Eisenhower, Dwight D.

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Dwight D. Eisenhower

Excerpt from "The Chance for Peace" address delivered before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953

Published in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States:
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Volume 1953

"Now a new leadership has assumed power in the Soviet Union. Its links to the past, however strong, cannot bind it completely. Its future is, in great part, its own to make. This new leadership confronts a free world aroused, as rarely in its history, by the will to stay free. This free world knows, out of the bitter wisdom of experience, that vigilance and sacrifice are the price of liberty."

O n April 16, 1953, U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969; served 1953–61) addressed the American Society of Newspaper Editors. He titled his address "The Chance for Peace," in response to statements made by the new premier of the Soviet Union, Georgy Malenkov (1902–1988). Soviet premier Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) had died in March and, with his death, his terror-filled dictatorship at last ended. Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971) became the new Soviet Communist Party leader, the secretary general, a very powerful position.

Malenkov hoped to focus on Soviet internal issues and domestic economy and the well-being of the Soviet people. In strong contrast to Stalin's views that capitalism and communism could not peacefully coexist in the world and that war was inevitable, Malenkov declared peaceful solutions existed to solve the international Cold War problems. In early April, he had proposed talks to reduce military forces in Europe so he could concentrate more on Soviet issues. In response, President Eisenhower delivered his "Chance for Peace" speech.

During World War II (1939–45), Eisenhower had become a legend as a commanding general. Before being elected to the U.S. presidency in November 1952, Eisenhower had served as a U.S. army general in World War II. In December 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45) made Eisenhower supreme commander of Allied forces to lead a massive invasion across the English Channel at the Normandy shores of France. Eisenhower executed a brilliant plan and was able to keep the strong, diverse personalities of the other Allied commanders focused toward the common goal of pushing back the occupying Germans. After liberating France, Eisenhower was promoted to a five-star general in December 1944. He was victorious at the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium and began moving troops into Germany. In the final months of the war, Eisenhower decided to let Soviet troops march on and take Germany's capital city of Berlin. He hoped to foster goodwill with the Soviets in anticipation of postwar cooperation and to avoid some difficult fighting for his own troops.

Following the German surrender in May 1945, Eisenhower returned to a hero's ticker-tape parade in New York City and spoke to an enthusiastic joint session of Congress in Washington, D.C. President Roosevelt then sent him to Germany as head of the U.S.-occupied zone in Germany. There, he tried to cooperate with Stalin on postwar policies, but Stalin ignored key agreed-upon points such as allowing free elections in Eastern European countries. Shortly thereafter, in November, Eisenhower returned to Washington, D.C., to replace General George C. Marshall (1880–1959) as army chief of staff. Eisenhower retired in February 1948 as an extremely popular World War II general. He wrote the bestseller Crusade in Europe and served as president of Columbia University for two years. Then President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972; served 1945–53) talked him into commanding the Allied forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The organization was a newly formed military alliance between Western European countries and the United States and Canada.

The U.S. Republican Party leaders had been trying unsuccessfully to talk Eisenhower into running for political office for several years. They finally convinced him to run in the 1952 presidential election. Eisenhower chose Richard M. Nixon (1913–1994), a young U.S. representative from California

with a strong anticommunist record, as his vice presidential running mate. Immensely popular with the public, Eisenhower won easily. The public had grown dismayed with President Truman, who had been unable to direct the Korean War (1950–53) to a successful end and had "allowed" a communist takeover of China in 1949. Also, in November 1952, the United States had detonated the world's first hydrogen bomb (H-bomb) on the Marshall Island of Eniwetok. The H-bomb exploded with the force of 10 million tons (9 million metric tons) of TNT—one thousand times more force than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in August 1945. The world had become a more dangerous place.

Following Stalin's death and at Malenkov's overtures of a peaceful coexistence, President Eisenhower's words in "The Chance for Peace" were not directed only at those attending a newspaper editors' conference but to all Americans, to the Soviets, and to the world as a whole. First, he described "the vastly different vision of the future" that the democratic United States and the communist Soviet Union held. All in the name of protecting themselves from each other, both countries were spending vast sums of money for arms buildup. Eisenhower clearly, specifically, and with a great deal of feeling described how money for armaments, or military supplies, was taking away from "those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." He spoke of the new terrible superbombs. President Eisenhower recognized the new Soviet leadership and expressed a great deal of interest in discussing arms reduction.

