One of the most enigmatic relationships in modern military history was that of Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur. Their often-turbulent association spanned virtually the entire decade of the 1930s, during which time Eisenhower worked almost exclusively for MacArthur in a multifaceted role of secretary, adviser, staff officer, and, frequently, whipping boy. Theirs was a relationship that began with great promise and ended in a lifelong enmity between two of the most important figures of World War II.

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Douglas MacArthur had risen to the army’s highest and only four-star rank in 1930 after a brilliant career that mirrored the exploits of his famous father, Lt. Gen. Arthur MacArthur Jr., who had earned the Medal of Honor on Missionary Ridge, Tennessee, in November 1863. Obsessed with emulating his father, MacArthur became first captain of the Corps of Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy, graduated first in his class, and was recommended for but never awarded the Medal of Honor for his exploits during the Veracruz, Mexico, expedition in April 1914.

MacArthur’s valor under fire in the famed 42nd ‘Rainbow’ Division was legendary and earned him the distinction of being the most decorated American soldier of World War I. As the superintendent of West Point from 1919 to ‘22, MacArthur instituted major reforms that finally brought the archaic military academy into the twentieth century.

By contrast, Eisenhower graduated from West Point in 1915 with an indifferent academic record and no firm belief that the army represented a permanent career choice. To his dismay, he spent World War I commanding a tank training center at Camp Colt, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Frustrated by his failure to see combat in France, and convinced his military career might never recover, Eisenhower nevertheless emerged from the war with a glowing reputation as a troop trainer.

He soon came to the attention of Brig. Gen. Fox Conner, perhaps the army’s most brilliant intellectual, who rejuvenated and further sharpened Eisenhower’s already significant appetite for reading and studying history. Under his intense one-on-one tutelage, Eisenhower’s military education began to take shape in the early 1920s in Panama. In the narrow world of the interwar military, where budgets rather than military necessity ruled supreme, Conner was a steady voice of reason who repeatedly warned Eisenhower of future danger from a resurgent and aggressive Germany.

When MacArthur became the army’s youngest-ever chief of staff in 1930, the most highly regarded staff officer in the War Department was a balding forty-year-old major named Dwight D. Eisenhower. That Eisenhower would eventually be chosen to toil exclusively for MacArthur was, in retrospect, inevitable. From the time of his assignment to the general staff in late 1929, his drive, initiative, and seemingly endless capacity for producing well-organized and thoughtful staff work had made Eisenhower an invaluable commodity to the men who ran the War Department. Eisenhower was not only exceptionally loyal to his bosses but was, according to Stephen Ambrose, ‘able to think from the point of view of his chief, a quality both MacArthur and [George] Marshall often singled out for praise. He had an instinctive sense of when to make a decision himself and when to pass it up to his boss.’

Eisenhower was one of MacArthur’s few subordinates who could objectively judge both his virtues and his flaws. Never one to freely dispense praise, Eisenhower’s greatest compliments were reserved for MacArthur: ‘He did have a hell of an intellect! My God, but he was smart. He had a brain.’ All genius has its price, and for MacArthur it was an inviolate belief in his own infallibility. ‘MacArthur could never see another sun, or even a moon, for that matter, in the heavens as long as he was the sun,’ Eisenhower told biographer Peter Lyon.

Eisenhower was by equal measures awed and repelled by MacArthur. Although impressed by his genius, his charm, and his flattery toward a junior officer, he deplored MacArthur’s posturing and unwillingness to accept advice. On balance, however, Eisenhower viewed their relationship as positive.

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