, 

SOLDIERS 

AND STATESMEN 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office 

Washington, D.C. 20402 - Price $2.65 

Stock Number008-070-00335-0 

Catalog Number D 301.78:970 
The Military History Symposium 

is sponsored jointly by 

the Department of History and 

the Association of Graduates, 

United States Air Force Academy 

1970 Military History Symposium Steering Committee: 

Colonel Alfred F. Hurley, Chairman 

Lt. Colonel Elliott L. Johnson 

Major David MacIsaac, Executive Director 

Captain Donald W. Nelson, Deputy Director 

Captain Frederick L. Metcalf 
SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN 

The Proceedings of the 

4th Military History Symposium 

United States Air Force Academy 

22-23 October 1970 

Edited by 

Monte D. Wright, Lt. Colonel, USAF, Air Force Academy 

and 

Lawrence J. Paszek, Office of Air Force History 

Office of Air Force History, Headquarters USAF 

and 

United States Air Force Academy 

Washington: 1973 
The Military History Symposia 

of the USAF Academy 

1. May 1967. Current Concepts in Military History. 

2. May 1968. Command and Commanders in Modem Warfare. 

Proceedings not published. 

Proceedings published: Colorado Springs: USAF 

Academy, 1269; 2d ed., enlarged, Washington, D.C.: 

Government Printing Office, 1972. 

Proceedings published: 

Washington, b.C.: Government Printing Office, 197 1. 

Present volume. 

Proceedings to be published. 

3. May 1969. Science, Technology, and Warfare. 

4. October 1970. Soldiers and Statesmen. 

5. October 1972. The Military and Society. 

Views or opinions expressed or implied in this publication are those of the 

authors and are not to be construed as carrying official sanction of the 

Department of the Air Force or of the United States Air Force Academy. 
Page 

1 

13 

CONTENTS 

Foreword. Lieutenant General John B . McPherson ......................... Introduction. Major David MacIsaac ................................................ v 

First Session: FROM VIENNA TO VERSAILLES ......................... Chairman: Richard A . Preston 

“Soldiers and Statesmen in 19th Century 

21 

“Soldiers and Statesmen: The Prusso-German 

Experience. 1 8 1 5- 19 19. .. Andreas Dorpalen ................................. 35 

Commentary. Russell F . Weigley .................................................... 47 

Discussion ......................................................................................... 54 

Opening Remarks ............................................................................. 15 

France. .. Gordon WriBht ............................................................... 

Second Session: FROM VERSAILLES TO POTSDAM ................. Chairman: Louis Morton 

Opening Remarks ............................................................................. “The Wartime Chiefs of Staff and the President. .. Commentary. Maurice Matloff ........................................................ Commbtary. Gaddis Smith ............................................................. Discussion ......................................................................................... Commentary. Major General Haywood S . Hansell. 

USAF Ret ...................................................................................... Commentary, Brigadier General George A . Lincoln, 

USA Ret ......................................................................................... 

Forrest C . Pogue ............................................................................ 

Third Session: THE 13th HARMON MEMORIAL LECTURE 

IN MILITARY HISTORY ............................................................. Introduction, Lieutenant General Albert P . Clark ......................... “The Military in the Service of the State, ” 

General Sir John Winthrop Hackett ............................................. 

65 

67 

69 

86 

97 

103 

107 

116 

119 

121 

123 

Fourth Session: THE POSTWAR WORLD ..................................... 139 

Chairman: Theodore Ropp 

“John Foster Dulles: The Moralist Armed,” 

Opening Remarks ............................................................................. 141 

Commentary. William Appleman Williams .................................... Richard D . Challener .................................................................... 143 

163 

Commentary. Brigadier General Noel F . Parrish. 

USAF Ret ...................................................................................... 167 

Discussion ......................................................................................... 176 

The Participants .................................................................................. 191 

Index .................................................................................................... 200 

V 

FOREWORD 

I am indeed honored to be asked to provide a few brief comments by 

way of presenting this volume to the public. Having attended the sessions 

of the 1970 Military History Symposium, I can assure interested readers 

of both the quality and relevance of each of the formal papers and informal 

discussions. 

This symposium, the fourth in the series sponsored jointly by the 

Department of History and the Association of Graduates of the Air Force 

Academy, was of particular interest to those of us charged with 

responsibility for professional education in the military services. Especially 

at the National War College, most of whose graduates move on to high staff 

and command responsibilities, the value of so enlightened a discussion of 

the relationships between soldiers and statesmen cannot be 

overemphasized. 

Statecraft through the ages has called upon the soldier and the 

statesman to play vital roles in attaining the preedinent goal of national 

security. There has been a tendency, particularly in recent years, to separate 

and often dichotomize the two professions. In part this can be attributed 

to scholarly commentators who, for legitimate analytical purposes, often 

separate the two elements. This intellectual division is further compounded 

by the increasing degree of functional specialization required of the modern 

soldier and diplomat. Today’s national security policy-maker, as compared 

to his predecessors of only a generation ago, requires much greater 

technical knowledge and expertise. It is little wonder then that a type of 

myopic egocentrism develops as the soldier or diplomat wrestles with the 

complex problems of the “here and now.” Inundated with data, beset by 

the conflicting advice of subordinates and demands of superiors, and 

inexorably constrained by compressed decision time, he has little 

opportunity to reflect on the wider implications of his decisions. 

Yet it is not an exaggeration to insist that in our age and in the 

foreseeable future the soldier and the diplomat must work together more 

closely than ever before. Nuclear weapons and Vietnam have demonstrated 

both the strength and the limitations that can be placed on the use of 

military force; the Cold War and containment have provided a similar 

demonstration for diplomacy. The development of a new modus vivendi 

poses challenges of the highest order as new power configurations emerge 

to displace the old and as increased demands for solution of domestic 

problems attain higher priority in the competition for limited national 

resources. 
vi 

The challenge, however, is not limited to the practitioners of statecraft. It 

is here that the scholar must lend his talents, not only to provide the 

elongated perspective of history, which helps free us from generational 

egocentrism, but also to collect, distill, and collate the wisdom of the giants 

upon whose shoulders new pygmies will build. 

The scholars, both guest and resident, at the Fourth Military History 

Symposium of the United States Air Force Academy have more than met 

their challenge. For this reason, therefore, I commend to statesman and 

soldier, as well as to other interested scholars, this, the record of their 

proceedings. 

John B. McPherson, Lieutenant General, USAF 

Commandant, National War College 
1 

INTRODUCTION 

From at least the beginning of the 19th century, no problem in military 

affairs has been more perplexing than that of deciding what should be the 

relationship between the chief of state and those who advise him on national 

security matters. In contemporary society, increasingly directed by expertsmilitary and otherwise-this problem has by no means been permanently 

resolved.’ Writing in 1957, Samuel P. Huntington suggested that the problem of the modem state is not so much that of armed revolt as it is that of 

the relation between the expert and the politician. The same theme dominated C. P. Snow’s Godkin Lectures at Harvard three years later (published as 

eience and Government), while Bernard Brodie’s Strategy in the Miksile 

Age (1959) made the point, among others, that a tendency has become 

apparent for the military outlook to be adopted by associated civilians more 

so than the other way around. 

Events of the last decade have served to remind us how complex have 

become the routes by which advice on national security matters reaches the 

ear of the president, the last three of whom have for varying reasons tended 

to rely to an increasing extent on civilian advisers operating outside the 

established national defense hierarchy: e.g., McGeorge Bundy, Walt W. 

Rostow, and Henry A. Kissinger. When determining the topic for this, the 

fourth symposium in the series, the planning committee settled on a historical 

investigation of the recent past that would, hopefully: remind us how important is the relationship between soldiers and statesmen; examine how various 

societies have approached the problems involved ib that relationship; and 

determine how they have fared. We were well aware that we would achieve 

something less than specific solutions for today’s and tomorrow’s difticulties. 

’As this volume goes to press, for example, a recent article by Morton H. Halperin, a former 

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, explores “the limitations on the President when he is 

seeking military advice.” “The President and the Military,” Fore& Aff2iairs 50 (Jan. 1972): 

310-24. For an earlier military view of the problem, see Colonel William E. Simons’s prizewinning article, “Military Professionals as Policy Advisors,” Air University Review 20 (March 

1969): 3-10. 
2 

Nonetheless, we felt it was not too much to hope that reflection upon the 

problem and its history might serve to emphasize its difficulties and its 

importance. 

Having selected the topic, the next step was to structure that topic 

within specific frames of time and space. The approach adopted was to treat 

first the U. S. and Western European experience of the 19th century in the 

opening session, then the U. S. experience between Versailles and Potsdam, 

and finally the postwar experience in the concluding session. Overriding all 

such arbitrary divisions, the annual Harmon Memorial Lecture would address the general topic, “The Military in the Service of the State.” 

An airline strike and unexpected illnesses affecting two participants 

notwithstanding, the symposium began on schedule on the morning of 22 

October 1970. The audience consisted of more than 200 visitors from 

throughout the United States and Canada, along with interested members of 

the Cadet Wjng and the Academy staff and faculty. Following an introduction by Colonei Alfred F. Hurley, Professor and Head of the Department of 

History, the Academy Superintendent, Lieutenant General Albert P. Clark, 

welcomed the visitors and commented briefly on the significance of these 

symposia to the Academy in general and to the cadets in particular. He 

conclyded by reminding both participants and audience that the potential 

conflict that can arise between loyalty to the civil power and fulfillment of 

military duty is, for the career military man, a continuing problem, one on 

which he hoped discussion would “ultimately focus, to the benefit of all of 

us here and most certainly to future readers of the proceedings of the symposium.” 

Colonel Hurley then introduced the members of the symposium committee, explained a few last-minute program adjustments, and introduced the 

chairman for the opening session, Richard A. Preston, the William K. Boyd 

Professor of History, Duke University. (Biographical notes on the participants precede the Index.) 

The Rist Session 

Professor Preston focuses on two English practices that antedate the 

19th century, but are basic to our whole topic: the establishment of financial 

control over the military and the practice of cooperation between military 

experts and civilians on committees. The latter practice was instituted in the 

Royal Navy almost four centuries before it was accepted, and then over 

opposition, by the British army. He then mentions two later British practices 

of relevance to the symposium’s theme: the control exercised over Imperial 
3 

military operations at great distances by giving great power to the man on 

the scene, while keeping him subservient to a civilian agency at home; and 

the technique, when dealing with the emerging Commonwealth nations, of 

close cooperation at the professional, technical level, coupled with independence on the nontechnical, political level. 

The two principal papers in the opening session treat the theme of 

Soldiers and Statesmen in 19th century France and Germany. Professor 

Gordon Wright of Stanford, treating the French experience, notes the relative neglect of this topic by historians of France as compared to those of 

Germany. After citing three complicating factors that could have enlarged 

the role played by French soldiers-the split over values after the Revolution, 

the shadow of Napoleon’s example, and the chronic instability of governments-Wright suggests (as Marc Bloch was to do of a later period of French 

history2) that a considerable degree of routine-mindedness among soldiers, 

coupled with a talent for manipulation and fast footwork among politicians, 

largely account for the comparative absence of crises in French civil-military 

relations in the period between Waterloo and Sarajevo. In fact, he suggests, 

no really workable system governing relationships between soldiers and 

statesmen was achieved until the reforms of 1911 instituted by Adolphe 

Messimy. 

The body of Wright’s paper treats the French experience in three periods: from 18 15 to 1848, 1848 to 1870, and 1870 to 19 14. Citing the individual 

characteristics and problems of each period, with continuing emphasis on the 

personal factor-how Premier X related to General Y-Wright describes the 

continuing ineffectiveness of the General Staff, brought about largely by 

politicians astute enough to recognize that the German model was unacceptable for a parliamentary republic. The revived mood of patriotic assertiveness 

after the Morocco crisis of 1905 was significant in reviving the French 

military and public from the post,-Dreyfus doldrums, as well as in paving the 

way for the 191 1 reforms. Despite their shortcomings, these reforms appear 

to be about as far as the republic could then go toward creating a viable 

system of civil-military relations. That system, Wright concludes, might have 

sufficed in a short war. 

In the second paper Professor Andreas Dorpalen of The Ohio State 

University treats the Prussian-German experience during the same period, 

seeking to answer twin questions: Why was it that by 1914 Chancellor von 

Bethmann Hollweg considered the political implications of military plans to 

lie beyond his purview? And, why was it that Wilhelm I1 had come to accept, 

?See his Strange Defeat: A Statement ofEvidence Writen in 1940, trans. Gerard Hopkins 

(New York, 1949). 
4 

if indeed not encourage, an equality of status between civil and military 

authorities? As these questions do not appear until midway through the 

paper, Dorpalen’s method is instructive. Noting the supreme significance in 

German history of the relative position of soldiers and statesmen, he traces 

civil-military relations from the reign of the Great Elector (1640-88) all the 

way down to 1914 in an admirable feat of condensation that ignores no major 

event or figure. In essence, he shows how, by the 187Os, the army had become 

to a large part of the nation “the trailblazer of the united empire . . . the 

bulwark against the uncomfortable aspirations of the lower classes” (especially after 1848), and even, in time, “a sort of spiritual corset” against the 

materialism and egotism that followed economic expansion and prosperity. 

A growing sense of the imminence, if not inevitability, of war, fanned by such 

nongoverqmental organizations as the Pan-German, Army, and Navy 

Leagues, combined to produce a situation in 1914 where the military (von 

Moltke) apd the civilian (Bethmann), operating independently of one another, gave conflicting advice to their Austrian counterparts on the question of 

Austrian mobilization. 

The most obvious conclusion, Dorpalen suggests, is the need for subordination of military to political leadersbip in all matters of policy. Another 

conclusion has been less widely noticed: “the ultimate decision of civil vs. 

military priorities rested with the nation itself’ because “in the last analysis 

. . . militarism is a civil-political problem.”3 

In his commentary on the Wright and Dorpalen papers, Professor Russell F. Weigley of Temple University finds that contrqsts with France and 

Germany, rather than comparisons, dominate the United States experience 

in the period up to World War 1. The roles of soldiers and statesmen did not 

become clearly differentiated at any time in the 19th century United States, 

owing primarily to “a peryasive hostility to the differentiation of any specialized profession from the mass of the citizenry [lest] a specialized profession 

. . . become a privileged class.” Citing both the egalitarian attacks on West 

Point and the similar problems of the legal profession in attempting to set 

itself apart, Weigley’s cogept summary of the interchangeability of the soldier’s and statesman’s roles from Andrew Jackson to William McKinley 

leaves little room for argument. If the roots of a developing military professionalism can be traced to the late 19th century, nonetheless the army was 

still too small and remate to attract the concern of statesmen. Although this 

situation began to change rapidly after Versailles, even today the United 

States “still often visits for the first time places where nations like the Ger3Another eminent historian has recently raised questions about this same German experience, asking whether there is anything that our nation today can learn from that experience. 

See Fntz Stern’s Introduction to his Failure ofllliberalism: hys in the Political Culture of 

Modem Germany (New York, 1972). 
5 

mans and French have traveled often and long before.” 

An extensive discussion concluded the operiing session and is reproduced in the text. Evenly divided between questions put to the participants 

and comments offered from the floor, the principal topics are geographical 

determinism, the effect of perkonality over and above institutionaliqed arrangements, the European view of the American- Civil War (treating tactics 

rather than institutions), and challenges to Professor Weigley’s thesis that 

soldiers and statesmen were interchangeable in the 19th century-certifying 

to the niany ghosts of Samuel P. Huntington who surfaced now and then 

during the symposium. 

l%e Second Session 

On the afternoon of 22 October Lieutenant Colonel Elliott L. Johnson, 

the Acting Head of the Department of History, introduced the session chairman, Louis Morton, the Daniel Webster Professor of History at Dartmouth. 

Very briefly, Professor Mortoh links the morning and afternoon sessions by 

citing the Joint Board (established in 1903) as the institutional forerunner of 

the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose relationship with the president during World 

War I1 is the subject of the principal paper in the second session. 

Dr. Forrest C. Pogue of the George C. Marshall Research Foundation 

takes as his main theme an examination of the thesis put forth by Samuel P. 

Huntington in The Soldier and the State to the effect that (1) the Joint Chiefs 

of Staff, rather than the president, ran World War I1 and (2) they did it by 

abandoning their professional military values in favor of civilian ones. Opening with a long quotation in which Marshall addressed himself to similar 

allegations, Dr. Pogue treats first the basic relationship worked out between 

the president and each of the Chiefs individually, then moves back to his basic 

theme by citing and comparing other interpretations that both parallel and 

confute the Huntington thesis. Prominent among the interpretations cited are 

those of James MacGregor Burn‘s, Kent Roberts Greenfield, Richard M. 

Leighton, Maurice Matloff, and Louis Morton. Whereas the opening session 

had treated the symposium theme witqbroad-brush reviews of relatively long 

periods of time, Dr. Pogue’s paper sets the scene for a historiographical 

session observing particular soldiers and statesmen in the period between 

1942 and 1944. 

Selecting several cases in point-the Stilwell question in China, the 

Torch decision, the Trident meeting, and the first meeting at QuebecPogue is even-handed and judicious throughout, attempting to show by 

specific examples that “the full facts concerning the activities of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff’ do not demonstrate that they assumed “the direction of the 

war in the broad sense that Professor Huntington suggests.” Disagreements 
arose, to be sure, between the views of the Chiefs and those of the president; 

but on the whole the Chiefs followed the lines laid down by the president and 

the principle of civilian control survived the war intact. 

In the first of two scheduled commentaries, Dr. Maurice Matloff, Chief 

Historian, Department of the Army, continues the discussion, attempting to 

set the wartime decisions in the broader perspective of the pattern of civilmilitary relations that had evolved in the United States between Versailles 

and Pearl Harbor. Whereas Dr. Pogue had concentrated on personal relationships, Dr. Matloff stresses institutional arrangements, both as they had 

come to exist and as they had come to be viewed by the participants. Broadly, 

he shows how the absence of any national coordinating council on defense 

matters, such as the Joint Chiefs, between the wars led each of the services 

to think about the future essentially in service terms, especially since World 

War I seemed to have made it clear that determining the “what” of national 

policy was the preserve of the president, while determining the “how” was 

the military task. This pattern of thought was abetted by the tendency of the 

inter-war presidents to stay out of technical military matters. Thus, by the 

eve of the war, no meshing of political and military factors into a grand 

strategy for the nation had taken place, either institutionally or conceptually. 

Dr. Matloff then reviews the president’s own background in military 

affairs, treating the 1939-41 “short-of-war” period in some detail, and 

showing that while more prewar thinking had taken place than ever before 

in U.S. history, no consistent pattern had emerged. Neither the president nor 

the Chiefs of Staff started with a fully developed blueprint. From the 

beginning, Circumstance, necessity, trial and error, and compromises in the 

changing context of war dictated- decisions far more than any ideal military 

ethic, whether applied or surrendered. Dr. Matloff concludes with a 

perceptive discussion of the last year of the war, suggesting that perhaps the 

war itself outran both strategists and statesmen when “problems of winning 

the peace began to come up against those of winning the war.” 

In the second commentary, Professor Gaddis Smith of Yale brings to 

the discussion the viewpoint of the diplomatic historian. Beginning by citing 

several incidents during the Truman administration, seeking to show by 

comparison how difficult it is to determine just what constitutes a “military 

consideration” as opposed to a “political consideration,” Smith comes down 

solidly against the Huntington thesis, viewing it as an application of a simple 

model to a complex problem which, Jrhile stimulating, is “just plain wrong.” 

He then moves to an analysis of the long quotation from General Marshall 

that opens Pogue’s paper. Smith shows that there are many kinds of political 

considerations, of which he identifies four-the politics of method, of public 

opinion, of international cooperation, of competitive advantage. All of these 
7 

appear to be “lurking behind General Marshall’s remarks, and yet they are 

blended and confused,” testifying, Smith believes, to the need for “broad, 

continuing education of military officers in history and the social sciences.” 

Acknowledging the advances made in this direction since the 193Os, Smith 

proposes a corollary lesson: the need for “broad education, including some 

education in military history and principles, for the civilian side of national 

leadership.” 

Time prevented an extensive discussion following this session, so Professor Morton exercised his prerogative to call Dr. Richard Leighton from the 

audience, allowing him to offer a brief rebuttal to a number of points raised 

by Dr. Pogue. Dr. Leighton’s remarks are reproduced in full. Following his 

comments are two ex pt fact0 commentaries by Major General Haywood 

S. Hansell, Jr. (USAF, Ret.), and Brigadier General George A. Lincoln 

(USA, Ret.), an airman and a soldier both intimately familiar with many of 

the decisions treated in this session. General Hansell tells us how little the 

potential decisiveness of the bombing offensive in Europe was understood by 

the political leadership, while General Lificoln reminds us how certain of the 

decisions were so often affected by the more mundane imperatives of logistical planning. 

me Third Session 

After the banquet on the evening of 22 October, General Sir John 

Winthrop Hackett, Principal of King’s College, London, delivered the 13th 

annual Harmon Memorial Lecture.4 Sir John addresses his topic, “The 

Military in the Service of the State,” from the standpoint of “what the 

relationship between the military and the state looks like today, what changes 

have taken place in it in our time, and what factors are at work leading to 

further change.” The ethical aspects of that relationship are of particular 

concern to Sir John, since “some who have accepted that the state is master 

have not always accepted that the statesmen are the masters, or have done 

so with extreme reluctance.” 

Sir John concentrates on the American experience and suggests that 

future historians may come to see the 1945 to 1952 period as a watershed in 

civil-military relations. Up to 1945, the American approach to war was 

essentially anti-Clausewitzian, the national ethic being “not greatly in favour 

of the application of armed force to a political end.” Here he contrasts 

President Truman’s handling of the Berlin question in 1945 with that same 

president’s later decision in the case of General MacArthur in Korea. War 

.Although the Harmon Lectures are published separately each year, Sir John’s lecture is 

included here since it was an integral part-I am tempted to say the high point-of the 

symposium. 
8 

and peace could be looked upon as separate entities prior to the nuclear age. 

Since we now assume, however, that in a general nuclear war the first battle 

will be the last, such an approach is unthinkable; as in an earlier age, war 

and peace can-indeed, must-coexist. For the soldier, then, in an age of 

limited wars for political ends, the questions of obedience and loyalty are 

likely to be more complex than those encountered in a crusade for freedom. 

In the concluding part of his lecture, Sir John examines the question, 

“Where or by what is the allegiance of the military professional engaged?” 

All in all, his view of the future, one buttressed by hard study and some 35 

years of experience, is hopeful. That it is so is owing in no small part to his 

faith in the military way of life as constituting a moral repository for the 

nation. His closing confissio tide; is as eloquent a statement in defense of 

the military virtues as one will find anywhere. 

The Fourth Session 

The concluding session convened on the afternoon of 23 October. In the 

chair, substituting at the last moment for Professor Henry F. Graff of Columbia, was Professor Theodore Ropp of Duke. Professor Ropp opens the 

proceedings by linking the second and fourth sessions, asking whether the 

question at issue might be if we can see evidence in the recent American past 

of a trend toward an unintentional militarizing of our society. He then 

introduces the prinoipal speaker, Professor Richard D. Challener of Princeton and his topic, “John Foster Dulles: The Moralist Armed.” 

Professor Challener examines the record of Secretary of State Dulles, 

particularly those special qualities of the man that made him both the spokesman for and the symbol of the foreign policies of the Eisenhower years. 

Beginning from the standpoint that Dulles was essentially “a moralist who 

greatly inflated the rhetoric of the Cold War,” Challener examines the Dulles 

of the 1930s and 194Os, stressing the religious aspects of his background that 

led him later to speak of “atheistic communism,” giving the adjective equal 

weight with the noun. Discussing Dulles’s work with the National Council 

of Churches, Challener notes his conviction that a means to bring about 

peaceful change among nations was essential. His firm faith in the existence 

of a coherent moral order in the world led him; at least until 1945, to feel 

“that the lack of international organization was the cause of conflict. After 

1945 it led him to identify emergent communism as the new enemy of a just 

and durable peace. And against both, it was’ necessary to mount a moral 

crusade.” 

The transition was not immediate, as Challener makes clear in recount- 
9 

ing Dulles’s view in 1946 that overseas air bases should be foregone lest, by 

carrying “to others the offensive threat we would ward off from ourselves,” 

they “increase the risk of war.” Still later Dulles questioned the original 

proposals for NATO, wondering whether such regional arrangements were 

legal under Article 5 1 of the UN Charter and whether it was in the nation’s 

best interest to make long-term commitments. Although Professor Challener 

does not single them out, it becomes apparent that the North Korean invasion of June 1950 and the subsequent Chinese intervention in that conflict 

were pivotal in Dulles’s intellectual development. Soon thereafter, in a letter 

to General MacArthur, the future Secretary of State hinted clearly at the 

massive retaliation doctrine he was later to espouse. 

The middle portion of Professor Challener’s paper treats the relationships developed by Dulles, after becoming Secretary, with the Joint Chiefs 

and with Secretary of Defense Wilson and goes into some detail on the 

intellectual origins of the massive retaliation doctrine. Recalling again 

Dulles’s strong conviction that wars arise more often from miscalculation 

than from intent, Challener sees a relation between massive retaliation and 

the New Look in defense policy: the first was to draw the lines clearly, make 

positions known in advance so as to reduce the chance of the enemy’s 

miscalculating; the second-the means of massive retaliation-he sees as a 

characteristically American response, with its heavy reliance on presumed 

technical superiority, to the frustrations of the Cold War. By 1958 or 1959, 

however, Sputnik and other events had begun to lead Dulles to question the 

efficacy, if not the credibility, of the methods he had so long espoused. His 

sudden death prevented many from realizing, as might later have become 

clear, that he was not “wedded exclusively to massive retaliation as the single 

basis of policy.” 

Challener concludes by comparing the Dulles known to those with 

whom he worked and the Dulles known to most of us by the image he 

projected, that of the simplifier and brinksman. In the end, he suggests, 

Dulles was “no innovator but rather the man who carried inherited policies 

to their logical conclusions.” As Secretary of State when the Cold War was 

at its hottest, he remained “the moralist armed-a man of unexamined first 

premises who continued policies that helped to’turn the Cold War into a basic 

condition of American life.” 

Following Professor Challener’s paper is the commentary of Professor 

William Appleman Williams of Oregon State University, read in his unexpected absence by Professor Philip A. Crow1 of the University of Nebraska. 

Professor Williams agrees with Challener that the civilian leadership in the 

United States “had defined the world in such a way that American foreign 

policy could not avoid being militarized.” This process, however, goes back 
10 

at least as far in Williams’s view as the War with Spain. He reminds us that 

Dulles was not the first amateur theologian with a hand in foreign policy, 

mentioning the examples of Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings Bryan. 

Such men, he argues, were Christian capitalists, however, not Christian 

anarchists, Christian communitarians, or Christian socialists. “I simply do 

not think we can comprehend the Cold War without understanding that 

America’s civilian leaders saw themselves confronted by the challenge of a 

functioning alternative to a capitalist political economy.” 

In concluding, Williams raises the difficult question of whether it is a 

duty of the military professional, if he sees the definition of the world accepted by the civilian leadership to be somehow mistaken, so to inform the 

civilian leadership, rather than proceed with military plans in support of that 

mistaken definition. Here he touches on matters closely related to those 

raised by General Hackett. Williams answers his question affirmatively, 

seeing the central function of the military academies as that of educating men 

capable of seeing such contradictions where they exist and having the dedication and courage to speak up. “The good captain does go down with his ship, 

but he also refuses to take it to sea until it is fit for his crew.” 

The commentary of Brigadier General Noel F. Parrish (USAF, 

Retired), now of Trinity University, is informed by his long service on the 

Air Staff. Noting that “the orthodoxy of the moment is simply to categorize 

Mr. Dulles as immorally anticommunist,’’ General Parrish congratulates 

Challener on the breadth of7 his analysis and goes on to show numerous 

incidents in which Mr. Dulles was quite at odds with the views of the JCS. 

At the heart of his disagreement with today’s common view of Dulles is his 

question, To which other postwar Secretaries of State are we comparing 

Dulles when we categorize his attitudes and policies as essentially militaryoriented? Here his comments on Acheson and Rusk are suggestive, especially 

when he compares the foreign aid budgets of the Eisenhower and later 

administrations with their military budgets. Parrish sees the “massive retaliation” policy as a logical imperative stemming from the fiscal policies of the 

Eisenhower administration and devotes the second half of his commentary 

to this point, to the charge that military leaders did not look ahead, and to 

some considerations of the important benefits derived from Dulles’s unflinching attitudes. He concludes by reminding us how often since 1945 the military 

leadership has found a closer ally in the Secretary of State rather than the 

Secretary of Defense. 

The extensive discussion following the final session centers on the postwar period, although some questions and answers go back into the 19th 

century. Professor Crowl, remarking on the paper he had read for Professor 

Williams, makes the major point that Dulles inherited the policy of contain- 
11 

ment and had to make it fit within an era of severely limited military budgets. 

As the discussion proceeds, the similarities in approach of Secretaries Acheson and Rusk become more and more evident. 

Two ideas dominate the greater part of the discussion. The first, raised 

by Professor Dorpalen in comparing American Secretaries of State with 

Bethmann Hollweg, is that responsible statesmen have a duty to impress 

upon the people the dangers of popular policies. “If they can’t do it, if they 

feel they ought not to do it, then they ought to resign and let somebody else 

take over.”5 This idea had been raised earlier in the case of military leaders 

by General Hackett and Professor Williams. 

The second idea, implicit in the discussion until made explicit by Professor Morton, is that the major problem today would seem to be not whether 

the civilian leadership can control the military, but rather whether civilian 

leadership is being continually militarized in outlook. To that question, given 

our closeness in time to the events being discussed, every reader will have his 

own answer. It is at least possible, however, that some future historian will 

not only see the militarization of civilian leadership as generally true of the 

last quarter century, but will find that little else could have occurred, given 

the consensus to support the containment policy enunciated at the beginning 

of the period and called into doubt, and at first hesitantly, only twenty years 

later. 

David MacIsaac, Major, USAF 

Executive Director 

1970 Military History Symposium 

‘The possible application of this idea to many civilian leaders, with reference to Vietnam 

policy from 1962 to 1968, had by 1970 become a central feature of early memoirs and postmortems. See, for example, Clark M. Clifford, “A Viet Nam Reappraisal,” Fore& Affairs 47 (July 

1969): 601-22, and Townsend Hoopes, The Limits ofhtervention (New York, 1970). 

The Rmt &.&on 

SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN 

FROM VIENNA TO VERSAILLES 

15 

OPENING REMARKS 

Colonel ALFRED F. HURLEY (Professor and Head, Departmerlt of History, USAF Academy): General Clark, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. As chairman of the committee that administers the symposia in military 

history, I find it a real pleasure to see such a fine turnout for this fourth 

symposium. The veterans of these affairs will remember that our former 

Superintendent, General Moorman, made the opening remarks At the beginning of the first three symposia. We expect that he will be sitting in during 

the sessions today, since he retired to the Colorado Springs area. His successor came on board at the end of July, after holding a series of High-level posts, 

including service as the vice Commander of Tactical Air Command and, 

most recently, Commander of our Air University. At this time I would like 

to introduce to you our new Superintendent, Lieutenant General Albert P. 

Clark. 

General CLARK: Thank you, Colonel Hurley. Distinguished guests, ladies 

and gentlemen. One of my more pleasant duties as Superintendent here is to 

welcome all of you to the Air Force Academy and to this fourth symposium. 

I believe that programs such as this play a very large part in widening the 

experience and knowledge of our cadets and also of our faculty and in 

demonstrating by example that civil-military relations need not become a 

problem if we all apply our talents jointly to it. 

As a case in point, I am certainly pleased to see such a large number 

of civilian historians and other distinguished representatives from the community at large with us today. You come from more thari fifty history 

departments across the nation and from every one of our service academies. 

Virtually all the senior service schools, of the army, the navy, and the air 

force and the National War College are represented here.We have representatives from the Army and the Air Force ROTC and from the history 

programs of all three services. I would like especially to extend a welcome 

to our Canadian guests who have come a long way, and there are quite a 

number amongst you this morning. This evening I will have an opportunity 

to extend a special welcome to our distinguished Harmon Lecturer and his 

lady who, coming all the way from England, have come the farthest of any 

of you. 

We see in your presence here a testimonial both to the success of the 
16 

symposia and to your interest in a provocative and timely topic. I trust that 

you will enjoy your stay with us and that you should have a full opportunity 

while here to see the full picture of what we do at the Academy. We hope 

you will take this opportunity to examine our facilities and especially to talk 

to our officers and cadets. The total picture for us means but one thing: to 

provide an opportunity for the development of our gfaduates for a career of 

service as officers in the Qnited States Air Force. To this end we hope to help 

our cadets gain a sense of perspective, so that they will be better prepared 

to meet the challenge of this and future decades. We want to give them a 

deeper knowledge of our nation, of other areas of the world in which they 

might be called upon to serve, hnd of the noble profession upon which they 

have embarked. For those cadets who desire to study history in greater depth 

than is possible within our basic curriculum, we offer a full program comparable to any undergraduate major anywhere and climaxed in a few cases each 

year by a cooperative Master of Arts program with the history department 

of Indiana University. 

I think I should tell you that your presence here today is looked upon 

by all of us who constitute the Academy community as a major,opportunity. 

Ndturally those of us who can take part in the various sessions will benefit 

from our association with the distifiguished participants and guests; but 

beyond that, through publication of the papers and the discussion sessions 

we hope to pass on a similar opportunity to our future cadets and faculty and 

also to add to the understanding of interested parties here and abroad on the 

subject of “Soldiers and Statesmen.” 

Finally, bearing in mind the subject of our discussions, let me conclude 

by presuming for a moment to speak for all of us here at the Academy, and 

indeed here in this room, who are members of the profession of arms. Our 

duty is clear: to continue the tradition firmly established by our predecessors 

of loyalty without reservation to the civil power. In this country, that means 

loyalty to the president as commander-in-chief as provided in the Constitution by our founding fathers. Yet at the same time, we all recognize our duty 

to provide the best possible military advice to our civilian superiors. It is in 

this area of interaction between loyalty and the fulfillment of duty that we 

expect and indeed hope discussions during our sessions will ultimately focus, 

to the benefit of all of us here and most certainly to future readers of the 

proceedings of the symposium. 

I hope I have an opportunity to meet all of you in the course of the next 

two days. Thank you very much. 

Colonel HURLEY: Thank you, General Clark. 
17 

I would like to explain two changes in our program. On Tuesday we 

learned that the wife of the chairman of the fourth session, Professor Henry 

Graff, had become seriously ill; so Professor Graff had to bow out. We are 

extremely fortunate to be able to obtain at short notice the assistance of an 

old friend of the department, Professor Theodore Ropp of Duke. He will 

chair the fourth session. On Tuesday we also learned that the doctors had 

told Professor William Appleman Williams that he was not to travel. It may 

not be generally known, but Professor Williams is a graduate of the Naval 

Academy and was medically retired from the navy because of a wartime 

injury. That injury has flared up again, and he faces a major operation. His 

paper is in the mail, and if it arrives in time, we will ask one of the members 

of the academic community who is here to read it in Professor Williams’s 

stead. 

I should also explain that you may observe some shuffling going on 

during the course of the symposium. That reflects the fact that our cadets 

and faculty members do have duty commitments that preclude their attending all the sessions. The hardened veterans of professional meetings have been 

exposed to this sort of thing around the country. The coming and going here 

will not reach that level, but there will be some, and I hope you will understand. 

It is a great personal pleasure to introduce to you the chairmari of our 

opening session, “Soldiers and Statesmen: From Vienna to Versailles.” Those 

of you who attended our 1968 symposium on “Command arid Commhnders” 

will remember the splendid job this gentleman did as the chairmafi of our 

opening session. Because of that fine job, we have invited him back to try his 

hand as the opening session chairman today. [Colonel Hurley then introduced RICHARD A. PRESTON, the W. K. Boyd Professor of History, 

Duke University.] 

The CHAIRMAN (Professor Preston): General Clark, Colonel Hurley, ladies and gentlemen. It’s being put on the spot to be reminded that I got the 

symposium off to a good start before and that I am expected to do the same 

thing again! 

I think perhaps my first duty is to express on behalf of all the visitors 

here our appreciation for being invited to take part in this symposium, which 

has now become the leading symposium in the country on military history. 

It is a great tribute to the Academy’s Department of History, to the backing 

that it gets from the Academy administration and alumni, and also to the 

reservoir of military experience which conditions the work of preparation, 

including an order of the day to me, your chairman, which reads like an order 

to infantry About to go over the top! 
18 

But the most important thing about this symposium, and I think we 

would all agree with this, is that it is based solidly on a single discipline, on 

the established discipline of history, and not on the sort of cloudy nebula in 

which some of our colleagues operate in the area of strategic studies, where 

they talk theory and jargon and wander far from fact. 

I was told when I took this job that I was to do two things: get the 

symposium off to a “rollicking start,” and say something by way of introduction about civil-military relations in Canada and the CommonWealth. At first 

I thought that this Bas rather a contradiction in terms. There seemed nothing 

either tollicking or serious to say on that subject. Civil-military relations in 

Caaada have always been rather one-sided, and I could think of no time in 

history when the military were in a position to challenge the civilian autliorities-then we have the dramatic events of this week. [Political kidnappings 

and niurder in Quebec had led the Prime Minister of Canada to declare a 

state of “apprehehded insurrection” and to invoke the emergency War Measures Act. Troops and police conducted extensive manhunts and rounded up 

known separatists. -Ed.] I am embarrassed by thinking about all this. But of 

course being a bicultural country, we have certain advantages you don’t 

possess. We can always blame the French Canadians! 

However, I think that I might make one or two pertinent points about 

British experience in civil-pilitary relations to start the symposium off. It 

seems to me that these are a necessary background for our discussion today, 

and especially for the commentary which Professor Weigley is going to give 

after we have heard the papers. Two or three practices in civil-military 

relations established by British military practice are basic to our whole 

discussion this morning. We will be dealing with the 19th century, but these 

practices were established in Britain much earlier than the 19th century. One 

of them is the use of financial control, and the second is the practice of 

cooperation between military experts and non-experts on committees. Both 

of these come from far back in the British tradition. I should be careful and 

say “English” tradition, because they date from before the time the Scots got 

in on the act and began to claim credit for everything that the English did! 

As you all know, the failure of Charles I to get ship money, and of 

Cromwell to get his major generals to collect taxes, left unsolved the problem 

of providing for the military protection of the state. This was resolved in the 

reign of William I11 by the combination of an annual legislative appropriation 

and an annual Mutiny Act. This is the financial weapon by which the civil 

state now bludgeons the military. It is a pretty crude weapon, but they were 

pretty crude in the 17th century. You remember that they controlled the 

executive by chopping off the head of a minister or two-or the king’s if it 

became necessary. This financial weapon is still about as crude as that. It has 
19 

the same kind of effect. It also makes for the possibility of danger to the state 

by excessive economy. But as historians we ought to look at it in another way 

and realize that it is, nevertheless, an effective weapon of control. The military, from the very nature of their job, inevitably tend to think in terms of 

what one might call “over-kill”; and furthermore, if they’re given unlimited 

resources, they tend to get wasteful. Therefore, while it may be unfortunate, 

one of the best methods of making the militaj efficient is to introduce a 20% 

over-all cut into the budget. The Cardwell and the Haldane reforms in the 

19th and 20th centuries are instances of economy measures that produced a 

more rational and efficient military system. It seems to me therefore that we 

should look first at that principle of financial control as introduced from 

British experience in civil-military relations. This is one thing that is talked 

about in the coming papers. 

The second device is civil-military cooperation, and this again was an 

English contribution. For England the navy was the important service for 

many centuries, because of geography; and the navy happened to be from the 

beginning a technical service, much more so than the army. In order to 

control it and make it operate efficiently, it was found to be necessary to 

combine experts and nontechnical people in committees or commissions or 

boards. You got the Navy Board in the 16th century, and the Lord High 

Admiral was “put into commission” in the 17th century. This practice was 

not introduced into\ the British army until the 20th century, and then only 

as a consequence of great pressure. It came in the form of the Committee of 

Imperial Defence and the Army Council. The Imperial General Staff was a 

use of the committee system in a different way, all military. But this committee method is open to question: How effectively can you produce strategy and 

run services by committees? It’s a point on which American military personnel have criticized the British, although the National Security Council applies 

it on one level. Still it uses a very important and interesting innovation, and 

it too was a British innovation. 

I think two other points might be of interest from Imperial and Commonwealth and Canadian experience. The first one is the problem that the 

British encountered in the 19th century, when they attempted to control 

military operations in their colonies at a great distance at a time when 

communications were very slow. The British had tp face this problem long 

before the United States came up against it, and long before the MacArthur 

crisis. They gave great power to the man in the field, but kept him under the 

supervision of a civilian agency at home, often by appointing a retired general 

to be colonial governor. The conflict between Kitchener and Curzon, the civil 

and military leaders in India, was a consequence of delegating large powers 

to the men on the spot. In that instance, Kitchener won out at the time, but 

I believe it would be reasonable to say that afterwards the civil arm in India 
and at home exercised greater control because of that earlier conflict in India. 

I think that this is an area that needs perhaps much more investigation than 

it has hitherto received. 

A second point from Commonwealth experience, while it doesn’t apply 

much to the two papers we are about to hear, applies generally to our present 

interest in the symposium. It is the problem of relations with small states. 

Because the British in the 19th century began to realize that they needed 

support from the millions in the self-governing colonies who were becoming 

virtually independent allies, they had to invent a technique which is used by 

you now: close cooperation at the professional, technical level, coupled with 

independence on the nontechnical, political level. This of course is a good 

way to obtain close cooperation from allies. But, as with financial control, 

this formula is disliked very much by some military leaders because it seems 

to suggest undue interference by politicians. Yet there are times when it 

might possibly mean greater efficiency. One example I think of is during the 

First World War. At an Imperial War Cabinet meeting Sir Robert Borden, 

the Canadian Prime Minister, blasted the British General Staff on the basis 

of information that he’d collected from his Corps Commander, General 

Currie; and he quoted Currie by name. Currie of course was a subordinate 

of the Commander-in-Chief in the field. It would be impossible to think of 

a British subordinate who had been quoted in that way surviving very long. 

But Currie did survive. He even became the principal of a university afterwards, which is one of the laurels that apparently go to distinguished retired 

generals. Currie’s case is evidence that, because of a political relationship, it 

was possible to introduce criticism of the high command which otherwise 

could not have been introduced. Whether it was really valid criticism in this 

case is a different matter. There are people here who are experts in that field, 

and who might have more to say on it. 

I think that such experiences as these from British and Commonwealth 

background may be appropriate to mention at the outset of a symposium on 

“Soldiers and Statesmen.” If they are not peculiarly from the Canadian 

background, perhaps what is happening in Quebec this week may give 

Canadians relevant experience in this field for future use. 

[The Chairman then introduced Professor GORDON WRIGHT.] 

Professor GORDON WRIGHT (Stanford University): General Clark, Colonel Hurley, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. It is a great privilege for 

a very unmilitary historian to throw the first Molotov cocktail at this symposium. For those of you from the Air‘Force Academy, I want you to know 

that I consider myself merely an advance guard and scouting party for a more 

important delegation from Stanford that will be coming in about three weeks. 

[Referring to the upcoming Stanford-Air Force football game -Ed.] 
21 

SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN IN 19TH CENTURY 

FRANCE 

Gordon Wright 

Stan ford University 

The modern problem of civil-military relations, Samuel P. Huntington 

tells us, dates from the early 19th century, when a professional officer corps 

made its appearance. The nature of the problem was not a threat of armed 

revolt, but a more pervasive conflict: a kind of built-in tension between the 

military expert and the politician. Such tension, we are told by another 

scholar, became endemic in 19th century France. “French history between 

the revolution of 1789 and the outbreak of the First World War,” says Jere 

C. King, “is replete with instances of open or covert conflict between the 

civilian statesmen and the professional soldiers.”2 

This is the exact scope of my assignment, as defined by the planners of 

today’s symposium: “the relationships between chiefs of state and their principal military advisers in 19th century France.” If the period was really 

replete with open or covert conflict, as Professor King says, my task would 

seem to be an easy one: to collect and classify the most notable examples of 

such conflict and to draw some general conclusions therefrom. Yet as one 

browses through the standard works on 19th century France, one finds only 

sparse and fleeting references to such conflict, or even to the general problem 

of civil-military relations. With a few honorable exceptions, historians have 

pretty consistently avoided the topic, either because they lacked interest in 

it or because they considered it a non-topic, without a valid basis in fact. The 

contrast with Germany is striking. There we have a small library of monographs dealing with the politics of the army, with the role of the officer corps 

and the high command in society and the state; courses or textbooks on 

modern Germany can hardly be imagined without substantial reference to 

’Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier andsthe State: The Theow and Polirics of Ovil- 

* Jere C. King, Geneds and Politicians (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1951). p. 5. 

Milituy Relations (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), p. 19. 
22 

the military. Historians of France, on the other hand, seem to have preferred 

a policy of benign neglect. Some of them suddenly discovered the subject a 

dozen years ago, when the Algerian war inspired a severe military crisis; but 

their focus remained mainly contemporary, with little reference to the 19th 

century background. They were inclined to explain that until our time the 

French army knew its place and was content to stay in that place; that it took 

pride in the label “la grande muette,” silently executed orders, and rarely if 

ever sought to influence or control state policy. In the orthodox view, army 

officers did their duty in the same fashion as other bureaucrats such as postal 

clerks or professors; they broke the surface of history only in time of war. 

There is undoubtedly some justification for this orthodox view. French 

history in the 19th century can be lectured about or written about without 

much mention of the army; the course or text would not be seriously distorted 

by the omission. The same would be true, I suspect, of United States history 

in the same era, except during the Civil War. It would certainly not be true 

of German history. In this case, the Rhine is a real frontier. 

Nevertheless, the relative neglect of the subject in the case of France has 

surely been overdone. Even though the French high command rarely if ever 

sought to throw the army’s institutional weight in an effort to shape state 

policy or to win autonomous power, political and military leaders did have 

to relate to each other in their official capacities; and since they were human, 

there was room for differences of opinion and for occasionally serious tension 

between them. On both sides, there were fallible men who sometimes held 

strong convictions; professional pride and prejudice, divergent value-systems, 

simple personal vanity could easily intrude. This personal factor-how King 

or Premier X related to General Y-was perhaps the most important variable 

in the model of civil-military relations in 19th century France. 

Three complicating factors might be mentioned at the outset. First, the 

deep division within the nation that had just lived through the Great Revolution-one of the most profound social upheavals of modern times. Rival 

value-systems coexisted uneasily after 18 15; neither the pro-Revolutionaries 

nor the anti-Revolutionaries felt safe or satisfied. Rightly or wrongly, this 

conflict tended to reinforce suspicion between civilians and military men; the 

professional soldier was believed to prefer such Old Regime values as hierarchy and stability to the Revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality. 

The second factor was the heritage of Caesarism left by Napoleon. In 

his time, there had been no problem of harmonizing political and military 

leadership; both had been embodied in a single man, whose strategic genius 

and charismatic appeal continued to dazzle many Frenchmen for at least a 

couple of generations. It was easy for suspicious civilians to suppose that 
23 

ambitious soldiers would find the Napoleonic model attractive and that they 

ought therefore to be watched with care. 

The third factor was the pattern of French political instability that kept 

throwing into question all of the basic issues, including the authority of the 

government and the army’s proper role in the state. From 1815 to 1870, no 

regime lasted longer thanll8lyears;lfromll870 to 1914 a single regimemanaged 

to survive, but cabinets (and ministers of war) changed 55 times in dy-m. 

One would expect such chronic instability to offer great opportunities to 

military adventurers or to a strong and durable institution like the army, with 

its more stable hierarchy of leaders. 

The striking thing about 19th century France is that none of these three 

factors gravely affected the relationships between chiefs of state (or of government) and their top military advisers. The split over values, the shadow of 

Napoleon, the chronic instability of government never degenerated into an 

open test of strength between civilian and military authorities or an attempt 

to restore Caesarism (barring the somewhat ambiguous case of Napoleon 

111). Why was this so? The answer is not easy to find; but it must lie in part 

in the habit of discipline and obedience deeply ingrained in most French 

professional soldiers, and in the sense of patriotic pride with which most 

civilian leaders viewed the army. Possibly there were some less admirable 

impulses at work too: on the part of the soldiers, a considerable degree of 

routine-mindedness and the kind of petty vanity that contents itself with rank 

and decorations; on the part of the politicians, a talent for manipulation and 

fast footwork. Thanks to this melange of virtues and vices, there were few 

major crises in civil-military relations during the 19th century. This does not 

mean, however, that Frenchmen found it easy to work out a stable and viable 

set of mechanisms for formulating military policy. Instead, they limped and 

stumbled along through a series of regimes and found no really workable 

system until the eve of 1914. 

In this quick survey, it will be most convenient to subdivide the century 

into three periods: (1) the two constitutional monarchies, from 18 15 to 1848; 

(2) the return to a kind of watered-down Bonapartism from 1848 to 1870; 

and (3) the Third Republic, from 1870 to 1914. Each period had its own 

characteristics and problems. 

*****+*+* 

For the Restoration monarchy, the problem was how far to trust an 

offcer corps that had served for almost twenty years under Napoleon’s 

command and whose members owed their status and presumably their loyal- 

- 
24 

ty to the fallen emperor. Would the danger of subversion be greater if the top 

echelons were purged by dismissal or retirement, or if they were allowed to 

remain in control of the army, a potential state within the state? The monarchy's solution was a compromise: there was an extensive purge, yet a large 

number of officers retained (or were soon restored to) posts of high responsibility. For example, the two most notable ministers of war between 18 15 and 

1848, Gouvion St. Cyr and Soult, were both Napoleonic marshals. 

