Eisenhower, Dwight David

Eisenhower, Dwight David (1890–1969) U.S. Army general and 34th president of the United States (1953–61), born in Denison, Texas, and raised in Abilene, Kansas. He graduated from West Point in 1915, but saw no action in World War I, in which he was in charge of training camps. Eisenhower held various staff assignments in the interwar years, but his military career began to rise when he was named to head the War Plans Division (later Operations Division) of the War Department in 1941, responsible for planning the strategy of the war. He took command of American forces in Great Britain in 1942 and was soon named supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, leading the invasion of French North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. He was promoted to four-star general (1943) and made supreme commander for Operation Overlord (1944), the invasion of France. Eisenhower was recognized as an outstanding strategist, adept at handling complex joint operations. In 1944 he was promoted to five-star General of the Army. He led the Battle of the Bulge (1944–45), the greatest single battle ever fought by the U.S. Army, before moving into Germany. After receiving the unconditional German surrender (May 1945), Eisenhower served as head of the occupation in the American zone for several months until he was named chief of staff of the U.S. Army (1945), a post which he held until his retirement in 1948. After two years as president of Columbia University, in 1951 he was sent to Paris by President Harry S. Truman as the first supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe, where he organized the beginning of a NATO armed force and advocated the creation of a united Europe. In 1952 Eisenhower successfully ran for president on the Republican ticket, with Richard M. Nixon as his running mate. During his two terms (1953–61), he negotiated a truce to end the Korean War (1953); launched the interstate highway system (1956); reduced spending on conventional weapons while building more bombs and bombers; and constantly searched for peace with the Soviets. At the Geneva Conference in 1954, together with secretary of state John Foster Dulles, he agreed to the division of Vietnam and the creation of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), which formed the basis for later U.S. involvement in Vietnam. When the governor of Arkansas defied court-ordered school desegregation, Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock to enforce the decree (1957). In 1958 he sent U.S. troops into Lebanon in accordance with his earlier proclaimed Eisenhower Doctrine. The last year of his presidency was devoted to the pursuit of peace, but a planned summit conference in May 1960 was thwarted by the U-2 incident. His farewell address (1961) warned of “unwarranted influence” on government “by the military-industrial complex.”