Dwight D. Eisenhower Trivia
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47 free Dwight D. Eisenhower trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Dwight D. Eisenhower trivia quiz follows Ike from a Texas birth and a Kansas boyhood through West Point, where he tried to tackle Jim Thorpe, the tank school he ran in the First World War, the years under MacArthur in the Philippines and the wartime rise that made him Supreme Allied Commander for D-Day and a five-star General of the Army. The presidential half covers Columbia University and NATO, the 1952 landslide over Adlai Stevenson, the Korean armistice, the interstate highways, Atoms for Peace, the 101st Airborne at Little Rock, Sputnik and NASA, Alaska and Hawaii, the U-2 crisis and the farewell warning about the military–industrial complex. There is room too for the black golf balls, the bridge games, the oil paintings, the Gettysburg farm and the funeral train back to Abilene. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our US presidents and World War II quizzes next.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who succeeded Eisenhower as president in January 1961?
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy. He inherited a CIA plan, begun on Eisenhower's orders in 1960, to land Cuban exiles in Cuba; launched three months into his term, it failed at the Bay of Pigs.
Q 02Eisenhower grew up in Kansas, but in which state was he born?
Texas
Texas. He was born in Denison, where his father had found work on the railroad, and the family went back to Kansas in 1892.
Q 03What were Eisenhower's first two names, in order, at birth?
David Dwight
David Dwight. The Dwight honoured the evangelist Dwight L. Moody, and with his father also a David, it was the name he went by all his life.
Q 04Which military school barred Eisenhower as too old?
The Naval Academy
The Naval Academy. A friend talked him into trying for Annapolis because it charged no tuition; he passed the exam but was over its age limit, so he went to West Point instead.
Q 05Which Kansas town did Eisenhower consider his hometown?
Abilene
Abilene. He went back there in June 1952 to announce his run for president, and he is buried there in a chapel at his presidential library.
Q 06Which legendary athlete did Eisenhower try to tackle while playing halfback for West Point in 1912?
Jim Thorpe
Jim Thorpe. The Olympic champion led Carlisle to a 27–6 win over Army, and a week later Eisenhower wrecked his knee against Tufts and never played football again.
Q 07What nickname did Eisenhower's West Point cohort of 1915 earn?
The class the stars fell on
The class the stars fell on. Stars mark the Army's highest ranks, and 59 of its 164 graduates went on to wear them, more than in any other West Point class.
Q 08During World War I, what did Eisenhower do instead of being sent to Europe?
Trained tank crews
Trained tank crews. His unit finally got orders for France, but the armistice was signed a week before it was due to leave, and he never saw combat in that war.
Q 09Which 1919 Army expedition, in which Eisenhower took part, later shaped his belief in better highways?
The Transcontinental Motor Convoy
The Transcontinental Motor Convoy. It took 62 days to crawl from Washington to San Francisco at about 6 mph, over dirt roads and wooden bridges too weak for its trucks.
Q 10Eisenhower called his mentor Fox Conner 'the ablest man I ever knew' after serving under him in the 1920s beside which waterway?
The Panama Canal
The Panama Canal. In the Canal Zone Conner drilled him in military history, then pulled strings to get him into the Army's elite command school, where Eisenhower finished first in a class of 245.
Q 11Under which general did Eisenhower serve as assistant military adviser in the Philippines from 1935?
Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur. Eisenhower spent seven stormy years as his aide, first in Washington and then in Manila, where the two clashed over how to build a Filipino army.
Q 12Which phrase was added to the Pledge of Allegiance by a bill Eisenhower signed on Flag Day in 1954?
Under God
Under God. That February Eisenhower had sat in Lincoln's old pew for a sermon arguing that the pledge needed the words, and he took up the cause the next day.
Q 13What was the code name of the November 1942 Allied campaign in North Africa that Eisenhower commanded?
Operation Torch
Q 21What was Eisenhower's simple 1952 campaign slogan?
I Like Ike
I Like Ike. Irving Berlin had already put a song called 'They Like Ike' into his 1950 Broadway musical Call Me Madam, two years before Eisenhower agreed to run.
