Editor’s Note: On October 8, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed close to three square miles of the city, claimed an estimated 300 lives, and left some 90,000 homeless. Surprisingly, there has not been a major, carefully researched book on the fire until Chicago's Great Fire: The Destruction and Resurrection of an Iconic American City, from which this is excerpted and adapted. Author Carl Smith is a professor emeritus of English, American Studies, and History at Northwestern University.
October has become the season of reruns of television shows about ghouls of various sorts, with images of vampires often skulking around.
Could there be some truth behind the undying clichés of vampires?
In 1990, police in Griswold, Connecticut were called to the scene of what was suspected to be a mass burial. They soon realized it was a fairly typical 19th Century family burial and notified the state archaeologist, Nick Bellantoni.
On May 1, 1960, a Soviet V-750 surface-to-air missile (known in America as the SA-Z “Guideline”) shot down a U-2, one of the “invulnerable” American spy planes. The plane was a phantom—of all the secret projects of those years, perhaps the most secret. Even now, when it seems there are no secrets left, not everything connected with the U-2’s last mission can be explained from the standpoint of normal human logic.
In the 1950s, years of deep freeze in the Cold War, politicians and ordinary people on both sides were gripped by the same fear: that the opposing side, whether Moscow or Washington, would seize the opportunity to deal the first, and possibly last, nuclear strike. At the 1955 Geneva meeting of the four powers—the U.S.S.R., the United States, Great Britain, and France—President Eisenhower presented his Open Skies proposal, which called for planes of the opposing blocs to fly over the territories of probable adversaries in order to monitor their nuclear arms.
Ike as President, by RICHARD NIXON
As Vice President during Eisenhower's Administration, Richard M. Nixon was particularly close to the President, both officially and personally. In the following selection from his book Six Crises,* published in 1962, Mr. Nixon reveals some of Eisenhower’s personal characteristics.
. as I went to see Eisenhower [on September 15, 1952] the road ahead seemed full of promise and no pitfalls. . . . I saw General Eisenhower that evening in his headquarters at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver. The place was swarming with aides, party workers, and visiting dignitaries. It had the aura of a command post. Eisenhower was not the ordinary run-of-the-mill candidate seeking friends and supporters. He had been Commander of all Allied troops in Europe during the Second World War; he was the General who won the war; and even as a candidate he was accorded the respect, honor, and awe that only a President usually receives. Despite his great capacity for friendliness, he also had a quality of reserve which, at least subconsciously, tended to make a visitor feel like a junior officer coming in to see the commanding General.
Commander in Chief, by ADMIRAL ARTHUR W. RADFORD
Admiral Arthur W. Radford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during most of Eisenhower's first term as President, took a leading role in shaping the defense policies of the Eisenhower Administration. Here he writes of the close professional, and personal, relationship he had with the President.
Any man who has been elected and re-elected as President of the United States is bound to have left his mark on the history of the world. With considerable prejudice in President Eisenhower’s favor—for I served as his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for four years—I wish to tell the story of what history may record as his most important decision.
I could well start by going back to 1917 and the Bolshevik revolution, when the Communists took over the government in Russia and started the buildup of what has become in our day a monolithic military power, and then relate how in the years between 1917 and 1965, with intervals of setbacks and internal trouble, communism continued to grow in influence.
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein commanded the British Eighth Army in North Africa in 1942 and led Allied land forces in the invasion of Europe. He served with Eisenhower until the end of the war and again in 1951 as Eisenhower's Deputy Supreme Commander at SHAPE. Here, Montgomery recalls their friendship during their service together.
During the last week in May, 1942, I was directing large-scale maneuvers in southeast England for the divisions under my command; it was a very tough exercise, code name Tiger, and it is remembered to this day. Two American major generals were in England at the time, studying training methods, and they asked if they might visit me to see what was going on. The two were Dwight D. Eisenhower (Director of Military Operations) and Mark Clark (Director of Military Training) —both from Army Headquarters in Washington. These two were both to play a prominent part in Hitler's war from the end of 1942 onwards, and both became my firm friends.
William E. Robinson, former publisher of the New York Herald Tribune, and former President and Chairman of the Coca Cola Company, was one of the organizers of Citizens for Eisenhower. Here he describes the events leading to Eisenhower's nomination for the Presidency in 1952.
Earl Attlee, former Labor party leader, was Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1945 to 1951, and until 1955 led the Op-position party. During the war he served as Deputy Prime Minister. Shortly before his death in 1967, Earl Attlee wrote the following comment about General Eisenhower.
There are few more difficult tasks than that of being commander in chief in war of a mixed force made up of contingents drawn from different races or different nationalities. Even more difficult is that of commanding troops belonging to different sovereign states, allies in war for the time being.
Historically, perhaps the outstanding example of success is that of the great Duke of Marlborough, but there are several examples in the Second World War. Field Marshal Slim, for example, in the Burma campaign commanded British, Indian, and East and West African units and also managed to keep on good terms with the redoubtable "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell. General Alexander in Italy had to command contingents from more than twenty different nations.
“My room mate (tent mate, rather) is Dwight Eisenhower of Abilene, Kansas.…” On JuIy 30, 1911, Paul A. Hodgson thus informed his mother of the beginning of a close friendship, about which General Eisenhower commented in December, 1942: “The four years we spent in the same room more than a quarter of a century ago are still one of my most treasured memories.”
The new cadets had been at West Point six weeks when they were thrown together more or less accidentally because each had lost his initial roommate. It was a happy accident, for they had much in common. Both were Kansans, both came from large families, and both loved sports.
Ike the Warrior, by BRIGADIER GENERAL S. L. A. MARSHALL
The following commentary on Eisenhower's generalship was submitted by Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall, the eminent military critic and Chief Historian on the European Theater during 1944-45 when Eisenhower was Supreme Commander.