Replies

jmacusa: "That Eisenhower spoke of Lee in the terms did certainly didn't endear him to me.
I always felt he was barely qualified to command American forces.
D-Dy came off, but barely, the Normandy Campaign came off but barely and The Hurtgen Forest Campaign was an absolute slaughter, Market-Garden was a complete screw up . . ."

jeffersondem: "Now we have a little more insight into your ill-feelings toward American heroes."

In all fairness to Eisenhower, nobody ever claimed he was the world's greatest general, unlike many others we can name, from Lee & Grant to MacArthur and Patton.
But what's always said of Ike is that he was the right man for his job, he was more of a diplomat who got along with and kept united some very strong and often conflicting military personalities.

Regarding D-Day, we need first to remember that the Allies conducted many dozens of successful amphibious landings during WWII -- in the Pacific, Mediterranean and Atlantic.
These varied in size from a few brigades "island hopping" in the Pacific to unimaginably massive landings such as Operation Iceberg (Okinawa, Japan) and Operation Neptune (D-Day, Normandy).

We can debate which one was the largest landing overall -- Iceberg or Neptune -- but what's certain is they were both huge and produced many American casualties.

Operation Iceberg on Okinawa took three months, included seven divisions, eventually over 250,000 troops landed and suffered over 50,000 casualties.

Operation Overlord at Normandy also took three months, initially landing 10 divisions with 156,000 troops, eventually 39 divisions with over 2 million troops, suffering over 250,000 total casualties, including around 36,000 killed in action over the three months.

Of all those dozens of amphibious landings, very few went perfectly, but only one I can think of actually failed -- the British raid on Dieppe France in August 1942.
Also, arguably, the results of the Allied landing at Anzio, Italy, January 1944, were less than sterling -- it took over four months to break out of the beachhead there.

Bottom line: Eisenhower never lead troops in combat, but he was a great chief of staff in organizing and maintaining good relationships among different military branches from different countries commanded by some very difficult personalities.

Market Garden was Montgomery's baby.

The Hurtgen Forest was Omar Bradley's 12th Army Group and Courtney Hodges First Army, under Bradley.

I would put Eisenhower's biggest failure as his inability to see warning signs of Hitler's December 1944 Ardennes Offensive, the "Battle of the Bulge".
That cost the allies around 81,000 casualties, including nearly 9,000 killed in action.
It's at least arguable that had Eisenhower warned his commanders ahead of time, they would have been better prepared and faster to respond, perhaps saving many allied lives.

Good analysis Joe. As Supreme Allied Commander of The Anglo-American Forces in the ETO Eisenhower was the boss.

Montgomery pressured Eisenhower to let him undertake the mission. And as you point out Eisenhower was more a diplomat and he had to keep a contentious coalition of allied force(and egos) in snyc and working together. So he let Monty go ahead with it.

Eisenhower was Montgomery’s boss and Bradley’s too. It’s always the man at the top who takes the heat.

Eisenhower grew up at a time when America was still putting North and South together. Reconciliation was the political correctness of its day. It was a priority and it was important for the military to contribute. Ike’s whole career took place in an age of historical revisionism (1910 to 1960), when the war was blamed on unreasonable men unwilling to compromise (the abolitionists very much included) and the Southern view of Reconstruction was widely accepted by historians and teachers. Ike was, of course, educated at West Point, where Lee had been an exemplary student and then later superintended. So it was inevitable that President Eisenhower thought as he did. I don’t see any reason why we have to immediately and automatically accept or reject his view (or that of the doctor who wrote to him). Who’s right and who’s wrong is for us to figure out based on what we know now.

Theodore Roosevelt’s mother was a Georgian and his father was of course a New Yorker. His uncles had supported and served the Confederacy. His father had kept out of the war, perhaps out of deference to Teddy’s mother. The reconciliation project c. 1890-1910 was not only a national necessity for Teddy, but it had a very personal meaning for him, so of course he’d do what he could to support it.