General Douglas MacArthur is somewhat of a problem for American historiography, being rated by many as one of the great geniuses of the American military, but being accepted by most as a vainglorious megalomaniac, whose belated sacking was the only possible solution to his rampant disdain for his elected masters. As usual, the reality is somewhere between.
Douglas MacArthur was from an American military family that had done much to expand the American empire. His father was a General, and an important figure in the conquest of the Philippines (he was briefly Governor-General), and in beating their independence movement into submission. MacArthur senior was one of the wave of American imperialists who incorporated Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, the Philippines, and selected parts of central America and the Chinese coast, into the American imperial expansion, after they had run out of territory to ‘liberate’ from the American Indians. Douglas MacArthur's early life experience was little different to that of the son of a British General or Governor in India or Africa.
MacArthur knew that he was born to rule, and born to greatness. Part of the reason he knew this, was that his mother repeatedly told him so. In fact when he went to West Point, she moved into an apartment nearby to supervise, and spent the next decades harassing every public officials she could think of to improve his chances of recognition and promotion.
A good Sample of MacArthur’s attitude to the world is taken from his early attempt to win himself a Congressional Medal of Honour. As a minor liaison in one of the repeated American interventions in Central American affairs - at Vera Cruz - he recommended himself for the medal on the basis of an incredible sounding adventure he had undertaken supposedly for useful military purpose (and without orders or permission). The mythology of this rampage through enemy territory on a hand pumped rail cars, while single-handedly shooting it out and emerging victorious from several conflicts, has been uncritically accepted by far too many people. Historian Jack Galloway, writing a book about the relationship between McArthur and his senior Australian commander General Blamey during the Second World War (The Odd Couple: Blamey and MacArthur at War), employed professional athletes to try and attempt a similar feat with a hand cart to the one MacArthur claimed. They found the whole thing impossible, and concluded that the story was at least partially, if not completely, fantasy.
MacArthur posed with his Great War troops very efficiently, and apparently led them with actual elan. The very flamboyant troop leader apparently inspired his men, and achieved fairly significant results. They were not significant enough to impress General Pershing, who refused to add his name to the list of those to be promoted Brigadier, and was seemingly appalled and disgusted when MacArthur’s mother apparently managed to influence the promotion anyway and wrote him a thankyou letter for the supposed recommendation. (He was only given a brigade the day before the Armistice, and ran it for a mere 10 days after fighting ceased.)
MacArthur rose to the position of Chief of Staff of the army in the 1930s, but failed to impress many in the political establishment with his suitability for the role. His use of troops during Washington protests was not well received, and his attempt to sue journalists for libel fell apart when they threatened to call his Eurasian mistress as a witness. He had to pay the costs. (He was already divorced for 'failing to provide'.) He was soon moved on by a very unimpressed Roosevelt administration, and gratefully took up the opportunity to become the military leader of the national forces of the Philippines. (The Philippines in the 1930’s had its own parliament within the US Empire while training to get full independence later – this makes it approximately the equivalent of India in the British Empire at the same time). He did of course demand rank that he felt suitable to his noble character. For several years, he was able to flaunt the rank and title of Field Marshal, despite the fact that Philippine forces would have been hard put to assemble more than a few very weak divisions. At the start he was still being paid as a Major General in the US Army as well, but they retired him in 1937.
He may well have faded from history, as a colourful if unreliable junior officer whose delusions of grandeur had grown too great, except the intervention of World War Two in the Far East. Even then, he should have been quickly discarded into the waste bin of history, had only his own actions being taken into account. His grandiose plans to defend the Philippines on a broad front, fell apart completely. His air force was destroyed on the ground, despite the clear warnings that have been sent to him after Pearl Harbor. His troops collapsed in the field, and only a portion of them made it through a retreat to a small, fortified peninsula, called Bataan. Frankly, they only held out on this peninsula, and on the nearby fortified island of Corregidor, for as long as they did because they were of no threat at all to the Japanese expansion, and they were left to rot on the vine while the assault troops took care of the more urgent matters in the Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, the Pacific Islands, Burma, and New Guinea. When the Japanese could finally spare the attention for a serious assault, the position crumbled quite quickly.
This ignominious failure in the field was frankly a far worse performance than that of the various other military leaders whose careers did not survive the disasters. Lord Gort’s handling of the British expeditionary Force in France, General Percival’s failures in Malaya, General Fredendall in North Africa, and Gen Lucas in Italy, all failed less disastrously than MacArthur. And he failed in the one place where he had years to prepare his troops and his strategy. The man should have been cashiered, and never seen leading troops ever again. Instead he finally got his Congressional Medal of Honor.
What saved MacArthur was his unrivalled ability with propaganda. He far surpassed his nearest allied military rivals General’s Patton and Montgomery. In fact he could be more closely compared to Joseph Goebbels, both in ability, and in veracity. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin would have acknowledged their equals in the ability to tell a big lie. The lengths his propaganda team went to put his earlier fantasies to the pale. The American public were bombarded with stories about valiant defenders, and glorious victories. Not only were the Japanese dying in their thousands, and being shot out of the sky, but their battleships were being sunk apparently at will by MacArthur’s vastly outnumbered but indomitable forces. For an American public receiving a steady diet of failure and disaster in the Pacific and Atlantic, MacArthur was presented as a shining beacon of steadfast endurance and indomitable will. What a crock. His troops referred to him as 'Dugout Doug'.
Nonetheless he managed to pitch himself in such a way that his surrender would have been a disaster to American morale. MacArthurs name was trumpeted, by a politically partisan Republican press as much as by his own HQ bootlickers, as the most heroic individual since David faced Goliath. Unlike his own field commander Gen Wainright, or Gen Perceval in Malaya, there was no chance that McArthur would go down with the ship. Other generals might go into captivity with their men, but McArthur, or at least the myth of MacArthur, had to escape. His American superiors ordered him to Australia.
