Dwight D. Eisenhower
The Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, and the last career soldier elected president; educated at West Point and at the Army’s own staff schools.
Biography
Eisenhower was raised in Abilene, Kansas, in a family of modest means, and went to West Point in 1911 because it was free. He spent the First World War training tank crews in Pennsylvania rather than fighting in France, then passed two decades in the peacetime Army as a staff officer under Fox Conner, John Pershing and Douglas MacArthur, graduating first in his Command and General Staff School class along the way.
Promoted rapidly after Pearl Harbor, he commanded the Allied landings in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, and from December 1943 the invasion of Western Europe as Supreme Allied Commander. After the war he served as Army Chief of Staff, as president of Columbia University, and as the first Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. Both parties courted him; he ran as a Republican in 1952.
His two terms covered the armistice in Korea, the Interstate Highway System, the creation of NASA, the admission of Alaska and Hawaii, the Little Rock school-desegregation crisis in which he sent federal troops to enforce a court order, three short recessions, and a farewell address warning about the influence of what he called the military-industrial complex.
Education
- Abilene High School, Kansas, Graduated (1909)
- United States Military Academy, West Point, B.S. (1915)
- Command and General Staff School, Fort Leavenworth, Graduated first in class (1926)
- Army War College, Graduated (1928)
Military service
United States Army, 1915–1948 and 1951–1952; General of the Army; Supreme Allied Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force, 1943–1945; Army Chief of Staff, 1945–1948.
Offices held before the presidency
- Army Chief of Staff, 1945–1948
- President of Columbia University, 1948–1953
- Supreme Allied Commander Europe (NATO), 1951–1952