Date of Issue: June 6, 1994

KEY DATES 1890 Born in Denison, TX on Oct. 14 1915 Graduated from West Point as a second lieutenant 1935-39 Served in the Philippines with Gen. Douglas MacArthur 1944 Appointed Supreme Allied Commander for the Europe invasion 1952-60 Serves as Republican President of the United States 1969 Dies in Washington, D.C. on March 28

He led the Allies to victory and changed the course of history.
Only the Supreme Commander could give the order to attack. The vast power of an Allied army 2.5 million strong lay coiled in England, ready to spring across the Channel into German-occupied France. Some of the more than 5,000 ships accompanied by an additional 4,000 small craft of the invasion armada had already put to sea. On that June morning in 1944, screaming winds rattled the windows of the British naval headquarters near Portsmouth, where the D-day commanders were meeting. The rain, as General Dwight D. Eisenhower later recalled, lashed down in "horizontal streaks." A Royal Air Force meteorologist, however, cautiously predicted clearing skies for the next day, June 6. Eisenhower conferred with the generals and admirals gathered around him. He thought for less than a minute, then stood up. "O.K.," he said, "Let’s go."

	"Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Forces: You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade toward which we have striven these many months..."

Eisenhower stayed behind, alone, as his commanders rushed out to transmit the order that commenced Operation Overlord, the invasion of Western Europe. His duty was done for the day. He went down to a pier in Portsmouth to watch British soldiers board their landing craft. The biggest fleet in history — 59 convoys strung over 100 miles, led by six battleships, 22 cruisers and 93 destroyers — set sail toward the beaches of Normandy between 60 and 100 miles away.

The general drove to nearby Newbury to say farewell to some of the 23,000 Allied paratroopers who would take off before midnight to drop behind the Germans’ beach defenses. Operation Overlord’s British air commander, Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, had warned him repeatedly that the troopers might suffer casualties as high as 75%. Eisenhower chatted with men of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division, wished them luck and shook hands with their commander, Brigadier General Maxwell Taylor. As their C-47 transports roared off toward France, the Supreme Commander, who had envisioned this moment for more than two years, stood with his staff on the roof of a headquarters building and saluted them. When he turned away, he had tears in his eyes.

Fifty years later, veterans of the Allied Forces who defeated Nazi Germany are invading Normandy again to gaze at the beaches they stormed, walk the sunken roads they fought over, mourn at the military cemeteries, but most of all, celebrate their triumph. On the next big anniversary 10 years hence, most of these old soldiers — and many of those who lived through the cataclysm of World War II — will be gone.

President’s and generals and ordinary folk will come to pay homage in Europe this week, to remember a great battle in a good cause. Bill Clinton, who begins an eight-day visit, will meet the leaders of the other Allied nations who share credit for the victory and dine with Queen Elizabeth II in Portsmouth, then sail on an aircraft carrier for a sunrise ceremony off the Normandy coast on June 6. Some may question his credibility as Commander in Chief of the U.S. armed forces because he avoided military service during the Vietnam War. But if past anniversaries of the invasion are any indication, the emotion of the moment will carry the day. "That war," Clinton told the graduating class at the U.S. Naval Academy last week, "marked the turning point of our century, when we joined with our Allies to stem a dark tide of dictatorship, and to start a flow of democracy and freedom that continues to sweep the world." While peace is far from universal even in Europe, Western Europe is more prosperous and more unified than it has ever been. The cold war proved to be only a temporary faltering. The success of the wartime alliance gave birth to the United Nations and NAFTA and made America a permanent leader of the global community.

If the war was the century’s turning point, the turning point of the war was D-day. The Normandy landings might have been thrown back if the German command had not been so thoroughly surprised or so unusually slow to counterattack. But once the allied forces were successfully ashore, Hitler was doomed, caught between armies advancing against him from the west and the Soviet east.

After those first tense 24 hours, the Allies knew they had reached the beginning of the end. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, whose anxiety about the attack never completely subsided, was jubilant. "What a plan!" he raved to Parliament. The Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, who had been demanding the opening of the second front for years, paid tribute: "the history of warfare knows no other like undertaking from the point of view of its scale, its vast conception and its masterly execution."

That same extraordinary undertaking reverberated into American politics, securing the reputation of an indifferent student from Kansas as a great military leader and propelling him into the White House eight years later. This was Eisenhower’s invasion, the one he had planned and argued for and believed in wholeheartedly. He meant every word of the order of the day he addressed to the servicemen he was sending into Hitler’s Europe: "Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Forces: You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade toward which we have striven these many months…"