Waging Peace: Eisenhower's Return to Duty at the Helm of NATO

General Eisenhower with the first NATO flag, October 1951. U.S. Army photo

Europe after the war

In the late 1940s Europe was still recovering from World War II: cities lay in ruins and millions had been displaced, and even with the Marshall Plan recovery was slow. The victors now faced a threat from one of their own — the Soviet Union. Having suffered and inflicted enormous destruction on the Eastern Front, Soviet forces occupied much of Eastern Europe after the war. Their leader, Joseph Stalin, ruled by authoritarian control and a secret police that silenced dissent. For Western Europe's democracies, Soviet expansion was a grave threat.

The birth of NATO

To hold back the Soviets, old allies drew together. On April 4, 1949, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States — joined by once-neutral Portugal and former enemy Italy — founded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

• At home, NATO worked against rising nationalist militarism and Soviet agitators.
• Abroad, and better known, it promoted European political integration and met the Soviet threat on as many fronts as possible.
• Its core promise: "an armed attack against one or more of them… shall be considered an attack against them all," with each ally taking "such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force." That warned off Soviet expansion and protected nations whose armies were dwarfed by Soviet power.

Called back from retirement

In late 1950, Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower bought a farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, planning at last a quiet life out of the spotlight. Eisenhower was then president of Columbia University. But NATO needed a leader every member could trust, and that fall President Truman asked the former Supreme Allied Commander to take charge. Bound as ever by duty, Eisenhower said yes.

He told his friend Swede Hazlett he was rather looking forward to the job, and that he saw NATO as close to the last chance for the survival of Western civilization.

Selling the alliance

After meeting NATO leaders in Europe, Eisenhower reported to the nation from the Pentagon in early February 1951. Worried about isolationism at home, he stressed America's duty to its allies:

"…In our own interest, we must insist upon a working partnership with every nation making the common security its task of first priority. … Only cooperative effort by all of us can preserve for the free world a position of security, relative peace, and economic stability."

And he promised that history would remember success: "If we Americans seize the lead, we will preserve and be worthy of our own past. Our children will dwell in peace. They will dwell in freedom."

Privately, he was frustrated. In his diary on November 24, 1951, he warned that without a real European union — shared economic power and a European army — much American spending would be wasted, and suggested that Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Italy and western Germany form one federated state. West Germany was an uncomfortable question: the allies had deep doubts about rearming their recently defeated enemy, but the alternatives were a neutral Germany — unlikely — or one on the Soviet side. The same day he wrote to George Whitney, head of J. P. Morgan & Company, that trying to put courage into fearful men, and directness into those who had never faced an issue squarely, was a real drain on his energy.

Still, he knew how much depended on it. Addressing the NATO Council in Rome on November 27, 1951, he said:

"Our peoples must understand that, for each nation, the concept of collective security by cooperation must be successful or there is no acceptable alternative for any of us."

If NATO failed, he added, it would be through "our own laziness, our own failures as leaders," and through falling victim to Soviet propaganda.

A threat from home

The next danger came not from the Soviet Union but from Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, a noninterventionist before World War II who saw little value in NATO and wanted the United States out — which would have gutted the treaty. What spurred Eisenhower to act was that Taft was seeking the Republican nomination for president.

• May 31, 1952: having already won several primaries without declaring, Eisenhower stepped down as Supreme Commander of NATO forces.
• July: he resigned his commission and formally announced his candidacy.
• He then won the nomination at the Republican National Convention in Chicago and the general election — and with them the power to preserve NATO and extend its work.

Longing to retire to his Gettysburg farm, Eisenhower instead put personal wishes aside to keep waging peace after the war.

Sources

Based on "Waging Peace: Eisenhower and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization," Eisenhower National Historic Site and Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Eisenhower's public addresses are quoted; his private diary and letters are paraphrased. The source says Germany had been defeated "less than five years earlier" in late 1951, which does not fit its own dates, so that is left out.