All the same, the kings of both Bourbon and Orleanist dynasties remained on their guard. In the restructured army, they were careful to leave 

the high command amorphous and unorganized. The general staff that they 

created in 1818 was not a command organ, but merely a kind of bull pen of 

generals from which the government could choose a commander when needed. Likewise the new High Council of War, created in 1828 and composed 

of a dozen top generals,. was entrusted with no real authority and was liquidated after only two years. By keeping the high command in this inchoate 

condition, the regime restricted the potential influence of the officer corps; 

the army had no way of making its collective viewpoint known in the shaping 

of state policy. 

As individuals, however, soldiers played an unusually active political 

role in this period. For 12 out of 33 years, a military man presided over the 

council of ministers; in nine cabinets, a soldier was foreign minister; and in 

every cabinet without exception, a general held the war mini~try.~ Many 

officers also entered politics in their own right by winning election to parliament. The effect at times was considerable confusion in the lines of authority. 

During the Algerian conquest, which dragged on for a full generation after 

1830, the military commander in Algeria doubled in brass as governorgeneral, and in five different cases had a seat in parliament as well. Hence 

at times the curious example of a North African commander appearing at 

the rostrum of the Chamber of Deputies to defend his policies or even to 

criticize, openly or covertly, the government to which he was responsible. 

Such independence of action was possible not only because the field commander was a deputy, but even more because he usually outranked his 

hierarchical superior, the minister of war. A marshal in Algiers did not bend 

easily before a mere lieutenant-general in the post of minister. 

The Algerian conquest was marked by chronic conflict between Paris 

and Algiers. A long sequence of unstable cabinets, sensitive to parliamentary 

criticism, groped with the problem of whether to stay in Algeria and how to 

fight the war, but they failed to develop a firm policy or to give a clear lead 

5Roland d'Ornano, Gouvemement et haut-commandement en &&me padementaire franwk (Aix-en-Provence, 1958), p. 44. 
25 

to the North African commanders. Yet when a commander took a strong 

initiative on his own, he was likely to be scolded or recalled by the government. Frustration and irritation naturally resulted. There were repeated 

crises and changes of command during the 183Os, but conflict reached its 

high point during the long tenure of Marshal Bugeaud in the 1840s. Bugeaud, 

who has been described as one of the two outstanding French field commanders between Napoleon and Foch, was a cantankerous and self-willed character who resented slights to his considerable dignity and was sure he knew 

what was right to do in Algeria. Raised to the dignity of marshal in 1843, 

he could confront War Minister Marshal Soult on equal terms (though Soult 

liked to remind him that back in 1805 they had served together at Austerlitz 

-Soult as a marshal, Bugeaud as a corporal). Bugeaud also took advantage 

of his seat in parliament to make frequent visits to Paris and to lobby there 

against the doves who kept proposing to cut back the military commitment 

in Algeria. Still worse, he intrigued behind the minister’s back. He wrote 

complaining letters to his sympathizer, Foreign Minister Guizot, and to one 

of the king’s sons, and on one occasion even published a pamphlet critical 

of Soult’s alleged dovish tendencies. It is hardly surprising that Soult grew 

exasperated with this insubordinate subordinate who wrote candidly to the 

king’s son that “at times, in the nation’s interest, one must know how to go 

beyond the war minister’s order~.”~ Yet Soult dared not risk challenging this 

prestigious figure with his halo of desert victories, while Bugeaud was careful 

not to push the quarrel to an open breach. What was obviously lacking all 

through this episode was an organized system of relationships designed to 

coordinate political and military policy. If Algeria was finally conquered, it 

was not thanks to the system but rather in spite of it. 

********* 

The interlude of the Second Republic (from 1848 to 185 1) was too brief 

to develop a stable new pattern, but it offered tempting possibilities to opportunists on the make. While many officers resigned their commissions rather 

than serve the new regime, others saw a chance for quick promotion or 

political preferment. By mid- 1848, the bourgeois politicians were turning to 

the soldiers for help against the threat of insurrection by radical elements; 

during the bloody June Days, General Cavaignac was entrusted with extraordinary powers to crush the workers’ revolt. For several months thereafter, 

Cavaignac remained a kind of constitutional dictator, and he seemed likely 

to win election in December as president of the republic. But a dark-horse 

.Ibid., p. 89; Henri d‘Ideville, Le Mar&hd Bugeaud, d‘apr6.s sa correspon&nce intime, 

3d ed. (Paris, 1885); GCnCral Paul Azan, Conguete etpacifiation de I’AIgkbe (Paris, 1931). 
26 

candidate, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, emerged to catch the imagination of 

French voters thirsty for law and order plus national greatness, and Cavaig-. 

nac dropped back into obscurity. 

As bearer of the Bonaparte name and tradition, Louis-Napoleon seemed 

destined to restore the Caesaristic model which combined civil and military 

authority in a single leader. But unlike his brilliant uncle, he was only an 

amateur soldier with little military experience or native talent. Besides, he 

had promised to respect the constitution, which defined and restricted his 

powers. While the republic lasted, his relationships with the army leaders 

remained uneasy and at times tense. He was careful to choose second-rate 

generals as his ministers of war, but it was less easy to restrain the man who 

commanded both the armed forces of the Paris region and the National 

Guard-General Changarnier. A veteran of Algeria, a flamboyant, ambitious, and arrogant man, Changarnier had no sympathy for the flabby republic or for the Paris radicals who kept threatening the regime. For several 

months he tried without success to get Louis-Napoleon’s consent for a military coup that would overthrow the republic and restore an imperial monarchy; but the shrewd and cautious president refused to unleash his impatient 

general, sensing no doubt that the real winner in such a coup would be 

Changarnier rather than Louis-Napoleon. The irritated general began to vent 

his frustration by indiscreet references to the president as that “melancholy 

parrot,” and threats to “throw him in the clink”-omments that were 

promptly passed on to the melancholy parrot, who bided his time and chose 

his moment well.5 Early in 1851 ,Changarnier was stripped of both his 

commands, which were divided (for greater safety) between two less rambunctious generals. Changarnier fumed and fussed but knuckled under; even 

a man of his temperament was shackled by the habits of a lifetime of discipline. 

The coup d’Ctat that Changarnier had wanted was not long delayed, but 

Louis-Napoleon was determined to accomplish it in his own way. He needed 

army support, though not so much of it that he would become the army’s 

prisoner. In 1851, his military aide, Major Fleury, went off to Algeria in 

search of a general who might cooperate. He found one there in General de 

Saint-Arnaud, a soldier-of-fortune type whose remarkable career had included two dismissals from the army, a spell as a music-hall tenor, and perhaps 

some even more dubious ventures. Saint-Arnaud, who had an eye for the 

main chance, joined the conspiracy, then threatened at the last moment to 

withdraw, and thus blackmailed Louis-Napoleon into elevating him to the 

post of minister of war. In that role he was able to keep the army in line 

’Adrien Dansette, Louis-Napof&n a fa conquite dupouvoir (Paris, 1961), p. 301. For a 

pro-Changarnier account, see Comte d‘Antioche, Changamier (Pans, 189 1). 
27 

during the coup of December 185 1 and to use army units to put down the 

outbreaks of resistance that followed. He was rewarded with a marshal‘s 

baton and a generous cash settlement.6 

Civil-military relationships were bound to take a new form under a ruler 

who bore the name Napoleon, with all its aura of military genius and glory. 

He could scarcely afford to keep hands off in the military sphere, as the 

constitutional monarchs before 1848 had done. Yet his talents as planner, 

strategist, or field comdander were untested and unknown. Capable or not, 

it soon became clear that Napoleon intended to be his own commander-inchief, with the soldiers reduced to the role of offering advice and executing 

his plans and orders. To make matters worse, promotions to the highest posts 

came to depend heavily on the imperial favor, which showed a preference for 

courtier types, men who were adept at charming the empress. The Second 

Empire did introduce greater stability at the top in the sense that ministers 

of war, for the only time in the 19th century, enjoyed long tenure: there were 

only five ministers in eighteen years. But for reasons of his own, Napoleon 

let the high command remain in an amorphous, unorganized state; he introduced neither a general staff nor a consultative council empowered to discuss 

and plan. 

The shortcomings of Napoleon’s military organization and doctrine 

were never clearer than during his first war in the Crimea, which the emperor 

@tempted to run personally at long distance via a primitive telegraph line. 

The ill-conceived Crimean landing had aroused little enthusiasm among the 

military professionals; it was decided and planned primarily by Napoleon and 

his British allies, largely for political reasons. The minister of war, Marshal 

Vaillant, complained privately but made no open protest; “the fact is,” noted 

old Marshal Castellane in his diary, “that [Vaillant] cringes like a dog before 

the Emperor, and hasn’t the nerve to express his view^."^ General Canrobert, 

soon appointed field commander in the Crimea, was a pliant yes-man who 

soon found himself in a quite impossible situation. Napoleon instructed 

Canrobert to undertake no large-scale operation without prior approval from 

Paris; and worse still, he sent out a personal aide, General Niel, with authority to sit in on all high-level discussions and to report directly to the emperor. 

Matters were made still worse by tensions between the French and British 

high commands. As the siege of Sebastopol dragged on, the impatient Napoleon announced that he would go out to the Crimea 50 take direct command. 

Although finally dissuaded from this action by his entourage, he proceeded 

to draft a detailed siege plan and instructed his emissary Niel to see that it 

60f the several biographies of Saint-Amaud, the most thorough and dependable is that of 

Quatrelles I’Epine, Le M&hd de Saint-Amaud, 2 vols. (Pans, 1928-29). On Fleury’s role, 

see the Souvenirs du Ge’ndd Qe. Hemy, 2 vols. (Paris, 1897-98). 

7Markhal de Castellane, Journal (Paris, 1897), 5: 74. 
was adopted. Canrobert did his best, but the British balked; ill and disheartened, he finally asked to be relieved of his command. He was replaced by 

General Ptlissier, who was neither a yes-man nor a courtier type. Ptlissier 

was a rough-and-ready bulldog who had won his spurs in Algeria; as the 

French say, he was a man of character, which is to say difficult character. 

PBissier’s arrival changed everything. Ignoring Napoleon’s siege plan 

and Niel’s outraged objections, he drafted his own plan and began to implement it. When the emperor angrily wired instructions to “follow explicitly 

the orders I give you,” Ptlissier paid no attention; when Niel protested at an 

allied staff meeting, Ptlissier gave him a public tongue-lashing, ordered him 

to send no further messages to Paris without prior censorship, and threatened 

to pack him off home if this order were violated. When the emperor learned 

of this episode, he exploded. “There is no question of discussing strategy 

between us,” he telegraphed Ptlissier, “but of giving and receiving an order. 

. . .” Ptlissier again brushed this off, complaining that his command duties 

could not be carried dut “at the somewhat paralyzing end of an electric wire.” 

The emperor, beside ”himself, drafted a message intended to back Ptlissier 

against the wall; henceforth, clear every action in advance with Paris or hand 

over the command to Niel. An open break was averted by the prgence of 

mind of Marshal Vaillant, minister of war. Caught in the middle in this 

dispute, he chose to send the emperor’s message by slow boat rather than 

telegraph; and when Napoleon cooled off a bit, there was time to intercept 

and cancel the letter. After Sebastopol fell a few weeks later, Napoleon 

showed at least that he held no grudges; Ptlissier was promoted to marshal. 

But it had required virtual insubordination by a stiff-necked soldier to arrive 

at the kind of autonomy needed by the field commander in such a distant 

war.8 

This classic example of how not to run a war was not repeated in 

Napoleon’s later wars, even though the emperor himself was physically 

present and, at least formally, in active command. Perhaps that was because 

both of the later wars were mercifully brief. The Italian campaign of 1859 

lasted only a few weeks, while in 1870, Napoleon’s illness made his role as 

field commander a purely pro forma affair. Even in 1870, however, he failed 

to entrust clear-cut command authority to any of his generals; the main field 

army suffered three changes of command in six weeks of fighting-hardly a 

recipe for military effectiveness. 

True, one wonders whether things would have been much improved if 

the high command had been better organized and more influential during the 

OBrison D. Gooch, The New Bonapartist Generalsin the Crimean War (The Hague, 1959), 

p. 266; Victor Derrkagaix, Le M&hd Pdlissier, duc de Malakoff (Paris, 191 1). 
29 

Second Empire. It was not an era of brilliant leadership, of initiative and 

imagination in the armed forces; rather, the key word was routine-mindedness. In 1867 the high command could not even manage to organize a 

Knegspiel after the Prussian model; as a substitute, the emperor ordered one 

of his generals to read aloud to the others from a history of the first Napoleon’s campaign^.^ Indeed, the emperor seems to have been ahead of the 

soldiers in his concern for military reforms that would strengthen the army. 

He had to urge their adoption of such new weapons as the chassepot rifle, 

and his effort to broaden the draft law to provide increased manpower met 

indifference from the war minister, Marshal Randon. The army’s top echelon 

clearly showed the damaging effects of twenty years of servility toward a 

ruler whqse military pretensions exceeded his talent. When the Empire fell 

in 1870, even its defenders could hardly claim that it had developed a workable solution to the civil-military problem. 

********* 

Between the fall of Napoleon I11 and the stabilization of the Third 

Republic, France passed through two somewhat bizarre episodes. Both of 

them may well strike professional soldiers as a bit nightmarish, since they 

involved attempts by more or less civilian amateurs to interfere directly in 

the conduct of war, both at the strategic and the operational levels. 

During the first of these episodes, in the autumn and winter of 1870, 

Minister of War LCon Gambetta and his deputy Charles de Freycinet made 

a desperate attempt to prove that an aroused nation-in-arms could throw 

back the Prussian invaders who had outmatched the professional soldiers. 

Moved by the legend of Valmy, they rounded up manpower wherever it could 

be found and chose their field commanders largely by chance and by instinct. 

Serious tensions were quick to emerge. Gambetta rode roughshod over the 

normal rputines which were sacred to the generals; the soldiers came to detest 

this brash and unreasonable superior who preached audacity as the key to 

victory and talked of court-martialing them when they lost a battle. As for 

Gambtta and Freycinet, they were exasperated at their generals’ timidity 

and routiqe-mindedness. General d‘Aurelle failed to come up with a strategic 

plan so Freycinet drafted one himself and ordered d‘AureUe to carry it out. 

When d’Aurelle refused either to act or to resign, Freycinet undertook to 

direct the operation personally from his office in the war ministry, while 

d’Aurelle sulked in his tent. Needless to say, the operation was an inglorious 

failure. Some weeks later, Freycinet drafted another plan for General BourTharles de Gaulle, La Fmce et son arm.+ (1938; reprint ed., Paris, 1965), p. 187. 
30 

baki’s forces in eastern France and to make sure it was followed, sent one 

of his young civilian aides to keep watch on the commander; as a final 

argument, the aide carried an undated order stripping Bourbaki of his command, to be used if needed. The order was never used; Bourbaki did his best 

under these difficult conditions, but at last, depressed and distraught, his 

army disintegrating, he put a bullet through his head (or tried to: frustrated 

to the last, he survived the attempt, as the bullet caromed off his skull). 

Mercifully, an armistice soon ended a war that had brought the relationships 

between statesmen and soldiers to an almost unbearable pitch of mutual 

animosity. ’0 

The second episode followed almost at once. This time the civilian in 

charge was Adolphe Thiers, newly elected president of the provisional republic at Versailles, who had to confront the insurrection known as the Paris 

Commune. Most politicians aged 73 would have called on a soldier to organize the siege and recapture the city. Not so Thiers. He had written a massive 

20-volume work on Napoleon and had convinced himself that he was Napoleon’s lineal heir as a strategic genius-for this bantam-sized politician possessed an ego that could expand to fill the universe. Thiers chose a 

distinguished soldier, Marshal MacMahon, to command the siege forces, but 

from the outset Thiers presumed to act as his own commander-in-chief. No 

aspect of the siege escaped his minute supervision; he visited the outposts 

almost daily, freely issued orders to MacMahon and the other generals, even 

called meetings of all the corps commanders without inviting MacMahon 

himself. MacMahon bore this with notable restraint until the day when the 

troops began their active assault on Paris. When Thiers continued to issue 

operational orders, MacMahon cut him off short: “Two of us can’t command. I have that responsibility, and I intend to exercise it alone.”’ Thiers 

had to swallow his disappointment; but at least this frustrated amateur 

general had briefly tasted the joys of active command. 

With the stabilization of the Third Republic in the 187Os, there began 

a long and sporadic but ultimately successful effort to develop a more viable 

pattern of civil-military cooperation. The barriers to success seemed forbidding at first: the great bulk of the officer corps was anti-republican and even 

anti-civilian; it wanted not cooperation but isolation, autonomy, the right to 

”Jon the Gambetta-Freycinet episode: Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussan War (London; 1960); and J.B. Bury, Gambetta and the National Defence (London, 1936). 

llGCnCral du Barail, Mes souvenirs (Pans, 1896), 3: 286. The exasperated du Barail 

complained that “this man, who couldn’t have talked five minutes with a merchant of Frenchfries without trying to show him the secrets of cooking, took pleasure in revealing the secrets 

of the art of war to the generals who clustered round him.” (Ibid., p. 260.) For further details 

on the Thiers-MacMahon relationship, see also Jacques Silvestre de Sacy, Le Markha/ de 

MacMahon (Pans, 1960). 
31 

possess a kind of enclave into which no civilian might penetrate. For this 

reason (and others less justifiable), most of the republican political elite 

nursed a suspicion of professional soldiers and felt that close supervision was 

called for. From time to time political crises occurred that revived or reinforced this mutual paranoia: Marshal MacMahon’s dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies in 1877, General Boulanger’s anti-parliamentary campaign 

in the later 188&, the great upheaval of the Dreyfus Affair and its aftermath. 

Yet in spite of all this, the regime moved jerkily toward an accommodation, 

and in large part achieved it just before 1914. Luckily for the nation’s security, both politicians and soldiers retained some degree of mutual trustenough at least to permit them to try the experiment of working together. 

Most of the civilian leaders, stung by the humiliation of defeat by Prussia, 

were eager to reassert the nation’s greatness, which to them was symbolized 

by the strength of the armed forces. As for the soldiers, few of them were 

of a mind to subvert the republic, however much they might dislike the 

system. 

What France still needed was a more effectively organized high command and a peacetime mechanism through which government and command 

could jointly plan for the eventuality of war. The German model had proved 

its effectiveness, but it was out of the question for a parliamentary republic. 

A Moltke could enjoy thirty years’ tenure as Chief of the General Staff, along 

with direct access to the head of state (bypassing the minister of war); but 

no French republican could possibly conceive of setting up a French Moltke. 

Short of that, however, some steps could be taken; and the first of these 

were taken during the 1870s. A general staff was at last created, and a High 

Council of War made up of top generals was reestablished for the first time 

since 1830. Both mechanisms, however, were sharply restricted. The general 

staff was placed within the ministry of war rather than outside it; the chief 

of staff was made clearly subordinate to the war minister and found himself 

saddled with many of the minister’s bureaucratic chores. Furthermore, as the 

minister’s man, the chief of staff resigned whenever a ministry fell (which was 

often). Instability bred weakness and mediocrity; first-rate soldiers avoided 

the treacherous political posts of minister or chief of staff. What ranking 

general, after all, would not prefer an important corps command to the 

quicksands of French political life, where one spknt his time performing 

disagreeable tasks in the company of peculiarly distasteful civilian colleagues? As for the High Council of War, its impressive appearance concealed a lack of authority and of clear-cut functions; it met only sporadically, 

sometimes with a year elapsing between sessions. Finally, the reforms of the 

1870s left a sharp separation between, on the one hand, the function of 

planning and preparing the armies for war, and on the other hand, the task 

of wartime command. The peacetime role was assigned to the chief of staff, 
32 

while a second general was designated in advance for the wartime post of 

commander-in-chief (actually, commander of the principal group of armies), 

but was given no role in the planning process. This odd dualism in the high 

command, along with the embryonic nature of the command organs, left the 

army little better off than it had been before. Occasionally a strong individual 

like General de Miribel in the 1880s could make the chief of staff a kind of 

&minenee gnse at the war ministry, but only through operating outside the 

law. As a rule, neither the chief of staff nor the commander-in-chief-designate 

could exert much serious influence; the dualistic principle hampered them 

both. 

A second phase of reform came in 1890; and by an odd irony, it was the 

work of the first civilian to attain the post of war minister since the consolidation of the Third Republic. That civilian was Freycinet, Gambetta’s collaborator in the last phase of the Franco-Prussian War. Freycinet upgraded 

both the chief of staff and the commander-in-chief-designate, and in addition 

reorganized and strengthened the High Council of War. The Council was 

henceforth required to meet at regular intervals and to be consulted by the 

war minister, who chaired its sessions. The commander-in-chietdesignate 

was brought into the Council as its vice-chairman, thus giving him an active 

role in peacetime planning. The chief of staffs official title was changed from 

“Chief of Staff of the War Ministry” to “Chief of Staff of the Army,” 

implying a somewhat more autonomous function as well as longer tenure (he 

would no longer resign when cabinets fell). The Freycinet reforms gave the 

high command more clout, even though it still suffered from the dualistic 

principle of planning by one officer and eventual execution by another. The 

system could work effectively only so long a$ war minister, chief of staff, and 

commander-in-chief-designate shared common views. That was sometimes, 

but not always, the case. Still, it was a long step ahead. 

The next step, unfortunately, was backward. The Dreyfus Affair 

wracked France in the late 1890s and disrupted the sense of mutual trust that 

had been growing among both civilian politicians and soldiers; harsh suspicion and conflict took its place. War ministers, especially the maverick 

General Andrkwho had been out of harmony with the army establishment 

-reasserted their domination of the high command, cutting back the autonomy of the chief of staff and restricting the role of the High Council of War. 

Mediocrities were named to the top posts; the position of commander-inchief-designate had four different occupants in five years, all of them nonentities. The army slipped into a severe morale crisis during the first decade of 

the new century; a major war then would have been disastrous for France. 

Then came the upturn. A revived mood of patriotic assertiveness began 

to take hold after the Morocco crisis of 1905; it awakened forgotten senti- 
33 

ments in the hearts of many political leaders and citizens. By 191 1, civilian 

voices were being raised in favor of strengthening the armed forces and 

reinforcing the authority of the high command. A new war minister, Adolphe 

Messimy (himself a former career officer who had left the army during the 

Dreyfus crisis), decreed a fundamental reform: the old dualistic principle was 

abandoned and the functions of chief of staff and commander-in-chief-designate were joined in a single man, with the new title Chief of the General Staff. 

Joseph Joffre was chosen as the first holder of this post. 

This reform, David Ralston tells us, gave Joffre more authority than any 

French general had enjoyed since Bonaparte. Indeed, Ralston even argues 

that Joffre’s position was stronger than that of the younger Moltke in Germany, since Joffre had no Kaiser to overrule him.’? It is true that Joffre had 

a minister of war who was still, technically speaking, able to overrule him; 

the army’s responsibility to the civil power remained an essential element in 

republican doctrine. The reform also reserved to the government the overall 

direction of the war once it had broken out. In practice, however, war 

ministers put only the loosest of checkreins on Joffre after 191 1, and during 

the first year of fighting his freedom of action was almost complete. Never 

since Bonaparte’s day had the army’s autonomy been so great as it became 

after 1911. 

This is not to say that the republic had now achieved really effective 

coordination of foreign, domestic, and military policy. The need for close 

daily collaboration between soldiers and statesmen was not yet a commonlyaccepted idea in any country. The level of consultation in that era is exemplified in one of Joffre’s first experiences as chief of staff: the premier suddenly 

asked him whether, in case of war with Germany, France had a 70 per cent 

chance of victory. When Joffre, after brief hesitation, said the odds were not 

that favorable, the premier replied, “Very well, we will negotiate.” Joffre’s 

only concern about foreign policy was that he be kept informed of France’s 

external commitments so that he could plan the disposition of French troops; 

he discovered that for seven years (from 1902 to 1909) the army had maintained a large but useless force in the Alps because nobody had told the chief 

of staff about the Franco-Italian agreement of 1902.13 

Despite the shortcomings of the 191 1 reform, the republic had probably 

gone about as far as it could in that era toward creating a viable system of 

civil-military relations. In a short war, it would presumably have worked 

well. That the system proved inadequate to carry the nation through the 

2David B. Ralston, The Amy of the Republic (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), p. 337. I have 

”Markha1 Joseph Joffre, Personal Memoirs, trans. T. Bentley Mott (New York, 1932), 

leaned heavily on Ralston’s excellent study in the final section of my essay. 

1: 15, 21. 
34 

terrible strain of the Great War is hardly surprising. That experience, which 

neither soldiers nor civilians had anticipated, gradually broke down Joffre’s 

almost untrammeled authority, brought on a series of high command crises 

and a reassertion of parliament’s dominance over headquarters, and led at 

last to a kind of civilian dictatorship under Clemenceau, whose commitment 

to all-out war and victory found an echo in the army’s top eche10ns.l~ 

Perhaps a better system might have met the test more effectively. One can 

only conclude that France’s wartime problems would doubtless have been 

even more serious if French statesmen and soldiers had not arrived, after long 

travail, at the flawed but workable accommodation embodied in the reforms 

of 1911. Survival and victory would open the way to a renewed attempt to 

solve a problem that, in 20th century conditions, could no longer be evaded 

or ignored. 

“On developments during the Great War, the standard work is King’s Generals and 

Politicians. 
35 

SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN 

THE PRUSSO-GERMAN EXPERIENCE. 1815-1919 

Andreas Dorpalen 

The Ohio State University 

In few, if any, other countries has the question of the relative position 

of soldiers and statesmen been as central an issue as in Prussia and Germany. 

Throughout the history of these two states-from the latter part of the 17th 

century to the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945-the prominence of the 

army has been a distinctive facet of the political and social life of Prussians 

and Germans. 

The unusual role soldiers played in Prussia-Germany originated in the 

creation of a standing army in Brandenburg, the nucleus of the later Prussia, 

by the Elector Frederick William, better known as the Great Elector (1640- 

88), and above all in the military reforms of Prussia’s “Soldier King,” Frederick William I (1713-40). Frederick William I was convinced that Prussia 

could never attain major status in European affairs without a strong army, 

but he was also aware that his kingdom was far too poor to hire such an army, 

as was then the custom. we decided therefore to create it largely out of his 

state’s limited resources, both human and material. Ruthlessly and relentlessly, he drafted almost everyone, directly or indirectly, into the service of state 

and army: common soldiers were conscripted from among the peasantry; 

labor and middle class worked in an economy tightly supervised by the state 

and focused largely on meeting the needs of the army; and the younger sons 

of the nobility were pressed into service in the officer corps. This latter service 

was made especially attractive to the nobility and became the all-but-exclusive domain of the nobility, thus bestowing prestigious status upon the officer 

corps. Moreover, members of the officer corps were to enjoy an especially 

close relationship with the king, a fellow officer as it were, who as a tribute 

to the pre-eminent role of the corps took to wearing a uniform day in, day 

out, as if always on duty. But the arrangement was also a very profitable one 

for the nobles: they retained full political and judicial power on the local level 

and derived considerable material gains from their appointments as officers. 
Here then were laid the foundations for the phenomenon of “Prussianism”-the quasi-military organization of civil society with its emphasis on 

state service, discipline, frugality, and the vital role of army and officer corps. 

The system, with some adjustments, worked well enough to enable Frederick 

the Great, Frederick William 1’s son, to fight his wars with Austria, Russia, 

and France against astonishing odds. Yet only twenty years after Frederick‘s 

death the vaunted Prussian army, having meanwhile grown rigid and antiquated, collapsed before the onslaught of Napoleon’s forces in 1806-07. 

A series of liberalizing reforms were initiated by several forward-looking 

generals, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau among them. These measures were 

meant to convert the Prussian army from its self-contained, separate status 

into a national, popular institution that would have the morale and striking 

power needed to match the French armies in a future war of liberation. The 

officer corps was opened to qualified commoners; universal, compulsory 

military service was introduced (at least in principle); and a national militia, 

with elected officers, was established. But once Napoleon had been defeated, 

these reforms, whfch were closing the gap between army and nation, were 

whittled away. Increasingly commoners were barred from the officer corps, 

while its noble members became vocational specialists both socially and 

professionally, aloof from and deeply contemptuous of civil society. The 

corps came to look upon itself as an instrument designed to maintain internal 

order in an anarchic society, rather than as the country’s defense against 

foreign enemies. Civilians, in turn, began to look on the militia as a defense 

against royal and military despotism, and the question was raised whether 

the standing army ought not to be replaced altogether by an expanded militia. 

This question became an important issue in the Prussian phase of the 

revolutions of 1848. The revolutionaries insisted on the withdrawal of the 

regular army from Berlin and the creation of a citizens’ guard (Burgemehr) 

to take its place. But the tide turned quickly. The members of the Burgerwehr, all volunteers, soon tired of their responsibilities. Absenteeism increased, and in an emergency that arose the guard proved incapable of 

maintaining order. Meanwhile the Prussian constituent assembly, which was 

to institutionalize the militia, got entangled in doctrinal quarrels and failed 

to do so. Inevitably the army regained the ground it had lost; its role as the 

only effective protector of domestic stability became even more important to 

upper and middle class when they learned, with deep apprehension, of the 

fierce battles between workers and government that raged for several days 

in the streets of Paris in June 1848. By that time, moreover, economic ties 

between aristocracy and bourgeoisie had acquired some significance. Many 

aristocrats were now agrarian capitalists, owners of mines, sawmills, refineries, and other enterprises, as well as heavy investors in railroads; sharing 

many bourgeois interests, they used their connections to help remove obsta- 
37 

cles blocking business expansion. Thus the bourgeoisie came to feel that there 

were ways other than a parliament to obtain greater freedom of action. 

Altogether the army emerged in a strengthened position from the revolution of 1848. Not only was its protective role more widely appreciated, its 

leaders also secured an influence on policy decisions they had never had 

before. Fearful of the weakness and instability of King Frederick William IV, 

his entourage had established a kind of “kitchen cabinet” in the early days 

of the revolution in order to stiffen the monarch’s backbone. The king, unsure 

of himself and uncomfortable with the new liberal government, readily listened to this Gremium composed chiefly of court generals and military aides 

who knew how to appeal to his divine-right mysticism and legitimism. This 

camarilla survived into the postrevolutionary period, and the military made 

the most of its newly won role. But being concerned only with rescinding and 

warding off all liberalizing reforms that might curb the status of the army 

and those feudal-aristocratic circles from which the officer corps was recruited, the camarilla had no positive program. All it could do was to delay and 

prevent; and in doing this, it caused the civil authorities continuous difficulties.’ 

Inevitably the old tensions between army and civil society reappeared. 

In the Prussian parliament, which now had jurisdiction over the budget, 

army requests for appropriations were thoroughly scrutinized and more than 

a few were rejected-just because the opposition suspected that they would 

serve to strengthen the army as an instrument of internal repression rather 

than lend Prussia greater strength in dealing with other states2 

Matters came to a showdown in the early 1860s over the reorganization 

and expansion of the army. There was general agreement on the need for 

both, and the conflict that ensued between army and parliament centered on 

a question that was political rather than military: should recruits be retained 

in the army for three years rather than two as before? The issue was political 

because it was generally recognized that a two-year training period was 

sufficient from the military viewpoint. Indeed, King William I and most of 

his military advisers insisted on the three-year period solely in order to make 

certain that the draftees would be thoroughly indoctrinated with the proper 

spirit of monarchial loyalty. For that very reason, however, the liberal 

majority of the Prussian House of Delegates rejected the extension of service: 

it did not wish the army to become the praetorian guard of the Prussian king. 

‘Fritz Hartung, “Verantwortliche Regierung, Kabinette und Nebenregierungen im konstitutionellen Preussen: 1848- 19 18,” Forschungen zur brandenburgkchen und preussischen Geschichte 44 (1932): 6-7. 

=Gordon A. Craig, The Politics ofthe Pmssian Army, 1640-1945 (New York, 1964), pp. 

126-28. 
38 

Yet the House’s stance was ambiguous; it opposed the government with an 

evident feeling of uneasiness about challenging the authority of the state, and 

it was careful not to carry its opposition into the streets lest it destroy the 

state altogether. Bismarck was one of the few cunservatives to sense this 

reluctance. When he became minister-president in 1862 in order to resolve 

the impasse between government and parliament, he simply proceeded to 

collect the required taxes over the head of the House of Delegates, confident 

that it would forgive this illegal procedure once it was shown that the reforms 

would redound to the benefit of the Prussian state and German unification. 

He proved right. His defiance of the House was quickly forgotten when 

the reorganized and expanded Prussian army won two wars in rapid succession-against Denmark and Austria-and the latter victory, apart from 

bringing Prussia considerable territorial gains, led to the unification of northern and central Germany in the Prussian-dominated North German Confederation. Even before this, some liberal sympathizers-industrialists, bankers, 

railroad magnatesaecided that their economic welfare did not depend on 

a strong parliament and could be furthered in close cooperation with army 

and government, a belief Bismarck readily encouraged through his liberal 

economic policies. After the war against Denmark, the minister-president 

reported that “the financiers are pressing loans on us without requiring 

legislative approval,” and General von Roon, the Prussian minister of war, 

told some months later of a transaction with one of the railroad companies 

that “would give us a free hand in foreign policy, if necessary to mobilize the 

whole army and to pay for the whole campaign.” The oppositional stand of 

the parliament could not have been sabotaged more effectively by the 

staunchest supporters of king and army.3 

Even though Bismarck had successfully warded off the subjection of the 

army to full parliamentary control, relations between him and the generals 

never became entirely amicable. Many of the military leaders felt that, after 

the victory over Denmark, the minister-president should have abolished the 

Prussian constitution so as to free the army of all parliamentary controls. 

This Bismarck considered both unwise and unrealistic-an attitude that 

earned him the ill will of some of the king’s military advisers and led to their 

interference, for some time, with his efforts to effect a reconciliation between 

king/government and parliament after the war against Au~tria.~ Other 

problems arose, especially in connection with the peace settlements after the 

wars against Austria and France. In both cases Bismarck was able to win the 

3Helmut Bohme. Deutschfands Wegzur Grossmacht (Cologne, 1966), pp. 186 ff.; Theodore S. Hamerow, The Socid Foundations of German Unification, 1858-1811 (Princeton, 

1969), pp. 26-27, 99 ff., 120-21, 270 ff.; Bismarck’s and Roon’s statements, ibid., p. 14; Andreas 

Dorpalen, Heinbch von Treitschke (New Haven, 1957), pp. 114 ff. 

.Craig, Politics of Prussian Army, pp. 162-63, 172-73. 
39 

king’s support for his views; and on the whole, political rather than military 

considerations prevailed in these peace treaties. During the war against 

France in 1871, Bismarck also had to fight an extended struggle in order to 

convince the king that the decision as to when to conclude peace was an 

eminently political matter in view of the possible intervention of other powers. Any move, therefore, touching~on the question of peace, such as the 

negotiated surrender of Paris, ought to be solely his responsibility rather than 

be shared by him and General von Moltke, the chief of staff, as the latter 

demanded-a claim, incidentally, which the king preferred to bypass rather 

than reject.5 

Nonetheless, soon afterwards Bismarck again came to the help of the 

army, as he had in the Prussian crisis of 1862. This time the Reichstag, the 

parliament of the newly founded German empire, sought to assert its right 

to control the military, and again the issue at stake was the size of the army. 

The. military authorities asked for a permanent peacetime strength of some 

400,OOO men; the Reichstag called for a three-year arrangement that would 

have given each Reichstag a say in military matters at least once during its 

three-year existence.6 Bismarck resolved the developing stalemate by a compromise settlement for a seven-year period (Septennat)-an arrangement that 

he preferred in any event, since it would keep the army somewhat dependent 

op him. Yet in order to neutralize this concession as much as possible and 

insulate the army even further from parliamentary inquiries and criticisms, 

the Prussian minister of war, who was the army’s spokesman before the 

Reichstag,’ was deprived of all jurisdiction over matters of personnel; these 

were assigned to the head of the kindemperor’s military cabinet, who did 

not have to appear before the Reichstag. This, to be sure, did not quiet the 

army’s parliamentary critics who, if anything, became more vociferous in 

their attacks; but they were fighting a losing battle. 

The fact was that by this time the army had gained a new and powerful 

ally-a large part of the nation. Ultimately the army could elude the control 

of the Reichstag only because most of those whose views counted, that is, the 

upper and middle classes, approved of the army’s extraparliamentary status. 

To them the army was the trailblazer of the united empire, it was the bulwark 

”bid., pp. 209 ff.; Gerhard Ritter, Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk (Munich, 1954-68), 

1: 251 ff., 278 ff. Ritter also points out that Bismarck‘s attempts to interfere in matters of military 

tactics (assault on Paris rather than siege) were just as objectionable. 

%in=, according to the constitution, the amount of money to be spent on the army was 

determined by its size, with a fixed sum of 225 thalers set for each soldier, the permanent 

establishment of the army’s size would have deprived the Reichstag of all budgetary controls 

over the military. 

’The German empire had no army of its own; its army consisted of the Prussian army into 

which the armies of the other German states were absorbed, except for those of Bavaria, 

Wurttemberg, and Saxony, which in peacetime retained their separate status to varying degrees. 
40 

against the uncomfortable aspirations of the lower classes. Last but by no 

means least, the army, with its discipline, order, and organization, was a 

counterweight to the growing materialism and egotism that economic expansion and prosperity brought in its wakea sort of spiritual corset, a “school 

of the nation” which parliamentary divisiveness must not touch. Out of this 

attitude evolved during those years the militarization of social and professional relations, fostered in the schools and universities, in press and lectures, 

in veterans’ organizations and political leagues, that was to keep alive the old 

Prussian virtues and with them the existing hierarchical order. In this purview, moreover, war was no longer merely a continuation of politics, but in 

a sense also a remedy against politics, a purgative and rehabilitation from 

selfishness and materialism. From an attitude imposed from above, German 

militarism was being turned into a self-propelled force and was raised to the 

level of a Weltanschauung. Indeed, the philosopher Max Scheler proudly 

contrasted Germany’s Gesinnungsmilitarkmus (militarism as a matter of 

principled attitude) to the Zweckmilitansmus (an opportunist militarism 

adopted merely to accomplish a specific purpose) of other countries.* 

Bismarck too paid tribute to these proclivities. As Prussian ministerpresident he had always worn civilian clothes, but as Reich chanckllor he 

appeared in his general’s uniform on public occasions. Yet as long as he 

headed the government, he succeeded in fending off nearly all eiforts on the 

part of the military to intrude on his conduct of foreign policy. The most 

flagrant intrusion occurred in 1887, during one of the innumerable Balkan 

crises, this one over Bulgaria, in which Germany and Russia supported 

opposing candidates for the vacant Bulgarian throne. While Bismarck tried 

hard to keep the conflict from spreading and urged Austria, too, to remain 

calm, the general staff, convinced of the inevitability of a military showdown, 

gave its Austrian counterpart to understand that Berlin was pot wholly 

~pposed to an Austrian war against Russia and through the German military 

attache in Vienna suggested the initial moves to be made.9 

$ 

This type of interference came to an end, at least temporarily, when 

Count Sohlieffen became chief of staff in 1891, but only because Schlieffen 

was a military technician without political interests and ambitions. O Schlief- 

*Rittei, Staatskunst, 2: 122 ff.; Dorpalen, Treitschke, pp. 148 ff., 205 ff., 229 ff.; Eckart 

Kehr, “Zur Genesis des koniglich-preussischen Reserveoffziers,” in Dy P~rnat der Znnenpolitik, ed. Hans-Ulrich Wehler (West Berlin, 1965), pp. 53 ff. As in earlier tiqes, and in 

pccordance with their social function, the “Prussian virtues” were to apply in particular to the 

middle and lower strata of society. On Max Scheler’s terminology see his essay, ‘<her Gesinnungs- und Zweckmilitarismus,” in his Gesarnrnelte Werke (Bern and Munich, 1954-63), 6 

187 ff., especially 188-91. Cf. Friedrich Meinecke, Die deutsche Katastrophe (Wiesbaden, 

1946), pp. 26-30. 

qCraig, Politics of Prussian Army, pp. 268 ff.;‘ Ritter, Staatskunst, 1: 295 ff. 

’OWhether, as has been claimed, Schlieffen abandoned his customary reserve during the 

Morocco crisis of 1905 and urged a “preventive” war against France hqs never been clearly 

established. See Craig, Politics ofprussian Army, pp. 283 ff.; Ritter, Staatskunst, 2: 240. Fritz 

Fischer’s discussion of this question, in Der Kriegder Illusionen (Diisseldorf, 1969), pp. 98-100, 

also fails to provide conclusive evidence of Schlieffen’s advocacy of war. 
41 

fen’s successor,General Helmuth von Moltke, a nephew of the field marshal 

of the Bismarck era, knew no such restraint and again took to meddling in 

matters of foreign policy. In 1909 he suggested to his Austrian colleague, 

Baron Conrad von Hotzendorf, that Germany would come to Austria’s aid, 

not only in a war of defense, but also in an act of aggression such as an 

Austrian occupation of Serbia in order to put an end to anti-Austrian activities in that country. Yet if Moltke made commitments that were not his 

to make, it must be added that his government, which he did inform of his 

message, made no attempt ‘to repudiate him. At no time, in fact, did the 

political leadership attempt during those years to coordinate its policies with 

the plans of the military-a fact in which Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg 

still took pride after the debacle of the First World War, when he claimed 

credit for never having attempted to interfere with the work of the general 

Staff.12 

Why did the chancellor consider the political implications of military 

plans beyond his purview? The answer was that the equality of status of civil 

and military authorities had now been fully accepted-if only because William I1 insisted on it and no one tried to point out to him the fallacies of his 

views. Indeed, we gain the distinct impression from a variety of contemporary statements that both chancellor and Foreign Ofice considered it the task 

of diplomacy to adjust to the militpry necessities as determined by the general 

staff. “Anyone who had any real insight into the situation,” Bethmann 

Hollweg wrote later, “was so fully aware of the immense danger of a twofront war that a civilian who would have interfered with the carefully thought 

out military plans the anqy cqpsidered imperative, would have assuped an 

unbearable responsibility and would have been considered the sole cause of 

a subsequent defeat.” Similarly, when Foreign Secretary von Jagow pointed 

out on one occasion that the invasion of Belgium, as proposed by the hchlieffen Plan, would draw England into the war, he dropped the matter aq soon 

as Moltke warned him that it wqs the only strategy that promised 

However, an analysis of the government-army relationship in Imperial 

Germany cannot end here. It can be argued-although apparently it has 

l ’Craig, Politics ofprussim Army, pp. 288 ff.; Fischer, K~egderlllusiooen, pp. 105-06. 

Ritter’s defense of Moltke’s actions in 1909 is not wholly convincipg: Staatskunst, 2: 299 ff. 

lTheobold von Bethmann Hollweg, Befrachtungen zum Weltkfiege (Berlin, 1919-21), 

2:l. 

’The Schlieffen Plan proposed to divide the expected two-front war against Russia and 

France into two phases. Since Russia would need many weeks to mobilize her forces, the bulk 

of Germany’s army was to launch a concentrated attack on France and defeat her in a speedy 

campaign, after which it would !x sent to the east to deal with Russia. The plan provided for 

a huge wheeling movement through Belgiup, in order to attack France on as wide a front as 

possible. 

“Ritter, Staatskunst, 2: 249-50, 254-55. 
42 

never been done-that the task of the general staff was to draw up plans for 

any eventuality that might arise. Thus the Schlieffen Plan was to deal with 

the danger of a two-front war against both Russia and France-a strong 

probability since the conclusion of the Franco-Russian alliance of 1894. If 

such a war presented an “immense danger,” as Bethmann put it, it seems 

obvious that German diplomacy ought to have attempted a rapprochement 

with one of these two countries in order to neutralize the alliance. Yet no such 

effort was made, except for one rather amateurish and abortive attempt by 

William I1 some years before Bethmann became chancellor. The government 

accepted the Schlieffen Plan despite the risks it involved; all that Bethmann 

did was to take some steps to improve relations with Britain. Yet in this he 

failed. The naval leadership blocked his efforts to negotiate a naval arms 

moratorium, which might have allayed Britain’s suspicions in regard to 

Germany’s maritime goals. However, a naval dktente by itself would not have 

settled much either. Germany’s hegemonial plans in Europe were equally 

objectionable to London, for they were irreconcilable with Britain’s stake in 

the continental balance of power and thus constituted as much of a threat 

as the naval b~i1dup.l~ 

The handling of these problems, moreover, was not determined by the 

civil and military leaders alone. Most of these questions were aggravated by 

pressures from nationalist or economic interest groups and an aroused public 

opinion. Thus the issues had to be dealt with within the coptext of domestic 

demands for power and self-assertion, the search for new markets and raw 

materials, and also with due regard to deep-seated worries over Germany’s 

exposure to supposedly jealous and covetous neighbors. All these claims and 

anxieties were carefully nurtured by organizatioqs created especially to cater 

to these varied feelings of aggressiveness and frustration, materialism and 

patriotism, overflowing self-confidence and diffident insecurity. The PanGerman League, Wehrvereh and FfottenVerein (Army and Navy 

Leagues), and similar organizations joined forces in an unceasing assault on 

Reichstag and government in newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets, and 

speeches urging a more forceful foreign policy and increased mi1ita;ry preparations both on land and at sea.I6 Such efforts of course made any governlSAt one point, in 1912, Bethmann tried to secure some elbow room for his rapprochement 

with Britain by playing off the army against the navy. Fearful lest Tirpitz’s naval program would 

ruin his plans, he abandoned his customary reserve and warned the hesitant army leaders that 

unless they submitted at once a request for an increase of the army, the navy demands would 

claim all the money the Reichstag could be expected to appropriate. The army put ip its request, 

but the Reichstag did not reduce the naval demands; both bills were passed. Ritfer, Staatskunst, 

2: 275-76; also Fischer, Krieg der Illusionen, pp. 169 fF. Concerning the army’s reluctance to 

ask for more men, see n. 16. 

16The Wehrverein (on its purposes, see Fischer, Krieg der Nlusionen, pp. 159 ff.) also 

brought pressure to bear on the army itself to increase its nurpbers. Many military leaders were 

reluctant to do so, lest the increases pecessitatc the admission of large numbers of petty bourgeois 

to the offcer corps and an increased influx of Social Democrats into the ranks of the noncoms. 

Non-noble officers like Ludendorff then a colonel on the general staff, helped to oveteome these 

inhibitions from within. Ritter, Staatskunst, 2: 261 ff.; &kart Kehr, “Klassenkampfe und 

Riistungspolitik,” in Wehler, Primaf, pp. 99 ff.; Hans Spier, “LudendorK” in Makers of 

Modem Strafegy, ed. Edward MGad Brle (Princeton, 1943), pp. 308 ff. 
43 

mental attempts to achieve a dttente even less credible. 

As we know now, these governmental endeavors were half-hearted in 

any event; recent research has shown that government and army were evidently prepared to go to war, if necessary, in pursuit of what they considered 

Germany’s vital rights (Lebensrechte). Civil- and military leaders joined 

hands in urging the psychological preparation of the nation for a war that 

seemed all but inevitable, “for such a war,” as Moltke warned, “in which the 

very existence of the state will be at stake, requires the sacrificial approval 

and enthusiasm of the people.” A government-inspired propaganda campaign now descended upon the country, supported by bourgeois press and 

political parties, by academicians and Protestant church groups, by the PanGerman and service leagues, and by banking and industrial circles which 

found the opportunities for investment and market expansion increasingly 

limited by British and French competition. The campaign warned of a rapidly approaching showdown, the dangers of weakness, and the necessity to 

stand up for Germany’s rights. The fact that the thesis of the imminence of 

war was generally accepted suggests a fatalistic resignation to war’s inevitability, which indeed many Germans shared and to which even some of the 

Social Democrats did not remain wholly immune.” Only a radical group 

within the party kept up its opposition to any kind of war. Like Moltke, the 

radicals knew that no war could be fought successfully without popular 

support; and they strove hard to counter the government’s efforts in that 

direction. As Rosa Luxemburg, one of the leaders, declared, “It [is not] the 

army who makes war, . . . it is the entire population. The latter has to decide 

whether wars do or do not happen.”‘* 

Given the growing expectation of war, it is noteworthy that the lack of 

coordination between government and armed forces did not entirely end even 

then. At times each branch still pursued its own plans, without much, if any, 

concern for the others. Even during the critical days of July 1914, when the 

decision between war and peace hung in the balance, coordiqation was pot 

fully achieved. At the very time when Bethmann urged Austria not to mobilize against Russia in order to keep Russia from mobilizing, MQltke requested 

Hotzendorf, the Austrian chief of staff, to start mobilizing against the Russians, leading the Austrian foreign minister, Count Berchtold, to wonder out 

loud, “Who does govern in Berlin?”19 The questidn summed up the grave 

flaws in Germany’s governmental structure. 

”Craig, Politiks of Pnrssian Anny, p. 291; Fischer, Krieg der Illusionen, p. 244, 

Dorpalen, Treitschke, pp. 148 ff., 232-33. 

’OFischer, Krieg der Illusionen, pp. 23 1 ff., 357; Deutschland im ersten Weltkrieg ed. 

Fritz Klein and others (East Berlin, 1968), 1: 159 ff., 171; Luxemburg’s statement in J. P. Nettl, 

Rosa Luxemburg (London, 1966), 2: 490. 

l*Klein, Deutschland, I: 251. 
44 

The war brought no change in this situation. As before, the military 

leadership maintained its aloofness, leaving the government largely uninformed on the specifics of military developments. “That’s none of the 

diplomats’ business,” General von Falkenhayn, the chief of the general stat€ 

from September 1914 to August 1916, told an aide of Admiral von Tirpitz. 

