Category Archives: Dwight D. Eisenhower

Operation Torch plus 80 years

08 Tuesday Nov 2022

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, WW2

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It has been a long day with another, longer one coming tomorrow but I would be remiss if I did not mention that today is the 80th anniversary of the American invasion of North Africa. One of the Second World War’s great ironies is that American troops’ first major engagement in the Atlantic Theater came largely against . . . the Vichy French. It was all over in seventy-two hours but don’t let the quick timeline fool you. It all could have gone so differently. The truth is we were fortunate things went the way they did. Marshall, Eisenhower and all the others had a steep learning curve.

(image/American troops land near Algiers, 8 November 1942/FDR Library)

Holocaust Remembrance Day 2021

27 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by in Civil War sesquicentennial, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Holocaust, Memory, Reconstruction, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM)

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Holocaust survivor Ignaz Feldmann shows the Ohrdruf gallows to Eisenhower (far right) and others, April 12, 1945

I was reading the social media feed of an email acquaintance a few days ago, a prolific and well-regarded historian of the Civil War Era, who noted that he was starting to believe that the memory and historiography of post-Civil War Reconstruction seem to be supplanting our remembrance of the actual fighting that occurred between 1861-65. That is becoming my sense as well. How could it not given events of the past several years? We have seen the same phenomenon with the popular memory of the Second World War over the past three quarters of a century. Battles make for riveting narratives filled with interesting characters behaving shamefully or courageously, often at the same time. War’s aftermath however is always complicated and, in comparison to tales of the battlefield, almost always unheroic. No one wants to study shabby compromises. I can’t help but think of all these things this January 27th, International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

I don’t wish to go too much into the details at the moment because it’s still a ways off, but some colleagues and I are working on a project related to the Shoah that will come to fruition sometime in the future. Specifically our project covers the American response to the war and Holocaust before, during, and after the conflict. It’s a fascinating topic and we intend to cover it thoroughly. The historical memory of the Holocaust began before the war ended: on April 12, 1945–four weeks prior to what became V-E Day–Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar N. Bradley, George S. Patton and Troy H. Middleton toured the Ohrdruf labor and concentration camp. Benjamin Runkle wrote a piece for Tablet magazine two years ago about Eisenhower’s role in not just ensuring the documentation of the liberation of the camps, but his work–mistakes and all–in accommodating displaced persons after the war’s end. The 75th anniversary of the Second World War’s end was last spring. That was only part of the story; as in post-1865 America, post-1945 Europe was hardly at peace. These next few years are an opportunity to examine what came immediately after Germany’s surrender, in all its complexity.

(image/photographer, William Newhouse; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park)

D-Day plus seventy-five years

06 Thursday Jun 2019

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George C. Marshall, Harry S. Truman, New York City, WW2

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Rally in New York City’s Madison Square on D-Day, June 6, 1944

Good morning, everyone. I could not let the 75th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion go unnoticed. Anniversaries such as this are an opportunity to pause and reflect on what we have gained and stand to lose in our current troubled times. Coalitions are difficult to build and easy to destroy. We would do well to remember the lessons taught to us by Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, George Marshall, Harry Truman, and the many others who helped create the world we cavalierly take for granted today.

Last night one person did mention to me the 75th anniversary of D-Day. We’ll see how many, if at all, do today. Here is a post I wrote in 2011. The major D-Day anniversaries have followed me over the course of my adult life.

There are many striking images of New York City taken on June 6, 1944. People obviously had a need to be out publicly, anxious as they were for news from England and France. D-Day was a lonely time for Eisenhower himself, who by that time had done all he could and thus spent his hours chain-smoking and waiting for news at his headquarters in England. Here in the States, ball games were cancelled, shops closed, and things in general came to a halt as the fate of the war hung in the balance.

(image/photographed by Howard Hollem, Edward Meyer or MacLaugharie for the Office of War Information; Library of Congress)

NATO at 70

04 Thursday Apr 2019

Posted by in Dean Acheson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, George C. Marshall, Harry S. Truman

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Secretary of State Dean Acheson joins eleven other foreign ministers in signing the proposal of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) while President Truman and Vice President Alben Barkley look on, 4 April 1949.

