HISTORICAL NOTES: Ike’s Crusade

The general fell into step beside the young infantryman and together they plodded toward the Rhine.

“How are you feeling, son?”

“General, I’m awful nervous … I don’t feel so good.”

Said General Eisenhower: “Well, you and I are a good pair then, because I’m nervous too . . . Maybe if we just walk along together to the river we’ll be good for each other.”

The date was March 23, 1945. By next morning the massive crossing of the Rhine in the Wesel sector was a fact, and jubilant Winston Churchill stood on the west bank exclaiming repeatedly to Ike: “My dear General, the German is whipped. We’ve got him. He is all through.” But sweeter, perhaps, to Eisenhower, was the fervent comment of Field Marshal Brooke, Churchill’s army chief of staff: ”Thank God, Ike, you stuck by your plan. You were completely right . . . Thank God, you stuck by your guns.”

For General Eisenhower to stick by his guns was a tougher job than has ever been told until now. This week, in the 559 pages of Crusade in Europe, Ike explains just how tough it was. Written in the brisk and serviceable monotone of West Point English, it is Ike’s own indispensable record of the war in Europe and Africa.

5,000 Words a Day. Eisenhower wrote Crusade in Europe after four years of prodding from friends in & out of the Army. Once he decided to do it, he made a quick, sharp campaign of it. On Feb. 7 of this year, in his quarters at Fort Myer, Va., he started to dictate at a clip of 5,000 words a day, pacing steadily as he talked. After his shorthand expert had left for the day, he corrected the first draft, began to add to it in longhand, and soon found himself working on until 3 a.m. By March 24—46 days later—he was finished.

Crusade in Europe may well be, as its publishers claim in an awed voice, the “largest non-fiction-book publishing venture in history.” In syndicated (and ineptly cut) form it went to newspapers in the U.S. and 18 foreign countries before publication, is being published in ten countries. In the U.S., over 110,000 copies have been sold to retail dealers before publication, and it is the December Book-of-the-Month Club choice (750,000 members). * It is also the apparently final answer to many of the bitterest controversies of World War II.

Ike Was Boss. Not the least of these controversies involved Eisenhower’s own role as the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Forces. Those who have thought of him as primarily a placator or referee of jealous, bickering commanders, a benevolent military chairman of the board, will have to revise their estimate. A lieutenant colonel in the Regular Army when the infantry waded ashore in Africa (though a lieutenant general by wartime rank), Ike really ran the show.

Eisenhower was the choice of both President Roosevelt and of General Marshall (of whom he writes with near veneration), and Marshall gave him the power, then backed him to the hilt. Says Eisenhower flatly: “Commanders in the American Army were all of my own choosing.” He also fired them on his own responsibility, including General Lloyd R. Fredendall in Africa, and an unnamed corps commander in Italy.

Churchill, in spite of honest differences with Ike, always backed him up. During the campaign in France, says Ike, “Prime Minister Churchill and Field Marshal Brooke took occasion to inform me that they also were prepared, at any moment I expressed dissatisfaction with any of my principal British subordinates, to replace him instantly.” This unity of command, says Eisenhower, was one of the great achievements of the war.

But Ike’s differences with Churchill were continuous and lasted until the end of the war. At first they arose over Churchill’s coolness toward the cross-Channel invasion. Eisenhower, in fact, said that Churchill feared the bloodletting of a direct thrust at the Germans. Almost up to D-day itself, and while all plans for it had long since been put in motion, the Prime Minister plumped for an all-out attack against the “soft underbelly” of Europe (Italy, the Balkans, southern France). In this contest Ike proved just as stubborn as Churchill, and won every exchange.

Ike sometimes seems a little stiffly polite, though always an officer and a gentleman, in paying his respects to Churchill. In conferences before the European invasion, Churchill repeatedly said: “General, if by the coming winter you have established yourself … on the Continent, and have . . . freed beautiful Paris from the hands of the enemy, I will assert the victory to be the greatest of modern times.” Long before that winter was over, Ike’s armies had done much more: they were poised on the frontiers of Germany.

For Dday, Churchill demanded a spectator’s place on one of the supporting naval vessels. Ike, afraid that Churchill might become a casualty, refused to give his permission and the Prime Minister threatened to ship as a crew member. King George personally settled that one by telling Churchill that he would go along himself to lead the landing troops, if the Prime Minister persisted. That ended the argument.

Geniuses & Gadflies. Crusade in Europe should also be close to the final word on the Montgomery and Patton controversies, if not on the Battle of the Bulge. Patiently and logically, in terms of command and the necessities of logistics, Ike knocks down Monty’s argument in favor of a single ground commander in Europe (Monty wanted the job) and a single punch against the Ruhr and Berlin (again by Monty) instead of a broad crossing of the Rhine. The same logic and logistics dispose of Patton’s claim that, given the men & supplies he needed, he could have rushed Germany off its feet in 1944. Both Montgomery and Patton were dazzled by what seemed their individual opportunities, says Eisenhower.

