Upon General Pershing’s retirement from the Army in 1924, Marshall was assigned to troop duty with the 15th Infantry in Tientsin, China. There he found himself enmeshed, not for the last time, in the tortured internal affairs of that country. Warlord conflicts, incipient nationalism, and anticolonial sentiment all posed great challenges to the foreign garrisons stationed there with the mission of preserving some semblance of order and stability. Marshall found it expedient to acquire a working knowledge of Mandarin in his dealings with the various indigenous parties. His homecoming in 1927 was marred by the sudden and unexpected death of his wife, Lily, a loss that left him devastated; she died of a heart condition aggravated by a diseased thyroid gland. He sought solace by throwing himself into his next assignment, which would ultimately prove to be an unexpectedly crucial one for the future of the Army.
This posting was to Fort Benning, Georgia, where Marshall was designated the assistant commandant of the Infantry School, in which position he was given full control over the academic department. In this capacity Marshall was able to bring to bear the wealth of experience that he had acquired throughout his career. Specifically, Marshall had the sagacity to recognize that World War I was an anomaly, and that it was a mistake to base the Army’s professional education exclusively on this experience. By the time the American Expeditionary Forces had arrived in France, the war had long since settled into the stalemate of trench warfare. This static fighting involved artillery in huge masses, detailed intelligence, excellent maps, ample communications, and ready supply. Such circumstances led armies to employ elaborate planning procedures and assured that green troops inserted into the front could often afford to make mistakes without disaster.27 Marshall, however, believed that Army training and education should focus on surviving the first six months of the next war, where poor intelligence, bad maps, strange terrain, haste, and confusion would be the rule. This would be a war of movement, where brief, concise oral orders and not elaborate decision making and planning procedures would prevail.28
Upon his arrival at Benning, Marshall found that the instructors based their lectures on “elaborate Leavenworth training which was really based on static war.”29 Marshall quietly but firmly compelled the faculty to simplify everything—to base their instruction on the scenario of preparing a new Army for war and having little time in which to do it. The new course of instruction employed greatly simplified manuals and taught the student-officers how to make quick decisions with imperfect knowledge. Marshall ultimately forbade his instructors to use notes when they lectured, compelling the teachers themselves to demonstrate the qualities of brevity, conciseness, and simplicity that he wished to impart to the students. He himself frequently visited classes and field exercises, where he would unexpectedly interrupt the proceedings and have students make impromptu briefings on the tactical situation at hand, as a way of teaching them to think on their feet.30 Marshall encouraged the commandant of the Command and General Staff School at Leavenworth to undertake a comparable restructuring of the curriculum there: “I insist that we must get down to the essentials, make clear the real difficulties, and expunge the bunk, complications, and ponderosities…. We must develop a technique and methods so simple and so brief that the citizen officer of good common sense can readily grasp the idea.”31
To fully implement these reforms, Marshall brought to Benning what he later called “a very brilliant group of young officers” to serve on the faculty.32 This group included many names that would become well known in the next war: James A. Van Fleet, J. Lawton Collins, Charles L. Bolté, Joseph W. Stilwell, Edwin F. Harding, Omar Bradley, and Harold R. Bull.33
The five years that Marshall spent at Benning had a profound effect on the Army that would soon be fighting another world war. At any given time Marshall was actively molding the minds of sixty to eighty instructors and three hundred to five hundred students.34 By one estimate, some two hundred future general officers passed through the Infantry School on Marshall’s watch.35 Thus, the Army of World War II in large part embodied the philosophy and concepts that Marshall introduced at Benning.
The tour at Fort Benning brought another happy development into Marshall’s life. There he met Katherine Tupper Brown, a widow with three children, whom he married in 1930. By all accounts, Marshall was devoted to his new wife and fell readily into the role of stepfather, and their relationship proved to be a happy and rewarding one for all concerned.