“They’ll have to be satisfied with a Yes or No on the part of the military 

authorities. . . . I never mention any figures to the chancellor.”20 This was 

said some time after Falkenhayn had concluded that his armies could not win 

the war against the combined forces of France, Russia, and Britain and that 

the government would have to negotiate a peace treaty with one of them. 

The consequences of this contempt for the civil authorities were disastrous. Bethmann agreed on the need for coming to terms with one of the 

adversaries, preferably Russia, which seemed more likely than the two other 

powers to respond to a proposal for a negotiated peace. However, since 

Falkenhayn never confided to him the full gravity of the military problem, 

the chancellor underestimated its seriousness. Not only did he refuse to send 

out peace feelers at once, but he also insisted on territorial concessions from 

Russia that went far beyond what Falkenhayn wished to settle for. The result 

was that no effective approach was made to St. Petersburg.21 

Yet here again the difficulty was not just lack of cooperation between 

soldiers and statesmen. The chancellor knew that annexationist pressure 

groups, unaware of the declining prospects for victory, would not tolerate any 

major concessions on their demands. To acquaint them with the true state 

of affairs, he considered pointless; these groups would refuse to accept the 

truth and simply call for his replacement by a stronger man-preferably a 

military leader like Tirpitz or Hindenburg, who by that time had become 

something of a national hero. In fact, these circles had already been clamoring for such a change for some time. Bethmann worried also about the 

reaction of the lower classes to any suggestion of defeat-such reaction might 

well express itself in sharper opposition to the monarchy and the sociopolitical system, and lead in the end to revolution.22 

2oMemorandum of Captain Widenmann, 11 Feb. 1916, reprinted in Alfred von Tirpitz, 

Deutsche Ohnmachtspofitik im Weftkriege (Berlin, 1926), p. 474; see also Karl Heinz Janssen, 

Der Kanzfer und der Genersl (Gottingen, 1967), p. 201. 

?’Paul R. Sweet, “Leaders and Policies: Germany in the Winter of 1914-15,” Journal of 

Central European Affairs 16 (1956-57): 229 ff.; Fritz Fischer, Gemany’s Aims in the Fint 

Word War (New York, 1967), p. 194; Janssen, Kanzfec p. 49. 

Wraig, Politics ofPrussian Amx pp. 307 ff.; Janssen, Kanzfec p. 53; Klein, Deutschfmd 

1: 380-82, 388 ff.; Alfred von Tirpitz, Ennnerungen (Leipzig, 1920), pp. 447, 459, 466, 472 ff. 

At one point, in the spring of 1915, after the German advance in Russia had come to a halt, 

Hindenburg had given up hope for victory altogether and had urged the conclusion of the war. 

Karl Heinz Janssen, “Der Wechsel in der Obersten Heeresleitung 1916,” Wertefikhnhefie fir 

Zeitgeschichte 7 (1959): 341; additional documentation in Janssen, KanzfeG pp. 90-91. 

90-91. 
The way found out of this impasse represents a sort of climax to the 

struggle between soldiers and statesmen. Bethmann and others who shared 

his concerns concluded that Hindenburg ought to replace Falkenhayn as 

chief of staff, in the hope that the field marshal might still win the military 

victories required to meet all domestic expectations. However, should he fail, 

he alone, thanks to his tremendous prestige, would be able to convey that fact 

to the nation without plunging it into chaos. Thus the chancellor and other 

government leaders joined in the growing clamor for the appointment of 

Hindenburg as the commander of all German forces. Yet unlike the bulk of 

the nation, Bethmann supported the demand, not because he was certain that 

Hindenburg’s leadership would assure victory, but because though he kept 

hoping for victory, he also knew that victory might no longer be attainable.23 

The assumption of the supreme command by Hindenburg (and Ludend~Tff)~~ established the full ascendancy of the military over the civil authorities, and the latter became virtually subordinated to the two generals. The 

Kaiser too had to submit to their requests, and chancellors, ministers, even 

the monarch’s personal advisers remained in office only as long as they had 

the support of the Supreme Command. The military leadership took charge 

of the economy, overruled Bethmann on the question of unrestricted submarine warfare, and intruded on other decisions of great political sensitivity. Yet 

the country’s faith in Hindenburg’s wisdom was such.that when defeat came, 

he survived it with his reputation unimpaired, and a few years later ‘he was 

elected president of the Weimar Republic.25 

In his capacity for survival Hindenburg was not alone; the army, as an 

institution, showed a similar ability. With the help of the stab-in-the-back 

legend, it managed to put the blame for the loss of the war on the new 

political leaders. The prestige of the army rose further when in the subsequent 

domestic turmoil it once more seemed like an island of stability; its reduction 

in size and the abolition of compulsory military service were regretted above 

all because the army could no longer function as a school of the nation, 

teaching discipline and subordination to German youth. Once more, during 

Hindenburg’s presidency, the military men, with General von Schleicher as 

their spokesman, began to exert influence on governmental matters, helping 

to make and break governments, as they had not done in peacetime since the 

Z3Janssen, “Wechsel,” pp. 340 ff.; Ritter, Staatskunst, 3: 226 ff., 241,248-49. The discussion in Klein, DeutschIand 2: 410-1 1, is oversimplified, see also Janssen, Kanzlw, p. 247. 

Z4How disastrously Hindenburg’s military abilities were overrated by the nation is evident 

from the fact that he became chief of the general staff only in name and Ludendorff was made 

co-responsible quartermaster-general, contrary to previous practice. 

the way in which Hindenburg’s national standing was systematically protected, partly 

by others, partly by himself, see Andreas Dorpalen, Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic 

(Princeton, 1964), pp. 21 ff., 44 ff., 53 ff., 58 ff. 
46 

days of Frederick William IV. But theirs was basically the same kind of 

narrowminded, exclusionist influence which the camarilla of the 1850s had 

exercised, and it was equally unresponsive to the needs of the times. Soon the 

generals found themselves opposed by a militarized mass movement which, 

as it were, made every civilian a soldier. 

When the Nazis came to power, the army was quickly reduced to only 

one among several military organizations. Ultimately it came so completely 

under Hitler’s control that during the Second World War even the top 

military commanders knew little about what went on beyond the area of 

which they were directly in charge. Not only strategy but tactics as well were 

determined by Hitler, who insisted that even minor moves had political 

implications that were more important than any military considerations. The 

army, once considered a state within the state or even the state within the 

state, became a mere tool in the hands of the Fuhrer.26 

The story of Prusso-German civil-military relations as it unfolded since 

the days of King Frederick William I speaks for itself. The one obvious 

conclusion it forces upon the student of this relationship concerns the need 

for the subordination of the military to the political leadership in all matters 

of policy. This of course is no novel discovery-long ago it had been postulated by Clausewitz-and requires no elaboration. There is however another 

lesson to be derived from the German experience. This latter conclusion has 

received much less attention, although it is at least as significant as, if not 

more fundamental than, the first one. It is evident from the course of developments in Prussia and Germany, especially since the 1860s when the nation 

became increasingly political-minded, that the ultimate decision of civil vs. 

military priorities rested with the nation itself. The Moltkes and Falkenhayn, 

Hindenburg and Ludendorff, Schleicher and others could not have played 

their particular roles if the nation had not tolerated their intrusions into the 

civil domain or even encouraged them, directly or indirectly. In the last 

analysis, then, militarism is a civil-political problem. To paraphrase the old 

adage, every country has the kind of civil-military relationship it deserves. 

2bThe definition of the army as “the state within the state” (italics in original) was coined 

by Carl Schmitt, Staatsgefige und Zusammenbruch des zweiten Reiches (Hamburg, 1934), p. 

12. In this pamphlet Schmitt, one of the leading ideologists of the Nazi era, provides also a 

revealing analysis of the National Socialist as a political soldier-the triumph and culmination, 

as he sees it, of the Prussian soldierly tradition. On the rationale of Hitler’s attitude toward the 

army, see Andreas Dorpalen, “Hitler, the Nazi Party, and the Wehrmacht in World War 11,” 

in Total War and Cold War, ed. Harry L. Coles (Columbus, Ohio, 1962), pp. 76 ff. 
47 

Commentary 

Russell F. Weigley 

Temple University 

The task assigned to me, as a historian of the United States and its army 

commenting upon Professor Dorpalen’s and Professor Wright’s papers, is 

primarily that of viewing them from the perspective of American military 

history. 

In the period from Vienna to Versailles, it is contrasts rather than 

comparisons that have to be emphasized between the French and German 

experience with soldiers an4 statesmen on the one hand, and the American 

experience on the other. Indeed, the outstanding fact about the relationship 

of soldiers and statesmen in the United States during most of this period is 

that the roles of the two types were not yet clearly differentiated. In the 

United States there could not yet be the kind of contrast in roles, with 

resultant conflict, between the civilian and the military that developed in 

France and in Germany-not only because the military in the United States 

played a relatively unimportant part in national affairs, but also because the 

same persons could still pass interchangeably from a civilian to a military role 

or in the opposite direction. Until the beginning of the 20th century, until 

the final years of the period under consideration, a distinct military class and 

interest were only beginning to develop in American society. Through most 

of the 19th century, the soldier as a distinct social type had not yet made his 

entrance into American history in sufficient numbers or with sufficient power 

and influence to find himself in confrontations of opposing interest with the 

statesman. 

I myself have pushed, as hard as any historian, the idea that under the 

leadership of the West Point of Sylvanus Thayer and Dennis Hart Mahan, 

the American military in the 19th century went remarkably far in developing 

officership as a profession, given American circumstances. But when focusing. attention on the American military, it is easy to accord insufficient 

attention to that cautionary phrase, “given American circumstances.” The 

circumstances of 19th century America were those of a pervasive hostility to 
48 

the differentiation of any specialized profession from the mass of the citizenry. To Americans of the egalitarian age, a specialized profession seemed too 

likely to become a privileged class. The ideal American of the Jacksonian era, 

and then of the democratic ethos throughout the century, was the jack-of-alltrades who could do everything well: clear a homestead in the wilderness, 

prosper as a merchant, invent a steam engine or a new use for one, argue or 

judge in the courts, command a militia battalion, and write a state constitution. The ideal American was not the man educated to any specific profession, because Jacksonian America regarded any specialized higher education 

as likely to produce the oversophisticated, effete snobs whom Americans 

associated with decadent Europe. The ideal American was nature’s nobleman, able by the certitude of uncorrupted natural instinct to meet all the 

challenges that came his way, as Andrew Jackson himself with a minimum 

of formal education moved back and forth among the roles of lawyer, planter, 

merchant, financier, politician, statesman, and, not the least, soldier. 

By the Jacksonian era, the fears that had led the founding fathers to 

balance and divide the military power so carefully in the federal Constitution 

had lost much of their vitality. Memories of the English Civil War with its 

military dictatorship and of the redcoats in America as a cause of thk American Revolution had long since faded. The few historic instances when the 

American military might have become an oppressive political force, such as 

the writing of the Newburgh Addresses and Alexander Hamilton’s attempt 

to raise a politicized army during the quasi-war with France, had found the 

military threat so easily aborted, and the military as a group had so thoroughly and so long subsided into political neutrality, that the specter of an American army as a praetorian guard couldho longer seem real. The suspicions 

that the military aroused in the United States in the 19th century did not so 

much involve fear of or hostility toward things military per se, let alone 

pacifist hostility toward war. Marcus Cunliffe has shown in his book Soldiers 

and CiviIians how much early 19th century America was inclined to admire 

and glorify the trappings of military life and the heroics of war. Rather, the 

suspicions against which the American officer corps had to contend during 

the 19th century were mainly those that egalitarian America turned toward 

any educated and specialized profession. 

Perry Miller has shown how the legal profession had to struggle to 

advance itself against similar suspicions and hostility, because it wished to 

perfect itself as an educated, rational profession, to maintain “against the 

irrationality of democracy and of millennialism an imperative of control of 

temper by logic.” “. . . the lawyers’ real controversy with their society,” says 

Professor Miller, “was that they stood for the Head against the Heart.” But 

the claims of the heart, of intuition, of natural wisdom against artificial 

education were so powerful in 19th century America that the legal profession, 
49 

though it advanced its claims remarkably far, could not become the preserve 

of pure rationality that many of its leaders wished. “For all their professions 

of devotion to Socrates,” says Miller, “the lawyer had to come to some sort 

of accommodation with the speech of Leatherstocking.”’ 

It was similar with the military profession. The Jacksonian attacks upon 

the Military Academy at West Point, voiced in Congress, legislatures, and 

the press, were not primarily attacks upon military strength or preparedness 

or upon military values, but were directed against the efforts of the officer 

corps to set itself apart as a distinct, professional class. The Jacksonian fear 

aroused by West Point was not so much fear of the military in itself as fear 

of any educated profession as a threat to democratic egalitarianism. “. . . if 

schools may be established by Congress,” asked a select committee of the 

House of Representatives to investigate the Military Academy, “to educate 

men for the army, at the public expense, . . . may they not, by a most obvious 

parity of reasoning, be established to educate them upon the like easy terms, 

for diplomatists, or for heads of departments, or for clerks and accountants?’ 

The plea here is not against militarism but against tax-supported professional 

education. The object of the House committee in its report critical of West 

Point was to keep “wide open all the grades of office in the army to the free 

and honorable occupation of all classes of citizens.”? 

The Jacksonians who attacked West Point did not desire to undermine 

the military qualities in American life, but rather they believed it was West 

Point that undermined true military qualities and the military strength of the 

nation. They proposed a diffusion of basic military training through colleges 

and literary seminaries throughout the country, where unlike West Point, 

“those in whom the martial spirit predominates should not, with their ripening years, have their ardor quenched by the cold process of mathematical 

demonstration, nor the minute investigation of scientific studies.”3 Andrew 

Jackson himself testified to the debilitating effects of excessive military education, with its resultant effeteness and oversophistication, as opposed to the 

natural military capacities of Americans. He said that the contrast was 

demonstrated by his own famous victory at New Orleans: 

Reasoning always from false principles [the British, he said], expected little opposition from men whose officers even were not in uniform, who were ignorant of the rules of dress, and who had never been 

caned into discipline. Fatal mistake! a fire incessantly kept up, directed 

’Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America; From the Revolution to the Civil War 

2Quoted in Leonard D. White, The Jacksonians; A Study in Administtrative Histow, 

31bid. 

(New York, 1965), pp. 119-21. 

1829-1861 (New York, 1954), p. 210. 
50 

with calmness and unerring aim, strewed the field with the brave officers 

and men of the [British] column, which slowly advanced, according to 

the most approved rules of European tactics, and was cut down by the 

untutored courage of the American militia.‘ 

The Military Academy at West Point survived the attacks of the Jacksonians, though the professionalizing superintendency of Sylvanus Thayer 

did not; but the American military profession had to mume its claims to the 

possession of a body of specialized skills and knowledge and to open its ranks 

in wartime, even its generalships, to newly commissioned civilians. In this 

process, a term as a soldier became almost a standard ingredient of the 

preparatory career of a statesman, and to that extent in 19th century America 

the soldier and the statesman were not separate castes but became one. Of 

the eighteen presidents of the United States from Andrew Jackson through 

the remainder of the 19th century, six whose careers were primarily civilian 

nevertheless served as general officers of the army: Jackson himself, William 

Henry Harrison, Franklin Pierce, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, 

and Benjamin Harrison. Two of the others, of course, were general officers 

whose early careers’ were primarily military, but who went on to exchange 

the soldier’s blue coat for the black of the presidential statesman: Zachary 

Taylor and Ulysses S. Grant. Every elected president from Grant to the end 

of the century, except Grover Cleveland and William McKinley, was a Civil 

War general; and McKinley had been a brevet major too young during the 

war years to have had much opportunity to become a general. So little had 

the soldier’s role become distinct from that of the statesman, so little had 

leading American soldiers themselves adopted the values, as Samuel P. Huntington defines them, of military professionalism and “objective civilian control,” that such career soldiers as Winfield Scott and Winfield Scott Hancock 

also attempted to transform themselves into statesmen as major-party presidential candidates. So did such slightly less soldierly soldiers as John C. 

Frkmont and George B. McClellan. 

While general officers thus readily passed from the army into statesmanship, it was true that a contrary tendency toward professional differentiation 

of the soldier from the statesman persisted in the army despite an inauspicious national atmosphere. The rise of military professionalism in the United 

States was handicapped before the Civil War because, among all the other 

reasons, the Military Academy itself was less a school for military officership 

than a school of engineering. After the Civil War, the development of a 

growing system of postgraduate military schools and the appearance of 

professional officers’ organizations and periodicals helped cultivate a military 

.Quoted in John William Ward, Andrew Jackson; Symbol foran Age (New York, Galaxy 

edition, 1962), p. 46. 
51 

professionalism more complete than ever before in the United States. So did 

the self-consciously professional and anti-civilian writings of Brevet Major 

General Emory Upton. So also did the very isolation of most of the United 

States army on the Indian frontier during the postwar years. 

At the same time, the isolation of the army kept the late 19th century 

tendencies toward the growth of a distinctive soldier class in the United 

States a phenomenon of which the country could remain largely unaware and 

to which statesmen as yet had to pay little heed. The army was too small and 

too remote for the enlargement of its officers’ professionalism to require 

much attention from statesmen. At the top, the late 19th century army 

remained much the same as the American army had always been, its most 

visible soldiers not yet so distinctively professional that they were clearly set 

off from politicians and statesmen. General William Tecumseh Sherman was 

consistently a political figure, ever ready with the expression of political 

opinions, however sincere he may have been in disclaiming ambitions for the 

presidency. His successor as commanding general of the army, Philip Sheridan, was perhaps a more distinctively soldierly figure; but the next commanding general, John McAllister Schofield, had often mixed political activity 

with his career in and out of the army and once had been interim Secretary 

of War; while the final commanding general, Nelson A. Miles, made no secret 

of his infatuation with the white House as a home. 

When the Spanish War came, statesmen and soldiers both indiscriminately mixed politics and generalship. General Miles’s overt political ambitions had much to do with the McKinley administration’s refusal to give him 

the leadership responsibilities that might have been expected to go to the 

commanding general of the army; he was consigned to the sideshow campaign in Puerto Rico. Politicians and statesmen still saw little reason why 

they should not themselves essay the soldier’s role. Brevet Major McKinley 

was the principal strategist of the war. William Jennings Bryan pinned on his 

shoulders the eagles of the colonelcy of the 3d Nebraska Regiment. It did not 

speak much for the recognition of a differentiation between statesmanship 

and soldiering that Theodore Roosevelt, utterly lacking in military experience, modestly refused to accept in his 1st Regiment of United States Volunteer Cavalry a rank higher than that of lieutenant colonel. Roosevelt deferred 

the colonelcy to the professional medical skills of, Leonard Wood. 

The aftermath of the Spanish War brought a relatively abrupt end to this 

American history of interchangeable soldiership and statesmanship. The 

responsibilities of world power and empire, entailing at least a measure of 

preparation for possible war with the military powers of the Old World, 

converged with the attitudes and standards of military professionalism that 

had been developing obscurely within the armed forces for a generation and 
52 

more. Helped along by a distinguished civilian statesman, Secretary of War 

Elihu Root, the convergence produced a reorganized military system whose 

institutions, especially the new General Staff of the Army, encouraged an 

unprecedented differentiation and separation of the professional soldier’s role 

from the statesman’s. 

Yet until the First World War, tbe internal reorganization of the American armed forces in the direction of cultivating military professionalism so 

much absorbed the energy of the army and navy that little was left over to 

be directed toward the outer civilian world. There were still no well defined 

confrontations of opposing interests between the soldiers’ and statesmen’s 

worlds. Civil-military relations in the first decade and a half of the 20th 

century consisted largely of the soldier’s calling for civilian assistance to 

complete the armed forces’ internal reforms against old-fashioned, preprofessional resistance from within. Major General Leonard Wood’s reliance 

on the assistance of Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson to assure the ascendancy of the General Staff over the War Department bureaus in the contest 

with Adjutant General Fred C. Ainsworth is a good example; similarly, 

William S. Sims invoked the aid of Congress and President Theoqore Roosevelt to achieve his reform of gunnery in the navy. The soldier’s assertions of 

military versus civilian interests might come later. For the present, there was 

too much to do in making the armed forces themselves truly soldierly in a 

full professianal sense. 

Perhaps it would be possible to draw analogies between the American 

history I have thus described and Professor Wright’s account of 19th century 

relations between soldiers and statesmen in France. Similarities might be 

found between the interchangeability of American soldiers’ and statesmen’s 

roles and the frequent service of French soldiers in the cabinets of the 19th 

century Bowbon and Orleanist kings, or between the American soldierpresidents and the French soldier-emperor, Napoleon 111. But if France was 

slower than Prussia and Germany in delineating soldiership from statesmanship, both European powers were far abead of the United States in making 

clear the distinction. In the United States, a distinctive military profession 

was so long in eqerging into a positioq where the govepment would have 

to recognize it, saldiers and statesmen so long moved easily back and furth 

through each other’s roles, and divisions of interest between the soldier and 

the statesman were consequently so late in becoming issues of moment in 

national politics, that modern problems of civil-military relations, anqlogous 

to those which G~many and France had begun to experience decades before, 

did not arise in the United States until after the First World War. 

Between the era of the founding of the American Republic, when problems of civil-military relations were still the old-fashioned sort revolving 
53 

around the possibility of a military coup #&at by a praetorian guard, and 

the post-World War I era, when the United States for the first time began 

to confront the more subtle, modem problems of military influence upon 

policy in a great power dependent upon mass armies, intricate military 

technologies, and immense military expenditures-for a century between 

these two different eras of civil-military problems, the boundaries between 

the civilian and the military in the United States were blurred beyond any 

possibility of national political divisions along distinctively civilian-versusmilitary lines. If a General McClellan intervened in partisan politics from the 

headquarters of the army, the condition was not one in which a distinctively 

military influence threatened civilian values, but one in which the frontiers 

between soldiership and statesmanship were too inconclusively defined to 

prevent McClellan’s kind of political adventurism. 

It used to be a stereotype of some historical writing to contrast old, 

experienced, wise but cynical Europe with young, naive, often foolish but 

virtuous America. In the history of the relationships between soldiers and 

statesmen, that old stereotype still carries a measure of conviction. In the 

geography of civil-military relations, the United States in our day still often 

visits for the first time places where nations like the Germans and French 

have traveled often and long before. 
54 

Discussion 

The CHAIRMAN: That was a sparkling presentation and raises a great 

many thoughts. Perhaps the theme of the three papers is that a nation gets 

the kind of civil-military relations that its social structure produces. But I 

wonder whether it isn’t necessary to qualify this to some extent and to say 

that a state gets the kind of civil-military relations that its geographic position 

produces. The English Channel up until 1914 was something like the Atlantic 

in its effect in this respect. British society differed from that in North America, yet in some respects they had similar problems in civil-military relations 

and produced similar solutions, different from those on the European continent. This is a point that I would like to put up for further thought. 

Now my job is to call for comments or questions from the floor on any 

of these three presentations. 

Professor ROBIN HIGHAM (Kansas State University): Would Professor 

Wright like to comment on the geographic factor? What effect has it had on 

civilian attitudes toward the military? 

Professor WRIGHT: I can’t say much on the subject, but it seems quite clear 

that geographic location does play a role. I would assume that everybody 

would regard Germany’s central location and lack of clear natural frontiers 

as one of the factors that tended to make the military a powerful force there, 

and that our American isolation produced the opposite effect. France is 

always like Lucky Pierre, in the middle, and therefore I suppose the French 

experience is somewhere between that of the German and the American. 

I was also struck by Professor Weigley’s comment on the American 19th 

century dislike of all kinds of professionalism as infringements of equality. 

This is something that hadn’t occurred to me, and it is a very provocative 

and suggestive idea. And I suspect that whenever you have an older culture 

in which social roles have become more differentiated in hierarchical fashion, 

as in France or Germany, the military officer does play a different kind of 

role. 

Professor DORPALEN: Well, it is quite obvious that geographic location 

does affect the attitude of people and the problems of security and defense. 

But I have always felt that history is made by people rather than by material 
55 

circumstances, material environment. 

Certainly Germany was not in a more precarious position in the period 

1900-1910 than she had been in the 1870s and 1880s. And yet the country 

did not in the 1870s and 1880s have that feeling of insecurity. It did develop 

after the turn of the century. I have always felt that there was something a 

little artificial about this feeling-that there were too many people interested 

in creating stronger fears than were really warranted by the geographical 

position. Bismarck was very much aware of Germany’s precarious position. 

He realized that the unification of Germany upset the balance of power in 

Europe. There existed then a very strongly organized, unified state instead 

of a multitude of very small states in the center of Europe; and the result was 

that he was very careful in the pursuit of his foreign policy and made sure, 

with one or two notable exceptions, that he would not create additional fears 

on the part of the surrounding countries. Germany later forgot this and 

caused anxieties which in turn created counter-anxieties in Germany, and a 

vicious spiral was set in motion. But it seems to me that a more cautious 

leadership, a more sensitive leadership, more aware of its international responsibilities, could have helped to avoid the difficulties that arose. I am 

wondering how much Germans used their geographical position as a sort of 

alibi to justify their expansionist ambitions. 

Mrs. DORIS E. CONDIT (Center for Research in Social Systems): I was 

wondering if anyone would like to comment upon the relative position of 

Germany, France, and the United States with regard to civil-military relations in 1970. 

The CHAIRMAN: Does anybody want to move into the cloudy area of 

contemporary strategy? 

Professor WEIGLEY: Well, it does seem to me that if geography is influential in determining a nation’s civil-military relations, obviously our situation 

now is that geography has caught up with the United States and in some 

ways, with the range of modern weapons, left France and Germany to a 

degree less exposed than we are. Without pressing too far the geographical 

determinism on which we have touched, one of the several reasons why the 

United States is now traveling the road that Germany and France traveled 

a hundred years ago is that geography has caught up with us and technology 

has helped that along. 

Professor DANIEL R. BEAVER (University of Cincinnati): I would like to 

change the subject back to institutional relationships and direct my question 

to Professor Wright. It is very possible, it seems to me, that the 191 1 reforms 

in the French army were really a disaster that was only corrected in some 
way by Clemenceau’s gaining power in late 1917. I wonder if you might 

comment on the isolation of the French army and the particular kinds of 

controls that came out of the 1911 reforms. Did these ultimately lead to 

disaster in the First World War by creating divisions whereby the civilian 

control of the French army was completely incapable of making itself felt 

until the advent of Clemenceau? 

Professor WRIGHT: I think this point has a good deal of force to it. It’s quite 

true that the reforms of 191 1 did not produce a really satisfactory militarycivilian relationship for a long war such as France got into. It is quite true 

that terrible tensions developed and that the army tried in the first year or 

two of the war to run the show almost independently of the civilians. It is 

quite true, as Messimy himself said, that it simply wasn’t clear when the war 

broke out what the relative powers and functions of the two sides were. On 

the other hand, his reform didn’t create but rather perpetuated the isolationism of the two sides. In the long run it was disastrous and did require some 

kind of deus ex mqchina like Clemenceau. If it had been a shorter war as 

people expected, it would have been a very workable solution for the civilians 

to stand aside temporarily while the military fought the war. But it is quite 

clear this was not a long range solution, and one wouldn’t want to see the 

French try it again as they did in 1914. 

Professor DAVID B. RALSTON (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): 

It seems to me much of this is a question of personality. In the interwar years 

the French go back to a dual high command with PCtain as vice president 

of the higher war council and a number of less ranking officers as chiefs of 

staff. For reasons with which I am not entirely familiar, they decide that this 

is an unsuitable arrangement and finally you get in 1935 a reorganization of 

the high command in which Gamelin is given once again the two posts, vice 

president of the higher war council and chief of staff. Gamelin was also able 

to get along with all the civilian authorities. One would argue that perhaps 

he got along too well with the civilian authorities. You have here civilian 

dominance, certainly, with an institutional arrangement that at first glance 

ought to be ideal. I give you the summer of 1940 as the way it worked out. 

I am not sure if purely institutional arrangements can be understood apart 

from the people who make these institutions function. 

While I have the mike I also have one question I would like to address 

to Professor Dorpalen. It seems to me you very rightly point out this legend 

of the villains of German history always being soldiers, with all the misfortunes that come to the German political development being placed on the 

heads of the soldiers. I think it is the fact that there were an awful lot of 

civilians who saw eye to eye with the soldiers. I would suggest that even in 

the 187Os, one could argue that someone like the elder Moltke, in terms of 
57 

his vision of how a future war would be fought, was almost a limiting element 

as against possible German assertiveness. That is to say, everybody knew that 

if war came, Germany would have to fight both France and Russia. Moltke 

would say negotiate a solution at all costs with France and fight for some kind 

of limited victory within Russia. And it would seem to me that in this way 

the general staff had a rather limited point of view, rather than the almost 

megalomania of the Schlieffen "generation. 

Professor DORPALEN: Yes, I certainly would agree and I think you could 

even go a little further on this if you look at the history of Germany in the 

last 200 years. You will find oddly enough that in a number of cases when 

war broke out, the generals were not happy about it. They were either not 

ready or they felt the situation was not a promising one or something like 

that. In fact, offhand I can think of only one war, the war of 1914, that the 

German generals wanted to bring on, feeling that otherwise time might work 

against them. But certainly in 1866 the generals were not anxious to go to 

war against Austria. Bismarck practically pushed them in. The same of 

course occurred in 1939. They tried their best to limit the war then and delay 

an attack on France-and managed to do so a couple of times during the 

winter of 1939-40. They were very unhappy about the invasion of Russia. So 

I think you have a very good point in this, Professor Ralston. 

Captain LOUIS M. McDERMOTT (USAF Academy): Professor Dorpalen, 

Professor Nunn of Portland State has recently studied the Prussianization of 

the Chilean army. He found that after the Chilean army became professional 

in the 1880s and 1890s, when the government moved against it as an institution, the army responded with moves against the government. His findings 

in other areas of Latin America seem to indicate that after professionalization, institutionalization, Latin American armies, when they are attacked as 

institutions, reply with political action-that is, the overthrow of the government. Would this come out of the Prussian background or would it be a 

combination of Prussian military institutions being transplanted into a Spanish area? 

Professor DORPALEN: I am not really competent to answer that question. 

To give you a layman's view, my own feeling from the little reading I have 

done is that in a sense the Latin American officer corps have been sort of 

political outlets. There was no parliamentary life, there was no political life, 

so anyone with political ambitions went into the officer corps. This explains 

why so many of the military coups (I may be completely wrong but this is 

my personal impression) revolved around political issues rather than military 

ones, and it goes so far now that some of the Latin American reform movements are being sponsored by armies. The army, feeling that the kind of 

caste-bound society that exists in many Latin American countries has 
58 

become completely obsolete and wanting to anticipate a popular revolution, 

calls for reforms. In Bolivia the army has been the champion of political and 

social reforms. You have a similar situation in Argentina. Whether Prussian 

instructors first planted certain seeds there, which made it easier for officers 

to assume a political role, I don’t know. But my feeling is that this is an 

indigenous development rather than one imported from abroad. 

The CHAIRMAN: Professor Wright wants to return to Professor Ralston’s 

comment. 

Professor WRIGHT: Before we get too far away from what Professor Ralston said, I would like to say that I think his comment on the role of 

individuals and the differences among them is a very significant one that 

tends to get pushed aside, but it is most congenial to me. I think the example 

he suggested, Gamelin, is an excellent case in point. 

I also want to add that he is one of the very few people who have done 

anything in the area of French history that I talked about. I borrowed 

shamelessly from him in preparing my paper. He is the one who should have 

presented the paper on this topic. 

Professor WILLIAM T. R. FOX (Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University): None of the speakers this morning made much reference 

to the American Civil War, except to point out that having high command 

in that war was fairly important to winning the presidency in the next three 

or four decades. Could any of you offer us any guidance as to whether the 

problems of civil-military relations in the American Civil War were digested 

and subsequently influenced the patterns in France and Germany, or whether, if the American problems had been studied in Europe, some of the crises 

of civil-military relations in World War I might have taken a little different 

form? I ask this question very much out of ignorance, because I am one of 

those people that Professor Preston was talking about who is insufficiently 

grounded in military history and historiography. 

The CHAIRMAN: We need Jay Luvaas to answer this, but he is not here, 

so I’ll ask Dr. Dorpalen. 

Professor DORPALEN: I am not aware that the Civil War had any impact 

on civil-military relations in Germany. It had unfortunately a very negative 

impact as far as military developments were concerned. I remember reading 

somewhere that Moltke once was asked had he learned anything from the 

developments in the American Civil War, and his answer was that he was 

not interested in the kind of warfare which was carried on by unorganized 

bands of civilians. This was a very shortsighted remark to make, for the 

simple reason that during the American Civil War military developments 
59 

occurred which were very much to influence future tactics and strategy in 

Europe too. It was the first war of extensive trenches. Anyway, all the 

European armies went into the First World War with the idea,it would be 

a war of movement where the troops would clash and by the end of the day, 

it would be decided who had won. The whole war of course wouldn’t last for 

more than two or three months. German troops-I don’t know whether this 

applied to the French as much-but German troops literally had to be 

trained after a few weeks how to dig trenches, how to build fortifications on 

short notice, how to use machine guns, and that sort of thing. Now anyone 

who watched carefully the American Civil War or the Russo-Japanese War 

could have learned about this and should have wondered whether this kind 

of warfare would not be applicable in Europe, too, in the future. But it was 

not done, and the result was that all the armies were quite unprepared for 

the war of attrition, for the war of trenches which developed in Europe in 

the fall of 1914; and they paid a terrible price learning the necessary techniques and adopting them. 

Professor WEIGLEY: I think that even if the institutional arrangements of 

civil-military relations in the United States during our Civil War had been 

superb, there would have been no influence in Europe, because my impression is that nobody over there ,was paying any attention. But the institutional 

arrangements of civil-military relations in the United States during our Civil 

War were anything but superb. They were very clumsy, and I think that to 

the extent that the North fought the final campaigns of the war with the civil 

and the military elements of government working pretty well in harness, that 

that outcome was the result again of individuals working well together-f 

Lincoln and Stanton and Grant being able to cooperate so well as individuals 

that they overcame bad institutions. 

Colonel TREVOR N. DUPUY (USA, Ret.; Historical Evaluation and Research organization): Although I want to express admiration for the very 

persuasive and interesting case for the lack of distinction between the professional military leaders and governmental leaders in postdacksonian America 

made by Professor Weigley, I was surprised that he did not mention the 

differences that arose between Winfield Scott, for instance, and his secretaries 

of war, and Sherman and his; and I think that despite a number of very senior 

American military men having political ambitions, thdse were perhaps exceptions to the rule. I would suggest that a case could be made the other way 

around, although I am not prepared to make it at this moment. 

Professor WEIGLEY: Well, obviously to mention Winfield Scott and William Tecumseh Sherman is enough to show that you have a point: there were 

occasions of civil-military division. But standing by the case that I argued 

today, I would be inclined to take the position that the differences between 
60 

Scott and Sherman on the one hand, and their secretaries of war on the other, 

were less matters of differing civil-military outlooks than differences that 

came about because Scott and Sherman were so slightly professional, were 

so much political soldiers and not really professional. But you obviously have 

a point. 

Professor THEODORE ROPP (Duke University): I am the ghost of Samuel 

P. Huntington . . . . Seriously, I would like to call to your attention the remark 

that Huntington makes, in his book on this subject, in which he deals with 

the notion of military science as an independent subject. It has been developed ,in Germanyiat the end of the 19th century, but was adopted by the 

American soldier as a kind of escape hatch, a way the American soldier could 

bury himself in the details of his profession and avoid conflicts with the 

civilian authorities. He puts this adoption of true professionalism rather late, 

just before the Root reforms, and sees it as a kind of compensation device 

to escape these problems of civil-military relations. Would any of you comment on that? 

Professor WEIGLEY: Well, I think that it is certainly true that the army’s 

very isolation in the United States helped bring on its professionalism. More 

than that, by the late 19th century, army officers saw so many things in 

civilian America that for various reasons they disliked, that they wanted to 

stay isolated. Therefore there probably is an element of correctness in Huntington’s argument here, that pursuing professionalism was a means of continuing to remain apart from a civilian America that the army didn’t quite 

trust, partly because of civilian America’s suspicions of the army’s emphasis 

on specialized skills. 

Professor DENNIS SHOWALTER (The Colorado College): I wanted to 

make an observation regarding the influence of the Civil War on the European military experience and the fight over the three-year law in Germany 

as well. In reading the German-Prussian military press, I have been struck 

by the intensity with which they addressed themselves as early as the 1850s 

to some of the problems that the Americans would face in the Civil Warnotably the question of men against fire, the problem of how to get men to 

advance against long-range rifles that could kill at a thousand paces. This was 

a major reason why the colonels, the majors, the captains argued for a third 

year of service. Not only would it militarize the soldiers, but it would make 

it possible to get them off the barracks square onto open drill grounds and 

teach them how to develop the innere Farung to go up against modem 

rifles. The reaction of many German leaders to the Civil War was not so 

much, “It can’t be done,” as “These people can’t do it.” In other words, our 

men with better training and better equipment will be able to do what the 

Americans couldn’t, to overcome trench warfare and long-range ifles. 
61 

I think another problem, which Jay Luvaas mentioned in his study on 

the Civil War, was that most of the foreign military observers tended to leave 

after 1863, just at the time when the Civil War armies had begun to learn 

their trade and develop reactions to military problems that might have been 

useful to the Germans, the French, and the Austrians as well. 

I wanted to ask Professor Dorpalen if he thinks that there may be a 

tendency among German historians to underplay the technical, military 

reasons for wanting this third year of service. 

Professor DORPALEN: I must confess I have never heard about this and 

I find it very interesting. I have never really studied the military technical 

literature of Prussia at that time. The only thing I can say is that neither in 

the parliamentary debates nor any memoirs does this question come up, and 

the only other thing I can say is that the military leadership was prepared 

to accept a two year term as sufficient. It was the king wha insisted, and again 

I only know of political reasons, that the men be retained for three years; and 

he in fact was prepared to abdicate if he didn’t get this through. This of course 

is when Bismarck was called in and he just proceeded on his own. 

The CHAIRMAN: This attitude of the professional soldier about the American Civil War is illustrated by a story of a British engineer officer who came 

to inspect the war and saw cavalry behaving, as he thought, very poorly-so 

he borrowed a horse and showed the Northern troops how to attack entrenched infantry on horseback, which must have caused them some amusement. 

Professor NEVILLE T. KIRK (U. S. Naval Academy): Replying to Mr. Fox 

and also addressing a comment of Professor Weigley, I think that it can be 

said that the American Civil War influenced England more than any other 

European nation, and influenced England very considerably. One gets a very 

detailed analysis of the whole course of the war in Blackwood’s Magazine 

from 1861 to 1865. Captain Hamley, who became commandant of the British 

staff college at Camberley, produced excellent strategic analyses in Blackwood‘s from 1862. Another British officer, Captain Chesney, wrote a whole 

book on the administration and strategy of the war by 1863. But the interest 

of British soldiers in the Civil War was acute, certainly at the early stages, 

and I think, indeed, throughout the war-in distinction to the reactions of 

the Prussian and many French observers. 

Professor RICHARD CHALLENER (Princeton University): I would like 

to comment, relative to Professor Weigley’s remarks, that perhaps the issue 

of professionalism appears differently if you are talking about the navy. For 

example, you start to find elements of professionalism.and a beginning sense 
62 

of organization considerably earlier in the naval service than in the army. 

Moreover, once the General Board was established in 1900, many navy men 

were quite prepared to make statements and express ideas about the foreign 

policy of the United States. On the other hand, two other considerations were 

operative with the navy. First, what naval officers were interested in was 

overseas expansion, and this was the same thing that civilian leaders were 

interested in. Secondly (and this was very much part of the naval outlook), 

they continued to believe that the role of the military in this country was to 

advise only upon military matters. To be sure, naval officers occasionally sent 

off memos with policy implications, but at the same time they always pulled 

back from suggesting that, under the American system, they were authorized 

or permitted to go further than offering strictly military advice. 

Professor JUSTIN B. PIERCE (Colorado School of Mines): There are two 

points that I would like to comment on. One of these has to do with the 

notion of the scapegoat being a military person in German history. Am I 

wrong in recallirlg that, particularly after the famous interview in which 

LudendorfT seized on the stab-in-the-back concept, the Zentrum, for such 

figures as Erzberger, and the Socialists, with Scheidemann and Ebert, were 

universally held as being exemplary of the failure of the civilians to support 

the military in war? 

The second point is that unless my information is incorrect, of all the 

European powers who went into the conflict in 1914, Germany in particular 

was best equipped with regard to the use of machine guns, because as early 

as 1901 Wilhelm himself had interested himself in this matter and had urged 

the increased use of machine guns, to the effect that in 1914 the German 

heavy weapons companies had something better than twice as many machine 

guns as did the French, who were the next best equipped. The French 

military evaluations of casualties-I believe it was in the first seven weeks of 

the war-laid particular stress on the effectiveness of German tactical use of 

the machine gun as opposed to artillery fire, which the French had largely 

relied upon. It was their evaluation, as well as that of some forward thinking 

Britishers, that the machine gun had been particularly decisive in the hands 

of the German troops. 

Professor DORPALEN: I could be wrong on the question of the German use 

of machine guns. I am not sure that I understand your first question. Is it 

that Ebert and Scheidemann and Erzberger were considered traitors? 

Professor PIERCE: Yes, in essence. Perhaps you misunderstood a remark 

made by Professor Ralston, but I took the sense of his comment and your 

reply to be that, when it was necessary to find a scapegoat, when there had 

been some failure in cooperation between military and civilian in Germany, 
63 

it has always been the military who were considered the scapegoats. 

Professor DORPALEN: I did not mean to imply that this was always the 

case. After Wofld War I the civilians were indeed made the scapegoats by 

the stab-in-the-back legend, which said that Germany was never defeated 

militarily but was stabbed in the back by traitors back home. Yet the fact of 

the matter is that the military at the end of September 1918 told the civilians 

that the war was lost. The nation was completely unprepared for that. Of 

course, once this was out, then morale crumbled, and political influences 

made themselves felt. 

The CHAIRMAN: I am watching the clock, but I want to take time before 

we close to express our appreciation for the three excellent papers that we 

have heard. A round of applause would be appropriate. 

65 

The Second Session 

SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN: 

FROM VERSAILLES TO POTSDAM 

67 

OPENING REMARKS 

The CHAIRMAN (Professor LOUIS MORTON, Dartmouth College): This 

afternoon we are to deal with the period from Versailles to Potsdam. The 

main paper will deal with the World War I1 Chiefs of Staff and their relations 

with the president. Let me just provide a brief transition to try to link our 

morning session with this afternoon’s. 

Russ Weigley spoke eloquently and persuasively about the development 

of professionalism, or the lack thereof, in the 19th century, and its beginnings 

in the early 20th century. One of the evidences of this growth of professionalism and the beginnings of a dichotomy between the soldier and the statesman, 

and the problems arising therefrom for civil-military relations, was the establishment in 1900 of a General Board in the navy, of a General Staff in the 

army in 1903, and of the Joint Board the same year-the first, formal, joint 

organization of the two services. You will all remember that the Joint Board, 

which was the predecessor of the Joint Chiefs of StafT, had no legal or 

statutory basis, but was created by an exchange of letters between the two 

Secretaries and a general order of the navy and army in July 1903. 

The fortunes of this joint agency concerned with operations that affected 

both army and navy jointly, and the relationship of the board to political 

matters via the State Department and the president, were mixed in the years 

down to World War I. Most of you are familiar with this story and I have 

no intention of repeating it except to say that at one point in its relationship 

with Theodore Roosevelt, the issue of where to establish the major American 

base in the Philippines, whether it was to be at Cavite or Subic Bay, led to 

a rift between the president and the Joint Board which finally resulted in a 

cessation of meetings by the Board for a year. Its fortunes thereafter were also 

uneven and in World War I, if my recollection serves, it met only twice, both 

times on matters relating to the Philippines. Certainly it was not an effective 

joint organization. 

But the point here is that in this first, formal, joint organization for 

planning between the two services and in the relations of the agency with the 

political authorities, there clearly developed certain problems that point 

toward the future and ultimately the establishment in 1947 of a National 

Security Council-the first time actually that an institutional arrangement 

was made to solve some of these problems. So that in this period from the 
68 

beginning of the 20th century, as the American army became professional-. 

ized, the problems about the relationship between the political and military 

authorities began to be explored, and institutional arrangements for reaching 

agreement, or at least deciding upon how policies were to be made, were at 

least beginning to be explored. Mr. Matloff will speak at more length in his 

comments on the period from Versailles to World War I1 on the fortunes of 

the Joint Board and how it was transformed, I suppose, into a Joint Chiefs 

of Staff very informally in February 1942. So there is a link, there is a 

relationship, between the first session that we had this morning, particularly 

Mr. Weigley’s comments, and the discussion we are about to have. 

[The Chairman introduced Dr. FORREST C. POGUE, Executive Director, The George C. Marshall Research Foundation.] 
69 

THE WARTIME CHIEFS OF STAFF AND 

THE PRESIDENT* 

Forrest C. Pogue 

George C. Marshall Research Foundation 

As a small boy in western Kentucky, I used to attend a great many 

evangelistic services, and I found that you cannot make a proper oration of 

any length without a text; so I would like to begin my paper today with a 

text-a lengthy text-from General Marshall. I may return to it sometime 

near the end of the speech; however, I purposely put it at the beginning so 

that the next two speakers may use it as a basis for departure from some of 

the points that I have to make. 

In 1956, I raised with General Marshall a number of questions relative 

to the failure of the United States Chiefs of Staff to consider political matters 

in their military decisions and the matter of the extent to which they had 

made U. S. wartime policy. I called attention specifically to the criticism of 

the military leaders by Chester Wilmot and Lord Alanbrooke. The former 

Army Chief of Staff, who had talked earlier with Wilmot, Sherwood, and 

Morison on these subjects and who had carefully read statements by Hanson 

Baldwin, Churchill, and Alanbrooke, replied: 

In regard to the political aspects which some British historians and 

some British officials feel that I [and other U. S. military leaders] were 

not sufficiently mindful of. . . I have this to say: We probably devoted 

more time in our discussions, our intimate discussions, to such matters 

than to any one subject, because we were very fearful that we might find 

our whole campaign upset by some politi&l gesture. I frankly was 

fearful of Mr. Roosevelt introducing political methods, of which he was 

a genius, into a military thing which had to be on a fixed basis. . . . You 

can’t treat military factors in the way you do political factors. It’s quite 

a different affair. You have to be very exact, very clearly informed, and 

very precise in what you say in regard to military things. 

*This paper is based on my researches of the past several years, for writing the multivolume 

biography of General Marshall. 
70 

Now as to whether we did not regard diplomatic factors sufficiently, 

I repeat again that we discussed political things more than anything else. 

But that was Mr. Roosevelt’s [responsibility], and our problem was to 

be on guard that the military picture-Army, Navy, and Air-was not 

completely disjointed by what I will call some irrelevant political gestures which were made without due thought to what was going on at 

the time. . . . 

Of course, Mr. Churchill and the president were the dominant factors 

in all these arrangements and in all guidance. And they were the great 

political leaders of their countries, but they were also the military leaders 

and it was quite a delicate issue back and forth, particularly in matters 

like the Mediterranean, the soft belly of Europe, the Balkan states, the 

marches on Berlin, and things of that sort. Well, there were a great many 

factors connected with all these things, but we had to give special regard 

to the particular military factors and make sure there were no misunderstandings of failure in this respect. I repeat again that I doubt if there 

was any one thing, except the shortage of LSTs, that came to our minds 

more frequently than the political factors. But we were qery careful, 

exceedingly careful, never to discuss them with the British; and from 

that, they took the count that we didn’t observe these things at all. But 

we observed them constantly, with great frequency, and particular solicitude, so that there is no foundation in that charge. We didn’t discuss 

it with them because we were not in any way putting our necks out as 

to political factors which were the business of the head of state-the 

president-who happened also to be Commander-in-Chief. ................................................ 

I do not think the military authorities should make any political 

decisions unless they are instructed accordingly, because the effects are 

too wide-reaching, there are too many influences involved, and it is quite 

a question of how much of this would be familiar to the military participants. And also it must be remembered [and he repeated this to me on 

three occasions] the military responsibility in operations is very, very 

large, and it has with it a terrible measure of casualties. . . .l 

Marshall thus put into perspective a position taken and adhered to for 

the most part by the U. S. Chiefs of Staff throughout World War 11. It should 

be compared to the thesis advanced by Samuel Huntington in The Solder 

and the State in 1957 and confuted by William Emerson, Kent Greenfield, 

and athers in later years that (1) the Joint Chiefs of Staff ran the war and 

(2) that they did it by merging their identity with civilian views. Considerable 

material has become available since Huntington wrote his perceptive volume, 

’Interview with General Marshall, 11 Feb. 1957. 
71 

and it is worthwhile reexamining the relationship of the president and the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff in that light. This is particularly important since Professor James MacGregor Burns’s new book has raised again the question of 

President Roosevelt’s role in directing the war effort. 

I think that for this audience I need not give a long outline of the 

formation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, except to call to your attention the fact 

that shortly after Pearl Harbor such an organization was established in 

Washington. General George C. Marshall, U. S. Army Chief of Staff; Admiral Ernest J. King, Chief of Naval Operations; and General Henry H. Arnold, 

Commanding General, U. S. Army Air Forces, were the original members. 

Admiral William D. Leahy was added as chairman in the summer of 1942. 

