Who was Dwight D. Eisenhower?

He was the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe in the Second World War (1890 to 1969) and the 34th president of the United States.

What is Eisenhower famous for?

For directing and launching the D-Day invasion of Normandy in 1944 as Supreme Allied Commander, and for later serving two terms as US president.

What was Eisenhower's role on D-Day?

He was the Supreme Allied Commander who made the final decision to launch the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944 and directed the overall invasion.

Why was Eisenhower a great commander?

His genius was in leadership and organization: he held a fractious coalition of nations together and managed the immense planning that made the invasion possible.

What was the note in Eisenhower's pocket?

Before D-Day he wrote a short message taking full personal responsibility if the landings failed, showing his readiness to shoulder the blame for the risk.

How is Eisenhower remembered?

As the general who united the Allies and launched the liberation of Western Europe, and as a two-term president of the United States.

Dwight D. Eisenhower: the general who commanded D-Day

Dwight D. Eisenhower won his greatest battle not with a charge but with a decision. As Supreme Allied Commander he held together a vast coalition of nations and personalities, oversaw the planning of the largest seaborne invasion in history¹, and gave the order to launch it on D-Day. The landings in Normandy opened the road to the liberation of Western Europe.

Compare: Eisenhower vs Montgomery

The organizer of victory

Born in Texas in 1890 and raised in Kansas², Eisenhower rose through the U.S. Army as a gifted planner and manager rather than a battlefield fighter². That gift made him the right man to command a coalition, where holding allies together mattered as much as any tactic.

Oval black and white yearbook portrait of a young cadet in a high-collared grey uniform — Cadet Dwight Eisenhower in the 1915 Howitzer, the yearbook of the US Military Academy at West Point, the year he graduated. Public domain

Supreme Commander

As Allied commander in the Mediterranean, Eisenhower directed the campaigns in North Africa and Sicily, and the opening of the Italian campaign³, before being named Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in December 1943 and taking charge of the invasion of France. Balancing the demands of British, American and other Allied leaders⁴, he forged them into a single fighting effort.

Portrait of General Dwight D. Eisenhower — Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. Army photograph, 1945. Public domain.

The hardest part of command was not the battle, but the decision to begin it.

D-Day

On 6 June 1944, after an agonizing wait for a break in the weather¹, Eisenhower gave the order for the Normandy landings, the largest amphibious invasion in history. He carried in his pocket a note taking personal blame should it fail⁵. It did not. The beachhead held, and the liberation of Western Europe had begun.

Map of the English Channel and Normandy with Allied task forces crossing from England and German divisions in France — The Allied invasion force and the German dispositions in north-western France on 6 June 1944. Map from the US Military Academy atlas. Public domain

From general to president

After the war Eisenhower served as the first military head of NATO, then was elected the 34th president of the United States in 1952⁶, serving two terms. He died in 1969, remembered as the general who united the Allies and launched the invasion that helped end the war in Europe.

Black and white photograph of Eisenhower walking between ranks of sailors holding rifles with fixed bayonets — Eisenhower, then NATO's first Supreme Allied Commander Europe, inspects Dutch naval personnel at the naval training station in Hilversum in May 1951. SHAPE photograph, Rijksmuseum. CC0 (public domain)

See the invasion he ordered at the Battle of Normandy, or explore the greatest battles of the Second World War.

Sources and notes

Numbered notes in the text point to the works below.

U.S. National Archives (American Originals), “D-day, 1944” ↩ a b
Carlo D'Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life (Henry Holt, 2002). ↩ a b
National Park Service, “Eisenhower in 1943” ↩
Stephen E. Ambrose, The Supreme Commander: The War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Doubleday, 1970). ↩
U.S. National Archives (American Originals), “A note, in case of failure” ↩
Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Dwight D. Eisenhower summary” ↩
Wikipedia, “Dwight D. Eisenhower, Wikipedia”