36. Alfred M. Gruenther (1899-1968)
The youngest four-star general in the history of the U.S. Army, Alfred Gruenther became one of the favorite American presidents despite his two-term tenure being wracked by controversies and incidents. Had it not been for the 22nd amendment, Americans would have probably voted him in for a third term if he ran. He is remembered as America's great soldier-statesman and his funeral was the largest diplomatic meeting in history.
By all accounts, Gruenther was an especially talented person but without a notable background. He was famously bullied in school. Before the War, he was called the best bridge player in the army, becoming Eisenhower's partner. This proved fortunate when he acceded to the post of head of NATO through friendship with Eisenhower. Before that, he was known as the Brain due to his strong mental capacity and major impact on planning allied invasions.
Gruenther proved to be a massive success in his NATO post. Armed with his easy-going charm and incredible factual memory, he saved NATO support, turning skeptics into supporters. His reputation for both the big-picture and microscopic detail was legendary, and yet he found time for public appearances, meeting thousands of visitors, politicians, and colleagues.
The Time Magazine called him a "human IBM machine" and the "most factual man of his times" in 1956, the year he assumed vice-presidency and de facto presidency. The media ascribed the sudden change in Soviet behavior to his efforts, a move he did not strongly dismiss even if it had nothing to do with him. The elections of 1956 ended up in the first landslide victory in a while, with Gruenther easily defeating the Republican ticket.
Although many speculated Dewey might pull a Cleveland and return, he instead tried to push for several candidates of his own choosing for the nomination. The most prestigious of them was ironically Eisenhower, whom he previously convinced to retire and then unsuccessfully tried to recruit as his running mate. The Draft Ike movements were still strong in 1955 when he was assassinated by a 15-year-old Gudrun Ensslin in Württemberg. This led to a contested convention that nominated governor John W. Bricker as a compromise candidate after 66 ballots.
Bricker led a disastrously misguided campaign, avoiding directly facing Gruenther while attacking government spending and calling the Democratic party a front of the Communist Party of the USA and insufficiently spiritual. Bricker even attacked former president Dewey for refusing to ban the Communist party and cast doubt over the legality of OUN. Publicly, the most disastrous issue was when he attacked Gruenther for allowing Eisenhower to be killed in Germany. The incredulous statement led to Democrats taking a full-page ad in major newspapers where Gruenther explained point by point the issues surrounding the assassination, most notably wondering if Bricker has yet learned if Eisenhower was succeeded by Gruenther, quoting 14 poorly worded Bricker statements and making him look uninformed.
This resulted in the internationalist and progressive wing of the Republican base abstaining or even voting for Gruenther. Only the Dixiecrat ticket dared to debate the vice-president, and he smashed them in the radio debate with his phenomenal knowledge of figures and statistics down the decimal points. Come election time, the Republican ticket won nearly less electoral votes than the Dixiecrat ticket which was a major humiliation for the Republican party which had won only one presidential election in the past 25 years.
Gruenther faced America mired with multiple problems: civil rights, the divide in labor movements, Suez and German crisis, the endless was in China, Cuba and so on. Despite his popularity and Democratic gains, he had little political infrastructure and capital to spend. He favored Republicans earlier in his life and found too many Democrats resistant to kind-hearted persuasion, especially in the South. With the Republicans seemingly on the decline and bitterly divided, there was correspondingly less unity in the Democratic party itself which saw this as a mandate from God.
Domestically, Gruenther's greatest success was a series of reforms introducing nationwide health service which managed to pass in 1960, just in time for his reelection, although the legislation suffered two years of wrangling in the Congres over the possible federal overreach. Gruenther established the Volunteer Corps and ensured they were subsidized by the federal and state governments, even hoping to partner it with the national guards.
Of course, Gruenther's term started with the Alabama Bus Fire, in which the enduring fight over segregated busing spiraled into burning 13 African-Americans inside a bus. This was followed by massive unrest all over America as Caucausian- and African-Americans rioted. Gruenther used federal troops to restore the order, but their use would be later declared illegal by the Supreme Court in a highly contested ruling.