In 1932 Marshall was assigned to command a battalion of the 8th Infantry at Fort Screven, Georgia, and in 1933 he was promoted to colonel and made the regimental commander of the 8th, which was headquartered at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina. In both these assignments he became intimately involved with one of the initiatives undertaken by the new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, to mitigate the effects of the Great Depression. This was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a program in which unemployed young men were brought together in camps and put to work on various public works projects, under the leadership and supervision of the Army. In the first three months of the program, 250,000 men were assembled in 1,468 camps.36 The demands of this massive new program brought to a sudden halt the normal garrison routine of the Army, as officers and NCOs went off to establish and supervise the camps. Many officers found CCC duty to be onerous and distasteful, but not Marshall. As colonel of the 8th Infantry, he found himself responsible for nineteen CCC camps scattered across the southeastern United States.37 He was prescient enough to see that the CCC experience gave the Regular Army a salutary lesson in the type of leadership that would be necessary in mobilizing an army of citizen-soldiers. He later observed, “I found the CCC the most instructive service I ever had, and the most interesting.”38
His next assignment was less happy. At the direction of the Army chief of staff, General Douglas MacArthur, Marshall was assigned to be the senior instructor for the 33rd Infantry Division, Illinois National Guard, and his place of duty was to be the city of Chicago. Marshall, who from childhood had loved the open countryside, chafed at his confinement in this urban setting. He also recognized that this assignment was a setback to his career, as it took him away from command yet again. Some commentators have asserted that this assignment reflected malice on the part of MacArthur, but this does not appear to be substantiated—Marshall clearly was the right man to get the faltering 33rd Infantry Division up to standard. Indeed, as Marshall himself had pointedly informed the War College in 1923, such assignments reflected the Regular Army’s key mission in peacetime. As MacArthur no doubt expected, Marshall brought to bear his considerable skills as a teacher and his insights into the abilities and special requirements of the part-time soldier. At the end of his tour, the 33rd Infantry Division was performing to standard.
Marshall’s reward was a promotion to the long-coveted rank of brigadier general in 1936 and assignment to command the 5th Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, at Vancouver Barracks in the state of Washington. For Marshall it was an ideal assignment—command of troops in a beautiful rural setting, responsibility for a number of CCC camps, and ample opportunities for outside recreation. His satisfaction was tempered by the realization, however, that his promotion to brigadier general had probably come too late for him to ever win a second star.39
Indeed, the next transfer took Marshall not to division command, but to yet another staff assignment, this time in the War Department in Washington, D.C., where in 1938 he became the assistant chief of staff, War Plans Division. Shortly thereafter he was elevated to the position of deputy chief of staff. In the latter capacity he became closely involved in laying the groundwork for mobilization in case of war, an eventuality that looked increasingly likely. Marshall’s skill in the ways of bureaucracy and politics proved crucial in this assignment, for the War Department was divided into factions—Secretary of War Harry Woodring was an isolationist, whereas Assistant Secretary of War Louis Johnson was an advocate of preparedness. Marshall had to thread his way carefully through this internecine dispute, as well
as another between advocates of airpower and those who sought a more conventional force.40
As deputy chief of staff, Marshall accompanied the chief of staff, General Malin C. Craig, to the White House for meetings with President Roosevelt. At one such meeting on November 14, 1938, Roosevelt proposed a rearmament plan that called for a massive buildup of airpower to the detriment of the ground army. Marshall himself favored a balanced buildup of all the arms. When Roosevelt asked Marshall for his opinion, Marshall replied, “Mr. President, I am sorry, but I don’t agree with you at all.”41 As had been the case when he confronted General Pershing twenty-one years earlier, Marshall escaped the encounter with his career intact—and perhaps even enhanced. Like Pershing, Roosevelt was able to accept candid observations even when they clashed with his own views.
