The Art of Manliness - The Making of a Supreme Commander — How Eisenhower Became the Leader Who Delivered Victory on D-Day

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:11.240 that dwight d eisenhower became supreme commander of the allied forces in europe

00:00:15.220 orchestrating the largest amphibious invasion in history on june 6 1944 was far from inevitable

00:00:21.100 he came from the middle of nowhere abilene kansas had never led men in battle spent most of his

00:00:27.200 career as a staff officer and didn't make general until he was in his 50s how then did he become

00:00:32.340 the leader on whom the fate of the world would rest today we trace the making of ike with michelle

00:00:36.460 paradis author of the light of battle we talk about how eisenhower's midwestern upbringing shaped his

00:00:41.820 character and how his most important education happened outside the classroom michelle shares

00:00:46.260 how crucial mentors were in ike's development and how eisenhower made the most of those relationships

00:00:50.300 we discuss the books that were most formative in shaping his thinking including what he got for

00:00:54.800 we also get into some of the practices eisenhower used to lead effectively including how he

00:00:59.660 budgeted his time to maintain his morale while under the pressure of planning d-day and what he did in

00:01:04.000 the evening before the invasion to deal with the stress after the show's over check out our show

00:01:08.120 notes at aom.is slash supreme commander all right michelle paradis welcome to the show thanks so much

00:01:26.600 for having me so you got a book out called the light of battle which is about d-day d-day is one of the

00:01:32.460 most studied and written about events in modern history what do you think gets missed in the books

00:01:38.660 on d-day and what were you hoping to bring to our understanding of d-day with your book no that's

00:01:43.420 exactly right there are so many great books about d-day too that i definitely knew in starting this one

00:01:49.120 that i couldn't write just another book about d-day if only because like you know competing with you know

00:01:54.880 people like max hastings is going to always be impossible and so you know i to me i think i think

00:02:01.880 the thing we missed to answer your question about d-day the thing that fascinated me is not just the

00:02:08.880 actual heroism of the men who hit the beaches you know on omaha or on juno but how much went into it

00:02:17.060 how much was behind that we think about those 176 000 men who hit the beach in the first day

00:02:23.420 you know obviously correctly they are the literal heroes of that story but you know depending on how

00:02:29.720 you count it about 2 million people made d-day happen and that kind of collective action right

00:02:35.640 that working together for a common goal was essential to d-day's success and that ultimately

00:02:42.860 is what drew me especially to eisenhower and obviously there's no lack of historical celebration

00:02:48.720 for dwight eisenhower but i also think we almost take him for granted you know there's a book a

00:02:54.840 minute about people like you know about churchill about patten about d-day itself but there are

00:03:00.300 actually very few serious studies of eisenhower the last you know significant biography certainly

00:03:05.620 covering his wartime experience is at least about 10 15 years old now and i just thought that was

00:03:10.600 amazing right i couldn't understand that because here you are you have this guy he comes from the

00:03:16.640 middle of the country right about as far away from anywhere as you could possibly get which is

00:03:21.600 abilene kansas and not only comes to the heights of military leadership in the second world war he

00:03:29.260 commands the most complicated and i would argue consequential military operation of that war which

00:03:34.600 is d-day and then goes on to be probably one of the preeminent figures of the 20th century the

00:03:40.880 first president who we call the leader of the free world and so many i think even admiring takes of

00:03:47.980 eisenhower sort of look at him as like this inevitable figure or a boring figure at worst like

00:03:53.380 the you know the 50s the mayonnaise on white bread kind of thing and to me i just knew that there was

00:03:58.400 something more going on there and so in thinking about d-day and thinking about the heroism of the

00:04:02.680 men on the beach on d-day i really wanted to just understand how they got there and how they got

00:04:07.960 there in a way to succeed and that took me to dwight eisenhower and that's what i loved about

00:04:12.000 the book you get into his personality or try to because he is kind of an enigma he's kind of a

00:04:17.180 sphinx character in a lot of ways just kind of this affable smiling guy and i think that's why he gets

00:04:22.180 overlooked but you try to paint a picture of him that you know there's a lot going on with this guy

00:04:27.260 that's why he was so successful as a commander and later as a president of the united states so let's

00:04:33.040 dig into eisenhower and try to figure out like how did this guy manage to carry off one of the biggest

00:04:40.400 military invasions in the history of humanity you mentioned he grew up in abilene kansas how do you

00:04:47.320 think his kansas upbringing prepared him for his role in world war ii yeah it's i mean he's such a

00:04:53.380 fascinating figure like as you say because he's known certainly in his lifetime particularly as

00:04:59.320 president as being you know everyone likes ike he's this smiling guy he's sort of almost seen as

00:05:05.140 again bland or non-threatening and yet he is probably you know responsible literally for the

00:05:11.100 deaths of millions of germans and one of the most i think cunning and in some ways ruthless military 0.99

00:05:18.140 and political figures of the 20th century but it's all concealed around this very sort of bland

00:05:23.720 deceptively bland i would say packaging of smiling ike and a lot of that traces to his upbringing in

00:05:30.120 kansas and there are a couple things that i think shape him you know he's born in 1890 which is sometimes

00:05:36.720 celebrated as the year the west was closed and he grows up in abilene which had been a you know a cow

00:05:42.860 town from the wild west but by that point had become a fairly reserved very religiously oriented

00:05:48.340 community around the river brethren and his family his father's family was a very prominent religious

00:05:54.280 family and farming family but his own father was a you know a complicated guy he wasn't a drinker but

00:05:59.200 he was definitely abusive and even for the time i would say abusive you know late 1800s kansas and so

00:06:05.360 eisenhower grows up in this community in the middle of kansas which emphasizes a certain kind of you know

00:06:11.420 humility you know if you talk to anyone from kansas the most important thing to let you know is well

00:06:15.260 kansas is nothing to talk about you know we're just we're just humble people from the plane and so

00:06:20.340 that sense of eisenhower of being in a way self-effacing is right out of kansas right everyone

