A Brilliant Look at Eisenhower at War

The movie of the year, at least in my book, is called “Pressure.” It’s a historical dramatization of General Dwight Eisenhower’s decision during World War II on whether to go through with the invasion of Normandy. It stars Brendan Fraser as the supreme allied commander who is getting ready to deal with the last item in the planning of the largest seaborne invasion in history — namely the weather.The movie opens with a British meteorologist, Group Captain James Stagg, saying goodbye to his nine-months pregnant wife and being driven to Ike’s headquarters. He is promptly taken in hand by Eisenhower’s famous driver, Kay Summersby, and brought in to see the general. Stagg, played by Andrew Scott, wastes no time in telling the allied commander that he doesn’t have enough time to make a proper forecast.“Have a look, Group Captain,” Ike says, gesturing to a huge map of Normandy, “I got 7,000 naval vessels, 130,000 ground troops, 200,000 naval personnel, 15 hospital ships, 8,000 doctors, three airborne divisions, and a partridge in a pear tree.” It’s the largest seaborne invasion force in history, Ike emphasizes. “We invade France Monday,” he says. That’s “61 hours from now.”“The fate of the war hinges on this,” Ike confides to Stagg, adding “there is only one imponderable that remains. I need a forecast.” Churchill had recommended Stagg to Eisenhower. Yet the general has his own meteorologist, Irving Krick, who is standing by his prediction of balmy weather and smaller waves. He uses historical patterns in the weather going back decades. Stagg looks at data, upper air, lower air, salinity of the ocean, collected from scores of sites around the globe. He warns that storms are bearing down and making a landing on Monday, June 5, impossible.“If you chose to postpone,” Krick says at one point, “you’ll regret it for the rest of your lives.” At another, Skagg becomes almost hysterical. The weather was as Krick describes in 1904 and 1925, he says, but Krick “fails to mention 1916, June 5th, the battle for Mount Sorrel” during World War I. “Then as now there were areas of high pressure above the Azores. But the storms came anyway. Many people here will remember that battle. Chaos. Absolute Chaos. Thousands of lives lost. Hell on Earth. Torrential rain.”When the two meteorologists fail to agree, Eisenhower tells his stunned camarilla that the invasion is postponed. What is so illuminating about the film, at least in my view, is Eisenhower’s method of command. He grills both Stagg and Krick in front of others — including General Bernard Montgomery — crammed into his map room. On the Sunday on the eve of the attack, it’s a balmy day in Britain, too, and they all go to church with the sense that the decision to postpone is a mistake. Stagg steps out to rest beneath a tree. In a closeup of Stagg’s face, we see a wisp of hair catch a slight breeze. The camera swings to the meadow, where the grasses are now all moving. Then come thunder and clouds — and, suddenly, heavy rain. The churchgoers return to Eisenhower’s war room. Stagg goes to consult his humiliated counterpart and discovers they can agree that there is going to be a window at Normandy — on Tuesday, June 6.The rest is history. And how glorious it is. There is no shortage of heroes in the movie, but the one who stands out for me is Ike himself. It’s a germane glimpse for today, too, when our administration is firing one general officer after another and, with the winds of war stirring the meadows on almost every front, our Army is left without a chief of staff or an Army secretary.“Pressure” offers a sense of what a powerful commander Eisenhower turned out to be. He hands Kay Sommerby two scripts of his post-invasion statements to the vast army he sent into battle and to the wide public. One is for use if the invasion fails, in which case he assumes all blame and responsibility, and one if it succeeds, in which he spreads the glory. How we could use a general like him at the moment.

A Brilliant Look at Eisenhower at War

A Brilliant Look at Eisenhower at War

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