Was Eisenhower really as useless and incomeptent as they said?

amphibulous

Banned
Without getting too much into Ike's presidency, it looks as though his decision making abilities were also over-rated. Does that add up with his early decisions as President? I really thought he was rather good in that job?

He was the guy who gave initial approval to the Bay Of Pigs. And he dealt the US military a severe blow to morale by trying to take away overseas allowances for the families of enlisted - or something close and equivalent to that. He also let McCarthyism flourish - which is more than a moral issue, as fear of future witch hunts led to serious and multiple foreign policy failures.
 
He was the guy who gave initial approval to the Bay Of Pigs. And he dealt the US military a severe blow to morale by trying to take away overseas allowances for the families of enlisted - or something close and equivalent to that. He also let McCarthyism flourish - which is more than a moral issue, as fear of future witch hunts led to serious and multiple foreign policy failures.

The government was heavily infiltrated by communists although the witch hunt did a lot of damage it is frankly alarming about how many on the lists were actually pro soviet.
 
With the US providing 70%+ of the manpower in Europe, there is precisely a 0% chance of a non-US supreme commander.

I know this is just a small niggle but the U.S. ground troops did not rise as high as 70%+ on the western front. Just a quick glance at the figures (admittedly a very quick glance) shows the U.S. contingent in June '44 was approx 50% rising to 55% by October '44 and 63% by June '45. That doesn't take into account any Free French forces as my quick glance didn't provide those figures. Even if I've made a 5% error (meaning my figures are 135,000 men adrift) that still doesn't quite reach 70%. Anyway ... just saying.
 
..Martian ones!

(I.e. no; you are being silly.)


I'm not going to mention how much the Manhattan project was infiltrated.

In 1993, experts from the Library of Congress traveled to Moscow to copy previously secret archives of Communist Party USA (CPUSA) records, sent to the Soviet Union for safekeeping by party organizers. The records provide an irrefutable record of Soviet intelligence and cooperation provided by those in the radical left in the United States from the 1920s through the 1940s. Some documents revealed that the CPUSA was actively involved in secretly recruiting party members from African-American groups and rural farm workers. The records contained further evidence that Soviet sympathizers had indeed infiltrated the State Department, beginning in the 1930s. Included were letters from two U.S. ambassadors in Europe to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and a senior State Department official. Thanks to an official in the State department sympathetic to the Party, the confidential correspondence, concerning political and economic matters in Europe, ended up in the hands of Soviet intelligence.[12]

The United States Treasury Department was successfully penetrated by nearly a dozen Soviet agents or information sources, including Harold Glasser and his superior, Harry Dexter White, assistant secretary of the treasury and the second most influential official in the department.[1][2] In Late May 1941 Vitaly Pavlov, a 25 year-old NKVD officer, approached White and attempted to secure his assistance to influence U.S. policy towards Japan. White agreed to assist Soviet intelligence in any way he could. The principal function of White was to aid in the infiltration and placement of Soviet operatives within the government, and protecting sources.[citation needed] When security concerns arose around Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, White protected him in his sensitive position at the Board of Economic Warfare. White likewise was a purveyor of information and resources to assist Soviet aims, and agreed to press for release of German occupation currency plates to the Soviet Union. The Soviets later used the plates to print unrestricted sums of money to exchange for U.S. and Allied hard goods.[15]
In August 1945 Elizabeth Bentley, fearful of assassination by the Soviet MGB, turned herself in to the government.[citation needed] She implicated many agents and sources in the Golos and Silvermaster spy networks, and was the first to accuse Harry Dexter White of acting on behalf of Soviet interests in releasing occupation plates to Moscow, later confirmed by Soviet archives and former KGB officers.[5][15]
 
The man-power issue was one of things where Brooke/Churchill did not exactly agree with Marshall for a landing in 1942 or 1943 for that matter.

It would have been overwhelmingly British troops and US (very green and untried) generals. Neither Brooke nor Churchill felt like sacrificing troops just for the hell of it.

Ivan
 
I'm not going to mention how much the Manhattan project was infiltrated.

Eisenhower had no control over infiltration of the Manhattan Project, nor did he control Truman's State Department, nor MI-6. How many people got to look at the "lists"? Joe always offered to show the lists in his hand, and he never showed them.
 

amphibulous

Banned
I'm not going to mention how much the Manhattan project was infiltrated.

You said that the US GOVERNMENT was heavily infiltrated. The Project is not the government, and several people in the entire US do not count as heavy infiltration!

The people mentioned in the wikileaks are a minute group; persecuting thousands of people at semi-random and permanently crippling US foreign policy is not justified by their existence. And that's before one remembers that this handful of spies wasn't caught!
 
Eisenhower had no control over infiltration of the Manhattan Project, nor did he control Truman's State Department, nor MI-6. How many people got to look at the "lists"? Joe always offered to show the lists in his hand, and he never showed them.

I'm not saying Eisenhower had any control over that. I'm not trying to defend Joe he was an asshole and was allowed to go way too far but the fact remains that soviet infiltration did exist and what little they did know of it was enough to be alarming.
 

Rex Mundi

Banned
I'm not saying Eisenhower had any control over that. I'm not trying to defend Joe he was an asshole and was allowed to go way too far but the fact remains that soviet infiltration did exist and what little they did know of it was enough to be alarming.

Not particularly. One of the things about living in America is (or should be) not getting 'alarmed' because people have different political views. Otherwise we might as well just move to the Soviet Union.
 

amphibulous

Banned
I'm not saying Eisenhower had any control over that. I'm not trying to defend Joe he was an asshole and was allowed to go way too far but the fact remains that soviet infiltration did exist and what little they did know of it was enough to be alarming.

Cutting off your leg because you have a verruca and some idiot convinces you that it is leprosy is stupid. The minute problem the US had did not justify McCarthyism, McCarthyism did severe damage, E'hr was president and did nothing to control the idiocy.
 
Not particularly. One of the things about living in America is (or should be) not getting 'alarmed' because people have different political views. Otherwise we might as well just move to the Soviet Union.

Different political views?

I'm talking about the people who actually worked for the Russians. The problem was the easiest to find were the ideological ones, the ones who wanted cash slipped under the radar far more easily.

I don't approve of witch hunts the FBI had been doing the private version of McCarthyism for over a decade by this point and also got many innocent people.

A more focussed and discreet approach would have been better but by this point the second Red Scare was in full swing and a political animal with no morals saw his chance.
 
Proconsul Ike

The specific issue was direct contact with the USSR on taking or not taking Berlin without reference to either the US Govt or UK. Whatever the merits or issues militarily it is a political issue and the contact should have been at a political level or after political guidance.
 
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