Eisenhower in War and Peace

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was after President Kennedy’s funeral that Congress passed legislation to provide full Secret Service protection to former presidents.

Of the two field marshals, Rommel was more susceptible to Hitler’s hypnotic appeal.

The very qualities that made Eisenhower successful as supreme commander militated against his success on the battlefield.

“Well,” Thompson replied, “I have never before seen a chauffeur get out of a car and kiss the General good morning when he comes from his office.”3

FDR was sometimes too quick off the mark, and this time he recognized that he had overstepped. As he often did when caught out, he dissembled.

Eisenhower’s friends were white and many were from the South. At the professional level he did not encounter African Americans. That is not to say Ike was racially prejudiced. He simply did not question racial segregation—a situation to which the Supreme Court of the United States had given its seal of approval.

Two million Parisians lined the route—“a miracle of national consciousness,” in de Gaulle’s words, “one of those gestures which sometimes, in the course of centuries, illuminate the history of France.”

The Russians, for their part, chose not to go public with their protests about the U-2 flights because they did not want to admit to the world that their military was powerless to stop them. Eisenhower recognized that each U-2 flight was a provocation and insisted on approving the flights personally.