The Generals
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Schwarzkopf (left) arranges a ceasefire with Iraqi generals at Safwan, Iraq, in March 1991. He and his superiors thought they were ending the war. Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein could not understand why he was being given the gift of a ceasefire, which he interpreted as a victory for Iraq. That is, he had been assaulted by the Americans but lived to tell about it. So began two decades of American fighting with Iraq—first, twelve years of patrolling “no-fly zones,” followed by eight years of fighting on the ground. But the ragged outcome of the war was more the fault of American civilian leaders than that of generals.
Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who mishandled the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, is seen by many in the Army as a mistake or aberration, someone promoted well past his level of competence. In fact, he was not an accident but the natural outcome of Gen. DePuy’s post-Vietnam rebuilding of the military, with its overemphasis on tactics and its failure to educate generals to think strategically about war. As retired Lt. Gen. John Cushman put it, “His development approached the ideal career pattern of senior officer development at the time.”
Gen. David Petraeus cleaned up much of the mess made by Gen. Tommy Franks in Iraq but was less successful when sent to try to conclude the Afghan war. Petraeus is an anomaly among contemporary American generals. He earned a Ph.D. at Princeton, enjoyed talking to reporters, and generally was more successful than many of his peers, who saw him as an outsider.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez (left), the most junior three-star general in the Army, was put in charge of a situation in Iraq that he did not understand; a full-blown insurgency emerged on his watch. He was given command in Iraq essentially because he was available. He would retire in bitterness. He was succeeded by Gen. George Casey (below left, walking on an Iraqi tarmac with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld). Casey would do better than Sanchez but ultimately would be ousted by President George W. Bush.
Long after the war in Iraq sputtered to an end, American soldiers fought in combat in Afghanistan. Above, soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division fighting in Kunar Province in 2011.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was written at the Center for a New American Security, a small and collegial refuge in the middle of Washington, D.C. I am indebted to its recent leaders, Nate Fick, John Nagl, and Richard Fontaine, as well as its founders, Kurt Campbell and Michèle Flournoy. Other colleagues there have helped me with various aspects of this book, among them Kristin Lord, Shannon O’Reilly, Dana Stuster, Tiffany Sirc, David Barno, Andrew Exum, and Nora Bensahel. At a time when I felt I was at a dead end, Richard Danzig, a former secretary of the Navy and now the chairman of CNAS, wrote a particularly incisive critique of my second draft that helped me see the way forward. Robert Killebrew was in many ways the mentor for this book, beginning with his admonition several years ago that I should learn more about George Marshall. All were generous in sharing their thinking, but, in keeping with CNAS’s policy of not taking corporate positions, none necessarily agree with the arguments made nor the conclusions reached in this book.
I am especially indebted to the squad of first-class researchers provided by CNAS: Michael Zubrow, Peter Henry, Kyle Flynn, Matthew Irvine, Jessica Glover, Gregory McGowan, Brendon Mills, and J. Dana Stuster. Without their energetic and thoughtful help and their long hours in archives and libraries, this book would be less than it is and also would have taken years longer to produce. I did not realize as I began this project what a sprawling effort it would be. Their help was essential. Dana Stuster in particular did a wonderful job in the long and difficult task of assembling the photo insert.
I will forever appreciate the people who gave the first draft of this book a critical review: Vernon Loeb and Mary Kay Ricks worked mightily to help me restructure the first one hundred pages of the book. Rick Atkinson gave the chapters on World War II a good wire-brushing. Andrew Wylie, Tom Donnelly, Eliot Cohen, Roger Cirillo, Conrad Crane, Richard Kohn, John Cushman, Henry Gole, Volney Warner, Michael Bayer, T. X. Hammes, and David Fuhrman also brought their many areas of expertise and experience to a critical reading of the manuscript. Mark Stoler read the entire manuscript twice without even being asked to do so, making helpful comments both times. Robert Killebrew and Robert Goldich also deserve special notice for endurance as two-time reviewers of my drafts. I was especially impressed by the comments of two retired Army officers—Col. Stuart Herrington, who, by serving in the Army for thirty years, might have missed a great career as a book editor, and Lt. Gen. James Dubik, whose thirty-seven-page critique of the first draft spurred me to make major revisions in my manuscript and who then reviewed the second draft incisively.