00:06:25.760 in kansas recognizes that but i think the other things he gets from growing up in his very unique

00:06:30.480 circumstances is one a a real burning desire to see the rest of the world i don't know that he travels

00:06:37.780 more than about 100 miles or so before he ends up enrolling in west point when he's 19 years old

00:06:44.480 and as the middle child of a fairly low income large family he just has this itch to want to see

00:06:53.380 the absolute rest of the world and that leads him to cultivate all sorts of mentors both in abilene

00:06:58.460 and then really for the rest of his life it's probably one of his greatest skills as a sort of a man in

00:07:04.920 development is that he looks for people who seem to have figured something out that he wants to know

00:07:10.060 and he gloms on to them and tries to learn from them in a really intimate way and in kansas one of

00:07:16.040 his first mentors is the publisher of the local democrat newspaper uh the dickinson news and he

00:07:23.420 just goes to this guy's newspaper shop uh hangs out there after school typically with some friends

00:07:27.740 and you know this publisher sees an eisenhower curiosity and eisenhower wants to know what's going

00:07:32.540 on in the rest of the world and so this guy starts just giving eisenhower books to read

00:07:36.680 and one of eisenhower's favorite or the one that makes the biggest imprint on him is the life of

00:07:41.580 hannibal now when i said eisenhower is the middle child of a very large low-income family that's also

00:07:47.580 a religiously pacifist family his father and his mother are part of a movement called the bible

00:07:52.100 students which we now know is the jehovah's witnesses but we're a much more how would you say

00:07:56.140 mystical movement at the turn of the 20th century and his religiously pacifist mother is not at all

00:08:03.280 impressed when he brings home the life of hannibal and in fact confiscates it from him and puts it

00:08:07.820 away in her closet and as eisenhower sort of tells the story later he would wait until she was out in

00:08:13.480 the garden you know culling some of the crops and he would sneak into her closet like he was looking

00:08:18.340 for the playboy and read the life of hannibal sort of in secret and just became fascinated by really in

00:08:25.280 love with a kind of military heroism a kind of manly figure and the thing he would always say about

00:08:30.140 hannibal in particular is that he knew from the time he was a young boy that hannibal was one of

00:08:35.720 the greatest generals in all of history because he was recounted as such but only ever by his enemies

00:08:41.560 there are no extant tracks or histories by the carthaginians of hannibal's exploits only those

00:08:47.060 written by the romans and to eisenhower the fact that someone could be so compelling as a figure so

00:08:53.340 powerful as a general so brilliant so so heroic as to go down in history that way when the only

00:09:00.740 people writing about you are the enemies who fought you in battle really impressed eisenhower from a

00:09:06.720 young age and so that upbringing in kansas that combination of you know it sounds cliche but it's

00:09:11.980 true small town values but combined with this real burning itch to get out of kansas to see the rest of

00:09:18.780 the world to be a part of the world formed eisenhower's character at a young age in ways that

00:09:23.400 you can see almost the day he dies so you mentioned west point was his ticket out of abilene he went to

00:09:29.680 west point how did west point prepare him to be supreme allied commander you think it's a couple

00:09:34.880 different ways you know eisenhower went to west point as his you know ironically enough his way of

00:09:40.640 rebelling against his parents and to get his ticket out of abilene and he gets there and he's really

00:09:48.340 quite awkward you know he he is a country boy but he has a sense of this is where he wants to be and

00:09:55.720 this is where he's in a sense always wanted to be since he was a boy and so ends up doing two things

00:10:02.120 in his career uh at west point that end up i think shaping him and the sort of the eisenhower we know

00:10:09.400 forever one is he has this deep concern about his background he is not the son of a general he is

00:10:16.220 not part of the sort of burgeoning american aristocracy that is filling the ranks of his

00:10:20.660 classmates but that gray uniform they all wear at least covers up how sort of shabby and country his 0.81

00:10:26.940 clothes are but the way he talks where he's from right no one's ever heard of kansas really but people

00:10:33.480 have heard of abilene that old west sort of history that abilene carried as being the the place

00:10:38.520 where cowboys had shootouts in the in the town square eisenhower fully embraces as part of his

00:10:44.520 personality and it's where he begins to take on the nickname ike as well because ike is this sort of

00:10:50.820 typical name for a cowboy in the dime westerns that you'd get you know a cowboy who was out on the land

00:10:56.540 all alone who was his own man who was always there to do the right thing even if he was a little

00:11:01.220 uncultured and really leans into this identity of being sort of from the cowboy town even though that

00:11:07.860 is not at all consistent with how he actually grew up but develops this kind of like cool right it's

00:11:13.500 funny to say eisenhower was cool but in west point he definitely develops this sense of cool and devil

00:11:19.080 may care big smile you know always ready for a good time that cultivates i think a very warm kind of

00:11:27.240 friendship and respect between his classmates who go on to be his contemporaries in the army over the

00:11:32.880 next 30 years the other thing though and this is i think underappreciated now just given how different

00:11:38.280 we think about sports but he also was a star football player in his freshman and sophomore years

00:11:44.600 and not particularly skilled right he wasn't a very very fast runner but he was a hardcore player right

00:11:51.360 he would just throw himself into the opposing line and so he was known as a bruiser and started you

00:11:57.700 know having a lot of success and gaining quite a reputation for himself as a football player but

00:12:02.300 then blows out his knee and at the time in west point if you had an injury like that you could get

00:12:07.660 kicked out not of west point but kicked out of the army and so eisenhower is faced you know from a young

00:12:13.200 age with the prospect of really not having a military career left just because of his knee injury

00:12:19.280 but the one thing he does and the one thing the army sees in him is you know once he's literally

00:12:25.280 back on his feet he can't play football anymore but he can coach it and he becomes the assistant

00:12:29.980 coach of the football team and demonstrates a kind of genius for the game a genius for organizing men on

00:12:36.080 the field that just as a practical matter the army really appreciated back then because people used

