The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s

by William I. Hitchcock

“Well, Ike, you’re going to command Overlord,” Roosevelt casually told him in the backseat of an armored Cadillac in Cairo in December 1943. It was the biggest command job of the war. Eisenhower earned it through his competent management of the troops, his disciplined strategic focus, and his scrupulously fair treatment of his resentful and frequently embittered British allies. Overlord was the turning point in Eisenhower’s career. The fame and accolades he earned leading the invasion of France in 1944 and then the final assault on Germany in 1944–45 transformed him into the face of American victory and set spinning the wheels of fortune that would carry him to the White House precisely nine years after being told of his new command.36 In planning the invasion of France, Eisenhower’s skill and experience shone. Not only did he attack the operation with his usual logistical and planning talent, but he had to fight strong headwinds from none other than Churchill, who never liked the prospect of an invasion of France and thought it likely to end in disaster. By now Eisenhower was an old hand at dealing with strong personalities: his days were full of exchanges with men such as Patton and the always difficult British combat commander Gen. Bernard Montgomery, to say nothing of Churchill and Roosevelt.