Dwight D. Eisenhower: Mr. Supreme Allied Commander Goes to Washington

this video is brought to you by manscape.com keep yourself well groomed with the performance kit from manscape more on them in just a bit when scholars rank u.s presidents there are four 20th century names that always break the top 10. fdr truman teddy roosevelt and dwight d eisenhower one of the most popular men in this era eisenhower had the fortune to lead america through a prolonged economic boom during his tenure the middle class drastically expanded poverty was reduced and peace and stability reigned this was the era of tv's first golden age of consumer choice of exciting new technology when films and shows like happy days and back to the future wanted to portray american innocence it would be to eisenhower's era that they returned again and again yet who really was the man at the center of it all who was the president who steered the nation through one of its most iconic decades born in modest circumstances in north texas eisenhower grew up fascinated with the military joining the army as a young man he rose through the ranks eventually becoming supreme commander of allied forces during d-day swept to the presidency on the back of his wartime popularity he promised an era of optimism his successes and failures would define an entire generation you know how some kids know from the age of like four exactly what they want to do with their lives well that was dwight eisenhower all over from almost the moment he could read the future president wanted to be in the military born on october the 14th 1819 a ramshackle house in denison north texas there had been nothing in eisenhower's background that indicated army material his father was a blue collar worker while his mother was a pacifist man and i who considered war almost as immoral as laziness for young i because eisenhower was known that meant a boyhood of prayer and hard work it also meant inheriting a hilariously victorian attitude to society even when he was president ike would blush crimson if he ever accidentally used cuss word in front of a woman yet behind this strict religious upbringing behind this facade of a blue-collar football-loving boy lurked an ambition that would shape the nation whenever he had a moment to spare eisenhower devoured books about military history although he kept it quiet from his mom it's not too hard to imagine he already had his heart set on an army career the first step in realizing this dream came in 1911. by now living with his folks in kansas i could grown into an athletic competitive man whose stern discipline masked a volcanic temper he was also a supremely hard worker after graduating high school bike made a pact with his brother edgar to work for two years to pay edgar's tuition fees afterwards edgar would go out to work to support eisenhower's studies true to his word ike had taken two jobs to keep edgar in education barely giving himself enough time to sleep but before edgar could fulfill his side of the bargain good news came eisenhower's way west point military academy was going to accept him free of charge for most of the family this is the first they learned of the young man's military ambitions it said that his pacifist mom burst into tears but there was no talking the boy out of it he enrolled at the academy and promptly settled into being utterly average yep that burning ambition of eisenhower's hadn't extended to being a great officer or a great general he was content to coast by to do the bare minimum required to fill his dream of seeing action we can see this from his ranking at graduation 61st out of 164 solid but certainly not spectacular still this was nearly enough in spring of 1917 the usa declared war on germany by now married to mammy geneva dowd who had met while stationed in san antonio ike had every reason to hope america's entry into world war one would prove to be his shot at glory even though he was forced to spend the year in charge of a tank training center in pennsylvania the army was soon shipping people out by the thousands in late 1918 ike finally got the call well before he could set out for europe history intervened in november 1918 world war one ended eisenhower must have been the only person on earth upset to see the carnage over grouching that had missed his big opportunity he instead turned to working with an army buddy named cameo alert george s patton on a series of articles advising the military to invest in tanks for future conflicts but rather than being like cool consider us advised the army brass are more like no pogcast president is going to tell us what to do indeed they threatened him with court martial shunted off to the panama canal zone told to keep his opinions to himself eisner could have faded into obscurity then and there had it not been for one man down in panama ike's commanding officer was general fox connor a guy who valued creative thinking when he heard the younger man's ideas for the future of warfare connor didn't threaten him with punishment instead he pulled some strings and got him into the prestigious command and general staff college this was where the future of the military was made a place for the creme de la creme of the officer corps connor was taking a huge gamble sending an average soldier