Ike: An American Hero

Michael Korda's Ike is a fascinating look into one of the most famous men of the twentieth century. He was a first-rate solider and statesman, this life-long solider would leave office warning the nation of the growing military-industrial complex. This is an incredible story of a boy from Abilene, Kansas who would rise to become one of the most famous figures on the world stage. If history had not intervened he probably would have retired from the army a bird colonel and we never would heard about him.

The book begins with Korda explaining how the United States mistreats its heroes of the past, through endless amounts of revision it tears down one giant after another. Then the narrative shifts to the moments before the great invasion of D-Day. General Eisenhower is making not only on the most important decisions of his life, but in all of world history. Then from there the story changes again, it goes back to his time as a boy. Actually Korda spends a minute trying to explain the entire family history leading up to the birth of David Dwight Eisenhower whose first two names would later be switched around. There is almost no hint of what was ultimately going to come. His army career is pretty basic he moves slowly up the chain of command with his commanding officers seeing his greatest value as coaching the base's football team.

Eisenhower gets married to Mamie Doud, and she ends up becoming a typical Army wife always looking to `push hubby' through. Eisenhower played no significant role in World War I; he was just a staff officer, although, he did run into another officer, only slightly senior to him, George Patton.

"Both men were fiercely ambitious, but Ike did his best to conceal his ambition, whereas Patton wore his on his sleeve. Unlike Ike, Patton was eccentric, erratic, vain, deeply emotional, and a full-fledged military romantic, in love with the whole idea of glory, capable of writing, as Ike would surely not have been, of his beloved cavalry, `You must be: a horse master, a scholar; a high minded gentleman; a cold blooded hero; a hot-blooded savage.' Such words--and sentiments--came easily to Patton, who saw himself (and wanted others to see him) as a cavalier, a swashbuckling hero on horseback, a student of war history and war poetry; and who at times seriously believed himself to be the reincarnation of great warriors of the past. Perhaps no solider has ever had a more romantic view of war, and, at the same time, a better understanding of its hard practicalities, than Patton."p.148

Dwight D. Eisenhower spent sixteen years at the rank of major. He was just a major when Herbert Hoover was elected president in 1928, which is odd when it is considered that Major Eisenhower would be the next Republican to win election. Eisenhower spent a few good years as the top aid to General MacArthur when the General was the Chief of Staff of the United States Army. At this point Eisenhower had actually made lieutenant colonel.

"MacArthur's remaining year as Army Chief of Staff was painful, as Roosevelt, with the deft political cunning for which he soon became famous, carefully undercut the position of the person he regarded as one of the two `most dangerous men in America,' while all the time continuing to profess admiration and warm affection for him, he was only too aware that the New Dealers, as they were already beginning to be known, viewed him with deep suspicion, hated him for his reactionary political views, and were afraid he might harbor political ambitions which would bring him in open conflict with the administration--that he might become, in fact, the proverbial `man on a white horse' in the event of a fascist putsch in America. In short, their feelings about General MacArthur were a paranoid as his about them."p.205

When World War II broke out Eisenhower would begin to make his mark on the world, in a little over three and half years he would rise from lieutenant colonel to five-star-general. In that time he over saw the invasion of Sicily and the invasion of the Italian mainland. As the Supreme Allied Commander, he had to be both politician and solider. He was great at both roles. In the politician angle he had great success, especially in Britain. While in Britain there was one lady there named Kay Summersby, who Eisenhower may have known a little too well. She was officially his chauffeur but she proved to be a lot more than that.

"Perhaps the only people of consequence who snubbed Kay were King George VI, who was always petrified by the slightest hint of an improper relationship because of the misfortunes of his older brother, and who deliberately treated her like a chauffeur, which is to say a servant; and General Marshall, who considered part of his job to telephone Mamie once a week, and was deeply suspicious of Kay Summersby. Whatever virtues Ike may have had, however--and he had many--discretion about his friendship with Kay was not one of them, and people can hardly be blamed then or now for drawing the logical conclusion."p.284

During the D-Day invasion Eisenhower, like General Grant in the Civil War--as Kordra points out--was concerned with armies not territories. His primary mission was to defeat the Army of Germany not to capture particular points of real estate. It was this attitude that attracts his primary criticism as a general. However, it was Eisenhower who kept allies bound together and united no matter how hot-headed their leaders' personalities may have been, Eisenhower got the best out of each of them.

