Eisenhower in War and Peace

by Jean Edward Smith

  Stephen E. Ambrose, 2 Eisenhower 129 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984); The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, vol. 14, The Presidency 564–73n26; Robert H. Ferrell, ed., The Eisenhower Diaries (New York: Norton, 1981); Box 4, DDE Diary Series, EL.

  e In 1936, as executive partner at Sullivan and Cromwell, John Foster Dulles had supervised the drafting of the agreement with the Ubico government of Guatemala that gave the United Fruit Company a tax-free status for ninety-nine years as well as control of the country’s only port, Puerto Barrios. Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention 124 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982); Thomas McCann, An American Company: The Tragedy of United Fruit, Henry Scammell, ed. 13, 56 (New York: Crown Publishers, 1976).

  TWENTY-THREE

  New Look

  Our most valued, our most costly asset is our young men. Let’s don’t use them any more than we have to.

  —DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER,

  March 17, 1954

  The Eisenhowers, like the Roosevelts, were accustomed to servants. When Eisenhower got out of bed each morning, Sergeant Moaney held the president’s undershorts for him to step into. When Ike took practice shots on the South Lawn, Sergeant Moaney retrieved the balls for him. And when Ike cooked stew for his friends, Sergeant Moaney assembled the ingredients, chopped the meat and vegetables, and stood by like a surgical assistant to hand Eisenhower whatever he required.

  Mamie was pampered equally by her personal maid, Rose Woods. Rose rinsed out the First Lady’s stockings and underwear in the bathroom every night and dressed her in the late morning. Sergeant Moaney’s wife, Delores, served as the Eisenhowers’ personal cook and maid in the family quarters of the White House, and Sergeant Leonard Dry drove for Mamie. Elivera Doud, Mamie’s mother, lived in the White House, just as Madge Wallace, Bess Truman’s mother, had done, and as Marian Robinson, President Obama’s mother-in-law, currently does.1

  Mamie’s experience running large household establishments was immediately evident. “She appeared fragile and feminine,” said White House chief usher J. B. West, but “once behind the White House gates she ruled as if she were Queen.”2 Unlike Eleanor Roosevelt, Mamie paid close attention to the White House menu. Although she had never learned to cook herself, she had an instinctive understanding of the compatibility of various dishes, and chided the staff to avoid waste. Every morning she asked for a list of food that had not been eaten the previous day. “Three people turned down second servings of Cornish hen last night,” she reminded Charles Ficklin, the White House maître d’. “Please use it in chicken salad today.”3

  Ike and Sergeant Moaney grilling steaks. (illustration credit 23.1)

  Official entertaining at the White House was straitlaced. The food was superior to that served by the Roosevelts, but the drinks were sharply rationed. Cocktails were never served, and butlers poured only American wines at the table with dinner. Alcohol flowed more freely in the family quarters. Eisenhower preferred scotch, and Mamie liked old-fashioneds, although, as J. B. West reports, her consumption was very modest despite rumors to the contrary.4

  Mamie’s particular passion was watching television soap operas, and she rarely missed an episode of CBS’s As the World Turns. After her private time watching television, Mamie would be joined by her old friends from wartime Washington in the Monroe Room for an afternoon of Bolivia, a form of canasta that she adored. According to West, “The Bolivia players usually took a break for tea at 5:00 p.m., and sometimes they would stay for dinner.”a In the evenings the Eisenhowers and their guests would often watch movies in the White House theater. Ike’s taste ran predictably to Westerns, most of which he had seen three or four times. Unlike Eleanor Roosevelt and Lady Bird Johnson, Mamie did not take up public causes and rarely ventured outside her role as the president’s wife. “I have but one career,” she often said, “and its name is Ike.”5

  Once a month Eisenhower would host a stag dinner for sixteen or so guests, bringing together men from various professions whom he had read about and wanted to meet. Dress was usually black tie, and the conversation was free-flowing. “I used these dinners to try to draw from leaders in various sections of American life their views on many domestic and international questions,” said Ike. “The stag dinners were, for me, a means of gaining information and intelligent opinion as well as enjoying good company.”6