Continuing on in a sense with yesterday’s post about the creation of the Marshall Plan, today marks the 70th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The scene we see above is Secretary of State Dean Acheson signing the agreement with President Truman and Vice President Alben William Barkley looking on over Acheson’s shoulder. Acheson was one of a dozen foreign ministers in Washington on 4 April 1949 who signed on in the creation of NATO. President Truman spoke to those assembled.

From here the measure went to the U.S. Senate, where passage of the NATO Treaty was by no means a given. Senator Robert A. Taft was just of many who had his concerns. Eventually the Senate ratified the NATO treaty in June. Eisenhower was the natural choice to lead NATO. The supreme allied commander in the Second World War at this time was the president of Columbia University and would take a leave of absence from the school in 1950 to lead the NATO troops in Western Europe.

Again, the more we understand the difficulties in creating such complex mechanisms as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Marshall Plan, the better we might see the wisdom in treading lightly on the hows & whys of tearing asunder their hard won gains.

(image/Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer)

The return of the 27th Division

10 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by in 27th (New York) Division, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Writing, WW2

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The Eagle captured the excitement of the Leviathan’s return while noting signs of the coming difficulty in securing the peace. The Mauretania returned this same day with another 3,500 men from the 27th Division.

A few minutes ago on this rainy Sunday morning I hit send and submitted something that hopefully will appear in an online venue toward the end of the month. I suppose this will give away the topic, but in my research I found these incredible images we see of men from the 27th “New York” Division returning from France 100 years ago this week. Nearly 15,000 of O’Ryan’s Roughnecks returned aboard the Leviathan and Mauretania on March 6, 1919. I always found it extraordinary the way the men packed in to these huge ocean liners by the thousands like this for the voyage home. During the Second World War Dwight Eisenhower and other military officials gave the men the choice of coming home the way the doughboys had a generation earlier, or staggering the launches with more crossings and thus fewer men to make the passage more comfortable. The thing was, that also meant more time in getting everyone back. Eager to get home and move on with their lives, the dogfaces chose the former virtually to a person.

Men of the 27th Division aboard the Leviathan arrive in New York Harbor, March 6, 1919. Arrivals such as this, with ships crammed stem to stern with doughboys, were almost a daily occurrence in winter 1919.

The Leviathan pulls in to New York Harbor on March 6, 1919. Dockworkers returned from strike to ensure the Leviathan and Mauretania’s safe arrival in the city with the men of the 27th.

(bottom images/Library of Congress)

The Class the Stars Fell On at Gettysburg, 1915

02 Monday Jul 2018

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gettysburg, Ulysses S. Grant (General and President)

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The West Point Class of 1915–The Class the Stars Fell On–toured Gettysburg in early May 1915 a few days before the sinking of the Lusitania and graduated one month later. Two years after this many of these men would be lieutenants and captains serving in France.

We are going to continue with the Gettysburg theme this Fourth of July Week with this photograph of the West Point Class of 1915 posing on the steps of the Christ Lutheran Church on Chambersburg Street. This West Point cohort is called The Class the Stars Fell On because so many of the firsties we see here went on to become generals by the time of the Second World War. Somewhere in here are Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley. They arrived in Gettysburg on 2 May and toured for several days under the supervision of Colonel Gustav J. Fiebeger, the legendary instructor who for more than a quarter of a century served as chair of the Academy’s Civil and Military Engineering Department. Among Fiebeger’s important works was “Campaign and Battle of Gettysburg,” which was studied by students at West Point. Remember that military parks like Gettysburg still fell under the auspices of the War Department in 1910s, not being turned over to the National Park Service until the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration.

When these cadets graduated a month later on June 12 they were the largest West Point Class up until that time, comprising 164 second lieutenants. Secretary of War Lindley Garrison was the commencement speaker. This was the first United States Military Academy class to graduate since the outbreak of the Great War the previous year and everyone understood that these young men might eventually be leading men into battle. The Lusitania was sunk later the very week this photo was taken. A very short list of those in attendance when the West Point Class of 1915 graduated the following month included Major General and Chief of Staff Hugh L. Scott; Major General George W. Goethels, who built the Panama Canal during the Theodore Roosevelt Administration; a West Pointer from the Class of 1847 who went on to become a brigadier; and Horace Porter, another West Pointer, who was an important aid to General and President Ulysses S. Grant and who went on to build Grant’s Tomb and was managing the mausoleum up through this time.