Q 22Whom did Eisenhower defeat in both the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections?
Adlai Stevenson II
Adlai Stevenson II. Eisenhower's 1952 campaign all but ignored the Illinois governor and ran against the outgoing Truman administration instead, winning 442 electoral votes to 89.
Q 23Who was Eisenhower's vice president for both terms?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon. His place on the 1952 ticket was in doubt over a private expense fund until he defended himself on television in the 'Checkers' speech and the public rallied to him.
Operation Torch. He ran the landings from tunnels inside the Rock of Gibraltar, and ended the fighting by striking a deal with the Vichy French admiral Darlan.
Q 14Whom did Roosevelt pass over in 1943 when he chose Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe?
George Marshall
George Marshall. As the Army's top officer he had spotted Eisenhower, promoted him fast and sent him to Europe in 1942, so the biggest command of the war went to his own protégé instead.
Q 15On what date did the D-Day landings in Normandy take place?
June 6, 1944
June 6, 1944. Bad weather had already forced a day's delay, and on the eve of the landings Eisenhower scribbled a note taking all the blame himself in case they failed.
Q 16To what five-star rank was Eisenhower promoted on December 20, 1944?
General of the Army
General of the Army. He had to resign the commission before he could take office as president, and Congress handed it back to him when he left the White House in 1961.
Q 17Which Ivy League university did Eisenhower serve as president from 1948?
Columbia
Columbia. He never quite left: in 1950 he took leave for a military command in Europe, and he kept the title of university president until he moved into the White House in 1953.
Q 18What was the title of Eisenhower's 1948 war memoir?
Crusade in Europe
Crusade in Europe. It was a major success, and in 1949 ABC aired it as a 26-part documentary series that won a Peabody Award.
Q 19Of which alliance was Eisenhower the first supreme commander, from 1951 to 1952?
NATO
NATO. Truman called him back into uniform for the job, and it was at his headquarters near Paris that Republican envoys talked him into running for president.
Q 20Which senator's presidential prospects did Eisenhower enter the 1952 race partly to block?
Robert A. Taft
Robert A. Taft. The Ohio senator was the front-runner until a convention fight over contested delegates in a few key states went Eisenhower's way and gave him the nomination on the first ballot.
Q 24Which war ended in an armistice in July 1953, months into Eisenhower's first term?
The Korean War
The Korean War. 'I shall go to Korea,' he had promised late in the 1952 campaign, and he made the trip after winning the election, before he was even sworn in.
Q 25To which body did Eisenhower deliver his "Atoms for Peace" speech in December 1953?
The United Nations General Assembly
The United Nations General Assembly. He proposed an international agency to put atomic material to peaceful use, and four years later the International Atomic Energy Agency was born.
Q 26Which 1956 law, signed by Eisenhower, authorised the Interstate System?
The Federal Aid Highway Act
The Federal Aid Highway Act. Congress had voted his first plan down in 1955; the version that passed paid 90 percent of the cost from a trust fund fed by the federal gasoline tax.
Q 27Which division did Eisenhower send to Little Rock in 1957 to protect nine Black students at Central High?
The 101st Airborne
The 101st Airborne. The paratroopers Eisenhower had sent into Normandy on D-Day were now ordered to walk nine teenagers into school past a mob.
Q 28Which Arkansas governor's defiance prompted Eisenhower to send troops to Little Rock?
Orval Faubus
Orval Faubus. He had posted the Arkansas National Guard to keep the nine students out, so Eisenhower took the Guard away from him by putting it under federal orders.
Q 29Which Soviet achievement in 1957 prompted Eisenhower to create NASA?
The launch of Sputnik
The launch of Sputnik. The shock also produced the National Defense Education Act of 1958, which offered college students federal loans to draw more of them into science and teaching.
Q 30Whom did Eisenhower appoint Chief Justice of the United States in 1953?
Earl Warren
Earl Warren. The California governor took his seat that October, and within months his court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated schools were unconstitutional.