Marshall had one last chance to attain the pinnacle of his profession. General Craig, the Army chief of staff, was due to retire in 1939. Marshall was a contender for the post but was by no means the leading candidate. He had never commanded a formation larger than brigade. Moreover, there were thirty-three generals senior to Marshall. All but four of these, however, were themselves scheduled to retire before they could complete the four-year term as chief of staff.42 The top contender was Major General Hugh A. Drum, who had been Marshall’s senior in World War I and had held commands at the division and corps levels.43 Like Marshall, he had remained a protégé of Pershing’s through the postwar years. Drum took advantage of his standing with Pershing and his many political connections to launch a large-scale publicity campaign in his quest to become chief of staff.
Marshall, on the other hand, dissuaded supporters who wished to lobby in his behalf: “My strength with the army has rested on the well known fact that I attended strictly to business and enlisted no influence of any sort at any time…. Therefore, it seems to me that at this time the complete absence of any publicity about me would be my greatest asset, particularly with the President.” He went on to add, “The National Guard knows me now. The Reserve Corps know me well. The ROTC people, including many college presidents, know me. And the Regular Army know me. It is not time for the public to be brought to a view of my picture.”44
In the end, Drum’s lobbying and publicity failed to impress Roosevelt, and it may well have actually hurt his cause. In any event, one day in the spring of 1939 Roosevelt summoned Marshall to the White House and informed him that he would be the next chief of staff. Marshall told the president that he reserved the right “to say what I think and it would often be unpleasing.”45 Roosevelt found this to be acceptable, and on April 27 he announced Marshall’s appointment. On July 1 Marshall assumed the position of acting chief of staff when General Craig departed on terminal leave.
The date of September 1, 1939, was a momentous one for George C. Marshall and, indeed, for the world. On that date the United States awoke to the news that Germany had invaded Poland, inaugurating World War II in Europe. Later that morning Marshall was promoted to the rank of major general, and shortly thereafter he was sworn in as the fifteenth Army chief of staff, an assignment that carried with it the temporary rank of four-star general. Both Marshall and the Army adjutant general, who administered the oath of office, wore civilian clothes, for Marshall did not want to have “a lot of uniforms plastered around Washington” in peacetime, and he encouraged officers in the War Department to do likewise.46 By noon that day Marshall was in the White House discussing the implications of the new war for the United States.
As chief of staff, Marshall wielded more power than any American officer before or since. Under Army regulations dated 1936, Marshall was both head of the General Staff in Washington and commander of all field forces, responsible for their training in peacetime and serving as expeditionary force commander in war, unless and until the president designated a separate combat commander.47 His authority extended over not only the ground forces, but also the Army Air Corps. Marshall reported directly to the secretary of War and, often, directly to the president.
George C. Marshall, chief of staff, 1940. (Library of Congress)
With the outbreak of war in Europe, and growing tensions in the Pacific, it was increasingly likely that the United States would eventually be embroiled in war. Marshall was absolutely determined that the Army and the nation not find themselves in a state of unpreparedness if and when that occurred. The task of mobilizing an army would be a monumental one, given the state of decrepitude into which the Army had fallen since the end of World War I. As a first step, President Roosevelt declared a state of “Limited National Emergency” on September 8, and he directed a modest expansion of all the military services. This was the first stage in a process that would increase the Army (including the Army Air Corps) from 190,000 officers and enlisted men on the day Marshall became chief of staff to a force of over 8 million by 1945. From the outset, Marshall was determined that the buildup would proceed methodically, step by step, rather than the “single plunge” that had characterized the mobilization for World War I.48 In the process, the politically astute Marshall took care not to invite accusations of warmongering, and to avoid swamping the small peacetime Army with excessively rapid growth and change.
