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The Eisenhower Years xx-xx-xx (01) Introduction
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The Eisenhower Years xx-xx-xx (01) Introduction
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- [00:00]
Narrator
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
Men will still.
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Historian
Say this was their finest hour.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
We will gain the inevitable triumph. So help us God.
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Today the appointment of General Dwight Eisenhower.
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General
As supreme commander of Allied Expeditionary Forces.
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Harry Butcher
He didn't expect to have promotion, was rather surprised when he got it.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
Soldiers, sailors and airmen of the Allied.
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Expeditionary Force, you are about to embark.
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Upon the great crusade toward which we.
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General
Have got us to work together. And we won.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
That was a big thing. He won.
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Historian
He was kind of the GI's.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
General Eisenhower informs me that the forces.
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Historian
Of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
I intend to have nothing whatsoever to.
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Do with partisan politics. I will never seek political office. I accept your summons. I will lead this crusade of a.
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Historian
Certain kind of politics.
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Kenneth S. Davis
He was an absolute genius. The politics of popularity.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
Too old a cry, but it hurt.
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Historian
Too much to laugh.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
You white di who Howard do follow this word.
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General
Mr. Chairman.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
Mr. Chairman, may I say that Mr. Wells talks about fellow citizen being proved. Tonight we greet with prayers of thanksgiving the official news that an armistice signed almost an hour ago in Korea.
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Historian
The single foremost quality of President Eisenhower's public life was this element of trust that people had in him.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
I, Dwight D. Eisenhower, do solemnly swear.
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Kenneth S. Davis
We swept all these things under the rug. We postponed decisions and we missed opportunity after opportunity for greatness. You can never say I've never made agencies.
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General
I found them ready and willing to listen to all sides of an issue and then ready and willing to make a decision.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
In accordance with that responsibility. I have today issued an executive order directing the use of troops under federal authority to aid in the execution of federal law at Little Rock, Arkansas.
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Give us the ballot and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights. Give us the ballot. We give the supreme court in Washington, D.C. fair warning. If they can't maintain our southern way of life, then we are going to.
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Do something about it. The first artificial earth satellite in the world has now been created. This first satellite was today successfully launched in the ussr. There is real military significance to these launchings. The pilot's name has Francis Geary powers and the aircraft. A U2 in his administration was a period of relative tranquility in our country.
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Historian
President Eisenhower guided our country through a very perilous period. But he did it not so much by dynamic leadership as he did by comforting us.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
It is truly, I think, the most powerful position in the free world.
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Ralph Titus
The Eisenhower Years A chronicle in sound of the life of Dwight Eisenhower. Produced by Extension Radio television at Kansas State University.
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Narrator
This is the first of 13 programs dealing with the life of the 34th president of the United States. As a soldier, Dwight Eisenhower commanded the mightiest armada in history. As a president, he guided the nation through eight years of increasingly complex times. And as both soldier and statesman, he was one of the sculptors of the 20th century. And if history has yet to place Eisenhower, there is little doubt where the people have already placed him.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
He is first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.
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Kenneth S. Davis
I think he was a kind of mirror in which the common man could see himself reflected in the colors and shapes of greatness. You see, everybody identifies with a hero and thinks of himself in terms the hero is himself, in a sense. But he was a special kind of hero.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
We want height. We want Ike. We want height.
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General
Well, he was one of our.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
Most.
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General
Important commanders in history. He had the biggest force, biggest operation, and he won with it.
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Arthur Fleming
Can't say much more friendly, human, warm. He was the best.
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Harry Butcher
He sort of generated a feeling of integrity. He also was dedicated to his job.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
To put it in the simplest terms, he was a good man whose goodness was evident to all.
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Narrator
When Dwight Eisenhower was a boy, he was convinced that life was a flat plateau of assigned tasks. Unchanging, he thought, in monotony and injustice. He said he supposed at that time the only peak on his horizon was that of entering the eighth grade, or maybe of becoming a full fledged member of the high school baseball team. His boyhood dream was not unlike that of most boys growing up in the first part of this century. He described it in his book At Ease. I daydream now and then about the highest and most remote peaks of all. To be an engineer racing across the land, arriving in Abilene, steam engine hissing, bells ringing once again, breaking the record from St. Louis or some other distant mythical place. Certainly I never thought of myself or those about me as makers or participants in any other kind of history. What the future was to hold for Dwight Eisenhower was to surpass any of the childhood visions he dared contemplate. His destiny would in fact be the classic American dream come true. The small town boy from the heart of America would become one of the world's most widely known, renowned and respected leaders.
