Eisenhower: A Mystery in War and Peace A review of Jean Edward Smith s biography

Transcription

1 Eisenhower: A Mystery in War and Peace A review of Jean Edward Smith s biography Ben Liberto CHARMS Fall 2012

2 Liberto 1 Jean Edward Smith s latest work, Eisenhower In War and Peace, is the newest addition to a trend among historians to revive the image of America s 34 th President. While the first major book to reclaim Eisenhower s image, The Hidden Hand Presidency, was published in 1994, Smith s book goes further to claim Eisenhower as one of the greatest Presidents of the 20 th century. In this respect, Smith s book is a convincing argument that Eisenhower, far from being asleep at the helm, was in fact a master politician who successfully managed friend and foe alike bringing America 8 years of peace and prosperity. However, In War and Peace is described as a biography, and in that sense, Smith very much leaves a great deal to be desired by failing to give the reader a better idea of, or insight into, who Eisenhower was as a person, instead of just as a military man and later politician. First, the positives. Smith, like any good historian, cites extensively throughout the book the endnotes and bibliography take up nearly 130 pages so one feels assured that Smith has done his homework, so to speak. Smith s prose, generally speaking, is clean and elegant, although from time to time he slipped in the occasional French phrase which left me scrambling to find a translation. The book is an easy read, and certainly designed for a mass audience it reads much easier than Klarman, or Kennedy, or even Daniel Walker Howe. The relative simplicity of the prose made a somewhat large book fly by rather quickly and easily. Smith s analysis of Ike s effectiveness as President is also very well done. Eisenhower s handling of McCarthyism to let the Senator hang himself, in effect was brilliant, and was much better than denouncing McCarthy publicly, which would just give McCarthy the attention he was so desperately seeking. Sending the 101 st Airborne to Little Rock to uphold the Federal Court s desegregation order showed that Eisenhower was, when necessary, able to bring the full

3 Liberto 2 power of the Presidency to bear to uphold the Constitution. His tactics sending large numbers of one of the U.S. Army s toughest divisions, also belied his experience as a wartime commander using huge numbers in concentration to overwhelm, or in this case, quiet, your opponent (the unruly mobs of Little Rock). I agree with Smith s assessment that had Eisenhower failed to uphold the court s decision with overwhelming force, racist Southerners would have tried to protest every school desegregation across the South. The Suez crisis showed that Eisenhower would not stand with Great Britain and France if they were in the wrong, and raised the esteem of the United States in the eyes of the 3 rd World. Smith claims that Ike s calm response to Sputnik served to put the American public at ease, but based on the Dickson book and DVD it seems to me more likely that Ike s real success here was not revealing that American U-2 spy planes had been crossing Soviet airspace and showed conclusively that there was no missile gap. Ike s decision to end the Korean War and his absolute refusal to escalate the crisis in the Formosa Strait or allow the French to use nuclear weapons at Dien Bien Phu show that Eisenhower pursued a policy of peace. In these respects, Smith does show Eisenhower s effectiveness as President, whether he was pulling strings behind the scenes (Suez) or was acting like the Commander in Chief (Little Rock). However, Eisenhower In War and Peace claims to be a biography, and at the end of the book I was asking myself, Just who was Dwight D. Eisenhower? Having just read nearly 800 pages about the man, I should not be asking that question. Smith fails in any meaningful way to shed light on Eisenhower as a person. For example, Smith wrote repeatedly of Ike s famous temper, yet he doesn t provide evidence of such a temper until nearly 200 pages in! No examples of Ike s supposedly friendly demeanor are given or explained in any detail, and as

4 Liberto 3 someone who wanted to understand Eisenhower on a personal level, this book feels sorely lacking. Ike s ability to cast away people as they became no longer needed, or his distance from his family could have been explained in more detail. Instead, they are given cursory notice, and the narrative moves forward. More analysis of Ike as a man during his affair with Kay Summersby while writing twice a week to his wife, Mamie, no less represents a lost opportunity on Smith s part. Cutting off all contact with Summersby after the war makes sense Ike did not want to endanger his career, especially after supposedly reading a letter Marshall wrote to Ike when Ike (supposedly) claimed he wanted to divorce Mamie and marry Kay. Clearly, if such a letter did exist, and Ike really did want to marry Kay, then his decision to simply end all contact with Kay must have been far more wrenching than Smith portrays. Smith does devote some pages to how the loss of their first child put a damper on Ike and Mamie s marriage, but overall I found this book to be grossly lacking in the human element, with few exceptions (Ike s concern about D-Day on the night of June 5 th being a notable exception). The only figure in this book who actually seems to be alive is Kay Summersby everyone else feels too stiff, too formal to qualify as human. Smith s presentation of Ike as a great President succeeds, but Smith s presentation of Ike as a human being fails miserably. It is almost as though Smith is so intent on elevating Ike s status to one of the great American Presidents that he whitewashes the rest of Ike s history including a great deal of his humanity. Even Eisenhower s mistakes are softballed in by Smith his broad front strategy in Europe instead of an armored thrust across the North German Plain to Berlin, for one. Smith notes in a very kind manner that Ike made an error, then moves right on the next topic without further analysis.

5 Liberto 4 Perhaps the most glaring example of Smith s refusal to engage with Ike on a human level can be found in the last chapter, Taps, which covers Ike in his post-presidency, from Jan until his death in March The last years of Ike s life are given less than 6 full pages, with nothing but the most cursory of mentions about his reconciliation with Truman at JFK s funeral, spending time with his grandchildren, spending more time in Arizona and Gettysburg than Augusta after the Little Rock decision, etc. All of those tales could have, and should have, been more fleshed out by Smith, and would have helped give us some insight into who Dwight Eisenhower was as a person. Instead, in what I found to be the most insulting part of the entire book, Smith ends with the following: Several years later, a young David Eisenhower asked his grandmother Mamie whether she felt she had really known Dwight David Eisenhower. I m not sure anyone did, Mamie replied. 1 As a reader, that felt like a cop-out, not on Mamie s part, but on Smith s, almost as an excuse for why Eisenhower has absolutely no personality in his book. In an age where real-life heroes seem to be torn down for their failings, I give credit to Smith for trying to highlight a man who I truly respect and admire as an American hero. I cannot say that I am Eisenhower s biggest fan in regards to the Second World War (I truly respect Marshall in that regard, and my late grandfather served under Patton), but I do respect and admire the man. That being said, it seems that Smith was so scared not to trample on Eisenhower s legacy by humanizing him that Smith ran in the opposite direction and completely whitewashed Ike s humanity from In War and Peace. I do not agree with the idea that because our heroes have failings that we should no longer respect or idolize them. At the same time, however, I want my heroes to be human enough so I can relate to them. This, in my opinion, is 1 Pg. 766.

6 Liberto 5 the great failing of Smith s book. Had Smith taken the effort to portray Ike as a genuine human being, I truly believe it would make Ike s decisions more understandable. As it stands, In War and Peace shows the actions and decisions of a great man, but fails to help its audience determine how that great man came to make those actions and decisions. For a biography, failing to humanize the subject matter is a critical error in judgment by the author an error that, unfortunately, cheapened what Smith was trying to accomplish by portraying Eisenhower as a great man.