Bull Tiger Biographical Library · Giant Hundred -- Eisenhower

Author: Hao Xiaowei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1998-10-12
Features: We are delighted to recommend the "Giant Biographies Series" to young friends. At the turn of the century, having such a fine series accompany you is a joy in wisdom. We believe that from the footsteps of these giants and masters, you can learn how to properly handle success and failure, comfort and hardship, joy and pain, smoothness and tribulation, understand how to face life, how to learn to be a person, how to pursue knowledge, how to shape oneself, and how to shape the future.
Principal of Peking University: Zhao Yulin
Party Secretary: Dong Lingsheng
Principal of Tsinghua University: Zhao Qinggang
Great men are the elite of humanity. They have made outstanding contributions to the progress and civilization of human society. Their spirit of struggle and extraordinary achievements are deeply admired by people, becoming models for others to learn from. Great men are human, not gods. They come from ordinary people but are above ordinary people. Their lofty ideals and the belief that they want to benefit the motherland and humanity are the driving force behind their relentless efforts and fearlessness of difficulties.
Principal of Tianjin Nankai Middle School: Kang Xiuyan
To carefully read this series of books is like seeing their appearance, speech, and actions, and feeling their ideals, beliefs, ambitions, and sentiments. This will help you learn to be a person, learn to pursue knowledge, and learn to build a career.
Principal of Fudan University: Cao Tianren
In a military-unfriendly America, it is rare for a general to rise to the presidency. Dwight D. Eisenhower was one of the few who achieved this honor. Eisenhower, a graduate of the renowned West Point Military Academy, later studied at the Army War College and the Army Command and General Staff School. However, until the outbreak of the Pacific War, he was still an obscure military officer. Fortunately, Eisenhower had long served under MacArthur and Marshall as a staff officer and gained their recognition. In June 1942, at Marshall's recommendation, Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Commander of the U.S. Army in Europe. Before this, he had never commanded combat operations in the field. However, his first major mission—commanding the North African landing of the Allied forces—was a resounding success, proving Marshall's keen insight. Eisenhower thus gained widespread fame.
Many of Eisenhower's British generals had more battlefield command experience than he did. At the same time, he had to deal with a British prime minister who liked to directly interfere in battlefield command. This posed considerable challenges. However, he appropriately managed his cooperation with the British and successfully maintained his authority as the supreme commander of the Allied forces. People say that his secret to success lay in the fact that he was a soldier with a politician's vision.
The victory in the D-Day invasion brought Eisenhower's reputation to its peak. As Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe, he focused on strategic issues. He was willing to listen to various opinions and was polite and humble, but he never gave an inch on principle. He insisted that the British Royal Air Force must be under his command; when his subordinates doubted whether to use airborne troops as planned, he resolutely ordered the execution of the original plan; at the end of 1944, when the Allied forces entered Germany, he withstood Churchill's pressure and insisted on not competing with the Soviet Red Army for Berlin. It was due to Eisenhower's proper command that the D-Day landing operation and the series of subsequent battles in Europe achieved glorious victories.
On the eve of the end of the European war, Eisenhower was awarded the highest military rank in the U.S.—General of the Army, sharing this honor with his mentors MacArthur and Marshall. When he returned to the U.S. from the European battlefield in triumph, he was welcomed by a crowd of thousands. In August 1945, during his visit to the Soviet Union, he was invited as a foreigner to the reviewing stand at Lenin's Mausoleum to stand alongside Stalin and watch the Soviet sports festival. In 1952, Eisenhower retired from the military and was soon elected President of the United States, serving two terms until 1961.
This book does not deliberately highlight Eisenhower's diligence and achievements but uses a delicate pen to portray his successes and failures, as well as his joys, sorrows, anger, and happiness as an ordinary person. It fully reveals his psychological activities and complex personality.