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Ralph Titus
Eich Eisenhower seemed a monument to robust health. His well formed athletic frame spoke of strength and sturdiness. The rigors of West Point training and his many years as an army officer had given him an erect and dignified bearing and the appearance of being a large man, though he was only 5ft 10. That picture of health was accented by a ruddy complexion and alert sparkling blue eyes. The resulting impression was of a man of authority, a man whose very presence would command attention and respect.
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Narrator
Words on a page were never more eloquent than the expressions on Ike's face. He had a remarkable facility for mobilizing all his features, jaw, mouth, eyes, eyebrows, forehead into a statement of anger, surprise, boredom, perplexity or mirth. Whatever his mood, it was clear to read. But his most outstanding feature was his grin, as broad as the Kansas wheat fields. And it became his trademark. To millions around the world it represented his warmth and regard for humanity.
- [09:19]
Historian
Lots of the so called unsophisticated people in America, they call them unsophisticated. They're really the, in many ways, the strength of this nation. They just liked him. They didn't know anything about his politics.
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Narrator
Those the words of former Vice President Hubert Humphrey who said Dwight Eisenhower was every father's idea of a son, every son's idea of a father and everyone's brother. Those who knew Ike were around him both as a general and as a president, said he was privately as he seemed publicly, likable, affable, easygoing, charming, gracious. One of those who knew him well during the war was his personal aide, now retired Navy Captain Harry Butcher.
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Harry Butcher
You could always be at home and at ease with him. He was just a nice companion who had human thoughts and pleasant to be with. And I think this is the. But I don't think there was a mean bone on his body, really. I think this is the impression the American public have of him. At least it's mine.
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Narrator
Author and Eisenhower biographer Kenneth S. Davis.
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Kenneth S. Davis
You always felt when you were with.
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Historian
Ike that, that he was.
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Kenneth S. Davis
That he meant it. You know, he wasn't, he wasn't phony. He was Not a phony at all. Now, as far as his personal human relations were concerned, I think he was absolutely first rated.
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Narrator
Former vice president Hubert Humphrey.
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Historian
He had that. That friendly smile, that kind of informal manner about him which endeared him to a lot of people and gained him a great deal of respect and affection. I think there was trust, affection and respect even beyond admiration. I mean, admir. You admire sometimes some people, but don't particularly like them and. But the people respected him and they held him in warm affection and basically in trust.
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Narrator
Ike had a sense of humor that was sometimes whimsical when he was in a clownish mood. In his younger years, he would entertain friends with a favorite parlor trick. Harry Butcher recalls.
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Harry Butcher
He would stand erect with his head.
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General
And.
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Harry Butcher
Body stiff against the wall, and he would slowly fall forward without moving a muscle. But at the last instant, just before it seemed he would break his nose on the floor, his strong hands and muscular arms quickly broke the fall. This was in the nature of a crowd pleaser.
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Narrator
Ike's preferred entertainment was storytelling, and many of his stories he told on himself.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
This is a real story in, you might say, psychiatry. There's a boy came to town and he talks about his experience in the ring. Now, these farmer boys around here, there was a half a dozen of them. You'd take him and picked him by his neck and carried him off like that. But, you know, by just talking he. The way he did, he. Well, he just had them bluff and they just stayed away from him like he had the plague. I came back for my furlough mid year, midterm furloughs. Only we got one, you see, in 1913. And they were all waiting. I went off the train where I was saying, look, we hear you've been boxing up in West Point. You've got to take this fellow off. Well, I didn't want to start alibi. My knee really wasn't fit to be in a boxing ring, I'll tell you that. But finally I just had to save face, agree to do this. I certainly was. I was bigger than this boy, and I must have outweighed him at least 12 pounds, some of that kind. And I had a better reach. And finally we got. There was a clothing store, Sterle's clothing Store, down in the basement. They had sort of a rough ring. Finally got down there with the Sterle boys and these others. And of course, I did everything I could. No date. I was very heavily muscled, ticking my shoulders. I stripped down and I took off my shirt and I went around and making My muscles as big as I could. I wanted to impress this fellow and because I didn't know what I was into, I. That's all. I'm an amateur and that's how I was to it. Well, this fellow came up walking toward me in such a place that I knew he was completely ignorant. He didn't know the first thing about boxing. And I reached over and jabbed him in the face of my left and he was sort of staggered right as hard as I could and he was out. Well, and there were other residents. Relief and all my life.