There was a problem in this for President Roosevelt and General Marshall. MacArthur’s popularity was so great, that there was a serious move in Congress to bring him back to America and put him in command of all American armed forces. This was theoretically the position that the President was supposed to hold in the American system, and would definitely have outranked the far junior Chief of Army Staff Marshall. Neither regarded McArthur with anything more than disdain, both considered he had failed dismally in the Phillipines, and both needed him as far away as possible. Fortunately for them, an inexperienced and panicky Australian government under Prime Minister John Curtin appealed for American aid. Not being able to send much of any use at the time, and not believing that Australia was facing much of a genuine threat, Roosevelt and Marshall were pleased to offer them MacArthur instead. Like the equally difficult Joseph Stillwell (on whom another post later), it would be a pleasure to have such a loose cannon as far away as possible. Meanwhile the Curtin government was happy to accept him, as they viewed him as a convenient “suction pump” for reinforcements.
MacArthur’s relationship with his Australian ‘allies’ has filled many books on its own. He quickly had the Australian government so trained to heel that it completely ignored the advice of its own military (even those generals who had fought successfully against the Nazi’s in North Africa were treated as unimportant by a government busy fawning over a man clearly more gifted at propaganda than leading troops). MacArthur even managed to get his supposed ‘Ground Forces Commander’ – the Australian Blamey – despatched to isolation at the front. (Curtin later admitted that in his ignorance he had not realized that the commander of the national military forces cannot afford to be supervising a brigade on the front line.) MacArthur then refused to have an integrated HQ, insisted on all divisional heads being from his 'Bataan Gang', and manipulated deployments to ensure that Americans would never fight under Australian command.
MacArthur worked out fairly quickly that he had been expelled to a backwater, and attempted to fight back against his superiors (alwys a far more worrisome enemy to Doug than the Japs). With hardly any American troops available (except for a single division not suitable for front-line service), he was fortunate to discover that the Australian Army was more than capable of winning battles. For the next two years he was to build his reputation as the person fighting hardest against the Japanese on the abilities of these troops who he refused to acknowledge. Buna, Gona, Nadzab, Lae, Salamis and Finsdschafen were the Australian victories that made him a winner again. To the Australian soldiers in the field, the code became very clear. Any radio announcement that said ‘American troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur’ meant just that. However far more common was the line ‘Allied troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur’, which actually meant Australians. Not that this attitude was restricted to his allies. A good example of how MacArthur treated his own officers was when he offered one of his American generals (Eichelberger) that if he won a very dicey situation, McArthur would actually go to the extent of releasing his name to the press! This was the highest honour MacArthur could conceive, and reveals what lack of recognition those who served under him would usually receive.
Much is made, by the ignorant, of MacArthur’s achievements at this stage. Much is ignored about use inability to understand the situation, or to make allowances for what was actually happening on the ground. The dreadful hand-to-hand fighting across the Stanley range in New Guinea saw helpful comments from his headquarters about blowing up the passes with dynamite. Considering that this was terrain where soldiers had to crawl on their hands and knees, the fact that neither he nor any of his headquarters lackeys actually went to have a look is damning. (Note: Blamey, also fighting for his political life, committed the same solecism.) MacArthur also repeatedly boasted that could he get American troops onto the ground, their natural superiority would give them easy victory over the Japanese. Inevitably, the green American troops who eventually arrived ground to a halt quickly, and had to be rescued by the more experienced Australians.
MacArthur is given great credit for what is called the ‘island hopping’ campaign. This did in fact bypass various Japanese garrisons on the way back to Japan. It was not actually his idea, as his early plans clearly reveal that he planned to slog past each garrison. Fortunately a lack of resources, particularly shipping, means that more intelligent planners suggested a better alternative, and he was happy to take credit for it. The bypassed Japanese garrisons, with virtually no logistical support and no transport, could be happily left to rot on the vine (in the same way his own troops had been at Bataan and Corregidor). In fact many of them were reduced to spending their available time trying to farm to support their own needs, and played no further role in the war. MacArthur did have the sense to follow this advice, and was a big enough media presence to act as the suction pump necessary to make it possible. So certainly he influenced developments. This is a long way from crediting him with any brilliance.
The re-conquest of the Philippines was not on the agenda for the United States Chiefs of Staff. Their preferred option was to bypass the place, and head on to the island of Formosa (Taiwan). They considered this not only a superior island hopping strategy, and one that would get them closer to Japan, but also a lethal blow to Japanese shipping routes, and a brilliant opportunity to reopen the supply lines to China. MacArthur of course, had promised to return to the Philippines. In the end, his perspective would win out. This is the single most impressive result of his propaganda campaign over several years.
Interestingly, it is here that I actually identify signs of the superior strategic and geopolitical ability in MacArthur. The plans of the United States Chiefs of staff were the simplistic straight-line approach that they wanted to use in Europe. They were paying no attention to the political effects of cleaning up the mess, and re-establishing stable government in the areas that needed liberation. Field Marshal Alan Brooke, the British Chief Imperial General Staff, mentions several times in the course of his diaries about the war that he wished he had been dealing with MacArthur in Washington instead. He recognized some of MacArthur’s weaknesses, but held that he was the only one of the senior Americans who had a clear strategic understanding. It would be fair to suggest that had McArthur been in Marshall’s position, the Allies would have a least liberated Czechoslovakia and as many of the other East European capitals as they could at the end of the war, rather than handing them over to the Soviets in the good-natured stupidity of ignorance that saw Eisenhower refuse to make any efforts whatsoever. MacArthur’s presence in Washington would have made any post-war entente a much different thing.
