geeky
This time Americans were not so supportive of their wartime president and Truman could read the political tea leaves just as well as anyone. He decided not to run for re-election in 1952. In his place, the Democrats chose Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson, a very cerebral and professorial man as their candidate. His opponent was the very popular General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in World War II, the architect of the D-Day invasion and a very formidable candidate.
Eisenhower campaigned by attacking "Korea, Communism, and Corruption", which were spin as failures of the outgoing Truman administration. Specifically, Eisenhower and the Republicans blamed Truman for the military's failure in Korea. Eisenhower was no fan of MacArthur either. He had been MacArthur's aide in 1932 when MacArthur sent the army in to chase the Bonus March protesters out of Washington and privately he wondered why MacArthur hadn't been fired sooner.
On October 24, in the dying days of the campaign, Truman challenged Eisenhower to come up with a better policy as to how to deal with the Korean problem. In response, the next day Eisenhower announced that if he were elected, he would personally go to Korea to get a firsthand view of the situation. In hindsight, he probably didn't need to go that far, and would still have won the election even if he had not promised to do so. But the promise boosted Eisenhower's popularity. On election day, November 4, 1952, Eisenhower easily defeated Stevenson, winning 442 electoral votes and 39 states, compared to 89 electoral votes and 9 states for Stevenson. Eisenhower received 34,075,529 votes (55.2%) and Stevenson received 27,375,090 votes (44.3%).
President-elect Eisenhower fulfilled his campaign pledge. Prior to going, he was not very specific about exactly what he hoped to accomplish. He visited with US troops, even dining on k-rations with the troops. He returned to the United States, but remained vague about what he planned to do about the war. On November 29, 1952 he left for a three days trip to Korea where he conferred with his old comrades General Mark Clark and General James Van Fleet, as well as South Korean Generals Chung Il-kwon and Baik Seon-yup. He talked to division and regimental commanders, and he even ate C-rations at the front with G.I.’s from the 15th Infantry, his old regiment. He flew along the battle line, roughly the 38th Parallel, in an artillery observation plane (a small plane the size of a Piper Cub) where he did his own reconnaissance and got a first-hand look at the terrain. Eisenhower noticed that it was rocky, mountainous and very difficult to traverse for an infantry. It was also full of Chinese gun placements and heavily fortified. He later said that it reminded him of Tunisia during World War II, where an untested American Army had received its first defeat. He said, “It was obvious that any frontal attack would present great difficulties.” He added, “Small attacks on small hills would not win this war. We could not stand forever on a static front and continue to accept casualties without any visible result.”
Eisenhower returned to the United States and was convinced that there was no other option but to make peace. Truce negotiations had been started 18 months earlier, but there had been no ceasefire. Casualties continued to mount. American losses (killed, wounded, and missing) had reached 75,000 in July 1951 when the talks began. They would eventually rise to 150,000, including an additional 12,000 dead, because of American insistence on fighting while the negotiations took place. Eisenhower say this as unconscionable. He said: “We cannot tolerate the continuation of the Korean conflict. The United States will have to break this deadlock.”
Eisenhower instructed General Clark to step up the exchange of prisoners with the North. He presented a "get tough" facade so as not to appear to be negotiating from a position of weakness, but his goal was to end the war as soon as possible. He suggested that he would "unleash" the Nationalist Chinese forces on Taiwan against communist China, something that Truman had refused to do. He hinted at the possibility of using whatever force was necessary (including the use of nuclear weapons) to bring the war to an end unless peace negotiations began to move forward. Eisenhower realized that he Chinese were just as exhausted by more than two years as the Americans were, and that they were likely also open to ending the conflict.
In early April 1953 the Communists signaled they were ready to negotiate an end to the war. Joseph Stalin had recently died and the new Soviet leadership apparently also wanted to see the situation resolved. On April 8, Eisenhower announced his decision to agree to an armistice that would leave a divided Korea. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Defense Secretary Charles Wilson were strongly opposed. But Eisenhower rejected their argument. He said “Now either we cut out all this fooling around and make a serious bid for peace. or we forget the whole thing.”
In July 1953, an armistice was reached with the Chinese and the Koreans. It left Korea divided along approximately the same boundary as in 1950. The armistice and boundary remain in effect today, with American soldiers still stationed there to enforce it. The armistice, concluded despite opposition from Secretary Dulles, South Korean President Syngman Rhee, and others inside Eisenhower's party.
Stephen Ambrose, one of Eisenhower's leading biographers, considers this armistice as the greatest achievement of his administration. Having witnessed the ravages of a great war, Eisenhower had the wisdom and the insight to realize that unlimited war in the nuclear age was unthinkable.