In many ways the situation Marshall found himself in as chief of staff was analogous to that he had experienced in taking the incomplete and unprepared 1st Division to France in 1917: “There wasn’t anything. We had a terrible time getting ourselves together.”49 Fortunately, Marshall’s determination to expand methodically meshed with President Roosevelt’s intent to proceed cautiously in pursuing rearmament. Roosevelt was determined to follow, rather than lead, public opinion. He saw that he could garner more support for a military buildup (and for assistance to Britain) if he allowed events to precipitate action, rather than trying to whip up public opinion on his own.50 Perhaps Marshall’s greatest problem was that Roosevelt, Congress, and the public did not fully understand the need for conventional ground forces—Marshall found himself competing for resources with the Navy, Marshall’s own Air Corps, and Lend-Lease aid to Britain. In particular, he repeatedly had to deflect Roosevelt’s calls for a massive buildup of airpower without a commensurate increase of ground forces. Even so, he refused to force the president’s hand by going public with his case for ground troops, recognizing that he needed to retain the administration’s trust and confidence. Marshall said he “tried to do [his] convincing within that team.”51 He was, however, more than willing to speak bluntly to the president. In May 1940, when Roosevelt balked at sending a rather modest but essential appropriation request to Congress, Marshall told him pointedly that “you have got to do something and you’ve got to do it today…. I know you can get them to accept it. They can’t evade it.”52
American preparedness efforts received a major boost in June 1940 when Roosevelt appointed two Republicans, Henry L. Stimson and Franklin Knox, to be secretary of War and secretary of the Navy, respectively. Stimson’s long record of public service included previous appointments as secretary of War under William H. Taft and secretary of State in Herbert C. Hoover’s administration. He had served in World War I, attaining the rank of colonel in the American Expeditionary Forces, where Marshall and he had met. He shared Marshall’s attitude toward selfless public service. The two men developed a very close and highly effective relationship.
Marshall also developed a good reputation and healthy relationship with Congress. Thanks to his considerable experience as a staff officer, he was a talented briefer, thoroughly versed in his subject, and a candid, forceful, and succinct speaker. His lack of political affiliation promoted his image as an apolitical proponent of the nation’s best interests. Marshall’s efforts to build up the Army brought him before congressional committees five times between January and April 1940.53 Over the succeeding five months, he spent twenty-one days testifying before Congress.54
The floodgates of congressional appropriations broke open in May 1940, when the German military stunned the world with its rapid conquest of France. The F
rench Vichy government’s subsequent alignment with Nazi Germany suddenly opened the prospect of German forces occupying French holdings in Africa and perhaps even the Western Hemisphere. On May 29 Marshall testified in support of a $2.5 billion appropriation that equaled the total military expenditure of the preceding five years.55 A year later, in June 1941, Congress passed a record-breaking $9.8 billion appropriation that included a $25 million discretionary fund placed at the disposal of the chief of staff—a testament to the high regard in which Marshall was held.56 “For almost twenty years we had all of the time and almost none of the money,” he observed, “today we have all of the money and no time.”57
Given the new sense of urgency toward preparedness measures, in June 1941 Marshall for the first time spoke openly about the need for mobilizing the National Guard and implementing selective service. Marshall, long a proponent of universal military training, clearly favored the implementation of conscription before the nation’s declaration of war. He recognized, however, that an influx of draftees would inundate the small Regular Army and interrupt other modernization programs. Moreover, he was well aware of the widespread isolationist sentiment that would oppose such an unprecedented measure as peacetime conscription. Accordingly, Marshall himself declined to take the lead in the push for conscription, leaving it to preparedness-minded legislators to serve as the front men. He did, however, detail several officers from the War Department to assist in drafting the eventual legislation.58 Meanwhile, Marshall also supported a move to bring the National Guard on active duty, in large part because the understrength Guard units would serve as ready receptacles for an influx of draftees. Throughout, Marshall cast all this expansion in terms of hemispheric defense and not intervention in Europe. On August 27, 1940, a joint resolution of Congress authorized the federalization of the National Guard, and on September 16 President Roosevelt signed the nation’s first peacetime selective service bill. Marshall remarked, “The National Defense Act of 1920, the lesson of our lack of preparation in 1917 and 1918, is being put into effect in a progressive, businesslike manner.”59
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