00:12:41.820 to play a lot of very competitive football it's kind of the way softball leagues are maybe today

00:12:46.440 but that in turn is what keeps him in the army the army always wants a good football coach and he

00:12:51.500 basically spends the first 10 years almost of his career as like a star football coach in the army

00:12:56.600 but that also gives eisenhower the first real lessons in leadership and those lessons in leadership

00:13:03.940 of leading a football team coaching a football team end up i think shaping his understanding of

00:13:10.880 what it means to lead in battle to lead an army in ways that far surpass anything he actually learns

00:13:17.520 in the classroom either at west point or the command and general staff school or anywhere else

00:13:21.300 it's really at west point and in that opportunity to be a football coach that he learns to really be a

00:13:26.420 leader in this section about his his role um as army football coach and as a player for the team

00:13:32.500 uh you talk about this guy ernest graves he was an army football coach and he wrote this book

00:13:38.800 ernest graves wrote this book about coaching offensive and defensive alignment and mixed in

00:13:44.760 with it were these sort of just insights about leadership and after i read about that in your

00:13:50.120 book i was like i had to go buy this book i'm gonna go find this ernest graves book and i read it in

00:13:54.300 just like one setting it was really easy to read but you're right there's these leadership lessons

00:13:58.260 that i think eisenhower probably picked up from graves on how to lead not only a football team but a

00:14:03.760 an army a military unit yeah absolutely and i'll flash forward to i think one of the most uh you

00:14:10.460 know spoiler alert but one of the most climactic moments in the d-day story and certainly in my

00:14:15.300 telling of it is when eisenhower ultimately has to make the call based on some very unclear weather

00:14:22.360 predictions about whether to launch this invasion and launching this invasion is either going to be the

00:14:28.500 grand success that it became or it's going to be a complete and utter disaster there is literally a

00:14:34.060 hurricane outside the doors as he's making this decision and when he finally does the thing he says

00:14:39.800 is okay let's go and that's his famous sort of send-off speech uh for the d-day invasion

00:14:47.160 and that exact quote is something ernest graves used to say and used to tell coaches to say right before

00:14:53.280 the men were to go out onto the field he's like okay when it's time to go the coach needs to take

00:14:57.320 control of the situation and say something like okay let's go and again whether or not that was

00:15:03.020 sort of in the back of eisenhower's head whether or not it was just a coincidence you know we'll never

00:15:06.780 really know but yeah that sense of okay it's my job to lead this team and the way to do it is the same

00:15:13.340 way you would lead a football team i think is totally correct so he graduates west point 1915

00:15:19.120 world war one is happening but he doesn't get sent off there instead he gets kind of sent off to

00:15:25.260 different training positions and then he becomes sort of this staff officer not really on the battle

00:15:31.180 grounds how did those staff positions prepare him for d-day you think i think they prepared him

00:15:38.340 uniquely well and it gets to something i was saying a few minutes ago is that you know one of eisenhower's

00:15:43.900 i think most important leadership lessons is the importance of followership and it's the importance

00:15:50.180 particularly when you're young particularly when you're coming up to understand that your job is

00:15:56.420 not to be the smartest person in the room your job is to figure out who the smartest person in the room

00:16:01.460 is and make yourself as useful as possible to them because in doing that you know not only are you going

00:16:08.200 to be much more effective than kind of butting heads with the person who actually knows what they're

00:16:13.280 doing with your own ill-conceived ideas but you're going to learn a lot right if you keep a genuinely

00:16:18.120 open mind and pay attention to what that person is doing and how they're making decisions you're

00:16:22.000 going to learn a ton from them that you can then use as you rise up the ranks and so for eisenhower

00:16:27.700 you know one of the ways i i even thought about telling his story is by telling it through his mentors

00:16:33.400 and i could rattle them off but the big ones certainly are people you know like joe howe who was that

00:16:38.780 newspaper publisher fox connor who he spends a long and very formative period with in panama but then

00:16:44.780 people like general mosley um who is probably one of the more suspect figures in history but who has

00:16:50.780 a big influence on eisenhower same thing with general mcarthur and then obviously general marshall

00:16:55.480 and then i would even say roosevelt and churchill right as eisenhower rises up the ranks there's always

00:17:01.280 someone who's the smarter person in the room he gets that but he makes himself as useful as possible to

00:17:07.460 fulfilling their vision and in the course of doing that learns their skills learns how they either

00:17:14.140 command an army how they manage a team or how they develop and use political power in ways to get

00:17:22.480 things actually done the way roosevelt and churchill did and so it's by having the humility really to be

00:17:29.480 that staff officer to be the one who helps the leader execute their plans that eisenhower really does

00:17:36.160 grow into an incredibly formidable political figure in his own right yeah one thing i've taken away from

00:17:42.980 eisenhower's experience as a staff officer is yeah that humility and then also patience with your

00:17:48.760 career i know eisenhower lamented like when world war one was over he's like it's it my military career

00:17:54.860 is over it's not going anywhere like i've gone as far as i can go and i missed it i missed my chance

00:18:02.160 and he didn't know he was about to like embark on the biggest part of his military career and it would

00:18:07.420 happen in his 50s yeah so i mean i think it's a great lesson there if for a young guy or even if

00:18:12.880 you're a guy in your 30s or your 40s you think man i missed the boat this is as far as this is as good

00:18:16.920 as it's going to get maybe not you could have a whole big giant book of life ahead of you like

00:18:22.580 eisenhower had after his staff positions yeah it's definitely an encouraging uh encouraging story

00:18:28.960 to anyone who's still not yet in their mid 50s to see that eisenhower you know starts world war ii

00:18:34.420 as a colonel and within a matter of three years he's a five-star general and again one of the

00:18:39.720 preeminent figures the 20th century to boot and and yeah you know it wasn't just after world war

00:18:44.600 one there are a lot of false dusks in eisenhower's career where he thinks he's just finished it's all