The liberation of the Philippines did for American prestige, what the failure to liberate Malaya didn’t do for British prestige. The Americans were restored after the ignominious defeats. (It is interesting to note that a British fleet was circling off the coast of Malaya even before the Japanese surrendered, but that it could not invade because McArthur was still technically responsible for Malaya. The plan was that he was to hand this responsibility over to Mountbatten, but he managed to put this off until the chance for the British to regain their prestige had been lost. I would suggest that this may be another example of MacArthur’s conscious geopolitical planning.)
MacArthur had been so successful at setting himself up as the great hero that he was to be the one who would be given the opportunity to command of the invasion of Japan. Fortunately for the troops under his command, that never happened. MacArthur had never been a very good at commanding troops on the ground, and had relied on subordinate generals to take care of that minor detail for him. It is horrible to imagine what might have happened had he actually supervised personally. There is no recognizable tactical flair to his handling of larger forces, and his handling of his subordinates had always been miserable.
Instead, a President who despised him (and feared him as a potential Presidential challenger) and a Chief of Staff who wanted him as far away as possible, agreed to make MacArthur de facto dictator of a defeated Japan. And here, the entire world can be grateful that this man was given the position rather than the more the geopolitically ignorant American commanders who predominated in the European, African, Asian and Pacific theatres. Here, finally, there was a genuine advantage to MacArthurs refusal to ignore the orders from those in Washington who he considered to be ignorant buffoon’s. (Such as the Presidents he served under.)
McArthur, whose childhood had seen him inhale the principles of imperial government at the feet of a colonial administrator - his father - was the ideal person to administer post-war Japan. He completely ignored all the stupid instructions about degrading the Emperor (which would only lead to trouble), or about setting up a republic rather than a constitutional monarchy. He was very well aware that if he wanted a quiet and peaceful administration, American imperial arrogance was not the way to go. (The State Department later admitted that the only thing they could think of which might punish him for completely ignoring them was to cut off his access to the press!) Possibly, his understanding of history was great enough that he realized that the entire problem with the post Great War peace Treaty at Versailles was that this sort of ignorant idealism had guaranteed future problems. Instead, MacArthur played the pragmatist, and can be given almost sole credit to the magnificent Japanese miracle that followed.
Unfortunately for him, MacArthur now believed his own press. When a new crisis arose in Korea, MacArthur knew he was the man to handle it. He managed to assemble enough troops to mount a successful amphibious operation at Inchon to restore the situation, and he and his commanders had enough experience to know that you bypass the front lines and cut the lines of supply. Finally he was demonstrating the skills that would make a useful front-line general. By contrast however, his self-righteous nobility now meant that he felt it unnecessary to pay any attention to the inferior sheep trying to limit his vision. He ignored all instruction from his military superiors, and treated the orders of his President with contempt. There was no choice but to sack him before he started a Third World War. Truman said, “I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son-of-a-bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three quarters of them would be in jail.” Bradley (now Chief of Staff - I will do a post on him later) just called him a megalomaniac.
This then is the challenge of analyzing MacArthur. He was a pompous bastard to his troops and to his subordinate generals, and an insubordinate self-righteous arrogant insufferable pain-in-the-arse to his superiors. He was a complete and utter failure as commander of the Phillipines national defences, and an appalling disaster as a manager of allies. He failed whenever he came near a battlefield, and succeeded only when good generals won battles for him - in which case he treated them and their men with contempt and refused to acknowledge them. (When Eichelberger's staff tried to recommend him for a Medal of Honor it was no surprise that MacArthur refused.) It is not possible to imagine any front line soldier in possession of the facts ever desiring to serve under such a person.
On the other hand, he was the closest thing to a strategic thinker that the Americans possessed, and his geopolitical knowledge and understanding during the war possibly came second only to Churchill (certainly above that of the arch manipulator Stalin). Although he was a disaster in direct command, he almost certainly had the ability to organize the actual outcome of the war from a Washington desk far better than did Marshall or Roosevelt. There can be absolutely no shadow of a doubt that some of the ancient European capitals that Marshall and Eisenhower happily left to the tender mercies of the Soviets would have been on the NATO side of the Iron Curtain had MacArthur been in Washington. Perhaps his megalomania would have got him into trouble here to, but the fundamental clarity of his vision at this level could hardly have caused bigger post-war issues than the mess but was actually delivered. Probably Roosevelt or Truman would have found it necessary to sack him anyway, but certainly it would have been an interesting ride.
But the vital point is his attitude to defeated nations, and his brilliance at converting them too loyal allies. Only the very best military leaders in history have been able to achieve this successfully. Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, the Dukes of Marlborough and Wellington, and very few others. The whole world should be grateful that it was Douglas MacArthur, an American not caught up by the fantasy of American democracy, who converted one of the oldest and proudest imperial states into a modern and loyal constitutional monarchy. For that, and that alone, it is almost possible to forgive the rest of the MacArthur myth, and accept him as one of the great captains of history.
The reality though, this is not the stuff of great generals. MacArthur was a brilliant imperial administrator and Governor, with great practical insight and vision when it came to dealing with defeated states on fair terms. But it is not possible to call him a good general.
Showing posts with label not a good general. Show all posts
Showing posts with label not a good general. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Rating General Marshall
General George Catlett Marshall was the US Army Chief of Staff from the day Hitler invaded Poland to the end of World War Two. He followed that with stints as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defence, which gave him at least equal public recognition, and, in the case of the Marshall Plan for economic aid to postwar Europe, possibly greater acclaim. But he never commanded a single soldier in combat. So can he be a great general?
Marshall was from an old Virginian family that considered itself middle class. He graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1901. He had postings around the US and the Philippines until sent to France in 1917, where he was a planner for both training and operations. He moved to Pershing’s headquarters to plan operations, including the Meuse-Argonne offensive, and develop an intimate relationship with the army’s demigod that was to help propel him to a rank partly invented for him. (One of the reasons the Americans adopted the term ‘General of the Army’ instead of using the universally accepted term, was because they didn’t want their first five star army officer to be called Field-Marshall Marshall.)