  Eisenhower’s concern for appearances sometimes led him to make fussy decisions. Allegedly to save money he shut down the presidential winter quarters at the Key West Naval Station and got rid of the Williamsburg, the presidential yacht on which the Trumans often entertained. “The very word ‘yacht’ created a symbol of luxury in the public mind,” Ike wrote his friend Swede Hazlett.7 At the same time, Eisenhower permitted Arthur Summerfield, the Michigan GM dealer who served as postmaster general, to repaint the nation’s mailboxes and postal trucks from traditional post office green to a car salesman’s red, white, and blue—supposedly as a symbol of American patriotism.8

  “Shangri-La,” FDR’s rustic retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains, which the WPA had built in the 1930s, also went on the chopping block.b But Mamie intervened, insisted that it be updated and redecorated, and used as a weekend getaway until the farm at Gettysburg could be rehabilitated. Like Key West, Shangri-La was maintained by the Navy, and as J. B. West writes, “Soon came the order for the Navy to redecorate Shangri-La, with Mrs. Eisenhower as the consultant, and the rustic lodge soon took on a ’1950s modern’ look, in greens, yellows, and beiges.”9 When it was finished, Eisenhower renamed it “Camp David” in honor of his five-year-old grandson, evidently hoping to erase the memory of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

  The Eisenhowers occasionally used Camp David as a retreat and conference center, but Ike much preferred to accept the hospitality provided by his friends in the Gang, with whom he felt he could best relax. His favorite spot was the Augusta National, and he used his trips to Augusta to unwind, much as FDR had done at Warm Springs.10 Eisenhower also enjoyed extended fishing vacations at Aksel Nielsen’s estate near Fraser, Colorado, and at Denver developer Bal Swan’s purebred Hereford ranch on the north fork of the South Platte River.

  Above all, Ike and Mamie were soon caught up restoring the farm at Gettysburg they had purchased in 1950. After Eisenhower left the Army, he and Mamie began looking for a place to retire. They wanted a place in the country, preferably with a few acres, and not too far from Washington or New York. Gang member George Allen, a country boy from Mississippi, owned a farm near Gettysburg and recommended the region to Ike. Eisenhower had served two years at Camp Colt (on the Gettysburg battlefield) during World War I, and had never forgotten the lush rolling countryside. Mamie remembered the friendly townspeople. When Allen told them that a 189-acre farm had been put on the market, Mamie went to inspect it and fell in love with the property.

  “I must have this place,” she told Ike.

  “Well, Mamie, if you like it, buy it.”11

  The property, known as the Allen Redding farm, was adjacent to the battlefield and about three miles from town. During the Battle of Gettysburg the house had served as a dressing station for Confederate wounded. Eisenhower paid a total of $40,000 ($362,000 currently): $24,000 for the farm, and $16,000 for the livestock and equipment. In addition to the two-story brick farmhouse, there was a massive wooden barn (one of the largest in Adams County), thirty-six Holstein dairy cattle, and five hundred white leghorn chickens. It was a working farm. The milk was picked up every morning by a Baltimore dairy, and the eggs (about twenty dozen daily) were marketed through a cooperative in Gettysburg. There were also two tractors and all the machinery necessary to operate the farm.12

  Eisenhower, who was then president of Columbia, decided to retain the farm as a going concern. An old Army associate, retired brigadier general Arthur Nevins, who had been Ike’s deputy G-2 at SHAEF, was talked into becoming the farm’s manager, and General Nevins and his wife, Ann, moved into the house in the spring of 1951
. The Nevinses and the Eisenhowers had been close friends since their service together in the Philippines.13

  Ike and Mamie decided to renovate the house after they moved to Washington. Plans were drawn by Penn State architecture professor Milton Osborne, Mamie engaged interior designer Dorothy Draper, and the construction work was handled by Charles Tompkins, one of the largest contractors on the East Coast. Eisenhower insisted on using union labor, which meant that most workers had to drive from Washington or Baltimore, which added considerably to the final cost. On the other hand, Charles Tompkins charged no overhead and billed Ike only for actual expenses, which balanced things out.

