There is only one President of the United States who served in both World War I and World War II, the Texas born Dwight David Eisenhower. In fact, he is the only President who has spent his entire life in the military until the end of that war. That was when he was encouraged to run for the Presidency, so popular and impressive he was to the people of the United States.
The 34th President of the United States served from 1953 through 1961, two full terms between two Democrats, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. He had been a Democrat early in his life, but switched to the Republican party while serving in the military.
Though he was born in Texas, Eisenhower was raised in Abilene, Kansas in a family who believed in and practiced religion though not necessarily any organized church. He graduated from West Point in 1915 and volunteered to serve in Europe when the first war broke out. He was denied that request, and instead headed a unit that trained crews for tanks in that war.
When the war was over, Eisenhower served with the army both in this country and the Philippines, rising in rank through the years. Promoted to Brigadier General just before December 1941, he led troops in numerous battles after the onset of America’s involvement.
He oversaw the invasions of North Africa and Sicily by the Allies in the war, then oversaw the invasions of both France and Germany. He became the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary force In Europe and was promoted to the rank of five star General of the Army. Two of the most consequential military campaigns of the war, Operation Torch in 1942-43 in the North Africa campaign and the Normandy invasion in 1944.
When the war ended, Eisenhower was named military governor of the American-occupied zone in Germany and was then Army Chief of Staff from the war’s end to 1948. He served as president of Columbia University for five years after that and was also named the first supreme commander of NATO at its start in 1951.
Eisenhower was determined to halt isolationism promoted by Senator Robert Taft who opposed NATO, and so entered politics to run for president. He won both that election and his second four years later, both with overwhelming landslides, defeating Adlai Stevenson in both elections.
Eisenhower’s policies were intent on halting the spread of communism and reducing federal deficits, considered using nuclear weapons to end the Korean war and was President for China signing the armistice that ended the war, an agreement which remains in place today. An advocate of Truman’s policy recognizing Taiwan as the legitimate government of China, he secured congressional approval of the Formosa Resolution, providing aid to France in the First Indochina War and providing financial support to help the French fight off Vietnamese Communists in the First Indochina War and supporting the new state of South Vietnam.
Considered a moderate conservative, Eisenhower approved the Bay of Pigs invasion which Kennedy carried out, expanded Social Security, opposed McCarthyism and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957. He sent army troops to ensure integrated schools in Little Rock, Arkansas and is credited with developing and beginning construction on the Interstate Highway System, the largest road construction project in American history.
In his farewell address, Eisenhower, the career soldier, expressed concern about deficit spending and government contracts to private military manufacturers as well as massive military spending.
Eisenhower died in Washington at age 79 on March 28, 1969, and is buried in Abilene Kansas at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library Museum and Boyhood Home.
