Dwight David Eisenhower presided over America's most important victories in World War II and the ending of the Korean War, and provided leadership of the free world at the height of the Cold War.
Ike was famous for his ear-to-ear grin, which conveyed an easygoing personality, but behind the grin was a determination and will to succeed that catapulted him from modest beginnings to world leader. On Nov. 1, during a noon lecture sponsored by the Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Division, author Geoffrey Perret presented a lively talk about his new biography, Eisenhower. Nattily attired in a three-piece brown suit (Ike's favorite color), Mr. Perret engaged an audience of more than 100 visitors and staff, plus C-SPAN cameras, by evoking penetrating images and challenging traditional assumptions about the nation's 34th president.
Geoffrey Perret - Simsons of Beverly
Geoffrey Perret served in the U.S. Army and was educated at Harvard and the University of Southern California, where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa, and the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of 10 books, including Days of Sadness, Years of Triumph, a history of the homefront during World War II, and America in the Twenties. He has also written extensively on military subjects, including A Country Made by War, a study of American conflicts from the Revolution to Vietnam, and There's a War to Be Won, an account of the U.S. Army in World War II. His last two books have been biographies of Ulysses S. Grant and Douglas MacArthur. He is a devoted user of the Library's facilities and conducts much of his research in the Library's various reading rooms, including the Main, Manuscript, and Newspaper and Current Periodical reading rooms.
Born into a lower middle-class family of six sons and raised in Abilene, Kan., young Dwight Eisenhower was imbued with traditional values of thrift and hard work, chiefly imparted by his mother. An appointment to West Point in 1911 offered the dual opportunities of a free education and escape from small-town life. Mr. Perret stressed Ike's role as innovator. Eisenhower was responsible for training tank troops during World War I. His command initially suffered from a lack of equipment, operating without the benefit of a single tank. Mr. Perret revealed that an undeterred Eisenhower "trained men to become tank machine-gunners by bolting down machine guns to flatbed trucks, and had them practice firing at targets ... while the trucks jolted over the rough ground below."
According to the author, it was Ike's vision that set him apart from other military thinkers. During the military demobilization following World War I, he recognized the tank as the main land weapon of the next war, and teamed up with George S. Patton. Reading an excerpt from his book, Mr. Perret characterized the bond between the two officers as a passionate belief in the tank as a harbinger of the future battlefield: "Here I am, announced this messenger in steel diapers, a being freshly created, yet I will shake the world and bring nations to their knees. My tracks are destiny. Where they go, humanity will follow and water them with its tears." As time went on, Eisenhower also foresaw the integrated role ground and air forces would play on the battlefield.
Success in World War II brought invitations from both major parties to run for public office. Accepting the 1952 nomination of the Republican Party, Eisenhower was elected, and then re-elected, to the presidency. Mr. Perret believes Ike's accomplishments as president are overlooked, and that in Cold War strategy, civil rights and the economy he was a more active and involved leader than previously thought; he also believes that Eisenhower's successes were the result of his long-term thinking.
In his personal life, Eisenhower struggled to overcome the death of his first-born son at an early age, and a marriage that suffered from long periods of enforced separation due to military service. He was also extraordinarily popular, said Mr. Perret, because "he identified with ordinary people so easily. The troubles that beset them -- marital problems, uneasy relationships with their offspring, the death of a child, strong competition within their profession or business, problems with money or ill health -- he had experienced all of these, despite his phenomenal success."