- [14:29]
Narrator
Justice. Ike's moods were clearly marked on his countenance. So was Eisenhower's nature, stamped with easily discernible characteristics. An almost awe inspiring honesty, genuine humility and sincerity. A complete lack of pretension and self interest, a deep rooted sense of dignity. The strong Protestant influence of his upbringing had instilled in Ike the ethic of working hard and getting ahead by one's own efforts. He attributed that to two things. First, being brought up on the fringes of the frontier, we were still in.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
That place in our development where there was a little bit of the old pioneer you did for yourselves. Everybody not only realized a necessity for work, but there was no, there was no resistance to it. You just accepted it as a way of life. We sneered at anyone that said we were underprivileged or anything like that. We didn't know those words in those days anyway. If either the town, the county or the. Or the federal government tried to give us a dollar, why, I think Airport stress.
- [15:38]
Narrator
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- [15:53]
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Everybody in the town had been outraged. This was terrible. Times have changed, but we were still just in the last edges, you might say, of that era where people were expected to work to take care of themselves, that's all.
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Narrator
And the second prime influence.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
Well, I think my parents were successful in instilling, you might say, decent ambition in all the boys. My mother and father both are saying, well, if you want to go to college, go. There's nothing stopping you. And they refused to even hint that lack of money could keep you from going to college if you really wanted to. It was, my mother had a number of sayings, sink or swim or survive or perish, things of that kind. And she said, just how strongly is your desire to do these things? And I think therefore they were constantly trying to show us that you got anywhere by your own efforts and by.
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Narrator
How well you could do your work, whatever you chose. Always energetic, Ike tackled everything he did with enthusiasm and dedication. Success in life was his goal, but he didn't seem ambitious for the pinnacle of success he eventually attained. Ken Davis.
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General
I think he was going to play.
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Kenneth S. Davis
For as far as he could get. But I really think it's true, as he used to always say. He said it to me, and he did to everybody, that if he made colonel, that was his ambition, to make colonel permanent rank.
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Narrator
Even as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Eisenhower failed to see, or perhaps ignored his place in history. His public relations officer at that time, Thor Smith recalls, I think we had.
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Arthur Fleming
More of a sense of what place he was going to have in history than he had himself. We, as I say, he had almost a schoolboy's naivete about the whole thing. I mean, he would not accept how important he was, and he would not accept that he was a. He was a worldwide figure. Maybe it's. Maybe it's the army training that did this. I mean, you know, you come up through the ranks and whatnot. But I'm sure that he didn't, at that point, sense how terribly important he was and how every single thing that he did and said was historical.
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Narrator
Outwardly, Ike appeared a simple man. But like most men, he had his quirks of character, his paradoxes, his complexities and weaknesses. Despite his resoluteness, at times he seemed indecisive. And during his presidency, his critics and occasionally his supporters accused him of inconsistency and vacillation. He was gregarious, but sometimes bashful. He was relaxed and easygoing, but now and then displayed a temper that became legendary. Few people saw it, but those who did say it was awesome. And Ike himself tried very hard to control it.
- [19:00]
Dwight D. Eisenhower
As a matter of fact, I learned to control it from my mother and a little talk she gave to me, oh, I guess, when I wasn't over 10. And I didn't, of course, appreciate it until I was probably 35 or 40. It was on Halloween evening. My two older brothers had gotten permission to go up and join a little group, and I wanted to go along, and my folks decided I was too young and I couldn't do it. So I, of course, I bellowed and did everything I could to get them change their mind. But finally off went my two brothers. Now, this is about the last thing I remember that instant until my dad had me by the collar and I was really getting a tanning And I don't mean maybe and what he had done. He found me. There's an old apple tree, a stump of an apple tree. And for some reason, I guess I thought the apple tree was to blame. And I was there crying as hard as I could and beating the apple tree with my fists. And they were all bleeding and messy. Well, of course he. After he got through with his punishment, he says, young man, to bed. So the bed I went. Well now, about a half hour later my mother came in the room and she began to talk to me and she used them some Bible verses and then she. But she talked a while and trying to show me how when you really. You got so angry at someone that you couldn't help yourself, that you were not hurting them at all, they didn't even know it. How could they know it? So you're hurting yourself. Well then in the meantime she began to wash my hands and get a little salve on them and wrap them up. And I think that was one of the most important moments of my life because since then I want to tell you this, I've gotten angry many times, but I certainly have tried to keep from showing.
- [21:12]
Narrator
Often tolerant and tireless in his efforts to persuade and conciliate, Ike could be very short tempered. When brought problems or decisions, he expect others to settle for themselves. Always searching for the simple and straightforward. He loathed needless detail and what he considered trivial and unnecessary matters. The great respecter of truth, he would scrupulously weed from his speeches those words and phrases that sounded in the least bit contrived, those promises that were made for effect only. And like most people, Ike sometimes got up on the wrong side of the bed. On such occasions, so the story goes, the White House staff would be alerted by his attire. A brown suit signaling foul weather, a blue suit. Fair blue suits were more prevalent than brown. Eisenhower Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Arthur Fleming comments on the Eisenhower temper.