Eisenhower, however, also made a number of difficult challenges to the Soviets. He called on the Soviets to consider their policies in divided Germany, to halt aggressive acts in Korea and Southeast Asia, to release thousands of prisoners of war it still held from World War II, and to allow Eastern European nations a "free choice of their own forms of government." He called on the Soviets to show how they were breaking with the past and entering a new phase of cooperation. After a listing of possible topics of discussion for armament reductions, he called for a "practical" system of inspection under the United Nations "to assure all armaments limitations that might be agreed to were properly carried out." He called on the Soviets to act, saying, "the hunger for peace is in the hearts of all peoples—those of Russia and of China no less than of our own country."

Things to remember while reading "The Chance for Peace":

Between the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, was an overwhelming sense of mistrust. It was difficult to come to any agreements when each feared that the other's actions were calculated to weaken the other.
One of Eisenhower's major presidential goals was to balance the federal budget, which would require reductions in military spending.
The idea of inspection systems under the control of the United Nations that could guarantee the United States and the Soviet Union were complying with any arms agreements reached was a radical new idea. The inspections dubbed "Open Skies" called for both the Soviet Union and the United States to fly inspections over the other to alleviate fears of surprise attacks.

Excerpt from "The Chance for Peace"

In this Spring of 1953 the free world weighs one question above all others: the chance for a just peace for all peoples.

To weigh this chance is to summon instantly to mind another recent moment of great decision. It came with that yet more hopeful spring of 1945, bright with the promise of victory and of freedom. The hope of all just men in that moment too was a just and lasting peace.

The 8 years that have passed have seen that hope waver, grow dim, and almost die. And the shadow of fear again has darkly lengthened across the world.…

In that spring of victory [1945] the soldiers of the Western Allies met the soldiers of Russia in the center of Europe. They were triumphant comrades in arms. Their peoples shared the joyous prospect of building, in honor of their dead, the only fitting monument—an age of just peace. All these war-weary peoples shared too this concrete, decent purpose: to guard vigilantly against the domination ever again of any part of the world by a single, unbridled aggressive power.

This common purpose lasted an instant and perished. The nations of the world divided to follow two distinct roads.

The United States and our valued friends, the other free nations, chose one road.

The leaders of the Soviet Union chose another.…

This way [the United States' way] was faithful to the spirit that inspired the United Nations: to prohibit strife, to relieve tensions, to banish fears. This way was to control and to reduce armaments. This was to allow all nations to devote their energies and resources to the great and good tasks of healing the war's wounds, of clothing and feeding and housing the needy, of perfecting a just political life, of enjoying the fruits of their own free toil.

The Soviet government held a vastly different vision of the future.

In the world of its design, security was to be found, not in mutual trust and mutual aid but in force: huge armies, subversion, rule of neighbor nations. The goal was power superiority at all cost. Security was to be sought by denying it to all others.

The result has been tragic for the world and, for the Soviet Union, it has also been ironic.

The amassing of Soviet power alerted free nations to a new danger of aggression. It compelled them in self-defense to spend unprecedented money and energy for armaments. It forced them to develop weapons of war now capable of inflicting instant and terrible punishment upon any aggressor.…

What can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found on this dread road?

The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.

The worst is atomic war.

The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter plane with half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of the threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that come with this spring of 1953.

This is one of those times in the affairs of nations when the gravest choices must be made, if there is to be a turning toward a just and lasting peace.

It is a moment that calls upon the governments of the world to speak their intentions with simplicity and with honesty.

It calls upon them to answer the question that stirs the hearts of all sane men: is there no other way the world may live?

The world knows that an era ended with the death of Joseph Stalin. The extraordinary 30-year span of his rule saw the Soviet Empire expand to reach from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Japan, finally to dominate 800 million souls.