"Since 1945, almost everybody has had a say about the supposed mistakes that were made in the last year of the war--especially the presumed failure of on the part of the western Allies to take Berlin and the failure to confront the Soviet Union over the borders and the independence of the eastern European countries. Many if not most of these have been blamed on Roosevelt, but it should always be borne in mind that the president did not live to write his own memoirs, or to criticize those of others. Ike, when he came to write his, was careful not to join in postwar criticism of Roosevelt. Ike himself had shown no interest in wasting the lives of American soldiers to get to Berlin, and several times he offended even angered Churchill by going over the heads of the prime minister and the president to deal directly with Stalin, as if he himself were a head of state, to ensure that there would be no accidental clashes between Allied and Soviet troops as their front lines began to touch." p.432-3

When Eisenhower he served in a number of posts, finally, in 1952, Eisenhower decided to run for the Republican Nomination for president. He would win beating Senator Robert Taft, and he would go on to win the election against his Adlai E. Stevenson. He would have an eventful and successful presidency. Under him there would be an inter-state highway system and an end to the Korean War. He would send soldiers to protect the `Little Rock Nine' students who braved the way against segregation in education and all other aspects of life. The Cold War would continue with spy planes and talks of a `missal gap.' There also was the crisis in Hungry and Suez Canal.

"It was the end of more than Eden's career--it was the end of Britain's remaining pretensions to independent, imperial power; it was the end of the fiction, still persisting from World War II, that the United States, Great Britain, and France were equal world powers. (Britain would shortly abandon Malaya, Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, and much else besides; France would shortly lose Morocco, Algeria, and most of its African colonies.) Ike had acted swiftly, decisively, and undeniably for the good; and although he felt great sympathy for his old friends in Britain, and even greater sympathy for the gallant but ill-advised Hungarians, he carefully managed events to avoid a clash with the Soviet Union, and he preserved peace--not a perfect peace, to be sure, or one without victims and compromises., but still peace. The Soviet Union had threatened to use atomic weapons on London and Paris at the height of the Suez Crisis, and in order to discourage American intervention in Hungary, but Ike had taken all this blustering calmly in his stride and kept a firm control of events." p.693-4

Eisenhower retired for good, in 1961, when his successor John F. Kennedy, who had beaten Ike's vice president, Richard Nixon, took office. He would live into 1969, just long enough to see Nixon, whose daughter would marry his grandson, become president.

Michael Korda wrote a great biography on the thirty-fourth president very detailed and informative. There are also historical allusions to other time periods littered thought the book, which as a history buff, I really do appreciate that. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wanted to know more about Dwight D. Eisenhower and World War II.

Starts off waxing lyrical about how Americans feel uncomfortable making men into heroes - idolizing them as anything special (ignoring monuments to Washington, Lincoln, etc.). Makes factual errors on issues not central to Korda's subject (Ike) and thus showing that he has done little peripheral research. For instance he places Cherbourg in Britanny, not in Normandy.

His sense of geography is terrible. Of "Operation Torch" he writes about how widespread the invasions were, saying "spread across nearly 2,500 miles of coast from Safi, in French Morocco, the easternmost point; to Algiers, the westernmost point". The only problem with this is he's got east and west around the wrong way! Algiers is east of Morocco!

Further he talks of how 30,000 Australian troops were captured with the fall of Tobruk (1942). This never happened. Australians successively defended Tobruk in 1941 against the Germans until the garrison was relieved. Rommel made a resurgent drive across North Africa and then took the port in 1942, capturing its garrison of South Africans. Perhaps he's confused with Australians who were captured at the fall of Singapore, half-way around the world... except he'd already mentioned that fact!

I read a lot of presidential biographies, and I have to say, this was truly disappointing. It didn't feel so much insightful as it did just a report -- and not a terribly complete one. His presidency itself was, in relation to the rest of the book, almost an afterthought. I know I'm spoiled by reading the David Mccullough biographies, but this didn't even come close. The author was clearly biased and defensive about Eisenhower, which I don't believe was even necessary. You didn't feel as if you knew anything more about the man, himself when the book was done. And the author's repeated references to himself and his family in the book just come off as annoying and egotistical. I mean, if I cared where and how your grandparents met or what you did during the war, I'd read your biography.

