Dwight David Eisenhower’s Biography

Dwight David Eisenhower was a very important American president because he was an integral part of success in WWII and the 1940s, and also accomplished many things as president. Eisenhower had many experience in politics before he became president. Eisenhower planned and supervised the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942–43 and the invasion of France and Germany in 1944–45. Eisenhower was a general, and was the general that planned the attack known as D-day. As Eisenhower was president, he ended the Korean war in 1953. He also Sponsored and Signed the Civil Rights Bill of 1957.

Eisenhower’s number one achievement was that he kept America at peace. Eisenhower came back after Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland caused the outbreak of World War II in Europe. In September 1941, Eisenhower received his first general’s star with a promotion to brigadier general. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December, U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall called Eisenhower to Washington, D.C. to work as a planning officer. Beginning in November 1942, Eisenhower headed to Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa. He then directed the invasion of Sicily and the Italian mainland in 1943 that caused the fall of Rome in June 1944. Eisenhower became a full general in 1943.

That same year, Eisenhower was appointed supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in December and was given the task of the invasion of Europe that was in the hands of the Nazis. That attack was known as D-day and happened on June 6, 1944. On the D-day invasion, more than 150,000 Allied troops crossed the English Channel and stormed the beaches of Normandy. The D-day invasion led to the liberation of Paris on August 25 and turned the tables of the war in Europe and gave the allies the upper hand.

After the war, Dwight Eisenhower replaced Marshall as army chief of staff and from 1948 to 1950 he served as the president of Columbia University. Eisenhower came a long way to get where he is now and to gain all of his success. Dwight D. Eisenhower was born on October 14, 1890, in Denison, Texas, with the parents of David Jacob Eisenhower and Ida Elizabeth Stover Eisenhower. Dwight was the third born son out of seven. His parents moved from Abilene, Kansas, to Denison, Texas, before he was born. In Denison, the family lived in a tiny house near the railroad tracks while David cleaned train engines to help his family. When Dwight was one year old, his family moved back to Abilene so David Eisenhower could have a better job at his brother-in-law’s creamery.

In Abilene, Dwight Eisenhower’s 10-month-old brother Paul died of diphtheria when Eisenhower was 4 years old. Despite the tragedy, Dwight made happy childhood memories in Abilene that he would cherish throughout his life. One of these were his days playing baseball and football at Abilene High School. After Eisenhower graduated from high school in 1909, he joined his dad and uncle at the Belle Springs Creamery while also working an extra job as a fireman. Eisenhower used the money he earned to pay his younger brother Edgar’s tuition at the University of Michigan. The brothers had a deal, that deal was that after two years, they would switch places with Edgar then working to support Eisenhower’s college education. Edgar Eisenhower never had to live up to his end of the deal. In 1911, Dwight Eisenhower made an appointment at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, where attendance was free. He was a star on the football field again, until a series of serious knee injuries forced him to stop playing.

In 1915, Eisenhower graduated from West Point, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. After he graduated, Eisenhower was sent to Texas, where he met and started dating 18-year-old Mamie Geneva Doud from Denver, Colorado. They got married nine months later, on July 1, 1916. Dwight D. Eisenhower was promoted to first lieutenant on his wedding day. For the first few years of Eisenhower’s military career, he and Mamie moved from post to post throughout Texas, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In 1917, Mamie gave birth to the couple’s first son, Doud Dwight. That same year, the United States entered WWI.

Although Eisenhower hoped to be commissioned overseas, he was instead appointed to run a tank training center at Camp Colt in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Throughout the war and afterward, Eisenhower continued to rise through the ranks. By 1920, he was promoted to major, after having volunteered for the Tank Corps, in the War Department’s first transcontinental motor convoy, the previous year. In 1921, tragedy struck at home, when the Eisenhowers’ firstborn son, Doud Dwight, died of scarlet fever at the age of 3. Mamie gave birth to a second son, John Sheldon Doud, in 1922. That year, Eisenhower assumed the role of executive officer to General Fox Conner in the Panama Canal Zone. In 1924, at Conner’s urging, Eisenhower applied to the Army’s prestigious graduate school, the Command and General Staff School at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, and was accepted. He graduated first in his class of 245 in 1926, with a firm reputation for his military prowess.

From 1927 to 1929 Eisenhower toured and reported for the War Department, under General John Pershing. After finishing his tour in 1929, Eisenhower was appointed chief military aide under General Douglas MacArthur. From 1935 to 1939 Eisenhower served under MacArthur as assistant military advisor to the Philippines. Eisenhower returned to the United States in early 1940.Over the next two years he was stationed in California and Washington state. In 1941, after a transfer to Fort Sam Houston, Eisenhower became chief of staff for the Third Army. Eisenhower was soon promoted to brigadier general for his leadership of the Louisiana Maneuvers. Late that year he was transferred to the War Plans division in Washington, D.C. In 1942, he was promoted to major general. Just months later, he became commander-in-chief of the Allied Forces and led Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa.

After Germany’s surrender in 1945, Eisenhower was made military governor of the U.S. Occupied Zone. After that, Eisenhower returned home to Abilene and received a warm welcome. A few months later, Eisenhower was appointed as U.S. Army chief of staff. In 1948, Dwight Eisenhower was elected as the president of Columbia University, he was president of Columbia University until December of 1950, when he decided to leave Columbia to accept an appointment as first Supreme Allied Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. While he was in Paris with NATO, Eisenhower was encouraged by the Republican emissaries to run for president of the United States in the Election of 1952.in 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an act that creates the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He called the signing an [sic] historic step, further equipping the United States for leadership in the space age.

Since the end of World War II, the United States had worked to make innovations in rocket science. This particular legislation expanded the original National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics which is known as NACA, into NASA. NASA research, which was funded by Eisenhower’s successors, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, was responsible for successful and amazing American achievements like the Apollo 11 lunar landing in 1969 and the development of the space shuttle that launched in 1981. Recently, NASA has sent robotic exploration missions to Mars and launched a spacecraft to view Pluto. NASA’s research has also contributed to advances in consumer-oriented goods like telecommunications satellites and computer technology. (History.com)As a president, Eisenhower ended the Korean war.