Category Archives: Dwight Eisenhower

The Road to Trinity

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road-to-trinityThis book, which had the subtitle, “A Personal Account of How America’s Nuclear Policies Were Made, was written by Major General Kenneth D. Nichols, (Retired). Nichols was a Lieutenant Colonel when he began an assignment as deputy district engineer of the Manhattan Engineer District. He was deputy to Leslie Groves. There have been many books written on the subject, but I would recommend this and the Groves account “Now it Can be Told,” as the best two to read if you are just beginning to want to understand what happened in the Manhattan Project and beyond. I was shocked that there hasn’t been a single review of the Nichols book on Amazon. You can buy a used copy of the book for about a dollar plus shipping. It would be worth your investment, although interlibrary loan was even less expensive.

The book begins in November 1952 when Nichols is directed to write his “…personal views on the political and military implications of the hydrogen bomb and given three hours to write it.” He wrote that the hydrogen bomb “…has equal or greater political than strictly military implications.” He warned that to achieve deterrence the U.S. must convince the Soviet Union we will utilize nuclear weapons ruthlessly. He believed we should have used tactical nuclear weapons in Korea “…proving to the world we really mean to use every potential weapon available to us to preserve peace and thereby deter war. He recognized that might or probably would  have precipitated a major war “…at a time when we have the greatest potential for winning it with minimum damage to the U.S.A.”

People who are “anti-nuclear” and favor disarmament will gasp at some of the things Nichols writes. I was comfortable with his advice and opinions, and judge that he had, because of the roles he filled, an informed understanding of the real world situation that should be carefully and respectfully considered despite which side of the argument you might stand on. Continue reading →

Secret Empire: Eisenhower, The CIA, and the Hidden Story of America’s Space Espionage

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secret-empireThis book by Philip Taubman introduced me to a fascinating world of spying by the United States on the Soviets during the high-stakes era of the Cold War when both the U.S. and the Soviets desperately wanted to learn everything they could about their adversaries. “In a brief period of explosive, top-secret innovation, a small group of scientists, engineers, businessmen, and government officials rewrote the book on airplane design and led the nation into outer space.” That refers to the U-2 and the Corona projects. Corona was a capsule containing cameras and new types of film launched to circle over the Soviet Union before reentry, deployment of a parachute, and recovery by a plane. It is an incredible story of repeated failures before the first success. The persistence in the face of all the failures is a tribute to the people who worked on the project and the desperation for information that politicians providing funds even when it seemed the scheme might never work. I learned much about both Corona and U-2, and more than I really cared to know about the people involved. I also learned about Eisenhower who was willing to commit huge sums of secret money and take great political risks to learn more about what was going on behind the Iron Curtain.

The book begins with an interesting description of a Strategic Air Command (SAC) bomber crew violating Soviet air space to collect pictures of military installations. The plane was attacked by a new MiG and suffered damage but was able to make it back to base. The book provides some disturbing information about the costs of such spy flights. “Hundreds of men in the Air Force and Navy risked their lives flying along or across the Soviet frontier in an effort to learn more about Russian air defenses and military forces…At least 252 air crewmen were shot down on spy flights between 1950 and 1970, most directed against the Soviet Union…It is certain that 90 of these men survived…But the fate of 138 men is unknown. It is possible, even likely, that some of them survived for years in captivity while Washington made little effort to determine if they were alive and make arrangements for their repatriation.”The human costs and political risk of such flights prompted Eisenhower to approve secret funding through the CIA to develop reconnaissance techniques through development of the U-2 spy plane and the Corona project. Continue reading →

The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower

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great fearThis book by David Caute is extremely long (697 pages including the appendices) and tedious (I skimmed much of it). I disagreed with most of what I read. The dustcover includes the statements that the book is about “…perhaps the greatest crisis that America has ever suffered in terms of her liberal and democratic values. Here is the first comprehensive history of the fearsome anti-Communist purges that affected almost every area of American life in the age of Truman and Eisenhower.” The author expresses skepticism or outright disbelief about numerous cases where people were accused and tried on charges they had spied for the Soviets. The book was written in 1978 before the Venona Project and the information in the Soviet archives became available and proved the extent of the Soviet espionage networks.

I won’t disagree that the lives of many innocent people were impacted. The book begins “…in the high summer of the great fear, (when) the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee warned that ‘the threat to civil liberties in the United States today is the most serious in the history of our country’. Federal, state, and municipal employees were worried that some youthful participation in a now-forbidden organization would come to the attention of the loyalty boards that had been formed because of the fear of communism. The fear reached to people in the military, civil servants, film stars, industrial workers, lawyers, teachers, writers, trade unions, and people serving in or running for public office.” The author admits that what he called “…the purge of the Truman-Eisenhower era…” never “…reached the frontiers of fascism.”