I am deeply indebted to four military archives that welcomed me and even made suggestions for additional research. I remember particularly one day when an Army archivist said, while handing me the files of an obscure general, “If you’re interested in this general, you also need to read the papers of Dandridge Malone—heard of him?” I spent several weeks working at the U.S. Army Military History Institute, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and am grateful to Conrad Crane and his colleagues there—Richard Sommers, Robert Mages (formerly), Rich Baker, Rodney Foytik, Guy Nasuti, Gary Johnson, Terry Foster, Tom Buffenbarger, Steve Bye, Monica Duke, Shannon Schwaller, Carol Funck, and Martin Andresen. Erik Villard, at the U.S. Army Center of Military History, Fort McNair, Washington, D.C., was especially generous in sharing his research files with me. I also appreciate the assistance given me by Brian Shaw and his colleagues Paul Barron and Jeffrey Kozak at the George C. Marshall Research Library, in Lexington, Virginia. Mark Stoler went the extra mile in policing my work on Marshall. My thanks as well to the archivists and librarians of the Marine Corps University library, in Quantico, Virginia. Timothy Nenninger, chief of modern military records at the National Archives, pointed me to some particularly helpful files on the management of general officers in World War II.
Lt. Gen. John Cushman (U.S. Army, Ret.) not only served as a critical reader but also shared his privately published memoirs and a variety of documents. In addition, he showed a good deal of patience in dealing with my questions. Col. Henry Gole (U.S. Army, Ret.) was generous in helping me to understand William DePuy. Brig. Gen. John Johns (U.S. Army, Ret.) aided my research on the history of operational effectiveness in the Army and provided supporting documentation. Robert Goldich and Donald Vandergriff were repeatedly helpful in explaining the intricacies of personnel and promotion policies. I owe thanks also to Wade Markel of the RAND Corporation for generously sharing his insightful work on Army promotion policies and their relationship to risk averseness in the post–World War II officer corps—and thanks, too, to RAND’s David Johnson for sending me to Markel.
I also appreciate the weekly encouragement given me by the Dow Road Choir.
In publishing this book, I feel I once again have the best team in the business: Scott Moyers, Andrew Wylie, and the wonderful gang at The Penguin Press—Ann Godoff, Elisabeth Calamari, Tracy Locke, and Mally Anderson.
And, as always, I am deeply grateful to my wife. Without her, this all would mean nothing.
The mistakes are of course my own.
NOTES
PROLOGUE: CAPTAIN WILLIAM DEPUY AND THE 90TH DIVISION IN NORMANDY, SUMMER 1944
“We could locate no regimental or battalion headquarters”: J. Lawton Collins, Lightning Joe (Louisiana State University Press, 1979), 208–9.
“Goddammit, General, you can’t lead this division”: John Colby, War from the Ground Up: The 90th Division in WWII (Nortex, 1991), 29.
“Orders may have been issued”: Lt. Col. Romie Brownlee and Lt. Col. William Mullen, Changing an Army: An Oral History of General William E. DePuy, USA Retired (U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA, 1985), 38. Hereafter: DePuy Oral History.
Its battalion commander walked around: Henry Gole, General William E. DePuy: Preparing the Army for Modern War (University Press of Kentucky, 2008), 35.
; Later that summer in Normandy: Colby, War from the Ground Up, 149.
In six weeks of small advances: Martin Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2005), 201.
The average term of service: William DePuy, “Battle Participation and Leadership,” remarks to the TRADOC Commanders Conference, Fort Leavenworth, KS, March 1989; quoted in Paul Gorman, The Secret of Future Victories (U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 1992).
“a killing machine”: DePuy Oral History, 202.
Gen. Collins wrote: Harold Meyer, Hanging Sam: A Military Biography of General Samuel T. Williams (University of North Texas, 1990), 72. However, the official Army historian Martin Blumenson disagrees, concluding on page 76 of Breakout and Pursuit that during the course of the summer, the 90th “met enemy forces at least numerically equal in strength who occupied excellent defenses.” For the 90th Division’s combat performance in Normandy, see also Gordon Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1951), 400–405.