Leahy was named, as a matter of fact, at the suggestion of General Marshall, 

who felt that King might not be happy with General Arnold’s sitting in the 

regular Joint Chiefs meeting with a full vote, thus giving the Army and the 

Army Air Forces two votes to King’s one. Marshall also felt, however, that 

in Leahy, an old friend of President Roosevelt and a man with whom Marshall himself had worked briefly, the organization would gain a man who 

could perform useful liaison with the president and also a man who would 

take a broad view toward both army and navy attitudes. Marshall was 

disappointed in this selection in one respect: Admiral Leahy accepted Roosevelt’s definition of the job of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which 

the chairman would be his “leg man,” whereas that had not been Marshall’s 

concept of the job. The Army Chief of Staff felt at times that Leahy limited 

himself far too much to bringing messages from the White House and carrying messages back, without serving as the strong voice of the Chiefs of Staff 

to the president, as Marshall had hoped he would be.l However, for all that, 

Leahy played an important role in briefing the president every morning, and 

Leahy did tend to take a broad gauge view in most of the discussions within 

the Joint Chiefs. 

As to Marshall’s role, and it is the one that I shall talk about most here 

since it is the one I know most about, I should say that in the beginning, 

Marshall felt he did not have the close confidence of the president. He was 

never quite sure how he came to be appointed to the job of Army Chief of 

Staff, but he believed that it was due largely to the influence of Harry 

Hopkins, and especially to one meeting that he had with Hopkins several 

months before he was appointed. Hopkins, who had been converted very late 

in the game to the need for quick rearmament, had talked with him, after 

a discussion of the use of WPA funds for army construction, about the needs 

of the country. At the end of a two hour session, Hopkins said, “I want to 

go to the president and emphasize to him the things that you have just said.”3 

*Ibid., 13 Nov. 1956, 14 Feb. 1957. 

3Gen. Marshall to Col. William Spencer, !5 Nov. 1950. 
72 

Nevertheless, the general sensed that, not having had a command position in World War I, he did not initially have the president’s full confidence. 

Marshall said of this period: “I thought it was far more important in the long 

run that I be well established as a member of a team and try to do my own 

convincing within the team rather than to take action publicly contrary to 

the desires of the president and certain members of Congres~.”~ And very 

carefully, when he testified before congressional committees in executive 

session, he made it a point that his full remarks were placed on the president’s 

desk next day. He also resolved very early not to force showdowns with the 

president on “small matters,” so that the president would know that on any 

occasion when Marshall said, “There must be a decision; it must come now 

for the good of the country,” then the president would know that he was not 

being dealt with frivolously. 

Not only did General Marshall actually become the principal spokesman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the president but, in time, of course, he 

became the chief proponent of the cross-Channel strategy in the discussions 

with Churchill. The prime minister recognized this very clearly, going out 

of his way, during most of the international conferences from Casablanca on, 

to arrange a private meeting as soon as possible with Marshall, in order to 

seek some sort of understanding with him about the discussions that were to 

follow. I don’t mean by this to imply that at those meetings where the 

president attended, he and Churchill did not have long sessions-they had 

far more than the Chiefs of Staff would have liked. But in most cases, 

Roosevelt suggested that the Chiefs of Staff go ahead of him to talk with the 

British Chiefs of Staff, and then quite often Churchill would arrive before 

Roosevelt. 

In the U. S. Chiefs of Staff meetings, on the matter of grand strategy, 

although Admiral King had definite views about what should be done in the 

Pacific, he tended to work closely with Marshall on questions such as 

“Europe first,” and in some cases presented the Marshall strategy -more 

strongly than the general himself did. As most of you know, General Arnold, 

technically under Marshall, concentrated on air matters, and Marshall for 

the most part left such things to him. I have the feeling that of the various 

Chiefs of Staff, the one that President Roosevelt personally liked to talk to 

most was General Arnold. 

I also have the feeling that the president very seldom was completely at 

ease with Marshall or King. And the general went out of his way to discourage familiarity, turning down suggestions from Hopkins that he go to Hyde 

‘Interview with Marshall, 22 Jan. 1957. 
73 

Park or Warm Springs to talk with the president. “I found informal conversations with the president would get you in trouble,” Marshall said later. “He 

would talk over something informally at the dinner table and you had trouble 

disagreeing without creating embarrassment. So I never went. I was at Hyde 

Park for the first time at his funeral.”5 

By the late fall of 1943, Marshall thought that he had the president’s full 

confidence; and it is quite evident that in 1944 and the early part of 1945, 

the president relied on him to a tremendous extent. 

I would like to say, too, that the president never had the close rapport 

with the Joint Chiefs of Staff that Churchill had with his own Chiefs. And 

Marshall-while he did not want to duplicate the experiences of the British 

qith Churchill on those occasions when, as Lord Portal said, “He browbeat 

them like they were a bunch of pickpockets”6 -Marshall was glad to escape 

that type of familiarity; but he would have liked more frequent meetings, and 

he would have liked a greater give and take in the discussion period than he 

was able to get. He was particularly unhappy at the fact that it was nearly 

impossible to get a clear record of agreements that Roosevelt made orally 

with Churchill and others. In 1942 and 1943 Marshall tried to get the 

president to read a description of the secretariat that Ismay had set up for 

the prime minister and the British Chiefs of Staff. Marshall tried to get 

Hopkins to take this information to the president.’ Marshall went to the 

point of taking Colonel John R. Deane with him to some of the early meetings 

of the president with the Chiefs of Staff. Of this episode, Marshall recalled 

that the finit time Deane attended, he had a large notebook; and the president 

had said, “Put that thing up.” The next time Deane took a notebook so small 

that, while the president didn’t notice it, Deane could not put any notes in 

it. In the summer of 1943, General Marshall worked very hard on a better 

administrative arrangement between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the president, and at one point suggested to Hopkins that Averell Hamman act as 

secretary of the group.* But in a short time, Harriman was sent to Moscow 

and, said the Chief of Staff, “that ended that.” Deane went with the Harriman mission and Marshall never was able to do much about it again. 

Not being able to find on an official, regular basis exactly what the 

president had told various people in private conve5sations, Marshall began 

to depend in British matters on Field Marshal Sir John Dill, head of the 

British staff mission. These men became extremely close friends, and it is 

interesting to find occasionally in the files messages that Dill had sent MarSIbid., 14 Nov. 1956. 

6Interview with Lord Portal, 7 Feb. 1947 

7Interview with Marshall, 13 Nov. 1956. 

‘Ibid.. 14 Nov. 1956, 22 Jan. 1957. 
74 

shall, with notes to the effect that “This is what will be presented formally 

to the president tomorrow. Please don’t let him know what is in it.” But 

because the president in a short time might ask the Joint Chiefs or Marshall 

for a paper on the subject, it was highly important that he have some advance 

warning. 

Except on one or two matters, Marshall also depended heavily on Harry 

Hopkins, finding it possible to get Hopkins to bring the views of the president 

to the Chiefs as well as carrying the Chiefs’ views to the president. But on 

the matter of aid to Russia, Hopkins followed the president’s lead of rushing 

all possible aid to the Soviets in the early months after the German invasion. 

Marshall said of this disagreement that they finally did not discuss the 

problem at all. Hopkins’s job,’as Marshall saw it, was to carry out the president’s desire that all possible aid be rushed to the Soviet Union; Marshall’s 

job was to represent the interests of the Army and the Army Air Forces. 

“And I was opposed,” said the Chief of Staff, “to any undue generosity which 

might endanger our security.” When Hopkins urged the promotion of Colonel Philip R. Faymonville to brigadier general so that he could help expedite 

Lend-Lease deliveries to Russia, Marshall accepted the recommendation as 

a White House requirement after suggesting reasons against the promotion.9 

And in the matter of the China-Burma-India theater, especially China, Marshall finally reached the point that he would no longer discuss with Hopkins 

the problems of General Chennault’s air program and General Stilwell’s 

strategy, because he found that Hopkins was completely on Chennault’s side, 

opposed to Stilwell, and there was no point in pursuing any discussion. 

Now let us come back to Professor Huntington’s thesis, made some 

years ago in The Soldier and the State, about who ran the war. Huntington 

declared, “So far as the major decisions in policy and strategy were concerned, the military ran the war [and they ran it] just the way the American 

people and American statesmen wanted it run.”10 This view has of course 

been challenged in more recent days, first possibly by William Emerson, who 

detailed instances in which FDR definitely overruled the Joint Chiefs of 

SM. I suppose the strongest case against Huntington’s view is that presented by Kent Roberts Greenfield in American Strategy in World War I4 

in which he cites more than twenty cases in which Roosevelt overruled the 

considered judgment of the responsible military chiefs and substituted his 

own estimate of the military situation or his own concept of the strategy the 

situation required. Greenfield mentions twelve other cases in which the 

pForrest C. Pogue, George C Marshall: Ordealand Hope, 1939-1942 (New York, 1966), 

loSamuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State; The Theory and Politics of avil- 

”William R. Emerson, “F.D.R., 1941-1945,” in Ernest R. May, ed., The UltimateDeCipp. 73-74. 

Milikqy Relations (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), p. 315. 

ion: The hident as Commander in Chief (New York, 1960), pp. 173-77. 
75 

initiative for taking an important military measure came from Roosevelt.12 

However, since that book appeared, Lord Moran’s diary has thrown light on 

some of the discussions between Hopkins and the American Chiefs of Staff, 

on the one hand, and Churchill, Foreign Minister Anthony Eden, and others, 

which would seem to change some of Greenfield’s interpretation; and I will 

go into that in a moment. 

More moderate positions between the extremes taken by Greenfield and 

Huntington have been taken by Maurice Matloff and Louis Morton, who feel 

that both the Joint Chiefs and the president played considerable roles. I have 

relied heavily in some of my earlier work on their interpretations, apd my 

independent research brings me more closely into line with their positions 

than with some of the others. Professor Morton in 1960 declared: 

The assertion is frequently made that the United States fought World 

War I1 with no awareness of political objectives and with a singleminded devotion to the ideal of military victory. Perhaps this is the way 

President Roosevelt wanted it, for, by deliberately avoiding defining 

postwar political objectives, he left the military men largely free to 

pursue their own goals. This is not to say that he did not intervene in 

strategic matters when he felt it necessary, as in North Africa, or that 

the military men were unaware of political problems. As a matter of fact? 

they were perhaps more aware of them than most civilian officials and 

on many occasions sought guidance from their political superiors. When 

such guidance was not forthcoming they had no recourse but to baSe 

their actions on military considerations. 13 

I should note in passing that Huntington lists the same two cases in 

which Roosevelt overrode the Joint Chiefs of Staff that were first mentioned, 

I think, by Sherwood in his Roosevelt and Hopkins. l4 One of these has to 

do with Torch, the decision to go into North Africa. The president definitely 

took a strong stand against the Joint Chiefs of Staffs recommendation that 

they push ahead for some kind of cross-Channel attack in 1942 or at least 

in the spring of 1943, without having the diversionary action in North Africa. 

The other instance has to do with the decision to drop Buccaneer, the 

llKent Roberts Greenfield, American Strategy in World War I8 A Recondderation 

(Baltimore, 1963), pp. 56-84. 

laMaurice Matloff, “Franklin Delano Roosevelt as War Leader,” in Harry Lewis Coles, 

ed., Total War and Cold War: Problems in Czvilian Control of the Militaty (Columbus, Ohio, 

1962), pp. 44-65; Louis Morton, “National Policy and Military Strategy,” Virginia Quarterly 

Review 36 (Winter 1960): 9-10. 

“Robert Emmet Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York, 

1948), footnote, p. 446. 
76 

amphibious operation which was to have supported the attack in Burma. This 

decision was taken, as you know, at the second Cairo conference in 1943, 

after certain discussions in Teheran. 

James Burns’s recent book has focused attention on the possibility that 

Roosevelt, by brushing aside the advice of General Marshall and Admiral 

King in 1942, helped to raise hopes in the minds of the Russians which, when 

not satisfied, helped to prepare the way for the Cold War.’5 This is a 

somewhat oversimplified statement of his view, but I do want to raise it very 

briefly, so that if you want to examine it further in the discussion period, you 

can do so. All that I want to say here is the following. Molotov went to 

Ehgland in May of 1942 seeking some sort of diversionary action in the West 

that would take away 40 German divisions from the Eastern Front. Churchill 

did not know of any way that could be done, so he began to tell about other 

fine operations such as Gymnast in North Africa, or Jupiter in Norway, 

which would serve the purpose of diverting some German divisions from the 

East. Molotov then came on to Washington, where he talked to Marshall and 

to the president. General Marshall felt that, while the president should 

encourage the Russians to expect aid ultimately, he should not make a 

specific promise, and he should not give any particular publicity to any sort 

of statement. Despite this advice, and despite the fact that Hopkins repeated 

Marshall’s doubts about the whole matter to Roosevelt on two occasions, the 

president, in an expansive mood or from a desire to encourage a hard-pressed 

friend, suggested that a second front would be launched much more quickly 

than Marshall thought possible. Then over Marshall’s objection, this was 

given publicity. Of course, where I question Professor Bums’s thesis is that 

I can not believe that as able a diplomat as Molotov would believe for a 

moment that the president could put into effect any great operation within 

a few months, particularly if the British had to furnish most of the resources, 

when it was quite clear that Churchill didn’t intend to do anything of the sort. 

So if the Cold War started because of this disappointment, it was because the 

Russians wanted it to start, since Molotov had no reason to base any great 

faith on this point. 

Now I recognize that if you drop that point and assume that Molotov 

expected aid, took for granted that the Soviet Union was due aid from the 

West on the grounds that it had been fighting the West’s war for it, then it 

is a different story. Of if you want to take it another way, that the Russians 

took it for granted that the Western powers were perfectly willing for them 

to wear themselves out against the Germans and to do most of the fightingthat’s another story, too. But actually Professor Bums seems to overstress 

’5James MacGregor Bums, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (New York, 1970), pp. 

233, 238. 
77 

this particular discussion in 1942. But to go back to the question of Roosevelt's overriding his advisers. In this case, Roosevelt did not flatly override 

General Marshall's advice. Marshall was not giving political advice, but was 

trying to explain to the president that we could not make available in 1942 

resources that could divert 40 divisions from the Eastern Front. Now as you 

know, before that spring was over, Marshall did talk about the possibility of 

an emergency landing in the Cherbourg Peninsula with perhaps two divisions 

or something of the sort-it was a little vague at times-to make some kind 

of diversion. But it was nothing of the magnitude Molotov had asked for. 

When you come to the decision to go into North Africa, you certainly 

have a clear-cut example of the president, on the basis of what he thought 

were political as well as military reasons, overriding the considered opinion 

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They felt that any invasion of North Africa would 

get us into a number of diversionary actions that would delay, if not prevent, 

the type of cross-Channel operation that the Joint Chiefs wanted by 1943 or, 

at the latest, by the spring of 1944. General Marshall later said he had leap4 

an important lesson from this decision's going against him, a lesson he tried 

to point out to young officers every time he spoke at the War College: in a 

democracy, political leaders at times had to have action for the sake of 

assuring the public, and sometimes risks had to be taken to let the public feel 

that they were making progress toward ending the war. And Marshall had 

to admit that he had not thought of that particular angle in his own planning. ' 

Now I want to take up two points on which there has been considerable 

debate about the extent of Roosevelt's overriding his military advisers in the 

matter of cross-Channel strategy. There are some differences in interpretation of what happened between President Roosevelt and his military advisers 

at the Trident and first Quebec conferences, between some of us on the 

platform and one or more of you in the audience. The Joint Chiefs in May 

1943, preparing for their meeting with the British Chiefs at Trident. persuaded the president to sit down with them at the White House and determine a basic American case on which they could all agree. Now this is 

important. All of them agreed that they would try to pin down the British 

for a cross-Channel invasion at the earliest practi5al date and to make full 

plans for such an operation for the spring of 1944. The president agreed to 

that, althQugh neither Secretary of War Stimson nor General Marshall was 

certain tbat they could hold him to it. Dr. Greenfield and Dr. Richard 

Leighton, in accounts of this particular conference and the one that followed, 

are inclined to feel that the Joint Chiefs were somewhat more inflexible than 

1 believe they were, and also that it was the president who, by some sort of 

'%terviqw with Marshall, 13 Nov. 1956. 
pressure or persuasion, got them to be a little more reasonable in their 

dealings with the British.17 I have the feeling, and I believe that Professor 

Matloff has the same in his books on coalition strategy, that this is not quite 

accurate. 

I have the feeling that the president, in the White House conference, 

tended to agree with the Joint Chiefs, and that he did not basically depart 

from that general agreement in his later discussions, although he may have 

been less abrasive in his language than General Marshall or Admiral King. 

Dr. Greenfield, for example, I think went too far in his statement that the 

president had let his advisers go out on a limb that did not support their 

weight.’* In their own way, these descriptions of Roosevelt’s actions exaggerate the president’s role as framer of strategy as much as the Huntington 

thesis exaggerates the role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the first plenary 

meeting at Trident, Roosevelt made clear that he had always shrunk from 

the thought of putting large armies into Italy-actually a main contention 

of the Joint Chiefs? argument. He proposed that the Chiefs investigate the 

effect on Allied resources of an occupation of Italy proper, or of the heel or 

toe of Italy. There were about 25 Allied divisions in the Mediterranean that 

should be employed. The surplus in the Mediterranean should be used to 

build up the forces in the United Kingdom. The president and the Joint 

Chiefs agreed that there could be no Sledgehammer or Roundup in 1943, 

and that if they were to be mounted in the spring of 1944, preparations had 

to begin then. Roosevelt emphasized that one or the other should be decided 

on for the spring of 1944-that is, Sledgehammer, the lesser operation, or 

Roundup, the greater one. To take the weight off Russia, they should compel 

the Germans to fight. For this reason, he questioned the occupation of Italy, 

feeling that this might release the pressure on Germans now in that country. 

He felt that the most effective way to make them fight was the cross-Channel 

operation. His statement, while not calling for a specific number of divisions 

in the initial attack, made the point insisted on by Marshall and his colleagues 

that they not get involved in an Italian adventure that would make a crossChannel operation impossible for 1943 and interfere with the main effort for 

1944. From the standpoint of the U.S. Chiefs of Staff, Roosevelt instead of 

moderating their views had instead backed them. Churchill certainly was 

taken aback. 

Now this is the point, I say, that was not available to Professor Leighton 

and to Dr. Greenfield when they wrote in 1960 or 1961. Lord Moran, 

Churchill’s doctor, kept a diary of various discussions at these conferences. 

“Richard M. Leighton, “Overlord Revisited; An Interpretation of American Strategy in 

’EGreenfield, American Smregy, p. 64. 

the European War, 1942-1944,” American Historical Review 68 (July 1963): 919-37. 
79 

He says that after Churchill and Hopkins had discussed this statement of 

Roosevelt’s, Churchill seemed surprised, since he had been certain that he 

could again win the president to his own point of view, as he had done in 

1942 over Torch. Moran later wrote: “The Americans had done some very 

hard thinking, and Marshall was at the President’s elbow to keep in his mind 

the high urgency of a second front. The results, according to Hopkins, were 

very satisfactory. The President could now, Harry felt, be safely left alone 

with the Prime Minister.” Churchill told Moran a short time later that “The 

President is not willing to put pressure on Marshall. He is not in favour of 

landing in Italy. It is most discouraging. . . . I cannot let the matter rest where 

it is.” Moran suggests that Churchill hoped that by taking Marshall to 

Algiers with him, he could change Marshall’s mind. l9 

Writing of the first Quebec conference held a few months after Trident, 

Dr. Greenfield declares: 

Perhaps remembering Trident, General Marshall took the precaution 

of having his chief planner, General Handy, fly to Washington from 

Quebec to see Mr. Roosevelt before the conference opened. When the 

President arrived at Quebec the next day “it was already clear,” to quote 

the official historian [Dr. Matloffl, “that a compromise was in the 

making and that the U. S. staff would have to accept something less than 

‘overriding priority.’ ”20 

The inference here is that Roosevelt was still holding the scales even between 

the U. S. Chiefs and the British, rather than actually going ahead with his 

earlier decision to back the strategy advocated by the Joint Chiefs concerning 

crossChanne1. It is instructive to look at Stimson’s diary and his correspondence with the president, as well as General Handy’s recollections on the 

nature of that trip to Washington, because Dr. Greenfield gives the impress 

that Handy came to find out what the president wanted done, when Handy’s 

impression is that Marshall wanted to make sure that the president stood 

hitched on the position he had already agrreed to. 

Stimson, returning around the first of August from a mp to Europe 

where he had argued stoutly over cross-Channel, wrote a detailed report 

19Charles McMoran Wilson, Baron Moran, Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940- 

1965: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Mom (Boston, 1966), pp. 102, 104. 

ZOGreentield, American Strategu, p. 70. Matloffs full quotation gives a somewhat different 

turn to the situation. He wrote: “On 17 August, the President amved in Quebec to lend his 

support to Overlord. By that time-after three days of staff debate-it was already clear that 

a compromise was in the making and that the U. S. staff would have to accept something less 

than ‘overriding priority’ for the operation” (Strategic Planning for Coalition Wd., 1943- 

1944 [Washington, 19591, p. 223). 
80 

to the president on August 10, just before the Quebec meeting. Stimson 

went over the report step by step with the president, in what the Secretary described as one of the most satisfactory discussions they had ever 

held. Stimson emphasized the need of pinning the British down to the 

cross-Channel attack, the importance of Roosevelt’s taking the leadership at the approaching Quebec conference, and the selection of Marshall as Supreme Commander of the cross-Channel attack. Stimson was 

then invited to sit in on the Joint Chiefs meeting. “The president,” wrote 

Stimson, “went the whole hog for Roundhammer or cross-Channel. He 

was more clear and definite than I had ever seen him. . . .” Roosevelt 

favored setting up rapidly in the United Kingdom forces for Roundhammer, so that before the time of landing we would have more troops 

in Britain dedicated to that purpose than the British would have. “He 

said he wanted to have an American commander, and he thought it 

would make it easier if we had more men in the expedition at the 

beginning.” I don’t think that indicates Roosevelt was being nice to the 

British. I concede that the military and naval conferees were astonished 

and delighted at his definiteness. In respect to future operations in the 

Mediterranean, Marshall said that after deducting divisions to return 

from the Mediterranean to Great Britain, Eisenhower would have 48 

divisions. On hearing this, the president withdrew his suggestion, made 

the prevhs day to Marshall, that they should send six divisions from 

the United States to help Eisenhower in the Mediterranean. Roosevelt 

said he felt Eisenhower now had plenty of strength. Stimson, who was 

often inclined to be pessimistic about the president, concluded: “I came 

away with a lighter heart. If he can hold to this in the conference, it will 

clear up the situation.”21 

Roosevelt held to his course. Churchill visited him at Hyde Park 

shortly after the Joint Chiefs and the Combined Chiefs had gone to 

Quebec, and then Churchill returned to Canada while the Combined 

Chiefs argued strenuously over the matter of an overriding priority for 

the cross-Channel attack. Determined this time to see that Roosevelt 

had the American side of the story before he again came under Churchill’s influence, the prime minister’s “sun lamp” as they liked to call it, 

General Marshall told General Handy to return to Washington and 

make sure that the president knew what the British Chiefs of Staff were 

saying and what the American Chiefs had in mind. Handy talked with 

Hopkins, and the presidential adviser arranged for Handy to ride on 

Roosevelt’s train to Quebec the next day. Handy talked with the president and was convinced by the time they reached Quebec that the 

president was still on the same line that they had talked about in the 

21Diary of Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, Yale Library, entry for 10 Aug. 1943. 
81 

beginning. But Handy said, “Both sides knew, and the president knew, 

that we had to come to an agreement.”22 

The point I want to make is that it was not a softening of the Joint 

Chiefs by the president, but the fact that the Joint Chiefs working with 

the president had come to a moderate position. In the meeting at Quebec, the president was firm in his determination to get an agreement on 

cross-Channel, and he was determined to get the supreme command for 

that operation for the United States. He had General Marshall prepare 

statistics proving that we had, or would have, by all odds the larger 

number of troops in that attack. Of course, this was not needed because 

Churchill had read the handwriting very clearly and before Roosevelt 

could bring up the subject, he offered the naming of the Supreme Commander to the president. Lord Moran in his memoirs underscores one 

of the points I have been trying to make. “The Americans,” he wrote 

at Quebec on August 20, “are not in doubt that Marshall was right in 

resisting the postponement of the landing in France. It appears that the 

President and Hopkins are no longer prepared to acknowledge Winston 

as an infallible guide in military matters.’Q3 There was also the fact that 

since the president himself had insisted on the supreme commander role 

for an American, and it was evident that it would be Marshall, Roosevelt 

certainly was likely to assume that he would have to protect the Marshall position on cross-Channel strategy-the position the general had 

been set on since early 1942. Marshall himself reported to Stimson later’ 

that the big fight was not on cross-Channel but on 

Jumping ahead from Quebec to November and December of 1943, 

I would like to take up briefly the matter of Buccaneer, the case in 

which many writers insist that Roosevelt again overrode the advice of 

the Joint Chiefs. Now at the first Cairo conference, Roosevelt was in a 

mood to assure Chiang Kai-shek of strong American support for the 

operation in Burma. He took from a report of t,he Joint Chiefs a statement that there should be an amphibious operation in support of the 

ground attack in Burma, and the president promised such an operation 

to Chiang Kai-shek. This was not a Joint Chiefs promise; it was the 

president’s promise. In the course of the conversations at Teheran, and 

particularly immediately afterward, the prime minister began to say that 

dtalin’s agreement to enter the war against Japan later on changed the 

situation, and that they should therefore give up the promise to do 

Buccaneer and use the landing craft thus freed for some other purpose. 

**Interview with Gen. Thomas T. Handy, 9 July 1970. 

*fMoran, Churchill, p. 118. 

l4Stirnson Diary, 5 Sep. 1943. 
82 

Under great pressure from the prime minister, the president began to 

weaken; but instead of a brusque overriding of the Joint Chiefs, he began 

to ask if there was something else that Mountbatten could do that would 

satisfy Chiang Kai-shek. Now many people have been surprised that the 

Chiefs, after their return to Cairo from Teheran, continued to support 

the president’s former position. Later the president reluctantly, most 

reluctantly, gave up that operation. Such a shift can scarcely be called 

a bold presidential exercise of authority over his military advisers. Rather, it was an embarrassed request that they help get him out of a situation 

in which he had been placed by his own impetuosity and the pressure 

of the prime minister. 

I think, however, if you want a case where he did override and 

almost at times warred with his advisers, you should take another issue 

in that theater-the whole matter of Stilwell, Chennault’s program, the 

question of Stilwell’s recall, and a few other odds and ends of that 

arrangement. Much of this, of course, was due to the personality of 

Stilwell, to his quarrel with Chennault, to the ground force theory and 

the air force theory, to the British reluctance to do certain things in 

Burma, to Roosevelt’s insistence in helping China to be a g;eat power, 

and to the extremely personal fight that developed among the Americans in the China-Burma theater and their advocates back in Washington. At times, Marshall became more involved emotionally and 

personally in his support of Stilwell than in practically any other issue. 

As I have said, he had reached the point where he declined to discuss 

the matter with Hopkins. Now the amazing thing about the fight that 

went on between all these people%during 1942-44, before Stilwell’s recall, 

is the extent to which the president would approach the point of suggesting that Stilwell be recalled, and the extent to which the Joint Chiefs 

would almost take the step of opposing the president’s policy, without 

quite doing it. The president, for example, came closest to angering 

General Marshall when he put his full support behind the Chennault 

program in the face of Stilwell’s recommendation and in the face of 

Marshall’s strong feeling that the president was encouraging Chennault’s insubordination toward Stilwell. But how you could ever figure 

out who was being insubordinate to whom in the China situation, I 

really don’t know. Stilwell, technically under Chiang Kai-shek, actually 

opposed him. Chennault, subordinate to both Stilwell and Chiang, opposed his American superior in China. The president had invited Chennault to communicate directly with him, thus virtually inviting him to 

bypass both Stilwell and the War Department. Chennault insisted, over 

Marshall’s vehement protest to the War Department and Stilwell, on the 

commissioning of Joseph Alsop, Chennault’s civilian aide who had attacked Stilwell. And then later, when Stilwell was Mountbatten’s depu- 
83 

ty, Mountbatten felt that Stilwell was undermining his authority as head of 

SEAC.25 The case illustrates some very poor lines of authority and communication; but it also illustrates that the president did not always take the advice 

of the Joint Chiefs, and that the Joint Chiefs were not always docile when 

the president took an opposing view. 

Basically, during the war, the president decided on the Europe-first 

strategy, with which the Joint Chiefs agreed. The president outlined and held 

to the unconditional surrender formula, although the Joint Chiefs had reservations about it. The president personally decided against taking responsibility for southern Europe, although he later changed that attitude somewhat. 

The president decided on the great-power role for China, even in the face of 

objections from Churchill. The president at one point set one or two years 

as the term for the American occupation of Germany. And the president 

emphasized that the big powers should enforce peace after the war. It was 

the acceptance by the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the president’s actions in these 

political matters that apparently led Professor Huntington to his conclusion 

that “the trouble with American policy making was not too much military 

thinking but too little. And this was caused directly by American insistence 

that their professional military servants assume power and responsibility 

beyond their competence.”26 

The full examination of this thesis would require more time than we 

have for it in this symposium. But I would like to raise one point, in the light 

of what I have said earlier, for further examination and perhaps for further 

discussion in today’s meeting. I have in mind Huntington’s statement, 

In contrast to American civilian thought, the thinking of the military 

before the war was, in general, coldly professional and free of illusion. 

They were, indeed, the only significant group to have such an approach 

to foreign policy. If they had been able to continue to think in military 

terms after assuming direction of the war, the policy decisions which 

their critics mistakenly label the result of the “military mind” might well 

have been avoided. If their views had not been altered, the military 

leaders might have warned the country of the permanence of the struggle 

for power, the improbability of postwar harmony, the weaknesses of 

international organization, the desirability of preserving a balance of 

power in Europe and Asia, and the truth of history that today’s allies 

are frequently tomorrow’s enemies. But, instead, as they achieved powz51nterview with Marshall, 29 Oct. 1956. 

26Huntington, soldier and the Srate, p. 328. 
a4 

er, the military commanders had to abandon their professional conservatism and adopt the prevailing civilian viewpoints.27 

1 doubt if the full facts concerning the activities of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

will show that they did assume the direction of the war in the broad sense 

that Professor Huntington suggests. Even if they had continued to think in 

purely military terms, as he suggests they should have, one wonders how they 

could have made their warnings effective. How, short of taking over real 

control of the government, could they have imposed their point of view on 

the country? 

Beyond that, I think that so far as the members of the Chiefs of Staff 

organization were concerned, there is little evidence that their prewar military thinking would have brought them to the kind of position Professor 

Huntington had in mind. Their general training had, of course, conditioned 

them to many of the professional views he mentions, but they had also been 

influenced by the U.S. experience in World War I and the reactions that 

followed. The balance of power in Europe and Asia, alluded to in the Joint 

Board estimate of September 1941 to which Mr. Huntington refers28 as a 

realistic statement of United States policy, meant little more in fact than a 

hope of returning to the status quo ante bellum. This was based, as ArmyNavy statements throughout the year indicated, on the defeat of the German 

and Japanese forces. As a practical matter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the 

war period could not imagine American support of prolonged intervention 

in Europe and Asia to enforce the balance of power. The hope was that with 

the restoration of Britain and France to their former positions and the 

clearing of Axis forces from Russia and China, a balance would be reestablished, at least from the standpoint of the basic defense of the United States, 

which was the point on which American military strategy had been based for 

generations. In this case Russia's postwar position would be balanced by the 

Western European powers. 

Whatever theoretical views the military had, there was the profound 

conviction, born out of the inability to keep even the modest defense establishment provided for in the National Defense Act at the close of World War 

I, that the American people would not pay for more than the defense of the 

coast of the United States, certain areas of Central and South America, and 

some areas of the Pacific. To get them involved beyond that required a special 

crusade against a particular enemy, and this in turn demanded a quick 

victory and speedy return home. It is hard to see how even the most professional military view could be expected to overturn this experience, short of 

*'Ibid., pp. 327-28. 

ZaIbid., p. 331. 
85 

a completely different presidential policy with some prospect of national 

support. 

I believe that except as an academic exercise, we need not concern 

ourselves with the question of what the professional military leaders would 

have come up with had they been free of responsibilities for running the war. 

The facts we now have fail to indicate that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had the 

full direction of the war in their hands, in the sense Mr. Huntington suggested. Perhaps they could have forced different views on the president, but they 

felt that this was not required of them; and in the framework of American 

professional military thinking, it was indeed foreign to their views. 
86 

Commentary 

Maurice Matloff 

Office of the Chief of Military History 

Department of the Army 

American Leadership in World War I1 

Probably no aspect of World War I1 history has aroused more bitter 

controversy than American leadership and particularly thc: subject of the 

session this afternoon-the wartime relationship of the military to the president. Two extreme positions have been set forth: one that the military ran 

the war with FDR simply ratifying their decisions; the other that the president manipulated and bent the staff to his will. Between these extremes lie 

a wide variety of shadings set forth by conventional and revisionist interpreters of American policy and strategy in World War 11. 

Scholars who tread their way amid the complex problems of evidence, 

perspective, and the conflicting stereotypes and images that have become 

imbedded in the postwar literature face a formidable task. The illuminating 

paper we have been privileged to hear today, treating the controversial subject in the even-handed, judicious manner we have come to expect from the 

author, is therefore particularly welcome. Distilling his findings from his 

intensive study of General Marshall and the American high command, Dr. 

Pogue has presented a perceptive, balanced portrait of a changing association, of a growing respect between the president and his military chiefs, of 

a loose but cooperative relationship. In passing he has criticized the Greenfield-Leighton school for overdrawing the president’s role and Huntington’s 

portrait for exaggerating the JCS role. I have no basic quarrel with the 

general picture that emerges particularly since, as Dr. Pogue so graciously 

acknowledged, his interpretation accords in large measure with my own 

reading of the evidence. In the limited time available, I should like to approach the subject of the paper in a somewhat longer time frame and broader 

context and, in particular, to consider the important question Dr. Pogue 

raised at the end of his paper concerning the validity of the Huntington thesis. 
87 

My comments are intended as extensions, rather than criticisms, and revolve 

around three main points: the historical context of the wartime relationship, 

the nature of that relationship, and its significance. Since Dr. Pogue’s paper 

has dealt so fully with the personal side of the relationships, I shall put more 

stress on institutional and intellectual factors. 

The first point raises the question of background and framework. The 

wartime relationship must be put in a proper historical setting-that is, 

considered in terms of the pattern of civil-military relations that had emerged 

by Pearl Harbor. This is particularly important since the Huntington thesis 

rests in part upon assumptions about prewar military thinking and valuesvalues that presumably were surrendered when, according to Huntington, 

the JCS assumed the conduct of the war. What was the legacy the JCS and 

the president inherited and how did that legacy color their roles during the 

war? To understand the traditions each inherited, it is necessary to go back 

briefly to World War I, the great divide in the history of civil-military 

relations for the Western world. In underscoring civilian control over the 

military, it only confirmed American traditions that reached back to the 

Founding Fathers and the Constitution. Yet, while Clemenceau’s classic 

epigram that “war is too important to be left to the generals” emerged from 

that conflict, in fact, the president of the United States had allowed General 

Pershing, commander of the expeditionary forces in Europe, almost complete 

freedom in the military conduct of the war. Wilson simply delegated many 

of his responsibilities as Commander-in-Chief to the supreme commander in 

the field, while he kept the reins of foreign policy in his own hands and 

retained his options as war statesman. The major decisions in Allied strategy 

had already been made before American entry into the war, and the president 

was confronted with no thorny decisions that might have brought him into 

the arena of controversy with his military staff or Allied leaders-before 

Versailles. The war therefore confirmed the American tradition that the 

president determined the “what” of national policy and the military the 

“how.” It also left a legacy of ideas and institutions, of intellectual baggage, 

inherited by American leadership on the eve of World War 11. For the 

military the war confirmed the doctrines of concentration and of fighting for 

complete victory; and out of the experience on the battlefields of Europe 

came the foundations of strategic faith that military leaders like General 

George C. Marshall later sought to apply in the multitheater context of 

World War 11. 

As has happened so often in American history between wars, after a brief 

moment of glory on the national stage the military retreated from society, 

amid public indifference and hostility, to technical pursuits and cultivated 

their own professionalism. The presidents became preoccupied with other 

concerns: with the pursuit of security in non-military terms, with domestic 
88 

problems, and with the Great Depression. In this atmosphere during the 

period 1919 to 1939, the military gave little if any thought to the larger 

questions of war and peace or to a new world after another war; they were 

not encouraged to think in global, political, or coalition terms. No close 

coordination existed between the military and the presidents. The presidents 

stayed out of technical military matters. This gap, added to the traditional 

separation of political and military spheres in American national policy, 

would show up later in World War 11. 

In the period between the World Wars, then, both the presidents and 

the military turned their attention inward. The important question in civilmilitary relations was whether, in a period of isolation from American society, the military would take refuge in a narrow or broad professionalism. 

Fortunately, the period proved to be an era of gestation, of experimentation, 

and of broad professionalism for the American military. But American 

strategic theory and planning developed essentially along individual service 

lines. Joint service committees met and planned, but no highly sophisticated 

joint service machinery emerged that might have produced a coherent and 

authoritative body of strategic theory. The Joint Board, which had met only 

twice during World War I and re-emerged after that conflict, straddled 

strategic issues that might have created controversy between the services; 

most of the plans evolved by the joint service planners were academic exefcises. 

While in the context of the times official policy stressed the defensive, 

offensive notes, stimulated in part by currents in European theory, crept into 

the strategic thought of the services. On the eve of World War 11, the army 

fashioned its theory of war around the infantry and a heavy concentration 

of ground forces; the navy put its faith in the capital ship and a powerful sea 

offensive, especially in the Pacific; and a vigorous group of theorists in the 

fledgling air force, advancing a more revolutionary approach to war, built its 

concepts around the long range bomber and strategic air bombardment. In 

effect three distinct theories of war emerged from the quiet revolution in 

service strategic thinking between the wars. 

In classical military fashion, the military continued to recognize sharp 

distinctions between policy, the realm of the statesmen, and strategy, the 

preserve of the military, a corollary of military subordination to political 

control. Despite service support for some kind of coordinating politicomilitary machinery on a high national level that might give guidance on 

hational policy, no national coordinating council emerged. 

Thus, on the eve of World War 11, institutionally and corlceptually, no 

meshing Qf political and military factors into a grand strategy for the United 
89 

States had taken place; nor had a suitable mechanism evolved for developing 

grand strategy in the event of war. Basically the services were still co-equal 

sovereignties. While they still had no plans for global, coalition .war, beneath 

the surface of official planning and doctrine, the trends in military tactics, 

technology, and strategic theory between the wars in effect were reinforcing 

earlier national experience in large-scale warfare and predisposing them toward decisive, all-out, offensive war overseas in the event of a future involvement. 

On the eve of World War 11, the president too was being molded by his 

own experiences and reading of the recent past. A naval enthusiast from his 

youth, his service as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in World War I had 

made him familiar with naval planning for war against Japan; and he had 

been an observer at first hand of Wilson’s experiences with Congress, the 

military, the Allies, and the enemy. Like the military he too fell heir to the 

American tradition that saw war and peace in absolute terms and in distinct 

compartments. Down to Munich, though he had supported naval appropriations, he had largely ignored the army and its air arm. His experience with 

World War I and its aftermath had confirmed to him that victory had to be 

won on Capitol Hill as well as on the battlefield. 

Fortunately for the United States, the prolonged “short of war” period 

between 1939 and 1941 offered an opportunity for the president and the 

military to adjust to the new realities. Under the president’s leadership the 

country began to mobilize. A new phase began to develop in the relationship 

between the president and his military staff, as he drew the Joint Board closer 

to him-no longer did they have to go through the Secretaries. His concern 

with the aggressive imperialism of the Axis powers encouraged tbe military 

planners to lay aside their academic exercises, to widen their horizons, and 

to gear their plans for global and coalition war. Under the new assumptions, 

realistic compromises began to take hold in the joint planning committees. 

The new joint plans-the Rainbow plans-envisaged war against more than 

one enemy and in more than one theater, and for the first time incorporated 

the idea that the United States would fight alongside allies. While the president did not commit himself to these new plans, he encouraged staff talks 

with the British, out of which evolved the adoption of the crucial Europe-first 

principle. During this period the services, now virthally three, educated him 

even as he prepared them for the period ahead. He extended his knowledge 

of military affairs to take into account army and air, as well as navy matters. 

The military began to appreciate that he would play an independent role in 

strategy and policy. When he initiated the drive for rearmament after Munich, he rejected army views for a balanced ground-air rearmament in favor 

of more aircraft-a form of direct help that could be used to,bolster the 

sagging Western European countries. Nor would he always agrk with his 
staffs assumptions on crucial matters. With faith in his own estimates, he 

simply refused to accept the staffs fear that Britain might go down or that 

the Soviet Union might not survive the German onslaught. Tying American 

security to British survival, he worked directly and indirectly to widen the 

scope of hemisphere defense. In the process he introduced his own creative 

strategic innovation, Lend-Lease. While the staff, in line with its traditions, 

stayed aloof from the debate over national policy and could not be sure of 

its future drift, it did not actively press for national guidance much as it 

wished it. Nor, consistent with the tradition of the “how” and the “what,” 

did the Joint Board seek to ascertain the larger objectives of possible American involvement in war abroad. The one notable exception, to which Dr. 

Pogue alluded, occurred in the summer of 1941 in connection with the staff 

study requested by the president of a Victory Program for munitions necessary to pursue a successful coalition war. To arrive at such quantitative 

calculations, the staff felt it necessary to make some assumptions about larger 

American political goals in the event of such an involvement and incorporated, as one objective, the restoration of a balance of power in Europe and Asia. 

While this report of the Joint Board of September 1941 went forward to the 

White House, there is no evidence that the proposal for the balance of power 

objective was either pursued by the staff or encouraged by the president, then 

or later. In the realm of the higher objectives, the president showed, even 

before Pearl Harbor, that he would wage his own war and served notice that 

he would be his own Secretary of State. Significantly, at the same time that 

the staff floated the balance-of-power trial balloon, army strategic planners, 

in keeping with the traditional American notion of a “sharp and decisive” 

war, showed a disposition to think in terms of meeting the German armies 

head on-and the sooner the better. To’that notion, the core of the American 

theory of a war of mass and concentration, they would hold steadfast 

throughout the war. 

In any event, for all the uncertainties in the quickening pace of 1939-41, 

the relationship between the military staff and the president became closer 

and the spheres for each more clearly delineated. For the first time in American history, a president and his military advisers entered a war with considerable strategic thinking having been done beforehand on how to fight it. The 

sum total of doctripes to which the wartime JCS fell heir tended toward an 

American approach toward war-total style-but there is no conclusive 

evidence that their prewar thinking or valves gave them a concerted view of 

the larger objectives of the war ahead that might have led to the pursuit of 

a different type of war and peace. In fact, on the basis of evidence to date, 

despite Huntington’s contention, it may be questioned whether they had such 

consistent values to surrender-values that might have given them a fully 

worked out thesis or solution for the complex era ushered in by World War 

II. Although the president and his military advisers drew closer in 1939-41, 
91 

the gaps in grand strategy, both institutional and conceptual, had not been 

closed. 

So much for the legacy, a blend of old and new, by the time of Pearl 

Harbor. Now what about the roles of the JCS and the president with relation 

to strategy and policy under the impact of war? Since Dr. Pogue has surveyed 

the major relevant decisions, and I have presented my basic views on those 

roles elsewhere, I shall attempt here only to offer a few observations. 

The picture that Dr. Pogue paints, of a president who interfered in 

military affairs more than was originally thought when Sherwood and Huntington wrote, is in accord with the evidence as I read it. So too is his basic 

point that, while the military thought of political matters, over the long haul 

they left them for the president to decide. Essentially, despite the wartime 

pressures, the military held to the traditional distinctions between the “how” 

and the “what.” Basically the pattern that began to emerge between 1939 and 

1941 held throughout the war-an active and independent Commander-inChief in working partnership with his military advisers. The relationship 

suited his methods and purposes. He could work through them, he could 

work around them. As usual, he used any and all instruments at hand. But 

they did give his administration an orderly touch that was often lacking in 

other parts and without which it is doubtful that he could have played his 

independent political role. At the international conferences, they carried the 

burden of debate with the British, allowing the president to play his favorite 

mediatory role. In many ways they served for Roosevelt in the multi-theater 

conflict as General Pershing and eventually Tasker Bliss had served for 

Wilson in the essentially one-front war. The day-to-day running of the war, 

the hammering out of those numerous decisions to keep a global, coalition 

war running on the track, fell to the JCS and permitted him to concern 

himself with the larger ends of the war. Not that he did not on occasion 

interfere with military affairs and pull the rug out from under his advisers. 

The timing and choice of important decisions he reserved for himself. 

In this connection much has been made of the number of times he 

overruled the staff. A kind of numbers game has sprung up in the literature 

to which the Greenfield interpretation, following on his reading of the Leighton thesis, contributed. I would submit that the precise number of times is 

not really important-whether one accepts Sherwood‘s two or Greenfield’s 

twenty or twenty plus twelve. Indeed, as Dr. Pogue has indicated, a goodly 

number on the Greenfield list occurred before Pearl Harbor; a number of 

them, looked at closely, are somewhat suspect as to who initiated what. For 

every case submitted, there are literally hundreds of decisions in the military 

running of the war where the president did not interfere, as a reading of the 

JCS minutes of the war would indicate. What is important, I would submit, 
92 

is the area of the differences. And here, I would suggest, of fundamental 

importance were the president’s political objectives: his desire to keep the 

Grand Alliance functioning; to help faltering friends, such as Britain and 

Russia in mid-1942; to treat China as a great power; and to preserve that 

alliance intact through the war and house it in the United Nations. Note how 

rarely he interfered in decisions involving the Pacific theater, an area of 

American and JCS responsibility. Dr. Pogue has noted that in connection 

with the dispute over strategy for the China-Burma-India theater, FDR 

encouraged General Chennault to communicate with him. But observe that 

this was an exception. He normally dealt with the commanders in the field 

through formal channels and only met with General MacArthur once during 

the war, at Pearl Harbor in July 1944; and even then it does not appear that 

he intervened in the strategic decisions that were pending in Pacific strategy. 

Did he have strong strategic convictions? I should suggest that on the 

basis of the evidence he had predilections, rather than firm beliefs, and took 

pride in what he felt to be his strategic flair. To FDR, committed to no 

strategic doctrine except decisive victory, strategy, like politics, was the art 

of the possible; and he was apt to chide the staff on occasion for its conservatism. He could bend to strong staff urgings, even as he could on occasion 

overrule them. Indeed, while he did not always see eye to eye with his military 

professionals, his respect for them grew as the war wore on. But by and large, 

as in 1939-41, whatever political objectives he had in the international arena 

he kept to himself and did not discuss fully and freely with his staff. The 

unconditional surrender concept, which he announced to his staff shortly 

before Casablanca and which fitted so well with the basic military doctrine 

of a war of mass and concentration, served further to close off political 

discussion with the staff. 

Now what about the Joint Chiefs of Staff as strategists? Did they prove 

to be as narrow and doctrinaire as charged in postwar literature, and did they 

thereby mislead the president and the West? It is important to recognize that 

the strategy they espoused evolved in response to changing pressures, internal 

and external, and that the American military matufed in military diplomacy 

as the war progressed. It is not generally realized that after the American 

disappointment at Casablanca, the JCS system underwent a fundamental 

reorganization in the spring of 1943 as military planners and chiefs sought 

to cope more effectively with the president and to present a more united front 

vis-a-vis the British at the conferences. Needless to say, the Overlord operation finally agreed upon at Teheran represent& a compromise between 

American and British views-a compromise that was two years in the 

making. 

In holding to their strategy against Germany for a war of concentration 
93 

and in regarding target dates as sacrosanct, the American military were 

entirely consistent with their traditions and strengths. As the arsenal of 

democracy for the coalition, they regarded a major cross-Channel attack as 

the pivot of the global plans. They were anxious to get on with the war against 

Japan, in which they bore the primary responsibility. They feared the ultimate costs, in ,men, money, and time, of a long war of attrition so foreign to 

the American approach to war and summed up so succinctly by General 

Marshall’s statement: “a democracy cannot fight a seven years’ war.” Critics 

of the American case tend to minimize their maturation as strategists in 

mid-war, the global context of their planning, the war of opportunism they 

fought in the Pacific-not unlike that advocated by the British for the Mediterranean. The critics tend to overestimate the politico-military coherence of 

the British case and to forget that the strategy the Americans espoused for 

direct, total solutions was born in good measure from European prewar 

doctrine, to which they had fallen heir, as well as from their own traditions. 

A word should be said about the American military and politics in the 

larger sense to which Dr. Pogue has addressed himself. As he has illustrated, 

and the instances could be multiplied, the charge that the American staff was 

oblivious to political considerations needs to be examined closely. As the war 

advanced, General Marshall and his planners increasingly recognized that 

,military planning was inextricably involved with foreign policy. The fine line 

between foreign and military policy became increasingly blurred, and the 

staff sought to close the gaps with the State Department and devise new 

coordinating links to handle emerging politico-military problems. 

As early as the summer of 1944 the JCS advised the Secretary of State: 

. . . the defeat of Germany will leave Russia in a position of assured 

military dominance in eastern Europe and in the Middle East . . . . The 

successful termination of the war against our present enemies will find 

a world profoundly changed in respect of relative national military 

strengths, a change more comparable indeed with that occasioned by the 

fall of Rome than with any other change occurring during the succeeding fifteen hundred years. This is a fact of fundamental importance in 

its bearing upon future international political settlements and all discussions leading thereto. 

After the defeat of Japan, the United States and the Soviet Union will 

be the only military powers of the first magnitude . . . . 

