Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (pronounced /'a?z?nha??r/, eyes-?n-how-?

r; October
14, 1890
March 28, 1969) was the 34th President of the United States from 1953
until 1961, and the last U.S. President to have been born in the 19th century. H
e was a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II and serv
ed as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe. He was responsible for p
lanning and supervising the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942 43
and the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944 45 from the Western Fro
nt. In 1951, he became the first Supreme Commander of NATO.[2]
Eisenhower was of Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry and was raised in a large family i
n Kansas by parents with a strong religious background. He graduated from West P
oint and later married and had two sons. After World War II, Eisenhower served a
s Army Chief of Staff under President Harry S. Truman and then accepted the post
of President at Columbia University.[3]
Eisenhower entered the 1952 presidential race as a Republican to counter the non
-interventionism of Senator Robert A. Taft, campaigning against "communism, Kore
a and corruption". He won in a landslide, defeating Democratic candidate Adlai S
tevenson and temporarily upending the New Deal Coalition.
Eisenhower's main goals in office were to keep pressure on the Soviet Union and
reduce federal deficits. In the first year of his presidency, he threatened the
use of nuclear weapons in order to conclude the Korean War; his New Look policy
of nuclear deterrence prioritized inexpensive nuclear weapons while reducing fun
ding for conventional military forces. He ordered coups in Iran and Guatemala. E
isenhower refused to send American soldiers to help France in Vietnam, although
he gave the French bombers and napalm, and CIA pilots flew passenger planes to f
erry French troops. CIA files released in 2005 showed that US pilots flew bombin
g raids with the French during Operation Castor, and two US pilots were killed d
uring the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Congress agreed to his request in 1955 for th
e Formosa Resolution, which obliged the U.S. to militarily support the pro-Weste
rn Republic of China in Taiwan and continue the ostracism of the People's Republ
ic of China.
After the Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite in 1957,
Eisenhower authorized the establishment of NASA, which led to the space race. Du
ring the Suez Crisis of 1956, Eisenhower condemned the Israeli, British and Fren
ch invasion of Egypt, and forced them to withdraw. He also condemned the Soviet
invasion during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 but took no action. In 1958, Ei
senhower sent 15,000 U.S. troops to Lebanon to prevent the pro-Western governmen
t from falling to a Nasser-inspired revolution. Near the end of his term, his ef
forts to set up a summit meeting with the Soviets collapsed because of the U-2 i
ncident.[4] In his January 17, 1961 farewell address to the nation, Eisenhower e
xpressed his concerns about the dangers of massive military spending, particular
ly deficit spending and government contracts to private military manufacturers,
and coined the term "military industrial complex".[5]
On the domestic front, he covertly opposed Joseph McCarthy and contributed to th
e end of McCarthyism by openly invoking the modern expanded version of executive
privilege. He otherwise left most political activity to his Vice President, Ric
hard Nixon. He was a moderate conservative who continued New Deal agencies and e
xpanded Social Security. He also launched the Interstate Highway System, the Def
ense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the establishment of strong scie
nce education via the National Defense Education Act, and encouraged peaceful us
e of nuclear power via amendments to the Atomic Energy Act.[6]
Eisenhower's two terms saw considerable economic prosperity except for a sharp r
ecession in 1958 59. Voted Gallup's most admired man twelve times, he achieved wid
espread popular esteem both in and out of office.[7] Since the late 20th century
, consensus among Western scholars has consistently held Eisenhower as one of th
e greatest U.S. Presidents.