Sublime

Fox Conner did not speak to Eisenhower about Napoleon or any other great commander of the past, nor did he discuss the importance of history to the development of a well-rounded military officer. Instead, Conner drew three novels from the shelves of his collection and handed them to his assistant. “You might be interested in these,” Conner

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In his first State of the Union address, Eisenhower had promised to carry out Truman’s edict and end segregation in the military and in the District, and he had kept that promise. By the end of 1953, all public facilities in the capital had been desegregated, and he could boast that in the Navy and the Air Force, segregated units were “a thing of

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Ike has received precious little credit for this, but it is a perfect example of what a quick learner he was. He had suffered through the chaos brought about by American policies in North Africa, when he had paid too much attention to Robert Murphy and the wishes of the president, and he was not about to let that happen again. No other American

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In 1903 Secretary of War Elihu Root brought the Army, which had a similar structure, reluctantly into the twentieth century. The power of independent branch chiefs such as the adjutant general and the chief of engineers was broken, a general staff system established, and the entire uniformed service brought under the command of a single military

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Among the American casualties on the first day of the attack was Lieutenant Colonel George Patton. With his tanks unable to advance, Patton located some lost infantrymen and began to lead them forward when a bullet from a German machine gun tore into his left thigh. The upward trajectory of the slug left an exit wound “just at the crack of my

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