Keith Eiler

Eiler headshot
Born in Monowi, Nebraska, Keith E. Eiler (1920-2005) attended the University of Nebraska, graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point in 1944 and joined the 80th Infantry Division in General Patton’s 3rd Army in Europe. After he was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge (and received a Purple Heart), Eiler became an engineer for the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project. From 1950 to 1951, Eiler was aide-de-camp to General Wedemeyer who commanded the 6th Army at the Presidio of San Francisco. He served with the 8th Army in Korea in 1952, commanded an engineer combat battalion in Germany, became assistant director of military construction in the Office of the Chief of Engineers, and served in the Office of the Chief of Staff of the Army and the headquarters of the Army Forces Far East in Tokyo. In addition, he was an instructor and assistant professor of mathematics at West Point from 1954 to 1958.

After retiring from the Army in 1965 as a lieutenant colonel, Eiler earned a PhD in the history of American civilization at Harvard in 1974. He was a research Fellow at the Library of Congress (1968-74) and at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University (1983-2003).

Eiler also earned masters’ degrees in civil engineering from Harvard and in international affairs from George Washington University. His book, Mobilizing America: Robert P. Patterson and the War Effort, 1940–1945, received the Hoover Institution’s Uncommon Book Award in 1999.


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Mobilizing America eBook cover