“a horse’s ass of the worst order”: Gole, DePuy, 306.
“almost constantly made the wrong decisions”: John McManus, The Americans at Normandy: The Summer of 1944—The American War from the Normandy Beaches to Falaise (Forge, 2005), 98.
he was placed under arrest: Meyer, Hanging Sam, 77.
His successor, Col. John Sheehy: Maj. Charles Ronan, “The Operations of the 3rd Battalion, 357th Infantry (90th Infantry Division) in the Hedgerow Battle of Normandy, 8–11 June 1944” (U.S. Army Infantry School, Fort Benning, GA, 1948), 7.
“had never before experienced”: Meyer, Hanging Sam, 81.
judged to be wanting: J. D. Morelock, Generals of the Ardennes: American Leadership in the Battle of the Bulge (National Defense University Press, 1994), 145.
“I feel that a general officer”: Meyer, Hanging Sam, 91.
the pop singer Eddie Fisher: “Extra Added,” Billboard, October 4, 1952, 20.
In 1963, Ginder retired: Wade Markel, “Winning Our Own Hearts and Minds: Promotion in Wartime,” Military Review, November–December 2004, 27.
“Hanging Sam Williams was the assistant division commander”: DePuy Oral History, 31.
“You are fired”: Meyer, Hanging Sam, 162.
Creighton Abrams, the future American commander: Lewis Sorley, Thunderbolt: From the Battle of the Bulge to Vietnam and Beyond: General Creighton Abrams and the Army of His Times (Simon & Schuster, 1992), 131 and 136.
giving him a list of sixteen field-grade officers: Omar Bradley, A Soldier’s Story (Modern Library, 1999), 298.
During the war he was awarded: Gole, DePuy, ix.
“one of the most outstanding”: Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, 297.
“Because incompetent commanders were fired”: Henry Gole, “General William DePuy: His Relief of Subordinates in Combat,” VMI Cold War essay contest, 2006–7, 20.
“The brutality and stupidity”: DePuy Oral History, 38.
“The Army owes him a great debt”: “Life and Career of General Donn A. Starry,” interviews by Lt. Col. Matthias Spruill and Lt. Col. Edwin Vernon, February 15–18, 1986, in Lewis Sorley, ed., Press On!: Selected Works of General Donn A. Starry, vol. 2 (Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 2009), 1163.
At least five corps commanders: Gary Wade, “World War II Division Commanders,” Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS, n.d., 2. Also, Robert Berlin, “U.S. Army World War II Corps Commanders: A Composite Biography,” Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 1989, 16. For a discussion of the relief of corps commanders in World War II, see Stephen Taaffe, Marshall and His Generals: U.S. Army Commanders in World War II (University Press of Kansas, 2011), 322.
“the critical level of professional competence”: Henry Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace & War (Harper & Brothers, 1948), 659.
a private who lost his rifle: Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, “A Failure of Generalship,” Armed Forces Journal, May 2007, accessed online.
“Personality plays a tremendous part”: Martin Blumenson, The Patton Papers, 1940–1945 (Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 572.
more Army troops have been sent: This fact is mentioned in Leonard Wong, “Where Have All the Army Generals Gone?,” Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, November 15, 2011, accessed online.
PART I: WORLD WAR II
“not even a third-rate military power”: The War Reports of General of the Army George C. Marshall, General of the Army H. H. Arnold, Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (Lippincott, 1947), 290.
Of the nine infantry divisions: Russell Weigley, History of the United States Army (Indiana University Press, 1984), 419.
By September 1944: Richard Stewart, ed., American Military History, vol. 2, The United States Army in a Global Era, 1917–2003 (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2005), 123.
1. GENERAL GEORGE C. MARSHALL: THE LEADER
Less than two weeks after the attack: Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (Penguin, 2001), 39–44.
When Lt. Gen. George Kenney arrived: Thomas Griffith Jr., MacArthur’s Airman: General George C. Kenney and the War in the Southwest Pacific (University Press of Kansas, 1998), 50–56.
One-third of the Navy’s submarine captains: Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America (Free Press, 1984), 455.