  When the project was completed in 1955, little remained of the original house. There were now fifteen rooms, eight baths, a thirty-seven-by-twenty-one-foot living room, and an oak-beamed study for Ike. The total cost came to $215,000 ($1.75 million currently), and was paid largely from the receipts Eisenhower realized for Crusade in Europe.14 Shortly afterward, Gang member W. Alton “Pete” Jones (president of Cities Service Company) bought three adjoining farms on which he planted hundreds of strategically sited trees to assure Ike’s privacy.15 The farms were combined and worked under the supervision of General Nevins. Ike raised purebred Angus cattle in partnership with Alton Jones and George Allen, but the venture was primarily a hobby rather than an attempt to turn a profit.16 Toward the end of his presidency, Eisenhower purchased an adjacent five acres containing an abandoned rural schoolhouse. The schoolhouse was remodeled to provide a home for John, Barbara, and their four children, and a private road was built connecting the two houses. Eisenhower doted on his grandchildren, and could never see enough of them.c

  But Ike’s time was limited. His first priority as president was to make peace in Korea. His second was to balance the budget. Unlike the Republican party’s Old Guard, he ruled out any reduction in social programs. Savings would be achieved through the elimination of government waste and a review of all other programs. National security, the largest budget item, was an obvious target, and when Ike took office, he ordered an immediate review of the nation’s military structure.

  Eisenhower was critical of existing defense policy for two reasons. First, he believed President Truman had demobilized the armed forces too quickly after World War II, withdrawing from Korea and thus inviting attack. Second, after the Korean War started, the Truman administration quadrupled defense spending without considering the costs. That threw the budget seriously out of kilter. What was required in Ike’s view was a defense policy that could be sustained over the long run without sending the country to the poorhouse.

  Ike and John with David, Susan, and Barbara Ann at Gettysburg. (illustration credit 23.2)

  Eisenhower was uniquely qualified to lead the reappraisal. With the possible exception of Ulysses Grant, who confronted different but equally difficult military issues, no president has been better equipped by outlook and experience to deal with matters of national security. Like Grant, Ike was his own military expert, and as with Grant the country trusted him implicitly. Both Grant and Eisenhower twice won elections by massive margins because the electorate had confidence in their abilities to defend the nation. In Grant’s case, the danger pertained to Reconstruction and restoring the Union. In Ike’s case, it was a Cold War that might turn hot. Here lay Eisenhower’s supreme personal expertise, and he tackled the issue with enthusiasm.

  In his first State of the Union message, two weeks after assuming office, Eisenhower told Congress that “to amass military power without regard to our economic capacity would be to defend ourselves against one kind of disaster by inviting another.”17 Shortly afterward, he took the issue to the country. Speaking to a national radio and television audience on May 19, 1953, Eisenhower said, “Our defense [policy] must be one we can bear for a long and indefinite period of time. It cannot consist of sudden, blind responses to a series of fire alarm emergencies.” The United States could not prepare to meet every contingency, said Ike. That would require a total mobilization that would “devote our whole nation to the grim purposes of the garrison state. This, I firmly believe, is not the way to defend America.”18

  Eisenhower announced that he intended to direct 40 percent of the upcoming defense budget to the Air Force. The Army and Navy would be reduced accordingly. The object was to prevent war, not to fight one. With the war in Korea approaching an end, there was no reason to maintain an Army of twenty divisions. The implication was clear. Under Ike there would be no limited wars, no police actions, no conflicts beneath the nuclear threshold. “Our most valued, our most costly asset is our young men,” said the president. “Let’s don’t use them any more than we have to.”

