own terms and in ways that will aggrandize his own power. He is blinded by his dedication to the Marxist theory of world revolution and Communist domination. He cares nothing for the future happiness of the peoples of the world … In our use of the word, he is not, therefore, a statesman, but rather a powerful, skillful, ruthless, and highly ambitious politician.”
It mattered little that Eisenhower was right. Open Skies threatened Khrushchev, and so it failed.
In later years, Eisenhower would come to regard Geneva as a tragic disappointment, but the immediate public reaction was overwhelmingly positive, particularly toward him. Eisenhower’s ever-impressive approval rating jumped notably, increasing five points on the eve of the conference and another three in its aftermath. By August 1955, 75 percent of Americans approved of Eisenhower’s performance, compared with just 11 percent who disapproved. As those numbers suggested, Ike was suffused with goodwill. Back home, he met with
legislative leaders, greeted the annual Boys Nation event, commemorated a new “Atoms for Peace” stamp, and took in a few rounds of golf at Burning Tree, in Bethesda, Maryland. He replaced Oveta Culp Hobby with Marion B. Folsom, who was confirmed without incident.
He tended to ceremonial functions, posed for a portrait, and bade a happy farewell to the nettlesome Admiral Carney. In August, he decamped for a few days at Gettysburg, where he took the Reverend Billy Graham on a tour of the farm, hunted, played golf, and tended to his cattle. It was, by the standards of the presidency, a quiet few weeks, interrupted only by meetings of the cabinet and the National Security Council as well as the unending parade of visitors, but free from crisis. When Ike arrived in Denver on August 14, he had every reason to expect a relaxing break.
So it was at first—golf at Cherry Hills, fishing with his old friend Aksel Nielsen at Nielsen’s Colorado ranch. Ike was joined there by his grandson, David, always a delight to his granddad. Ike and Nielsen fished in the mornings and evenings, toured the ranch with David by Jeep in the afternoon, and practiced on a casting pond when time permitted. Back in Denver the next week, Ike and his grandson continued to enjoy their summer freedom—David was allowed to invite friends to join them, and they all lunched together after Ike finished a round of golf. Eisenhower flew off to New England to inspect flooding damage, spent a few days in the White House catching up on work, and delivered an address in Philadelphia, where he was followed to the podium by Chief Justice Warren, their relations now confined to pleasantries and little else. But that brief spell of business was followed by a return to Denver and time with family, lunches at the golf course, painting, and manageable public appearances.