He switched between staff appointments and commanding barracks – usually for training commands - for most of the interwar period, but was jumped from a one star Brigadier to a four star General between June 30 and September 1 1939 (July and August were spent as a two star Major-General), to take over as Army Chief of Staff. This sort of promotion is unheard of in most other peacetime armies, and presumably either reflected superhuman abilities, or the right connections. Various biographers have suggested either alternative, with some suggesting it needed both.
As a result he was the only Allied Chief of Staff to hold office not just for the period that the US was in the Second World War, but for its entire length. Some of his biographers have used this to claim that he was therefore a greatly superior and greatly more experienced military leader than any of the others members of the CCOS. (Forest Pogue in his magisterial book Organizer of Victory – based on the title Churchill assigned to Marshall – said: “1943… Marshall was more than ever the pre-eminent figure on the military scene both at home and abroad… fast becoming first among equals in… CCOS meetings… the only one of the CCOS to have held his position since the day war in Europe began… more experience than any other military leader in finding resources for his own forces and America’s allies, for dealing with members of Congress, the President, and the general public.
This is an interesting interpretation of what makes a great general when compared to someone like the British CIGS Alan Brooke, who successfully commanded both corps and armies in battle, and army groups in the front line facing invasion, before becoming the professional head of the wartime service, where all but his worst enemies admired his undoubted abilities. I have always wondered what qualities of generalship some biographers put above practical experience in leading troops in combat? Indeed Marshall was certainly the most experienced Bureaucrat of the CCOS (possibly explaining why he got on so well with the equally bureaucratic Field Marshal Dill), but the pre-eminent ‘General’? Not as I understand the term.
So let us analyse the parts of his generalship.
He never led troops in battle, so there is considerable difficulty assessing his abilities compared to others in many regards. But some things can be said.
Personally he was a picture of Robustness for a staff officer, though he never had the stress of field operations. He was an immensely impressive Character, though he never had the chance to demonstrate whether he would be able to inspire troops at the front. He had considerable Humanity, though many would argue that his treatment of individual soldiers as simply replacement parts of a complex machine was not something to be proud of. He had great Spirit, but again never the chance to demonstrate he could infuse it into his troops. All these things appear positive, if un-measurable in combat.
Now for the negatives.
We can judge his Common Sense by what he tried to achieve, and how he responded to failure. Many of the training systems this so-called ‘training-expert’ set up, particularly the Individual Replacement System, were quite disastrous. His refusal to change the system cannot be considered a positive. When Brooke complained in North Africa of the inadequate training of American troops, particularly replacements, Marshall’s frustrated response was “at least they learn”, which was missing the point that the untrained replacements died in vast numbers through not getting a chance to learn. By the end of the war many American units were a weakened conglomeration of tired experienced survivors who were close to breaking (if not actively deserted in their tens of thousands), mixed in with constant levies of poorly trained cannon fodder with a very short life expectancy – often only two or three days. Most of the failures of the common soldier in the American Army in the Second World War can be traced directly to this system.
His ability as a Mentor is also deeply questionable. He managed to pick at least as many failures as successes amongst the generals he appointed to high office, with particular examples like Fredendall (of whom he said “One of the best”… “I like that man, you can see determination all over his face”…); and Lucas, failing miserably in battle. Many of his other choices were highly questionable (Clark and Hodges will be other posts), and some like Lee (Eisenhower’s logistics commander in France and another post), were indefensible. He, like Auchinleck, showed a distressing willingness to stick by proven failures, and to refuse to dismiss them no matter what. At the very best he was only average in this category.
Because he never led troops, ever, his Operational abilities can only be judged on what we can gather from his suggestions and orders to others. What they reveal is a man too far removed from the realities of the front line.
Planning, like training, was supposed to be a specialty of Marshall’s, and indeed here he deserves the greatest praise. He converted an army of a few hundred thousand into a force of 8 million, and more or less made it work. Unfortunately the bureaucratic achievement is somewhat undermined by the practical results. The plan had been for over 200 divisions, not the 90 he finished with. The plan had been for a brilliant inter-operability of troops, not the frantic conversions to plug gaps that became necessary in France. The plan had been for the best equipment, not to make the barely adequate stuff available in 1942 (tanks and anti-tank guns spring to mind here) hang on in service until it was completely outclassed. The plan was to create an unsurpassed military force, not a barely average one reliant on willingness to take almost unlimited casualties to make gains. As a mastermind of expansion, Marshall was excellent: but the devil is in the detail, and the detail looks decidedly less impressive.
Logistics is an area where Americans pride themselves. Pity Marshall never understood it very well. Not in terms of producing the correct equipment, and not in terms of improving the speed and reliability of its transport. Certainly he (and Roosevelt) created vast quantities of materials, but a surprising amount of American production was obsolete even as it was being produced. The British had an excuse for continuing to produce 2 pounder anti-tank guns instead of the 6 pounder replacements they knew were needed in 1940 and 1941… they were facing imminent invasion. The Americans had no excuse for producing tens of thousands of outdated tanks and aircraft in 1943, and 1944, which just went into storage. The P39 Airocobra for instance, supposedly an air superiority fighter, had been declared obsolete by the British for European operations even before Pearl Harbour, and thereafter was used in Europe largely as ground attack aircraft by minor allies like co-belligerent Italy, Poland and even Portugal. It was nonetheless kept in production until July 1944, with a large number of the planes produced being crated and stored (though about a third went to the Russians who actually had a combat environment that suited them). Certainly GI’s watching ‘Tommy-Cooker’ British Sherman’s - at least equipped with 17 pounders that could stop any German tank - had reason to wonder why they were still using ‘Ronson-lighter’ Sherman’s, with short barreled 75mm guns that fired shells that bounced off. Marshall got a huge force into action with a lot of equipment. Pity so much of the force and the equipment was sub-standard.
