The real difference between the American and British systems of conducting the war was that the greatly expanded scope of the American military chiefs forced them to adopt a broadly political viewpoint, while the restricted range of activity of the British military permitted them to adhere to a professional military outlook. Sherwood remarks that it was “the American opinion that Churchill dominated his own Chiefs to a much greater extent” than did Roosevelt, and Admiral Leahy in a revealing comment observes:
As we worked in closest liaison with the Chiefs of the British armed forces, there was more than one occasion when we felt that our British colleagues were loyally supporting the views of their defense minister [Churchill] only because it was their duty and because they were carrying out orders. On our side, we never labored under any such handicap. There were differences of opinion, of course, but due to the mutual confidence and daily contact between the President and his military chiefs, these differences never became serious.13
Viewing the war from a military point of view, the British chiefs differed from their government which looked at it from a political point of view. As good military men, however, they supported the government decisions with which they disagreed. The American Chiefs, on the other hand, supported their government’s policies because, as political directors of the war, they played a major role in formulating them. Accustomed to power, on the rare occasions when they were overruled, they did not take their defeat with very good grace.14 While they did not envy the British military chiefs their circumscribed role, the American military leaders did have to recognize the superior coordination and unity produced by the British system of civilian control. At least the British military always knew what the policies of their government were, even if they did not agree with them. On the American side, however, confusion existed as to who was making policy, and at times the American military yearned for the orderly division of responsibilities of the British system. The disunity in American organization was, however, simply the corollary of the harmony in American thought. Too much harmony is just as much a symptom of bad organization as too much conflict. On the face of it, something is wrong with a system in which, during the course of a four-year major war, the political Chief Executive only twice overrules his professional military advisers. This can only mean that one of them was neglecting his proper function and duplicating the work of the other.
NATIONAL POLICY: BALANCE OF POWER TO TOTAL VICTORY. The views of the military leaders who began to achieve prominence at the end of the 1930’s reflected the conservative professional military ethic prevailing in the American officer corps during the interwar decades. Long before 1939, American officers, adhering to the military belief as to the inevitability of war, were convinced that the United States would become involved in another world conflict.15 Consequently, throughout the lean years of the 1930’s, the services strongly advanced a variety of proposals to build up the forces to a minimum consistent with the needs of national security. After the Administration began to take deeper interest in armament in the fall of 1938, the military continued to advocate a balanced yet sizable increase in military strength. At the same time, in these years prior to the wartime military-civilian harmony, a significant cleavage existed in the Administration in 1940 and 1941 between the military viewpoint and the dominant civilian opinion. Wishing to delay the inevitable conflict so as better to prepare for it, the military consistently advocated caution and the avoidance of any action which might give the Axis powers an excuse for war. Hopkins, Stimson, Knox, Ickes, and Morgenthau, on the other hand, all tended to favor more active and belligerent measures. The President and Secretary Hull wavered between the two, with the President generally tending toward the civilian group and Hull usually coming to conclusions closer to the military school of thought. In a manner reminiscent of the fears of the German General Staff in the 1930’s, the military stressed the dangers to the United States of involvement in a two-front war. Throughout 1940 and 1941 they consistently opposed an express or implied commitment by the United States to enter the European war and objected to moves which might provoke Japan, such as the embargo on American exports and the visit of American naval units to Singapore. As tension mounted in the Far East in the fall of 1941, the military leaders urged an agreement with Japan and the avoidance of the “precipitance of military action.” Their warnings were, however, overruled by the civilian leadership, and the final American decisions the last part of November which precipitated the conflict were made virtually without military participation and decidedly without military approval.16
Not only in their advocacy of military strength and diplomatic restraint, but also in their entire approach to the international situation in these prewar years, America’s military leaders adhered to the professional military ethic. The two most comprehensive statements of the military viewpoint during this period were probably the formulation of the American position for the staff conversations with the British in January 1941 and the “Joint Board Estimate of United States Over-all Production Requirements” of September 11, 1941. In the earlier document the military planners warned that the United States must not “entrust our national future to British direction,” and emphasized that American planning must be based upon an awareness of America’s continuing political goals and interests. The British, the planners declared, would always have in mind “their postwar interests, commercial and military.” Consequently, it was necessary that we too should “safeguard our own eventual interests.”17 Nine months later, the military approach was further elaborated in the Joint Board Estimate signed by Marshall and Stark. Both in its specific requirements for immediate American strategy, and in its analysis of Axis strategy and capabilities, the Estimate manifested a coldly realistic and professional approach. It was, in the words of Langer and Gleason, “utterly devoid of false hope or self-delusion.” It defined the “major national objectives of the United States” as:
. . . preservation of the territorial, economic and ideological integrity of the United States and of the remainder of the Western Hemisphere; prevention of the disruption of the British Empire; prevention of the further extension of Japanese territorial dominion; eventual establishment in Europe and Asia of balances of power which will most nearly ensure political stability in those regions and the future security of the United States; and, so far as practicable, the establishment of regimes favorable to economic freedom and individual liberty.18
Even at this late date the military leaders were still thinking in conservative realistic terms with respect to national policy. The long-run goals of the United States were not the defeat of Germany and Japan, but rather the establishment of a balance of power in Europe and Asia. Victory over the Axis was desirable only insofar as it contributed to this end. This confidential military statement of American aims contrasted markedly with the idealistic and ambiguous public declaration of American goals by the President in the Atlantic Charter a month earlier. The mere fact that the Joint Board had to formulate a definition of national goals was, however, a sign that the military could not long adhere to it. The origin of the Estimate was a presidential request for military production requirements. To state these, however, the military had to know what over-all national policy was. But, in the summer of 1941, the only policies which existed were, in the words of General Gerow, “more or less nebulous.” Hence, the military staff had to make its own definition of national policy. In these early days, it could still do this in the spirit of the military ethic. In due course, however, this was to become impossible, and the military planners found their thinking shifting from that typified by the Joint Board Estimate to that typified by the Atlantic Charter.
The foreign policy which the United States actually followed during the war contrasted markedly with prewar military thinking. Its most important elements were derived almost exclusively from civilian sources. Among these key components were: (1) concentration upon the military defeat of the Axis to the exclusion of all other consideratio
ns; (2) postponement of political decisions respecting the postwar settlement until after the war; (3) requirement of unconditional surrender of the major Axis powers; (4) priority to the defeat of Germany ahead of Japan.
Early in the war the President laid down the line that all American military planning was to be based upon the assumption that our political aim was military victory in the most efficient manner. In Stimson’s words, “The only important goal of the war was victory, and the only proper test of wartime action was whether it would help to win.”19 This emphasis was deep-rooted in the American approach which assumed a natural harmony in international relations. Disruptions of this harmony were caused by a single transitory evil, the elimination of which would end further conflict. As a result, the Americans rejected Churchill’s pleas for an attack through the Balkans and insisted in the final weeks of the war that the western armies concentrate primarily upon the destruction of the German armed forces rather than the occupation of territory and capitals. The desire not to consider or discuss postwar objectives with our Allies was naturally a part of this outlook. Hull and the President strongly resisted British and Russian efforts to engage the great powers in commitments as to the postwar settlement. The goal of unconditional surrender was, in its phrasing, a personal creation of Roosevelt’s, but in its substance, it was implicit in American policy and thinking. It was determined upon by the President without first consulting his military advisers. Finally, the Germany-first policy had both civilian and military roots. From the military viewpoint, it was, of course, desirable to defeat first the principal threat to American security. More significant than this consideration, however, was the fact that throughout the two years before American entry our policy had been primarily oriented toward the support of Britain while holding off Japan in the Pacific by adopting a defensive attitude.20
As the military acquired authority and influence during the war, they slowly abandoned their prewar attitudes and accepted the assumptions and values of civilian thinking. This adjustment may be seen concretely in the manner in which the Joint Chiefs altered their views to accord with those of the President. As early as April 1941, when Marshall began his strategic briefings of FDR, the Chief of Staff reminded his subordinates that “Army planners had to recognize and adjust their thinking to the fact that the President was governed by public opinion as well as by professional military opinion.”21 The high commanders of the Army and Navy had, indeed, been in part chosen because they possessed the “sense of statesmanship that enabled them to consider the political as well as purely military aspects of the global situation.”22 The acquiescence of the military was in part the result of daily contact with the President and his appealing persuasiveness. But it was even more due to the fact that as the Joint Chiefs became the alter egos of the President in the conduct of the war, it was only natural that similar responsibilities and similar perspectives should produce similar policies. As Captain T. B. Kittredge of the Historical Section of the JCS observed:
