Marshall had to be tough on brass to win WWII
Army Chief of Staff and Uniontown native George C. Marshall didn’t brook excuses, especially excuses lodged by other generals.
In the weeks and months before Japanese planes launched the United States into World War II, Marshall fired at least 600 top Army officers who, he judged, were too old, too timid, too set in their ways to succeed in the rigors of modern warfare.
It pained Marshall to oust so many people, including a great many long-time friends and colleagues. But he did what needed to be done. His first obligation was not to the Army’s officer corps, as Thomas E. Ricks states in his compelling 2012 book, “The Generals” (not to be confused with a book by Winston Groom with the same title released just weeks ago, featuring Marshall on its cover).
Marshall reckoned that he owed allegiance to the ordinary GIs who bore the brunt of battle; to his boss, the president of the United States; and finally, and most importantly, to the nation they all served.
Marshall was not a sentimental man. He did not coddle officers of high rank. Ricks tells of the dismissal of Gen. Charles Bundel, in charge of Fort Leavenworth in those pre-war years.
“Bundel … told Marshall that updating the complete set of Army training manuals would take 18 months,” Ricks writes. “Marshall offered him three months to do the job.” Bundle said it couldn’t be done, not even in four months. Marshall warned the general to reconsider. Bundle said it couldn’t be done. “I’m sorry, then you are relieved,” Marshall said on the spot.
“By God, (Marshall) just took them and threw them out,” Dwight Eisenhower commented “… He got them out of the way.”
“The corollary to swift relief,” Ricks explains, “is rapid advancement.”
“I was the youngest of the people that he pushed up into very high places,” said Eisenhower, a colonel at the start of the war.
Ike, of course, became supreme allied commander in Europe and eventually the president of the United States.
Goodness knows, how long it would have taken to win World War II in the absence of Marshall’s unsentimental approach to command. How many more dead Americans might there have been without his ruthless weeding out of incompetents, both before the fighting began and after the U.S. was fully engaged?
As Ricks makes clear, Marshall’s example is remarkable precisely because the notable tradition of the Army policing its own ranks came screeching to a halt post-World War II.
The firings and demotions that did take place were all conducted at the very highest level, and they were singular in nature: Gen. MacArthur by President Truman, Gen. Westmoreland by LBJ, Gen. McChrystal by Barack Obama.
According to Ricks, there is little doubt as to why the U.S. has failed to put away any of the enemies it has engaged since World War II: not the Chinese and the North Koreans, not the Vietnamese, not the Iraqis or the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The problem is poor generalship — generals who time and again fail to understand the enemy and the war they are fighting.
Ricks blames the Army’s buddy system — a system that protects and promotes not brilliance but mediocrity. In today’s Army, leadership devolves on those who wait their turn.
It’s a far cry from the system Marshal instituted during the Second World War when swift dismissals and swift promotions were the order of the day.
As Ricks summarized in a 2010 column, “In World War II, a front-line officer either succeeded, became a casualty, or was relieved within a few months — or in some cases, within days.”
This just does not happen today, according to Ricks.
In light of all this, one wonders about the advice President Obama is hearing from the brass on the ways and means of defeating ISIS. Can the generals be trusted to know what they’re talking about?
And it’s more than a little worrisome to hear presidents and candidates for president say, as Jeb Bush recently did, “I will listen to our military leaders” when considering a way forward in the Middle East.
Listen? Sure. But act on? The recent record is not good.
“The American ground force today is a long way from being George Marshall’s Army,” Ricks relates. “… What would (he) do if he could come back and fix things?”
With Gen. Marshall in his grave at Arlington National Cemetery for nearly 60 years now, the best we can do is to consult the historical record. We can surmise that he would with cool demeanor systematically, thoroughly, quickly, and forthrightly undertake to repair the damage.
As he told a Uniontown audience in 1939, at the start of the European phase of World War II, time was not on our side, but a start had to be made.
More than anything, Marshall said, “we … must not be misled” or fall prey to “emotionalism.”
And, oh yes, he would fire some generals and promote others, until he found officers who could get the job done.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — “Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation” and “Our People.” He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com.