Keith E. Eiler, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University since 1983, died on Wednesday, November 16, after a long illness.
Eiler, born and raised in rural Nebraska, turned 85 years old on November 8. He was a retired lieutenant colonel in the United States Army and an expert on United States military history.
He was the author of a definitive history of U.S. economic and military mobilization in World War II entitled Mobilizing America: Robert P. Patterson and the War Effort, 1940–1945, a book that received the Hoover Institution's Uncommon Book Award in 1999. He also edited Wedemeyer on War and Peace, a compilation of writings by General Albert C. Wedemeyer, the U.S. War Department's most prominent strategist and commander of the Allied forces in the China-Burma-India theater during World War II.
Eiler graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1944. He subsequently served during World War II with the 80th Infantry Division of the Third U.S. Army in Europe, where he was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge; as an engineer with the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project involved in operational employment of atomic weapons; as an aide-de-camp to General Wedemeyer during the latter's term as commander of the Sixth U.S. Army at the Presidio of San Francisco (1950—51); with the Eighth U.S. Army in Korea, where he helped plan the Demilitarized Zone (1953); and in the headquarters of the Army Forces Far East in Tokyo (1953—54).
Eiler taught mathematics as an instructor and assistant professor at West Point from 1954 to 1958; commanded an engineer combat battalion in Germany in 1960—61; and was assistant director of military construction in the Office of the Chief of Engineers, U.S. Army, from 1961 to 1963. In his last assignment before his retirement from the military in 1965, he served with the army general staff in the Office of the Chief of Staff, 1963—64.
He held masters' degrees in civil engineering (Harvard University) and international affairs (George Washington University) and a doctorate in the history of American civilization (Harvard).
He is survived by his wife, Mary Ann; three sisters, Fern Maxwell, Edna Zach, and Sue Curtis; three brothers, Donald, Jim, and Dale Eiler; grandniece Michaela and other nieces and nephews. A funeral mass will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Monday, November 21, at the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco. Burial will be at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, on November 29.