After police stopped a planned assassination attempt on the Supreme Court by a group of radical civil rights activists, including a former communist Harvey Lee Oswald, Gruenther preferred pressuring the Southern States through de facto economic blackmail. His supporters note that Gruenther simply continued his previous habit of forcing facts into his opponents, while critics lament that Gruenther never felt at home at the Democratic party and washed his hands over Dixiecrats who were acting unreasonably. Gruenther did not want to risk the appearance of open conflict with the Supreme Court, despite precedents, nor he wanted to give the appearance that America is turning into a military dictatorship as several countries in Europe and America saw military governments due to internal unrest. Gruenther believed the issue will resolve itself during the sixties through a generational change, but Americans wanted an immediate solution.
America seemed to be booming during Gruenther's terms, with only short and minor recessions. America launched the first satellite in 1957, followed by the first man in space in 1960, establishing itself as the premier nation in the world. The nation boomed with pride even as problems continued elsewhere.
Gruenther endorsed a massive American presence in Cuba ("no half-measures"), turning it into a true puppet, although the move was initially supported by most of Central America strong-armed by Washington. Dewey's folly resulted in a marked increase of Marxist guerillas on the island and the island was too big and too strategically important to retreat from without a secure government.
Gruenther resolved to solve the issue of Germany within his first year possibly elated he was able to do something substantial over it after years of wrangling with the issue as the head of NATO. The complicated diplomacy of the FDR and Byrnes era meant that no unilateral move could resolve the issue as a provision required the Security Council to approve German reunification. Over ten years this meant that nearly every country threatened or used the veto on any plan for reunification. The continued occupation of Germany had become an administrative nightmare and a diplomatic graveyard for career diplomats. The murder of Eisenhower who was attending one such conference on reunification as the Congress emissary prompted fears of resurgent German nationalism, fears that were not without grounds. Already, there was a liberal critique that using nuclear weapons on Germany was unnecessary and Germany would have capitulated on its own in fear of the Red Army reaching its borders.
From a practical perspective, the German reunification was a stumbling block for relations in NATO and it was important to resolve the issue before the Soviet proposal for neutralizing the country gained wider acceptance. The Gruenther administration backed a plan which established Germany but with the caveat that its military, or better said, "peacekeeping forces" were part of OUN command and subject to the purview of the Security Council and the General Assembly. This would also allow the continued presence of NATO troops in the country as well as assuage the Soviets. As the banner of Federal German Republics rose again on June 1st, 1957, Germans celebrated and president Gruenther flew to Berlin, along with the French president and the British prime minister.
Wagner's policy towards the Soviet Union was of careful and strategic containment. He knew Beria is impersonating Stalin, but this was a boon as Beria was a strongman, not an ideologue. On the one hand, the Soviet Union would collapse in 15 years if its economy did not improve, but on the other hand ideologues might renew interest to support Marxist regimes over the world. Beria's Soviet Union was reformist and insular, although cruel towards countries inside its own sphere. Gruenther decisively intervened over violent Marxist movements in the former European colonies, a strategy that was highly divisive abroad even as Gruenther carefully chose only strategic targets.
The nascent detente of 1958 was strangled in its crib when the Red Army put down Socialist Spring in Eastern Europe with excessive force. Although Gruenther strongly condemned the Soviet Union, America did not want to provoke a conflict. This caused a shock in the general population after Ukraine, formally a member of the OUN, was dismembered into three republics as a punishment for unrest. The brutal flight of over 750 000 people from Hungary and Yugoslavia to Austria and Italy caused much concern on the West although NATO was resolute not to intervene. The intelligence services correctly believed that the Soviet Union is on a downward spiral and saber-rattling now might strengthen the Beria regime. The general public was outraged nothing was being done for European states. The American public even believed Moscow was going to annex Poland, acting on a doomed propaganda effort in Poland extolling the virtues of Tsarist rule over Poland.
Come elections 1960, the popular soldier-statesman had to defend himself against accusations he is weak on communism despite America getting involved in conflicts in Indonesia, West Africa, Yemen, and Indochina. This was due to the activities of middle and upper-class immigrants for Eastern Europe. In the first televised debate in America, Gruenther used charts and graphs to explain how America is rolling back insurgent movements back and tried to explain how NATO couldn't just roll into Hungary and Yugoslavia without provoking a war with the Soviet Union.
