LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Dwight Eisenhower: North Africa
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When the Allies began their first strike against the Axis (during Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa), Eisenhower was in command. In his role as Supreme Allied Commander, he was in charge of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France which began on June 6, 1944. Eisenhower was skilled at managing the huge undertaking, which would eventually be the largest amphibious operation in human history. He ... managed very adeptly the relations between American and British officers, who often disagreed on the best way to carry out the liberations of France, the Low Countries, and eventually Germany.
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Eisenhower planned to use Normandy to land Allied troops and not the Pays de Calais region. To ensure that the Germans could not reinforce their men during the initial landings, he ordered that all railheads and any rail line in northern France should be destroyed. Bomber Command objected to their planes being used for this purpose as they wanted to continue to concentrate on German cities and industrial plants. However, Eisenhower got his way when he threatened to resign if Bomber Command did not comply with his wishes.
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While General Eisenhower was directing his forces to victory in North Africa, his eighty-plus-year-old mother talked to Elmer Peterson about raising her sons in a household where life was simple and self-sufficient and all the young men thrived. She described Ike's skill in cooking everything from stews to apple pie and his love of gardening that endured through 1941 when, at Fort Lewis, Washington, he grew a vegetable garden. This article provides an intimate and affectionate view of Ike's background and has several good pictures of his mother.
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By 1943, Allied forces under the command of Eisenhower had liberated North Africa and Sicily from the Axis and had eliminated Italy as an Axis power. President Franklin D. Roosevelt named Eisenhower as supreme commander, Allied Expeditionary Forces, and as such, Ike directed the land, sea and air invasion at Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
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The meticulous planning Eisenhower had been responsible for overseeing, paid off. Compared to the numbers involved, few Allied troops were killed on D-Day, the exception being the casualties at bloody Omaha Beach, one of the landing zones. From Normandy in northern France, the Allies pushed out and Paris was freed in August.
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Ambrose evaluates the command decisions that Eisenhower made during the North Africa and Normandy invasions and in reaction to the German, counteroffensive in the Battle of the Bulge. Also described are relationships between Eisenhower and Allied military and civilian leaders such as Churchill and Montgomery.
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