More importantly Marshall never really understood the significance of opening the Mediterranean, no matter how often the shipping figures were shown to him. This theoretically could be considered a single minded, if misguided, pursuit of the most direct approach to attacking Germany from Britain: until one remembers that he was just as keen on getting supplies to China along the most lengthy and difficult supply line in the world. The lack of consistency implies that this was another area he failed to understand very well.
Topography and Movement. Again, the American military is very big on map-reading. Marshall was very big on it himself, and rightly pointed out that mountainous Italy was hardly a ‘soft underbelly’. (Though Churchill of course meant politically not geographically.) Yet his other efforts at long distance map reading from Washington are somewhat dubious. He was against British plans to invade North Africa through ports further into the Med because he preferred the ‘safer’ Atlantic Coast. (Luckily the normal swell which would have ruined the Morroccan attack was quite that particular day). Why he felt that troops who needed the ‘safety’ of distance from the Axis in North Africa, would be better suited to a head on attack on veteran German forces in France, is a mystery. Yet in both North Africa and France he then planned nice straight lines of attack in complete disregard of terrain. He argued against a campaign in mountainous northern Italy, and then supported Eisenhower’s plan to advance into the forests and mountains of Southern Germany instead of along the North Sea coastal plain. Then consider his favoured ‘hump’ route for supplies to China. There is little to demonstrate that he had above average understanding of topography or movement.
Tactics. Again, Marshall never commanded troops in battle, but he did suggest lots of ideas to his field commanders, so we can get some idea of his grasp of tactics. The best revelations are probably in the book ‘Dear General’ which runs through Eisenhower’s correspondence with his mentor. The editor himself comments that Eisenhower starts as a supplicant, but gradually grows more willing to argue with his mentor. By the end there is a feeling of exasperation from Ike when Marshall suggests clearly ridiculous things like dropping an airborne corps into France far from the chance of possible relief. Combined with his clear failure to understand the problems of invasions, we cannot rate Marshall’s tactical understanding very high.
Combined Operations are actually a particular problem for Marshall. The great proponent of an invasion in 1942 or 1943 admits in1944 that apparently a worldwide lack of Landing Ship - Tanks might be an issue (while commenting that he had hardly heard of the things a year ago).
Marshall scores somewhat better in Command abilities, but again there is always the suggestion that his Olympian perspective from Washington is far too remote from the realities at the front. He was a firm believer in good clear instructions, and his Clarity can only be admired when it comes to administrative matters. (When it comes to what he would like to happen on the battlefield however, some of his more optimistic orders to Eisenhower and Stillwell sound about as convincing as Hitler’s orders to von Paulus at Stalingrad.)
He was excellent at Delegation within the Pentagon, and no underling ever doubted that attempting to stretch or thwart his orders would bring down the wrath of God. Good people were encouraged, bad disciplined. But again there are questionable examples such as letting his administrative generals get away with unsavoury behaviour like bugging British officers they didn’t like. More worryingly, it is clear that he let distance affect his control. Again, it is unlikely General ‘Jesus-Christ-Himself’ Lee would have got away with a quarter of what he did in France if Marshall had been close enough to see what was happening. In fact this is the most concerning part of his delegation. Why didn’t any of his own people, in his own hierarchy, tell him what was going on. Or why did he ignore any who did? How much did he ignore feedback that didn’t meet his preconceptions?
There is no doubt that Marshall was excellent at relations with his political master, as long as you only include Roosevelt on that list. It is not clear that he ever understood that in the sort of coalition he was in, the political masters of the CCOS included the Prime Minister of the equal partner. (Having said that, Dill was better at relations with Roosevelt than with Churchill too: but then Roosevelt rarely actually consulted or really listened the way Churchill interacted with his generals.)
Marcshall also tried quite hard to be good at Relations with allies and other services. Certainly he was outstandingly superior to Admiral King in this regard, though the somewhat junior Chief of the Army Air Force, General Arnold, was even better. Yet he expressed constant frustration with others - British, French, Poles, even Canadians - for not seeing things his way. Eventually he let this frustration overflow into ignoring requests that he didn’t feel were important, and encouraging Eisenhower and MacArthur to do as they saw fit regardless of the opinions of his fellow CCOS, or of their host governments.
Perhaps this would have been reasonable, had Marshall demonstrated that his Strategic sense was superior to that of his Allies. But he never showed much in the way of ability in this regard. His frustration with his allies came down to the fact that he simply wanted to invade Germany by the shortest route as quickly as possible. He wanted to hit the northern French beaches in 1942, or at least 1943, and always believed that anything else was a frustrating diversion. He never agreed with clearing North Africa first. He never desired to go to the effort of knocking Italy (and her large army and navy) out of the war. He never understood the implications of clearing the Mediterranean on Allied shipping and troop movements. He never believed that there was any need to tie down dozens of good German divisions in Italy, the Balkans and Southern France. He never understood that Allies arriving over beaches in France could not possibly build up faster than Germans arriving by train (unless the German army was weakened and their communications shattered – something certainly beyond Allied ability in 1942 and probably also in 1943). He never agreed that American troops might need a little battle hardening in nice remote locations like North Africa or Sicily or Italy before facing the Germans in an attempted rampage across northern France. He never acknowledged the many failures of these troops (and some of his handpicked generals) in North Africa and Italy. He never even recognized that he simply was not sending enough troops towards Europe fast enough to make an earlier invasion anything but an assault against superior numbers. (Though he contributed to this by his constant collusion with King that if France was not going to be invaded right now, they could put off new forces so they could do more in the Pacific.) He supported Eisenhower’s ‘broad front’ strategy in France, even after the German army collapsed and a Blitzkrieg was a genuine alternative.