00:18:50.520 over i've wasted my best years this is the end and each time he's proven wrong because there's a new

00:18:56.260 and often greater challenge just waiting just just a little bit further down the line that he ends up

00:19:01.580 having to take on so you mentioned one of eisenhower's mentors during this staff officer period

00:19:06.660 of his career was fox connor this was when he was in panama this is one of my favorite sections of

00:19:12.420 the book because you explore the education that connor gave eisenhower this is where really eisenhower

00:19:19.420 got his education he didn't get it at west point it was when he was in panama with this fox connor guy

00:19:25.320 so what did that tutelage look like under connor like what did he tell eisenhower what did what

00:19:31.660 did he assign eisenhower to read tell us about it because i think it's really interesting yeah yeah

00:19:36.040 fox connor you know he started just in the past i would say 10 years or so maybe 10 15 years started

00:19:41.160 to get more recognition by historians part of the reason that he hadn't had more previously is that

00:19:46.640 he ordered all of his papers to be destroyed when he died so it's actually extremely difficult to

00:19:51.520 do any real research with fox connor but yeah fox connor you know he's the son of a confederate

00:19:56.960 wounded veteran has an army career a quite distinguished army career in its own right he's

00:20:01.820 probably the principal military planner of the american expeditionary force in world war one

00:20:06.680 where he comes to know george patten george marshall like fox connor has a pretty amazing

00:20:12.720 repertoire of connections that obviously matter a lot in eisenhower's life too and eisenhower gets

00:20:17.560 stationed with him in fort gaillard panama and this is a backwater in a backwater i i gotta be

00:20:24.100 honest with you and one of the things that i never was able to fully pin down is why fox connor got

00:20:27.920 marooned to command this podunk post in the middle of nowhere it's not obvious but one of the things

00:20:33.800 that is suggestive though is that fox connor was not an easy person to get along at all you know he

00:20:39.700 had a mississippian sort of rigidity to his personality he was extremely serious he inspired very

00:20:45.860 little loyalty let alone affection in subordinates who saw him as extremely high-handed and brusque

00:20:53.400 and eisenhower frankly is no different i think when he arrives in panama fox connor basically makes him

00:20:58.620 every day write out these very complicated orders of the day what is everyone to do for today and how

00:21:04.060 are they to do it and there's no point in this exercise right the army's job in camp gaillard is

00:21:10.280 basically to make sure the camp doesn't fall into the panama canal and that's it there's nothing

00:21:15.160 going on there it's the middle of nowhere everyone is bored most of the enlisted come from puerto rico

00:21:19.760 so they don't even speak english which creates even bigger morale problems camp gaillard specifically had

00:21:25.160 a a sodomy crisis system army called it at the time and there was all sorts of prostitution and

00:21:31.080 gambling and alcoholism that was just rampant because everyone's bored in the middle of nowhere and

00:21:36.380 eisenhower is just enduring this initially as the best he can maybe eisenhower his wife is there with

00:21:42.120 him and leaves within a few months to have their son back in colorado and so eisenhower is alone

00:21:46.740 working for this very difficult guy and ultimately though eisenhower you know kind of getting to what i was

00:21:53.680 saying before eisenhower always understood that it was important to just be as useful as possible to

00:21:59.580 the guy in charge and he understood that he was a staff officer fundamentally and so he did that and

00:22:04.520 he would take just all sorts of abuse from fox connor about how he was writing out these orders

00:22:10.360 of the day which again are complete busy work but eisenhower was there doing it and at one point fox

00:22:15.820 connor invites eisenhower over to his house and the thing almost everybody who ever met fox connor noted

00:22:20.380 about it was that he had this enormous personal library thousands of books that he would demand the army

00:22:27.120 transport with him wherever he went so just crates and crates of books and eisenhower had never seen one

00:22:33.840 person owned that many books and was impressed and connor kind of asks him in a friendly way do you

00:22:39.920 like to read do you like military history and eisenhower at this point is making do he he loved

00:22:45.420 military history as a boy right he loved hannibal but when he got to west point it was a very very

00:22:49.440 dry dull military education he didn't get a thing out of it and eisenhower had been stationed in

00:22:56.120 gettysburg during the first world war and so fox connor reaches over and hands him a handful of books

00:23:02.060 mostly novels in fact about the battle of gettysburg and he says here you might like these give these a

00:23:08.000 read and eisenhower reads these books reads them pretty fast actually and then brings them back

00:23:12.500 connor and connor you know says what did you think about it and then they started having a conversation

00:23:17.880 about it and so fox connor gives him some heavier reading right some memoirs of gettysburg and some

00:23:23.500 firsthand accounts getting into the heavier non-fiction and eisenhower reads those and fox connor

00:23:29.580 what did you think about them why do you think lee did this and they would go out often all day on

00:23:35.740 horseback through the panamanian countryside discussing things like the battle of gettysburg

00:23:40.900 or discussing the napoleonic wars or the battle of luthan and quickly eisenhower comes to appreciate

00:23:50.060 that he is being given an incredible education not just in military history but in the history of being

00:23:56.360 a general because those are the questions fox connor puts to him it's like why are people making

00:24:00.500 these decisions what are they seeing what did they not see why are they making this mistake why are they

00:24:05.720 guessing right about this question some of the books that connor gives them though over the course of

00:24:11.060 these tutorials are not just military histories but philosophy literature shakespeare nietzsche on war

00:24:18.420 by carl von clauswitz which is essentially a theory of war and the use of military power to achieve

00:24:25.640 political ends and by the time eisenhower leaves the panama three years later he has you know a first

00:24:35.000 class education in how to be a general and it's with that education to include the writing out of the

00:24:42.340 very dull daily orders orders of day that eisenhower is essentially picked through some of the sort of

00:24:49.760 bureaucratic magic fox connor can exercise to go take the army's course in how to be a general called the

00:24:56.220 command and general staff college it's a course where you learn the principles of generalship and of staff