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General
Things have been written about that and I've heard people discuss it, but I never had any experience with it and I never observed it. There was a saying around the White House that when after you had pursued a point to the place where the color began to move up in the back of his neck, you probably should assume that he had made a decision. I don't know how accurate that observation was.
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Narrator
Eisenhower was not a member of any particular church until he became president. Then he joined the Presbyterian Church. Nonetheless, he was a religious man. Many of his speeches made reference to the spiritual values and needs of America, of her sacred foundations and her moral influence in the world. He was the first president to begin his inaugural address with a prayer. And throughout his administration, the weekly cabinet meetings also began with a prayer. Arthur Fleming.
- [23:16]
General
I've always felt that. But one thing that has to be kept in mind is that his spiritual roots ran very deep. And you would see reflections of that in the way in which he approached particular kinds of issues. Soon after his major surgery, or soon after the recovery period, he attended one night a meeting of business leaders from all over the country that had been brought together to listen to a briefing from General Grunther, who was then in charge of NATO. And after General Grunther talked, there was a question and answer period. And down near the end of the question and answer period, one member of the group said to General Grother, when you think of position taken by the Indian government today, and I forget what the issue was, don't you feel a little bit frustrated when you consider all of the money that we put into India? In other words, the position taken by the Indian government had been in opposition to some position that we had taken? Well, General Gunther responded to the question very well, as he always does, but then the chairman turned to the President and said, is there anything you'd like to say? And he said, well, when I left the White house, I promised Mrs. Eisenhower that I wouldn't get involved in any discussion. But he said, I would like to comment on that last question. He said, that last question rests back on two assumptions. The first assumption is that a neutral nation is a liability in a world like ours. And then he proceeded to explain why a neutral nation was not necessarily a liability and some of the burdens that we would take on if a nation like India were a part of one of our military or political alliances. But then he said, also that question rests back on the assumption that we are giving aid to India in the hope that by so doing, we can persuade her to become a part of a military or a political alliance of which we are a part. He said, I don't believe that the American people are making resources available for that reason. He said, I think that the American people are making these resources available because they feel that they have a obligation, a spiritual obligation, to share their resources with other people's in order to help them achieve their highest potential. He said, it is possible that countries like India and other countries will begin to realize that this is why we're doing it. And he said, it is possible that as they realize it, they may embrace the values that lead us to make a contribution of this kind, he said, if they do, then maybe we will start down a pathway that will lead to peace. And in fact, he said, I don't know of any other way of starting down that pathway. Well, I felt that that expression unquestionably came out of his rather deep seated spiritual background, much as for any other reason.
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Narrator
Duty, honor, country. The motto of West Point. It could well have been Ike's personal creed. He was first and foremost an American. His faith lay in the standards and principles of democracy, the rights of the individual, human dignity, self government, peace and prosperity. Liberty with justice. He dedicated his life to preserving and strengthening those principles. The experience of war taught Eisenhower the necessity of peace. He had been known as the Peace General and would become the Peace President. He recognized that the oppressed people of the world looked to America to help free them of the fear and tyranny of war. Upon assuming the office of president, he pledged his unceasing efforts to the cause of peace with justice for all mankind. In his first inaugural address, President Eisenhower outlined the precepts by which he hoped Americans would live. They were the principles that were to guide him the rest of his life.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
At such a time in history, we who are free must proclaim anew our faith. This faith is the abiding creed of our fathers. It is our faith in the deathless dignity of man, governed by eternal moral and natural laws. This faith defines our full view of life. It establishes beyond debate those gifts of the Creator that are man's inalienable rights and that make all men equal in his sight. In the light of this equality, we know that the virtues most cherished by free people, love of truth, pride of work, devotion to country, all are treasures equally precious in the lives of the most humble and of the most exalted. And so each citizen plays an indispensable role. The productivity of our heads, our hands and our hearts is the source of all the strength we can command for both the enrichment of our lives and the winning of the peace. This is the hope that beckons us onward in this century of trial. This is the work that awaits us all to be done with bravery, with charity and with prayer to Almighty God.
- [29:31]
Ralph Titus
The Eisenhower Years is produced by Extension Radio Television at Kansas State University under a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The producer narrator is Ralph Titus. Research by Anne Frank. Original music for the Eisenhower Years was composed by Gail Kubik, performed by the Kansas State University Chamber Symphony conducted by Luther Levengood. Our thanks to the following organizations for materials used in this broadcast, CBS News, WC BAU Radio, Philadelphia Metro Media Incorporated and the Eisenhower Presidential Library. Next week, Abilene, the Formative Years. This is Paul deweese.