like eisenhower there but it was a gamble that would pay off for the entire world now before we go any further with dwight's story let's have a quick word from today's video sponsor landscaped manscaped if you aren't familiar is a company aimed specifically at men who understand the value of being well groomed and you should understand their value think of them as a hardware store but for your body manscaped has this great performance package kit that they've sent me it's not just this this is of course this is the the lawnmower 3.0 with skin safe technology because where this is designed to shave you want that skin safe technology trust me but it also comes with all sorts of great stuff the crop preserver of course 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bag down during the six or so years they worked together mostly in the philippines eisenhower would find himself tearing what little remain of his hair out trying to get macarthur to listen still the experience taught him a lot and sent him climbing ever further up the ranks that meant that ike was in the perfect place career-wise when war broke out again in europe sent back to the usa in 1940 eisnow was promoted to chief of staff for the third army just in time for the legendary louisiana maneuvers by 1940 the american military was modernizing like crazy in case war came and everyone needed some practice to figure out how to wield this high-powered new fighting machine so general george c marshall basically had his men pick out an empty patch of louisiana and said well that'll do and sent nearly half a million troops down there to war game the crap out of it did eisenhower shine during the maneuvers yeah of course he did eisenhower's strategic planning in louisiana was so impressive that he was promoted straight to brigadier general just in time too because that december world war ii finally caught up with america the bombing of pearl harbor was the beginning of eisenhower's stratospheric rise through the ranks sent to dc to work on war plans he caught the eye of general marshall who promoted him right the way up to commander of u.s troops in europe partly this was due to eisenhower's ability but it was also due to him being the sort of person that people trusted remember that whole political slogan i like ike well it worked because liking ike was exactly what people did despite his discipline and strict religious background dwight eisenhower was one of those guys you just can't help but want to be around he was clever funny plain spoken but also sharply intelligent and persuasive as the great british world war ii officer berna montgomery put it he has the power of drawing the hearts of men toward him as a magnet attracts the bit of metal he merely has to smile at you and you trust him at once in other words eisenhower was basically the military equivalent of the brainy beautiful prom queen everyone wants to be around only instead of a homecoming parade he got to invade north africa launched in november 1942 operation torch saw the allies overrun vichy france's colonies triggering a revolution in algeria and helping to bring the north africa campaign crashing to a close although eisenhower's planning wasn't perfect mistakes were made including the assumption that french colonial forces would welcome them as liberators he did the job with north africa secured eisenhower was able to pivot to overseeing the invasion of sicily the campaign that led to mussolini being removed from power as italy collapsed into two warring states one aligned with the allies the other with the axis it became clear that the wind was changing direction that the much-promised invasion of france might now even be possible can't you guess who'd be leading it in later life when he was president dwight eisenhower was asked brian's brother milton to read the commencement address a penn state the morning of the big speech big storms blew up threatening the ceremony panicked milton asked his brother for advice if the weather turned in response ike merely smiled and said milton i haven't worried about the weather since june 6 1944. that's because june 6 was the day eisenhower had overseen the greatest seabourn invasion in history d-day promoted to supreme commander of the allied expeditionary force on christmas eve 1943 eisenhower had spent the previous six months liaising in london with winston churchill and charles de gaulle to make sure that things went right there were a lot of ways they could have gone wrong because of the tidal requirements and the need for a full moon there were only a few days of any given month when the landings could be pulled off that meant bad weather could throw not just eisenhower's plans but the fate of the whole of europe into disarray originally i could schedule d-day for june 5th only to abort when bad weather was predicted so it was with a feeling of incredible tenseness that eisenhower listened to the forecast for june the 6th this was it the last day that month when conditions would be perfect even if they did the landings when the tides were right again in two weeks there'd be no full moon quietly eisenhower heard the meteorologist predictions for the morning probably fine with an outside chance of storms and he said the three words that changed the course