Dwight Eisenhower

General Dwight D. Eisenhower's speech at Guildhall on June 12, 1945, was considered by those who heard it to be a masterpiece of oratory. The Times of London compared it to Lincoln "Gettysburg Address", no less an authority than Winston Churchill lavished praise upon it, and historians a quarter century later continued to describe it as "graceful, simple, [and] delivered with a crystalline sincerity." The address at Guildhall manifested many of the themes and attitudes that would come to characterize Eisenhower's postwar speaking: unity, cooperation, sacrifice, duty, humility.

Throughout the "Guildhall Address," Dwight D. Eisenhower emphasized unity, teamwork, and mutual cooperation, themes that would be mainstays of his oratory for the next seven years.

Eisenhower's oratorical abilities would not, however, live on to become a part of his historical legacy. As the first true television president, Ike's oratory would be remembered, if at all, for its syntactical complexities, verbal ambiguities, and lackluster style. Yet by all accounts, Dwight D. Eisenhower was an extraordinarily successful extemporaneous speaker during World War II, and a better-than-average orator in the years immediately thereafter. The one quality that most distinguished Eisenhower's speaking was sincerity. It was a personal quality that said as much about the man as the subject matter, a quality that would manifest itself throughout his career.

However, it was not Dwight D. Eisenhower's speech-making abilities that first endeared him to the mass public. It might even be considered superfluous to attempt to explain in rational terms what was, in many ways, a visceral reaction to a national hero. Eisenhower commanded the operation that led to Hitler's final, ignominious defeat, and for that fact alone his name would be forever etched in the hearts of his countrymen.

Even so, Eisenhower was different. History had recorded many generals who won important battles, some of whom rose from the ranks of obscurity to rally the nation. Yet there was something special about Eisenhower. The soldiers knew it; the correspondents knew it; General Marshall and President Roosevelt knew it; and so, too, did the American people. It was hard to define, hard to pinpoint exactly, but Dwight D. Eisenhower was, in some special sense, the epitome of Americanism. He was the living embodiment of America at its best-strong, determined, optimistic, straightforward, sincere, and as common as the Kansas soil-or so it seemed.

When the war in Europe ended on May 7, 1945, the American public hailed Dwight D. Eisenhower as a conqueror. But what they knew about the country's newest hero was limited almost entirely to wartime dispatches and occasional human interest stories. The plain fact was that prior to the summer of 1941, virtually no one outside of military circles had ever heard of Dwight D. Eisenhower. As Stephen E. Ambrose later noted, "had he died in 1941, on the verge of retirement on his fifty-first birthday, he would not today be even a footnote to history." But even by war's end, after three-and-a-half years of front-page headlines, the general public's knowledge of Eisenhower consisted primarily of what could be read in the newspaper.

Five qualities repeated themselves, in different forms, throughout these works: commonality, dedication, considerateness, humility, and a special sort of moral vision. By examining how readers were invited to construct an image of Dwight D. Eisenhower, one can begin to understand the persuasive potential such an image could command-and did command-for over two decades in public life. Every word spoken, every action undertaken, every symbolic gesture made-all were understood against the backdrop of this previously formed public persona which hovered above all; they informed, shaped, directed, and provided Eisenhower with a great reservoir of respect and good will upon which he would draw repeatedly during his presidential years.