He believed in the value of the Chinese, regardless of all evidence. He trusted the Russians, regardless of all evidence. He opposed Churchill’s first attempt to save the Greek islands, and was unhappy about the second, successful attempt, to save Greece itself from the communists. He agreed with Eisenhower’s decision not to advance to Berlin, or even into Czechoslovakia. He supported the planned invasion of Japan even though he knew that the Japanese wanted to surrender. He agreed to the decision to drop the Atomic bombs, possibly mainly because he had finally realized that the Russians were untrustworthy.
Here we overlap into the realm of Geopolitics, and this is definitely one of Marshall’s weak areas. He apparently believed wars were for military victory, not to achieve political goals. He seemed to honestly think that once the enemies were defeated, the Allies would have a nice chat and agree to things. He was dragged kicking and screaming behind British moves to save Greece and Trieste and Denmark, and managed to prevent them saving Czechoslovakia. He then went to post war China and almost single handedly (according to McCarthy and even – much to Marshall’s shock - Eisenhower), handed over China to the Communists – leading to a domino chain in North Korea, Vietnam and Burma, and a long civil war in Malaya. In fact Marshall’s contribution to the postwar strategic situation was more to provide a firm foundation for the Cold War, rather than to contribute to a new Golden Age. That is as true when he was Secretary of State or Secretary of Defence as when he was COS.
The summary of all this would suggest that Marshall was a good administrator, but not a good general. I suppose it is possible that had he remained a two star and commanded a division or corps early in the war before progressing to three star - preferably under a particularly good mentor - he might have developed into a reasonable army commander, but this seems doubtful. He simply lacked Operational skills across the board. He certainly failed to understand equipment requirements. His correct place was certainly as a staff officer, and here he was certainly one of the best of the war. The mistake (common to most armies) was in thinking that a good staff officer makes a good executive commander. (See Churchill appointing Dill, Dill appointing Percival, Canadian PM King appointing Crerar, Stalin appointing Voroshilov, or Togo appointing Mutaguchi.)
Marshall was an impressive man of great character, but probably lacked the skills to have made a good frontline leader. He was a brilliant administrator and bureaucrat, possibly the ideal person to expand an army: but not a good CIC, and certainly needed someone to over-rule his stubbornness on such disastrous decisions as the Individual Replacement System and mass production of outdated equipment. He was a very poor choice to help design global strategy, and Brooke was probably right to wish he had the vainglorious MacArthur (who he considered to be both strategically and geopolitically excellent) in Washington instead. Marshall’s limited military viewpoint missed the whole point of why nations fight wars, with dire consequences for future generations.
In summary Marshall is in the same category as Dill. A great man, a noble man, a brave man, but completely out of his depth in the wrong job. Marshall, as the strategic voice of the United States, failed completely either to shorten the war (his personal goal), or to leave the world better placed for peace afterwards (the goal of a truly professional national military commander).
Marshall was from an old Virginian family that considered itself middle class. He graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1901. He had postings around the US and the Philippines until sent to France in 1917, where he was a planner for both training and operations. He moved to Pershing’s headquarters to plan operations, including the Meuse-Argonne offensive, and develop an intimate relationship with the army’s demigod that was to help propel him to a rank partly invented for him. (One of the reasons the Americans adopted the term ‘General of the Army’ instead of using the universally accepted term, was because they didn’t want their first five star army officer to be called Field-Marshall Marshall.)
He switched between staff appointments and commanding barracks – usually for training commands - for most of the interwar period, but was jumped from a one star Brigadier to a four star General between June 30 and September 1 1939 (July and August were spent as a two star Major-General), to take over as Army Chief of Staff. This sort of promotion is unheard of in most other peacetime armies, and presumably either reflected superhuman abilities, or the right connections. Various biographers have suggested either alternative, with some suggesting it needed both.
As a result he was the only Allied Chief of Staff to hold office not just for the period that the US was in the Second World War, but for its entire length. Some of his biographers have used this to claim that he was therefore a greatly superior and greatly more experienced military leader than any of the others members of the CCOS. (Forest Pogue in his magisterial book Organizer of Victory – based on the title Churchill assigned to Marshall – said: “1943… Marshall was more than ever the pre-eminent figure on the military scene both at home and abroad… fast becoming first among equals in… CCOS meetings… the only one of the CCOS to have held his position since the day war in Europe began… more experience than any other military leader in finding resources for his own forces and America’s allies, for dealing with members of Congress, the President, and the general public.
This is an interesting interpretation of what makes a great general when compared to someone like the British CIGS Alan Brooke, who successfully commanded both corps and armies in battle, and army groups in the front line facing invasion, before becoming the professional head of the wartime service, where all but his worst enemies admired his undoubted abilities. I have always wondered what qualities of generalship some biographers put above practical experience in leading troops in combat? Indeed Marshall was certainly the most experienced Bureaucrat of the CCOS (possibly explaining why he got on so well with the equally bureaucratic Field Marshal Dill), but the pre-eminent ‘General’? Not as I understand the term.
So let us analyse the parts of his generalship.
He never led troops in battle, so there is considerable difficulty assessing his abilities compared to others in many regards. But some things can be said.
Personally he was a picture of Robustness for a staff officer, though he never had the stress of field operations. He was an immensely impressive Character, though he never had the chance to demonstrate whether he would be able to inspire troops at the front. He had considerable Humanity, though many would argue that his treatment of individual soldiers as simply replacement parts of a complex machine was not something to be proud of. He had great Spirit, but again never the chance to demonstrate he could infuse it into his troops. All these things appear positive, if un-measurable in combat.
Now for the negatives.
We can judge his Common Sense by what he tried to achieve, and how he responded to failure. Many of the training systems this so-called ‘training-expert’ set up, particularly the Individual Replacement System, were quite disastrous. His refusal to change the system cannot be considered a positive. When Brooke complained in North Africa of the inadequate training of American troops, particularly replacements, Marshall’s frustrated response was “at least they learn”, which was missing the point that the untrained replacements died in vast numbers through not getting a chance to learn. By the end of the war many American units were a weakened conglomeration of tired experienced survivors who were close to breaking (if not actively deserted in their tens of thousands), mixed in with constant levies of poorly trained cannon fodder with a very short life expectancy – often only two or three days. Most of the failures of the common soldier in the American Army in the Second World War can be traced directly to this system.
