Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (14 October 1890 – 28 March 1969) was President of the United States from 20 January 1953 to 20 January 1961, succeeding Harry S. Truman and preceding John F. Kennedy. During World War II, Eisenhower was a five-star general in the US Army and Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe, and he led the Allies to victory as their highest military commander. As president, Eisenhower was a moderate conservative and a member of the Republican Party, and he continued New Deal agencies and expanded Social Security. He put an end to Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist witch hunt, signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, created the Interstate Highway System, promoted the establishment of strong science education, and oversaw an era of economic prosperity. Eisenhower is generally considered to be one of the greatest US presidents.
Biography[]
Dwight David Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas in 1890, and he grew up in Kansas before graduating from West Point in 1915. During World War I he commanded a tank-training unit and had numerous assignments between the wars, including service with Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines. In 1942, General George Marshall sleected Eisenhower over 366 more senior officers to be commander of US troops in Europe. As a Lieutenant-General, he went on to command Operation Torch in November 1942, the Allied landing in North Africa. In December 1943, he was appointed Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, making him responsible for the planning and execution of the D-Day landings and subsequent campaigns in Europe. His tact, optimism, and command of bureaucratic politics enabled him to secure inter-Allied collaboration and to avoid confrontation.
After the war, Eisenhower retired to the United States, where he was courted by the Republican Party at the same time as the Democratic Party; the Democrats, fearing Harry S. Truman's defeat, offered him the 1948 Democratic nomination for president, which he refused. In 1951, he was persuaded to return to active service as Supreme Commander of NATO, a command he held for fifteen months, finally retiring from the army in June 1952.
He was elected President as a Republican in November 1952, with Richard Nixon as Vice-President. He promised to seek an end to the Korean War if elected, a promise he fulfilled in July 1953. Eisenhower had a strict view about what he considered the relatively limited role of the President. For Eisenhower, it was not for the President to influence legislation, which was strictly a matter for the US Congress. He considered himself a "dynamic conservative", attempting to encourage business through tax cuts and the decrease of federal control in the economy, while expressing a concern for social welfare. His administration was embarrassed by the right-wing witch-hunt of Senator Joseph McCarthy, but it did nothing publicly to allay it and profited from it politically. In 1957, he used federal troops to quell segregationist violence at Little Rock, Arkansas. In spite of tough talk there was a move towards reconciliation with China and a decision not to become engaged in Indochina, following the defeat of France at Dien Bien Phu. With John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State, the NATO and ANZUS pacts were extended by the SEATO Pact of 1954. Keenly interested in foreign affairs throughout his presidency, after Dulles' death in 1959 he sought to negotiate with the Soviet Union. In May 1960, however, a US U-2 reconnaissance plane was shot down over Soviet territory, an incident which destroyed these hopes. In the United States presidential election, 1960, Eisenhower refused to throw his full support behind the Republican Richard Nixon, but he did endorse Nixon in 1968 from his sickbed in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and he lived to see him inaugurated as President before dying in 1969.