00:25:00.840 officership so that you can write out orders and eisenhower just like you know when he goes to west point is very

00:25:06.360 nervous about his skills right does he have the real background he'd never served in one he hadn't

00:25:12.560 really served in any serious positions to that point nothing like the classmates he'd be encountering at

00:25:16.600 command and general staff college and fox connor basically says to him look when you were under me

00:25:21.720 i had you write an order of the day every single day you're going to find no sense of inferiority when

00:25:28.640 you get to the command and general staff college and sure enough when eisenhower gets there he works a lot

00:25:32.900 harder than he claims to have but he's first in his class and it's from then on that eisenhower's

00:25:37.640 career just takes off we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:25:41.800 and now back to the show you mentioned that one of the books connor gave him was the philosophy of

00:25:50.000 nietzsche and you talk about the book that book actually had a big impact left a lasting impact on

00:25:54.840 eisenhower how did nietzschean philosophy influence eisenhower you think oh that was a real surprise to me

00:26:01.980 right almost the last person you think about when you think about eisenhower is friedrich nietzsche

00:26:06.240 but sure enough you know i was able to again one of the real difficult things that as a research

00:26:12.060 matter but one of the most satisfying and trying to understand eisenhower was just figuring out what

00:26:15.920 books he read and then reading them so like what's in his head and where can you see these ideas pop up

00:26:20.960 later if at all and you know when i read the the copy of nietzsche that fox connor had almost right away

00:26:28.500 i'm looking at you know almost verbatim things eisenhower says later and there are a couple

00:26:34.180 things that are going on in nietzsche that or at least the friedrich nietzsche that eisenhower reads

00:26:38.860 that are incredibly formative to eisenhower one is you know what we probably would just call basic

00:26:44.060 stoicism you know going back to at least marcus aurelius you know this idea of manhood being about

00:26:51.580 seeing the world as it is in an unsentimental way and knowing that the truth is always going to matter

00:26:59.120 much more than any ideology or idea or wish for how the world could be and that anytime you find

00:27:05.720 yourself as he often did and would right uh complaining about oh things aren't turning out

00:27:11.320 the way i hoped knowing that you know shut up your feelings don't matter what matters is what is and as

00:27:18.640 soon as you can reconcile yourself to that the better and so that's a big part of eisenhower's

00:27:23.660 own philosophy just being very objective and really quite hostile to ideology which i think is one of

00:27:28.620 eisenhower's most important and laudable traits whether or not it's nazi fascism or communism or any

00:27:35.440 of the other sort of you know how would you sort of say sort of ideologies or theories of the day

00:27:40.580 like he's always worried and always thinking fundamentally about brass tacks okay how does this really matter

00:27:45.800 what's really going on what's really motivating another big thing in nietzsche that eisenhower

00:27:50.540 like fully embraces is the virtue of toughness and the manly virtues so to speak the willingness to

00:27:59.400 fight for something bigger than yourself as a virtue in and of itself and then the third thing i think

00:28:06.560 that eisenhower draws directly out of nietzsche actually quotes it several times without attributing

00:28:11.500 it but it's right out of nietzsche is this idea that human beings all have a fundamental desire

00:28:18.560 to be free and that when you motivate that when you can appeal to that individual desire to be free

00:28:24.620 people are willing to to do anything to fight and to die for their own freedom and indeed one of the

00:28:30.540 biggest quotes he often repeats that again is verbatim out of nietzsche is the idea that there is

00:28:36.040 nothing more powerful than a motivated democracy that democracy fundamentally is all about allowing

00:28:42.960 free people to be free and if you can harness that energy that drive towards something greater than

00:28:48.960 themselves that individual desire to be free to to make their own choices to pursue their own happiness

00:28:53.920 that you have harnessed the most powerful force that human beings can muster so eisenhower graduates from

00:29:01.080 the u.s army commanded general staff college he's still confined to sort of administrative positions

00:29:06.540 he's the aide to general douglas mcarthur he serves the chief of staff at the third infantry division

00:29:11.740 he holds various staff positions in washington dc he's a colonel when world war ii starts he's never

00:29:19.260 led a battle he doesn't have that you know big personality like mcarthur or padden but he still gets the job

00:29:27.500 of supreme allied commander in europe over george marshall who is also in the running and there's

00:29:32.200 a whole interesting story there but from the time he takes that command he's got less than six months

00:29:38.700 to plan operation overlord d-day what kind of physical and emotional toll did the pressure

00:29:46.260 in planning that invasion take on eisenhower yeah it's an incredibly compressed time frame the the day

00:29:52.480 by day is stunning and yeah it has a huge toll it has to eisenhower is basically sick the entire time

00:30:00.900 into varying degrees of severity um like his cold basically comes and goes he smokes like a chimney

00:30:07.680 he's up three packs a day by the time the d-day invasion launches i i did the math on that that's

00:30:13.680 about 11 to 12 hours of smoking per day he begins to drink too much he sleeps like three to four hours a

00:30:20.860 day and he really does bear the weight of it internally in ways that you you know i mean it's

00:30:28.480 almost difficult to imagine anyone else being able to endure you know he's lonely he misses his family he

00:30:35.720 misses his son there's a moment when he which i recount in the book because it's just so poignant

00:30:40.080 when he's asked to essentially give the commencement address at britain's equivalent of west point and you

00:30:47.720 know gives this very solemn speech about how the weight of the world is on these young men who are

00:30:53.380 going to be literally his subordinates in a matter of weeks and he writes this letter home that's so

00:31:00.140 meditative and it's quite dark where he says you know i just don't understand this human need to

00:31:06.120 destroy and how so many lives are put to waste and how we haven't learned as a species to do better

00:31:13.520 to be kinder to each other and i think the poignancy of that moment came not just in the fact

00:31:18.860 that he's looking at these young men who he is confident he is sending to their deaths at some

00:31:23.840 point or very well could but they're his son's age his son john is actually graduating from west

00:31:29.280 point ironically enough on june 6 1944 and you know as he's bestowing awards and shaking their hands like

