Dwight Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas, and graduated from West Point in 1915. By 1939 he had become chief military assistant to General Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines. During World War II, he commanded Allied forces in North Africa and became general of the U.S. Army in 1944. Eisenhower directed the invasion of Normandy on D-Day (June 6, 1944) and served as army chief of staff from 1945 to 1948. In 1948 he was appointed president of Columbia University. He became the supreme commander of all North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) land forces in 1951—one year after the outbreak of the Korean War. In 1952 he resigned from the army, and as a Republican he was elected president of the United States. Eisenhower’s presidency was marked by a preoccupation with foreign policy and the growth of a civil rights movement. In 1953 the United States ended the Korean War. Eisenhower ordered troops to enforce the integration of a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. After two terms as president, Eisenhower retired from politics. Eisenhower published his memoirs of his presidential years in two volumes, Mandate for Change (1963) and Waging Peace (1965).