A much greater problem was the civil rights movement. Gruenther was unwilling to provoke conflict with the Supreme Court, resisting calls to stack it with liberal judges instead of having the Court continue to seesaw 5-4 on a variety of civil rights issues. The strategy adopted by Gruenther, of forcing states into submission by suspending their federal funding, contributed towards the creation of the new party system. The Democrats become a federalist, civil rights party that supported interventionism, social services, and a strong executive branch that increasingly found itself in service of richer states. The demoralized Republican reformed around the tenement of moderate isolationism, strengthening the state governments and reducing the power of the executive branch. The disastrous Bricker turned out to be accidentally prophetic. The once thought dying branch of the Midwestern Old GOP transformed into a new leading faction that supplemented its ranks with Galtians.
Gruenther believed that dissatisfied citizens of the South would vote in civil rights supporting Democrats, not wanting to risk losing federal funding, but the Dixiecrats endured and started running joint tickets with the GOP on the local level. The Civil Rights package could not pass both Houses since a part of the GOP blocked it on the grounds of federal overreach and being weak on crime, especially after the Triple Prison Riots of 1961. Twice, the civil rights package failed by a mere handful of votes. Gruenther's famous televised address about the "shame on the pristine face of America" was well-received, but failed to move the Congress. After the midterm election, the Civil rights package finally passed in 1963, but the success was sidelined as the world nearly plunged into World War Three.
That same year Korean dictator Rhee launched a long prepared invasion of Manchuria, coordinating with Republican China, seeking to reclaim Korea's historical borders using the opportunity of Communists being wracked with famine and other problems. The offensive was much more successful than anyone expected and Communist China seemed on the brink on the collapse, publicly calling for the Soviet Union to intervene with nuclear weapons. America could not back nor restrain Rhee who directed the army towards Bejing. A massive buildup and mobilization ensued in Europe and the situation worsened as Soviet "volunteers" were shot down over China. Gruenther warned that he does not want "to win China and lose the human civilization" even as America moved to DEFCON 3.
The situation was resolved by the Lavender Plot. The corrupt "democratic" Republican government in China was highly unpopular and internally divided. One faction used the opportunity to coup the Republican government, believing that with most of the army occupied the transition of power would be swift and backed by the OUN in the promise of a truce in China. Instead, victorious Republican China split in two and the offensive was halted, forcing Korea to withdraw from most of Manchuria. President Gruenther and Premier Beria negotiated in Tokio a ceasefire which resulted in China being split in three, instead of two, at least for the time being. The Tokio Peace would result in Nobel Peace Prizes for Stalin and Gruenther next year.
Beria returned from Japan to the country that tried to arrest Stalin for his misdeeds and had to escape the Moscow airport to another city in vain. Beria had enraged the party, and once the famine was followed by a humiliating defeat in China which saw the main Soviet ally cut in half, the Party had enough.
Gruenther admitted that he would run for a third term if the Constitution allowed him. The situation in the Soviet Union would indeed become volatile and Gruenther was worried since Beria was replaced by a cabal of fervent ideologues trying to outcompete each other with their revolutionary zeal. A disastrous combination of a country that was recently humiliated and armed with hydrogen weapons. The Democratic candidates were quick to promise Gruenther the post of the Secretary of State in the new Democratic nomination, allowing a virtual "third term" for Gruenther.
The elections of 1964 did not result in a Democratic victory and Gruenther returned to private life. He became a sort of elder statesman, holding speeches and publishing essays on foreign policy. Some even called him the American Winston Churchill. Others considered him a warmonger, blaming him now for tens of thousands of American troops serving aboard in "imperialist wars." Gruenther unexpectedly died in 1968 in a car crash.
Gruenther's funeral in Washington was attended by over 170 current and former heads of state and government, making it the largest such gathering in history until that point. Comedians noted that he should have been buried in the OUN lamenting the catastrophic traffic jam that paralyzed the city during that week.
Alfred Gruenther consistently tops the lists of top ten American presidents, and there have been initiatives to add him to the Mount Rushmore. His image as the great statesman has endured despite the public study of his mistakes over the years.