His ability as a Mentor is also deeply questionable. He managed to pick at least as many failures as successes amongst the generals he appointed to high office, with particular examples like Fredendall (of whom he said “One of the best”… “I like that man, you can see determination all over his face”…); and Lucas, failing miserably in battle. Many of his other choices were highly questionable (Clark and Hodges will be other posts), and some like Lee (Eisenhower’s logistics commander in France and another post), were indefensible. He, like Auchinleck, showed a distressing willingness to stick by proven failures, and to refuse to dismiss them no matter what. At the very best he was only average in this category.
Because he never led troops, ever, his Operational abilities can only be judged on what we can gather from his suggestions and orders to others. What they reveal is a man too far removed from the realities of the front line.
Planning, like training, was supposed to be a specialty of Marshall’s, and indeed here he deserves the greatest praise. He converted an army of a few hundred thousand into a force of 8 million, and more or less made it work. Unfortunately the bureaucratic achievement is somewhat undermined by the practical results. The plan had been for over 200 divisions, not the 90 he finished with. The plan had been for a brilliant inter-operability of troops, not the frantic conversions to plug gaps that became necessary in France. The plan had been for the best equipment, not to make the barely adequate stuff available in 1942 (tanks and anti-tank guns spring to mind here) hang on in service until it was completely outclassed. The plan was to create an unsurpassed military force, not a barely average one reliant on willingness to take almost unlimited casualties to make gains. As a mastermind of expansion, Marshall was excellent: but the devil is in the detail, and the detail looks decidedly less impressive.
Logistics is an area where Americans pride themselves. Pity Marshall never understood it very well. Not in terms of producing the correct equipment, and not in terms of improving the speed and reliability of its transport. Certainly he (and Roosevelt) created vast quantities of materials, but a surprising amount of American production was obsolete even as it was being produced. The British had an excuse for continuing to produce 2 pounder anti-tank guns instead of the 6 pounder replacements they knew were needed in 1940 and 1941… they were facing imminent invasion. The Americans had no excuse for producing tens of thousands of outdated tanks and aircraft in 1943, and 1944, which just went into storage. The P39 Airocobra for instance, supposedly an air superiority fighter, had been declared obsolete by the British for European operations even before Pearl Harbour, and thereafter was used in Europe largely as ground attack aircraft by minor allies like co-belligerent Italy, Poland and even Portugal. It was nonetheless kept in production until July 1944, with a large number of the planes produced being crated and stored (though about a third went to the Russians who actually had a combat environment that suited them). Certainly GI’s watching ‘Tommy-Cooker’ British Sherman’s - at least equipped with 17 pounders that could stop any German tank - had reason to wonder why they were still using ‘Ronson-lighter’ Sherman’s, with short barreled 75mm guns that fired shells that bounced off. Marshall got a huge force into action with a lot of equipment. Pity so much of the force and the equipment was sub-standard.
More importantly Marshall never really understood the significance of opening the Mediterranean, no matter how often the shipping figures were shown to him. This theoretically could be considered a single minded, if misguided, pursuit of the most direct approach to attacking Germany from Britain: until one remembers that he was just as keen on getting supplies to China along the most lengthy and difficult supply line in the world. The lack of consistency implies that this was another area he failed to understand very well.
Topography and Movement. Again, the American military is very big on map-reading. Marshall was very big on it himself, and rightly pointed out that mountainous Italy was hardly a ‘soft underbelly’. (Though Churchill of course meant politically not geographically.) Yet his other efforts at long distance map reading from Washington are somewhat dubious. He was against British plans to invade North Africa through ports further into the Med because he preferred the ‘safer’ Atlantic Coast. (Luckily the normal swell which would have ruined the Morroccan attack was quite that particular day). Why he felt that troops who needed the ‘safety’ of distance from the Axis in North Africa, would be better suited to a head on attack on veteran German forces in France, is a mystery. Yet in both North Africa and France he then planned nice straight lines of attack in complete disregard of terrain. He argued against a campaign in mountainous northern Italy, and then supported Eisenhower’s plan to advance into the forests and mountains of Southern Germany instead of along the North Sea coastal plain. Then consider his favoured ‘hump’ route for supplies to China. There is little to demonstrate that he had above average understanding of topography or movement.
Tactics. Again, Marshall never commanded troops in battle, but he did suggest lots of ideas to his field commanders, so we can get some idea of his grasp of tactics. The best revelations are probably in the book ‘Dear General’ which runs through Eisenhower’s correspondence with his mentor. The editor himself comments that Eisenhower starts as a supplicant, but gradually grows more willing to argue with his mentor. By the end there is a feeling of exasperation from Ike when Marshall suggests clearly ridiculous things like dropping an airborne corps into France far from the chance of possible relief. Combined with his clear failure to understand the problems of invasions, we cannot rate Marshall’s tactical understanding very high.
Combined Operations are actually a particular problem for Marshall. The great proponent of an invasion in 1942 or 1943 admits in1944 that apparently a worldwide lack of Landing Ship - Tanks might be an issue (while commenting that he had hardly heard of the things a year ago).
Marshall scores somewhat better in Command abilities, but again there is always the suggestion that his Olympian perspective from Washington is far too remote from the realities at the front. He was a firm believer in good clear instructions, and his Clarity can only be admired when it comes to administrative matters. (When it comes to what he would like to happen on the battlefield however, some of his more optimistic orders to Eisenhower and Stillwell sound about as convincing as Hitler’s orders to von Paulus at Stalingrad.)
