Eisenhower, Dwight D.

Cadet to Commander

Eisenhower's roots were in mid America—he was born in Denison, Texas, but grew up mainly in Abilene, Kansas—and his origins were solidly middle class: his father worked as a mechanic in the local creamery. Throughout Eisenhower's rise to the pinnacle of national and international leadership, he would exemplify the potential of America's idealized egalitarian society to function as a true meritocracy, where talent and hard work could transcend pedigree as a determinant of success. In 1911, he scored well enough on a competitive examination to secure an appointment to West Point, where he proved to be a popular cadet who excelled as an athlete and as a prankster, but did not always excel in the classroom. “Ike,” as his friends called him, graduated from the Academy in 1915, part of a class that also included future generals Omar Bradley and James Van Fleet. Unlike many of his classmates, however, Eisenhower would not see combat overseas during World War I, being posted instead to a stateside command at a tank-warfare training center in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The end of hostilities in Europe saw him transferred to Camp Meade, Maryland, the main base of the U.S. Army's armored corps. There he met and befriended George S. Patton, who had won acclaim fighting in France as a tank commander with the American Expeditionary Force.

As a military commander, Eisenhower never displayed the flamboyance of Patton or of Douglas MacArthur, for whom Eisenhower served as an aide during MacArthur's tenure in the 1930s as Army chief of staff and as military adviser to the Philippine government. Although Eisenhower never cultivated the dashing mystique or larger-than-life image of some of his more colorful colleagues, he was by no means lacking in charisma. Even one of his fiercest critics—the British general Bernard Montgomery, whose ego, ambition, and bombastic persona led him during World War II to chafe under, and frequently clash with, Eisenhower—admitted that the American general had “the power of drawing the hearts of men towards him as a magnet attracts the bits of metal.” In Eisenhower's case, that power came from a warm, outgoing, and captivating personality that inspired affection and from a decisive, forceful (but not overbearing), and forthright command style that inspired trust.

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