Postwar writers who have stressed the complete absence of political 

sophistication on the part of the U. S. staff have overdrawn the case. But it 

is also apparent that from the beginning the staff accepted constraints on 
their non-military thinking. Whatever modifications the military may have 

wished, for example, on the application of unconditional surrender, and they 

were neither consistent nor in total agreement on this, they never pushed for 

them with the vigor with which they argued for a cross-Channel operation 

on a definite target date. Whatever predilections they might on occasion have 

exhibited in the secrecy of their staff memorandums or in the privacy of their 

own thinking, they left politics to the president and certainly never developed 

a coherent politico-military strategy of their own. In this respect, far from 

surrendering their values, as Huntington claimed, they were entirely consistent with their traditions. 

What, then, may we conclude about the significance of the wartime 

relationship? The simple stereotypes and generalizations that have become 

embedded in postwar literature need re-examination in light of the lengthened perspective, broadened context, and new evidence. The evidence suggests that neither the president nor the JCS started with a fully developed 

blueprint. The patterns they fashioned for victory were molded by circumstances, by necessity, by trial and error, and by compromises among themselves and with their allies in the changing context of the war. Despite 

wartime challenges to the historic division of labor between the “how” and 

“what” of policy, between principal and agent, American soldiers and statesmen remained faithful to their respective traditions and roles. The successes 

and failures of American leadership in World War 11, it may be argued, were 

a product of the American system and its ingrained approach to war and 

peace. The relationship forged under the stress of war empowered the military to secure the decisive victory FDR wanted. It permitted them to apply 

the revolution in technology, tactics, and doctrine that had developed between the World Wars to the war of mass and mobility that World War I1 

turned out to be. Just as the president could play his mediatory role with the 

Allies, the JCS were enabled to balance the three approaches to war with 

which the American services entered the conflict. Through a quiet military 

diplomacy, the JCS managed to reconcile the diverse service theories, to 

produce joint plans without generating harsh frictions, and to oversee the 

delicate adjustments in which no one service won its way completely. The 

compromises they reached without formal votes were a testament to the 

working partnership that developed among them. Their flexibility in terms 

of the military strategy they forged among themselves and with their allies 

under the anvil of war has been underestimated. How far the American 

military had come in the quarter century since World War I was reflected 

in the transformation from the junior partner of World War I to its large 

share in molding European strategy and its preeminent role in directing the 

war in the Pacific in World War 11. The JCS proved to be a remarkably 

efficient instrument in waging the first really global war in American history. 

In the process the military formed close ties with the civilian sNiety and 
95 

emerged from the war with greater prestige and influence than ever before. 

Yet, it may also be argued in retrospect that in the end the war outran 

the strategists and the statesmen. Gaps, conceptual and institutional, in 

national policy began to show up in the last year of the war. Problems of 

winning the peace began to come up against those of winning the war. 

Questions of political and territorial adjustments arose for which no solutions 

had been foreseen. The basic props of presidential policy-the cooperation 

of the Soviet Union, the survival of Britain as a strong power, China’s 

elevation as a great power in the near future-began to be questioned. Roosevelt died without having decided what to do about Lend-Lease. He had 

fought the wars against Germany and Japan and, in the American crusading 

spirit, the war to end war. He had succeeded in the first two, but the issue 

in the third was still in doubt. On the military side, the JCS ended the war 

as they had begun it, approaching war as a technical military game. But in 

the end they sanctioned the use of the atomic bomb, planning for which had 

grown up largely outside regular strategic channels, before a theory or doctrine for it had been developed or its place in the future of warfare or of 

international relations been fully comprehended. 

The world of 1945 was not the world of 1919 or 1939 or 1941. In 

previous American wars, political and military goals had meshed neatly: 

thrash the bully who started the war and all could return to normalcy. In 

World War 11, the more the immediate enemy was beaten, the more the 

balance was upset. The more thoroughly Germany was defeated, the greater 

loomed the threat of the wartime half-ally, the Soviet Union-in victory more 

of a question mark than ever. In this uncertain situation, neither U.S. military 

doctrine nor political experience offered any real precedent. Hostage to 

American traditions, the president and the JCS had fought the war in terms 

of absolutes. To the end they saw war and peace in separate compartments 

and tended to postpone middle and long range political problems for a 

general peace conference that a quarter of a century later had still not 

materialized. 

In retrospect, a number of questions remain. Had the president and the 

Joint Chiefs really fought different wars-one a crusade, the other a military 

struggle--in which their strategies happened on the whole to be compatible? 

Had the military reached the zenith of professionalism in the successful 

military war they fought, only to find military strategy an outmoded art in 

the international arena emerging by 1945? Had the president come in sight 

of the victory he sought, only to see danger signs for the brave new world 

he had envisaged? Was either really prepared for the changes in warfare or 

in international politics growing out of World War II-changes that would 

affect the relations of soldiers and statesmen in the quarter century to follow? 
96 

The war’s end exposed the limits of tradition in the American approach’ to 

global grand strategy, an area new to national experience. But the military 

instrument the president had created and the alliance he formed with it had 

enabled American leadership to exercise power that rivaled Hitler’s and to 

marshal national resources more effectively than either the political dictatorship of Germany or the military dictatorship of Japan. Throughout, the 

military remained the servants rather than the masters of the state, and the 

tradition of civilian control emerged from the war intact. The harmonious 

partnership formed by a remarkable group of forceful civilian and military 

leaders enabled American leadership to remain faithful to the basic precepts 

of the Founding Fathers and to meet the greatest test in war the nation had 

ever faced. 
97 

Commentary 

Gaddis Smith 

Yale University 

Lest I appear under false colors, let me say I am not a military historian. 

I am a diplomatic historian, more concerned with the historical interpretation of the civil side of civil-military relations. My remarks will reflect this 

background and point of view. 

Historical scholarship on any particular issue often resembles the damping down of an oscillating pendulum. One extreme interpretation calls forth 

another just as extreme. Next both are modified by sober scholars more 

interested in truth than in controversy. Dr. Pogue in this paper is a fine 

example of the bscillation damper. This is not a very dramatic role, but it is 

ail honorable and necessary one, the role of the true professional rather than 

the publicist or ax-grinder. 

His paper dampens down the oscillations on three major related issues: 

1) Who ran the war, President Roosevelt or the Joint Chiefs of Stafl? I 

think the pendulum is about to come to a halt on that. Obviously they both 

did. 

2) How sharp was Anglo-American conflict over strategy? Is the history 

of coalition strategy best understood by expressing antagonism or areas of 

agreement, compromise, and successful negotiation? In the military field, this 

reminds me of the general issue of Progressive history versus consensus 

history. Dr. Pogue, like Dr. Leighton, belongs in the consensus school on 

strategy. The ability of the British and the Americans to reach agreement was 

more significant than conflict. 

3) Did military considerations dominate the running of the war to the 

exclusion of political considerations? Was there a disastrous absence of sound 

political thought concerning the management of the war? In other words, was 

the wartime mix of political and military considerations a success or failure 
from the long-term point of view of American national interests? 

I will concentrate on this last issue, for it is the crux of the conference. 

It is also the aspect of Dr. Pogue’s paper which yields most when subjected 

to. analysis. 

Let me begin with an excursion into the Truman administration for 

purposes of comparison. Secretary of State Dean Acheson once commented 

on the folly of believing that there was some sort of intellectual cream 

separator which would put all the military considerations into one bucket and 

all the political considerations into another. On one occasion, Secretary 

Acheson made a private treaty with General Bradley of the Joipt Chiefs of 

Staff that neither would use the phrases “military point of view” pr “political 

point of view.” This dictum sounds good, very sophisticated and worldlywise. But it does not work in practice. There is no sharp line of division, but 

obviously there are differences between the political and the military spheres. 

We cannot ask everyone involved in the management of national security 

affairs to be both a general and a politician. The ideal of interchangeability 

of which Professor Weigley spoke this morning may have been possible in 

the 19th century. It is clearly impossible in the 20th. 

Acheson himself found it impossible to follow his own advice. He made 

distinctions between international and domestic political considerations. It 

was his job to recommend what was right, in his opinion, for the international 

position of the United States. It was up to President Truman to judge what 

was practical from the point of view of domestic politics. For example, in 

1952 during the prolonged negotiations over the repatriation of Korean 

prisoners of war, Acheson reported to Truman that a situation had been 

reached in the United Nations whereby a plausible agreement could probably 

be concluded. A statement could be issued to the American public proclaiming an American triumph. But Acheson warned that this plausible agreement 

would be bogus, a situation in which the American side got the words and 

the other side got the substance. Even though an apparent agreement might 

have had a positive effect on the chances of the Democratic Party in the 

elections of 1952, President Truman steadfastly refused to sanction such a 

course. There was no agreement in 1952 on the prisoners of war. General 

Eisenhower won the election. 

Another example from the Truman administration involves Indochina. 

In 1952, with the battle line settled in the vicinity of the 38th parallel in 

Korea, many in the administration feared a negative domino effect. The 

Chinese had been stopped in Korea. Now they would seek some other place 

to advance. Indochina, where the French were hard pressed, seemed the most 

likely place. Acheson asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a report on what it 
would take militarily to stop China in Indochina. The Joint Chiefs of Staff 

replied that they needed first to know what the administration’s political 

priorities were. If the overriding objective was the defense af Indochina, how 

could that be reconciled with the idea that the risk of a mdor land war in 

Asia was unacceptable? Which prevails when an overriding objective collides 

with an unacceptable risk? Acheson was annoyed by this response, because 

he wanted a report on military costs before he could appraise political considerations. The Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted political considerations before they 

could weigh the military cost. The two sides were at an impasse. 

It would seem elementary that military and political considerations 

must be intermingled, and yet still kept separate to a degree. Therefore, what 

is all the shouting about? Cannot soldiers and statesmen agree and then get 

on with their responsibilities? This is not likely or even desirable. 

The debate over civil-military relations resembles the running battle 

over the political role of the Supreme Court. The conservative Court of this 

century until 1937 claimed that it was above politics. Its critics charged that 

the conservative justices of that period were extremely political and in fact 

were upholding the interests of a narrow class. The Warren Court, in more 

recent times, took deliberate notice of political and sociological reality. Its 

critics charged that the Warren Court was making law. This is a two-edged 

sword. If you do not like the outcome of a decision, you can charge that the 

Court is polluted by politics, or, on the other hand, you can condemn a 

distasteful decision by claiming that the Court closed its eyes to the political 

realities and the real needs of the nation. 

Commentators on military affairs do the same thing. A Chester Wilmot 

or a Hanson Baldwin can charge that American policy failed to take political 

reality into account during the Second World War. On the other hand, a 

Stimson or Eisenhower or Marshall in 1942 can complain that President 

Roosevelt allowed political considerations to override sound military strategy 

when he ordered the North African invasion for that autumn. The Korean 

War provides many examples. General MacArthur complained that political 

inhibition imposed upon him from Washington prevented victory. Others 

have suggested that President Truman, at least before he summoned up the 

courage to dismiss General MacArthur, showed an exaggerated respect for 

military opinion. 

Samuel Huntington, wha received considerable attention in Dr. Pogue’s 

paper, is a good example of using the issue to fix blame for a situation he 

found alarming, namely the power of the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Huntington was caught up in the then faddish critique of the alleged moralismlegalism in American foreign policy and was seeking to counterpose military 
100 

realism to what he and so many others at that time saw as sentimental, 

utopian liberalism. I agree with Dr. Pogue that Huntington is stimulating, 

but just plain wrong about the military in the Second World War. 

Huntington created an ideal body of military realism and then leaped 

without evidence to the conclusion that this realism prevailed among military 

leaders in the 1930s until they suddenly and inexplicably abandoned their 

realism during the Second World War. Huntington added, rather romantically, that America would have been better served if military realism had 

actually controlled strategy during the Second World War. Huntington suggests that military realism would have acted on the assumption that the 

struggle for power is permanent, that today’s allies are tomorrow’s enemies, 

and that international organizations are futile. 

Perhaps; but as long as we have wandered off into this hypothetical 

jungle, let me suggest the following: American military realists might have 

said, “Yes, today’s friend could be tomorrow’s foe, and that friend is Great 

Britain. Yes, the struggle for power is permanent, and that struggle will be 

between Great Britain and the United States.” Huntington, writing at a time 

when British weakness and Russian power were so evident, forgot how 

Americans so often exaggerated British power during the war and denigrated 

Russian power. The first lesson, I suggest, is that soldiers, statesmen, and 

scholars have a responsibility to distinguish between the polemical use of 

accusations about improper civil-military relations and thoroughly documented analyses of those relations. 

The issue is complicated by honest confusion of terms. What is a military 

consideration? What is a political consideration? General Marshall, in a long 

quotation at the beginning of Dr. Pogue’s paper, exemplifies this confusion. 

General Marshall said he and the Joint Chiefs devoted more time to political 

considerations than to any one subject. But in the body of his remarks he is 

not talking about one category of subjects, but at least four. 

1. The Politics of Method 

Marshall was fearful, uneasy, and appalled at President Roosevelt’s 

slipshod, unsystematic, intuitive method. What orderly man would not be 

similarly appalled by the president’s tendency to tell different people contradictory things, to avoid planning, to drift with events, to fail to keep a record 

of decisions? But Marshall confuses these idiosyncrasies of Roosevelt with 

political method in general and contrasts them with the precision of sound 

military practice. This really is not a civil-military issue, but an issue between 

good administration and bad. President Roosevelt’s method had enormous 

negative impact. A generation of military and civilian leaders went to school 
101 

under Roosevelt during the war, and when they moved on into the postwar 

period in the Truman administration shaped their practice by conscious 

avoidance of Roosevelt’s administrative methods. 

2. 7&e Politics of Public Opinion 

Marshall also feared that Roosevelt might make some domestic political 

gesture, some decision to satisfy public opinion, that would upset a military 

campaign. This is indeed a legitimate concern which has given pause to 

everyone who has pondered the problem of civil-military relations since the 

United States became a world power. It is, of course, a facet of the larger 

question of compatibility of democracy with an effective foreign policy. It is 

hard to find a civil or military leader who is truly comfortable with the 

thought that public opinion might take control of foreign policy. Cordell 

Hull, a simplistic Wilsonian, may be the one exception. Despite this wide 

fear, it is hard to find an example during the war of the injurious impact of 

the politics of public opinion upon military strategy. 

3. The Politics of International Cooperation 

In this category we should put decisions designed to meet the needs of 

allies, for example, the level of aid to Russia, support for Chennault’s rather 

than Stilwell’s strategy in China, or accepting the British Mediterranean 

strategy in 1942 and 1943. Here Roosevelt’s influence was at its greatest and 

moved consistently in the direction of giving bigger consideration to the 

wishes of allies than might have been the case had Roosevelt been silent. 

4. The Pofitics of Competitive Advantage 

This category became the most controversial of all. To what degree 

should jockeying for postwar position be allowed to shape military decisions? 

Should the Anglo-American armies drive through the Balkans to head off the 

Russians on the Danube? Should Anglo-American troops push as far east 

into Germany as possible and remain east of the Elbe in spite of the agreement with the Russians on occupation zones? Some postwar critics charged 

that the United States ignored political factors. On the contrary, it seems to 

me that Roosevelt’s political strategy and our military strategy were congruent. The quickest road to victory over Germany a’nd the least provocative 

action toward the Soviet Union were identical. 

All four of these types of political consideration appear to be lurking 

behind General Marshall’s remarks, and yet they are blended and confused. 

The second lesson to draw, then, is the necessity to distinguish carefully what 

kind or kinds of political considerations are meant when the issue of the 

impact of politics on military policy is under discussion. 
102 

In closing, let me comment on a pervasive note of defensiveness, even 

inferiority, in Marshall’s remarks. He speaks several times of being “fearful” 

of Roosevelt’s political talents, and of the necessity of being “on guard” and 

also the military man’s unfamiliarity with political affairs. In context the 

word “unfamiliarity” implies ignorance, nahett, and defenselessness. The 

third lesson which this suggests is the necessity of broad, continuing education of military officers in history and the social sciences. The defensive tone 

of Marshall’s remarks, coming from the most distinguished American military leader of this century, is an indictment of the narrow military environment in the United States in the first forty years of the century. Fortunately 

the nature of military education broadly defined is far better in the postwar 

period than before 1945. A corollary to this lesson, of course, is the equal 

necessity of broad education, including some education in military history 

and principles, for the civilian side of national leadership. 
103 

Discussion 

The CHAIRMAN: I don’t know if there is going to be time for general 

discussion, but I want to say that poor Sam Huntington has been taking an 

awful kiting here today. He is not here, of course. Some here who know him 

well, as I do, know that he could take care of himself pretty well if he were 

here. I am almost tempted to try to defend him myself, but I couldn’t do 

nearly as well as he could, so I won’t even try. 

The late Dr. Greenfield has been taking a beating too, and obviously he 

can’t be here, but I would like to exercise the chairman’s prerogative. Since 

one half of the team that has been referred to as the Leighton-Greenfield 

school is here, I think perhaps we owe Dr. Leighton a few minutes to make 

some comments. Why don’t you come down here, Dick? 

Dr. RICHARD M. LEIGHTON (Industrial College of the Armed Forces): 

I realize that this is not an offer of equal time, so I will make my remarks 

brief. Actually Dr. Matloff has made a lot of the points I would have made. 

I am grateful to him for that. I might take one small exception to his reference 

to the numbers game, trying to add up Occasions on which FDR overrode 

his military advisers. This is a numbers game. Some of us have indulged in 

it more than others, but I fully agree with Maury that this is a fruitless 

exercise and can be pushed too far. One point, however: the 20 or 22 occasions of overruling that the late Dr. Greenfield found-most of them came 

not from my book but from Maury’s. It is a point both Dr. Greenfield and 

I have made whenever the opportunity presented. 

But generally I think Maury made several points that should be kept in 

mind in any consideration of the relations between FDR and his military 

advisers. The fact is that Roosevelt’s role was dominated by his political aims, 

especially the aim of keeping the coalition together. This I think cannot be 

overstressed. Dr. Pogue has already referred to it with respect to the Soviets. 

In the case of the British, it meant that Roosevelt felt not only a great deal 

of sympathy with British aims in the Mediterranean, where they had a 

legitimate military and political interest, but he thought the United States 

should even make very substantial concessions to those aims. It was on these 

points that he most frequently clashed with his military advisers. 

Now Dr. Pogue zeroed in on two specific areas of controversy, namely 
104 

Roosevelt’s role at the Trident and Quebec conferences in 1943. And perhaps, since time is short, I had better focus on them. At Trident I think the 

central question to be asked is, what was the debate all about? I would submit 

that it most decidedly was not about whether there would be a cross-Channel 

invasion in 1944. For several weeks before the conference, staff studies on 

both sides of the water had indicated pretty clearly that any reasonable 

projection of visible assets would not permit a cross-Channel invasion in 1944 

on the scale originally contemplated in the old Bolero/Ftoundup plan. The 

Joint Chiefs were fully aware of that; their own staffs had made it clear, and 

they had deliberately decided in effect to sweep this issue under the rug, that 

is, not to make it an issue at the conference. The paper they brought to 

Roosevelt on the eve of the conference merely stressed that it was important 

to pin the British down to a definite commitment to go through with that 

invasion. This is where I differ with Dr. Pogue. I see no reason to believe 

either that the British were not prepared at that time to go through with the 

invasion, or that it was a real issue in Washington among the staffs. The real 

question at issue was the size of the operation. I see no reason to believe that 

Roosevelt, since about November 1942, had backed away from the principle 

that a cross-Channel invasion would be necessary in 1944. The debate, I 

submit, was over the size and to a limited degree the timing of the invasion. 

But the question of timing was resolved, at this time, rather casually. The 

Americans proposed 1 April 1944; the British wanted 1 June, because that 

would coincide with the time the Russians planned to launch an offensive on 

their front. They split the difference on 1 May. It was not an ironclad 

commitment on either side. It was a target date and was so labeled, and that 

was part of the compromise that was arrived at. 

But the stand that Roosevelt took at the beginning of the conference I 

think was of crucial importance. The Joint Chiefs had presented him a 

position paper that said, in effect, we have got to get tough with the British, 

we have to pin them down. All the language of the paper was in that tone. 

We have Roosevelt’s marginal comments on that paper. We don’t know 

exactly what was said at the meeting, but his marginal comments do indicate 

a high degree of scepticism and reservation as to the propriety of taking such 

a line with the British. And his introductory remarks at the first plenary 

meeting seem to me almost certainly to constitute a kind of message to the 

Joint Chiefs to the effect that whatever decision was arrived at with regard 

to the cross-Channel operations, they would have to face up to the probability 

that a large scale operation like the original Roundup plan would not be 

feasible and that a small scale operation, like Sledgehammer, would not be 

enough. And in effect the decision of the conference was for a medium sized 

operation, which was, very broadly speaking, the kind of operation that was 

eventually carried out. 
105 

On other points compromises were reached and Roosevelt did support 

his Chiefs. He supported them on their position on the Pacific, for example, 

where they wanted a written proviso that the United States could extend the 

war in the Pacific-precisely the kind of proviso that the Joint Chiefs were 

unwilling to grant to the British in the Mediterranean. On the Mediterranean, 

the decisions generally were a compromise and in the spirit of the position 

that Roosevelt had taken on the eve of the conference. 

On the other conference, in Quebec in August, the issues involved were 

quite specific. They came down to dates and timing and things of that sort. 

The main point to be made is that the Joint Chiefs quite definitely backed 

down early in the conference from the position they had taken to the conference table. That position was that in the allocation of resources to the 

European theater during the coming year, an overriding priority should be 

given to the needs of the build-up for a spring cross-Channel invasion. The 

British boggled at that, although they were willing to continue the build-up 

and to plan tentatively for a cross-Channel operation. On the first or second 

day of the conference--I have forgotten which-the Joint Chiefs decided, as 

they put it, to nail their flag to the masthead on that issue. It was then that 

General Handy went down to Washington to report this to the president, and 

I think it was more than coincidence that when the president reached Quebec 

the next day, the Americans decided to abandon the overriding priority 

demand for cross-Channel invasion preparations. 

Those are the principal points of controversy over these two conferences. 

Let me conclude with the remark that perhaps these revisionist controversies 

over interpretation of global strategy in World War 11, as on many other 

issues like Turner’s frontier thesis, have a tendency under examination to 

become fuzzy and indeterminate. The blacks and whites turn to grays and 

the contestants find themselves, in the last analysis, agreeing more than they 

disagree. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN: I am very sorry that time does not allow further discussion. The issues raised are challenging. I am almost tempted to register my 

own disagreement with several of the comments thqt have been made by the 

speakers, but I will resist. There are people in the audience who can talk 

about these matters with considerable authority, and I would like very much 

to be able to call on some of them. But I am told that the buses are about 

to leave, so I will adjourn the meeting. I thank the speakers for excellent 

ppers, and I thank Dr. Gghton. 
106 

Two Soldiers Comment 

After the symposium, the papers for this session were sent to a number 

of officers who had participated in the events that the scholars were analyzing. Major General Haywood S. Hansell, USAF Retired, and Brigadier 

General George A. Lincoln, USA Retired-both of whom were key planners 

during World War 11-agreed to comment for publication. General Hansell 

was assigned to the Office of the Chief of the Air Corps in 1939 and helped 

write the basic war plan with which the U. S. Army Air Corps prepared for 

combat, AWPD-1. During the war he alternated between Washington, where 

he helped produce the plans behind the American half of the Combined 

Bomber Offensive, and the command of combat units in Europe and the 

Pacific. Retired for physical disability at the end of 1946, he was recalled in 

1951 for duty in the Directorate of Plans, Headquarters USAF, and,later in 

the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group in the Ofice of the Secretary of 

Defense. General Lincoln was in the European theater for most of the first 

half of World War I1 and seryed with the General Staff from 1943 to 1947. 

He then returned to his prewar assignment on the faculty of the U. S. Military 

Academy, where he long headed the influential Department of Social 

Sciences. In 1969 he retired and was appointed Director of the Office of 

Emergency Preparedness in the Executive Wice of the President. 
107 

Commentary 

Major General Haywood S. Hansell, USAF (Ret.) 

Dr. Pogue, Dr. Matloff, and Dr. Smith have presented papers that 

arouse my admiration and with which I find no disagreement. I can offer 

little at the level of their observations and nothing comparable in the quality 

of their exposition. But I had a modest experience in the field they are 

exploring, and this prompts me to offer comments that stem from personal 

experience with the machinery of the wartime Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

I had no experience with the personal relationships between the president and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. My only personal contact with the president occurred when I had a brief opportunity to express to him my opinion 

on the progress of the strategic air war in Europe. The occasion was a 

breakfast meeting with the president, to which I was taken by General 

Arnold, in the presidential bedroom during the Quebec Conference. In reply 

to his inquiry, I stated that I was convinced the strategic air forces, if built 

up to planned strength, could literally break the back of the German industrial structure and make it possible to launch the invasion against a country on 

the verge of collapse. The president listened with courtesy but, I felt, without 

conviction. 

I did, however, have many contacts with the Chiefs of Staff in my 

various assignments in Washington, first as a member of the Air War Plans 

Division and of the first Joint Strategic Committee; later as the representative 

at Quebec of General Eaker, who commanded the Eighth Air Force; and still 

later as the U. S. air member of the Joint and Combined Plans Committee 

during a period which included the Cairo Conferences; and as a member of 

General Arnold’s advisory group. My observations of the Joint Chiefs, and 

especially of General Marshall and General Arnold, lead me to agree with 

the general thesis put forward by Dr. Pogue and Dr. Matloff. 

General Marshall was, in my opinion, the embodiment of the finest 

qualities of military leadership espoused in the doctrines of the professional 

military service at the outset of the war. He adopted an attitude toward his 

commander, the president, that reflected the idealized relationship prescribed 

by traditional American military Rrofessionalism. 
108 

Dr. Pogue quotes at some length from General Marshall's views on 

military-political relationships. Dr. Gaddis Smith offers the comment that 

General Marshall's attitude toward political factors bearing on the relationship of the Chiefs of Staff with the president was defensive, and there is an 

implied criticism that he and the other Chiefs paid insufficient attention to 

the political side of national strategic decision. 

I see the situation differently-which is not surprising since I am a 

product of the indoctrination that affected all the professional military people 

of my era. I think General Marshall did not question the right of political 

leaders to override military advice for political reasons. I believe that, in the 

early phases of his career as head of the military element of the War Department, he felt that political policies-even political objectives-were not a 

primary concern of the professional soldier. He was concerned with injecting 

military considerations into political affairs only in respose to request, or in 

terms of impact upon military matters. He feared that political leaders might 

take decisions without proper consideration of the attendant impact on military and strategic operations. 

U. S. military tradition accepted as doctrine the subordinate role of the 

military in relation to elected civilian leadership. This doctrine was taught 

explicitly at the service war colleges and schools and led to a somewhat naive 

trust on the part of the military in the wisdom and competence of the political 

statesman. It was American professional military doctrine that the role of the 

military was to support national policy when controversy exceeded the 

bounds of peaceful negotiation and the civilian political leadership decided 

upon forceful confrontation. The professional military man of that time 

believed that, eventually, his role was to achieve a military victory of such 

proportions as would allow the statesmen to raise a revised structure that 

would assure the security of the country and further the national values and 

aspirations for which he had fought. He did not aspire to be architect of the 

new structure of peace. He did expect to direct the energies of the military 

machine toward victory, and he tended to accept political goals without 

question so long as they did not undermine or seriously threaten the military 

victory on which he was embarked. 

Abstaining from the role of political architect did not excuse him from 

concern with the structure of international relations. Marshall, who I think 

embraced this traditional military doctrine, clearly accepted the need for 

political sophistication on the part of the military man which would lead to 

sound recommendations for providing the tools of military security and for 

support of national policy. He saw the need for expressing military judgment 

in describing the military implications of national policy or foreign threat. 

But the exercise of these policy obligations to warn and recommend was quite 
different from the obligations of successful military command in war. The 

American military doctrine called for perception and broad evaluation of 

threats from abroad, general awareness of national aspirations, fearless and 

insistent presentation of military views to the president till there was assurance that the military points were understood, and then complete and unstinting support of the presidential decision, whether that decision was 

affirmative or negative. 

With the progress of the war, this idealized concept which isolated 

military responsibility from political influence had to give way to some extent 

in a give-and-take with political realities. There were times when an undesirable political factor had to be recognized by the Chiefs, debated without 

prejudice with the president, and accepted as preferable to an even more 

undesirable alternative. But my own opinion is that the Joint Chiefs tried very 

hard, and on the whole quite successfully, to retain the idealized concept and 

that they sought the adoption of measures that would bring about military 

victory with least cost and risk, without being unduly influenced by political 

aspirations. 

The president in turn showed high respect for the professional competence of the military Chiefs. As Dr. Matloff points out, he seldom overrode 

their recommendations. 

As the papers point out, the occasions when the president did override 

the Chiefs on European strategy were associated with political factors of very 

high impact, often sponsored and supported by a master politician of great 

persuasiveness. But neither the president nor Mr. Winston Churchill, as the 

papers also show, overrode the Chiefs in the field of military strategy in the 

Pacific. 

It is my own belief that the military-political relationship between the 

U. S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and the president in World War I1 was basically 

correct and that the personal relationship between the president and the Joint 

Chiefs in World War I1 was sound and proper. Specifically, I think it was 

more sound and proper than the relationship that has succeeded it, a relationship in which the Joint Chiefs are separated from their Commander-in-Chief. 

More recent developments under Mr. McNamara, ih which the professional 

military body was encouraged to do what they were told and leave the 

provision of military composition and concepts of employment to selected 

civilians, have degraded the caliber of the American profession of arms at a 

time when professional quality and wisdom are at a premium. 

The principal occasion on which the president and Mr. Churchill overrode their Chiefs of Staff had to do with the major thrust into North Africa 
110 

and the Mediterranean, as the papers point out. But the military leaders had 

little to complain of in this instance. They did have an opportunity to voice 

their objections to this tangential thrust away from the primary military 

objective, the defeat of Germany in Europe. They expressed their position 

with vigor and clarity. But the president and Mr. Churchill, having listened 

to these military views, had every right to conclude that political factors and 

objectives were more important and more persuasive. Time was a compelling 

factor in this decision. The military leaders wanted to focus upon a direct 

thnist against Germany itself. But they had to confess that no really significant surface actidn could be undertaken for at least a year, probably longer. 

North Africa offered immediate action. It is likely that the president was 

swayed by his appraisal of the temper of the electorate. The American people 

had had to subsist on a diet of disaster and defeat for nine months; they were 

not a patient group. Mr. Churchill was doubtless motivated by a desire to 

further vital Empire interests in the Mediterranean and a concern for postwar 

conditions in Europe if the Russian offensives swept too far westward. A 

movement throughdhe Balkans might serve to limit that westward sweep. In 

any event, this political decision did not infringe the proper command relationship. 

But another occasion arose shortly thereafter that did threaten to have 

a catastrophic effect upon military strategy and operations, and it was caused 

by the intrusion of political opinion and the application of political pressure 

to alter military tactics. In this case, a political leader threatened to exercise 

compelling pressure on the military command, not for political reasons but 

because the politician wished to enforce his own military views on a tactical 

military operation. 

Just before the Casablanca Conference, General Arnold learned that 

Mr. Churchill planned to meet with the president and personally persuade 

him to abandon the daylight strategic air operations of the U. S. Eighth Air 

Force and to direct the adoption of the night tactics of RAF Bomber Command. This came at a very critical time for the American strategic air 

offensive. The Eighth Air Force was young and weak. It had been trying to 

find itself and to develot, tactics that would permit it to reach and destroy 

the vitals of industrial Germany. The German Air Force was at its peak and 

fighter opposition was skillful and deadly. The Eighth had endured painful 

combat losses, but was forging ahead. Then the North African campaign had 

come into being and nearly half the strength of the Eighth-indeed, the most 

experienced portion of the Eighth-was assignd, to the Twelfth Air Force, 

in support of General Eisenhower. Those units were lost to the strategic air 

offensive. And the campaign in North Africa was not two months old before 

General Eisenhower put in urgent requests for more of the heavy bombers. 

Now a new and formidable threat to the strategic air offensive appeared in 
111 

the form of that most persuasive and dynamic politician, Winston Churchill. 

This proposal by Mr. Churchill would have involved abandoning the 

American air strategy of destruction of selected industrial installations by 

daylight precision bombing and adopting instead night attacks against urban 

areas. The proposal was based not on political objectives or humanitarian 

arguments but upon judgment of military tactics and methods. This was 

precisely the kind of thing about which both General Marshall and General 

Arnold had been apprehensive. 

The move by Mr. Churchill was brought to a halt with great difficulty. 

General Arnold sent for his Field Commander, General Eaker, who commanded the Eighth Air Farce. Arnold arranged for Eaker to meet with 

Churchill before the latter saw the president. Eaker spoke with such firm 

conviction and such evident courage that he brought Churchill over to his 

side. As a result, the Casablanca Conference adopted a policy directive that 

enjoyed the support of the military leaders, especially the airmen. It described 

the purpose of the air offensive against Germany as: “TO bring about the 

progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial 

and economic system and undermine the morale of the German people to a 

point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened.” 

The RAF and the American strategic air forces could seek their common objectives by the methods best suited to each. Military judgment and 

recommendation had been persuasive. But the issue had narrowly avoided 

the imposition of a crippling decision based purely on a political intrusion 

into military tactical functions. These comments do little but confirm the 

observations of Dr. Pogue, Dr. Matloff, and Dr. Smith. 

I should like now to approach the subject of the relations of the World 

War I1 Chiefs of Staff to the president from a lower level and a different angle 

of perspective. I should like to comment on the composition of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff Committee and the resulting effect of that composition on the 

president and his view of war strategy. 

As Dr. Matloff pointed out, just prior to our entry into the war, in the 

last days of the Joint Board, there were three viewpoints of national war 

strategy: that of the army, of the navy, and of the aviation component of the 

army. General Arnold owed his membership on the Joint Chiefs of Staff to 

the fact that the British had a full-fledged air member on their Committee 

and he needed an “opposite number” to talk to. The president appointed 

General Arnold, who was the U. S. Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Air and 

Commanding General U. S. Army Air Forces, to be the air member of the 

U. S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. But General Arnold was still an army officer and 
112 

as such subordinate to General Marshall. The navy never really recognized 

the air members of the various JCS committees as bona fide equals, and even 

though General Marshall was one of the staunchest supporters of strategic 

air power, General Arnold was far too wise ever to cross him even on air 

matters. It was not quite the same thing as being the military Chief of Staff 

of an old and highly respected military service; the air members were not 

quite to the manor born. This had its effect upon the strategic conduct of the 

war. 

Dr. Pogue indicates as much by indirection. He says that Arnold was 

personally popular with the president. Doubtless this is so. But in all the 

references to major elements of grand strategy, it is Marshall and King who 

are named as participants in the strategic discussions with the president. 

Strategic air warfare was not a full partner with ground and naval warfare 

at the White House. 

The background to the plans for strategic air war bears upon the charge 

that the professional military services were unheeding of national and international policies and politics. The charge is not quite correct. 

In the fall of 1939, shortly after the outbreak of the war in Europe, 

General Arnold, as Chief of the Army Air Corps, took a most significant’step 

that clearly indicated a breadth of vision beyond the conduct of military 

operations specifically on direction. He was dissatisfied with the air intelligence he was receiving. He went to the Chief of Staff and got permission to 

set up his own intelligence section. The Air Intelligence Section was organized under a very broad directive. Major Thomas D. White and I were 

assigned to the section and left pretty much to our own devices. Among other 

units of the section, we set up a Strategic Air Intelligence unit and sought 

to determine how U. S. air power might be related to national policy in time 

of war. We sought to determine how great industrial powers who were 

potential enemies supported themselves and their military forces‘in time of 

war. We sought to determine the key elements and systems that made their 

critical industries work, and how those industries and systems might be 

disrupted by bombing. And we sought to estimate the effect upon enemy 

war-sustaining efforts and upon the actual survival of the enemy state as an 

operating entity if those systems were destroyed. 

Since we couldn’t tackle this sort of job on a world-wide basis, it was 

necessary to estimate who our most probable enemies might be. This was at 

a time when our national war plans were perforce geared solely to the defense 

of our borders, or at most to the defense of the Western Hemisphere. 

The selection of Germany and Japan as the two couqtries for initial 
113 

strategic analysis took no exercise of genius. But the whole process was 

evidence of political interest and discrimination beyond that implied in the 

criticisms suggesting that prewar military people were not concerned with 

international policies and lacked vision and imagination. Incidentally, it was 

also evidence of an imaginative new approach, since current doctrine in the 

War and Navy Departments did not recognize economic and industrial 

analysis as valid exercises in intelligence. This was well before the development of the Rainbow war plans and the extension of military planning 

beyond the limits of Hemisphere defense. General Arnold was, of course, 

familiar with the undertaking and aware of the charge of unorthodoxy. 

When the president directed an inquiry to the Secretaries of War and 

the Navy as to the requirements to gain supremacy over our potential enemies, in August of 1941, the foundation of strategic air intelligence served 

the Army Air Forces in good stead. The Air War Plans Division, which 

prepared the Air Annex to the War Department’s reply, produced in some 

detail a plan for strategic air warfare against the Axis powers. The objective 

of the plan was not simply strategic air support of the army, but was a bold 

bid for victory through air power. 

The plan naturally encountered opposition and dissent in the War Department General Staff. The preamble to the reply to the president prepared 

by the Joint Board underlined and emphasized the contention that sea and 

air forces could lend important support, but that it was an almost invariable 

rule that only land forces could secure victory in war. When the air plan was 

presented to General Marshall, there was a breathless moment in awaiting 

his reaction. After listening in silence to the voices of dissent, he quelled them 

with the statement that, in his opinion, the plan had merit and he wished the 

Secretary of War and Assistant Secretaries to hear it. The Secretary, encouraged by General Marshall, endorsed the plan and stated that he would 

arrange for a presentation to the president. 

The air plan was described, of course, in terms of contingency: if the 

country should go to war. General Marshall and General Arnold were not 

recommending to the president that he undertake a strategic air war against 

the Axis powers-only that the military services be wepared for such action 

if the political leaders of the country found war inevitable or thrust upon 

them. 

Pearl Harbor brought an end to speculation. With the attack on Pearl 

Harbor, the United States was at one stroke engulfed in war and bereft of 

the usual means of waging surface warfare. 

The impact on the plan for strategic air war was two-fold. Since the 
means of waging surface warfare were no longer available, the strategic air 

war was the only means of bringing war to the enemy. The plan was adopted, 

but only by default. The other impact was unfortunate: the presentation to 

the president never took place. The terms of the air requirements were 

presented to him and received approval, but the basic strategic purposes of 

the air war were never persuasively presented. So the education of the president which Dr. Matloff noted-from naval advocate to joint army-navy 

advocate-never extended to strategic air warfare. The president was an 

ardent aviation advocate and supporter, but that is quite a different thing. He 

never appreciated nor understood the basic underlying objectives of strategic 

air warfare. He could and did seize upon exciting goals of aviation production: 50,000 aircraft a year! This was fantastic! But he never viewed the 

winning of the war by air power in the same perspective as he did the major 

land and sea campaigns. 

The conduct of the strategic air war suffered. The forces intended for 

the death blow against Germany were diverted and employed to serve lesser 

roles connected with. surface operations. Postwar analysis of the air war 

against Germany leads me to the conclusion that the German State could 

have been eviscerated by air-unable to sustain either its civil structure or 

its war effort-if the original air plan had been adhered to, if there had been 

anything like the zealous determination behind the air war that was lavished 

upon the “cross-Channel” operation. 

If the air war had been supported-or if the invasion had been postponed three or four months-the hazardous operation across the Channel 

would have been far less costly, and the subsequent operations would have 

been much more akin to an occupation operation. 

Whether General Arnold, or any other airman, could have been persuasive to the president if he had enjoyed equal stature to Marshall and King 

is, of course, highly speculative. Even with a full measure of stature on the 

Joint Chiefs, he would have found himself constantly caught in the situation 

in which one strategic airman was contending with two equals advocating 

surface warfare-and demanding air support for their surface ventures. General Marshall would probably have lent his support. Admiral King was a 

consistent skeptic on the subject of victory through air power. 

In any event, the various aspects of the strategic air wav were never 

debated at the presidential level in the same manner as those of surface 

warfare. The issues of the campaigns in Sicily, Italy, the Balkans, were really 

all subordinate to the strategic impacts of air destruction of petroleum 

sources and supplies; of the electric power system of Germany; of the rail 

transportation system there. But there was little discussion of them in high 
places and almost no recognition of what would ensue from success in 

strategic air warfare. 

Only after the war did we learn how desperately Germany had been 

hurt, how close she was to bleeding to death from her wounds. Dr. Matloff 

says: 

Just as the president could play his mediatory role with the Allies, the 

JCS were enabled to balance the three approaches to war with which the 

American services entered the conflict. Through a quiet military diplomacy, the JCS managed to reconcile the diverse service theories, to 

produce joint plans without generating harsh frictions, tind to oversee 

the delicate adjustments in which no one service won its way completely. 

The compromises they reached without formal votes were a testament 

to the working partnership that developed among them. 

The effect of compromise is often good, but it is not always good. The 

strategic air war was compromised far more than it need have beetl. It is 

astonishing that it achieved so much in the face of continuous diversion of 

forces and effort. But it paid a price in terms of time. The surface for& would 

have profited more if they had not been so insistent upon diversioh of strate 

gic air effort to their support. It was a costly compromise. Perhaps it was an 

inevitable one. 

I find myself, nevertheless, in complete accord with Dr. Matloff when 

he says, “The JCS proved to be a remarkably efficient instrument in waging 

the first really global war in American history.” 
116 

Commentary 

Brigadier General George A. Lincoln, USA (Ret.) 

Director, Office of Emergency Preparedness 

There has been considerable writing with the objective of defining the 

optimum “professional officer,” and this writing has been a good thing. In 

fact, of course, this optimum professional officer, however you define him, 

has probably never existed since officers are human and are bound to be less 

than perfect on occasion. 

One of the aspects of these attempts at a definition of the optimum has 

been the political perception and expertise of the professional officer. It seems 

evident that the nature of the political perception and the legitimacy of its 

interpolation into affairs of state are bound to vary among the particular 

military situations being appraised by the historians. When the political 

perception and guidance by civilian leadership is strong and proves sound in 

historical perspective, the soldier who attempts to interpolate his views will 

be chided or even clobbered by historians. When civilian and political leadership proves weak in hindsight, the military commander, particularly if he was 

successful militarily, is likely to be chided for not having shaped his military 

successes closely to the political needs as defined in hindsight. 

These comments are not made in criticism, but just to note how things 

are. 

Now as to the discussion about the political preparation of the U.S. Joint 

Chiefs of Staff-in my observation, these men recognized the political objectives. They were conscious of the defined objectives and strove to achieve 

them. Their major problems are indicated in Forrest Pogue’s quotation from 

General Marshall, stemming from the difference between military factors 

which are usually to a considerable extent quantitative, and political factors 

which are usually not so quantitative. A political decision can be made, then 

changed, and changed again in a matter of a few months or even a few days. 

The military decisions and actions to carry out a political decision normally 

have a long gestation period and once set in motion are often difficult to 

adjust to a new political decision. Hence, the continual concern of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff that the political leadership would make some quick change 
117 

for quite sound political reasons which might at worst be impossible to adjust 

to, and at best would mean a lavish expenditure of resources. A couple of 

examples of the points I am trying to make are Churchill’s interest in pushing 

on to the Eastern Mediterranean, even to bringing Turkey into the war, and 

his proposal to divert the Southern France operation, just as it was about to 

sail, to a landing in Brittany. 

I would also like to note that when political guidance is not available, 

the military forces tend to make policy by the continuing momentum of their 

military successes. 

One of the most important political decisions-if not the most important 

-was the unconditional surrender formula. It was also a military decision, 

since it was the basic definition for the resources that we had to mobilize and 

the military plans we had to provide. In fact, the unconditional surrender 

formula did not in the end have an adverse effect on the outcome of the 

Pacific war. It may, however, have had an adverse effect in Europe since with 

a less rigid formula we might have achieved some arrangement to end the 

war around the time of the attempt on Hitler’s life. But this last point is 

highly speculative. If such had occurred, the history of the world since that 

time would have been materially changed, as I believe everyone will agree 

who studies the strength and disposition of armed forces in Europe and Asia 

a’t that time. 

My principal concern about the writing of World War I1 history is that 

there has been inadequate attention to the impact of logistics on strategy and, 

for that matter, on aspects that are sometimes called “political.” I recognize 

that logistics is sometimes a dull subject compared to most other aspects of 

military history, but it should be central to World War I1 history. The 

strategy of World War I1 was in very considerable part a strategy of logistics. 

Ships and landing craft were the bottleneck resources to a significant and 

even predominant degree; these two types of resources, and some related ones 

such as port capacity, determined both timing and the mass that could be 

applied. Hence, strategy was to a very considerable extent a business of 

priorities and allocations. It was also a matter of the art of the possible, again 

determined by logistical standards. 

General Marshall, by the way, had to my mind a very deep understanding of logistics in the broadest sense of the term. 

The Third Session 

THE MILITARY IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE 

The 13th Harmon Memorial Lecture in Military History 

121 

INTRODUCTION 

General CLARK (Superintendent, USAF Academy): Ladies and gentlemen. 

This evening it is our honor and privilege to be present for the delivery 

of the 13th annual Harmon Memorial Lecture. As most of you know, the 

Harmon Lecture series was inaugurated in 1957 to honor the memory and 

accomplishments of Lieutenant General Hubert R. Harmon, distinguished 

soldier, student of history, and first Superintendent of the United States Air 

Force Academy. 

Past lectures in this series, published annually by the Academy, have 

received wide attention both in this country and abroad. More importantly, 

perhaps, the series has served to cement bonds of friendship and mutual 

respect between the Academy community on the one hand, and the distinguished lecturers on the other. Illustrating that contention, by the way, I 

might note here that this evening’s audience includes four of the twelve 

previous Harmon lecturers. 

Tonight’s speaker, I have no doubt, will not only continue the tradition 

of excellence now well established-he will add luster to it. 

General Sir John Winthrop Hackett comes to us tonight from London, 

where he is now Principal of King’s College. He assumed that post following 

his retirement from active service after a most distinguished career spanning 

37 years. An Oxford graduate, Sir John spent most of his early career in the 

Middle East, where, despite being involved in active operations, he found 

time to complete a thesis on the Third Crusade for the degree of B. Litt., 

Oxford. Rather like King Richard I, Sir John was delayed in his return from 

the Middle East to England. In Sir John’s case, however, the matter at hand 

was the coming of World War 11, rather than his being kidnapped and held 

for ransom. 

Throughout World War 11, when he commanded the 4th Parachute 

Brigade, and indeed after the war when he commanded the Transjordan 

Frontier Force, Sir John continued in the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean 

Theaters. At length returning to his homeland, Sir John became Commandant of the Royal Military College of Science from 1958 to 1961. 
122 

In the following year, Sir John was called to Trinity College, Cambridge, 

to deliver the Lees Knowles Lectures for that year. Those lectures, published 

ds The Profession of Arms, have become an essential part of our military 

history courses here at the Academy. Indeed, since first making their acquaintance, I have found myself returning to them more than once for both 

insight and inspiration. 

In recognition both of his gallant combat record and unusual intellectual 

skills, Sir John was made Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff from 

1963 to 1964, and from 1966 to 1968, Commander, British Army of the 

Rhine. 

Sir John’s topic tonight is “The Military in the Service of the State.” I 

know of few men more qualified than he to address that theme. Ladies and 

gentlemen, Sir John Winthrop Hackett. 
123 

THE MILITARY IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE 

General Sir John Winthrop Hackett 

King’s College, London 

I am much honoured by the invitation to address this distinguished 

gathering tonight, and my wife and I are deeply indebted to our hosts for their 

hospitality and for the opportunity to visit this beautiful and remarkable 

place. My topic tonight is one upon which much has already been said. It 

might reasonably be asked whether anything omitted from the distinguished 

writings of men like Samuel Huntington, Hanson Baldwin, Spanier, Clark, 

Legere, Coles, Ralston, Higgins to name only a few, as well of course as those 

very distinguished men, Theodore Ropp and Forrest C. Pogue, and my own 

good friend and countryman Michael Howard, who have also enjoyed your 

hospitality on similar occasions-whether anything omitted by them has 

sufficient importance to justify a transatlantic journey to say it. But times and 

perspectives change. It is perhaps worthwhile to ask, from a point in time 

now well advanced in a century which has seen swifter change in human 

affairs than any since the world began, what the relationship between the 

military and the state looks like today, what changes have taken place in it 

in our time, and what factors are at work leading to further change. To try 

to be exhaustive would be to succeed only in exhausting patience. I propose 

therefore only to outline a basic position and suggest broadly how it has 

developed up to our own time, to point to some of the factors bearing iu a 

novel way upon the relationship between the military and the state in the 

second half of our century and to ask what their effect might be, and finally 

to consider some ethical aspects of the relationship. 

Until man is a great deal better than he is, or is ever likely to be, the 

requirement will persist for a capability which permjts the ordered application of force at the instance of a properly constituted authority. The very 

existence of any society depends in the last resort upon its capacity to defend 

itself by force. 

“Covenants without swords are but words,” said Thomas Hobbes 300 

years ago. This is no less true today. Government thus requires an effective 

military instrument bound to the service of the state in a firm obligation. 
124 a 

The obligation was at one time uniquely personal. Later it developed 

into an obligation to a person as the recognized head of a human group-a 

tribe, a clan, a sept, or a nation. The group develops in structure, acquires 

associations and attributes (including territoriality) in a process occurring in 

different ways at different times in different places. The polis emerges in 

ancient Greece. King John is found in mediaeval England describing himself 

on his seal, the first of English kings to do so, as Rex Angliae, King of 

England, and no longer Rex Anglorum, King of the English. The state is 

born. In Western Europe statehood had by the mid-13th century largely 

replaced the concept of an all-embracing Christendom as the basic political 

structure. Military service continued however to be rendered as an obligation 

to a person, to the single ruler, to the monarch, and the personal link has 

persisted in one form or another right up to today. 

