Eisenhower in War and Peace

Eisenhower in War and Peace by Jean Edward Smith

I recently read this author’s biography of Franklin Roosevelt that clocked in at 880 pages. I made the observation that even though 880 pages is an awful lot, it really didn’t seem enough when covering such a figure such as FDR.  Now that I’ve read Jean Edward Smith’s bio of Dwight Eisenhower that has 976 pages, I came away with the exact same conclusion.  For someone such as myself who studies a lot of history, it seemed as though this book was missing a lot of key moments from Eisenhower’s history and should have been a bit longer. But 976 pages is an awful lot, and it’s actually a testament that the author must be doing a great job when he devotes so many pages to his subject, yet as a reader, I wanted much more.

Although wanting more, I felt the author devoted an adequate amount of page space to the key parts of Ike’s life. There’s an acceptable time devoted to his early life, his life in the army (before and during WWII) and a very digestible synopsis of his eight years as President of the United States from 1952-1960. I’m not sure if it was the author’s intention, but “War and Peace” is actually a perfect title to describe Eisenhower. First, we all know of his service as General during World War II which would be the “war” part, but the “peace” probably alludes to his eight years as president. There are many that tend to look at Eisenhower’s tenure as president with slight skepticism stating that he never had to rule during times of extreme adversity (i.e. major war), yet Jean Edward Smith makes it very clear that it was Eisenhower and his governing policies that actually made this possible.  There were MANY times during 1952-1960 when the U.S. could have easily entered into yet another global conflict, but Ike made it a high priority to keep the U.S. out of such wars. He avoids potential wars with China, Vietnam, and Egypt just to name a few.  He’d been in a war. He saw what it was like. He made it a priority to keep his constituents out whenever and however possible.  He always succeeded. We should be thankful.

Fortunately, this book isn’t an instance of an author fawning over an idol.  I was surprised to read about the many instances (most during World War II) where the author points out many poor decisions that Eisenhower makes and how it negatively impacted many of the major battles, and even possibly prolonged the European conflict. Smith reminds us that, ironically, Eisenhower never participated in an actual battle before he was made a general in 1942.  This definitely hindered Ike in many instances. Eisenhower’s real strength, Smith tells us, is when Ike was a high-level commander.  Such a position, even in the military, involves a lot of politics and a lot coddling. Eisenhower had the rare gift of getting all of the leaders from the different allied nations to play nicely with each other in the sandbox. Such cooperation is crucial during a world war.

Such a leader is a perfect candidate to run a nation as Commander in Chief. Not surprisingly, both Democrats and Republicans want Ike to run in 1948; even current president Harry Truman who is up for re-election. (No one knew at the time whether Ike was a Republican or a Democrat.) The stars do align, though, in 1952, and Eisenhower begins an eight-year journey of quietly becoming one of the best presidents the U.S. has ever (or will ever have) seen.   He’s incredibly smart, often made major speeches extemporaneously, never gave a rip what other politicians nor voters thought of him and was always quick to acknowledge whenever he was wrong about something.  A president who admits his mistakes.  What a concept.

Although I’ve read many history books (including Stephen Ambrose’s bio of Ike), I really felt that I learned a lot of key things about Eisenhower that I had never been exposed to before.  Events in Eisenhower’s life such as Operation TORCH, the Suez Canal crises, and the CIA initiated coups of Iran and Guatemala are just a few events that get an adequate amount of attention in this biography.  The author has a very smooth delivery in his prose, and the reader never feels bored nor weighed down by useless statistics and inconsequential facts.

I would conclude this review with a cautious observation that the best thing that Eisenhower brought to the White House was the fact that he was not a career politician.  It’s nice to have such a high reputation that, as president, you could simply shrug your shoulders whenever high-profile members in congress disagree with you.  There were many times where it seemed the Democrats liked him more than his fellow Republicans.  Think about that for a minute. How often does that even happen?  Such credentials of being a political outsider don’t always guarantee success, though.  Herbert Hoover is a good example. So is Donald Trump. But let’s not go there.

I thoroughly enjoyed this biography. I enjoyed it better than the Stephen Ambrose volume, yet I really enjoyed that one as well.  I love biographers that point out the good, bad, and ugly of their subject matter, and after reading two biographies of well-known U.S. presidents by this author, I can honestly and sincerely say that Jean Edward Smith is a great biographer.

Side note: Jean Edward Smith also wrote a biography of Ulysses S. Grant, and Smith seems to have a peculiar infatuation with the Civil War hero.  I’m willing to bet there were at least 100 (seriously) comparisons and references to Grant in this book.  I haven’t read his bio of Grant yet, but I found it rather strange that the author would mention Grant as often as he did.  I guess I need to read the Grant bio as well.  One day….