The Soviet system shaped by Stalin and his predecessors was born of one World War. It survived with stubborn and often amazing courage a second World War. It has lived to threaten a third.

Now a new leadership has assumed power in the Soviet Union. Its links to the past, however strong, cannot bind it completely. Its future is, in great part, its own to make.

This new leadership confronts a free world aroused, as rarely in its history, by the will to stay free.

This free world knows, out of the bitter wisdom of experience, that vigilance and sacrifice are the price of liberty.

It knows that the defense of Western Europe imperatively demands the unity of purpose and action made possible by the

North Atlantic Treaty Organization, embracing a European Defense Community.

It knows that Western Germany deserves to be a free and equal partner in this community and that this, for Germany, is the only safe way to full, final unity.

It knows that aggression in Korea and in southeast Asia are threats to the whole free community to be met by united action.

This is the kind of free world which the new Soviet leadership confronts. It is a world that demands and expects the fullest respect of its rights and interests. It is a world that will always accord the same respect to all others.

So the new Soviet leadership now has a precious opportunity to awaken, with the rest of the world, to the point of peril reached and to help turn the tide of history.

Will it do this?

We do not yet know. Recent statements and gestures of Soviet leaders give some evidence that they may recognize this critical moment.

We welcome every honest act of peace.

We care nothing for mere rhetoric.

We are only for sincerity of peaceful purpose attested by deeds. The opportunities for such deeds are many. The performance of a greater number of them waits upon no complex protocol but upon the simple will to do them. Even a few such clear and specific acts, such as the Soviet Union's signature upon an Austrian treaty or its release of thousands of prisoners still held from World War II, would be impressive signs of sincere intent. They would carry a power of persuasion not to be matched by any amount of oratory.…

With all who will work in good faith toward such a peace, we are ready, with renewed resolve, to strive to redeem the near-lost hopes of our day.

The first great step along this way must be the conclusion of an honorable armistice in Korea.

This means the immediate cessation of hostilities and the prompt initiation of political discussions leading to the holding of free elections in a united Korea.

It should mean, no less importantly, an end to the direct and indirect attacks upon the security of Indochina [a former federation of states in Southeast Asia, including Laos, Cambodia, and areas that became Vietnam] and Malaya [now part of Malaysia]. For any armistice in Korea that merely released aggressive armies to attack elsewhere would be a fraud.

We seek, throughout Asia as throughout the world, a peace that is true and total.

Out of this can grow a still wider task—the achieving of just political settlements for the other serious and specific issues between the free world and the Soviet Union.

None of these issues, great or small, is insoluble —given only the will to respect the rights of all nations.

Again we say: the United States is ready to assume its just part.

We are ready not only to press forward with the present plans for closer unity of the nations of Western Europe but also, upon that foundation, to strive to foster a broader European community, conducive to the free movement of persons, of trade, and of ideas.

This community would include a free and united Germany, with a government based upon free and secret ballot.

This free community and the full independence of the East European nations could mean the end of the present unnatural division of Europe.

As progress in all these areas strengthens world trust, we could proceed concurrently with the next great work—the reduction of the burden of armaments now weighing upon the world. To this end we would welcome and enter into the most solemn agreements. These could properly include:

1. The limitation, by absolute numbers or by an agreed international ratio, of the sizes of the military and security forces of all nations.

2. A commitment by all nations to set an agreed limit upon that proportion of total production of certain strategic materials to be devoted to military purposes [that is, to limited production of armaments].

3. International control of atomic energy to promote its use for peaceful purposes only and to insure the prohibition of atomic weapons.

4. A limitation or prohibition of other categories of weapons of great destructiveness [nuclear weapons].

5. The enforcement of all these agreed limitations and prohibitions by adequate safeguards, including a practical system of inspection under the United Nations.…

This idea of a just and peaceful world is not new or strange to us. It inspired the people of the United States to initiate the European Recovery Program [the Marshall Plan] in 1947. That program was prepared to treat, with like and equal concern, the needs of Eastern and Western Europe.

We are prepared to reaffirm, with the most concrete evidence, our readiness to help build a world in which all peoples can be productive and prosperous.