 

Liberty trucks at Grant’s Tomb

06 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Grant National Memorial (NPS)

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I wish the above image were less grainy but it is how it appears in the digitized edition of the 28 April 1918 Brooklyn Daily Eagle. For much of the year leading up to the taking of this picture, the Society of Automotive Engineers had worked exhaustively with the Quartermaster Corps’s Motor Transport Board to standardize a number of vehicles before putting them into mass production. The ones we see here are Standard B “Liberty” trucks. They were brought to Grant’s Tomb in late April 1918 to observe the anniversary of Ulysses S. Grant’s birthday, show the vehicles off, and demonstrate to the public how their Liberty Loan money was getting spent. When the war began most European armies were still using horse-drawn carriages. The United States experimented with trucks somewhat during the Punitive Expedition in Texas in 1916 but was also largely dependent on equestrian transport out in the field. Thus the need for the automotive industry and War Department to brainstorm in 1917-18 before putting the Standard B and other models into mass production. By early winter 1918 through the summer, dozens of factories were turning these and the other models out by the thousands every month.

In the same edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in which this photograph appeared, there was an article stating that the automobile would become increasingly significant in American life after the war. That prediction proved prescient but it is nonetheless jarring to see, given that the United States had not yet fully engaged in the Great War and that the outcome was far from certain. In July 1919,, just one month after the Versailles Treaty, about 275 officers and men of the U.S. Army, including one Dwight D. Eisenhower, engaged in the first Transcontinental Motor Convoy from Washington D.C. to San Fransisco. The convoy’s mission was both to test the efficacy of moving men and material across such a distance and to advertise to the public and military/political leadership the significance of motorized transport.

 

Sunday morning coffee

02 Sunday Jul 2017

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gettysburg

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July 1917: Bakers make war bread by the pound to feed hungry recruits at the Gettysburg training camp

Good morning, all. I have been thinking about Gettysburg all weekend. I was off all this past week and used the time productively to write 4500 words on my book about Civil War Era New York. The goal today is to write 750, which would put me in even better shape. Yesterday I went to the greenmarket on Union Square and pick up some things. The produce is almost in full season, though there is not yet sign of the heirloom tomatoes. I thought I would share this photo of an army baker taken in Gettysburg in July 1917. “War bread” was a concoction developed by the Army to hold the loaf’s freshness for several weeks. They needed the bread; thousands of troops were filing into Gettysburg for training in June – July 1917. This was not Camp Colt, the tank corps commanded by Captain Dwight Eisenhower in 1918, but a more general basic training facility similar to camps sprouting throughout the country that summer.

The Gettysburg army camp was constructed by Brooklyn architect Woodruff Leeming. Leeming attended Adelphi College in Brooklyn and later received his B.S. in Architecture from M.I.T. Five years prior to the Great War he designed the Beecher Memorial Building for Plymouth Church, which was constructed in recognition of the Henry Ward Beecher centennial. Leeming was active in the Brooklyn Institute of Arts & Sciences, what later became the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Woodruff was a major in the Officers’ Reserve Corps and it was under this jurisdiction that he traveled to Gettysburg in early June 1917 to build the camp.

Enjoy your holiday Sunday.

(image/Brooklyn Daily Eagle)

An afternoon at the Library of Congress

16 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Great War centennial, Libraries, World War One Centennial Committee for New York City, WW2

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I was having a conversation with someone last night who noted how many of the images I have used recently on the blog have come from the Library of Congress. I try to mix up the sources, but indeed most of the best photographs for recent posts have come from the LOC’s extensive collections. As a librarian myself, I understand how valuable these resources are to our nation. Not only have I used the library’s image collections, I have utilized the Library of Congress manuscript collections for my book projects as well. And the best thing is, with the internet at our fingertips many of these resources are available to us regardless of where we live or work. They do such a great job, we almost–almost–take it all for granted. Well today I had the good fortune to go with the Hayfoot to the Jefferson Building to see Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I. The curators did a fine job not just discussing the battles, but the economic, political, and social consequences of the war as well. With our country facing so many issues and uncertainties in our own historical moment, it is comforting to know that we as a nation have weathered times of uncertainty in the past. The challenges vary only in the details.