Gai-Jin

Gai-Jin – by James Clavell

The last book written of James Clavell’s six-part ‘Asian Saga’, yet the third story when told chronologically. I would highly recommend reading parts 1 (‘Shogun’) and 2 (‘Tai-Pan’) prior to tackling this one. There weren’t many similarities at all between the first two other than the fact that they both took place in Asia (Japan and Hong Kong respectively), yet this book manages to use elements of both as it tells a very long yarn of the Western traders residing in Japan during the Winter of 1862. ‘Gai-Jin’ is a term used by the Japanese when describing western foreigners, and it’s definitely not a term of endearment. More on that later.

I mentioned this is a ‘long’ book. In paperback form, it goes on for 1,234 pages. The entire story takes place over four months. I imagine that most people who read this book took longer than that to finish it. Not only is this book long, but it’s extremely thick and tremendously detailed.  For someone such as myself who can read a John Grisham or a Dean Koontz novel over a weekend, this book was a much different experience as it took me close to a month to finish and required extreme focus.  I can’t imagine any author going through such great lengths to achieve such an undertaking of telling such a meticulously detailed long story. True, Clavell only wrote six novels during his lifetime, but this book seemed the equivalent to about ten ‘regular’ novels. That’s no exaggeration. 

I would also caution that if one prefers a straight-forward ‘story’, this book might not be your cup of tea. Clavell is more interested in immersing his reader deep into the Japanese culture of the nineteenth century. This culture is definitely a hostile environment for a European or an American. The Asians and Europeans tolerate each other yet remain racially disgusted with each other. The Westerners are there solely as traders; plain and simple. There’s an awful lot of money to be made with Asian silks and raw opium, so the hostile environments that they find themselves in can be tolerated a bit more easily. It also helps when both cultures think themselves vastly superior.

There IS a story here. A few of them actually.  Essentially none of the Japanese factions trust each other and their entire existence seems to revolve around deception and treachery.  The factions are constantly trying to better themselves by knocking those out that are currently in power.  When the renegade group known as the ‘Shishi’ wants to destroy the powerful ‘Shogunate’, they use the Europeans as pawns. They randomly attempt to murder four of the main Europeans early in the story so the Westerners will be enraged and strike against the ‘Shogunate’. The Shishi would welcome this as it would weaken the ‘Shogunate’.

There’s more here though. Oh so much more. Lot’s of romance, love, lust, competition amongst the traders, murder, rape, cross-culture learning, and on and on and on. When the story focuses on the Europeans, it’s not too hard to follow, but when the story shifts to the daily lives of the Japanese characters, it’s very easy to get a bit lost. Not only are there a plethora of people to keep track of, but it seems as though the Japanese (as I’ve mentioned) are inherently distrustful of each other so there’s a lot of deception and switching allegiances throughout the story. There were times when I wished I would have taken notes while reading. Fortunately, the back of the book contains a ‘cast of characters’ section, but it’s not quite as inclusive as one would hope. There are also many times while reading the book that it seems as though the author got too distracted and spent too many pages describing events that were largely irrelevant to the big picture.  Again, though, the author’s gift seems more inclined towards the day to day interactions of the characters, so such distractions weren’t necessarily unwelcome. It’s just that 1200 pages can be a bit laborious even if Clavell really excels in this area.

In fact, the very ending of the book is basically a two-page summary of ‘what happened next’.  After reading the final summary, it’s easy to see where the author could have easily stretched out this summary to another 400 pages or so.  As a reader, I would have enjoyed those 400 pages, but let’s just say I was quite happy reading the summary instead. Sometimes Clavell simply doesn’t know when to stop.

On a somewhat related note, there seems to be a trend in modern culture to demean the white males of North America and they get a lot of flak from the sins of their great-great-great-great-great parents who arrived on the shores of the new world and managed to essentially wipe out the indigenous people as well as tolerate slavery for the first 75 years of the existence of the USA. What this book teaches us is that such attitudes are not unique to any one race of people.  Historically, people have always been tribal and looked at other cultures with mistrust and hostility simply because they looked and/or acted different. These Asian Saga books show us this in horrific detail.  The amounts of barbaric treatment and tortures make the sins of early Americans quite pale in comparison. Such treatment existed in Japan until Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced the nation to change its behaviors.  If you don’t believe me, talk to any U.S. POW who was interned by Japan during World War II.

Anyway, this was a great book, but it’s definitely not for the easily distracted nor the impatient. Give yourself a fair amount of time with this, and the author’s other works.