This Government is ready to ask its people to join with all nations in devoting a substantial percentage of the savings achieved by disarmament to a fund for world aid and reconstruction. The purposes of this great work would be to help other peoples to develop the undeveloped areas of the world, to stimulate profitable and fair world trade, to assist all peoples to know the blessings of productive freedom.

The monuments to this new kind of war would be these: roads and schools, hospitals and homes, food and health.

We are ready, in short, to dedicate our strength to serving the needs, rather than the fears, of the world.

We are ready, by these and all such actions, to make of the United Nations an institution that can effectively guard the peace and security of all peoples.

I know of nothing I can add to make plainer the sincere purpose of the United States.

I know of no course, other than that marked by these and similar actions, that can be called the highway of peace.

I know of only one question upon which progress waits. It is this:

What is the Soviet Union ready to do?…

Is the new leadership of the Soviet Union prepared to use its decisive influence in the Communist world, including control of the flow of arms, to bring not merely an expedient truce in Korea but genuine peace in Asia?

Is it prepared to allow other nations, including those of Eastern Europe, the free choice of their own forms of government?

Is it prepared to act in concert with others upon serious disarmament proposals to be made firmly effective by stringent U.N. control and inspection?…

If we strive but fail and the world remains armed against itself, it at least need be divided no longer in its clear knowledge of who has condemned humankind to this fate.

The purpose of the United States, in stating these proposals, is simple and clear.

These proposals spring, without ulterior purpose or political passion, from our calm conviction that the hunger for peace is in the hearts of all peoples—those of Russia and of China no less than of our own country.

What happened next …

Only two days later, U.S. secretary of state John Foster Dulles (1888–1959) spoke at the same convention of newspaper editors. His words were harshly anticommunist, unlike Eisenhower's.

British prime minister Winston Churchill (1874–1965) had once again been elected prime minister of Great Britain in 1951. A few weeks after Eisenhower's speech, on May 11, Churchill proposed that the world leaders hold a summit meeting to relieve Cold War tensions. Dulles and West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967) argued against such a meeting. They charged that the Soviets were not sincere in peaceful coexistence but only trying to weaken the West. Furthermore, U.S. senator Joseph R. McCarthy (1909–1957) of Wisconsin had stirred up a strong fear of communists among Americans. Dulles successfully used this fear, arguing that Eisenhower's administration could not afford to appear weak in dealing with the communists. The idea of talks between Eisenhower, Malenkov, and Khrushchev faded.

In Korea, after difficult negotiations, a cease-fire agreement was signed in July 1953, bringing an end to hostilities. The new president had managed to bring an end to the stalemated Korean War in just six months (see Chapter 3).

Did you know …

When Eisenhower ran for president, his campaign slogan was simply "I Like Ike." On the one hand, his personable mannerisms brought a great deal of comfort to Americans. On the other hand, the Soviets considered Ike a direct threat. They reasoned that if Americans had elected a general, then they must be preparing for war.
Eisenhower grew up in a strong Mennonite family. Mennonites were known for their extreme pacifism, or opposition to war. Eisenhower's mother was very distressed when he went to West Point. He went to West Point in part because the education was free.
After the Korean cease-fire, Eisenhower would not lose another U.S. soldier to combat through the remainder of his presidency, an accomplishment of which he was immensely proud.
It was President Eisenhower, working behind the scenes, together with army lawyer Joseph Welch (1890–1960), who finally brought an end to Senator McCarthy's radical anticommunist campaign in Congress.

Consider the following …

Review Eisenhower's list of the cost of single armaments in terms of practical needs of people. Construct a chart to better visualize this list.
President Eisenhower used some strong imagery in his "Chance for Peace" speech. He described "humanity" as "hanging from a cross of iron." Analyze on several levels what point he was trying to convey. Think in terms of armaments and also of Winston Churchill's famous "Iron Curtain Speech," in which Churchill warned the still-disbelieving Americans that indeed the Soviets were occupying large territories in Eastern Europe with no intention of leaving.
Although the speech did not result in a summit meeting between the leaders, consider what impact Eisenhower's list of possible arms control suggestions might have played in future negotiations. Was a seed possibly planted?