It is hard to believe the the World War I Centennial Commission Trade Show was three years ago this week, and right here in Washington D.C. no less. Approaching others is not something that comes easily to me, but I made certain at that event to talk to the representatives at every table. I remember having discussions with staff from various museums and cultural institutions, including some people from the Library of Congress’s Veterans History Project of the American Folklife Center. The friend with whom I was speaking last night lost his father, a veteran, not long ago. His father was buried in a military cemetery in a Southern state. I was telling my friend that waiting for my bus in Manhattan yesterday morning I struck up a conversation with a man wearing a WW2 cap. He too was waiting for the bus and was headed to Bethesda to see his daughter and her family, presumably for Father’s Day Weekend. Over our coffees I asked him if he had fought in Europe or the Pacific and he said Europe. He said he was nineteen when he entered the war, which would put him now in his early 90s. He looked more like seventy-five at the oldest. I told him I wrote my master thesis on Dwight Eisenhower and he told me he met the general one time. Eisenhower had come to speak to his unit of about 100 men to explain in person why their transport ship home would be delayed for a week. I know my WW2 well enough to know that troop transport delays homeward immediately after V-E Day were a major snag, though I didn’t say that to the veteran that at the coffee shop. Hearing the man tell the story was an incredible experience I will never forget.

I say all this because I noticed in the outstanding exhibit today that the curators incorporated a good deal of material from the Veterans History Project into Echoes of the Great War. Frank Buckles was the last of the American WW1 veterans, and he himself died over six years ago. If you have a chance, make sure to check out the Library of Congress’s outstanding Echoes of the Great War, which runs through January 2019.

The ETO turns 75

08 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George C. Marshall, George S. Patton (General), John J. Pershing (General), Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), William McKinley

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Colonel N.A. Ryan, acting chief of transportation, U.S. Army European theater of operations, and Major General D.J. McMullen, D.S.O., C.B.E., director of transportation, British Army, Great Britain circa 1942

General Pershing’s arrival in first England and then France one hundred years ago this week is often understood to mark a turning point in American-European relations. The coming of the A.E.F. certainly signaled the arrival of the United States on the world stage, a process that had begun almost two decades earlier during the Spanish-American War. The evolving American relationship with Europe dates back to then too; it was John Hay, Secretary of State in the McKinley and Roosevelt Administration from 1898-1905 and, just prior to that, Ambassador to the Court of St. James, who had done so much to build the “special relationship” with Great Britain. Hay and Pershing laid the groundwork diplomatically and militarily for the Allied victory in the Second World War. Pershing’s protégés included George Marshall, George Patton, and Dwight Eisenhower. Today, 8 June 2017, marks another significant moment: the War Department created the European Theater of Operations on this date in 1942.

Dwight Eisenhower, at fifty-one now a major general, took over at director of the European Theater of Operations (ETO) in London on June 24. Joseph Stalin had been pressing for a second European front for some time, and now it appeared he would get that some time in 1942. That of course did not come to pass. Roosevelt and his planners decided to make North Africa the first Atlantic offensive. Two years later came the invasion of Normandy and V-E Day less than on year after that. Ike was now a hero and came home to assume the presidency of Columbia University. He was back in Europe as the head of NATO in 1950. For the past three quarters of a century we have taken the work of the U.S. Army in the European Theater of Operations granted. It was in Germany as part of the ETO where Elvis was stationed after getting drafted in the late 1950s.

We would do well to remember in our current moment that building alliances is much more arduous and time consuming than tearing them apart. Diplomacy is a funny thing: when done well one does not see it; when done poorly it is all one sees. I only saw one reference to the creation of the European Theater of Operations today. Here is to remembering the work that Roosevelt, Marshall, Eisenhower, and millions of anonymous American uniformed service persons have done over the past seventy-five years.

(image/Library of Congress)