I'd never read a book by the somewhat ancient author Michael Korda -- he's three months older than me -- until now. He occasionally repeats himself, but the old boy is still a thrilling writer. If, as pointed out by one musical reviewer, Korda in one book is not as good on the subject of Eisenhower as Ambrose in two books, so be it, but I am enjoying this book to the maxarooney, despite not enough time and money being spent on orthography.

I'm learning so much about World War Two, the military, and many other subjects. Write on, Korda!

I found this biography to be an easy and entertaining read but found much of the content and viewpoint extremely biased towards Ike. I agree with many of the reviews posted here stating that there is too much emphasis placed on Ike's relationship with Kate Summersby. I also was very disappointed that there is so little content on his presidential years; important years when he had to deal with a post-war America, McCarthyism, the Cold War, the space race, and increasing racial tensions.

I did take away a couple very favorable impressions from this book. First, the chapters discussing young Ike's ambitions, circumstances, and choices that ultimately lead him to West Point I found very compelling. Secondly, the book did a very good job of highlighting Ike's acumen as a political statesmen and how important that skill was during his time in Africa and Europe. And I'm sure those same skills were immensely useful during his presidency as well but the book, unfortunately, does not delve into that territory.

Overall, this is an entertaining read for any Eisenhower or WWII fan, but anyone looking for a very detailed, thorough, and objective biography of Ike should look elsewhere.

This is far from the definitive biography of Dwight D Eisenhower. It is easy to read and has some interesting insights into Eisenhower's life, especially his mentoring by several older officers early in his career. The writing style is flowing and casual making it an easy read. As other reviewers have pointed out, the author gives Eisenhower's presidency very brief mention and this is one of the points at which the author's politics intrude a bit. He is obviously a liberal Democrat and has little interest in economics. His brief discussion of Hoover and the Depression continues the lack of insight that has only recently begun to dissipate. Again, in discussing Eisenhower's presidency, the author knows no Republican who is not "right wing" and poor Alger Hiss was hounded by Richard Nixon into perjury (He actually writes this nonsense), with no mention of the Venona transcripts confirming Hiss' treason. These are minor annoyances, however.

The author works in a number of personal stories about his own life and relatives, some of which add to the book and a few of which are annoying. All together, this is a shallow, easy read and enjoyable as long as the reader knows he is not getting the whole story. A definitive book about Eisenhower the president is still to be written.

Pros:
- Wording style is breezy to read
- Some facts are neat and presented well
- Upbeat defense of Eisenhower makes for a positive read

Cons:
- Civil War analogies disruptive, mostly due to author having only a topical understanding of the Civil War. (It was Lincoln, NOT General Grant who had the policy in place for years to deaf generals concerning attacking the enemy army and not the enemy capital. Also, the author should look up the Secretary of War's phrase "Lincoln's Terrible Numbers" and see why he also mis-credited that concept to General Grant. Other analogies fall flat. Great concept, terrible and amateurish application.)
- Huge omissions are glaring. (Where is a discussion of Market Garden beyond a sentence here or there? The introducing statement clearly assumes the book discussed it. Was it cut before publication? Unforgivable Omission! BTW, there are several such omissions.)
- 1/2 the book on WWII, barely a chapter on the Presidency, and even then a choppy one, in terms of the time-line.
- While the words are easy to read, the writing is not always easy to follow. Sometimes there are very abrupt transitions jarring the reader into wondering how they got from THIS subject all of a sudden to THAT one.

Had the Civil War analogies been cut or knowledgeable AND appropriate plus ALL necessary topics concerning WWII and Eisenhower's Presidency been at least considered in proportion to their importance, then this book could have been a 5 star.

Summary: amateurish and misapplied Civil War analogies, flow interrupted by lack of proper transitions, glaring omissions of HUGE subjects, but otherwise a breezy read for a beginner.
I'd say the book was rushed, and the author had a recent but only topical reading of the American Civil War.