“I hate to think that fifty years”: Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (Harper, 1948), 770.
this “coolly impersonal” man: Albert Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports! (Henry Holt, 1958), 212.
“Things look very disturbing”: George C. Marshall to Mrs. George Patton, September 1, 1939, in Larry I. Bland, Sharon Ritenour Stevens, and Clarence E. Wunderlin Jr., eds., The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, electronic version based on The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, vol. 2, “We Cannot Delay,” July 1, 1939–December 6, 1941 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 47–48.
“stubborn, pompous, occasionally ignorant”: Robert Payne, The Marshall Story (Prentice-Hall, 1951), 167.
“Yes, but I would prefer to serve”: Forrest Pogue, George C. Marshall, vol. 1, Education of a General, 1889–1939 (Viking Press, 1963), 138. Hereafter: Pogue, Marshall, vol. 1.
“foreign leaders still considered”: Conrad Crane, “Beware of Boldness,” Parameters, Summer 2006, 92.
first large groups of draftees: Weigley, History of the United States Army, 372.
The initial American casualties: Maurice Matloff, ed., American Military History (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1985), 382.
“He didn’t give General Sibert a chance”: Larry Bland, Joellen Bland, and Sharon Ritenour Stevens, George C. Marshall: Interviews and Reminiscences for Forrest C. Pogue (George C. Marshall Foundation, 1991), 197. Hereafter: Bland, Marshall Interviews.
Pershing’s opinion of Sibert: Donald Smythe, Pershing: General of the Armies (Indiana University Press, 1986), 55.
By the end of the year: “General Sibert, Pershing Aid, [sic] Relieved of Duty and Assigned to Command Department at Home,” New York Times, January 3, 1918.
“telling them they’d be ‘relieved’”: Robert Bullard, Personalities and Reminiscences of the War (Doubleday, Page, 1925), 95.
Pershing was “looking for results”: Edward Coffman, The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I (Oxford, 1968), 142.
Maj. Gen. Clarence Edwards: Frank Palmer Sibley, With the Yankee Division in France (Little, Brown, 1919), 311. Also, Bullard, Personalities, 175, and Anne Cipriano Venzon, The United States in the First World War: An Encyclopedia (Routledge, 1995), 213–14.
he survived the war: James Cooke, Pershing and His Generals: Command and Staff in the AEF (Praeger, 1997), 67–68, 133.
Pershing relieved at least six . . . American soldiers often pronounced: Timothy Nenninger, “John J. Pershing and Relief for Cause in the American Expeditionary Forces, 1917–1918,” Army History, Spring 2005, 22, 23.
President Lincoln also relieved a series: This sentence is more or less lifted from the writing of my friend Eliot Cohen on page 21 of his Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesman and Leadership in Wartime (Free Press, 2002).
“These changes weeded out”: Joseph Joffre, The Personal Memoirs of Joffre, vol. 1 (Harper, 1932), 276.
Pershing kept an eye on Marshall: Pogue, Marshall, vol. 1, 153.
“the combat division”: George C. Marshall, Memoirs of My Services in the World War, 1917–1918 (Houghton Mifflin, 1976), vii.
That unit later became the 1st Infantry Division: Mark Stoler, George C. Marshall: Soldier-Statesman of the American Century (Twayne, 1989), 39.
“Colonel Marshall’s greatest attribute”: Benjamin Caffey, “General George C. Marshall as a Staff Officer in WWI,” in “Reminiscences About George C. Marshall,” box 1, folder 23, George C. Marshall Research Library, Lexington, VA, 4. Note: In the library’s files, Caffey’s surname is misspelled as “Coffey.”
reputation as a “brilliant planner”: General James A. Van Fleet, interviews by Col. Bruce Williams, 1973, Van Fleet Papers, box 1, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA (hereafter: USAMHI), 26.
The Germans were resurgent: John Keegan, The First World War (Vintage, 2000), 375.
“The French and British had no reserves”: Marshall lecture on World War I, April 9, 1919, Marshall-Winn papers, box 2, World War I, Marshall Library, 2.
“In the midst of a profound depression”: Marshall, Memoirs, 79. Marshall supposedly had asked that the manuscript of that memoir be burned but had lost track of a second copy, which was published after his death.