by John G. Fowler
Under different circumstances, Gen. George C. Marshall might have been numbered among America’s great combat leaders. But he never lost his great perceptive insight into the role of the military officer. To claim the Normandy Command in World War II, Marshall would have had to turn aside the greater demands of the institution he upheld and the profession to which he belonged. Instead, he completed his Army career as he lived it—a study in unselfishness, self-sacrifice and devotion to duty.
Like many soldiers, he led a life steeped in anonymity, hardship and self-sacrifice. Like few other soldiers, however, he rose to the highest military office in the land—Army chief of staff. His military achievements as chief of staff were staggering in scope and dimension. He mobilized, modernized and managed successfully during crisis the largest army in the history of the Western World. Ironically, he also suffered during this period one personal and professional disappointment: He did not receive the one battle command to which, his biographer notes, “his entire Army career had pointed.”[1]
He was, of course, George C. Marshall, and the command in question was that of the Allied invasion of Europe—the Overlord operation which etched in history books forever the day known as “D.” Where this incident concerning command of the Normandy invasion becomes tragic is that Marshall wanted the command, but turned it down.
Marshall’s decision is worth examining. The unique role that military officers in American society play in shouldering simultaneously three responsibilities—pursuing a career, upholding an institution and sustaining a profession—can easily become blurred. Today, the officer corps spends considerable energies toward career goals, perhaps unknowingly at the expense of institutional and professional responsibilities. Marshall kept them all in balance. For that reason, the Marshall case merits review.
In the late summer and fall of 1943, military and civilian elements in Washington and London speculated about the anticipated assignment of Gen. George C. Marshall, U.S. Army chief of staff, to head the invasion force for Europe. There were few doubts about the appointment. As early as July 1942, Winston Churchill had suggested to President Roosevelt that Marshall command “cross-channel operations.”[2] This offer had been repeated at the Quebec Conference by Churchill more than a year later.[3]
Marshall was not only the logical choice; he was nearly everyone’s choice. A 1943 Newsweek survey of seventy independent observers of American leadership since Pearl Harbor placed the Army chief of staff first, receiving one more vote than President Roosevelt. Marshall was also named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” for 1943.
On 10 August 1943, Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War, hand-carried a letter to President Roosevelt which asserted that Marshall “is the man who most surely can, by his character and skill, furnish the military leadership which is necessary” for the Normandy Command. Stimson further reported that the president “read it through with very apparent interest… saying finally that I had announced the conclusions which he had just come to himself.”[4]
It is virtually certain that Roosevelt did, in fact, want Marshall to have the command. In a letter to Gen. John J. Pershing on 20 September 1943, Roosevelt wrote, referring to the Normandy Command: “The best way I can express it is to tell you that I want George to be the Pershing of the Second World War—and he cannot be that if we keep him here.”[5]
There were many dissenters, however, to the appointment. Pershing was among the foremost. He, like Admirals Leahy and King, argued that Marshall was too valuable as chief of staff and as a global strategist to be spared for a field command. Others thought the appointment would be a demotion, from influencing world strategy to controlling theater strategy. Roosevelt, too, admired Marshall’s consummate skill in assuaging Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Chiang Kai-shek and Winston Churchill in matters of grand strategy.
General Henry H. Arnold, the Army Air Corps leader, saw Marshall increasing in stature daily:
He had more mature judgment, could see far into the future. What he said was said in a way that carried conviction. I am sure that the President and the Prime Minister both felt the same, because each one called on him for advice and counsel at all hours of the day or night.[6]
And what of Marshall during this period? What was his position? The New York Times editorialized that if the Allies agreed that:
General Marshall is the man for the job, it would be difficult to find a counter-argument except one. That valid argument would be if General Marshall himself objects to this appointment.[7]
General Marshall did not object. Characteristically, the reserved, reticent chief of staff remained silent. He had been consulted several times, however, by Roosevelt and Churchill about the command structure for Overlord. He had told the president that war made personal preferences of no account. He did admit to Secretary of War Stimson that “any soldier prefers a field command.” Stimson later recorded that he “knew that in the bottom of his heart it was Marshall’s secret desire above all things to command this invasion force into Europe.”[8]
General Marshall’s wife, Katherine, meanwhile, began moving from the chief of staff’s quarters at Fort Myer, Virginia, to the Marshall home at Leesburg, Virginia.[9]
Still, Roosevelt delayed the inevitable announcement. Why? Marshall’s successor had already been chosen: Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, commander of the European theater of operations, and victor in North Africa. Eisenhower, in fact, had already argued with Churchill over this move. Eisenhower insisted on taking his able chief of staff, Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, with him to Washington. Churchill wanted Smith to remain in London to serve the new commander.[10]
Did Roosevelt perhaps think that Marshall did not want the command? It seems hardly likely. Certainly, British Gen. Sir Frederick Morgan knew. Appointed as chief of staff to the Supreme Command, Morgan visited Marshall in Washington in October 1943. His impression was vivid: “He intended that we should proceed together on the assumption that he was to command and I was to serve as his Chief of Staff.”[11]
It seems only a matter of time before Marshall’s appointment was announced.
Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met at the Cairo-Teheran Conferences from 22 November-7 December 1943. Here the matter of the Normandy Command was settled. On the day before the meeting began, Roosevelt toured Tunisian battlefields with Gen. Eisenhower. Discussing the Allied battle command for 1944, Roosevelt argued his case to Eisenhower:
Ike, you and I know who was Chief of Staff during the closing years of the Civil War, but practically no one else does, although the names of the field generals Grant, of course, and Lee, and Jackson, Sherman, Sheridan … every schoolboy knows them. I hate to think that fifty years from now practically nobody will know who George Marshall was. That is one of the reasons why I want George to have the big command—he’s entitled to a place in history as a great General.[12]
The conference continued without a decision, a matter which caused Marshall to believe the president was “wavering on his choice.”[13]
On 4 December, he sent his personal adviser, Harry Hopkins, to Marshall to seek Marshall’s preference for the Overlord command. Marshall refused to decide, saying that “personal feelings might influence my judgment, and the issue is too great for any personal feeling to be considered.”[14]
The following day, Roosevelt sent for Marshall and asked him “after a great deal of beating around the bush what I wanted to do.” Marshall replied that the president should decide what was best for the country, adding that he would “cheerfully go whatever way he wanted me to go.”[15] Roosevelt then whispered, “Well, then, it will be Eisenhower,” and before Marshall left that day, revealed, “Well, I didn’t feel I could sleep at ease if you were out of the country.”[16]
Why the eleventh-hour selection of Eisenhower’? Why did the president change his mind? In truth, Marshall had become, in a time of expendable men, the indispensable man to Roosevelt—and to the country. His prestige at home and abroad was unique. Marshall’s biographer writes that at the time of the Cairo Conference, Marshall’s prestige in Congress was “now almost without precedent.”[17] With his broad strategic vision, Marshall exerted considerable influence with all Allies, and his diplomacy and tact with Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo had driven that irrevocable fact home. He would continue his role as a soldier for all theaters.
 |
| At 0800, on June 6, 1944, Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force Gen. Dwight Eisenhower sent this report on the D-day operations to Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall in Washington, D.C. |
 |
| General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army. |
 |
| General Omar Bradley with General George C. Marshall and General Hap Arnold on a Normandy beach after Operation Cobra. |
 |
| General of the Army George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff. |
 |
| Making strategy at Quebec in August 1943: From right to left: Churchill, Roosevelt, and Mackenzie King of Canada. Behind them, Admiral William D. Leahy, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, General George C. Marshall, Field Marshal Sir John Dill, Admiral Ernest J. King, General Sir Alan Brooke, Air Marshal Sir Charles Portal, General "Hap" Arnold. |
 |
| General George C. Marshall leaves the Cairo Conference at Mena House in Cairo, Egypt, in 1943. |
 |
| Yalta Conference, 4-11 February 1944: At the round table, Stalin and his aides, upper left; President Roosevelt with Admiral William D. Leahy, his personal Chief of Staff, and General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army, upper right. Prime Minister Churchill is at lower left with cigar. |
[1] Forest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Organizer of Victory, 1943-1945, The Viking Press, Inc., New York, 1973, page xiii.
[2] Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: The Hinge of Fate, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, Mass., 1950, Volume IV, page 435. The plan, known as Bolero, became the foundation for the Overlord planning.
[3] Pogue, op.cit., page 260.
[4] Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in peace and War, Harper & Row Publishers Inc., New York, 1947, page 438.
[5] Pogue, op.cit., page 273.
[6] Henry H. Arnold, Global Mission, Harper & Row Publishers Inc., New York, 1949, page 462. Arnold’s comments describe his observation during the Cairo Conference of November-December 1943 where the decision for the Overlord commander was made.
[7] Editorial, The New York Times, 23 September 1943, page 20.
[8] Stimson and Bundy, op.cit., page 442.
[9] Katherine T. Marshall, Together: Annals of an Army Wife, Tupper & Love, Atlanta, Ga., 1946, page 159.
[10] The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower: The War Years, edited by Alfred D. Chandler Jr., The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Md., 1970, Volume III, page 1,585.
[11] Frederick Morgan, Overture to Overlord, Doubleday & Co., New York, 1950, page 124.
[12] Pogue, op.cit., page 303.
[13] Ibid., pages 320-321.
[14] Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History, Harper & Row Publishers Inc., New York, 1948, page 803. On his 75th birthday, Marshall told a panelist that he “would have preferred the top [Normandy] Command.” See Newsweek, 2 January 1956, page 15.
[15] Pogue, op.cit., page 321.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Pogue, op.cit., page 269. Six months later, Time claimed that “had he [Marshall] taken over the command of the European invasion, the U.S. Army would have remained without the one and only citizen who … could at any time get a unanimous vote of confidence from Congress.” See Time, 3 June 1944, page 15.
No comments:
Post a Comment