He was excellent at Delegation within the Pentagon, and no underling ever doubted that attempting to stretch or thwart his orders would bring down the wrath of God. Good people were encouraged, bad disciplined. But again there are questionable examples such as letting his administrative generals get away with unsavoury behaviour like bugging British officers they didn’t like. More worryingly, it is clear that he let distance affect his control. Again, it is unlikely General ‘Jesus-Christ-Himself’ Lee would have got away with a quarter of what he did in France if Marshall had been close enough to see what was happening. In fact this is the most concerning part of his delegation. Why didn’t any of his own people, in his own hierarchy, tell him what was going on. Or why did he ignore any who did? How much did he ignore feedback that didn’t meet his preconceptions?
There is no doubt that Marshall was excellent at relations with his political master, as long as you only include Roosevelt on that list. It is not clear that he ever understood that in the sort of coalition he was in, the political masters of the CCOS included the Prime Minister of the equal partner. (Having said that, Dill was better at relations with Roosevelt than with Churchill too: but then Roosevelt rarely actually consulted or really listened the way Churchill interacted with his generals.)
Marcshall also tried quite hard to be good at Relations with allies and other services. Certainly he was outstandingly superior to Admiral King in this regard, though the somewhat junior Chief of the Army Air Force, General Arnold, was even better. Yet he expressed constant frustration with others - British, French, Poles, even Canadians - for not seeing things his way. Eventually he let this frustration overflow into ignoring requests that he didn’t feel were important, and encouraging Eisenhower and MacArthur to do as they saw fit regardless of the opinions of his fellow CCOS, or of their host governments.
Perhaps this would have been reasonable, had Marshall demonstrated that his Strategic sense was superior to that of his Allies. But he never showed much in the way of ability in this regard. His frustration with his allies came down to the fact that he simply wanted to invade Germany by the shortest route as quickly as possible. He wanted to hit the northern French beaches in 1942, or at least 1943, and always believed that anything else was a frustrating diversion. He never agreed with clearing North Africa first. He never desired to go to the effort of knocking Italy (and her large army and navy) out of the war. He never understood the implications of clearing the Mediterranean on Allied shipping and troop movements. He never believed that there was any need to tie down dozens of good German divisions in Italy, the Balkans and Southern France. He never understood that Allies arriving over beaches in France could not possibly build up faster than Germans arriving by train (unless the German army was weakened and their communications shattered – something certainly beyond Allied ability in 1942 and probably also in 1943). He never agreed that American troops might need a little battle hardening in nice remote locations like North Africa or Sicily or Italy before facing the Germans in an attempted rampage across northern France. He never acknowledged the many failures of these troops (and some of his handpicked generals) in North Africa and Italy. He never even recognized that he simply was not sending enough troops towards Europe fast enough to make an earlier invasion anything but an assault against superior numbers. (Though he contributed to this by his constant collusion with King that if France was not going to be invaded right now, they could put off new forces so they could do more in the Pacific.) He supported Eisenhower’s ‘broad front’ strategy in France, even after the German army collapsed and a Blitzkrieg was a genuine alternative.
He believed in the value of the Chinese, regardless of all evidence. He trusted the Russians, regardless of all evidence. He opposed Churchill’s first attempt to save the Greek islands, and was unhappy about the second, successful attempt, to save Greece itself from the communists. He agreed with Eisenhower’s decision not to advance to Berlin, or even into Czechoslovakia. He supported the planned invasion of Japan even though he knew that the Japanese wanted to surrender. He agreed to the decision to drop the Atomic bombs, possibly mainly because he had finally realized that the Russians were untrustworthy.
Here we overlap into the realm of Geopolitics, and this is definitely one of Marshall’s weak areas. He apparently believed wars were for military victory, not to achieve political goals. He seemed to honestly think that once the enemies were defeated, the Allies would have a nice chat and agree to things. He was dragged kicking and screaming behind British moves to save Greece and Trieste and Denmark, and managed to prevent them saving Czechoslovakia. He then went to post war China and almost single handedly (according to McCarthy and even – much to Marshall’s shock - Eisenhower), handed over China to the Communists – leading to a domino chain in North Korea, Vietnam and Burma, and a long civil war in Malaya. In fact Marshall’s contribution to the postwar strategic situation was more to provide a firm foundation for the Cold War, rather than to contribute to a new Golden Age. That is as true when he was Secretary of State or Secretary of Defence as when he was COS.
The summary of all this would suggest that Marshall was a good administrator, but not a good general. I suppose it is possible that had he remained a two star and commanded a division or corps early in the war before progressing to three star - preferably under a particularly good mentor - he might have developed into a reasonable army commander, but this seems doubtful. He simply lacked Operational skills across the board. He certainly failed to understand equipment requirements. His correct place was certainly as a staff officer, and here he was certainly one of the best of the war. The mistake (common to most armies) was in thinking that a good staff officer makes a good executive commander. (See Churchill appointing Dill, Dill appointing Percival, Canadian PM King appointing Crerar, Stalin appointing Voroshilov, or Togo appointing Mutaguchi.)
Marshall was an impressive man of great character, but probably lacked the skills to have made a good frontline leader. He was a brilliant administrator and bureaucrat, possibly the ideal person to expand an army: but not a good CIC, and certainly needed someone to over-rule his stubbornness on such disastrous decisions as the Individual Replacement System and mass production of outdated equipment. He was a very poor choice to help design global strategy, and Brooke was probably right to wish he had the vainglorious MacArthur (who he considered to be both strategically and geopolitically excellent) in Washington instead. Marshall’s limited military viewpoint missed the whole point of why nations fight wars, with dire consequences for future generations.
In summary Marshall is in the same category as Dill. A great man, a noble man, a brave man, but completely out of his depth in the wrong job. Marshall, as the strategic voice of the United States, failed completely either to shorten the war (his personal goal), or to leave the world better placed for peace afterwards (the goal of a truly professional national military commander).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)