Update: I am reading Army at Dawn and am amazed on how many bits I already know. Looked up this book's reference and sure, lots of references. Check this books references. This author relies on second hand sources a lot, whereas groundbreaking biographies today often seek first sources more. See Team of Rivals for the type of modern greatness being written from first sources (instead of just repeating other authors)

In this regard, this book is more like a term paper than scholarly research. Check out Army at Dawn, 541 pages, 540 references.

Michael Korda's large and excellent biography, "Ike: An American Hero," is imposing to behold, but it is not a difficult read. In the opening chapters, Korda covers the treatment of Dwight David Eisenhower by historians and from the various perspectives of other famous memoir writers of the Second World War, and takes us to the eve of D-Day and the allied landings at Normandy in June1944.

It is not until chapter three that Korda takes up Ike's boyhood in Abilene, Kansas, and commences a chronological rendering of Ike's life, pointing out that Ike "came from solid Mennonite stock," and his mother, a Jehovah's Witness, burst into tears the day he boarded a train to depart for West Point and begin his military career. It was the free college education that attracted Ike to West Point, and he graduated with his class in June 1915, receiving his commission in August, with orders assigning him to a staff job at Fort Sam Houston, in San Antonio, Texas. By contrast, his classmate, the flamboyant young cavalryman George S. Patton was chasing Pancho Villa and his banditos south of the Rio Grande with General Pershing.

It was at Fort Sam Houston that Ike met Mamie Doud, a pert young socialite from Denver, Colorado, and they were married on July 1, 1916. When the United States entered the First World War, Ike was kept in staff and training jobs, and just when he received orders to lead troops in combat, the war was over before he could get into it.

For the next twelve years, Eisenhower continued to hold staff positions at various bases in the United States at a time when government policy was aimed at keeping the military small. In 1930, General Douglas MacArthur was named Army Chief of Staff, and he took Ike on as his assistant. Ike transferred to the Philippines when MacArthur was sent there, and in 1936, and after twenty years of service, Ike finally reached the rank of lieutenant colonel. In 1939, Ike returned to the states, training new recruits in the now fast-expanding Army after the enactment of peacetime selective service, becoming a favorite of the then Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall.

Soon enough, the United States entered the war, and Ike's star would quickly be on the rise. He would oversee landings in North Africa and Sicily before being called on to command the biggest invasion ever attempted, as a five-star general, The Supreme Commander of Allied Expeditionary forces in Europe. Korda does a thorough job of covering the allied victory in Europe in four chapters complete with situation maps, noting Ike's abrasive relationship with his British counterpart, Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery, and speculating on Ike's relationship with his beautiful English driver, Kay Summersby.

Ike's hero's welcome to a New York City tickertape parade in 1945 is a prelude to his becoming the Republican candidate for president seven years later. In the meantime, President Truman named him Army Chief of Staff, now overseeing the reduction of the army he had led to victory. Finally leaving the army in 1947, Ike became president of Columbia University in New York and completed his best-selling book, Crusade in Europe. But in 1950, President Truman asked Ike to put his uniform back on and return to Europe to become the first commander of the NATO forces. For the next two years Ike developed NATO into a working military alliance, returning home in 1952 to make his run for the White House.

In the final three chapters of his book, Korda quickly takes the reader through Ike's two terms a president, his somewhat strained relationship with his vice-president, Richard M. Nixon, and gives Ike high marks for his accomplishments in the Oval Office. Leaving the White house, Ike lived for nine more years on his farm at Gettysburg, before succumbing to a heart attack with Mamie at his side.

There is no question that in his sweeping biography, Michael Korda sees Dwight David Eisenhower as America's greatest general and surely one of her best presidents.

