Eisenhower as 'Military Statesman'

...Eisenhower was also able to suffer the ego of General Douglas MacArthur (albeit not always smoothly), and to cope with the sensitivities of such other talents as General George C. Marshall and General Omar N. Bradley, for his own and the nation's good...

...Instead of wasting time and lives on ruined Berlin," Ike's chief of staff has written, "the Allies had put an end to all German resistance in 33 climactic days by the only means the Nazis would accept...

...The need to reassure him after the Darlan flap has, in fact, been linked to the urgency to state the goal of "unconditional surrender," as Roosevelt did at the Casablanca Conference the following January...

...author, "Eisenhower and the American Crusades" It is easy to argue, as many historians have, that Dwight D. Eisenhower's special brand of leadership was what enabled a band of disparate allies to advance toward victory in that "most necessary" of all wars...

...By D-Day Ike largely won over this problematic ally, who had placed himself at the head of what was called the French Forces of the Interior...

...Reviewed by Herbert Parmet Professor emeritus of history, City University of New York...

...But Churchill, in apparent contradiction to his own agreement, considered the matter negotiable and wanted to press on toward Berlin...

...paid a formal call on de Gaulle as the provisional President of France...

...In return, Ike received assurances that the French would stop fighting the Allies...

...To the disgust of several aides, the general turned Presidential candidate capitulated...

...Stalin was left to wonder whether the distrusted Americans would ultimately "sell out" the Russians and sign a separate pact with the Nazis...

...At that point of the Nazi retreat, Eisenhower felt the city's strategic value did not justify the price of untold American lives...

...He won the Republican Party's Presidential nomination in 1952, and finessed that role just as he had every other on the path to victory in Europe...

...Unlike his Presidency, his Army career, the focus of this book, won broad acclaim, especially after the successful invasion of Western Europe starting on June 6,1944(D-Day...

...In the event, as Stephen Ambrose wrote in his 1967 monograph, "Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945," the Soviets sacrificed perhaps 100,000 men "battering their way into Berlin," then had to pull back in the end...

...De Gaulle noted that Ike tried to be pleasant and was sure that the American was acting under orders from Washington...

...Similarly, only Ike had the patience for the likes of General George S. Patton—whose virulent anti-Semitism (which caused problems for Eisenhower) is politely skirted here...

...Critics, though, viewed the Darlan matter as an indelible "blot on Eisenhower's record...

...At the beginning of their association," we are reminded, "Ike was still only an American, not an Allied commander...

...To Eisenhower and his West Point culture, politicians were a fairly contemptible breed...

...Yet after much artful hemming and hawing, the pull toward the White House ultimately proved irresistible...

...In a maneuver resisted by FDR, he enlisted to the Allied cause the man who had begun to set himself up as president of a free France...

...When in Englandhe often spent Friday evenings at the Prime Minister's country home, Chequers, listening to Churchill's endless pontificating, which helped to solidify their bond...

...It did hurt his reputation and it complicated subsequent wartime diplomacy...

...The author describes Ike and de Gaulle coming together in Algiers: "Despite the seeming intransigence of both men when they were arguing their position, a mutual appreciation was developing...

...But the author does note Patton's fascist proclivities while recounting his outrageous comment that Nazis and nonNazis were "just like Republicans and Democrats...

...The Prime Minister learned to recognize Ike "as a statesman, not a mere soldier," their frequent wartime differences notwithstanding...

...Historians, however, have been hesitant to criticize him too harshly in retrospect for a move that seemed entirely valid to Ike at the time...

...John writes that his father "never entirely forgave himself" for that "betrayal...

...Only Ike, recalls his son, could have put up with a Montgomery, let alone France's General Charles de Gaulle...

...Contrary to the reasoning of both Churchill and Montgomery, Ike decided to halt the eastward advance across Europe in 1945 at Germany's Elbe River, rather than go on to Berlin...

...Perhaps his most controversial act of statesmanship was the bargain that he struck with one of theVichy government's henchmen, Jean François Darlan...

...Grandson David, in his Eisenhower at War (1986), minimized the agreement as "a fading memory" that stemmed from Ike's "precarious baptism in wartime domestic politics...

...De Gaulle never forgot that gesture, even with the passage of years...

...Above all, this book documents Stephen Ambrose's conclusion that "Eisenhower was a team player, a manager of vaster enterprises, a general who led by deciding what was the best plan after careful consultation with his staff and field commanders...

...John S. D. Eisenhower's personalityfilled account of his father as soldier reaffirms the view of a half-century of journalists, historians and military analysts that Ike was, in the words of Britain's Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery, primarily a "military statesman...

...The well-publicized incident where Patton slapped an ill American GI was another in a succession of heartburn-provoking episodes for Ike, who needed his colleague's "genius for war," as historian Carlo D'Esté has put it...

...Wiping out the Third Reich in the south of Germany, they "insured the destruction of Hitler's armies in the West...

...thus further consolidating de Gaulle's position of power in the eyes of the world...

...In any case, his strategy was later approved by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and carried the unhesitating endorsement of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who advised, "Kiss Darlan's stern if you have to, but get the French Navy...

...For Ike, who had just taken command of TORCH (the invasion of North Africa), the logical step was to at least neutralize the collaborationist military resistance in the region and clear the way through Tunisia...

...The demands of political reality soon led him to scrap a prepared tribute to his respected old colleague, George Marshall, out of concern for the perceived interests of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and Republican Rightists...

...In December 1943, "convinced that de Gaulle was the one man who could rally all Frenchmen fighting Hitler, Ike paid a call on de Gaulle to solicit his support...

...Before long, though, the Commander in Chief learned how to adapt some of the statesmanship skills he had mastered so well as Supreme Commander—and he fashioned a remarkably shrewd, pragmatic eight-year Presidency...

...But the debatable deal backfired...

...Charles de Gaulle, speaking from London, immediately denounced the Darlan arrangement too...

...Other defenders have pointed out that Ike was not briefed or forewarned about the hazards of dealing with Darlan...

...But later, while working with de Gaulle—whose preoccupations "were all centered around France and her position in Europe, rather than around any mutual enemy the Americans and French were facing"—Ike demonstrated his uncanny ability to repair whatever damage had been done to American prestige...

...The French Navy's commander defied Darlan's orders and scuttled the fleet in the harbor of Toulon instead of handing it over to either the Allies or the Germans...

...He therefore recognized Darlan as governor general of French North Africa and granted General Henri Honoré Giraud control over the Vichy forces in Africa...

...Wisconsin Governor Walter Kohler warned Ike that praising Marshall, who had become Truman's secretary of state after the War and had drawn McCarthy's vitriol for allegedly helping to weaken the Nationalist position in China, would damage the GOP's statewide ticket...

...The best and final chapter of General Ike is reserved for the EisenhowerChurchill relationship...

...Ike brought them on board for the invasion of Normandy...

...Once Paris was liberated, "Ike, conscious of de Gaulle's immense symbolic value...

...Some thought he had compromised away key principles of the battle against the Nazis...

...He did so knowing that just weeks earlier at Yalta, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin had provided for the postwar division of the German capital into different zones...