The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months that Changed the World

The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months that Changed the World – by A. J. Baime

Looking at the cover of this book, you can easily miss the subtitle which includes “…and the Four Months That Change the World…”. This is important because this is not a complete biography of Harry S. Truman.  This is a book highlighting how one of the most unlikely persons in history ended up as Commander in Chief of the U.S.A. during the most perilous, tumultuous time in the country’s history.  The four months that this book details lays a solid argument that the events that happened truly did change the world, and how fortunate Americans should be that Harry S. Truman went from basically being a Nobody to a President who was able to bring the ghastly second world war to an end. He was also able to do this at least one year before most experts thought possible.

Although, again, not a biography, author A.J. Baime does give us enough of Truman’s background to paint a picture of this rather odd duck.  Harry Truman was never anything spectacular.  When one looks at his portrait, it’s safe to say that his personality matches his image. A small, quiet, unassuming introvert, his only skill as a young man is as a struggling farmer in his rural Missouri. He tries several business ventures, but those are all doomed to failure as well. Curiously, there’s one event in young Truman’s life that history shows us that the man had some sort of potential. He becomes a captain and commander of an infantry brigade during World War I, and quickly earns the support of his subordinates as he leads them through war-stricken France without a single casualty inflicted on his unit during combat.

Upon return, his heroics are brought to the attention of Kansas City Political “boss” Tom Pendergrast. Before you know it, Truman is serving as a county judge in his Missouri hometown. Then, with political connections, it seems that he’s quickly vaulted as an unlikely choice for United States senate. Such things don’t happen without help from somewhat dubious political connections.

The story gets stranger when FDR chooses Truman for his VP running mate in 1944. One wishes they could be a fly on the wall during the Democratic Convention as this decision was being made.  Most people rightly assumed that Roosevelt was already dying, and that whomever the VP would be, would be promoted to the head role sooner rather than later. Again, this makes you wonder if those in power really thought this through.  Sure, Truman was probably the safest bet to share the ticket with FDR (his popularity wasn’t undisputed in 1944, and there wasn’t a staunch guarantee he would be elected for a fourth term), but the fact that everyone in political power knew FDR was at death’s door still seems to make one raise their eyebrows of the eventual choice. Truman?

So less than four months after Roosevelt is sworn in for a fourth term, he dies. Truman is overwhelmed at the thought of his new job; as is everyone else.  He quickly becomes a student of world affairs out of necessity. These are not ordinary times. Although victory over Germany is basically guaranteed within a matter of weeks, the situation in Japan is not quite as clear.  Most feel that the U.S. will eventually prevail, but not without many more deaths and many more years of fighting.  Add to the fact that the U.S.’s new ‘ally’ Joseph Stalin is also a tyrant, isn’t going to make anything easier.  The allies are victors in Europe, but Stalin and Truman (along with Churchill) have much different ideas as to what to do with conquered Europe.

The bulk of this book seems to focus on the “Big 3” during their Potsdam conference in 1945. Truman shows he may be the new kid on the block, but he’s no pushover and won’t cave to this bully of a tyrant.  Also, Truman knows about the secret “Manhattan Project” that is essentially his ace up the sleeve during the conference.  We read an awful lot about the atomic bomb in these pages, and author Baime does a great job telling the story of the testing, preparation, and eventual deployment of the bomb.

It should be noted that these two events – the Potsdam Conference and the atomic bomb, really did go hand in hand. Without Truman’s weapon, the conference could have very possibly have gone in a completely different direction. As the subtitle of this book states, the events really did “change the world”.  Baime also spends a fair amount of time talking about the moral issue of using such a weapon. Like most historians, the author comes to the conclusion that as evil as the atomic bomb was, it was the lesser of two evils when contrasted against the alternative of a full force invasion of Japan that would have prolonged the war for at least an additional year.  (One statistic in the book that stood out: Some estimates stated that the U.S. would lose twice as many lives during the last, hypothetical, year of the war as they had lost during the entire conflict from 1941-1945).

The author adds a nice epilogue to the book as well. Since we don’t get the whole Truman story here, author Baime briefly mentions other monumental events during Truman’s latter years as president including the Berlin Airlift, the surprising 1948 presidential election, Korea, and the eventual sacking of Douglas MacArthur.  The Douglas MacArthur event deserves an entire book, though, of its own (I would recommend H.W. Brands “The General and the President).

So, no, not an exhaustive biography of the man nor his presidency, but an excellent account of how such an ordinary unassuming fellow surprised many and eventually brought the most horrific war in history to a close while minimizing the damage for his countrymen.  Very easy to read and digest as well.