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Panama played a big part in Ike's formation as a military officer

Eisenhower honed his administrative skills here

by Eric Jackson

Dwight D. Eisenhower arose to prominence not so much as a man of personal physical daring or moral courage --- although you will find elements of those in both his military and political records --- but as a brilliant administrator. He organized the valor and sacrifices of huge armies and, in league with the Soviet commanders on the Russian front and General MacArthur in the Pacific theater, led the Allied forces to victory in World War II. Later as president of the United States, without seeming to do very much he held the line in the Cold War, quashed the fanatics in his own party, helped lay the basis for the technological superiority that in the end overwhelmed the rival Soviet economy, and used national defense as a pretext for a huge public works program, the interstate highway system, that would have otherwise been opposed by his own Republican Party.

From whence came this most skillful of office politicians? The history books will tell you of roots in the Great Plains of mid-America, born in North Texas and raised in Kansas; then of an education at West Point, meritorious service as a junior officer in World War I and the Supreme Command of Allied Forces on the European and North African fronts in World War II.

But between the wars the US military all but withered away, and in that period the odds would have assigned Eisenhower to permanent obscurity, but for a relationship with a mentor and patron that brought him to Panama and from here on a meteoric rise through the ranks over the heads of more than 100 superiors. General Eisenhower's rise and the role that his mentor Major General Fox Conner played in it were the subjects of a September 7 talk by Russ Stayanoff at the Panama Historical Society.

Stayanoff, a former US Army Ranger and history teacher at the Academia Balboa, has lectured about the Conner and his relationship with Eisenhower at the Eisenhower Presidential Library and elsewhere, and is working on a book about the subject.

Conner, Stayanoff pointed out, was no publicity hound but nevertheless "the most influential officer in the US Army in the inter-war period." He had served as General John J. "Blackjack" Pershing's planning chief in World War I, played a major role in the US forces' resistance to being inserted as piecemeal replacements in British and French lines and ultimate deployment as a distinct force that turned the tide against the Germans on the Western Front, and disagreed with the decision to end that war with an armistice rather than a German surrender. A classmate of Pershing's he excelled in French at West Point and became an artillery officer after graduation. It was Conner's luck, however, first to be assigned to observe the French Army in action before the United States entered the war, then to become Pershing's French translator. Promoted to head the G-3 plans and operations department, it was Conner who selected the point in the Meuse-Argonne where an American attack breached the Hindenburg Line, leading to the collapse of the German war effort.

After the war Eisenhower went off to Fort Meade to train elements of what remained of the demobilized army in tank warfare, and in this part of his career he co-authored, with George S. Patton, a controversial but prescient article on the future importance of tank warfare.

At this point in his life, Ike's principal value in the US Army subculture was his skill as a football coach, a job that he did well but did not enjoy. The prospects of his becoming a general officer, with dozens of seniors above him sharing the same dream, seemed remote indeed. Especially so, when on top of the death of a young son and the pressures that created in his marriage to Mamie, Eisenhower was accused of abusing his military housing allowance. In those troubled times Patton introduced Ike to General Conner, and the two hit it off well.

With Pershing's and Conner's help, Eisenhower's troubles about the housing allowance were cleared up, he was maneuvered around the potentially career-ending hostility of the chief of the infantry division, and brought to Panama as Conner's executive officer at Fort Gaillard.

(What was Fort Gaillard no longer exists, having been swallowed up in landslides and widenings along Culebra Cut.)

In Panama Conner shared his extensive collection of history books with Eisenhower, introduced his protegé to the writings of Karl von Clausewitz that had been largely ignored in his West Point education, and essentially gave Ike an informal graduate education in military history. Along with Conner Eisenhower began to advocate a unified command in the next war with Germany that they expected. In Panama Eisenhower, who rose from captain to major, developed a reputation as a good staff officer.

After he left Panama Eisenhower didn't serve under Conner again, but the latter did pull strings to transfer Ike out of a long waiting line in infantry into a brief assignment with the adjutant general's recruiting efforts as a stepping stone to the Command and General Staff School, from which he graduated first in his class in 1926.

And thus from a launching pad on the banks of the Panama Canal, Eisenhower jumped over the heads of more than 100 officers who were ahead of him, including old superiors like General Patton.

The rest of his story is better known. Ike went on to become Supreme Allied Commander in the European Theater shortly after the US entry into World War II. His success with the invasion of Normandy made him a legend and a presidential candidate sought after by both Democrats and Republicans. He presided over the White House at a high point in US global power, even while warning his over-exuberant fellow Americans to understand the limits of that power and to be skeptical of militarists and industrialists who would overestimate it for their own ends. And these things he did while developing another famous attribute of his personality that also emerged in Panama, a fondness for golf.

The Panama Historical Society usually meets at the Balboa Niko's at 7:30 p.m. on the first Wednesday of every month. Stayanoff's book on Eisenhower's rise as a military administrator is but one of several works in progress among the members of this mainly English-speaking organization.

Also in this section:
Coach Palumbo dies at 94
Pets of the week
On the road to El Valle
Panama played a big part in Ike's formation as a military officer