LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Dwight Eisenhower: Western Europe
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Eisenhower entered the war ignorant of the intricacies of intelligence gathering; by 1944 he was a highly sophisticated and effective user of massive amounts of secret information from American and British sources. Throughout the European campaign he had almost as good a grasp of German order of battle as Hitler's staff, and sometimes better. He learned from Ultra and other deciphering of German messages; he was ... informed by anti-Nazi Europeans outside Germany (although he did not have spies inside Germany). He relied too much on signal intelligence gathered by Ultra's monitoring German radio messages, and thereby was taken by surprise by the Battle of the Bulge, because the Germans used land lines for telephone and telegraph messages. Eisenhower became skilled in deceiving the Germans about Allied strength and possible landing sites. He pretended that the Normandy landing was a feint and that Pas de Calais and Norway were the real invasion sites, and the Germans bought the deception and misdirected their forces.
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Eisenhower served as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army from 1945-48. In December 1950, he was named Supreme Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and given operational command of NATO forces in Europe. Eisenhower retired from active service on May 31, 1952, upon entering politics. He wrote Crusade in Europe, widely regarded as one of the finest U.S. military memoirs. During this period Eisenhower served as President of Columbia University from 1948 until 1953, though he was on leave from the university while he served as NATO commander.
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Eisenhower is promoted to temporary rank of full general in February. He completes the invasion of North Africa in May and directs the invasion of Sicily in July and August. Eisenhower receives permanent promotion to brigadier general and major general on August 30. Eisenhower commands the invasion of Italy in September and attends the Cairo Conference in November. In December Eisenhower is appointed Supreme Commander of Allied Expeditionary Forces to command Operation Overlord, the invasion of Europe.
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After the German surrender on May 8, 1945, Eisenhower was appointed Military Governor of the U.S. Occupation Zone, based in Frankfurt-am-Main , but soon delegated this position to Patton. He was named Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army in November 1945. In December 1950 he was named Supreme Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and given operational command of NATO forces in Europe. Eisenhower retired from the Army in July 1952, on entering politics.
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When the Second World War broke out after Hitler sold Stalin some shampoo that made his hair go a funny colour, Eisenhower was placed in overall charge of Allied forces in Europe. At the time, the situation was hilarious grim. German troops hilariously exaggerated goose stepping had forced French troops to pratfall back to Paris. The British expeditionary force was caught with its pants down (literally) and subjected to a series of devistating double entendres. The Nazis then turned their attention to Russia, then in the middle of a crippling joke shortage that ran from 1232-present.
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When the war in Europe ended on May 7, 1945, the American public hailed Dwight D. Eisenhower as a conqueror. But what they knew about the country's newest hero was limited almost entirely to wartime dispatches and occasional human interest stories. The plain fact was that prior to the summer of 1941, virtually no one outside of military circles had ever heard of Dwight D. Eisenhower. As Stephen E. Ambrose later noted, "had he died in 1941, on the verge of retirement on his fifty-first birthday, he would not today be even a footnote to history." But even by war's end, after three-and-a-half years of front-page headlines, the general public's knowledge of Eisenhower consisted primarily of what could be read in the newspaper.
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