  Ike put the matter in personal terms. “For forty years I was in the Army, and I did one thing: study how you can get an infantry platoon out of battle. The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.”19

  The Pentagon pushed back. Omar Bradley, still chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told the National Security Council that the United States had to prepare for both conventional and nuclear war. “The build-up of the military strength of the United States is the keystone and indeed, the very life blood of the free world’s strategy to frustrate the Kremlin’s designs,” wrote Bradley. To cut military spending as the president proposed “would so increase the risk to the United States as to pose a grave threat to the survival of our allies and the security of this nation.”20

  Eisenhower was unswayed. The Joint Chiefs were seeking to fight a war; he was determined to prevent one. And their parochialism was appalling. In a letter to his friend Swede Hazlett, Ike noted that the Joint Chiefs had a lot to learn. “Each of these men must cease regarding himself as the advocate for any particular Service; he must think strictly and solely for the United States. Character rather than intellect, and moral courage rather than mere professional skill, are the dominant qualifications required.”21

  Ike fretted about the chiefs’ recalcitrance. “Someday there is going to be a man sitting in my present chair who has not been raised in the military services and who will have little understanding of where slashes in [the Pentagon’s] estimates can be made with little or no damage. If that should happen while we still have the state of tension that now exists in the world, I shudder to think of what could happen to this country.”

  Eisenhower told Swede that his “most frustrating domestic problem” was with the leadership of the armed services.

  I patiently explain over and over again that American strength is a combination of its economic, moral and military force. If we demand too much in taxes in order to build planes and ships, we will tend to dry up the accumulations of capital that are necessary to provide jobs for the millions of new workers that we must absorb each year.… I simply must find men who have the breadth of understanding and devotion to their country rather than to a single Service that will bring about better solutions than I get now.22

  By the end of the summer of 1953, each of the Joint Chiefs had been replaced. Eisenhower did not relieve any, but as their terms expired they were not reappointed. Admiral Radford replaced Bradley as chairman, Matthew Ridgway succeeded J. Lawton Collins as Army chief of staff, Admiral Robert B. Carney replaced William Fechteler as chief of naval operations, and Nathan Twining followed Hoyt Vandenberg as Air Force chief of staff. Ike spoke with each before appointing him, and each assured Eisenhower of his support.

  With his military team in place, and after extensive staff studies, Eisenhower was ready to act. At the beginning of December 1953, the president wrote budget director Joseph Dodge that he had instructed Secretary Wilson “to establish personnel ceilings in each service that will place everything on an austerity basis.” Ike said the forces in Korea should be kept at full strength, as should the Strategic Air Command and the various interceptor squadrons, but that everything else should be reduced across the board. “We are no longer fighting in Korea, and the Defense establishment should show its apprec
iation of this fact without wailing about the mission they have to accomplish.”23

  As a result of Eisenhower’s directive, the Army was reduced from 1.5 million men in 1953 to 1 million by June 1955. The Navy and Marine Corps shrank from 1 million to 870,000, while the Air Force increased from 950,000 to 970,000.24 Admiral Radford announced the shift in a speech to the National Press Club on December 14. Radford called the change a “New Look” in defense policy, using a term then in vogue in the fashion industry to describe the lengthening of women’s skirts. Journalists labeled it “more bang for the buck.”25

  Eisenhower directed Secretary of State Dulles to put the shift in context. In a major speech to the Council on Foreign Relations on January 14, 1954—a speech that had been carefully vetted by Ike—Dulles explained the strategic significance of the New Look. Paraphrasing Eisenhower’s views, Dulles said, “Emergency measures are costly, they are superficial and they imply the enemy has the initiative.” The new aim of American policy, he said, was to make collective security more effective and less costly “by placing more reliance on deterrent power, and less dependence on local defensive power.” Dulles explained why the shift was necessary. “If the enemy could pick his time and place and method of warfare, then we needed to be ready to fight in the arctic and in the tropics; in Asia, the Near East and in Europe; by sea, by land, and by air; with old weapons and with new weapons.” But that was now changed. The United States would deter wars rather than fight them. “The basic decision was to depend primarily upon a capacity to retaliate instantly, by means and at places of our choosing.” That sentence had been added by Eisenhower when he reviewed Dulles’s original draft. The handmaiden of the military’s New Look was instantly dubbed the “doctrine of massive retaliation.” Dulles was given credit for the statement, but the words belonged to Ike.26