As Sir James Grigg (British Secretary of State for War, 1942-45) has written, Eisenhower had to put up with “not one but two geniuses—Patton as well as Montgomery . . . [not] an entirely unalloyed blessing.” Ike leaves no doubt that he valued them both. He also leaves no doubt that they could, each in his own way, be irritating. Each time Patton made a boner, Blood-and-Guts would come to Ike close to tears, and promise not to do it again. Writes Eisenhower: “His emotional range was very great and he lived at either one end or the other of it.”

Ike had hand-picked Patton because “for certain types of action [he] was the outstanding soldier our country has produced …” Patton knew that Ike had saved his hide more than once, wrote to him after the famous soldier-slapping incident: “I am at a loss to find words with which to express my chagrin and grief at having given you, a man to whom I owe everything and for whom I would gladly lay down my life, cause to be displeased with me.”

Montgomery remained a gadfly to the end of the war. Eisenhower had great regard for him as a “set piece” tactician, credits him with having predicted Rommel’s tactics in Normandy “to the letter.” Monty was always asking for more men, more supplies, wider command, but, says Ike, “General Montgomery was acquainted only with the situation in his own sector . . . He deliberately pursued certain eccentricities of behavior, one of which was to separate himself habitually from his staff … He consistently refused to deal with a staff officer from any headquarters other than his own . . .” Like Patton, Monty frankly admitted his debt to Ike: “I know my own faults very well and I do not suppose I am an easy subordinate; I like to go my own way. But you have kept me on the rails in difficult and stormy times, and have taught me much.”

“Predicted Catastrophes.” Eisenhower leaves something still to be said about the Battle of the Bulge. He spread his forces thin, he says, and accepted the calculated risk of a German attack so that the troops and supplies released could be used in attacks elsewhere. Yet he admits that intelligence reports had shown a German buildup there, and that nothing was done to offset it. Ike’s own explanation seems a little lame: “This type of report is always coming from one portion or another of a front. The commander who took counsel only of all the gloomy intelligence estimates would never win a battle; he would forever be sitting, fearfully waiting for the predicted catastrophes.”

But if someone must take the rap, Eisenhower is willing: “[My] plan gave the German opportunity to launch his attack against a weak portion of our lines. If giving him that chance is to be condemned by historians, their condemnation should be directed at me alone.”

Eisenhower also takes the blame for his obvious errors in the Tunisian campaign, but makes out a good case for his temporary collaboration with Darlan. Not only was he bound by political directives that the French in North Africa were to be treated as neutrals, not enemies, but Robert Murphy’s intelligence for the U.S. State Department on General Henri Giraud proved faulty. A great deal of effort went into prying Giraud out of Vichy territory, only to have him insist on having Ike’s job or none at all. Finally Giraud changed his mind.

But when the Allies got to North Africa they found that none of the French paid any attention to Giraud; the Vichy commanders on the scene idolized Pétain, and ultimately agreed to take orders only from Darlan, who by lucky chance was in Algiers at the time, visiting his paralyzed son. It was not Ike’s doing that De Gaulle in London wasn’t even told of the North African invasion. The British blamed a leak in De Gaulle’s staff for their earlier failure to capture Dakar. Ike is still cool toward De Gaulle, who, as Ike tells it, was more of a hindrance than a help to the Allied effort.

Essentially an optimist, Eisenhower thought at first that Russia and the West had a good chance of working out their postwar differences, tried hard in Berlin to make a go of it with Marshal Zhukov. The Marshal, he found, was merely a high-ranking Kremlin mouthpiece without authority, though Stalin himself said to Ike: “There is no sense in sending a delegate somewhere if he is merely to be an errand boy. He must have authority to act.” Ike soon learned that the East-West ideological differences were irreconcilable, that adequate military defense would provide the only real security for the U.S.

Promise in Potsdam. There had been rumors that publication of Eisenhower’s book was carefully held up until after the election. But Ike’s only stick of political dynamite has already become pretty damp powder. In Potsdam one day, Ike was out driving with President Truman, whom he had found “sincere, earnest, and a most pleasant person with whom to deal.” Said Truman, all of a sudden: “General, there is nothing that you may want that I won’t try to help you get. That definitely and specifically includes the presidency in 1948.” Ike says he replied with a laugh: “Mr. President, I don’t know who will be your opponent for the presidency, but it will not be I.”

-Under a Treasury ruling for non-professional writers, Eisenhower’s profits on the book, reported to be over $500,000, will be taxed as capital gains (25%) instead of as personal income, thus practically doubling his earnings on it. Though it is not generally known, he accepts no salary as president of Columbia University. As a five-star general he is technically still on active duty, with total Army pay and allowances of $15,744 a year.