00:31:36.060 they look and act and are exactly like his own son and that has to occur to him in terms of just like

00:31:44.220 what is really putting put at risk what are the costs what are the dangers that these young men who

00:31:49.020 are going to be crossing that beach what are they confronting and why are they doing it and he's the

00:31:53.580 one there sending them off right it's his responsibility ultimately he owns that and the pressure is insane

00:31:59.600 so besides smoking and drinking a lot another thing that helped eisenhower deal with the pressure of the

00:32:05.040 battlefront was spending time with what he called his official family and this was like his tight

00:32:10.520 inner circle of individuals he was close to it included uh case summersby his driver there was

00:32:17.600 his personal naval aide harry butcher his secretary maddie pinnett what role did eisenhower's official

00:32:25.140 family play in kind of boosting up his morale during this period yeah yeah i don't i don't want to

00:32:29.720 overstate he's not a drunk to be clear all right you know he basically he spends nobody spends his

00:32:34.600 nights you know he i thought i was very disciplined about organizing his time it's actually one of the

00:32:38.840 more like interesting and i think prescient leadership traits that he has is that he knows that

00:32:44.020 like a big part of his job is just making so many decisions day after day high consequence low

00:32:50.380 consequence just one after the other and to do that effectively to make the best decision he can

00:32:56.240 regardless of how it turns out he has to keep himself healthy both physically and mentally as much as

00:33:01.580 he possibly can and so he's very disciplined ultimately about budgeting out his time right

00:33:07.080 this is the era before smartphones and so when he goes home basically to the official family he

00:33:13.480 basically is disciplined from about seven or eight o'clock at night when he can about turning off the

00:33:18.780 office and playing bridge and you know watching movies together and chatting and reciting poetry it's a

00:33:24.880 really i think important opportunity he has to just like be as human as possible under the

00:33:30.420 circumstances and this official family is you know both his literal aides right there are secretaries

00:33:35.460 and drivers and things like that but i think they're just also the people that he can relax with these are

00:33:40.660 the people who are not gunning for him they're not trying to get anything from him they're not trying

00:33:44.100 to use or manipulate him for their own ends these are just the people he can trust day in and day out and

00:33:49.220 he knows he needs that retreat and he needs to take advantage of that retreat and not just constantly

00:33:54.400 be working because otherwise he'll collapse he'll burn out and he won't be able to make the hard

00:33:58.960 decisions that he has to make i think it's a great lesson for even if you're not the supreme allied

00:34:03.480 commander take your rest time seriously yeah make time for it if eisenhower could have done it during

00:34:09.020 overlord you can do it when you've got your nine to five job like you're okay that's right turn your phone

00:34:14.920 off yeah hang out with your kids have have a meal without looking at your phone all that yeah so you

00:34:20.320 mentioned there's a lot of internal struggles that eisenhower had you know he knew the impact his

00:34:25.900 decisions were going to have he was going to send lots of young men to their death i mean how did he do

00:34:31.880 that and think about the human consequences while not letting it paralyze him because i think that'd be

00:34:37.780 really hard i mean if i were in that position i would think oh my gosh i can't even make a decision

00:34:42.080 i would just freeze what do you think eisenhower did to overcome that while maintaining his humanity

00:34:48.200 at the same time i think actually the key thing was that he maintained his humanity you know we've

00:34:53.240 talked a bit about nietzsche and this is sort of a nietzschean idea or a stoic idea at least but i think

00:34:59.380 also comes right out of nietzsche is that he never he never looked away from the consequences of his own

00:35:06.420 decisions like he fully embraced them if only as a corrective to make sure he was making the

00:35:11.960 right decision and being able to hold those things in his head at the same time i think was a key

00:35:16.960 part certainly of his ability to lead in crisis and some of the hard decisions he made and i'll give

00:35:21.700 you just one example of it that almost brings me to tears every time i think about it is the night

00:35:25.760 before d-day launches he goes around and sees off the 101st airborne and there's you know probably the

00:35:31.600 most famous picture of eisenhower addressing these young men who are all painted up and getting ready

00:35:36.600 to jump out of these planes over france and he had been given an estimate just before that about

00:35:42.480 half of these guys are going to be lost like half and you know he's sending thousands of these young

00:35:48.160 men across the english channel so he goes and he goes to see them off and there's no fanfare right this

00:35:53.320 is not a review he literally just has k drive up as quietly as possible gets out and just starts

00:35:58.740 mingling between them and shaking their hands and talking to them and again there's this very famous

00:36:04.980 photograph where his hand is forward and he looks like he's very sternly telling them you know some

00:36:10.800 sort of great rallying cry to get them over the beaches and with a little bit of tracking down

00:36:16.340 we're able to find the um the actual story behind that photo and the guy he's talking to he's talking

00:36:22.960 to him about fishing because he would just go up to these guys and be like what do you like to do

00:36:26.140 where are you from what was your job what's your hobbies uh anyone from kansas and this guy said he

00:36:31.740 likes fishing and eisenhower is an adamant fisher himself and a fly fisherman on top of that and

00:36:37.340 he's like so when you throw a rod this is how i throw it and he's demonstrating the throwing of

00:36:41.800 his rod and the photographer just sort of happened to catch the moment in this way that has this very

00:36:45.720 sort of commanding overtone to it but what's really going on there is he's just treating that young man

00:36:51.240 like a human being like his son like himself and when he goes around and meets these young men and

00:36:57.800 shakes their hands he forces himself to look each one of them in the eye when he does it and think

00:37:04.700 about that each hand he shakes he knows that basically every other one is going to die right

00:37:11.700 every other one is some kid who is either his son's age or younger who's just not going to go home again

00:37:17.860 who's not going to see his own father again and eisenhower made himself do that not only i think to

00:37:24.400 you know be there for them and to let them know that he saw them and saw them you know not as

00:37:30.620 soldiers to be sent across the border but as young men who he cared about who had their own lives and

