Abstract
“I saw a great deal of [Marshall] throughout … the war, and the more I saw of him the more clearly I appreciated that his strategic ability was of the poorest. A great man, a great gentleman and a great organizer, but definitely not a strategist.”1 This was the assessment of George Catlett Marshall offered by Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, chief of the British Imperial General Staff during World War II.
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Notes
Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, War Diaries, 1939–1945, ed. Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman (London, UK: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001), 249.
see Forrest C. Pogue, “George C. Marshall: Global Commander,” The Harmon Memorial Lectures in Military History, 1959–1987, ed. Harry R. Borowski (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1988), 177–194. For a one-volume biography of Marshall that highlights his role in the making of strategy and diplomacy.
Mark A. Stoler, George C. Marshall: Soldier-Statesman of the American Century (Boston, MA: Twayne, 1989).
B. H. Liddell Hart, The Decisive Wars of History: A Study in Strategy (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1929), 150–151.
See also B. H. L. H. [Basil H. Liddell Hart], “Strategy,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th ed. (London and New York, 1929).
Liddell Hart, The Real War, 1914–1918 (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1930), 476. He later elaborated on his theory of strategy in Strategy: The Indirect Approach (New York: Praeger, 1954) and Strategy, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Praeger, 1967).
Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 177. For the influence of Jomini, see Howard, “Jomini and the Classical Tradition,” 30.
See also Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Policy and Strategy (New York: Macmillan, 1973), xvii-xviii.
Marshall no doubt did a disservice to himself when he said in April 1945 that he “would be loath to hazard American lives for purely political purposes.” This statement has been seized upon by historians who argue that Marshall thought only in narrow terms of military victory. See, for example, Bernard Brodie, War and Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1973), 43–44.
Minutes ofthe Tripartite Military Meeting, Nov. 29, 1943, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations ofthe United States: The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1961), 528.
Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Ordeal and Hope, 1939–1942 (New York: Viking, 1966), 47.
Maurice Matloff and Edwin M. Snell, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941–1942 (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1953), 282–284.
Keith Sainsbury, The North African Landings, 1942: A Strategic Decision (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1976), 11.
There is a bit of irony in Sainsbury’s criticism since Marshall himself had reservations about an approach that was too theoretical. “I was very much worried at the start of the Second World War … for fear our officers were too theoretical.” Larry I. Bland, Joellen K. Bland, and Sharon R. Stevens, eds., George C. Marshall Interviews and Reminiscences for Forrest C. Pogue (Lexington, VA: George C. Marshall Research Foundation, 1991), 161.
Memorandum, Roosevelt for Marshall, Mar. 8, 1943, quoted in Maurice Matloff, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1943–1944 (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1959), 68.
Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 4, The Hinge of Fate (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), 813. Lazare Carnot was the French military engineer and politician primarily responsible for implementing the levée en masse—mass conscription—during the French Revolutionary Wars.
Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (New York: Norton, 1995), 269.
War Elihu Root. “This is a time for organization. Great results are produced only by that Effective and harmonious organization is the moving power of the world today.” Root, quoted in William Geffen, ed., Command and Commanders in Modern Warfare, 2nd ed. (Colorado Springs, CO: United States Air Force Academy, 1971), 48.
Life, March 8, 1943, 84. Somervell’s wartime role is the subject of John Kenneth Ohl, Supplying the Troops: General Somervell and American Logistics in WWII (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1994).
James A. Huston, The Sinews of War: Army Logistics, 1775–1953 (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1966), 424.
Minutes of meeting of the president and prime minister with their military advisers, January 14, 1942, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations ofthe United States: The Conferences at Washington, 1941–1942, and Casablanca, 1943 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1968), 206, hereafter cited as FRUS: Washington and Casablanca.
Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York: Harper, 1948), 407.
For the background of this development, see William Emerson, “F.D.R,” The Ultimate Decision: The President as Commander in Chief, ed. Ernest R. May (New York: Braziller, 1960), 135–138. For an insightful essay on Roosevelt’s relations with the JCS, see Mark Stoler, “Civil-Military Relations during World War II,” Parameters 21 (Autumn 1991), 60–73.
Samuel Eliot Morison, The Two-Ocean War (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1963), 579.
The role of the JCS is examined in Mark A. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, The Grand Alliance, and U.S. Strategy in World War II (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000)
Charles F. Brower IV, “The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy: American Strategy and the War with Japan, 1943–1945” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1987).
See Bland, Marshall Interviews and Reminiscences, 431–433, for Marshall’s account of his role in securing Leahy’s appointment as chief of staff to the commander in chief. Roosevelt’s own motives for appointing a chief of staff are explored in Paul L. Miles, Jr., “American Strategy in World War II: The Role of William D. Leahy” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1999), 77–82.
Minutes of meeting of U.S. and British chiefs of staff, Dec. 25, 1941, FRUS: Washington and Casablanca, 92–93.