I leave the Middle Ages with reluctance, as I always do, in a world in 

which the book I have been preparing on a topic in the 12th century has so 

often been pushed aside by the preoccupations of the 20th. As we leave the 

Middle Ages behind, the military profession emerges, clearly distinguished 

from other institutions. Continuous service, regular pay, uniforms, tegregation in barracks, the revival and improvement of ancient military formations 

such as the Roman Legion, the development of tactics, the introduction of 

better materials and techniques and of firearms, more attention to logisticsthese and other developments had by the early 18th century given to the 

calling of the man-at-arms a clearly distinguishable profile as the lineal 

antecedent of the military profession we know today. The 18th century 

regularized this calling; the 19th professionalized it. From the late 19th 

century onwards, armed force was available to the governments of all advanced states through the medium of military institutions everywhere broadly similar in structure and essentially manned-and wholly managed-by 

professionals. The soldier and the statesman were by now no longer interchangeable and the subordination of military to civil was, in theory everywhere and in your country and mine in fact as well, complete. 

The Napoleonic experience led not only to the complete professionalization of the military calling: by reducing to a system the basic concept of the 

French revolutionary armies, it opened up the era of the nation-in-arms and 

thus of total war. In the 18th century, wars were conducted by a relatively 

small sample of the nation’s manpower applying a relatively small proportion 

of the nation’s wealth. The 19th century led to the situation where the totality 

of a nation’s resources in men and materials was applied to conflicts in which 

all other belligerents were similarly mobilized. In the 18th century, war and 

peace could to some extent coexist. England and France were at war when 

the writer Sterne received his passport to travel in France from the French 

ambassador in London himself, with the words, “A man who laughs is never 
125 

dangerous.”’ Odd vestiges of the coexistence of war and peace persisted even 

into the 19th century: George Washington’s investment account was handled 

by Barings of London throughout the Revolutionary War; and Russia, 70 

years later, helped to finance the Crimean War against France, Turkey, and 

Britain by means of loans raised in London. But by quite early in the 20th 

century, war and peace had come to be mutually exclusive concepts and 

could coexist no longer. 

A century and a half after Napoleon we seem to have reverted in some 

respects to the position evident before him. Total war is now unacceptable, 

total peace is apparently unobtainable. The world lives in a state between the 

two: war and peace again now coexist. 

With the military institution professionalized, regularized, and seen to 

be subordinate to the civil power, what was its sphere of operation and to 

what or whom was it ultimately responsible? Clausewitz declared that war 

was the continuance of policy by other means. Military action in war must 

always be governed by political requirements. 

But some who have accepted that the state is master have not always 

accepted that the statesmen are the masters, or have done so with extreme 

reluctance. “I can’t tell you how disgusted I am becoming with those 

wretched politicians,” said General George McClellan in October 18612 -a 

sentiment which has possibly been echoed more than once since then. On at 

least one important occasion in recent years, hostility and distrust have 

erupted into something near open insubordination. 

The principles formulated by Clausewitz have not been accepted as 

binding at all times everywhere. In Germany in World War I the army under 

the control of Hindenburg and Ludendofl became “a state within the state 

claiming the right to define what was or was not to the national intere~t.”~ 

The supreme command reserved to itself the right of defining Germany’s war 

aims. 

The history of the United States in our time has also afforded instances 

of tendencies to operate in a sense opposed to the concepts set out by Clausewitz. The case of General MacArthur is important here and I shall return 

to it later. But in quite another respect the approach of the United States to 

military-civil relationships up to the middle of our century could be described 

as anti-Clausewitzian. 

’Lodwick Hartley, This Is Lorence (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1943), p. 153. 

2Bruce Catton, The Amy of the Potomac, Vol. I: Mr. Lincoln’s Amy (New York, 

3Gordon A. Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Amy, 164@1945 (Oxford, 1955) p. 252. 

1962), p. 89. 
126 

Let us look at the spring of the year 1945 as events drove swiftly on to 

military defeat of Germany. In spite of agreement between the Allies on 

postwar areas of occupation, “It was well understood by everyone,” as Winston Churchill wrote, “that Berlin, Prague and Vienna could be taken by 

whoever got there fir~t.”~ The Supreme Allied Commander, writes Forrest 

C. Pogue, “halted his troops short of Berlin and Prague for military reasons 

only.” As General Eisenhower himself said of this time, “Military plans, I 

believed, should be devised with the single aim of speeding victory.”5 

General Eisenhower recognized that Berlin was the political heart of 

Germany. General Bradley, however, in opposing the British plan for an 

all-out offensive directed on the capital, described Berlin as no more than “a 

prestige objective,” though he frankly conceded later that: “As soldiers we 

looked naively on the British inclination to complicate the war with political 

foresight and nonmilitary objectives.”6 

Here lies the crucial difference between two philosophies. The one holds 

that war replaces politics and must be conducted by purely military criteria 

towards purely military ends. When war has been ended by the enemy’s 

military defeat, political action can once more take over from the military. 

The other maintains that war continues policy and is conducted only 

to a political end, that in grand strategy purely military criteria and objectives 

do not exist, and that military action must at all times be governed by 

political considerations arising out of clearly defined war aims. Under the 

first concept the only war aim is to win the war and to do this as quickly as 

possible. Under the second the prime aim in war is to win the peace. A policy 

of unconditional surrender is not a war aim at all, but the acknowledgment 

of the lack of one. 

There were of course towards the end of World War I1 problems of 

national sensitivity within the alliance which complicated issues. It would be 

wrong now to oversimplify them. Nevertheless, whereas Churchill asked at 

the time whether the capture of Berlin by the Russians would not “lead them 

into a mood which will ‘raise grave and formidable difficulties for the,futulre,”’ the U.S.’Chiefsiof Staff were of the opinion that such “psychological 

and political advantages as would result from the possible capture of Berlin 

ahead of the Russians should not override the imperative military consideration, which in our opinion is the destruction and dismemberment of the 

I 

.Forrest C. Pogue, “The Decision to Halt at the Elbe (1945),” Command Decisions, ed. 

SIbid., p. 371. 

bIbid., p. 378. 

’Ibid., p. 380. 

Kent R. Greenfield (New York, 1959), p. 375. 
127 

German armed forces.” There is no evidence whatsoever that General Eisenhower at any time put American national interests above those of the British. 

There is plenty of evidence that he acknowledged the complete priority in 

importance of the general political interest over the military. “I am the first 

to admit,” he said, “that a war is waged in pursuance of political aims, and 

if the Combined Chiefs of Staff should decide-that the Allied effort to take 

Berlin outweighs purely military considerations in this theater, I would 

cheerfully readjust my plans and my thinking so as to carry out such an 

operation.”8 The Combined Chiefs gave him no other instructions on this 

critically important point than to make his own dispositions. The new President of the United States, Harry S Truman, cabled Churchill on 21 April 

1945 that “the tactical deployment of American troops is a military 0ne.”9 

On 2 May 1945, with the Allied troops still halted according to their 

orders from SHAEF on or about the Elbe, the Russians completed the 

capture of Berlin. On 12 May, with the Allies halted on orders from the same 

source to the north and west of Prague, the Russians entered Prague too. I 

do not think I need dwell now on the consequences of these events or their 

effect upon the history of our own time. Let me only qdd a warning against 

oversimplification. The record stands as quoted. The Yalta agreement, 

however, is also on the record and it is not easy to see how the Allies could 

have stayed in Berlin and Prague even if they had got there first. 

The decisions which led to the course of events I have outlined here were 

in general wholly consistent with United States attitudes up to the mid-20th 

century. The national ethic was not greatly in favour of the application of 

armed force to a political end. It is true that America had been involved in 

limited wars (like the Spanish-American and that of 1812-14 with Britain) 

and in wars against the Indians which could scarcely be justified on grounds 

either of absolute morality or of national survival. put the nation has in 

general been reluctant to fight except when there was clear and compelling 

danger of national overthrow or a violation of the moral code which the 

nation followed-a violation so grave and flagrant as to demand correction. 

It has then suspended normal peacetime procedures wherever the military 

imperative demanded, thrown its whole weight into the crushing of opposing 

armed force as speedily as possible and, this accomplished, returned with 

relief to its own way of life. 

From this concept there developed a division of responsibility of which 

a classic exposition is quoted by Morton from an Army War College statement of Sptember 1915. “The work of the statesman and the soldier are 

Ibid, p. 381. 

Ibid., p. 385. 
128 

therefore co-ordinate. Where the first leaves off the other takes hold.”1° 

The middle years of our century, however, have seen changes which 

have profoundly affected the relations of military and civil and have set up 

a new situation. Of developments in military practice, the introduction of 

weapons of mass destruction is the most obvious. It is not the only one. 

Improved and new techniques and materials abound and have been applied 

not only in all aspects of weaponry but over the whole range of tools for war. 

Developments in metals, ceramics, plastics; new sources of energy; new forms 

of propulsion; new techniques in the electric and electronic fields; laser beams 

and infrared; the startling developments in solid state physics which have 

revolutionized communications and control systems-these are only a few 

examples chosen pretty well at random from a list any military professional 

could almost indefinitely extend. What has been happening in space needs 

no emphasis nor does the dramatic rise in powers of surveillance. The flow 

of information from all sources has vastly increased and the application of 

automatic processes to its handling has opened a new dimension. 

There are other developments than those in the hardware departments. 

International alignments tave changed. The U.S. has replaced Brkain in 

important traditional roles; Russia has been rkborn; China has emerged as 

a major power. The Third World has grown up out of disintegrating colonial 

empires-British, French, Belgian, Dutch-and stresses have developed in 

the international community no less than at home as the rich are seen to get 

richer much more quickly than the poor do. International relations have 

grown more complex with the demise of bipolarity. The Russians have moved 

further from strict Marxism at home and developed a striking potential for 

armed action at a distance abroad. The failure hitherto of yet another attempt 

to establish a world community of nations in the United Nations has been 

accompanied by a growing impatience worldwide with warfare as a means 

of settling social problems, while there has been no decline at all in the resort 

to warfare. There has been a surge of interest everywhere in the study of 

defence problems, an interest which springs, in my view, from a basic realization that what is at stake is nothing less than human survival. There has been 

much striving towards international agreement to take account of a new 

situation, some of it not unpromising-the Test Ban Treaty, for instance, and 

SALT. The American relationship with Europe has changed and is changing 

further. Many other things have happened. These are only some of the more 

important developments in the field of external relations. 

Here in the States you have seen an increase of centralized authority and 

loLouis Morton, “Interservice Co-operation and Political-Military Collaboration,” Total 

War and Cold War, ed. Harry L. Coles (Columbus, Ohio, 1962), p. 137. 
129 

a closer scrutiny of the decision making process in relation to national 

security. The risks of the nuclear age and the complexity of international 

issues have resulted in a day to day involvement of the executive in external 

affairs, with all their military implications, far greater than in the past. The 

reasons for this, as well as for the development of defence analysis into a 

considerable industry, lie in the imperatives of nuclear weapon power. Armed 

forces cannot now be brought into being more or less at leisure after the crisis 

breaks, as was formerly possible for America beyond the oceans, and for 

Britain, protected by her navy, when Britain could afford to be content to 

lose every battle but the last. For in general and unrestricted war the last 

battle is now the first, and we know that it cannot be won. Thus it is vital 

not to let the war take place at all, and deterrence becomes the major element 

in defence. But deterrence demands an apparatus sufficient in size and performance, always up to date, always at a high state of readiness, but never 

used and never even fully tested. It is therefore quite inevitable that the 

military agency will be closely and continuously monitored by its civil masters. 

From all these and other developments, the civil-military relationship 

now finds itself in a new frame of reference. I select two important elements 

in this new environment for further comment. 

First of all there is the enormous rise in the cost of warlike material since 

World War I1 and the huge increase in the burden on national resource, in 

money, materials, and skilled manpower, which preparation for war demands. President Eisenhower spoke of the growing significance of a militaryindustrial complex. General MacArthur among others drew attention to the 

ruinous cost of preparation for war, as distinct from the cost of its conduct. 

The demands of the military upon national resource, in times when a world 

war is not being fought, can be so great that the whole orientation of national 

policy, not only abroad but at home as well, can be determined by them. The 

danger of the formal supersession of civil authority by the military can today 

in our two democracies be dismissed as negligible. National resource, however, whatever its size, is limited. Money spent on space cannot be spent on 

slum clearance. Money spent on the containment of pollution cannot be used 

for an anti-ballistic-missile system. Even if the usurpation of civil government 

by the military is no longer to be feared, the orientation of policies, particularly at home, which might be forced upon the state by demands upon material 

resource and money and skilled industrial, technical, and other manpower, 

could place the military in a position of dominance in the state scarcely less 

decisive in the event than formal usurpation of powers of government. In a 

pamphlet published in Britain this month, J. K. Galbraith speaks of the 

growth of a huge bureaucratic organization of defence contractors and politicians acting with service advice. It began to grow, to use Galbraith's arresting 
130 

phrase, before poverty was put on the national agenda. The danger. that the 

military, through the demands upon resource of the military-industrial complex, would exercise too powerful an influence over the state was never high 

in postwar Britain. Professor Galbraith suggested to me last week in England 

that the British tradition of civil supremacy was probably too powerful to 

allow it. There are other, simpler reasons. The World Wars which greatly 

enriched the United States greatly impoverished the United Kingdom. Britain was made very sharply aware at the end of World War I1 that drastic 

reduction in national resource demanded a drastic review of spending priorities. Over the postwar years Britain has asserted and confirmed priorities in 

which social spending went ahead of expenditure on defence. In the past few 

years, for the first time ever, less has been spent in Britain on defence, for 

example, than on education. 

In the United States, where resource was so much greater, the realization only came later on that resource, however great, was not unlimited. Hard 

priorities have had to be drawn and as this disagreeable task was faced, 

perhaps a little reluctantly, the demands of some other claimants on national 

resource have had to be heard too. 

My own view is that the danger of unbalancing the relationship between 

military and state through inordinate demand upon national resource was 

never great in Britain; and now in the U.S., as national priorities come under 

review, it is on the decline. There is here, however, an aspect of civil-military 

relations to which we are not yet, I think, wholly accommodated. 

Of crucial importance in this relationship between armed forces and the 

state is atomic weapon power. It is a commonplace now that total war is no 

longer a rational act of policy. George Kennan saw this earlier than most 

when he wrote in 1954, “People have been accustomed to saying that the day 

of limited war is over. I would submit that the truth is exactly the opposite: 

that the day of total wars has passed, and that from now on limited military 

operations are the only ones that could conceivably serve any coherent 

purpose.”’ 1 The implications of this situation have not everywhere been fully 

accepted. The concept of the nation-in-arms is in major powers no longer 

viable and we have to think of national security in other terms. But in what 

terms? 

The introduction of atomic weapons has thrown new light upon a hallowed principle of Clausewitz. “As war. . . ,” he wrote, “is dominated by the 

political object the order of that object determines the measure of the sacrifice 

by which it is to be purchased. As soon, therefore, as the expenditure in force 

’’George F. Kennan, Realities of American Foreign Policy (Princeton, 1954), p. 80. 
131 

becomes so great that the political object is no longer equal in value this 

object must be given up, and peace will be the result.”12 

Irrto an equation which Clausewitz saw in relative terms, atomic weapons have now introduced an absolute. Can any political object be secured 

by the opening of a nuclear war which devaitates both sides? Hence, of 

course, the whole language of brinkmanship in a situation in which one object 

has come to be common to all parties. This is now survival. In the context 

of general war we have here a completely new situation. 

In the closing stages of World War I1 President Roosevelt showed much 

reluctance to impose a policy upon the Joint Chiefs of StaK His successor, 

President Harry S Truman, was disinclined at a critical time in 1945, as we 

have seen, to instruct General Eisenhower to act in Europe on any other than 

purely military considerations. It was only five years later that this same 

presidential successor found himself roughly compelled to accept the logic 

of the new order and act in a diametrically opposite sense. 

“The Korean War,” says Samuel Huntington, “was the first war in 

American history (except for the Indian struggles) which was not a cm 

salde.”131 cannot quite accept this, but it certainly was for the United States 

a war of unusual aspect. It was a war conducted according to the main 

concept supported by Clausewitz and not at all according to the practice of 

LudendorfK That is to say, the object from the beginning was clearly defined 

in political terms, and limited. There were variations from time to time in 

the war aim. After MacArthur’s brilliantly successful amphibious operation 

at Inchon, the aim shifted from the simple reestablishment of the status quo 

in South Korea to the effecting of a permanent change in the whole Korean 

Peninsula. The chance was seen to reunite this at a time when China was 

thought to be too preoccupied with the danger from the old enemy Russia 

to be inclined to intervene by force of arms. But China did intervene and the 

administration reverted to its former aim, whose achievement would in their 

view run small risk of furnishing the USSR with excuse and opportunity for 

the opening of World War I11 before Europe was strong enough to resist. 

General MacArthur could not accept this pition in terms either of the 

limitation of means or of the restriction of ends. Hechallenged the administration on both counts. In criticizing the administration’s desire to prevent 

the war from spreading, he declared that this seemed to him to introduce a 

new concept into military operations. He called it the “concept of appeasement . . . the concept that when you use force you can limit that 

”Karl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. 0. I. Matthijs JoUes (Washington. 1943), p. 21. 

laSamuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State (Cambridge, Mass., 1957). p. 387. 

“MacArthur’s testimony before the Senate Ann& Forces and Foreign Relations Committees quoted in Walter Millis (&.), American Mifihuy Th~ught (New York, 1966), p. 481. 
132 

“Once war is forced upon us,” he told Congress, “there is no alternative 

than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end.”15 He was 

not consistent here. He did not, in fact, advocate the use of every available 

means against China. He was strongly against the use of American ground 

forces in any strength on the mainland, for example, and advocated in 

preference air bombardment and sea blockade with the possibility of enlarging Nationalist forces on the mainland out of Formosa. He did not, in my 

view, either convincingly or even with total conviction argue against the 

acceptance of limitations on hostilities. What he did insist on was that the 

limitations accepted should be those of his, the military commander’s, choice 

and not those settled upon by his political superiors. But given the acceptance 

of limitation in principle, the identification of those areas in which Specific 

limitations must be accepted is a clear matter of policy. Is that for soldiers 

to determine? MacArthur challenged the administration on this issue and 

appealed to the legislature and the American people over the administration’s 

head. He lost. Perhaps he underestimated the character of the president and 

the degree to which experience had helped him to develop since the spring 

of 1945. Perhaps he overestimated the support that he could expect in the 

Joint Chiefs. The position taken by the Joint Chiefs, however, suppor;ted that 

of the president. It conveyed quite clearly that the instrumental nature of the 

military, as an agency in the service of the state, was not going to be forgotten. 

In the seven years between 1945 and 1952 there probably lies a watershed 

in civil-military relations in the United States which future historians will see 

as of prime importance. 

But another question arises, and this too was raised by the case of 

MacArthur, as it arose in the matter of the Curragh incident in Ireland in 

1914 and with General de Gaulle in 1940. Where or by what is the allegiance 

of the military professional engaged? Personal service to an absolute monarch 

is unequivocal. But in a constitutional monarchy, or a republic, precisely 

where does the loyalty of the fighting man lie? 

In Ireland just before the outbreak of World War I, there was a distinct 

possibility that opponents of the British Government’s policy for the introduction of Home Rule in Ireland would take up arms to assert their right 

to remain united with England under the Crown. But if the British Army 

were ordered to coerce the Ulster Unionists, would it obey? Doubts upon this 

score were widespread and they steadily increased. In the event, there was 

no mutiny, though the Curragh incident has sometimes been erroneously 

described as such. The officers in a cavalry brigade standing by on the 

Curragh ready to move into the North of Ireland all followed their brigade 

1%4acArthur’s address to Joint Session of Congress April 19, 1951, quoted in Douglas 

MacArthur, Reminiscences (New York, 1964), p. 404. 
133 

commander’s example in offering their resignations from the service. This in 

peacetime was perfectly permissible. The Curragh episode, all the same, 

formed a more than usually dramatic element in an intrusion by the military 

into politics which seriously weakened the British government of the day and 

forced a change in its policy. As a successful manipulation of government by 

the military on a political issue, it has had no parallel in Britain in modem 

times. But it also raised the question of where personal allegiance lay and 

raised it more sharply than at any time since 1641, when the hard choice 

between allegiance to the King and adherence to Parliament, in the days of 

Thomas Hobbes, split the country in the English Civil War. 

Essentially the same question was raised by MacArthur. For he not only 

challenged the administration on the fundamentals of policy-upon political 

ends, that is, as well as upon choice of military means. He also claimed that 

he was not bound, even as a serving officer, by a duty to the executive if he 

perceived a duty to the state with which his duty to the administration 

conflicted. His words to the Massachusetts legislature are worth quoting: 

I find in existence a new and heretofore unknown and dangerous concept, that the members of our armed forces owe primary allegiance or 

loyalty to those who temporarily exercise the authority of the Executive 

Branch of the Government rather than to the country and its Constitution which they are sworn to defend. No proposition could be more 

dangerous. ’6 

There is here a deep and serious fallacy. I do not refer to the possible 

violation of the president’s constitutional position as Commander-in-Chief. 

I have more in mind a principle basic to the whole concept of parliamentary 

democracy as it is applied, with differences in detail but in essential identity 

of intention, in our two countries. It is that the will of the people is sovereign 

and no refusal to accept its expression through the institutions specifically 

established by it-whether in the determination of policies or in the interpretation of the constitution-can be legitimate. MacArthur’s insistence upon 

his right as an individual to determine for himself the legitimacy of the 

executive’s position, no less than his claim of the right as a military commander to modify national policies, can never be seen in any other way than 

as completely out of order. It is ironic that MacArthur, who himself might 

perhaps have been brought to trial for insubordination, should at one time 

have sat in judgment on another general officer for that very offence. General 

Mitchell, though possibly wide open to charges of impropriety in the methods 

he used, was challenging the correctness of the administration’s policy decilbDouglas MacArthur, “War Cannot Be Controlled, It Must Be Abolished,” vital 

Speeches 17 (August 15, 1951): 653. Speech before Massachusetts Legislature, Boston, July 25, 

1951. 
134 

sions. MacArthur’s act was the far graver one of challenging his orders in 

war and of appealing to the legislature and people over the Commander-inChiefs head. 

It is worthy of note that in the wave of criticism of General MacArthur 

from nowAmerican sources, some of it violent at times, the voice of General 

de Gaulle in France was almost alone amongst those of comparable importance which was raised in MacArthur’s defence. De Gaulle himself, of 

course, had been there, too. He had declined to accept the wholly legitimate 

capitulation to a national enemy in war of a properly constituted French 

government. This is something for which France will always remain deeply 

in his debt. There is no doubt, however, of the correctness of the position 

taken by officers of the so-called Vichy French Forces after the fall of France. 

We fought them in Syria on account of it. The Troupes fiancaises du Levant 

had orders to defend French possessions in mandated territories against all 

comers and this they did. I was myself wounded for the first time in the last 

war, in that campaign, commanding a small force in an untidy little battle 

on the Damascus road which we won. After the armistice in Syria and the 

Lebanon, walking around Beirut with an arm in plaster, I met a French 

officer who was another cavalryman and a contemporary whom I had known 

before the war as a friend. He had the other arm in plaster and, I discovered, 

had been in this little battle the commander on the Vichy French side. We 

dined together in the St. George Hotel while he explained to me with impeccable logic how professionally incompetent the command had been on our 

side. The fact that we had won was at best irrelevant and at worst aesthetically repugnant. But I do not recall that in the whole of our discussion either 

of us doubted the correctness of his action in fighting against the Allies and 

his old friends. 

There is sometimes a purely military justification for disobedience. Britain’s greatest sailor, Lord Nelson, exploited it. After Jutland, Admiral Lord 

Fisher said of Admiral Jellicoe that he had all Nelson’s qualities. but one: he 

had not learned to disobey. What I describe as military justification rests in 

the opinion of the officer on the spot that he can best meet the military 

requirement of his superiors if he acts in some way other than that prescribed 

by them. This is a matter of professional judgment, and of courage, for failure 

can prejudice a career. It is not a matter of morals. But there are also 

circumstances in which men or women find themselves under a moral compulsion to refrain from doing what is lawfully ordered of them. If they are 

under sufficiently powerful moral pressure and are strong enough and courageous enough to face the predictable consequences of their action, they will 

then sometimes disobey. This, I know, is terribly difficult ground. “My 

country right or wrong” is not an easy principle to reconcile with an absolute 

morality, even if we accept a Hegelian view that the state represents the 
highest consummation of human society. Early in World War I a brave 

English nurse called Edith Cavell, who had said that “Patriotism is not 

enough,” was shot by her country’s enemies for relieving human suffering 

where she found it, among people held by the enemy to be fmcs tiresuS or 

partisans. Nurse Edith Cavell’s statue stands in London off Trafalgar Square, 

around the comer from the National Gallery; and it is worth a look in 

passing. It bears the inscription I have quoted. “Patriotism is not enough.” 

In the half century since that time doubt has grown further, not only 

on the ultimate moral authority of the nation state but also upon its permanence as a social structure. The nation state could at some time in the future 

develop into something else. States have before now been united into bigger 

groupings, and supra-national entities are not impossible. 

I do not see the nation state disappearing for a long time yet, but already 

we have much experience of international political structures under which 

groups of national military forces are employed. The United States in the last 

third of a century, it has been said, has learnt more about the operation of 

coalitions than ever before. Conflicts of loyalty are always possible where 

forces are assigned to an allied command. I have been a NATO commander 

in Europe, and as such I had on my staff an officer of another nation who 

was engaged in the contingency planning of tactical nuclear targets. This was 

less of an academic exercise for this particular officer than it might have been, 

say, for an American or even for a Briton, for the targets were not only in 

Europe but in this officer’s own country and in parts of it he had known from 

boyhood. It was made known to me that this officer was showing signs of 

strain and I had him moved to other work, for the military servant of a nation 

state can even now be put under moral strain in situations where conflicts 

of loyalties arise. The tendency towards international structures will almost 

certainly increase and the incidence of such situations is unlikely to grow less. 

Let me draw together these thoughts upon the moral, as distinguished 

from the professional, aspect of obedience. The fighting man is bound to 

obedience to the interest of the state he serves. If he accepts this, as MacArthur certainly did, he can still, rightly or wrongly, question, like MacArthur, 

the authority of men constitutionally appointed to identify and interpret the 

state’s interest. He could even, like de Gaulle, flatly lefuse to obey these men. 

Those who consider General MacArthur open to a charge of insubordination 

may consider that General de Gaulle was probably open to a charge of no 

less than treason. Neither is constitutionally permissible. A case in moral 

justification might just possibly be made for both, though such a case is 

always stronger when the results of the act are seen to be in the outcome 

beneficial. “Treason doth never prosper,” wrote Sir John Harrington in the 

days of Queen Elizabeth the First. “What’s the reason? For if it prosper none 

’ 
136 

dare call it treason.” In the event, de Gaulle became in the fullness of time 

president of the French Republic. It was poor PCtain that they put on trial. 

Finally there is disobedience on grounds of conscience to an order, 

lawfully given, whose execution might or might not harm the state but which 

the recipient flatly declines, for reasons he finds compelling, to carry out. 

This will be done by the doer at his peril; and the risk, which can be very 

great, must be accepted with open eyes. 

Another possible cause of strain upon the military is divergence in the 

ethical pattern of the parent society from that of its armed forces. Samuel 

Huntington, in the book The Soldier and the State, which will always 

occupy a high place in the literature‘upon this topic, spoke in the late 1950s 

of tendencies in the United States towards a new and more conservative 

environment, more sympathetic to military institutions. He suggested that 

this “might result inqhe widespread acceptance by Americans of values more 

like those of the military ethic.”” The course of events since Huntington 

wrote thus, in 1956, throws some doubt on the soundness of any pkediction 

along these lines. The qualities demanded in military service, which include 

self-restraint in the acceptance of an ordered life, do not seem to be held in 

growing esteem everywhere among young people today. In consequence, 

where a nation is involved in a war which cannot be described as one of 

immediate national survival and whose aims, however admirable they may 

be, are not universally supported at home and perhaps not even fully understood there, strains can be acutely felt. Limited wars for political ends are 

far more likely to be productive of moral strains of the sort I have here 

suggested than the great wars of the past. 

The wars of tomorrow will almost certainly be limited wars, fought for 

limited ends. The nation-in-arms has vanished; the general war is no longer 

a rational concept. But the nation state will persist for a time yet and the 

application of force to its political ends will persist with it. These ends, 

however, will be limited and the means limited too-not by choice of the 

military but by choice of their employers, the constitutionally established 

civil agencies of the state. These employers will also be watching most carefully the level of demand being made, on the military behalf, on national 

resource. If this level rises so high as to prejudice enterprises higher in the 

national scale of priorities than preparation for war, they will be resisted. 

There are signs that the very high priority given to the demands of the 

military upon a national resource in the United States in the third quarter 

of the 20th century will not persist into the fourth. 

17Huntington, Soldier and the State, p. 458. 
137 

Ladies and gentlemen, in addressing myself to the topic chosen for this 

memorial address, “The Military in the Service of the State,” I have selected 

only a few aspects of a big and complex theme. Let me end with something 

like a confessjo fidei -a confession of faith. I am myself the product of 35 

years’ military service-a person who, with strong inclinations to the academic, nonetheless became a professional soldier. Looking back now in later 

life from a university, I can find nothing but satisfaction over the choice I 

made all those years ago as a student-a satisfaction tinged with surprise at 

the good sense I seem to have shown as a very young man in making it. 

Knowing what I do now, given the chance all qver again, I should do exactly 

the same. For the military life, whether for sailor, soldier, or airman, is a good 

life. The human qualities it demands include fortitude, integrity, self-restraint, personal loyalty to other persons, and the surrender of the advantage 

of the individual to a common good. None of us can claim a total command 

of all these qualities. The military man sees round him others of his own kind 

also seeking to develop them, and perhaps doing it more successfully than 

he has done himself. This is good company. Anyone can spend his life in it 

with satisfaction. 

In my own case, as a fighting man, I found that invitations after the 

World War to leave the service and move into business, for example, were 

unattractive, even in a time when anyone who had had what they called on 

our side “a good war” was being demoted and, of course, paid less. A pressing 

invitation to politics was also comparatively easy to resist. The possibility of 

going back to Oxford to teach Mediaeval History was more tempting. But 

I am glad that I stayed where I was, in the Profession of Arms, and I cannot 

believe I could have found a better or more rewarding life anywhere outside 

it. 

Another thought arises here. The danger of excessive influence within 

the state to whicb I have been referring does not spring from incoppetence, 

cynicism, or malice in the military, but in large part from the reverse. What 

is best for his service will always be sought by the serving officer, and if he 

believes that in seeking the best fqr his service he is rendering tbe best service 

he can to his cquntry, it is easy fo see why. He may have to be restrqined. 

He can scarcely be blamed. 

The military profession is unique in one very important respect. It 

depends upon qualities such as thove I have mentioned not only for its 

attractiveqess but for its very efficiency. Such qualities as these make of any 

group of men in which they are fouqd an agreeable and attractive group in 

which to functicm. The military group, however, depends in very high degree 

upon these qualities for its functional efficiency. 
A man cm be selfish, cowardly, disloyal, false, fleeting, perjured, and 

morally corrupt in a wide variety of other ways and still be outstandingly 

good in pursuits in which other imperatives bear than those upon the fighting 

man. He can be a superb creative artist, for example, or a scientist in the very 

top flight and still be a very bad man. What the bad man cannot be is a good 

sailor, or soldier, or airman. Military institutions thus form a repository of 

moral resource which should always be a source of strength withih the state. 

I have reflected tonight upon the relationship between civil and military 

in the light of past history, present positions, and possible future developments and have offered in conclusion my own conviction that the major 

service of the military institution to the community of men it serves may well 

lie neither within the political sphere nor the functional. It could easily lie 

within tFe moral. The military institution is a mirror of its parent society, 

reflecting strengths and weaknesses. It can also be a well from which to draw 

refre9hment for a body politic in need of it. 

It is in the conviction that the highest service of the military to the state 

may well lie in the maral sphere, and the awareness that almost everything 

of importance in this respect has probably still to be said, that I bring to an 

end what I have to offer here tonight in the Harmon Memorial kecture for 

the year 1970. 
The Fourth Session 

SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN:. 

THE POSTWAR WORLD 

141 

OPENING REMARKS 

Major DAVID MacISAAC (USAF Academy): It is my privilege to introduce the gentleman who earlier labeled himself the ghost of Samuel Huntington; he is to chair this concluding session. First, however, some of you 

might like to know that we invited Professor Huntington to take part in this 

symposium. He declined, saying that he was not a historian and would feel 

out of place commenting on military history. [Major MacIsaac then introduced Professor THEODORE ROPP of Duke University.] 

The CHAIRMAN (Professor Ropp): Thank you, Dave. 

Colonel Hurley, gentlemen, and ladies. I have been uncertain as to 

exactly what the chairman is to do in this afternoon’s session, but I think I 

have an idea now of what the session is all about. 

What we are studying is really the structure and process of civil-military 

relations over a period that is now almost two centuries long. As I thought 

about what I would say about Professor Wright’s and Professor Dorpalen’s 

papers, and Professor Weigley’s showing that they did not apply to the 19th 

century United States, I decided to raise the ghost of Huntington again. What 

Huntington or Janowitz might see as a basic issue that always underlies these 

discussions of civil-military relations in an American context really is not 

whether the United States is becoming militaristic, but whether a long-term 

military commitment leads to what I believe either Janowitz or Andreski 

calls unanticipated or unconscious militarism. Dr. Pogue and Dr. Matloff I 

think concluded an old agrument about the military influence on policy in 

the Second World War by showing that, in running their own war scientifically as men of their generation understood the term, American soldiers of 

the Second World War did not intrude unduly on issues of foreign policyalthough I found Professor Smith’s analysis of such issues may still call for 

further questions in the panel that will follow this session. 

This brings us to a man who is uniquely qualified to ask the real question 

which is in effect bothering many of us at this session, and which I think 

deserves exploration in a session of this sort. The question is: Does a military 

politics lead to, and again I am quoting from, I suspect, Janowitz, “an 

unintentionally militarized society”? Our speaker is very familiar with the 

problems of unintentional militarismia the 20th century. And now he will 

address himself to a person who for many has become a very symbol of 

militant Americanism, or of what some people call the arrogance of power, 

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. [The Chairman introduced Professor 

RICHARD D. CHALLENER, Princeton University.] 
142 

Professor CHALLENER: I am afraid that to begin with, I owe all of you 

a sincere apology. Last night I looked through this paper a number of times 

and couldn’t find a single way that I could mention Sam Huntington in it. 

Three years ago, I came out here with a carefully footnoted paper that 

described the first attempt of the United States Navy to try to influence 

American foreign policy before World War I. Today’s paper is of a much 

different sort. It is speculative, and it is meant to open up discussion. Large 

parts of it, nearly everything that relates to the period after 1953, are based 

on transcripts in the John Foster Dulles oral history project at Princeton 

University. That project was set up by Mr. Crowl, sitting over on the left, 

who knows, I think, more about John Foster Dulles than I do; and he will 

be commenting later on in the session. 
143 

JOHN FOSTER DULLES: THE MORALIST ARMED 

An Assessment of His Relations with American Military 

Leaders and His Ideas on the Role of Military Power in 

Foreign Policy 

Richard D. Challener 

Princeton Univemity 

To the present generation John Foster Dulles is the Cold Warrior, the 

moralist whose platitudes reduced international relations to an oversimplified 

struggle between Western “good” and Communist “evil.” He is the brinksman who stood poised on the edge of Armageddon and reveled in the confrontation. 

It is, therefore, most appropriate for us to be reconsidering Dulles and 

some of his policies. This is certainly a period when many Americans-and 

not simply those of the New Left-are questioning the underlying assumptions of American foreign policy in the entire postwar era. Dulles, though no 

innovator, was one of the principal architects of that policy. He consolidated 

and greatly extended the basic policies he had inherited from Truman and 

Acheson; he carried their assumptions to their logical conclusion. And it is 

especially appropriate to reexamine Dulles’s relations with military men and 

his concept of the role of force and military power in American foreign policy 

since it is the military dimension of our foreign policy which is now being 

most heavily criticized. Dulles is remembered-properly remembered, indeed-as a Secretary of State whose policies contained an exceptionally 

heavy military component. 

Let me, first of all, stake out a few “givens,” a few of the underlying 

premises of this paper. I have absolutely no qualms about focusing on John 

Foster Dulles and his role in the policy-making process. I also see no reason 

to get into the controversy about whether or not Dwight Eisenhower was a 

“do-nothing” president whose General Staff concept of the presidency presumably led him to delegate the decision-making process to his forceful 

Secretary of State. (As a matter of fact, I simply do not subscribe to that 

interpretation. There was more of a presidential role, less passivity, more 
144 

mutuality than many of Eisenhower’s critics have realized.) Still, there was 

a certain special quality about John Foster Dulles that made him both the 

spokesman for and symbol of the foreign policies of the Eisenhower years. 

The person who sensed this best was his successor, Christian Herter, the 

gentle man from Massachusetts. Contrasting his own view of the presidential 

role in foreign policy with that of Dulles, Herter once said, 

I think the major difference between ourselves was my own feeling that 

the president was the constitutional officer responsible for foreign affairs. Whether he made the policy or didn’t make the policy, he ought 

to be out in front in connection with it. . . . I didn’t want it to be known 

as a Herter policy; I would much rather have it an Eisenhower.policy. 

Herter paused for a moment, then added, “but I think Foster rather liked 

it being a Dulles policy.”l 

Let me add a few additional assumptions. Dulles was clearly a moralist 

who greatly inflated the rhetoric of the Cold War. While he never believed 

that the Soviet Union deliberately intended to launch a general war, he was 

thoroughly convinced that both Russia and Red China were militaristic and 

expansionist. He took Soviet doctrine seriously, not as rhetoric but as a 

statement of definite purpose. More than one official of the State Department 

has since recalled Dulles’s frequent references to a well thumbed copy of 

Stalin’s Problems of Leninism. One foreign service officer vividly remembered being rebuked by the Secretary for not being acquainted with a particular quotation in it. As Dulles himself once wrote to Hector McNeill of the 

British Foreign Office, 

I showed you the volume of Stalin’s ProbIems of Leninism, in which 

I had underlined a good many passages. . . . I have read this many times 

and found it a valuable guide. It is hard reading, but if one gets the 

essence, it is a good deal like Hitler’s Mein KampK 

The religious aspect of Dulles made him especially conscious of what he 

referred to as “atheistic communism,” and for John Foster Dulles the adjective was just as important as the noun. Many obseqers have concluded that 

his emphasis on Soviet doctrine and his religious beliefs combined to produce 

a rigidity of mind which left him unprepared to understand the changes in 

’Transcript of interview with Christian A. Herter, John Foster Dulles Oral History Project, 

Fimtone Library, Princeton University. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations in this paper 

are from transcripts in this collection, which numbers some 300 transcripts of tape recordings 

made between 1964 and 1968 by members of the staff of the Oral History Project. 

Wulles to Hector McNeill, May 3, 1948, Papers of John Foster Dulles, Correspondence, 

Firatone Library, Princeton University. 
145 

the Soviet Union that occurred after Stalin’s death and which, above all, 

inclined him to view communism not in a spectrum of colors but in simple 

blacks and whites. Indeed, these qualities were noted by close associates who 

were by no means unsympathetic to him or his policies. James Hagerty, 

Eisenhower’s press secretary, believed that Dulles’s principal weakness was 

a desire to slam doors on things that he regarded as evil. “He was a Roundhead,” Hagerty said, “a Puritan, and I am quite certain that in the Cromwell 

days his ancestors were chopping down the Cavaliers in the name of their 

religious beliefs.” Sherman Adams, that interesting combination of granite 

and vicuiia, felt that when Dulles set out upon a course of action there was 

no man who was more irreconcilable. “He stuck to his objectives,” Adams 

said. “He gave no consideration to critics of his policies when he believed that 

his critics were not enlightened about the situation.” The late George Allen, 

a senior American diplomat, long remembered an evening when he was a 

guest in the Dulles home. During the course of conversation, Allen dropped 

a few disparaging comments about the quality of democratic leadership 

provided by Syngman Rhee and Chiang Kai-shek. Dulles leaned forward in 

his chair and, as Allen remembered it, his eyes were blinking: 

Well, I’ll tell you this. No matter what you may say about them, those 

two gentlemen are modern day equivalents of the founders of the 

church. They are Christian gentlemen who have suffered for their faith. 

They have been steadfast and have upheld the faith in a manner which 

entitles them to be considered in the category of the later leaders of the 

church. 

Allen, not strangely, added that Dulles always gave him the impression of 

having a pipeline to the Almighty and a mission to fulfill. Christian Herter 

noted the same tendency. “I think,” Herter said, 

that you have to give some allowance to the fact that Foster was essentially a very religious person, and I think that the very thought of 

communism, and the ungodliness of communism . . . was something that 

he felt deeply inside . . . . He felt that this was a very basic, fundamental 

thing that could only be settled eventually by some form of confrontation and that that confrontation would be more serious than anything 

that was now envisaged. 

Many of these same qualities-and I am trying to choose my words very 

carefully-gave Dulles a very special appeal to certain military men whose 

own political views were quite conservative and who tended to believe that 

American policy before John Foster Dulles had been marked by “softness” 

toward communism. General Mark Clark, for example, had been monumentally unimpressed with DuIIes in the immediate postwar period. But Clark 
146 

quickly came to the conclusion that, as Secretary of State; Dulles was a man 

who rapidly came of age and, in Clark‘s words, “learned fast of the duplicity 

and treachery of communists.” In Clark’s estimate, the Dulles record would 

have been even stronger if the Secretary had not been held back by the 

numerous State Department officiqls who preferred a path of appeasement. 

I recall one of the first assignments I drew in the Dulles Oral History Project. 

It was during the Goldwater campaign, and I lugged my tape recorder into 

the office of a man who had held high military rank during the Eisenhower 

era. On the way into his office I had noticed the bumper stickers on his car 

which called for an end to the “No Win Policy” of the United States and 

asked for “A Choice Not an Echo.” His office was filled with patriotic 

symbols. He told me sincerely, sometimes emotionally, that he had felt able 

to sleep nights during the Quemoy-Matsu crisis because he was confident that 

in Dulles, America at last had a Secretary of State who was prepared to push 

the button if that was necessary. 

********* 

Yet in the 1930s and even during World War 11, Dulles had projected 

a far different image. In the period immediately before the German attack 

on Poland, Dulles was very active in the efforts of American Protestantism 

to avert another world ~onflict.~ Inthe 1930s the constant theme of his 

speeches and his writings was the need for peaceful change. On countless 

occasions he argued that Europe was heading for another senseless conflict 

because no European nation was willing to live up to the provisions of Article 

19 of the Versailles Treaty-the article that called for the revision of peace 

treaties when international conditions had changed and that was intended to 

provide a mechanism for peaceful change in Great Power relationships. The 

European order, Dulles insisted, had become “artificial”; the terms of the 

Versailles Treaty were no longer applicable; and the status quo powers, 

Britain and France, were guilty of holding fast to a system that no longer 

corresponded to the realities. When a friend tried to secure Dulles’s support 

for an economic boycott of Japan, he responded, 

One great difficulty with all peace plans . . . is that they tend to keep 

the world static and in this sense try to resist an irresistible force for 

change. . . . It seems to me that if peace is ultimately to be assured, some 

vitality must be given to such a provision as Article 19 of the League 

Covenant with reference to the reconsideration of treaties which have 

become inappli~able.~ 

3For additional information on Dulles in the years before and during World War 11, see 

Richard D. Challener (with John Fenton), “Which Way America? Dulles Always Knew,” 

American Heritage 22 (June 1971): 12-13, 84-93; and the same authors’ “Recent Past Comes 

Alive in Dulles ‘Oral History Project,’ ” University (Spring 1967): pp. 3-9, 29-34. 

‘Dulles to Lewis F. Fox, Feb. 4, 1932, Dulles Papers, Correspondence. 
147 

While Dulles always insisted that he was not an isolationist, he did 

oppose American involvement in World War I1 until the time of Pearl 

Harbor. Asked to support the movement to provide some assistance to. 

France and Britain in the spring of 1940, Dulles refused. “A major question 

in my mind,” he wrote, 

is whether the inherent nature and character of modem totalitarian war 

does not itself jeopardize these objectives-perhaps even more, so far as 

we are concerned, than would a German “victory.” . . . So far as Europe 

is concerned, I do not think that there is anything we can do or that 

anyone can do that will prevent the present war from impoverishing the 

nations of Europe and creating social and economic conditions such that 

a regime of personal and individual liberty, such as we aspire to, will be 

impracticable. This will, I fear, be true no matter who “wins.” 

The conclusion of this long letter scarcely suggests the immobilist of the 

1950s: 

If the defeat of England and France can only be prevented by the United 

States assuming the role of guarantor of the status quo in Europe and 

Asia, then, indeed, we would have assumed a heavy responsibility. For, 

as I have said elsewhere, change is the one thing that can not permanently be prevented, and the effort to perpetuate that which has become 

artificial will inevitably break the person or nation committed thereto.5 

And this note, written only a few months before America became a belligerent: 

My principal objection to war is that it creates such hatred, passions, and 

false conceptions of ourselves and others that we are totally disqualified 

from working out, in a rational way, the very real international problems 

which exist and which, if unsolved, are bound to make war recurrent.6 

During the war years, Dulles devoted almost all of his time to the effort 

of the National Council of Churches to develop a set of political principles 

that would establish a lasting peace. He chaired the Council’s major study 

group, the Commission on a Just and Durable Peace, and as its leader became 

the principal lay spokesman for American Protestantism on the subject of 

war aims. His commission promoted the cause of international organization 

and, not surprisingly, insisted that the postwar order must make provision 

for peaceful change. Its major recommendations, “The Six Pillars of Peace,” 

5Dulles to Thomas Debevoise, Apr. 30, 1940, ibid. 

6Dulles to Watson Pomery, Apr. 25, 1941, ibid. 
were a plea for liberal internationalism. Point 3 read: “The peace must make 

provision for an organization to adapt the treaty structure of the world to 

changing, underlying conditions.” Point 5 stated: “The peace must establish 

provisions for controlling military establishments.”’ 

In this paper I cannot attempt any detailed explanation of the reason for 

the differences between the Dulles of 1945 and, say, the Dulles of 1955. 

Though I should at least note parenthetically that this difference was always 

a problem for the churchmen who had worked so closely with him before and 

during the war. They found it exceedingly difficult to understand how a man 

who had worked for internationalism in the company of such liberal Protestant leaders as Reinhold Niebuhr and John Coleman Bennett could in a few 

short years become the advocate of massive retaliation and the close associate 

of Admiral Arthur Radford. Was this brinksman, they asked themselves, the 

same John Foster Dulles they had always known? Or was it possible that they 

had misread and misunderstood him in the earlier days? With time and space, 

I think I could adequately explain those changes, both apparent and real, in 

John Foster Dulles which so confounded his former associates in the church. 

I would emphasize his moral rejection of communism and his actual experiences in international affairs as. the principal foreign policy adviser of the 

Republican Party and as participant in many UN sessions. Which is to 

suggest that there was essentially one John Foster Dulles, a man who had 

a consistent system of ethical principles, who always insisted on the moral 

worth of the individual, and who firmly believed in the existence of a coherent 

moral order in the world.* In the earlier years, this system of basic beliefs 

leQ Dulles to think that the lack of international organization was the cause 

of conflict. After 1945 it led him to identify emergent communism as the new 

enemy of a just and durable peace. And against both, it was necessary to 

mount a moral crusade. 

Dulles did not, to be sure, become an overnight convert to the cause of 

containing communism by military means. By 1946 he was already writing 

articles for such magazines as Life and Reader’s Digest in which he made 

many hostile comments about cornmuni~m.~ But there was still considerable 

wbivalence in these pieces, a reluctance tb accept the East-West split as 

permanent, an unwillingness to abapdon pll hope in the United Nations. 

Indeed, certain dedicated, militant pnti-communists still found reason to 

7% the pamphlet, A Just and Durable Pegce: Shtement of Polirical hpitions Formulated by the Comqhion on a Just and Durable Peace of the Federal Council of Churches 

(New York, 1943). 

*For an elaboration of his religious ideas, see John Mulder, ‘The Moral World of John 

Foster Dulla,” Jomd of presbyterian History 49 (Summer 1971) 157-82. 

%hn Foster Dulls, “Soviet Policy and What to Do about It,” Life 26 (June 3 and 10, 

1946). The article was condensed in the Aug. 1946 ipue of Reader’s Digest. 
149 

complain about his statements. For example, in one of his speeches in 1945, 

Dulles contended that the Soviets had as good reason to suspect our intentions as we had to suspect theirs. For this he was immediately taken to task 

by that committed anti-communist, Eugene Lyons. 10 

In September of 1946 Dulles delivered a major speech in which he 

suggested that the United States should not attempt to keep a series of what 

he termed “far flung bases” around the globe. Eyebrows went up in the War 

Department. Assistant Secretary for Air Stuart Symington asked General 

Spaatz to prepare a special memorandum for the enlightenment of Mr. 