00:37:35.320 dreams and interests but to remind himself of that too and when he finishes he just collapses into the

00:37:42.120 back of his car and just said well no one can stop it now and that's that's how he ends june 5th

00:37:49.600 1944 but i also think that's how he does it because he doesn't numb himself to the costs of

00:37:55.060 what he's doing he understands it he internalizes it and owns it and so that when he has a hard

00:38:00.880 decision to make such as sending them over there knowing how many of them are unlikely to ever come

00:38:06.220 home again he's able to do it because he's weighed the costs the benefits in a real way that he owns it's

00:38:13.500 as much about responsibility and owning responsibility as it is you know just making

00:38:19.120 the best decision you can yeah i mean the idea of owning responsibility eisenhower famously wrote

00:38:24.740 two memos before d-day happened and one of them was if it was a failure it's like if this mission

00:38:31.180 failed i'd take full responsibility for it but he didn't have to publish that one but uh he kept

00:38:36.820 yeah yeah so okay this is june 5th he sent off the men personally how did he spend the night

00:38:45.500 before the invasion in the morning what was he doing smoking he was he basically he stayed up the

00:38:52.280 entire night best as we could tell smoking and reading westerns he was an adamant western reader

00:38:57.480 he had his guilty pleasures as we all do and he was very emphatic that he got to enjoy them and so

00:39:02.880 really from about two in the morning when he gets back to base camp to about seven seven thirty when

00:39:08.660 he finally sort of gets up and meets the day he's just sitting on his bed laying in bed reading

00:39:14.800 westerns and smoking cigarettes and just waiting for the news to come in yeah yeah you talk about

00:39:20.200 the western he read with black john is the name of the story yeah yeah the czar of half a day creek

00:39:24.980 eisenhower really liked good shoot-em-up westerns those were his favorite czar of half a day creek is not

00:39:30.100 one of those it has like a sort of more humorous vein to it there's not a lot of shooting but it

00:39:34.800 really was apt it really kind of met the moment very well because it's all about this guy the czar

00:39:39.960 of half day creek his name is black john smith who is the kind of the doer in the small camping town

00:39:46.420 in alaska where he or in yukon country i think it is actually where he's he's always up to he's always

00:39:51.800 up to something but he's keeping everyone just everything in line everyone kind of thinks he's this old

00:39:56.880 hillbilly but he actually is the guy who who's always got the plan is one step ahead so it was

00:40:01.660 a very apt book for eisenhower to be reading on d-day another lesson there from eisenhower don't

00:40:07.340 feel bad about just indulging in a guilty pleasure when you're going through a stressful period like

00:40:12.860 he read westerns it's okay if you want to i don't know watch a crappy movie on netflix that's okay as

00:40:18.820 long as it kind of just takes the edge off that's fine no that's entirely true because one of the things

00:40:23.600 that i found super interesting about eisenhower which you don't see on the surface at all but

00:40:28.380 it's very true is that he he thought a lot about how he thought and he understood that you know if

00:40:35.440 he was tired if he was exhausted if he was overwhelmed that he was going to make bad decisions

00:40:40.600 and bad decisions didn't mean that those decisions would not turn out the right way he understood that

00:40:45.960 there was always risk just like any poker player would but he wanted to make sure he was always making

00:40:50.540 the best decision available to him based on the information available to him and so doing things

00:40:56.280 like making time for guilty pleasures making time for friends not beating up on yourself too much about

00:41:02.640 your own vices right everyone's telling him he's got to stop smoking otherwise his cold will never get

00:41:06.500 better and he's like yeah yeah i get it but he understands that he only has so much energy only so

00:41:12.660 much sort of self-discipline and focus that he can direct and so prioritizing what you're paying

00:41:18.620 attention to what you're really investing your emotional and mental energy in is honestly just

00:41:25.560 as important as any one decision you make because your ability to make those decisions is going to

00:41:30.200 be entirely contingent on how focused you are how clear-minded you are and your ability to just

00:41:35.580 take everything in and decide and so yeah just giving yourself your guilty pleasures and focusing on

00:41:42.020 the things that matter and figuring out what matters is just as important as any one thing that you do

00:41:47.160 yeah that idea that eisenhower thought about his thinking and he was kind of this master self

00:41:52.340 psychologist another thing that i remember reading about him that he did he's he had an anger drawer

00:41:57.380 so he had a temper and he struggled with it his entire life but he had this tactic whenever someone

00:42:03.300 would piss him off and he wanted just like light him up what he did instead is he wrote this letter 0.74

00:42:09.140 out that you know exactly what he wanted to say no filter and then he just put it in this drawer

00:42:14.980 and that's right kind of it cooled off he's like okay i got it out of my system now i can approach this

00:42:21.420 with the cool head yeah no it's as you say he was his own psychologist um because there was no one

00:42:27.380 else around he could trust for that role really other than maybe k summersby or harry butcher and yeah

00:42:32.460 so he would do those sorts of things or if he just was like feeling overwhelmed just same thing

00:42:37.220 he was feeling overwhelmed and he was like if he was having trouble focusing on any one thing

00:42:41.760 he would sit down and literally just write himself a memo of all the things he had to think about one

00:42:47.560 after the other and putting down a couple thoughts about each one just again put it out on the page

00:42:52.840 get it out of his body and into something tangible so that he could focus on it more clearly he's just

00:42:57.660 full of all of these very like specific just habits and techniques for making him like a much better

00:43:04.680 thinker and leader than he otherwise would have been so something that you know eisenhower is known

00:43:10.560 for is his political ability he was able to manage these big egos montgomery padden marshall churchill

00:43:16.400 de gaulle did it definitely i don't think any other person could have done that but the other thing

00:43:21.800 that impressed me about eisenhower was his grasp of public relations like he knew how to manage

00:43:27.960 the media yeah how would you describe his approach i think this is like underappreciated about

00:43:33.120 eisenhower oh yeah a hundred percent i agree i think it's totally underappreciated he got in a

