The Making of a General and How It Came About (original) (raw)
October 4, 1970
The Making of a General and How It Came About
By GORDON HARRISON
THE SUPREME COMMANDERThe War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. By Stephen E. Ambrose.
istorians of the last great war have all duly noted that fighting, like most human affairs, is now in the hands of bureaucracy. Hence there are no great generals any more, no strategic brilliance, scarcely even room for the exercise of imagination. Nothing in Stephen E. Ambrose's long and extraordinarily fascinating book argues the contrary. But if from the viewpoint of its victims, bureaucracy may be the quiet, faceless horror that Kafka saw, at the directors' level, people still act like people and their world is as rich in the drama of interacting personalities as a castle of old courtiers or a ship of fools. It is Mr. Ambrose's special triumph that he has been able to fight through the memoranda, the directives, plans, reports, and official self-serving pieties of the World War II establishment to uncover the idiosyncratic people at its center. At the center of that center Gen. Dwight Eisenhower comes remarkably alive.
Mr. Ambrose, associate editor of the recently published Eisenhower papers, covers ground that has been covered many times before, and there are no surprises of fact or interpretation. Yet his angle of sight is so fresh and lively that one reads as if one did not know what was coming next. It is better than that: One does know what's coming--not only the winning of a war but the making of a general--but the interest is in seeing how.
For the first time the Supreme Commander is presented not as a ready-made man of the hour but as a new man evolved step by step out of the staff officer who was summoned to the Pentagon in 1942 to work on war plans, came under the spell of George Marshall and laid the foundations of his military fortunes by discovering that his views could merge perfectly with Marshall's. He began thus in near idolatry of his patron and did not find his own feet until the crisis of the Ardennes counteroffensive some three years later. But his development was steady and is here revealed with a novelist's skill.
Because Marshall trusted him, Eisenhower went to England in 1942 to report on the state of United States forces there (at the time hardly more than a military mission). Because Marshall liked the report and the recommendations, Eisenhower got the job of carrying them out as theater commander. From then on he climbed to the top by stepping into a succession of commands for which he alone had the accumulated qualifications. He was on the spot when the planning for the North African invasion began and commanded the obvious headquarters to take on that operation. North Africa won, he was there for Sicily and Italy. Then fate seemed momentarily to falter.
George Marshall had always been thought of as the man to lead the climactic assault on Germany across the English Channel. But in 1943 Marshall's claims were in fact out of date. He was then the experienced Army Chief of Staff, commander of all America's ground forces and in a real sense architect and boss of America's war; he had evolved beyond the biggest field command while Eisenhower had grown into it. The seriously debated question of who was to lead American and British troops in the 1944 invasion does not seem in retrospect to have been a question at all.
Of course Eisenhower was not just lucky. He was good. It is almost a shock to reach back across the amiable, inarticulate, ineffectual years of the Eisenhower Presidency to find in the 1940's this leader of men, vital, vigorous, concise of mind, articulate, who combined an actor's talent for adaptation (or protective coloration) with a more remarkable capacity to stand forth as his own man when he was sure of himself at last. The self-assurance came only when he had thoroughly learned his job through long, patient experience in testing himself in the company of the great.
Shortcomings that made the White House years merely custodial were apparent then: his craving to be liked and to be cheerful in the company of cheerful friends; the simplistic morality and patriotism that he kept uncontaminated by his intelligence; his often fatal facility for ambiguity. But as Supreme Commander the strengths won out. He could listen, analyze and comprehend the essence of argument as well or better than any man around him. He was politically sensitive. He was broad-gauged and open (some thought too open) to contrary views. He could tolerate difficult people whose values were worth tolerating. (He was one of the few American or British leaders who got along with de Gaulle on the basis of mutual respect.) He combined great self- confidence with a capacity to learn--a rare amalgam indeed.
The portrait of Eisenhower as Supreme Commander is drawn skillfully and places him excitingly in conflict with the other lively personalities with whom he had to deal. Mr. Ambrose is the first historian I know to have got through the caricatures of Field Marshal Montgomery (including, not least, the Field Marshal's own) to find a human being. Battles are all off stage. Although it is clear enough what happened, this is not a history of the war in Europe. Nor is it quite a military biography, although Eisenhower steadily dominates its pages. Rather it is an anatomy of the commander as chairman of the board--a most extraordinary role that was filled, indeed created, by a most extraordinary man.
Mr. Harrison served as a combat historian with General Patton in World War II.