Description:

Eisenhower Dwight

Eisenhower Thanks General Groves of the Manhattan Project

 

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, Typed Letter Signed, to Leslie R. Groves Jr., October 31, 1963, Gettysburg, PA. 1 p., 7.125" x 10.375".  Very good.

 

Excerpts

“Thank you for the birthday message. It is indeed heart-warming to know that my friends remember me and take the time to send greetings.”

 

Historical Background

On Monday, October 14, 1963, former President Eisenhower celebrated his seventy-third birthday quietly in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, with his wife Mamie and family. After spending the morning in his office at Gettysburg College, he and Mamie drove to their son John’s home for a celebration with their four grandchildren. That evening, he had dinner at the home of Brigadier General Arthur S. Nevins, who was Eisenhower’s planning officer for the Normandy invasion in World War II.

 

The previous weekend, several hundred colleagues from Eisenhower’s presidency, including former Vice President Richard Nixon, hosted him at a party in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and presented him with a vase for his collection of Steuben glass. On Tuesday, October 15, he was in Washington for the Republican fund-raising dinner scheduled around his birthday.

 

 

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) was born in Texas but grew up in Kanas. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1915. He served in the United States during World War I and was promoted to Major soon after the war. At the beginning of World War II, he joined the General Staff in Washington and quickly came to the attention of Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall. In November 1942, Eisenhower became Supreme Commander of Allied forces in North Africa, and in December 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Eisenhower as Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe, and Eisenhower had primary responsibility for planning the D-Day invasion of Normandy in June 1944. In November 1945, he returned from Europe to replace Marshall as Chief of Staff of the Army. Three years later, he became President of Columbia University, where he served until 1953. In 1952 and again in 1956, he won landslide elections as a Republican candidate for President of the United States. He served as President from 1953 to 1961. He was the only general to serve as President in the twentieth century.

 

Leslie R. Groves Jr. (1896-1970) was a United States Army General with the Corps of Engineers who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II. Born in New York to a Protestant pastor who became an army chaplain, Groves graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1918 in a course shortened because of World War I. He entered the Corps of Engineers and gained promotions to major by 1940. In 1941, he was charged with overseeing the construction of the Pentagon, the largest office building in the world, with more than five million square feet. Disappointed that he had not received a combat assignment, Groves instead took charge of the Manhattan Project, designed to develop an atomic bomb. He continued nominally to supervise the Pentagon project to avoid suspicion, gained promotion to brigadier general, and began his work in September 1942. The project headquarters was initially in the War Department building in Washington, but in August 1943, moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He and physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer selected the site in Los Alamos, New Mexico, for a laboratory, and Groves pushed successfully for Oppenheimer to be placed in charge. Groves was in charge of obtaining critical uranium ores internationally and collecting military intelligence on Axis atomic research. Promoted to major general in March 1944, Groves received the Distinguished Service Medal for his work on the Manhattan Project after the war. In 1947, Groves became chief of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project. He received a promotion to lieutenant general in January 1948, just days before meeting with Army Chief of Staff Dwight D. Eisenhower, who reviewed a long list of complaints against Groves. Assured that he would not become Chief of Engineers, Groves retired in February 1948. From 1948 to 1961, he was a vice president of Sperry Rand, an equipment and electronics firm. After retirement, he served as president of the West Point alumni association and wrote a book on the Manhattan Project, published in 1962.

 

 

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