00:43:39.200 very like sophisticated way that like media had changed a lot and had changed politics a lot by the

00:43:47.240 1940s and he understood that there were really two things that he needed to do to be an effective

00:43:53.760 manager of his public persona which in turn would give him a much for your hand in dealing with

00:44:00.180 difficult political issues and one was you got to be friends with the press and he made sure that you

00:44:05.840 know when he was playing bridge and smoking and drinking that reporters were always with him just to

00:44:10.320 kind of hang out you know with a few exceptions as guys and having that kind of intimate sort of

00:44:16.260 friendship level relationship with reporters enabled him to know what was going on what they were

00:44:21.980 going to print publish before they did and also gave him opportunities to you know what we would

00:44:26.780 now call shape the narrative before things hit the press and that helped him on several occasions

00:44:31.740 not the least being with people like george patten but the other thing though and this was so i mean

00:44:37.700 it's part of who he is but it's so prescient that it demands to be remarked upon is he also understood

00:44:45.860 that as the media was becoming more intimate and celebrity driven where you had these personalities

00:44:53.640 who were not just on the radio or in newspapers but actually on film and could be seen that there

00:45:01.080 was a huge value in being seen as ordinary and i'm not saying he put that on this is in a way who he

00:45:08.680 is these are his kansas instincts coming out but he leaned really hard into it in a way that was

00:45:14.780 certainly um designed to conceal the sophistication of his own thinking in most situations where he understood

00:45:20.840 that being kind of folksy and having this like oh i just like going out and fishing and being very

00:45:27.300 seen as not grasping for power in an environment where most politicians to include roosevelt and

00:45:33.940 roosevelt being only sort of a marginal exception to this we're still seen as these very like stern

00:45:39.580 statuesque figures was its own kind of political power it's where we get the idea of i like i the idea

00:45:46.220 that a politician should not be only a leader but likable more or less draws directly from eisenhower

00:45:52.280 and i know this this again almost seems too obvious to say now but it's difficult to overstate how

00:45:59.320 revolutionary it was for a general like a major powerful general to be known broadly in the public

00:46:08.740 for smiling a smiling general there's almost nothing more incongruous than that if you really think

00:46:14.940 about it and eisenhower fully leaned into that and had a kind of folksy celebrity that obviously

00:46:20.980 becomes his trademark and i think in the environment that he's in particularly with people like de gaulle

00:46:27.760 with people like churchill and stalin and roosevelt is crucial to his ability to wield power because

00:46:35.040 none of them understand that yet none of them understand the importance of likability in the media

00:46:41.500 as a kind of political power and so everyone around eisenhower just underestimates him all of the

00:46:48.260 time as just being sort of like a smiling nice guy because they're obviously very much still in the

00:46:54.080 the marble statue mold and eisenhower both i think understands that and uses that to such great effect

00:47:00.020 that now it's actually difficult to think about a politician who doesn't smile all the time

00:47:04.600 right where it's not this sort of like happy i'm a nice guy i'm just like you whether or not it's you

00:47:10.660 know george w bush on his ranch and crawford clearing brush or donald trump you know eating a taco bowl

00:47:16.700 or you know barack obama smiling big and throwing baskets right all of our politicians now we want

00:47:22.640 them to quote unquote to be just like us and eisenhower kind of sets that mold and sees that that's where

00:47:28.940 society is going way earlier than anybody else does so after researching and writing about eisenhower

00:47:36.200 what's something that stuck with you the most about his life or his leadership i think for me the you

00:47:43.760 know in addition to it giving hope to 40 year olds everywhere that life is not yet over i think the

00:47:48.720 most you know both inspiring and cautionary aspects of eisenhower's life to me are that he really did come

00:47:56.380 from nowhere to achieve the absolute greatest heights of political power in the 20th century

00:48:02.360 like he through a combination of i think intelligence luck and ruthlessness hold himself up to that

00:48:09.360 height to great i think benefit to not only the united states but to the world and so the both

00:48:15.520 encouraging but cautionary things that i always think about when i think of eisenhower is encouraging

00:48:19.820 is that you know talent is everywhere talent can come from the middle of nowhere from someone you'd

00:48:24.780 never expect where it wouldn't even be recognized by most people you know until well into their 30s or 40s or

00:48:31.400 even 50s and the cautionary piece of that that i worry about sometimes is do we still live in that

00:48:36.780 america right do we still live in a society where talent can rise because we have more people than

00:48:41.800 ever we have more opportunity for more people than ever as well and fewer barriers you know based on

00:48:47.060 old lines whether or not it's gender or race but do we still have a society that allows the very best

00:48:53.140 to rise and i don't know the answer to that i worry about that sometimes because all the

00:48:57.940 opportunities eisenhower had have become much more difficult and much stricter and much more tied up

00:49:03.460 in tradition or bureaucracy or sort of other kinds of red tape that i i worry we you know we we may not

00:49:12.440 be getting the talent that we have at our disposal to have the kind of leaders that we put up possibly

00:49:17.460 could have well michelle this has been a great conversation work people go to learn more about the book

00:49:22.340 in your work yeah um the book is available and anywhere fine books are sold the light of battle

00:49:27.460 it makes a great gift in time for father's day i'll plug that and yeah feel free to always reach

00:49:32.400 out i'm very easy to find and so if you had any questions or ideas or thoughts about the book good

00:49:36.940 bad or ugly feel free to email me i try to respond as quickly as i can fantastic well michelle paradis

00:49:41.860 thanks for time it's been a pleasure thank you it was a lot of fun my guest is michelle paradis he's

00:49:47.680 the author of the book the light of battle it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere

00:49:51.300 you can check out our show notes at aom.is slash supreme commander we find links to resources we

00:49:56.320 delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to

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00:50:21.480 remind you on listening podcast but put what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - June 03, 2025

The Making of a Supreme Commander — How Eisenhower Became the Leader Who Delivered Victory on D-Day

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