of the war okay let's go that morning of june 6 eisenhower spoke to the assembled men you are about to embark upon the great crusade the boy from north texas told them toward which we have striven these many months the eyes of the world are upon you with those words d-day began the landings at normandy are the stuff of legend and could easily occupy an entire 30-minute or more video of their own some 156 000 troops stormed the beaches backed up by an invasion force numbering 1 million on june the 6th alone nearly 4 500 allied soldiers were killed with another 6 000 plus wounded or missing in the coming weeks thousands upon thousands more would die but it was also the beginning of the end for the third reich that december with paris liberated eyes now was made a five-star general just months later nazi germany surrendered ending the war in europe and ike would return home a hero yet his reputation wasn't entirely spotless in the last days of the european conflict eisenhower pulled his men back allowing the soviets to capture berlin this was what had been agreed at yalta regardless people back home accused the general of handing the communists a propaganda victory but while the criticism may have stung it didn't derail ike's career in the slightest that november with the war in the pacific also over harry truman promoted eisenhower to chief of staff ike had his disagreements with the president he thought truman had been a fool to authorize the use of atom bombs against japan arguing it made america look bad but the two still got on well enough so well that after eisenhower stepped back from duty in early 1948 truman suggested they should run on a joint ticket in that year's election and it wasn't just truman despite never having voted himself eisenhower was now being courted by factions in both parties to run for president it was clear the public thought he was a shoo-in to win and he would be just not yet ike turned all election offers down saying he needed to focus on serving his country that november truman won a shock second term in the aftermath the president promoted eisenhower to supreme commander of nato forces but 1948's brief brush with politics wouldn't be ike's last in just four short years the general would return to washington and this time it would be as commander-in-chief [Music] harry truman's presidency officially ended on the 20th of january 1953 but really it had come crashing to an end over two years earlier in the summer of 1950. that's because that was the summer the korean war broke out the korean war was as much a kick in the nuts to truman's presidency as vietnam was to lyndon johnson's or the iraq war was to george w bush's the nadir came when truman relieved douglas macarthur of his commands thus tanking his own popularity back home although truman had now served two terms the 22nd amendment had made an exception for him as the sitting president when it came into force in 1951. legally he could have run again but career put paid to that with no possibility of winning his party's nomination harry truman agreed to step aside he hoped to create some space for a new generation of democrat to take the white house instead he threw the door wide open for an eisenhower landslide all through truman's second term ike had been saying that he wouldn't run with all the sincerity of someone who is just desperate to be president when a group of internationalist republicans approached him worried that their party might nominate an isolationist the nato commander sensed an opening in january 1952 eisenhower announced that he would seek the presidency as a republican despite his massive popularity with the public getting on a ticket was far from a sure thing primaries were different beasts in the mid-20th century with many delegates chosen by the party as a result eisenhower went into the 1952 convention unsure if the nomination would go to him or the isolationist and son of former president robert a taft it's at this point that a certain californian senator enters our story at the convention richard nixon was eisenhower's greatest asset swinging enough delegates behind ike to take him over the top in fact ike was so certain that dick nixon had secured him the nomination that he made the senator his running mate so yeah you could totally blame one of america's best 20th century president for paving the way for one of its absolute worst the campaign that fall was a watershed for us politics 1952 is considered the first time tb played a significant role in an election with the i like ike jingle becoming a national catchphrase although a pissed off harry truman tried to sink eisenhower's campaign by telling people there was a time when i thought he would make a good president that was my mistake there was no doubt he was going to win especially after eisenhower made i will go to korea one of his campaign pledges that november i can dick one electoral college landslide one which netted the gop both chambers of congress for only the second time since herbert hoover's presidency on january 20th 1953 dwight diaz now became the 34th president one of his first acts was to follow through on his career promise by now the korean war had been raging for nearly three years with tens of thousands of american deaths and millions of