Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman originally called the Maryland presidential retreat, which opened in 1938, “Shangri-La” after the fictional Himalayan paradise. Eisenhower, however, wanted a less formal moniker so he renamed it in 1953 in honor of his 5-year-old grandson, David. “Shangri-La was just a little fancy for a Kansas farm boy,” he wrote in a 1953 letter to friend Edward “Swede” Hazlett. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who was brought by Eisenhower to the retreat, thought it sounded like a place where “stray dogs were sent to die,” but President John F. Kennedy and all subsequent chief executives have kept the name.
The interstate highway system, created under his leadership, fueled the economy and made it easier for Americans to visit distant parts of the nation. When American voters went to the polls on November 6, 1956, Eisenhower defeated repeat-Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson even more convincingly than he had in 1952. Eisenhower received 35,579,180 popular votes (57.4%) to Stevenson’s 26,028,028 (40%). In the Electoral College voting, Eisenhower carried forty-one states, receiving 457 electoral votes, compared to Stevenson’s seven states and seventy-three electoral votes. Two weeks after his victory, Eisenhower tendered his resignation as president of Columbia University, effective January 19, 1953, the day before his inauguration as President of the United States.
December 7, 1941 — Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor
His middle-of-the-road policies enabled him to work well with Congress even though the Democrats held majorities in both houses. Following the convention’s dramatics, the presidential election held on November 4, 1952, was anti-climactic. The wildly popular Eisenhower swamped the Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson. Eisenhower received 34,075,529 votes (55.2%) to Stevenson’s 27,375,090 (44.3%). In the Electoral College voting, the results were even more one-sided; Eisenhower carried thirty-nine states, receiving 442 electoral votes, compared to Stevenson’s nine states and eighty-nine electoral votes. As 1943 drew to a close, the Soviet Union’s Red Army and the German Wehrmacht were engaged in savage fighting on the Eastern Front.
Eisenhower’s team finessed the rules in their candidate’s favor and on July 11, Eisenhower secured the Republican presidential nomination on the first vote on July 11. While serving with NATO in Brussels, Eisenhower began testing the political waters back home. After winning the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary election in March 1952, Eisenhower resigned from his NATO position and returned to the U.S. On May 31, 1952, Eisenhower retired from active military duty and six weeks later, on July 18, he resigned his commission in the U.S. On June 7, 1948, the trustees of Columbia University, appointed Eisenhower as president of the university.
World War I
Just months later, he became commander-in-chief of the Allied Forces and led Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa. In 1921, tragedy struck at home, when the Eisenhowers’ firstborn son, Doud Dwight, died of scarlet fever at the age of three. That year, Eisenhower assumed the role of executive officer to General Fox Conner in the Panama Canal Zone. In 1924, at Conner’s urging, Eisenhower applied to the Army’s prestigious graduate school, the Command and General Staff School at Ft.
With the U.S. entry into World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Eisenhower was assigned to the General Staff in Washington where he devised war plans for defeating Germany and Japan. Becoming Chief of the War Plans Division, he was soon elevated to Assistant Chief of Staff overseeing the Operations Division under Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall. Though he had never led large formations in the field, Eisenhower soon impressed Marshall with his organizational and leadership skills. As a result, Marshall appointed him commander of the European Theater of Operations (ETOUSA) on June 24, 1942.
Eisenhower in World War II
After winning the Battle of the Bulge—a fierce German counterattack in the Ardennes in December—the Allies crossed the Rhine on March 7, 1945. In the meantime, in December 1944, Eisenhower had been made a five-star general. In the fall of 1919, Eisenhower met George S. Patton who had commanded a tank battalion in France during WWI.
During his seven years serving under MacArthur, Eisenhower was stationed in the Philippines from 1935 to 1939. Although he spent 35 years in the military and served during both world wars, Eisenhower never saw a single day of active combat. Military Academy in 1915, he served at various camps across the United States. Eisenhower requested an overseas assignment when America entered World War I, but he remained in training roles at home. When the United States entered World War II more than two decades later, Eisenhower had risen to become one of America’s top generals.
First Term in Office — January 20, 1953–January 20, 1957
After the French left, he gave strong financial support to the new state of South Vietnam. He supported regime-changing military coups in Iran and Guatemala orchestrated by his own administration. During the Suez Crisis of 1956, he condemned the Israeli, British, and French invasion of Egypt, what are the 2 axes in the eisenhower box and he forced them to withdraw. He also condemned the Soviet invasion during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 but took no action. Near the end of his term, a summit meeting with the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was cancelled when a US spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union.
In the aftermath of the crisis, Eisenhower announced the Eisenhower Doctrine, under which any country in the Middle East could request American economic assistance or aid from American military forces. The United States foreign policy of the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration, from 1953 to 1961, focused on the Cold War with the Soviet Union and its satellites. The United States built up a stockpile of nuclear weapons and nuclear delivery systems to deter military threats and save money while cutting back on expensive Army combat units. A major uprising broke out in Hungary in 1956; the Eisenhower administration did not become directly involved, but condemned the military invasion by the Soviet Union. Eisenhower sought to reach a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union, but following the 1960 U-2 incident the Kremlin canceled a scheduled summit in Paris. Based in London, Eisenhower soon was also made Supreme Allied Commander of the North African Theater of Operations (NATOUSA).
President at Columbia University and NATO Supreme Commander
In July 1955 the president met with leaders of Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union at a summit conference in Geneva. It was composed of the United States, France, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, and Pakistan. Eisenhower’s basically conservative views on domestic affairs were shared by his secretary of the treasury, George M. Humphrey.
- The Eisenhowers went to Gettysburg as often as the busy job of president permitted.
- Marshall and Eisenhower also agreed that all American forces sent to fight in Europe should be under the command of one man.
- In spite of his health issues, Eisenhower ran for re-election in 1956 and won in a landslide.
- On June 15, 1915, Eisenhower graduated from West Point, ranked sixty-first out of 164 cadets in one of the more outstanding classes in the academy’s history.
- Five weeks later, the Allied campaign ended on August 17 when thousands of German and Italian troops evacuated the island.
The job of heading an Ivy League institution was never a comfortable fit, and he left when Truman offered him the role of Supreme Allied Commander of the newly formed North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). As Eisenhower neared the end of his first term, he suffered a serious heart attack on September 23-24, 1955, while vacationing in Denver, Colorado. While hospitalized in Colorado until November 11, he continued in his role as president as he convalesced. Under Eisenhower’s command, on June 6, 1944, over 150,000 Allied troops stormed five beaches in Normandy, France.
Foreign policy
On April 2, 1951, he signed the activation order for Allied Command Europe and he subsequently commanded all NATO forces in Europe until May 30, 1952. On September 9, 1943, under Eisenhower’s overall direction, an amphibious invasion code-named Operation Avalanche landed Allied troops at Salerno and Taranto on mainland Italy. While Allied ground forces were fighting in Sicily, their air forces began bombing mainland Italy.
