Eisenhower's Army Career Between and Beyond the World Wars

Dwight Eisenhower as a West Point cadet, about 1911. Courtesy of the Eisenhower Presidential Library.

Dwight D. Eisenhower rose to Supreme Allied Commander in World War II without ever having fought in World War I. Many historians see that as an advantage: his strategic and tactical thinking was never trapped in the trench warfare of the first war. Yet most people know little of the rest of his army career, the long years of painfully slow promotion that made him a great leader of armies.

World War I: the tank camp at Gettysburg

After graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1915, Eisenhower's first post was Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, where he met Mamie Geneva Doud, whose family wintered in Texas. He asked to join the Pancho Villa Punitive Expedition into Mexico in 1916 but instead trained and supplied National Guard troops on border patrol. After more training posts early in World War I, he was sent to the Tank Corps at Fort Meade, Maryland, and soon ordered to set up its camp at Gettysburg, Camp Colt. As its commander he performed far beyond his rank, learning administration, management, logistics, organisation, training and, above all, leadership, skills that served him in the next war.

Between the wars: a long education

• Fort Meade and George Patton. Back at Fort Meade after the war, Eisenhower became friends with George S. Patton, who had served with the Tank Corps in France. Patton introduced him to Major General Fox Conner, known as an intellectual general and a great mentor.
• Panama. Eisenhower spent several years as Conner's assistant in the Panama Canal Zone. He later likened Conner's tutoring to a graduate school in military history; he learned to think critically and see the big picture.
• Staff schools. With Conner's help he entered the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth and finished first in his class, then studied at the Army War College in Washington, D.C.
• Pershing's battlefields. Under General John "Black Jack" Pershing at the American Battle Monuments Commission, he and his family spent a year in Western Europe studying the battlefields of the Great War for a long guidebook he wrote. Knowing Europe's geography and cultures helped him greatly in World War II.
• The War Department. As a staff officer he worked on readiness and on turning civilian industry to war production, and became known as a gifted writer. Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur had him write his reports and in 1933 made him his principal assistant.

General Douglas MacArthur (centre), Major Dwight Eisenhower (right) and Captain T. J. Davis (left) at Malacañang Palace in Manila, the Philippines, 1935. Courtesy of the Eisenhower Presidential Library.

• The Philippines. In 1935 MacArthur became military adviser to the new Philippine Commonwealth and pressed Eisenhower to come with him. Eisenhower did superb work building the commonwealth's army with scant resources.

A rapid rise before Pearl Harbor

After four years in the Philippines he came home to a country still neutral but drafting soldiers and expanding its forces while war raged in Europe. In less than a year and a half he went from a regiment's executive officer to chief of staff of a division, then a corps, then an army. His work in the Louisiana Maneuvers of August and September 1941 won him wide praise, attention and promotion to brigadier general.

Eisenhower at Camp Polk, Louisiana, 1941. Courtesy of the Eisenhower Presidential Library.

Five days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall summoned him to the War Department. With the Philippines and the Far East in crisis, Marshall wanted an officer who knew the Philippines. Eisenhower passed the interview and became war planner for the region, the start of his meteoric rise in World War II.

After the war

When Marshall retired in November 1945, President Harry Truman named Eisenhower Army Chief of Staff. With the army rapidly demobilising, it was a hard time: the country, the article says, had forgotten the lessons of World War I. He retired from the Army in January 1948 to write his memoirs and become president of Columbia University. Soon afterwards he and Mamie bought a 189-acre farm in Gettysburg with retirement in mind, but history had other plans.

Sources

• National Park Service, Eisenhower National Historic Site, "General Dwight David Eisenhower's Military Career Outside WWI and WWII." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/general-dwight-david-eisenhower-s-military-career-outside-wwi-and-wwii-htm.htm
• Corrected: "Tank Corp" to "Tank Corps", and "Manilla" to "Manila".
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.