This book is most interesting for Ike's early life and his Supreme Commandership during World War II. It falls down in its coverage of his presidencies. Korda's aim seems to be to erect (or maybe resurrect) Ike's reputation from both the controversies about his leadership during WWII and the general opinion that his presidency was, to say the least, indifferent. Beginning with the second goal, what is a major flaw throughout the book has its greatest effect. Korda's quick brush strokes of the general political background in which President Eisenhower had to operate are clichéd and sometimes inaccurate. Trying to portray Ike as the politically astute, effectively conciliatory, administratively powerful and militarily brilliant leader that he was in WWII, Korda presents Khrushchev as a bully whom Ike saw through, Ike as unconfrontatively abetting the civil rights movement, and standing up to McCarthy. History does not read that way elsewhere. Korda is particularly weak on the U-2 incident which scuttled what might have been a break through Summit. If I remember correctly Ike first denied there had been overflights and then caught out when the Soviets, not only produced the plane but Gary Powers' admission also. No wonder there was so much protest in Japan forcing a cancellation of Ike's trip there. There is simply no writing off the failures of Ike's second term by saying that even George Washington's second was troubled. Despite Korda admission that Ike was a monarchical president there is more to destructive aspects of America's role in the cold war than Korda acknowledges. So Korda jumps to the later fall of the Soviet Union, Nixon's recognition of China, etc. to demonstrate Ike's prescience. That is a weak ex post facto literary devise that made me want to say wait a minute, but being lazy in my reading, I let it pass until it seemed to be occurring too many times. So the coverage of Ike's white house years is limited. One thing Ike should get more praise for and space in the book than Korda gives was his role in undermining the '56 invasion of Suez. He is the only president since WWII (except maybe Carter a bit) to be even handed in the Middle East.
But the book's presentation of his generalship and what we would now call global orientation was very interesting. Stripping way the dullard image from his presidency, we find a brilliant military organizer, so recognized by George Marshall who mobilized America to win. Although the invasion of North Africa was deeply flawed and Sicily and Italy maybe more costly to the Allies than the Germans, the Invasion of France and subsequent exhausting of the German armies of the West was well done. Since the book presented history as an analysis of Eisenhower's role, it significantly downplayed the accomplishments of the Soviet Union which with only material help from the West might have won the war on its own. This aside, watching Ike deal with the narcissism of so many of his commanders, one wonders how the war could have otherwise been won. Maybe some of the commanders were brilliant tacticians, Patton in his rashness and Montgomery in his plodding thoroughness. Ike seemed to be able to work with them within the political confines of the coalition. Korda claims he allowed De Gaul to install himself, contrary to Washington's wishes and on his own worked out a meeting with the Russians that the British felt betrayed their efforts fighting three years longer than the Yanks ( but he did give them a northern occupation zone which Roosevelt who have rather had). That there was so much backbiting and contention afterward among historians and memorialists leads one to thing that those who lead armies are not very grown up. Where Ike was slow was in disciplining incompetents and the outspoken. He seemed to learn to do that (through Bedell Smith according to the author). The most difficult person to deal with was Churchill and until Normandy he was often able to wheedle some of what he wanted out of Ike. As for Ike's affair with Kate Somersby, whether it was chaste as the author hesitatingly suggests, Korda is right. It was a wartime emotional infidelity with respect to Mamie. It is hard to believe they never jumped in the sack, but maybe not. It sort of doesn't matter. There is no question they were deep comrades in a heterosexual way.
So is this book worth reading. Yes, but not for 1952-60 but to pull our understanding of Ike out of the shadow of those years. It gives us a sense of the brilliant general he became and what a debt we owe to that brilliance and good nature.

Charlie Fisher author of [[ASIN:1600700322 Dismantling Discontent: Buddha's Way Through Darwin's World]]

This is a friendly biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower, based primarily on secondary sources, including some of the better-known histories of World War II, as well as the memoirs of Winston Churchill, Charles DeGaulle, Viscount Montgomery and Lord Alanbrooke. The advantage of this approach is the author's intelligent comparison of these varying, and often irreconcilable, accounts. British recollections of the War in Europe tend to be highly critical, indeed dismissive, of Eisenhower's role. Korda is effective in demonstrating the self-interest of some of these accounts (especially Montgomery's) and in presenting "Ike" as a good deal more intelligent than he has often been depicted. He also notes that the first-person historical record will always be incomplete because Franklin Roosevelt did not live long enough to write his memoirs.

Although there is a section on Eisenhower's Presidential years (1953-61), the treatment is more superficial. There is also a good deal of material on Eisenhower's personal life (some of it drawn from his granddaughter Susan's biography of Mamie Eisenhower, "Mrs. Ike"). Korda discusses Eisenhower's wartime relationship with Kay Summersby in some detail, but resolutely refuses to come to a definite conclusion on whether they were lovers. The real value of this book is its treatment of Eisenhower's role in World War II. The reader may agree or disagree with the subtitle "American hero," but this work provides ample material for analyzing the question.