TAMPA, Fla. — Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who commanded the U.S.-led forces that crushed Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and became the nation's most acclaimed military hero since the midcentury exploits of Gens. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur, died Thursday. He was 78.
The general — who retired after the Gulf War, lived in Tampa and also owned a house in Telluride since the mid-1990s — died of complications arising from pneumonia, said his sister Ruth Barenbaum.
In Operation Desert Storm, Schwarzkopf orchestrated one of the most lopsided victories in modern warfare, a six-week blitzkrieg by a coalition of forces with overwhelming air superiority that liberated tiny Kuwait from Iraqi occupation, routed Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard and virtually destroyed Iraq's infrastructure, all with relatively light allied losses.
Winning the lightning war was never in doubt and in no way comparable to the traumas of World War II and the Korean conflict. But a divisive Vietnam conflict and the Cold War had produced no such heroes, and the little-known Schwarzkopf was wreathed in laurels as the victor in a popular war against a brutal dictator.
A combat-tested, highly decorated career officer who had held many commands, served two battlefield tours in Vietnam and coordinated U.S. landing forces in the 1983 invasion of Grenada, he came home to a tumultuous welcome, including a ticker-tape parade in New York.
"Stormin' Norman," as headlines proclaimed him, was lionized by millions of Americans. President George H.W. Bush, whose popularity soared with the war, gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Congress gave him standing ovations. Queen Elizabeth II made him an honorary knight.
"Gen. Norm Schwarzkopf, to me, epitomized the 'duty, service, country' creed that has defended our freedom and seen this great nation through our most trying international crises," Bush said in a statement Thursday. "More than that, he was a good and decent man — and a dear friend."
Herbert Norman Schwarz-kopf Jr. was born Aug. 22, 1934, in Trenton, N.J., one of three children of his namesake and the former Ruth Bowman.
At 18, he dropped the Jr. and his first name but kept the initial. His father, New Jersey's first state police superintendent, investigated the 1932 Lindbergh kidnapping.
As a boy, Schwarzkopf attended Bordentown Military Institute near Trenton. But from 1946 to 1950, he lived in Iran, Switzerland, Germany and Italy with his father. Already fluent in French and German at 17, he enrolled at Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pa., played football and was a champion debater.
At West Point, he was on the football and wrestling teams and sang in the choir. He loved history and dreamed of leading men in battle.
"He saw himself as Alexander the Great," said Gen. Leroy Suddath, his old roommate, "and we didn't laugh when he said it."
In 1956, he graduated 43rd in a class of 480.
After infantry and airborne training at Fort Benning, Ga., he served two years with airborne units in the U.S. and Europe, took a two-year assignment in Berlin and a career-officer course at Fort Benning, then earned a master's in guided-missile engineering in 1964 from the University of Southern California.
Schwarzkopf went to Vietnam as an adviser to a South Vietnamese airborne division in 1965 and once withstood a 10-day enemy siege. He returned a major in 1966, taught at West Point for two years and as a lieutenant colonel attended the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
In 1968, he married Brenda Holsinger. They had three children: Cynthia, Jessica and Christian. A battalion commander in his second Vietnam tour, in 1969-70, he was wounded twice and won three Silver Stars for bravery.
He became a colonel in 1975, a brigadier general in 1978, a major general in 1982 and a lieutenant general in 1986. Alternating between administrative and command jobs, he moved from personnel and planning to brigade posts in Alaska and Washington state, from the Pacific Command in Hawaii to a division in Europe and back to Washington in charge of personnel.