For the role of the CCS, see Alex Danchev, “Being Friends: The Combined Chiefs of Staff and the Making of Allied Strategy in the Second World War,” War, Strategy, and International Politics, ed. Lawrence Freedman, Paul Hayes, and Robert O’Neill (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1992), 195–210.
Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service, 414. Andrew Roberts describes Dill as “the de facto British ambassador for all matters military.” Andrew Roberts, Masters and Commanders: How Roosevelt, Churchill, and Alanbrooke Won the War in the West (London, UK: Allen Lane, 2008), 76.
John Ehrman, Grand Strategy: October 1944-August 1945 (London, UK: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1956), 342.
This is not to say that the significance of Trident has been overlooked. See, e.g., Mark A. Stoler, Allies in War: Britain and America against the Axis Powers, 1940–1945 (London, UK: Hodder Arnold, 2005), 119–121
Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall, vol. 3, Organizer of Victory, 1943–1945 (New York: Viking, 1973), 198–213.
Kent Roberts Greenfield, American Strategy in World War II: A Reconsideration (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1963), 32–33.
Leahy Diary, May 2, 1943, William D. Leahy Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Roosevelt, quoted in William D. Leahy, I Was There (New York: Whittlesey House, 1950), 161.
see Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland, Stilwell’s Mission to China (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1953), 335–362.
Charles McMoran Wilson, Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940–1965: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), 102.
Leahy statement, CCS 83rd meeting, May 13, 1943, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Washington and Quebec, 1943 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1970), 222.
see Mark A. Stoler, “From Continentalism to Globalism: General Stanley D. Embick, the Joint Strategic Survey Committee, and the Military View of American National Policy during the Second World War,” Diplomatic History 6, no. 4 (Summer 1982), 303–320.
Minutes, CCS 83rd meeting, May 13, 1943, FRUS: Washington and Quebec, 44.
Memorandum by the United States and British Chiefs of Staff, “American-British Grand Strategy,” December 31, 1941, FRUS: Washington and Casablanca, 214. Arcadia was the code name of the first Washington Conference.
Roosevelt, quoted in Richard M. Leighton and Robert W. Coakley, Global Logistics and Strategy, 1940–1943 (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1955), 44.
Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 5, Closing the Ring (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1951), 426.
Gordon Harrison, “Operation Overlord,” quoted in Maurice Matloff, “The ANVIL Decision: Crossroads of Strategy,” Command Decisions, ed. Kent Roberts Greenfield (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), 298.
James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), 374.
See also John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 65–66
Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 379–382.
Memorandum of conference held at the White House, May 30, 1942, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1942, vol. 3, Europe (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1962), 575 (emphasis added).
Minutes of CCS 83rd meeting, May 13, 1945 (emphasis added); Charles F. Brower IV, “Sophisticated Strategist: General George A. Lincoln and the Defeat of Japan, 1944–45,” Diplomatic History 15, no. 3 (Summer 1991), 320.
Draft of speech for the Academy of Political Science, Apr. 4, 1945 in Larry I. Bland, Joellen K. Bland, and Sharon R. Stevens, eds., The Papers of George C. Marshall, vol. 5 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 121 (emphasis added).
see Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 459, 501, 509, 545.
George F. Kennan and John Lukacs, George F. Kennan and the Origins of Containment, 1944–1946: The Kennan-Lukacs Correspondence (Columbia, MO: University Press of Missouri, 1997), 33.
Michael Howard, The Mediterranean Strategy in the Second World War (New York: Praeger, 1968), 75.
This is how Churchill later described the objective of such an offensive. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 6, Triumph and Tragedy (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1953), 65.
Marshall had drafted an earlier message that telegraphed the president’s position on the importance of Anvil. “I have examined the problem of assistance for OVERLORD by operations in the Mediterranean which our Chiefs of Staff have been discussing. On balance I find I must completely concur in the stand of the U.S. Chiefs of Staff. General Wilson’s proposal for continued use of practically all the Mediterranean resources to advance into northern Italy and from there to the northeast is not acceptable to me.” See Roosevelt to Churchill, June 28, 1944, n. 1 in Larry I. Bland, Joellen K. Bland, and Sharon R. Stevens, eds., The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, vol. 4 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 498.
Ray S. Cline, Washington Command Post: The Operations Division (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1951), 135.
Maurice Matloff, “American Leadership in World War II,” Soldiers and Statesmen (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1973), 93.
Wilson D. Miscamble, George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947–1950 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 8–9,
For Kennan’s own account, see George F. Kennan, Memoirs, vol. 1 (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1967), 327.
Don Higginbotham, “George Washington and George Marshall,” Higginbotham, George Washington and the American Military Tradition (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1985), 134.
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Miles, P.L. (2011). Marshall as Grand Strategist. In: Brower, C.F. (eds) George C. Marshall. The World of the Roosevelts. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-11928-4_4
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