dead civilians howardly eisenhower struck the posture of a peacemaker but behind the scenes he tried to drop hints that the u.s would consider a nuclear attack on north korea's back at china if peace wasn't forged today it's thought unlikely that the threat ended the war with the change in leadership in the ussr likely playing a larger role but when an armistice was signed in july of 1953 it was atomic weapons that eisner thought had given him the edge for the rest of his tenure eisenhower's official policy would be nuclear attacks on any communist nation that threatened america's allies a policy that became known as massive retaliation as we'll soon see though the reality of the cold war would be far more complex than ike's policy allowed [Music] despite the constant threat of nuclear annihilation the culture at large remembers the 50s as a great time to be an american mainly thanks to a shared economic boom although a fiscal conservative by nature eisenhower was smart enough to know how popular fdr's new deal policies remained with the public while his administration would take an axe to some like ending price and rent controls others he left intact or even expanded under eisenhower social security was increased the minimum wage went up low-cost housing was built and massive public works undertaken the biggest of these was undoubtedly the interstate highway program which provided employment for swaths of people at the same time the president refused to lower taxes saying it would be a waste of time as a result his bitterest opposition in congress wasn't from democrats who retook the house and sent it in 1954 but the right wing of his own party still eisenhower's modern republicanism worked across his two terms unemployment mostly stayed low inflation hovered at two percent and families found themselves able to buy things like second cars or newfangled tv sets while around a fifth of americans still lived in poverty it was a number that fell across ike's eight years in short it was a great time to be alive with one important caveat to get the most out of the eisenhower years he had to be white although we remember the 1960s as the civil rights era it was very much a live issue in eisenhower's time the military was desegregating the montgomery bus boycott was about to kick off a charismatic preacher named martin luther king jr was making waves and attitudes were changing among those changing were the attitudes of eisenhower himself rather than pretend like everything was hunky-dory ike was aware that his america was an unequal one and he was deeply conflicted about it on the one hand he seems to have felt that his administration could and should improve the lives of non-white americans on the other hand he also had a huge sympathy for racist whites afraid of equality you can see this internal conflict play out time and time again in the eisenhower era on the positive side you have the civil rights act of 1957. championed by eisenhower it was the first piece of civil rights legislation passed since reconstruction giving federal protection to voting rights it should have been a game changer for southern blacks who were often disenfranchised by dull ass tests or taxes but note the operative words in that sentence should have while eisenhower had the best intentions his legislation was just too toothless for example it gave disenfranchised voters the right to appeal before a jury but in the jim crow south where juries were all white this just didn't make a damn difference on the negative side you all said the hot mess that was brown and bored of education in 1954 the supreme court desegregated education in this landmark ruling as he usually did eisenhower refrain from commenting but this time his lack of comment was taken as a tacit nod by racist southerners in 1957 the governor of arkansas felt empowered to use the national guard to block nine black students from enrolling at central high school in little rock eisenhower tried to talk him down and then sent federal troops to enforce desegregation yet he still never spoke up for the principles of integrated education never had a moment like jfk's famous address arguing that desegregation wasn't just the law but a moral imperative in the end it would be lyndon johnson who took the mantle of civil rights president but that crown could have been eisenhower's had he pushed just a little harder he could have transformed the lives of millions of black americans and in doing so transformed himself from merely a good president into a truly great one as the 1956 election approached it wasn't at all certain eisenhower would run again for years he had been telling friends it'd be content to be a one-term wonder then in 1955 he was knocked flat by a massive heart attack many wondered if it ever recover yet recover ike did he recovered and he ran again for the presidency it was an even more lopsided win than in 1952. eisenhower crushed it at the polls sweeping even southern states that hadn't voted republican since reconstruction yet while ike was always going to win the margins were only so favorable because of what was happening in the rest of the world just a few days before the election france britain and israel had secretly teamed up to launch a surprise attack on egypt the suez crisis was