Eisenhower: A Biography (review)

What were the qualities that brought Eisenhower's rise to supreme command and success as both a general and commander-in-chief? They included diligence, charisma, passion, curiosity, stamina, ambition, empathy, patriotism, a drive to excel, an ability to learn and adapt to changing situations, an ingrained sense of duty, and a capacity for decisive action. Although unstated, it becomes apparent after one reads the initial chapters that the purpose of this book is to distill lessons for future leaders from the life and career of one of the nation's most important historical figures. Well-written and accurate but based entirely on selected published secondary sources, memoirs, and edited papers, this book makes no additions to existing scholarship. Instead it draws upon what already is well known and readily available.

Although interesting and generally useful for its intended purposes, this book has notable shortcomings. It calls itself a biography but presents Eisenhower's entire postwar career—one on which scores of volumes have been written and to which most of an entire presidential library is devoted—in just eleven pages at the end. The main thrust of the book, his generalship in World War II, tends to oversimplify—reducing his many qualities to just five: "focus," "teamwork," "empathy," "media savvy," and "devotion to duty." It thus fails to fully understand both the nature of his preparation and the magnitude of his accomplishment. These included his conscious mastery of military history—both Hannibal's victory at Cannae and Clausewitz's analyses of the challenges of coalition warfare such as the principle of the objective, the importance of morale, the difficulty of amphibious operations, and how to conduct large-scale offensives. These were things Eisenhower learned from his mentor, General Fox Conner, while serving as the general's chief of staff in Panama in the early 1920s—knowledge that he later brought to bear in his assault on the Third Reich. The author asserts, in other words, that the relationship with Conner was central to Eisenhower's intellectual growth as a commander but does not explain why.

And Wukovits's focus on Eisenhower's mastery of coalition warfare fails to include either his subject's awareness of the importance of Germany's Eastern front facing the Red Army (the other part of the coalition) or his preoccupation—virtual obsession—with the need for the armed services under his supreme command—air force, navy, and army—to fight jointly as one. This, one Nazi general later admitted, may have been the key reason for the German failure in the West. It is also a principle—joint operational commands—underlying the American global military presence today.

Despite these problems, this is a readable—indeed, absorbing—and accurate introduction, but only an introduction, to Eisenhower's career as a general and supreme commander.