Dulles. Spaatz, it is hardly necessary to say, identified American national 

security with the possession of overseas air bases. The need for such bases, 

Spaatz contended, arose from “the sharply increased offensive capabilities of 

modern warfare.” Dulles, after receiving the Spaatz memorandum, responded at length. While he conceded that the United States must maintain its 

military strength, he still held much of his original ground. Seizing upon 

Spaatz’s phrase about “sharply increased offensive capabilities,” Dulles referred to it time and time again in his rejoinder. If America kept such overseas 

air bases, Dulles argued, then the United States would also possess “sharply 

increased offensive capabilities against other nations with whom we want 

to maintain friendly relations. They automatically carry to others the offensive threat we would ward off from ourselves. That, in turn, may increase the 

risk of war.” Dulles specifically called for the renunciation of any plans to 

maintain air bases in Iceland or in any of the Japanese islands. Moreover, 

Dulles premised much of his argument on a strict, traditionalist view of 

civil-military relations. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, he argued, might properly 

advise on the technical and the military value of bases, but they were not 

qualified to evaluate the possible political consequences or the potential 

threat to other countries. Nor was it their duty to give such advice. The 

ultimate decision, Dulles insisted, was a political decision and must “be made 

by civilians, concretely the President and his cabinet advisers, and the Congress.”’ 

Traces of this attitude continued for some time. When NATO was first 

proposed, Dulles questioned whether regional arrangements could properly 

be made under Article 51 of the Charter. He also suggested that since the 

United States faced what he regarded as a temporary and transitional international situation, it might not be appropriate to make long-term commitments. 

And in February of 1949 he expressed to Dean Acheson his hesitations about 

the possible fragmentation of the UN and the globalization of American 

commitments.12 Some of his objections were, to be sure, simply a reflection 

loEugene Lyons to Dulles, Feb. 7, 1945, Dulles Papers, Correspondence. 

llDulles to Stuart Symington, Sep. 26, 1946, ibid. 

’2Memorandum on NATO, Apr. 1948, and Memorandum of Conversation with Dean 

Acheson, Feb. 1949, Dulles Papers, Writings. 
150 

of opinions prevalent in the Republican Party, which was still reluctant to 

accept the full implications of the postwar revolution in American diplomatic 

and military policy; but they also reflect more than a few traces of the Dulles 

who worked with churchmen for the establishment of the UN. 

Nevertheless, it is also equally clear that during these same years Dulles 

was in the process of resolving his doubts about the role of military power 

in foreign policy. Indeed, he had worked out his basic ideas on national 

security well before he actually became Secretary of State in January 1953. 

A letter to General Douglas MacArthur, written in mid-November 1950, just 

after the Chinese intervention in Korea, hinted at the massive retaliation 

doctrine Dulles would eventually sponsor: “YOU produced a miracle on the 

land in Korea, but I doubt whether you would feel that that proves we should 

make the Asian mainland the area for testing the relative strength of the free 

and the communist worlds.” “My view,” Dulles continued, “and my impression of yours, is that air and sea power must in the Far East be our main 

reliance.”’3 In the spring of 1952-before it was clear that Dwight Eisenhower would be the Republican nominee, before it was clear that Dulles 

would be Eisenhower’s choice for Secretary of State-Dulles published a long 

article in Life that was a remarkable forecast of policies to come. For, along 

with a liberal garnishing of rhetoric about “regaining lost initiatives in the 

Cold War” and “liberating subject peoples,” the article anticipated both the 

New Look in military policy and massive retaliation in foreign policy. It 

began with several lengthy, lugubrious paragraphs which bewailed the economic burden placed on the American people by great military projects that 

consumed some sixty billion dollars of each annual budget. (Parenthetically, 

it should be emphasized that this was more than rhetoric. Dulles, in the last 

analysis, was a Republican, and along with the great majority of his party 

he was concerned about the impact of expanding defense expenditures upon 

the national economy. Indeed, the more one examines the Eisenhower years, 

the more one finds himself emphasizing the centrality of fiscal questions and 

the extent to which the administration concerned itself with the economic 

implications of rising defense budgets. Indeed, in the Eisenhower defense 

programs economics was more important than political or strategic calculations.) After this introduction, Dulles outlined his strategic thinking: 

Today atomic energy, coupled with strategic air and sea power, provides the community of free nations with vast new possibilities of organizing a community of power to stop open aggression before it starts and 

reduce to the vanishing point the risk of general war. . . . 

13Dulles to Douglas MacArthur, Nov. 15, 1950, Dulles Papers, Correspondence. 
151 

Obviously we can not build a 20,000 mile Maginot Line or match the 

Red armies man for man, gun for gun, and tank for tank at any particular time and place their general staff selects. . . . There is one solution, 

and only one: that is for the Free World to develop the will and organize 

the meafis to retaliate instantly against open aggression by Red armies, 

so that if it occurred anywhere, we could and would strike back where 

it hurts by a means of our own choosing.14 

********* 

Once appointed Secretary of State, Dulles quickly established a firm and 

generally solid relationship with the military establishment-especially with 

the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their new chairman, Admiral Arthur Radford. 

What I am referring to is primarily a network of personal and individual 

relationships and not necessarily the general relationship between the Defense Department, on the one hand, and the State Department, on the other. 

It is undoubtedly true that the elaborate National Security Council mechanism created by the Eisenhower administration did produce greater coordination and understanding between the two departments than had existed 

before. It is also true that, almost to %L man, those individuals who were 

involved in the operations of the NSC structure have since bewailed John 

Kennedy’s dismantling of it after 1961. Nevertheless, there still remained a 

more or less permanent, underlying difference: State Department members 

suspected the military of thinking first of the use of force, while the military 

considered the diplomats to be a bit too political, a bit too “soft.” Having 

reviewed the great bulk of the transcripts in the Dulles Oral History collection, I am impressed by the number of individuals associated with the Defense Department who drew a distinction between their opinion of John 

Foster Dulles and their overall assessment of the Department of State. For 

example, former Under Secretary of the Navy Thomas Gates described his 

efforts to reach consolidated positions on which both State and Defense could 

agree. He felt that the position papers from the Navy usually advocated 

“John Foster Dulles, “A Policy of Boldness,” Life 32 (May 19, 1952): 146-60. Gen. 

Lucius Clay, then trying to bring Dulles and Eisenhower together, sent an advanced copy of 

the article to Eisenhower. The latter’s reply said, in part: “Only one point bothered me . . . . What do we do if Soviet political aggression, as in Czechoslovakia, successfully chips away 

exposed positions of the free world? So far as our resulting economic policies are concerned, the 

result would be as bad for us as if the area had been captured by force.” And further on, “One 

of the great and immediate uses of the military forces we are developing is to convey a feeling 

of confidence to exposed populations, that makes them feel sturdier in their resistance to 

Communist inroads. Military as well as economic strength is necessary to create the atmosphere 

in which intemaf aggression can be defeated. . . . This is another reason for producing a 

respectable military posture as soon as possible.” Dwight Eisenhower to Dulles, Apr. 15, 1952, 

Dulles Papers, Correspondence. 
152 

action, whereas those from the State Department did not. Therefore, Gates 

recalled, 

we used to worry in the Navy about [such] differences in point of view 

between the two departments. But often my work was wasted because 

Dulles more often than not didn’t take the position of his own staff 

papers. He usually took a position which was more in tune with what 

we were trying to espouse. 

Military leaders were deeply impressed by Dulles’s ability to marshal his 

evidence, his apparent command of every detail of a controversial question, 

his familiarity with all of the facts that bore on a problem. (They were not 

alone in this feeling. Virtually everyone who encountered Dulles in the 

cabinet or the NSC reacted similarly. The great source of Dulles’s influence 

was his ability to present his case, to argue a reasoned and logical lawyer’s 

brief into which every fact had been carefully fitted.) Even more important, 

military leaders were persuaded that Dulles would listen to them, hear them 

out, respect their opinions. General Nathan Twining later recalled, “He 

quizzed us an awful lot . . . he apparently had a lot of faith in the militarymore so than most of our people in those jobs had had before. And he dragged 

out these meetings with us because he wanted to get the facts.” And they also 

felt that Dulles would support them in the decisions which they had to make. 

General Lauris Norstad, recalling his days as Supreme Commander in 

Europe, was quite explicit: “With Mr. Dulles, as with the president, I had 

the feeling that whatever action I had to take-whatever I had to say or do-I 

had the absolute confidence that I had their support. In some cases they 

might even have disapproved, but they still gave support.” Most military men 

(with a few exceptions to be noted) also believed that Dulles had a good 

understanding of the role of force in foreign policy, a general grasp of the 

military aspects of national security, and a realization of the military implications of the foreign policies he pursued. 

Yet there were some unique aspects of Dulles’s relationship with the 

Department of Defense. He dealt, after all, with Secretary Charles Wilson, 

not with a Forrestal, Marshall, or McNamara. The distinction is important, 

for Charles Wilson was neither interested in nor informed about foreign 

affairs. As Secretary of Defense he ran the department as he had run General 

Motors-that is, with his own concentration upon production, management, 

procurement, and finances. One day Dulles was late for a meeting with 

Wilson. When he finally arrived, Dulles said that he had been delayed on 

Capitol Hill by a group of senators who had taken an hour and a half to quiz 

him about the size of the State Department budget. The Secretary of Defense 

asked how much money was involved. Dulles carefully explained, “Well, we 

were asking for 237 million, and they were trying to cut it back to 195 

million.” “Engine Charlie” was incredulous. “You mean to say that you sat 
153 

up on the Hill for an hour and a half to justify a 40 million dollar matter? 

Foster, I spend that much every day of the year, seven days a week, before 

the first coffee break.” 

While this little exchange may say something about national priorities 

in the Eisenhower era, it certainly suggests that Charles Wilson was no threat 

to Dulles in the area of foreign policy. Hence Dulles was inclined to go 

elsewhere for consultation-and “elsewhere” was quite frequently Admiral 

Arthur Radford, with whom, as I have noted, Dulles developed close ties. 

Indeed, as Radford himself later admitted, Dulles often sought him out in 

the first instance on policy matters which, properly speaking, should have 

been raised first with the Secretary of Defense. One of the principal reasons 

for the firm Dulles-Radford relationship was the general similarity of their 

views on the Far East. Dulles, I am convinced, came into office believing that 

the Democrats had neglected Asia and concentrated too much upon Europe. 

To his associates in the State Department, the Secretary consistently emphasized his belief that the United States was an Asian power and that, in 

consequence, the defense of Nationalist China was an imperative national 

interest. Admiral Radford, in keeping with the Navy’s traditional interest in 

the Far East, felt no less strongly. Later he said that, in his judgment, Dulles 

“understood” the Pacific better than any of his predecessors in the State 

Department. To cite Under Secretary Gates once again: “Dulles was very 

much‘in tune with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs at that time, Admiral 

Radford, particularly on Far Eastern policy, which both understood; and it 

was very strong policy.” 

Since the remainder of this paper will concentrate on two major topicsthe New Look and massive retaliation-there is insufficient space to refer to 

many other aspects of Dulles’s policies which involved, broadly speaking, 

military factors and military considerations. Any full study of Dulles, however, would have to analyze such matters as the following: his strong defense 

of the Nationalist Chinese in the Quemoy-Matsu crises, his intervention in 

Lebanon, his role in the Suez crisis, his sponsorship of the two congressional 

resolutions that attempted to spell out the lines across which the communists 

could not move without risking an American response, and, above all, his 

proliferation of national security pacts on a truly global scale. Dulles, moreover, is properly associated with the hard-liners who initially favored American action at the time of the fall of Dien Bien Phu, and the evidence also 

suggests that Dulles was among the first (if not the first) to believe, in the 

bitter aftermath of the Geneva Conference, that the regime in Saigon could 

be maintained by American support. In European affairs it was Dulles who 

was most insistent that American troops must be kept at the NATO force 

levels and who successfully maintained his position despite the strong desires 

of Republican economizers and the frequently expressed hope of President 

Eisenhower to reduce the size of the American troop commitment to 

NATO.15 

15See, on both points, the transcript of an interview with Gen. Andrew Goodpaster in the 

Dulles Oral History Project. 
Nevertheless, it is a mistake to over-emphasize the purely military dimensions of the policies of John Foster Dulles or to suggest that he was 

dependent upon the military. He continued to have a strong sense of civilian 

supremacy. While he consulted Radford, even sought him out in the first 

instance, he always insisted that the ultimate decision was the prerogative of 

civilians. As General Matthew Ridgway recalled, “He was very sensitive to 

anything which he might construe as trespassing by the military into the 

sphere of the diplomatic.” (Indeed, Ridgway remembered one NSC meeting 

at which the Secretary “snubbed” his friend Radford when he thought Radford was improperly intervening in forbidden civilian preserves.) Those who 

were responsible for the U-2 program certainly thought that Dulles was the 

key person whom they had to convince about the necessity of a flight and 

whose recommendation counted most heavily with the president when he 

made the final decision. In each and every instance, they recalled, the Secretary had to be convinced that the military information from a U-2 flight 

outweighed the possible political consequences of discovery or failure. 16 

Certain policies, which at first glance might seem to carry almost exclusively military implications, appear differently when subjected to closer examination. SEATO, for example, was designed by Dulles to meet certain 

constitutional, legal, and political problems and was not really intended to 

be a Far Eastern NATO. When Dien Bien Phu was under siege and the 

French position in Indochina was collapsing, Dulles had clearly believed that 

the United States had to act. But he encountered immediate congressional 

objections, especially to the idea of unilateral American action without 

French or British support. Dulles then consulted the British and thought he 

had secured a commitment for British support from Anthony Eden. He was 

bitterly disappointed when the British had second thoughts and pulled back. 

(Indeed, to Dulles, Eden had reneged on a promise. It was a root cause of 

subsequent disagreements between the two men.) Moreover, international 

law seemed to furnish no justification for American intervention in Indochina. SEATO was therefore designed to prevent just such complications in 

the future. As a treaty ratified by the Senate, it would provide the president 

with broad powers to act-and to act immediately without the necessity of 

a long, complicated congressional debate. As a treaty it would also have the 

approval of America’s allies, thereby diminishing the chance that some future 

Eden could “renege” on a promise. And, as a regional agreement under the 

provisions of the UN charter, it would provide a legal sanction for intervention in Southeast Asia. In other words, SEATO was primarily a lawyer’s and 

l6 See the transcripts of Richard Bissell andGen. Charles Cabell in the Dulles Oral History 

Project. 
155 

not a soldier’s document.” In point of fact, Dulles himself never thought 

in terms of creating an infrastructure along the lines of the NATO model, 

nor did he believe that the Asian countries would provide much military 

strength of their own or prove to be very solid bulwarks in the alliance. 

John Foster Dulles will, above all, always be identified with the doctrine 

of “massive retaliation.” It should be emphasized that the concept dues fit 

in with some of his deeply held convictions. Dulles, for example, consistently 

believed that wars arise out of miscalculation more frequently than out of 

deliberate intent. He always thought that World War I need not have occurred if Great Britain had made it clear in advance that she would fight to 

preserve the independence of Belgium. He thought that Hitler would not 

have gone to war in 1939 if he had realized that the United States would aid 

the Allies. And he was persuaded that Dean Acheson’s National Press Club 

speech in 1950 on American defense perimeters in Asia was in very large part 

responsible for the Korean war. Thus, Dulles always wanted to draw lines, 

make positions known in advance, and indicate that transgressions might 

well trigger an American response in some unexpected area-all of this 

intended to narrow the possibility of misconception and miscalculation. Also, 

a’s I have noted earlier, the basic concept of atomic retaliation was contained 

in his 1952 article in Life. Yet Dulles was by no means the principal architect 

of either massive retaliation or its concomitant military posture-the socalled New Look-with its primary emphasis upon air and naval power. 

These policies had many and varied ideological, technical, economic, and 

political roots-so much so that they represent a kind of fundamental, characteristically American response to the frustrations of the Cold War. Some 

years ago the late Walter Millis pointed out that the concept of the atomic 

deterrent as the basis of policy was foreshadowed as early as the late 1940s 

when the first B-29s were stationed in Great Britain.’* I am certain that 

Professor Gaddis Smith would confirm that in the Acheson period there was 

a great deal of discussion about massive retaliation-using different terminology, to be sure, but of the concept of basing policy upon the atomic 

deterrent. Both massive retaliation and the New Look were also based on an 

underlying national faith in the technological superiority of America as well 

as on the frustrations of the stalemated, limited war in Korea-that is, out 

of the fear that the United States, with limited manpower, could never hope 

to match the Chinese or Russians man for man. They also arose out of 

17Bissell transcript. Similarly, Dulles wanted to maintain U.S. troop levels in Europe not 

because he genuinely expected a Soviet attack but for the political symbolism involved. He 

reasoned that any reduction in the NATO force levels might leave the impression in Europe that 

the United States was reordering its priorities, which is simply to say that the size of the 

American contingent in Europe was a piece in his larger political and psychological game. 

laWalter Millis, Arms and the State (New York, 1958), pp. 225-27. 
156 

considerable rational calculation, for as the immediacy of the Korean crisis 

abated, both civilian and military planners began to argue that there ought 

to be a slow growth of military power, rather than a rapid build-up geared 

to a predetermined date of readiness. And, as I emphasized earlier, both New 

Look and massive retaliation were deeply rooted in the orthodox economic 

views of a Republican administration which was, above all, committed to the 

goal of a balanced budget and determined to reduce the amount of money 

spent for national defense. 

Indeed, I would argue that these concepts served as a very important 

device to bring conservative Republicans into the foreign policy consensus 

that the Eisenhower administration was trying to achieve. During the Korean 

war the Taft wing of the party had been greatly outraged by the presumed 

loss of American independence in foreign and military policy, the consequence, they argued, of paying too much attention to the wishes of America’s 

UN partners and her European allies. While the Taft Republicans clearly 

worried about the national budget, they also had increasingly fretted about 

this alleged growing dependence on allies. For them, massive retaliation and 

the New Look had many attractions: they seemed to offer greater security 

at less cost; they cut through some of the frustrations of limited war without 

“victories”; and they appeared to restore a degree of American independence 

to act on her own responsibility. They were, in short, the kind of bridge which 

brought virtually all Republicans into acceptance of the foreign and military 

policy apparatus of the postwar period. This being so, it seems to me that it 

is relatively unimportant to try to single out the specific role of a Dulles, or 

a Rdord, or a Humphrey in creating them. Rather, the point to be stressed 

is that massive retaliation and the New Look reflect the totality of American 

assumptions, calculations, and fears at a particular stage in the history of the 

Cold War. 

John Foster Dulles himself, it must be stressed, had a relatively sophisticated understanding of the role of force and the place of military power in 

his own policies. He did, without question, believe in the atomic bomb as a 

deterrent, and he was prepared to recommend atomic retaliation if that 

seemed necessary. No one who worked with Dulles was ever in doubt about 

his willingness to employ atomic weapons if war broke out. But he was by 

no means wedded exclusively to massive retaliation as the single basis of 

policy. In his private talks with his associates, Dulles always indicated that 

it was important to maintain conventional military power and to retain 

ground forces that were mobile, flexible, and capable of ,waging limited war. 

Admiral Arleigh Burke’s 31-knot prose may not be the most elegant on the 

subject, but it makes the point: “Mr. Dulles was all for limited wars, much 

more so than he is being given credit for. He was strong for conventional 

forces, not nuclear power.” 
157 

Through his speeches and writings, however, Dulles was the individual 

who was always most closely identified with the massive retaliation concept. 

Moreover, these speeches and articles created more misconceptions not only 

about the policy but also about himself. He projected an image of a bellicose 

America prepared to atomize large sections of the globe for something less 

than massive provocations. And, while his private conversations might well 

indicate a belief in the importance of maintaining conventional military 

strength, his speeches projected an oversimplified version of national security 

based on air and sea retaliation. Indeed, even Admiral Radford found his 

phraseology unfortunate. Dulles gave the impression, the admiral later recalled, “that we were just ready to pounce on everybody.” His article on 

massive retaliation, Radford felt, reversed the appropriate emphasis and 

failed to suggest that “the actual basis of the ‘New Look‘ was to devise a 

security organization that kept everybody quiet”-that is, would prevent 

war. Similarly Robert Bowie, who headed the Policy Planning Staff, was 

critical. Bowie knew from firsthand experience that Dulles did have a complex view of the requirements of national defense, but Bowie was often 

concerned when the Secretary’s speeches sounded as if he had associated 

himself “with the Radford idea whichlwasbasically committed to the all-out 

strategy.” 

Many of the misconceptions that Dulles created arose, ironically, from 

one of his principal virtues-his desire to communicate his ideas to the 

American public and to Congress and thereby to win general support for 

administration policies. But in these many attempts, Dulles had a tendency 

to choose striking words, catch phrases, capsule phrases-such as “massive 

retaliation,” “agonizing reappraisal,” “going to the brink,” and the like. 

These phrases, intended to make it easy for the public to understand his 

policies, had the unfortunate effect of making the Secretary seem both a 

simplifier and a brinksman. Thus, although I fully concur with those who 

insist that Dulles did believe in the need for a broad spectrum of military 

force and that his own ideas did differ significantly from those of Admiral 

Radford, I would also insist that he only managed to project a bellicose image 

of himself and his policies. His speeches, that is, fail to suggest that his goal 

was the creation of a system of deterrence that would prevent breaches of the 

peace; rather, they suggest the atomic response that might occur if the enemy 

miscalculated. I also think that Dulles gradually came to recognize his error. 

In later speeches, for example, he emphasized that what he had been talking 

about was the capacity for retaliation, not the act itself.19 

’Tompare his article, “Policy for Security and Peace,” Foreign Afl2im 32 (Apr. 1954): 

353-64, with his later piece, “Challenge and Response in United States Policy,” ibid. 36 (at. 

1957): 25-43. The same analysis applies to the concept of “brinksmanship.” The idea of Dulles 

as the brinksman who had three times led the United States to the edge of war emerged from 

an article about the Secretary in Life in 1955. In the course of the interview on which the article 

was based, Dulles had spoken at length about some very serious matters, notably how a nation 

should react in time of crisis when confronted by an implacable enemy. But again, he used 

striking phrases like “going to the brink” and “the President came up taut,” etc. The Life 

writers could not resist using these dramatic phrases, to which they added some provocative 

subheads and a flashy title on the cover, “Three Times to the Brink of War.” Nevertheless, the 

Secretary’s penchant for the simple, dramatic phrase was in large part responsible for creating 

the “brinksman” image. 
158 

More things were controversial about these new policies than the way 

in which the Secretary described them. The New Look, with its emphasis on 

air and naval strength, reduced the role of the ground forces; and a series of 

army offtcerk, especially Generals Ridgway and Taylor, raised the cry that 

the composition of American forces was getting out of balance. The overemphasis on air and naval components, they maintainedi meant that the 

United States would be unable to fight a limited war and, lacking this limited 

war capability, the only possible American response would be massive and 

atomic. In addition, at least a few of Dulles’s own staff in the State Department believed in the concept of balanced forces, disliked the air-naval emphasis of the New Look, and wanted the Secretary to enter into the cabinet and 

NSC debates on the structure of the armed forces. Wanting Dulles to become 

an active participant in the great interservice controversy about the New 

Look, they believed that, with his great influence in the administration, his 

interVention would be decisive. Robert Bowie, for example, tried to convince 

the Secretary that he had a duty to become involved in the debate. Dulles’s 

foreign policies, Bowie argued, involved the flexible use of force and would 

fail if only one choice were available. Moreover, Bowie contended, the posture that Dulles would actually be able to assume in foreign affairs was 

directly related to the kind of military instrument being fashioned in the 

Pentagon. He must not, in short, let the New Look limit his options. General 

Taylor was direct in his criticism: “I would say, and I say it somewhat 

critically . . . that as a Secretary of State who was taking such a bold, firm 

position arouqd the world, he was not looking at the instrument being welded 

for him in the Pentagon, which in the last analysis might be the support of 

his policy.” 

Yet Dulles never did intervene in the greatest interservice debate of the 

1950s. There were many reasons for his silence. First of all, he did accept the 

estimates given him by the Pentagon, especially the information provided by 

Radford. They were the experts, and he respected their expertise. And they 

were insisting, New Look or not, that the army critics were wrong and that 

the United States was still capable of exercising a wide variety of military 

options. The new emphasis on air and naval units, they claimed, had by no 

means restricted American military responses to all-or-nothing strategies. 

“Dulles,” Bowie later remembered, “was never willing to probe very deeply 

into the validity of that statement.” 

Furthermore, Dulles’s unwillingness to become involved was also related to his own strong sense of the prerogatives of the Secretary’ of State. He 

brooked absolutely no interference in’his own sphere of action. When a 

Harold Stassen or a Nelson Rockefeller intruded himself into the forbidden 

area of policy formulation, his days in Washington came to an abrupt end. 

The same logic led him to keep himself out of the affairs of the military. I 

think he clearly realized that, if he inserted himself into the interservice 
159 

debate over national military posture, he would, at the very least, weaken his 

own claim to banish poachers from his own territory. Then, too, there was 

the obvious fact that President Eisenhower was thoroughly at home in all 

military matters. Since Dulles prized his relationship with the president, it 

is reasonable to believe that he must have considered that it would be imprudent to involve himself in matters about which the president was himself an 

expert. 

Yet there are signs in 1958 and 1959-that is, in the last year of his 

life-that Dulles was beginning to have doubts about the future viability of 

the policy of retaliation. Sputnik, at the very minimum, pdsed the issue of 

the credibility of the American doctrine in an era when the Soviet Union was 

equipping itself with its own array of missiles and could also retaliate massively. Though the evidence is not truly compelling, I sense that Dulles might 

even have begun to ponder the foreign policy implications of nuclear stalemate. Certainly by 1958 he was becoming concerned about discovering ways 

that would enable the United States to act and, if necessary, to fight limited 

war in a period when the Soviet Union would have its own nuclear delivery 

system. On his own initiative he sought out certain military leaders and 

discussed with them the possible need to enunciate a new national security 

policy. It was, and I reemphasize the fact, no more than a beginning, a 

tentative exploration. But, as Gerard Smith recalled, 

I never saw Dulles so solemn. He talked, I would say, for an hour 

without any interruption at all, outlining why he thought a change in 

American military policy was necessary. The issue was not graduated 

deterrence, but what you do at Quemoy or in South Vietnam, where it 

isn’t credible with the opposition that you will go over to nuclear weapons. 

The prospect of change was difficult for Dulles to accept. He did think 

that both the nuclear deterrent itself and the stated policy of retaliation had 

worked, had kept the peace in previous years, and still retained considerable 

validity. But he recognized that the United States would have to consider the 

possible need for new policies before being overwhelmed by external facts. 

But, as I have stressed, it was but a beginning. The premature death of Dulles 

in the spring of 1959 ended this kind of exploration, and it was left up to the 

Kennedy administration to pursue the whole balanced forces theme. 

********* 

It is past time to conclude this paper. But I must confess that, as an 

academic historian, Dulles has always made me just a bit uneasy. His constant moralizing always put obstacles in the way of my own empathy. In 

many respects, too, I believe that Dulles does represent a major aspect of the 
160 

tragedy of American diplomacy about which Professor Williams has so ably 

written. I mean tragedy in the sense that with Dulles, there were too many 

unexainined assumptions about “right” and “wrong” and an all-too-easy 

identification of American foreign policy with eternal verities. 

He was, as I have said, no innovator but rather the man who carried 

inherited policies to their logical conclusions. What George Kennan has 

called the militarization of American foreign policy began long before Dulles 

became Secretary of State; the globalization of American commitments was 

implicit in earlier decisions; and massive retaliation was not so much the 

personal policy of John Foster Dulles as the characteristic policy of the 

United States in the Republican era of the 1950s. 

With Dulles one confronts the contemporary issue of the civilian and the 

Pentagon. Here, as Robert Bowie correctly asserted, was a Secretary of State 

whbse basic stance in foreign policy4eterrence through the threat of 

retaliation-rested upon the military posture of the United States. It is not 

sufficient to conclude that he, as a civilian, failed in his ability to cope with 

those who had the expertise in military matters, for Dulles, as I have tried 

to argue, was far better informed about military matters than all but a 

handful of his predecessors. But he could not and did not ask the big questions. And, while it is possible to understand why he didn’t, I find myself in 

agreement with those who regret his failure to probe very deeply into the 

advice he received from the Joint Chiefs. Above all, with Dulles one searches 

in vain for evidence that as Secretary of State he raised fundamental questions 

about the long tenh consequences of a national policy so firmly established 

upon a military foundation. 

John Foster Dulles was Secretary of State at a time when the Cold War 

was at its greatest intensity. He was able to live with and accept the logic of 

that confrontation. For us, now nearly two decades later, no appraisal of 

Dulles can be separated from our own interpretation of the Cold War and 

our estimate of communist intentions in the 1950s. The defenders of Dulles 

will concede his one-dimensional moral outlook and his provocative language. But they will also insist that in the 1950s, it was a categorical imperative of American foreign policy to convince the communist world that, if 

pressed to the ultimate decision, America would employ nuclear weapons. As 

Admiral Arleigh Burke has argued, “Dulles wanted to get across the idea, 

which he did, that the security of the free world was dependent upon our 

willingness to use nuclear weapons if we had to, and that it would be our 

decision when we had to.” But conversely, to those wdo, like myself, believe 

that there were more options available, more choices to explore, then Dulles 

remains the moralist armed-a man of unexamined first premises who continued policies that helped to turn the Cold War into a basic condition of 

American life. And, at the very minimum, we wish that John Foster Dulles, 
161 

as Secretary of State, had paused to remember some of the questions he had 

raised before and during the Second World War-questions about the consequences of war and the perils of resisting change in the name of preserving 

the status quo. 
162 

The CHAIRMAN: Before going further in this rather mixed concluding 

session, let me give you an idea of the format which we will follow. Professor 

Crowl will read William Appleman Williams’s comments on Dr. Challener’s 

paper. General Parrish will then comment. Then Professor crow1 wants a 

couple of minutes for some remarks of his own. Finally the chairmen of the 

previous sessions will comment on any questions that anyone wishes to put 

about previous sessions of this symposium. 

Professor Crowl, who is chairman of the Department of History at the 

University of Nebraska, former State Department official, one of the people 

who worked for that famous acronym known as OCMH, “Oh see more 

history” group, and also to most of you the Crowl of Isely and Crowl, US. 

Marines and Amphibious Wu, will read the comments that have just come 

in from Professor William Appleman Williams, Oregon State University. 

Professor Williams is probably the most important of the critics of American 

foreign policy in this period. The most important of his works, as I understand it, is The Roots of the Mixfern American Empire, 1969. Professor 

Crowl. 

Professor CROWL: Thank you, Ted. Ladies and gentlemen. I feel a little like 

Grouch0 Marx at the last moment being asked to play Hamlet, or perhaps 

Ophelia. However, as I said to Major MacIsaac on the way up here, when 

I was first commissioned an ensign in the United States Naval Reserve many 

years ago, I was told that my first and permanent obligation would be always 

to be prepared to bail out the Army or the Army Air Corps. So I am delighted 

to be able to serve in that fashion again. 

Now I am the voice of Professor Williams. 
163 

Commentary* 

William Appleman Williams 

Oregon State University 

May I first say, through the courtesy of my proxy, that I am deeply 

disappointed not to be with you. But as one doctor put it, “the mind and heart 

propose, bbt the spine disposes.” 

Not the least of my disappointments is that, since last Saturday, I have 

been working on an adaptation of that old jazz favorite, “Come on Home, 

Bill Bailey.” My versidn is called, “Get Back to the Ship, Ben Martin. This 

Is Not a Drill”-and I had intended to belt it out over the PA system,about 

0200. [Ben Martin is the head Academy football coach and, like Professor 

Williams, a graduate of USNA - Ed.] 

More seriously, I am disappointed that I can not speak directly to 

Professor Challener when I say that he has written a fine essay. He has seen 

and defined the central issues in any discussion of the relationship between 

civilian and military leaders, and he has explored them with perception and 

candor. In my view, his major conclusion is irrefutable. 

That is to say, in summary, that the civilian leadership of the country 

(including John Foster Dulles, but by no means excluding many others) had 

defined the world in such a way that American foreign policy could not avoid 

being militarized. This was a long process, not simply a result of World War 

11. It began with the war against Spain, which was clearly initiated by the 

United States after Presidents Grover Cleveland and William McKinley had 

formulated an implicitly bipartisan policy that arbitrarily defined Spain as 

being responsible for the prosperity and general welfare of the United States. 

Once you take that position, the only way to avoid war is to pick accommodating opponents who acquiesce. 

The trouble is, of course, that the age of the autocrat of the breakfast 

*Read, in Professor Williams’s absence, by Professor Philip A. Crowl. 
164 

table is over in world politics just as surely as it is over in domestic politics. 

It is literally a gravely unfortunate matter that the Blacks and the women of 

America waited so long to raise the flag of rebellion. Had they shaken the 

ghettos and the kitchens sooner, we might have learned without so much pain 

that people do not acquiesce forever in being falsely held responsible for the 

failures of others. 

While agreeing wholly with Professor Challener’s central proposition, I 

would like to explore a few of his secondary conclusions. Consider, for 

example, his judgment that there “was, essentially, one Dulles.” I wish he 

had gone more deeply into that important matter because it tells Us a very 

great deal about the way civilian leaders have defined the world in a way that 

militarizes foreign policy. But I do not think we can understand the continuity beneath the seeming disparities simply through references to the “moral 

rejection of communism” and the practical business of conducting foreign 

affairs. 

Dulles was not the first amateur theologian who had his hand in the 

making of American foreign policy: Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings 

Bryan come easily to mind. But the crucial point is that all those men, along 

with many others less overtly religious, were Christian capitalists. They were 

not Christian anarchists. They were not Christian communitarians. And they 

were not Christian socialists. The point strikes me rather like Jesus struck 

the money changers in the temple: the capitalism in their outlook is at least 

as important as the Christianity. I simply do not think we can comprehend 

the Cold War without understanding that America’s civilian leaders saw 

themselves confronted by the challenge of a functioning alternative to a 

capitalist political economy. 

Another point worth examining is Professor Challener’s judgment that 

“SEATO was a lawyer’s and not a soldier’s document.” Given the alternatives he offers himself (and us), he makes a case for that formulation. But, 

considering his analysis of Dulles, the thought comes to me that the issue 

might better be posed in this fashion: “SEATO was a warrior’s and not a 

statesman’s document.” I would make it clear that I am using the term 

warrior in its classic meanings, including its positive connotations, and not 

as a sly synonym for an aggressive monomaniac. My point is that Challener’s 

own presentation indicates quite clearly that Dulles wanted to free the Commander-in-Chief to act on a Cold War definition of the world without any 

complications or delays from foreign or domestic laggards. That assumes, as 

with the warrior, that The Truth is known, once and for all, whereas the 

statesman is neither so certain about the truth nor so confident in the threat 

or the use of force. 
165 

In conclusion, permit me to offer a few of the more general thoughts that 

came to me as I reflected on Professor Challener’s fine paper. As he notes, 

the militarization of American foreign policy was inevitable once Dulles and 

other civilian leaders settled upon their particular definition of the world. The 

consequences have been enormous. My firm judgment-based on my training as an Academy officer as well as on my observations as a historian and 

a citizen-is that the military today exerts far too much direct and indirect 

influence on the nature and the quality of American life. That power has long 

since become counter productive, and I am grievously disturbed that so few 

Academy officers have seen and acted upon the resulting dangers. Those 

dangers involve their ability to discharge their constitutional military responsibilities, and their implicit obligation to maintain the constitutional balance 

between the military and the civilian sectors of American society. 

Let us first consider that second danger. At some point in the postwar 

era, the military establishment did acquire and proceed to exercise a certain 

kind of independent authority. Given the accepted definition of the world, 

the recommendations of the military carried the kind of intellectual power 

that could not be denied without changing the definition of the world. 

That meant two things. First, the military’s solution for the strategic and 

tactical problems posed by the civilian definition of the world operated in 

effect to limit political and economic policy. Even within the existing framework, civilian leaders increasingly lost flexibility. They lost it even at the 

intellectual level, as revealed during the argument over a New Look in 

military policy. For a debate about how best to do one thing is not a discussion of whether that one thing is the best thing. Yet countless civilians 

thought they were re-examining the nature of American foreign policy. Vietnam revealed the gravely serious nature of their mistake. 

The result of that belated awareness serves to dramatize my other point 

about the way that the military’s uncritical acceptance and use of its great 

power has served in the end to weaken the military’s ability to discharge its 

constitutional responsibilities. For what started as an anti-Vietnam War 

movement has now become a far broader assault on the very structure and 

leadership of the establishment. 

So we come to a very difficult question: what responsibility does the 

military leadership have to tell the civilian leadership that its definition of the 

world is somehow mistaken? Meaning this: for the military to tell the civilians 

that their view of the world cannot be translated into military policy without 

in the end having the nature and demands of the military policy subvert the 

avowed objectives of peace, prosperity, and social health at home. 
166 

I suggest that the central function of the Academies is to educate men 

capable of seeing such basic contradictions, and to inculcate the kind of 

dedication and courage that will enable those men to state such truths to their 

civilian masters. Note carefully that I do not say that the military leaders 

should propose or agitate for some specific new definition of the world. That 

is properly the responsibility of the citizenry. An officer can always resign 

if he feels impelled to participate in that primary process of self-government. 

But I do say that the Academy offcer has a basic and special responsibility to say no when he concludes that he cannot defend his country except 

through means that weaken its structure and violate its principles. That 

responsibility is inherent in his oath to uphold the Constitution of the United 

States, and it holds even unto the act of resignation. The good captain does 

go down with his ship, but he also refuses to take it to sea until it is fit for 

his crew. 

The CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Professor Crowl. 

The next commentator is Brigadier General Noel F. Parrish, who for 

three years before his retirement in 1964 was Director of the Aerospace 

Studies Institute at the Air University. But for our discussion this afternoon, 

as I see it, the critical assignments he held were these: in 1948 he was Deputy 

Secretary of the Air Staff; in 1951 Special Assistant to the Vice Chief of Staff; 

1954 Air Deputy to the NATO Defense College, and so on. Therefore, in the 

very period Professor Challener’s paper deals with, General Parrish was in 

a position to know of the things of which Professor Challener has written. 

After his retirement, General Parrish took his Ph.D. in history at Rice 

University, and his dissertation again was directly related to the subject under 

discussion. It was nuclear weapons and their influence on foreign policy. I 

have the distinct privilege to introduce Brigadier General Noel F. Parrish. 

General PARRISH: I want to thank Professor Ropp for his introduction, but 

I should add a footnote. There were a great many things going on in that 

period that I did not know-there were just too many things going on. 
167 

Commentary 

Brigadier General Noel F. Parrish, USAF (Ret.) 

Trinity University, San Antonio 

Shortly after Eisenhower became president, he was visited by his old 

friend, Winston Churchill. Later, in England, Lord Moran asked the prime 

minister what he thought of Ike in the new job. Churchill was a bit angry 

with the president at the time. He replied, “Well, in the war, he had a very 

genuine gift for friendship and for keeping the peace. But I decided . . . in 

the States that he was really a Brigadier.”’ 

Doubtless it is as a former bdgadier in the Pentagon rather than as a 

present assistant professor that I have the privilege of commenting on Professor Challener’s paper. Brigadiers are barely members of the high brass establishment, but assistant professors are not members of anything other than the 

Faculty Club. 

Recently, I underwent a brain transplant which exchanged my military 

mind for an only slightly used academic one. The transplant was accomplished under four years of induced amnesia as a graduate student. Now, I 

am sufficiently conscious to understand that the academic hierarchy is more 

rigid than the military and that seniority therein is far more important. An 

impatient, non-scientific assistant professor, with a deep freeze of professorial 

tenure above him, must become a firebrand if he hopes to crack any ice. A 

recent investigation disclosed that no less than fifty assistant professors at ati 

eastern university had sided with the student radicals. My comments will 

therefore be in the character of an insurgent assistant professor rather than 

a counter-insurgent brigadier. 

Before objecting to anything in Professor Challener’s paper, let me first 

agree that it is an excellent paper, much broader in its scope than the title 

indicates. It treats the incredibly active Secretary of State as a complex man 

in thought and in action. This manner of treatment is rare, for the orthodoxy 

of the moment is simply to categorize Mr. Dulles as immorally anticommunist. 

’Lord Moran, Churchill (Boston, 1966), p. 466. Entry of July 19, 1953. 
168 

Professor Challener presents carefully selected samples from a variety 

of views about Dulles. He reviews the changing nature of the man’s opinions 

expressed over a’ full half-century of international mobility. Yet Professor 

Challener is able to maintain that there was essentially “one Dulles” whose 

basic principles, as Dulles himself said, remained‘ constant despite the diversity of his methods and his views. Professor Challener points out that Eisenhower was no “patsy” for Dulles, as Ike’s critics have claimed-and, I would 

add: as Dulles’s critics also have maintained. The two leaders complemented 

each other and each affected the other greatly. Emmet Hughes quotes Eisenhower as saying, in effect: “Who else but Foster knows so much about foreign 

affairs-who else, but me?’2 

On the other hand, Professor Challener reports the adverse opinions 

about the Secretary which have been current for many years. One may 

wonder whether Gerard Smith and Robert Bowie, so often quoted by Professor Challener, may have inspired some of the criticism of Dulles which began 

during his lifetime. They match Dulles’s famous clichQ with now familiar 

clichQ of their own. 

To quote Eisenhower again: “All right, I know what they say about 

Foster4ul1, duller, Dulles and all that. But the Democrats love to hit him 

ra’ther than me, even though not one of these critics of our foreign policy has 

a constructive thought to ~ffer.”~ 

The job of Secretary of State which Eisenhower shared with Dulles was 

more interesting to the president than the old, familiar problems of the 

Secretary of Defense. Yet Eisenhower could not escape being his own Secretary of Defense, for the simple reason that everyone expected it of him. It 

was quite proper that both he and the Secretary of State should consult often 

with Admiral Radford, and it is surprising that Dulles’s church friends or 

anyone else should consider these contacts strange. The same close relationship continued with General Twining, who succeeded Radford. Twining as 

Chairman of the JCS was Eisenhower’s selection, while Radford had been 

entirely the choice of Secretary of Defense Wilson. 

Perhaps Professor Challener does not mean to imply that military men 

respected and trusted Dulles because he agreed with them. No such conclusion would be justified, for Dulles opposed the military on a number of issues. 

He advocated suspension of nuclear testing, although the Chiefs, rather 

wisely as events proved, strongly opposed our suspension. He advocated less 

secrecy on nuclear weapons, which they opposed. Earlier he had advocated 

going ahead with the Japanese peace treaty, while the Chiefs wished to delay 

aEmmet John Hughes, me Odd ofPower (New York, 1963), p. 251. 

‘Ibid. 
169 

it. He opposed helping the French atomic bomb program, despite the urging 

of the Chiefs. He interfered with the Anglo-French attack on Egypt, when 

the Chiefs would have been happy to see it succeed. In addition, Secretary 

Dulles refused to take a definite stand on support for Quemoy and Matsu and 

left some of the hard decisions to American military advisers on the spot. He 

refused to join his own treaty organization in the Middle East, despite urging 

by Chiefs and the British that we should do SO.^ 

Only one Chief of Staff was, to my knowledge, really shaken by an action 

of Mr. bulles, and this occurred very early in the Eisenhower administration. 

Admiral Fechteler’s detailed account of this little known incident shows that 

Secretary Dulles once prepared a message to the U.S. Command in the Far 

East directing the prompt withdrawal of American forces from Korea unless 

President Rhee acceded immediately to all our demands. Conscientious Admiral Fechteler, who happened to be the only member of the JCS in Washington at the time, discovered this message just before it was to be transmitted 

without coordination. at the Pentagon. He called President Eisenhower, who 

saw Admiral Fechteler’s point, called Secretary Dulles to a conference, and 

made it quite clear that no message of this type was ever to be sentswithout 

the Joint Chiefs’ c~ordination.~ The whole matter was straightened out; the 

message was greatly softened and no withdrawal took place-as we all know. 

Evidently this was one of the many instances that proved Dulles’s willingness 

to learn. It may have influenced his later, more careful, and more pleasant 

relations with the Chiefs. 

Professor Challener says that Secretary Dulles is “properly remembered 

as a Secretary of State whose policies carried an exceptionally heavy military 

component.” With how many Secretaries of State is Secretary Dulles compared? Except for Secretary Rogers, the only recent Secretary who achieved 

an equal reduction of military involvement and investment was Frank B. 

Kellogg, who in 1928 persuaded twelve nations (including Japan, Germany, 

and Italy) to sign a treaty completely renouncing war. In the following 

Hoover administration, there was at least a warning to Japan. From that 

point on, there was a steady increase of military forces and actions, into the 

climactic explosions of World War 11. Secretary Marshall was peacefully 

inclined, but he favored universal military training. Secretary Acheson saw 

our military budget tripled. 

The heaviest increases under the Truman-Acheson military plans were 

in the Air Force. The Eisenhower administration’s first action at the Pentagon was to cut the Air Force budget so drastically that Air Force Chief 

‘Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation (New York, 1969), p. 435. 

SAdmiral William M. Fechteler, Columbia University Oral History interview. 
170 

Vandenberg publicly denied he had agreed to it. This led to an embarrassing 

Congressional investigation, but the cutback in Air Force plans and procurement was implemented nevertheless. Reductions were applied in lesser degree 

to the other services. During Dulles’s more than six years as Secretary, two 

wars in Asia were ended and a war in the Middle East was halted. Except 

for the tranquil Lebanon landings, minor military involvements were in one 

way or another avoided, and no new wars were begun. Under Secretary 

Herter, U-2s were flown deeper while efforts were made to recoup our 

retaliatory missile program-a program I that 1 had been embarrassingly! neig- 

‘lected during the tenure of Secretary Dulles. The following administration, 

with luckless Secretary Rusk in oflice, immediately escalated the military 

budget by some fourteen billion dollars, promoted a military disaster in the 

Caribbean, sent troops into Asia by the thousands, and over Cuba veered 

much closer to the brink than bold brinksman Dulles ever dared. With all 

this happening, the most overwhelming of Pentagonions and the coldest of 

warriors ever, Secretary of Defense McNamara, almost took over the Department of State. It is not my purpose here to deplore these actions; I merely 

cite them. Also, I suspect that Mr. Dulles shared the famed Eisenhower luck. 

But I am bewildered by the statement, which is by no means Professor 

Challener’s alone, that Dulles’s attitudes and policies were predominantly 

military. The question remains: Compared with whom? 

Professor Challener cannot be serious when he says that comparative 

budgets of the State Department and the Department of Defense may, in his 

words, “say a good deal about national priorities in the Eisenhower years.” 

These budgets are in no way comparable in any administration. It is worth 

noting, however, that Mr. Dulles did spend many days on his vital foreign 

aid budgets, battling against George Humphrey of the Treasury for every one 

of the mafiy billions he won. In this, his one true crusade, Secretary Dulles 

had the full support of the Chiefs, despite rumblings in the Pentagon that 

foreign aid was in competition with the military budget. Here was a true 

indication of priorities, for the Eisenhower foreign aid budgets reached an 

all-time peak, while his military spending was consistently lower than that 

of his predecessors and of each of the presidents who have succeeded him. 

In fact, Eisenhower’s military retrenchments were so stringent at midpoint 

in his presidency that fiscal analysts have said they instigated a minor economic recession. 

I wish Professor Challener had mentioned the connection between 

“massive retaliation” and the military de-emphasis that helped inspire it. 

Secretary Dulles’s predecessor, Dean Acheson, has recently written that 

rather than blaming Dulles for deficiencies in foreign policy, 

it might have been more acqurate to conclude that President Eisenhower 
171 

left foreign affairs to the decisions of Secretary of the Treasury George 

Humphrey. It was the Humphrey policy of retrenchment ‘for fiscal and 

economic reasons that led to drastic cuts in Army and Navy expenditures in the early Eisenhower years. These, in turn, rather than considerations of foreign policy or military strategy, led to the Dulles 

rationalization of necessity-the policy of nuclear retaliation to acts of 

Soviet aggression.6 

If Acheson is even approximately right, Dulles’s two policy planners, whose 

frustrations arouse our sympathy in Professor Challener’s paper, should have 

urged their chief to battle against balancers of the budget, rather than against 

any imbalance in the Pentagon. It is cheering to note, however, that the 

Foggy Bottom team interviewed by Professor Challener did agree with the 

military team in one respect: both wanted Dulles to become Secretary of 

Defense. 

Acheson is less explicit about his own massive retaliation policy, but he 

says: “Similarly Truman’s spirit of retrenchment in 1948 and 1949, so vigorously applied to the Army and Navy by Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, 

put means out of relations with ends.”’ 

Professor Challener makes it clear that the policy of “massive retaliation,” a phrase which nowhere appears in the famous speech, did not originate with Dulles. He quotes Walter Millis as saying that the whole idea of 

the atomic deterrent as a basis of policy was anticipated as early as 1949, 

when the first B-29s were stationed in Britain. That takes it back only five 

years, which is not enough. Surely the policy of the bomb began with its use. 

It was declared in the first leaflets that were dropped on Japan after Hiroshima, and unnecessarily made doubly convincing by the bomb on Nagasaki. 

When a committee of scientists chose cities as targets for the two bombs, 

General Carl Spaatz proposed an alternative, but he dropped the bombs 

exactly as ordered. In later years, General Spaatz was asked if he agreed that 

a bomb as terrible as the atomic bomb might never be used. After reflection, 

Spaatz replied, “I think that would possibly be so, except that we have used 

it.”8 

The closing portion of Professor Challener’s paper reflects the general 

assumption that responsible leaders such as Secretary Dulles, General 

Spaatz, Admiral Radford, General Twining, and others did not think into the 

future and that they seldom pondered the consequences of their actions. 

bAcheson, Present at the Creation, p. 735. 

’Ibid. 