the result of egypt's leader nationalizing the suez canal but that's not important for this video what is important is that none of the three attacking forces bothered to tell the us what they were going to do and when eisenhower found out he was pissed if britain and france still had any illusions about who was the superpower they lost them when eisenhower did the geopolitical equivalent of spanking their asses holding back their allowance and grounding them for all eternity while the crisis was a humiliation for the europeans it made eisenhower look every bit the badass general like it been back in world war ii but while the suez crisis saw ike act decisively his foreign policy wouldn't always be so resolute in fact it would be more often characterized by surprising hesitancy the same year as the suez crisis an anti-communist revolution blew up in hungary one swiftly followed by a soviet invasion given his policy of massive retaliation some expected eisenhower to respond to soviet aggression but despite or perhaps because of his years as war hero eisenhower just didn't want to get involved he didn't want to risk another war something similar played out in the war in indochina in 1954 the french requested american assistance to subdue their former colonies as he would with hungary though eisenhower demured the french were defeated and cambodia vietnam and lao became independent nations unlike the general eisenhower who'd stormed the beaches of normandy president eisenhower seemed to avoid a fight at any cost at least he did openly behind the scenes he authorized the cia to do some seriously dirty stuff it was under eisenhower that the cia of infamy the coup plotting government toppling cia came into its own with eisenhower's knowledge the agency deposed elected leaders in iran and guatemala helping set up two dictators and trigger a civil war while the other presidents would authorize more destructive actions it was eisenhower who first really let the cia loose yet what did his voters care the odd suez crisis aside foreign affairs just didn't figure that much into americans minds especially when things were not going so well at home deizernaw's presidency finally ended in january 1961. by then he'd overseen the last expansion of the union when hawaii and alaska both became states in 1959. although it was broadly popular when he stepped down there were still signs that the era of i like ike was coming to an end the previous november voters had plumped not for the continuity candidate richard nixon but a young senator from massachusetts who promised a new direction but while ike would live to see the whole of the jfk lbj era he wouldn't be around much longer in 1965 eisenhower suffered another heart attack that left him badly weakened three years later he had sickened enough to be permanently checked into walter reed army hospital he'd never leave on march 28 1969 dwight eisenhower died aged 78. he'd lived just long enough to see his grandson marry the daughter of his old vp julie nixon setting up a new political dynasty now he was content to spend his final moments holding his beloved mammy's hand his last words were i want to go god take me the america ike left behind was already very different from the one he'd ruled civil rights had drastically expanded the country was embroiled in a devastating war in vietnam and new social movements had exploded that would have been unthinkable just a decade earlier and yet it would be this new america that came to recognize ike as one of its best modern leaders today with the benefit of hindsight we can see that eisenhower wasn't quite a great president even if he was a very good one he could and should have pushed harder on civil rights and his willingness to interfere in countries like iran and guatemala left some hot messes behind that his successors would have to clear up still when you get down to it there's no doubting that eisenhower was a fundamentally decent man who enjoyed a remarkable career i mean even if it never become president it'd probably still feature him in a video as the guy who led goddamn d-day that he managed to not just go on to become president but also be one of the top 10 presidents of all time speaks volumes about his abilities as a leader and perhaps that's how he'd want to be remembered not just as a president but as a leader a man who led his country through one of the defining decades of its existence whether you think he was a truly great president or merely a good one there's no doubting that without him both the u.s and the world in general will be a very different place thank you and good night so i really hope you enjoyed this video uh thanks again to manscape for sponsoring it and one of the plug to get in at the end if you like politics or just interesting profiles and important subjects please do check out my newest channel called explored spelt xplrd two videos a week on that channel interesting profiles of a whole bunch of sort of just random topics that i find interesting i'll link to that below thank you for watching

Channel: Biographics

Views: 264,885

Keywords: biographics, biography, biographies, people, famous people, simon whistler

Id: jDt8eP4KerM

Length: 25min 49sec (1549 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 05 2021