It may be true that the President formally overruled them on very few occasions but this was only because informal discussions of the President with Leahy, Marshall, King, and Arnold usually led them to know in advance the President’s views. They, no doubt, frequently recognized the advantages of accepting the President’s suggestions with their own interpretations, rather than of risking an overruling by presenting formally proposals they knew would not be accepted.23
Through this subtle process the values and assumptions of the President were gradually written into the thinking of the military chiefs. The easiest civilian aim for the top military leaders to adopt was the substitution of total victory for continued military security through the balance of power. By 1943 and 1944 Marshall, for instance, had abandoned the views he had put forth earlier, and instead was agreeing with Stimson that military victory was the overriding goal and the requirements of military strategy the decisive component in national policy.24 Although Cordell Hull had little to do with the basic decisions of the war, his rejection of the balance of power concept was eventually endorsed by the Joint Chiefs. By the time of the Quebec conference in August 1943, the Chiefs of Staff were accepting the implication that the crushing of Germany in Europe would put Russia in a dominant position. The American response to this, they added, should not be to back Britain’s feeble efforts to create a balance to Russia in the Mediterranean area, but rather to give “every assistance” to Russia and to “make every effort” to obtain her friendship. This was, indeed, a far cry from the cold realism of two years earlier. Subsequently, in May 1944 the Joint Chiefs restated their new view on harmony among the Big Three as a substitute for the balance of power: “our basic national policy in postwar settlements . . . should seek to maintain the solidarity of the three great powers and in all other respects to establish conditions calculated to assure a long period of peace, during which, it may be hoped, arrangements will be perfected for the prevention of future world conflicts.”25 In part, this emphasis upon agreement with Russia reflected a military concern for Russian assistance in the Far Eastern conflict. Its content and context, however, indicate that it also reflected a change in political attitude from that of the prewar years. The Joint Chiefs similarly supported the policy of deferring consideration of the postwar settlement until the end of the conflict. As Admiral Leahy put it, the United States should stay clear of European politics and should rest its policy on the Atlantic Charter, “one of the most profound political announcements made during the war.”26 The American high command did not, of course, completely abandon the military viewpoint in their thinking. The tendency of some, if not all, of the commanders to take a pessimistic view of the time and the effort which would be necessary to defeat Japan reflected a normal military conservatism. Similarly, their desire that the United States acquire full ownership of the Japanese mandated islands was a typically military approach which brought them into sharp conflict with civilian agencies of the government. In general, however, on the major issues of policy, the views of the Joint Chiefs were those of the civilian statesmen and of the American public.
The pressure upon the military to make this adjustment varied, of course, with their rank and position. While it is difficult, if not impossible, to draw any lines, it is fairly obvious that politicalization was limited generally to the higher echelons and to officers serving in special capacities which brought them into contact with civilian needs and viewpoints. On the lower levels, the professional ethic remained more or less intact. Throughout the war, lower ranking military officers and the professional military journals warned of the difference between the postwar world and a postwarfare world. They urged the desirability of formulating postwar goals before the conflict ended, maintaining strong forces after victory, and directing policy toward the achievement of a world-wide balance of power.27 In the Balkans versus western Europe dispute, the Operations Division of the General Staff, which served as Marshall’s command post, generally accepted the prevailing political orthodoxy. In the lower ranking staffs, however, there were at least some doubts. A staff study produced in the G-2 (Military Intelligence) Division of the War Department warned of the political dangers of Russian dominance in the Balkans. But this occurred just at the time when the Joint Chiefs were acquiescing in the idea of Russian preëminence in Europe. Consequently, in the words of Hanson Baldwin, the authors of the staff paper “had their ears pinned back by a superior, who told them sharply: ‘The Russians have no political objectives in the Balkans; they are there for military reasons only.’ ”28
GOVERNMENTAL ROLE: CIVILIAN CONTROL TO MILITARY DOMINANCE. The changing nature of military thinking may also be seen in the attitudes of the military commanders with respect to civilian control. In the thirties the American military adhered thoroughly to this concept. This continued in the immediate prewar and early war years. It was the function of civilian authorities, the Army War Plans Division affirmed in July 1940, to determine the “what” of national policy and the responsibility
of the military to decide upon the “how” in the form of the military operations necessary to support that policy.29 The top military leaders during the first part of the war and their subordinate planning staffs for a longer part of the conflict favored the creation of a civil-military war cabinet along British lines staffed with an effective secretariat. This was, of course, merely a reiteration of the military pleas of the twenties and thirties for a strong national policy organ to furnish civilian guidance.
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