Perhaps the most ill-informed and startling part of the book is in the first page of chapter 3. “There is no documentation in the public record of a direct connection between the American Communist Party and espionage during the entire postwar period…”    Continue reading →

Castro!: An Impact Biography

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castroI recently posted a commentary about President Obama’s initiative to normalize relations with Cuba. I noticed this small book by Don E. Beyer at the library and I’m glad I checked it out.  The book quickly gets to the point of explaining Fidel’s origins and how he became the face of revolution in Cuba. The first sentences of the book are, “Fidel Castro is a man at odds with the world. He likes to say he came into it under conditions natural for a guerrilla fighter. He was born on August 13, 1926, as an explosive storm swept over the mountains of the Oriented Province, the wild land that has long served as an incubator of revolution in Cuba.”

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born illegitimate, one of seven children from two mothers. His father, Angel Castro, and his mother, Lina Ruz Gonzalez, were not married until several years after Fidel’s birth.  Fidel’s combative nature was displayed frequently in childhood. He was described as rebellious and combative. His brother Raul described him as dominating every situation. “He challenged the biggest and strongest ones, and when he was beaten, he started it all over again the next day. He would never quit.” As a student he displayed a photographic memory. “In later years, Fidel’s prodigious memory enabled him to give the impression of knowledge and competence where it did not exist.” Spanish Jesuit teachers taught him to admire Spanish Fascists such as Francisco Franco. He later admired Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. “He was described as walking around his school with a copy of Mein Kampf under his arm.”

Fidel began to move into revolutionary politics when he went to Havana in 1945 to study law. He admired the stories of Jose Marti who had become a Cuban independence martyr in 1895 when he was killed fighting with a revolutionary army. Castro “…saw himself as Marti’s spiritual heir.” Continue reading →

Killing Patton

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killing patton book cvrThis is another in the series of “Killing” books written by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, and my wife says this is her favorite book in the series. The subtitle of the book is “The Strange Death of World War II’s Most Audacious General.” The book does present some compelling evidence that Patton may have been killed. He did create some powerful enemies, including some in the U.S. military, Stalin, and some Germans.

The book begins with a description of Private First Class Robert W. Holmund, an explosives expert in Patton’s army. Private Holmund and his fellow soldiers have been ordered to attack a heavily fortified and mostly underground fortification called Fort Driant. The bombing and artillery strikes that preceded the assault have had no effect on the Wehrmacht fighters who have remained safe within the fort’s fifteen-food thick walls and hidden forest pillboxes. Machine guns that the soldiers have named “Hitler’s Zipper” because of the high-speed ripping sound as it fires twelve hundred rounds a minute open up on the attackers as their advance stalls at the barbed wire around the fort. The machine guns are joined by rifle fire, mortars, and artillery. The Americans eventually disengage and crawl back to safety. Eighteen have been killed or wounded. And that’s just the start.

The soldiers try again a few days later, and this time they make it through the barbed wire to again be faced with precision fire from everything the Germans have. The survivors are forced to hastily dig foxholes to escape the barrage. The medics race from foxhole to foxhole to tend to the wounded until they are killed. The soldiers find a way into to the tunnels and battle the Germans underground. The survivors withdraw to the foxholes and the Germans mount a counterattack. There are only four of Holmlund’s squad left alive by the time a sniper’s bullet fells him. The descriptions of the combat are vivid.

The book intersperses descriptions of Patton and the speeches he gave his troops to prepare them for war with descriptions of the war. He said, for example, “Americans despise cowards.” “Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.” I wondered whether the parents of Private Holmlund wished he had been a little less brave. Continue reading →

Partners in Command

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The subtitle of this book by Mark Perry is “George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace. The book begins with a chronology of George Marshall’s and Dwight Eisenhower’s lives, their military service, and the major battles of World War II. The focus is on the European theatre. Review of the chronology and the listings of major military commanders and politicians at the end of the epilogue give a quick snapshot of the events of World War II. That would be useful to a casual reader, because the book is written in incredible detail. A major focus of the book is the constant and difficult conflict between the Americans and the British. The conflicts occur at nearly every step of the planning and execution of military plans. The descriptions are undoubtedly historically accurate, but I found them tedious to read.

The Prologue describes the remarkable relationship between Confederates Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson and their connections with the Virginia Military Institute where George Marshall was a student and teacher. “In time he came to revere Lee and Jackson, and throughout his life he named them the two men he admired most.” The book describes that Lee chose Jackson to lead the fight and George Catlett Marshall chose Dwight Eisenhower as his partner in command. Continue reading →