*General Carl Spaatz, interviews with Life magazine editors, Jan. 1947, Spaatz Papers, 

Library of Congress. 
172 

There is evidence against this assumption. Just four years before he became 

Chairman, Admiral Radford risked his future and damaged his career, when 

he publicly excoriated all reliance upon atomic bombs and branded them 

immoral weapons. More thought, and further developments, changed his 

views. When Captain Yeager broke the dreaded “sound barrier” in 1947, 

General Spaatz sadly reminded his exuberant-civilian superior that while we 

must move ahead, we cannot assume that scientific progress will always be 

advantageous to us as a nation. Ten years before Sputnik, Spaatz was worrying about new problems that would arise when an aggressor might combine 

supersonic guidance with atomic warheads. “When that happens,” he wrote 

to Secretary Symington, “what is our defen~e?”~ Vandenberg, Twining, 

White, and other Air Force leaders anticipated the nuclear standoff that was 

foreshadowed by Russian H-bomb and missile progress as early as 1953. 

These military leaders agreed with Secretary Dulles that it would become 

increasingly difficult in the future to forestall Communist invasion and domination of vulnerable portions of the free world. They shared Dulles’s conviction that it was their common responsibility to deter Communist incursions 

into those areas as long as they had the means to do so. They supported 

Churchill’s ultimate verdict that “Dulles lays down what he considers the 

minimum we should do if we are to hold the Communists. He makes it sound 

terrible. But it is necessary that someone should stand up to thern.”l0 

That Mr. Dulles made it sound terrible is now a general view repeated 

by all who were questioned by Professor Challener, even including Admiral 

Radford. How could Mr. Dulles sound terrible to the allegedly more terrible 

Admiral Radford, who is pictured as the Patton of the Pentagon? Here is one 

clue. To at least one journalist of note, Admiral Radford has said he blamed 

Dr. Bowie for the phraseology which became so disturbing after the famous 

speech. Bowie, he said, had chosen overly strong words because he wanted 

to make the whole policy sound bad. How much the Admiral knew about 

Dr. Bowie’s motivation remains a question, but it is true that Dr. Bowie was 

normally responsible for papers of high policy. 

Dr. Bowie’s mistrust of Radford and of military leaders in general is well 

expressed in Professor Challener’s paper. Doubtless it is easier to mistrust 

men in groups when they wear the same type of, clothes. The uniformed 

leaders had to be more personal and selective in their mistrust, and from the 

State Department they chose only a few outstanding examples. 

Regardless of who was most responsible for Secretary Dulles’s frighten- 

*General Spaatz to Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington, Jan. 8, 1948, Spaatz 

lOMoran, Chuxchif4 p. 584. Entry of May 18, 1954. 

’Interview with Charles Murphy, editor, Forrune. 

Papers, Library of Congress. 
173 

ing image, the most famous passages in the speech were, in Bernard Brodie’s 

phrase, “innocuous and truistic.” Brodie thinks the furor developed because 

the speech as a whole seemed to forecast-a reduction in ground forces. Five 

days elapsed before there was any critical reaction to the speech, and this was 

only the surprise of the New York Times that no one in Washington had 

found it very interesting. Still later, Adlai Stevenson and Chester Bowles 

began the public debate. 

No doubt lack of space prevented Professor Challener from discussing 

the important benefits derived from Dulles’s unflinching attitudes. Was it not 

true that the big man’s forbidding frown served to shield as well as to 

emphasize Ike’s appealing smile-the smile that forced Khrushchev to compete, unsuccessfully, as a humanitarian symbol of peace? More important, as 

Sovietologist Herbert Dinerstein has pointed out, the open avowal of massive 

retaliation as a deterrent caused the doctrine that war was the best means for 

advancing Communism to vanish from Soviet textbooks. The Chinese disagreed, thus the unpopular doctrine became an instrument for the disruption 

of the Communist camp. Dulles was first to advance the idea of wooing the 

Russians away from the Chinese, instead of the reverse. He avoic!ed Chou 

at Geneva, but publicly embraced Molotov after the Russian agreement to 

evacuate Austria. Far from refusing to deal with the Communists, Dulles 

spent the equivalent of one and a half years in earnest negotiation with them, 

and not quite all of it was in vain.13 

Another important result of an open commitment to massive retaliation 

was that it justified keeping just a few U.S. regiments in Korea and a few 

divisions in Europe, small forces which otherwise would be hostages to the 

massive Communist ground and air forces in each of these areas. The Germans agreed to contribute a dozen indispensable divisions to NATO when 

they were assured that our nuclear intervention would save them from being 

overrun by the Red Army. As Wolfram Hanreider explained it: “Limited war 

in Europe meant limited war from the viewpoint of the U.S. but total war 

from the prospect of Bonn. West Germany was interested in deterrence, not 

defense.” 14 

Finally, the memorable speech contains an almost forgotten paragraph, 

which stated that the Korean war had just been ended by a warning of 

“massive retaliation” if it were not ended, thus establishing that the non-use 

of the bomb over Korea was a compromise rather than a failure of will. The 

possibility of a similar compromise in Vietnam was thereby implied. Such a 

’Wernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton, 1965), pp. 248-51. 

13Richard Goold-Adams, The Time ofpower (London, 1962), p. 131; Urs Schwarz, 

14Wolfram F. Hanreider, West German Foreign Policy (Stanford, 1967), p. 185. 

American Strategy: A New Perspective (Garden City, N.Y., 1967) pp. 90-91. 
compromise was soon achieved at Geneva. Anthony Eden, who was Dulles’s 

most troublesome critic, nevertheless wrote of the H-bomb threat: “I do not 

think we could have got through the Geneva conference and avoided a major 

war without it.”l5 

In conclusion, I feel I should mention another pressure on Dubs not 

stressed by Professor Challener-that af the right-wing, isolationist 

Republicans who were then more rampant than the left-wing, isolationist 

Democrats are today. Some years ago, Elmo Roper wrote: “The biggest 

problem facing the new administration and the nation at that time was the 

flourishing career of Senator McCarthy.” Not Senator Taft, but the 

uninhibited Joe McCarthy had succeeded the newly internationalist 

Vandenberg as dominant Republican in the Senate. After the Geneva 

Conference, McCarthy said he could “smell appeasement in the air.” Elmo 

Roper explained: “the basic foreign policy problem was how to be 

conciliatory and internationalist without losing the support of the 

isolationists.” The successful Eisenhower-Dulles strategy was “a series of 

pronouncements, usually by Secretary of State Dulles, which proclaimed a 

daring, militant foreign policy that had little discernible existence outside 

those pronouncements, while hewing to a line of action that was sober, 

moderate, and designed above all to reduce the scope and probability of 

armed conflict throughout the world.” This does sound like a bit of a trick, 

but who is complaining? 

A final question of comparison: Professor Challener agrees that the old 

issue of innovation in military policy by Eisenhower-Dulles is no longer 

moot, but what about comparisons with Kennedy-Rusk-Johnson? Professor 

Challener states and implies that after Dulles, great changes occurred. In 

contrast, I quote from President Kennedy’s most trusted journalist-friend, 

Charles Bartlett: “The ‘brinkmanship’ for which Dulles was attacked has 

become an avowed element of U.S. policy under both Kennedy and Johnson.”17 Judged solely as so-called warrior, Dulles seems to have flown half 

a million miles in vain. He was only a diplomat after all. 

Professor Challener shows that Dulles made no pretense of military 

expertise and that he found room for all to labor in the vineyard of peace. 

He and his military collaborators might well have altered Clemenceau’s 

well-worn slogan-that war is too important to be left to the generals-into a 

new slogan about peace. Their new slogan could read: “Peace is too precious to be guarded solely by civilians.” Military leaders, as I now see them 

from some distance, are not sufficiently numerous or influential to be exclu15Anthony Eden, Full Circle (Boston, 1960), p. 123. 

‘6Elmo Roper, You and Your Leaders (New York, 1958); Goold-Adams, Time ofpower, 

”Edward Weintal and Charles Bartlett, Facing the Brink 

pp. 193, 305. 

(New York, 1967), p. 217. 
175 

sive. They welcome others who will stand beside them in peace as in war, who 

will share their problems and respect their responsibilities. These broad 

criteria, strangely enough, since 1945 have included as allies of military 

leaders most of our Secretaries of State, and have excluded most Secretaries 

of Defense. They would, of course, include all of the great American presidents and all of the great Secretaries of State. Among the latter, as Professor 

Challener has shown, our military leaders would place the formidable John 

Foster Dulles. 
176 

Discussion 

The CHAIRMAN: Professor Crow1 has been promised a couple of minutes 

before we open the session to questions from the floor. 

Professor CROWL: I am not so sure it is necessary for me to say much; 

General Parrish has said just about everything that I had intended to say. I 

do want to reinforce a point that Professor Challener made, and General 

Parrish remade, and that is that in my opinion perhaps the key factor in 

shaping the Eisenhower-Dulles foreign policy, at least in the first year or year 

and a half, was fiscal policy. I think if one is looking for a clue to the doctrine 

of massive retaliation, one should look perhaps to Secretary of the Treasury 

George Humphrey rather than to Mr. Dulles himself. It seems to me that the 

doctrine of massive retaliation in a sense was a logical necessity that followed 

with unerring logic from the two premises on which Secretary Dulles had to 

lean. The first was the inherited doctrine of containment, which today we 

tend to refer to as globalism. The commitment of the United States to contain 

Communism-to contain a presumably aggressive, expansionist, and hostile 

Communist power centered in Moscow-was one with which the Eisenhower administration certainly agreed but did not originate. The new element 

with which Secretary Dulles had to cope was the concept of containment 

within severely limited military budgets. 

Now to Mr. Dulles. I am assuming some things here, but I think that 

to Mr. Dulles, the Humphrey-Republican Party insistence on balanced budgets and the reduction of military expenditures could serve as an open invitation to Soviet probes, to Soviet expansionism. To him the way out of this 

dilemma seemed to be to announce to the world that the United States would 

indeed, or at least was prepared to, use the one element of power in which 

it was superior to the Soviet Union, the one element of effective power 

(leaving out sea power), which was the Strategic ’Air Command and the 

weapons that it could carry. It seems to me that massive retaliation was not 

so much a doctrine or a policy as it was almost an intellectual exercise. Mr. 

Dulles was nothing if he was not a logician, and the logical imperatives in 

his mind almost required him to state the doctrine of massive retaliation. 

A word about Mr. Challener’s reference to Secretary Dulles’s moralism. 

Contrary to what Professor Williams has said and the common belief, it is 

my opinion that Mr. Dulles was not a man with profound religious insights. 
177 

He was certainly not a theologian. He was a churchman. His religious beliefs 

were conventional, just a slight modernization of those that he had inherited 

from his Presbyterian clergyman father. He didn’t examine these very deeply, 

he was not much concerned. He was not a reader of Paul Tillich or of 

Reinhold Niebuhr. But Mr. Dulles rose to public prominence on the platform 

provided him by the National Federation of Churches. His constituency, if 

he had a constituency, was the leaders of the Protestant churches and their 

followers, the thousands and thousands of people scattered throughout the 

country who were regular churchgoers. One might say Mr. Dulles had to 

consider these people; it was among such people that he had grown up and 

grown up politically, so to speak. Now, to announce the doctrine of massive 

retaliation, as Mr. Dulles felt he had to do, created in him a new dilemma, 

the dilemma between the prospective use of atomic weapons and the conventional, Christian dogma of “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” I think 

this most difficult task worried Mr. Dulles all of his life-how to reconcile 

the doctrine of massive retaliation with his Protestant Christian background. 

And my own opinion is that the sort of tortured moralism that Mr. Dulles 

frequently resorted to was an effort to reconcile what he regarded as the 

realities of foreign relations and power with his constituency of, church 

people. 

Now Professor Williams’s paper brings out, I think, a very important 

point-though I do not concur in his use of the term “militarization of 

American foreign policy.” That is not the proper expression. But it does 

suggest to me an important point. At the end of the Eisenhower administration, the doctrine of massive retaliation had obviously become obsolete as the 

single or even the most important element in American military and foreign 

policy. By the end of the Eisenhower administration, even before Mr. Dulles’s death, the Defense Department was moving toward the doctrine of 

balanced forces. Mr. Dulles to an extent concurred in this. With the coming 

of the Kennedy administration, the budgetary restrictions were in effect 

thrown out the window, and as General Parrish has pointed out, much 

heavier expenditures were authorized for the military, particularly for expansion of the ground forces. Neither President Truman nor President Eisenhower nor President Kennedy nor President Johnson seriously considered 

another way out of the dilemma that was created by an almost total acceptance of the doctrine of containment. The issues between the Republicans and 

the Democrats were largely a matter of fiscal differences, it seems to me; and 

no one until the Nixon administration, impelled by the public reaction to the 

Vietnam war and encouraged by the Sino-Soviet split-no one until the 

Nixon administration, as far as I know, has given serious consideration to 

another way out of the dilemma, which is to restrict the global commitments 

of the United States. In other words, to simply get along without containment. 
178 

The CHAIRMAN: We are now down to the concluding panel session. The 

two experts in green who have joined us are familiar to all of you: Professor 

Morton and my colleague, Professor Preston. You are encouraged to ask 

questions not only with respect to Professor Challener’s paper, but on any 

other matters that you feel this symposium ought to consider under the 

general rubric of “Soldiers and Statesmen.” 

General CLARK: I would like to offer one comment on the basic subject, 

which I think would be of general interest-a vignette of history that occurred in Washington shortly after President Kennedy was inaugurated. He 

came over to the Pentagon and spoke to all of the general and flag rank 

officers assembled there. I was present. As I recall, his comments were a 

plea-he urged all officers of all the services to grasp the fact that our world 

today was much bigger and much more complex than the one they had grown 

up to perceive, and he urged all to grasp the significance of the political, the 

psychosocial, the economic, as well as the military implications. And he cited 

instances where at that very moment officers of one service or another in 

various parts of the world were performing services for him, passing him vital 

information on which he had to make critical decisions in national strategy, 

or were themselves making decisions in his name that were well beyond the 

scope of affairs that military officers would normally be expected to deal 

with. I think this gives a little insight into how at least one president, who 

probably didn’t live long enough to show his hand fully in the matter, viewed 

the problem that we have been addressing. 

Mr. JOHN F. LOOSBROCK (Editor, Air Force Magazine ): In Professor 

Challener’s paper, he cited the famous Press Club speech, in which Acheson 

publicly placed Korea outside the sphere of strategic interest of the United 

States. I have often wondered since then if it was the Russians’ believing 

Acheson that led to Korea and to the U.S. military buildup that followed, 

with the ballistic missile program and so on. And I wonder if there is not an 

analogy in reverse with Khrushchev’s speech on wars of national liberation. 

Did we believe too much when he said such wars were going to be the wave 

of the future? Maybe this led us into chaos and the discouraging situation in 

Vietnam. I wonder if any members of the panel would address that. 

Professor CHALLENER: I am not sure that I can say much on the Khrushchev analogy, but a number of years ago Dean Acheson came to Princeton. 

We had carefully selected a group of students to meet with him and ask some 

questions. One of my students put his question a bit too provocatively and 

virtually said, “How come you invited the Communists into Korea with four 

Press Club speech?” Well, Acheson immediately went into orbit wifi no 

visible propellant, and gave us a 15 minute lecture on the subject: The 

important point he tried to make was that his speech had been read entirely 
179 

out of context. He maintained that he had actually been reflecting what had 

earlier been said by the Joint Chiefs and that, therefore, there was nothing 

in the speech that was brand new as far as defense perimeters were concerned. 

Secondly, he had been looking toward something entirely different: namely, 

the possibility that at some future date there might be a split between the 

Communist Chinese and the Soviets. Therefore, he wanted to avoid too close 

an identification of the American cause with Chiang Kai-shek. That part of 

the speech, he said, just never really got through. 

Now, personally, I don’t know if Dulles really believed that the speech 

had led to the Korean invasion, but he certainly made use of this argument 

in some of his own speeches. And I also think that this is one of the starting 

points in the split between Acheson and Dulles. 

Professor CROWL: As I recall that speech, the next paragraph went on to 

say that the United States still retained some kind of strategic interest in 

Korea. It was not a disclaimer of our concern with Korea. 

Professor SMITH: I agree with Professor Challener that one great themethere were two great themes-in that speech was that nationalism in Asia was 

the crucial fact, and that any non-Asian power, whether it was America or 

a European power, that tangled with that nationalism was going to get into 

trouble; so let the Russians get in trouble. If we were so foolish as to engage 

in some adventures that would divert from the Russians to our own shoulders 

the wrath of Asian nationalism, well, it would be our fault, and we would 

rue the consequences-as in fact we may have. But Acheson was also very 

defensive in after years about this, and he has in his ofice a great stack of 

Xerox copies of the front page of the New York Times of March lst, 1949, 

in which General Douglas MacArthur said precisely the same thing-and he 

will mail that out to anyone on request. 

Now I also want to respond to Professor Challener’s suggestion, with 

which I quite agree, that the military component in Dean Acheson’s thinking 

was very strong. I would say it was a good deal stronger than in the thinking 

of Secretary of State Dulles, and I will tell an anecdote to illustrate the 

differences between the two men. 

In 1949 the Russians agreed to lift the Berlin Blockade. In return the 

United States agreed that a council of foreign ministers would meet in Paris. 

John Foster Dulles was a member of the American delegation, and he said 

to Mr. Acheson, as the delegation was about to leave for Paris, that he felt 

this marked a real turning point in history. There had been great misunderstandings between Russia and the West since 1945, but now there was a 

chance to wipe the slate clean and start anew. Acheson could not have been 
180 

in greater disagreement. He said that the meeting of foreign ministers was 

not really a diplomatic event. It was simply a way of allowing the Russians 

to save face and to ratify a change in the military situation, because Acheson 

felt that with the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty and with the nuclear 

deterrent, the monopoly of which we still had, the Russians had finally 

recognized that Western strength was the greater and they were retreating. 

We had them on the run. We weren’t going to embarrass or humiliate them. 

We would go through the motions of having a meeting of the Council of 

Foreign Ministers. 

Now during the meeting another episode occurred involving Acheson 

and Dulles. This is sort of apocryphal, because it is impossible to document 

from Dulles’s side as far as I know. The foreign ministers were meeting, the 

Berlin Blockade had been lifted, and then there occurred what was known 

in those days as a little blockade, involving a rail strike in Berlin. The railway 

workers who lived in the western sectors but were working in the eastern 

sector had a wage dispute with the Russians. The workers wanted to be paid 

in Western currency, and they went on strike. Acheson felt that it was 

important to tell the Russians that we would not continue with the foreign 

ministers’ conference until the strike was settled. He wanted to tell them this 

and give them an ultimatum. Bevin of Britain and Schuman of France agreed, 

and Acheson was to bring it up within the American delegation. Now this 

is Acheson’s recollection. During the meeting Dulles disagreed and said he 

wanted to go on record in the minutes of the delegation as opposing the 

ultimatum. So Acheson said, “Fine, let the minutes so indicate but this is the 

decision.’’ The Russians were told and a few days later the strike was settled, 

whereupon, according to Acheson’s memory, Foster came into Acheson’s 

office in Paris and said, “Dean, about those minutes, have they been typed 

up yet? Do you think you could just leave out my intervention in the debate?” 

Acheson’s memory is that he agreed, and of course the minutes don’t show 

the intervention. 

There was a basic cleavage between the two men at that moment, and 

I think it is part of the transition in Dulles’s thought from the 1945 position 

to the 1953 position. It would be interesting to look closely at Dulles’s 

reaction to the Russian detonation of the bomb, because this certainly was 

extremely important for Acheson, as was the Korean War; but in 1949 the 

two men were poles apart. 

General PARRISH: I have one note from Dean Acheson’s new book, 

Present at the Creation. He makes a spirited and rather convincing defense 

that the influence of his Press Club speech was somewhat misrepresented in 

the presidential campaign. Then he finishes-probably the result of his experience at Princeton-by saying everyone seems to have forgotten about the 
18 1 

speech except, strangely, college students. 

Professor MEYER NATHAN (Colorado State University): I would just like 

to ask Professor Challener, or any other member of the panel, why a particular topic was not gone into more thoroughly-namely, this very militant 

rhetoric of Dulles’s, as contrasted with his very restrained course at Suez and 

in Hungary in 1956. You mentioned the role of Sputnik in perhaps forcing 

Dulles to re-evaluate his whole position. I wonder if you would care to 

comment further on this? 

Professor CHALLENER: This is one of the central mysteries of Dulles. Any 

time you talk with people who worked closely with Dulles, you encounter 

the problem of the discrepancy-the gapbetween the rhetoric of his public 

speeches and the language that he used in, say, cabinet and National Security 

Council meetings, or with his close associates. On such occasions, the rhetoric disappeared, and he was the lawyer dealing with the facts, presenting his 

case, marshaling his evidence. This point struck me very much as I was 

listening to Gaddis Smith’s and General Parrish’s comparisons of Acheson 

and Dulles. Perhaps the basic difference between the two Secretaries of State 

is much more in the outward manner in which they presented their policies 

than in the basic policies themselves. Certainly, when you read the Acheson 

memoirs, you are always struck by the way in which, time and time again, 

he sided with the “hardline” people. Indeed, even with Gaddis Smith present, 

I think it is safe to say that Dean Acheson has probably changed less over 

the past twenty years than anyone in public life. You measure Acheson in 

terms of th’e barometer of American public opinion which, in the late 40s and 

early ~OS, found him too “soft,” but which now finds him too “hard.” But 

Acheson himself changed very little in his views. Dulles, on the other hand, 

is the man in whom there was far more change of opinions. 

Now the matter of Dulles’s rhetoric is partly his manner of speaking, 

his way of trying to deal with his constituency, and he did have a way of 

readily falling into the moral language of the church. But I think that 

fundamentally he did believe that Communism was atheistic. This belief 

affected his views in ways that you won’t find in Acheson, who is much more 

a political animal. 

Professor CROWL May I just have one word on the question of Dulles at 

Suez? I don’t think there was any inconsistency there at all. It just wasn’t his 

brink. It was Anthony Eden’s brink. 

Professor CHALLENER: And he also felt that Eden’s policy was wrong, 

that there was something really immoral about what the French and British 

were doing. When we were interviewing people about the Suez decisions, one 

of the easiest things I found-and I think Phil Crow1 found the same thing- 
182 

was that you could get people pounding on the table in about five seconds 

whenever you mentioned the rightness or wrongness of the Suez issue. There 

really was a very deeply held belief that the United States had to act the 

way it did at the time of Suez, because the Anglo-French policies were 

morally wrong, and had to intervene against the British and French, even 

though that meant doing damage to the American alliance system. 

Professor CROWL: Moreover the British were not just being immoral, they 

were being insubordinate, which was even worse. 

The CHAIRMAN: Could I intervene? I think I see Professor Dorpalen in 

the back. Really his paper yesterday dealt with this. We all know of course 

that rhetoric is designed for internal purposes, to raise our own morale and 

this sort of thing. But this is precisely what we found so disturbing about 

German militarism before World War I and later-this constant drumming 

up of forces in order to get popular support for particular foreign policies. 

I wonder if Dr. Dorpalen would comment on this point. Was it the same kind 

of thing that frightened other people about American policy in the Dulles 

period? Let’s apply this to Black Panther rhetoric. Those people don’t really 

mean what they say:I’m suggesting that the Germans before World War I 

and the Americans in the Dulles period were kind of Black Panthers, brandishing their weapons to keep up their courage, their morale, and to persuade 

internal public opinion, and that this is very dangerous. Would you comment 

on that general idea? 

Professor DORPALEN: Well, I think you can draw certain parallel.! it: the 

sense that much of it is more a matter of emotionalism than of logic, rationality, thinking through of the consequences; but of course this is where political 

leadership should play its role. This is where people like Bethmann Hollweg 

and his associates did not measure up to their responsibilities, as I tried to 

point out yesterday. There were terrific pressures on them, but this is just 

what they should have tried to oppose by explaining what the consequences 

might be of the policies being advocated by the Pan-German League and the 

various service leagues. Bethmann was quite aware of the dangers and the 

risks involved. In effect even Schlieffen, who drew up the Schlieffen Plan, and 

Moltke, who was later its executor, realized that they were taking desperate 

risks, that the Schlieffen Plan was only one possible answer to a very difficult 

military situation. They were not sure at all that the answer would really 

prove helpful, so there were doubts, there were fears; and it seems to me the 

job of the responsible statesman is to impress upon people the dangers of 

popular policies that are being advocated. If they can’t do it, if they feel they 

pught not to do it, then they ought to resign and let somebody else take over. 

This brings me to a question that came up in the discussion about Dulles. 
183 

I was very much interested in the comments, which were quite new to me, 

that Dulles after the Second World War was somewhat more flexible and 

conciliatory than he was later. Now what brought about the change? Why 

was it that Dulles became so inflexible? Actually when he took over, as 

George Kennan and others have argued, he had quite possibly an opportunity 

to tone down the Cold War. Stalin died a few weeks after the Eisenhower 

administration came in, there were a number of conciliatory moves on the 

part of the Soviets, the deadlock over the election of a new Secretary General 

in the United Nations was solved. The deadlock over Korea was solved in 

a way. There had been difficulty over Berlin, but the qutpbahnen were 

opened up again without any further difficulties. There was a loosening up 

in some of the Eastern European states. The British of caprse were very much 

interested in a summit meeting. Why was all this ignored? Pow does that fit 

in with the earlier, more flexible positions that Dulles took? This is a question 

on which I wquld like to hear Professor Challener’s view. 

We have had Mr. Williams telling us that Dulles’s basic assumptions 

were wrong. We have General Parrish telling us that the basic assumption 

of a very serious, active Communist threat was correct. Where does the truth 

lie? One of these assumptions must be wrong and now, 20 years later, it 

should be possible to give some kind of an answer as to how to evaluate the 

Dulles foreign policy. 

Professor CHALLENER: Let me make one or two comments without being 

sure that I can completely answer the question or resolve the differences of 

opinion that have emerged. I think Dulles was really unhappy with the 

containment policy as it had emerged under Truman and Acheson. To be 

sure, he always managed to work closely with them, but there are still a 

number of signs which indicate that he felt that the United States had lost 

the initiative. In that sense he reflected the views of many Republicans, those 

of the center and the right, when they came into office in 1953. I’m also 

convinced that Dulles felt that American interests had been neglected in the 

Far East and that the only thing that was now possible was to try to settle 

the Korean War on the best available terms we could get-but without being 

particularly pleased by the actual outcome. 

But now you get into another problem. To what extent did the alleged 

threat to employ some kind of retaliation affect the Korean settlement? Did 

the threat end the war? A lot of Republican orators-and we are back on the 

question of rhetoric-have maintained that it did. However, I think myself 

that what happened within the Communist world after the death of Stalin 

was much more responsible for producing the truce that the Republicans 

were able to get. 
But I don’t think that Dulles believed that there were any significant 

changes in Communism at that time. Coming into office along with a lot of 

more militant Republicans, he wasn’t tempted to think that the death of 

Stalin had changed very much in the Communist world. My own quarrel 

with Dulles is not so much with this belief as with his attitude during 

Eisenhower’s second term in office, that is, after 1957. It seems to me that 

this was a time when it should have been apparent that there were real 

possibilities for opening up some of the questions of the Cold War, and that 

this was the time when opportunities were missed. 

Professor DORPALEN: May I just come back to this once more, because 

it will help answer Professor Ropp’s question to me a little more clearly. I 

am beginning to have the feeling that perhaps the original Dulles policy was 

much more dictated by domestic considerations-McCarthyism and similar 

phenomena-than by foreign political considerations. If this should be true, 

then of course Dulles would be guilty of the same charges that are raised 

against Bethmann Hollweg. In other words, in order to appease the domestic 

opposition, he pursued a foreign policy with which he was not really in 

agreement, the grave risks of which he was quite aware. I think this again 

raises the question: if he could not pursue the foreign policy which he really 

thought was the right one, should he then not have resigned or at least have 

bpn particularly careful with his language not to encourage the kind of 

pressures that he considered very dangerous? 

Professor CROWL: All I can say to this is that, judging from other things 

he said and did, I don’t believe that in Mr. Dulles’s mind the death of Stalin 

made any significant difference to Soviet foreign policy. He was an avid 

reader, as Professor Challener pointed out in his paper, of Lenin. He often 

called attention to the failure of pre-World War I1 leaders in France, Britain, 

and the United States to take Mein Kampf seriously; and he was taking 

Lenin seriously. I don’t believe that Mr. Dulles really ever thought that in 

the immediate future a detente with the Soviet Union was possible; and what 

the Soviets did in Hungary in 1956 served to confirm his hardline opinion. 

In regard to whether Mr. Dulles was a captive of Joe McCarthy, I just 

don’t think it is true. He was to some extent a captive of the Asia-first wing 

of the Republican Party-Senator Knowland and tHat crowd. But whatever 

McCarthy and McCarthyism represented in terms of foreign policy-and 

remember Joe McCarthy was not an isolationist by any means-I think 

McCarthy is irrelevant to Secretary Dulles’s foreign policy. 

Professor ALLAN R. MILLETT (The Ohio State University): I don’t think 

any of the panel really dealt fairly with one of the major points of Professor 

Williams’s criticism, that the state of the American economy or capitalism 
185 

had a great deal to do with Dulles’s ideas about the Cold War and foreign 

policy. This idea is not limited just to Alperovitz or Gabriel Kolko or Mr. 

Williams himself, but has been suggested by Hammond and Schilling and 

Snyder, and various studies of policy-making in the 1950s. Their general 

conclusion was that the nature of the Cold War, as Dulles saw it, was a 

long-term, continuing economic struggle between two different systems, and 

that rearmament or a massive arms race was ifl fact a part of the Communist 

plan to subvert and undermine the United States. Professor Crow1 has noted 

the connection between fiscal policy and the Cold War, but I don’t believe 

anybody has yet addressed himself to it sufficiently. Might we be more honest 

and just say it was George Humphrey’s fault? 

I would also like to ask Professor Challener whether he found in the 

Dulles papers this conception of a long-term, continuing struggle between 

Communism and capitalism and the need for changing American fiscal 

policy to cope with it? 

Professor CHALLENER: Let me simply refer back to my paper, where I was 

trying to make the point that the Republicans did have a great maw fears 

about what excessive expenditures for defense would do to the American 

economy, to the budget, to taxes, and so forth. Now, I’ve also wrestled with 

the questions raised by Mr. Williams and other members of the New Left, 

with the issue of how much the imperatives of an expanding American 

economy consciously or unconsciously motivated the men who made American foreign policy. My own feeling is that this isn’t something that it is really 

possible to document; you either accept this view as an article of faith, or you 

don’t. 

But let me say one thing specifically about Dulles. He was remarkably 

uninterested in many of the economic aspects of foreign policy that his 

advisers put before him. You can see this especially in the Latin American 

area. Time and time again Dulles would fly into Caracas or some other Latin 

capital for a conference. He would always speak in global terms about the 

great moral confrontation of East and West-then leave immediately and let 

his underlings work out the specific issues that concerned local economic 

problems. In other words, he was never directly interested in the economic 

or financial aspects of Latin American relations, certainly not to the extent 

that you might assume that someone with his Wall Street background might 

have been. I’m also convinced that Dulles looked upon foreign aid budgets 

in terms of the political results that could be gained, rather than from the 

perspective of what might be gained for the American economy. 

The CHAIRMAN: I think we should hear something from the boys in green 

[the chairmen of the previous sessions - Ed.] 
186 

Professor MORTON: Well, I thought I might take matters into my own 

hands. I want you to notice that we are wearing green and not blue. This is 

a significant victory for Dartmouth, although I did go to Duke. 

About five or six years ago, when I was organizing the Macmillan series 

on the wars and military institutions of the United States to which reference 

has been made here, I asked Bill Williams if he would do the volume on the 

war with Spain for precisely the reason that he stated in his comments. He 

hadn’t stated it explicitly then, but I thought this was his idea, and 1 thought 

it ought to make a very interesting book. Incidentally, he accepted my offer 

but later withdrew from the series. 

A part of his argument really gets to the heart of what I think is the 

theme of this session-of the whole symposium. I happen to believe that 

Williams has made a very important observation, which we haven’t really 

come to grips with in talking about the relationship between the military and 

the political. Each of the sessions in its own way has dealt with this under 

the general rubric of “Soldiers and Statesmen.” It seems to me, even if you 

don’t date it from the Spanish-American War, that his observation-and 

Walter Millis also noted this some time ago, at least in a conversation with 

me-is, we don’t have any civil-military relations problem. The real problem 

is the militarization-although it is perhaps not the best term to use-is the 

militarization of the civilian, rather than civilian control of the military. And 

today, I would worry mqre about this kind of problem than whether the 

civilian can control the militae. The president can control the Joint Chiefs 

of Staff. I don’t see any problem about this. All our institutional mechanisms 

and traditions give him the power and authority to do so. The real problem 

is, how does the president think about these problems? 

It seems to me also that General Parrish has made a very interesting 

observation, which has gone by without much comment, and that is that the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff have been closer to and found stronger support in our 

Secretaries of State than in our Secretaries of Defense. Surely if there is a 

problem in the military participation in and formulation of foreign policy, it 

might perhaps be found in this kind of observation or in this area. Has our 

foreign policy really become militarized in a way? These may not be the best 

words or the best way to phrase it, but I think this is the real problem, the 

central problem. 

We may have had at the beginning of the 20th century a dichotomy, a 

differentiation, created between the military and the civilian. The military 

were complaining that they weren’t participating in the formulation of foreign policy and that military factors were not being taken into consideration 

in the development of foreign policy. The problem is entirely different today. 
187 

You may date it from World War 11, or from the War with Spain and the 

economic factors that Williams speaks about, but it seems to me that it is at 

the heart of the issue today; and I think he has made a very important 

observation. It is interesting to observe that Gaddis Smith’s characterization 

of his Secretary of State and Dick Challener’s observation about Dulles don’t 

contradict that thesis at all; and I think Bill Williams has made a very 

important point which goes right to the heart of our discussion here. 

Professor HERMAN HATTAWAY (University of Missouri at Kansas 

City): The last set of comments has opened the way for what I want to talk 

about, a sin of omission rather than of commission. Certainly the statesman 

-and, I contend, the military man-is interested and often involved in the 

internal affairs of his nation, as well as its foreign policy. One of the most 

disturbing comments that I have heard during the symposium has been 

Professor Wright’s-and I have no intention of detracting from his paperbut he indicated that perhaps a textbook of United States history could 

discuss the 19th century and omit references to the army or to the military, 

with the exception of the Civil War. I think he is right that such a book would 

not be considered seriously out of focus; but I think that the profession would 

be incorrect in accepting it as such. 

One thing that has been in my mind through the course of the symposium is the theme of the comments of Professor Weigley-a theme which he 

developed at greater length in The American Military. I find myself still in 

disagreement with much of what he said, notably with regard to the conflict 

issue, which he based on the easily interchangeable roles of soldier and 

statesman. I was especially interested in Colonel Dupuy’s citing specific 

instances of disagreement, and I was surprised that no one thought of the 

conflict between Secretary of War Calhoun and General Jackson. Nevertheless, I think the ease with which the statesmen and the military men interchanged might perhaps indicate that this conflict issue is a false issue. The 

relative lack of conflict may have been a way whereby the military achieved 

a greater degree of power over the course of American development. It may 

well be that the military influenced American life and culture in the 19th 

century much more than many historians thus far have been willing to 

observe. 

I think also that the lack of mention of the Reconstruction period is a 

serious omission. We have talked about the Civil War, but the United States 

Army and Reconstruction is a very relevant topic, and Professor James 

Sefton of course ha9 a seminal book on the subject. Sefton, Harold Hyman, 

and John Hope Franklin all have been concerned with this topic, but I don’t 

think it, or the impact of the military on the general course of American life 

and culture, notably in the 19th century, has been nearly adequately ex- 
188 

plored; and I submit that if we investigate the impact of the military upon 

domestic institutions, the settlement of the frontier, on Reconstruction, and 

perhaps numerous other instances, a textbook of United States .history that 

did not take these problems into account would be considered seriously out 

of focus. 

The CHAIRMAN: Professor Preston wants to comment here. 

Professor PRESTON: I have to comment, to prove that we are not here just 

as ornaments. Another omission strikes me, but possibly not very many 

others here now have noted it, since I think most of the Canadians have 

already gone home. I am thinking that in this discussion of American policy 

there has been a surprising lack of any reference to the attitudes of small 

allies. I remember attending a conference at West Point some years ago, when 

I was there with a group of Canadians, both cadets and university students. 

We Canadians were horrified to hear almost universally from the American 

students present-not the cadets, but the American civilian students-the 

general idea, “After all, we are strong enough to tell these smaller countries 

what they have got to do and we should do so.” Now this kind of statement 

led to lots of rows with Canadians who were present in the seminars. The 

strange thing at that particular conference was the way this idea was rejected 

the keynote speaker. He was somebody I had not known much about 

before. He was the head of a foundation, and he spoke very eloquently on 

the theme that the United States must pay attention to the fact that it is not 

alone, but is part of a complex conglomeration of allies who have different 

interests and must therefore pay much attention to small powers. Two weeks 

later that gentleman became Secretary of State and I don’t think he mentioned the interests of small states afterwards. If he did, I didn’t notice it. This 

was Dean Rusk, of course. I agree very much with what has been said about 

Acheson and Dulles today, but I also think Rusk is going to appear to be the 

bad man of this period of history in the future. 

A second point is the militarization of American civilian attitudes, like 

the attitudes of the civilian students at the West Point conference, so notice 

able ten years agobut not now.One thing that strikes me about this was a 

suggestion made earlier this afternoon that Mr. Dulles, after all, was not 

merely thinking of strategic military interests but actually put more effort 

into foreign aid. I don’t think it is appreciated in the United States the extent 

to which American aid-foreign aid-is regarded abroad as being for American military and strategic interests and purposes. You will understand this 

if you compare American aid with Canadian aid and policy, which is more 

disinterested. Canadians feel very strongly about this. The point is well made 

in a book by a soldier-scholar at the U. S. Military Academy, Professor Amos 

Jordan. He points out that the whole of American aid is directed solely for 
189 

strategic purposes. The only place where it isn’t used to back up the actual 

Cold War struggle is in South America, where it is used to fight Communism. 

I think that, while this use can be explained, it ought to be taken into 

consideration. 

The CHAIRMAN: Our host tells me it is getting time to wrap up this 

conference, although I think we have one more gentleman who wants to 

make a statement. 

Dr. DENYS VOLAN (Historian, Aerospace Defense Command): I was 

distressed to hear Professor Challener say that he would not mention that 

name. It seems to me that an indecently long time has gone by since the name 

of Samuel P. Huntington was mentioned, because he has written one of the 

central books on the topic that we are discussing, The Common Definse; 

Strategic Programs in National Politics. If my memory serves me, there is 

a section in Huntington’s book which is very relevant to the subject of 

massive retaliation, the New Look, the relationship between the two, and the 

relationship between statesmanship and strategy. The New Look preceded 

Dulles’s speech on massive retaliation by some time. 1953 was an extremely 

significant year; the new Eisenhower administration spent almost the entire 

length of it in re-examining the defense mechanism, the military policy of the 

country; it wasn’t until December that Dulles made his famous speech concerning massive retaliation. In all that time there was a great deal of skulduggery in the Pentagon, all of which led to the New Look-in the vernacular, 

the doctrine of a “bigger bang for the buck.” I don’t recall Dulles having 

participated at all in its formulation, which leads me to believe that you 

gentlemen were quite right in emphasizing that this was primarily rhetoric 

on Dulles’s part, not policy making. 

General PARRISH: Just one comment about Professor Preston’s complaint, 

with which I agree. Americans do quite often forget their friends; but I would 

like to point out that the complaint is universal. And it is not just Americans. 

A few years ago, the Australian ambassador to the United Nations complained that, at the UN, unless you have A-bombs behind you, nobody listens 

to your speeches. 

The CHAIRMAN: It is time, I think, to thank our hosts for a very delightful 

session and for their excellent arrangements; and I will now turn things over 

to the chief arranger, Colonel Hurley. 

Colonel HURLEY: Thank you very much, Ted. 

In conclusion today, I would like to pass on to you the thanks of General 

Clark.. He attended practically every moment of the symposium, but had to 

leave a few minutes ago for an important engagement. It is a good thing to 
190 

have your chief executive officer at a university or an academy present for 

practically every minute of one of your affairs. But he is keenly interested in 

history, and certainly his support is very important in the continuance of 

these symposia. He asked me to thank the participants for the excellence of 

their papers. Many of you have come great distances to be with us, and we 

appreciate your support and look for your support in the future. 

It should be clear that we have very consciously invited a wide range 

of views to expose to this symposium, with the idea in mind of achieving a 

basic objective of the symposia, to promote the study of military history. If 

we have made a contribution in that regard over these two days, then the 

symposium has been a success. 

We hope to see all of you at the next symposium, which is scheduled 

to be held during academic year 1972-73, in the fall. We changed to a biennial 

program for various reasons, not only considerations of cost, which I am sure 

you have noticed in the newspapers have had an impact on the military 

establishment these days, but also because we have come to realize that we 

can do a better job if we take more time in planning. We have learned it in 

this one. We began this symposium more than a year ago. 

I would like to conclude on a personal note of thanks to all who have 

made this symposium possible. I am particularly indebted to Ted Ropp and 

to Phil Crow1 for having bailed us out so handsomely. Phil went above and 

beyond the call of duty, for we gave him the paper from Professor Williams 

only a few minutes before this session began this afternoon. I am also indebted to all the members of the History Department. It should have been 

apparent to you during these two days that it takes the work of more than 

30 people to make the symposia a reality. I will single out the Duke man who 

was the chief planner, Major David MacIsaac; and his principal assistant, 

Captain Don Nelson, who managed to talk the upper levels of TWA management into getting Professor Dorpalen here, strike or no strike. 

Thank you very much. 
191 

The Participants 

CHALLENER, Richard D. Born Pittsburgh, Pa., 15 Jan. 1923. A.B., 1947, 

Princeton; A.M., 1948, Ph.D., 1952, Columbia. Has taught at Princeton since 

1949, most recently serving as Chairman 

of the Department of History. Member, 

College Entrance Examination Board’s 

Advanced Placement Committee, 1958- 

61. U. S. Army, 1943-46. Books: Modern France; Problems of the Third and 

Fourth Republics (contributor, 195 1); 

The Diplomats (contributor, 1953); The 

French Theory of the Nation in Ams, 

1866-1 939 ( 1955); National Securily in 

the Nuclear Age (co-editor, 1960); An 

Uncertain Tradition (contributor, 196 1); 

From Isolation to Containment, 1921- 

195. Documents of Modern History 

(ed., 1970). 

CROWL, Philip A. Born Dayton, 17 

Dec. 1914. A.B., 1936, Swarthmore; 

M.A., 1939, Iowa; Ph.D., 1942, Johns 

Hopkins. Has taught at Princeton, U. S. 

Naval Academy, and since 1967 at Nebraska. USNR, 1942-45. Historian, Office of the Chief of Military History, 

Dept. of the Army, 1949-55. Intelligence 

Officer, State Dept., 1957-67. Director 

and consultant, Dulles Oral History 

Project, Princeton, 1964-67. Books: 

Maryland during and after the Revolution (1 942); The U. S. Marines and Amphibious War (co-author, 195 1); Seizure 

of the Gilberts and Marshalls (co-author, 1955); Campaign in the Mariannas 

(1959). 
192 

DORPALEN, Andreas. Born Berlin, 2 

May 191 1. Studied at the Universities of 

Freiburg, Munich, and Bonn; Dr. Jur., 

Bonn, 1933. Bas taught at Kenyon College, St. Lawrence University, and since 

1958 at Ohio State. Editorial assistant, 

Columbia Encyclopedia, 1939-42. Guggenheim fellow, 1953-54. Books: Heinnch von Treitschke (1957, 1973); Total 

War and Cold War (contributor, 1962); 

Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic 

(1964); and Europe in the Twentieth 

Century (1968). 

-+ HACKETT, General Sir John Winthrop. GCB 1967, CBE 1953, DSO 1942 

and Bar 1945, MC 1941. Born Perth, 

Australia, 5 Nov. 1910. BLitt, MA, Oxford. Commissioned in the 8th King’s 

Royal Irish Hussars 1931. He served in 

the Middle East prior to World War I1 

and in spite of active service against dissidents managed to complete his thesis 

on the Third Crusade. Fought in Syria 

1941. Commander of the 4th Parachute 

Brigade 1943; Italy 1943; Arnhem 1944. 

Returned to the Middle East as Commander of the Transjordan Frontier 

Force 1947. Commandant, Royal Military College of Sciencel 1958-61. GOCin-C, Northern Ireland Command, 

1961-63. Deputy Chief of the Imperial 

General Staff 1963-64; C-in-C, British 

Army of the Rhine, 1966-68. Since 1968, 

Principal of King’s College, London. 

Author of The ProfRssion of Arms, the 

Lees Knowles Lectures of 1962. 

a 

I 1 I 
193 

' '""-- MATLOFF, Maurice. Born New York 

City, 18 June 1915. B.A., 1936, Columbia; M.A., 1937, and Ph.D., 1956, 

Harvard. Has taught at Brooklyn College, the University of Maryland, 

American University, San Francisco 

State College, and University of California, Davis, and lectured at most of the 

country's military and naval academies 

and war colleges. U.S. Army, 1942-46. 

Chief Historian, Office of the Chief of 

Military History, Department of the 

Army, he has served in that office since 

1947. Books: Washington Command 

Post (contributor, 195 1); Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfire (vols. 1, 

1 9 5 3, and 2, 1 9 5 9); Command Decisions 

(co-author, 1961); Total War and Cold 

War (contributor, 1962); Recent Interpretations in American History (contributor, 1962); Readings in Russian 

History (contributor, 1962); The Theory 

and Practice of War (contributor, 1965); 

American Military History (ed., 1969); 

D-Dax The Normandy Invasion in Retrospect (contributor, 197 1). 

I 

i 

I 

I 
194 

MORTON, Louis. Born New York 

City, 30 Dec. 1913. M.A., New York 

University, 1936; Ph.D., Duke, 1938. 

Has taught at City College of New York, 

William and Mary, University of Wisconsin. Lectured at National War College, Army War CQllege, U. S. Military 

Academy. Presently Provost and Daniel 

Webster Professor of History, Dartmouth College. U. S. Army, 1942-46. 

Historian, Dept. of the Army, 1946-60. 

Consultant to Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare; Smithsonian Institution; RAND Corp,. Historical Advisory 

Committee, U. S. Air Force. President, 

New England Historical Association, 

1968-69. Books: Robert Carter ofNomini Hall (1941); The Fall of the Philippines (1953); Pacific Commang A Study 

in Interservice Relations (Harmon 

Memorial Lecture, 1961); Strategy and 

Commang The First Two Years (1 962); 

Schools for Strategy; Education and Research in National Security Affairs (coauthor, 1965); The Histonan and the 

Diplomat (co-author, 1967); and generaleditor, “The Macmillan Wars of the 

United States.” 

i.. 
195 

PARRISH, Noel F. Brigadier General, 

USAF (Ret.) Born 11 Nov. 1909, Lexington, Kentucky. B.A., 1928, Rice Institute; M.A., 1966, Ph.D., 1968, Rice 

University. Flew with attack and air 

transport squadrons until 1938, flight instructor until 1940. Commander of the 

Tuskegee Army Flying School during 

World War 11. 1948-51, Deputy Secretary of the Air Staff. 1951-54, Special 

Assistant to the Vice Chief of Staff. 

1954-56, Air Deputy to the NATO Defense College, Paris. 1956-58, Deputy 

Director, Military Assistance Division, 

U. S. European Command. 1958-61, Assistant to the Deputy Chief of Staff for 

Plans and Programs. Director of the 

Aerospace Studies Institute, Air University, until retirement in 1964. Presently 

Assistant Professor of History, Trinity 

University, San Antonio. 
196 

, 

-. _xl " 

POGUE, Forrest Carlisle. Born Eddyville, Ky., 17 Sep. 1912. A.B., Murray 

State College, 193 1; M.A., University of 

Kentucky, 1932; Ph.D., Clark University, 1939. Studied at the University of 

Paris, 1937-38. Taught at Murray State 

College, 1933-42, 1954-56. U. S. Army, 

1942-45; holds Bronze Star and Croix de 

Guerre. Combat historian with the 1st 

Army in the ETO, 1944-45; Hq USFET, 

1945-46; Office of the Chief of Military 

History, 1946-52; operations research, 

Johns Hopkins University and Hq U. S. 

Army Europe, 1952-54. Since 1956, Director, George C. Marshall Research Library. Books: The Supreme Command 

(1954); George C Marshall: Education 

of a General (1963); George C Marshall: Ordeal and Hope (1966); George 

C Marshall: Organizer of Victory 

(1973); George C! Marshall: Global 

Commander(the 10th Harmon Memorial Lecture, USAF Academy, 1968). 
197 

_- PRESTON, Richard Arthur. Born Middlesbrough, England, 4 Oct. 1910. B.A., 

1931, M.A., 1933, University of Leeds; 

Ph.D., 1936, Yale. Has taught at the 

University of Toronto; University College, Cardiff; and since 1965, Duke. 

R.A.F., 1940-45. President of the 

Canadian Historical Association, 196 1 - 

62, and of the Association for Canadian 

Studies in the United States, 1970-71. 

Books: Gorges ofPlymouth Fort (1953); 

Men in Arms (co-author, 1956, 1962, 

1970); RoyaIFort Frontenac (co-author, 

1 9 5 8); Kingston before the War of I8 I2 

(1959); Canada in World Affairs (1965); 

Canada and ImperiaI Defense (1968); 

Canada's R.M.C. (1969). 

ROPP, Theodore. Born Hollywood, Ill., 

22 May 191 1. A.B., 1934, Oberlin; A.M., 

1935, Ph.D., 1937, Harvard. Has taught 

p4 .c 

at Harvard and, since 1938, at Duke. 

Ernest J. King Professor at the Naval 

War College. President, American Military Institute. Chairman, Historical 

Evaluation and Research Organization, 

1966. Books: War in the Modern WorId 

(1959, 1962); The Historical DeveIopment of Contemporary Strategy (Harmon Memorial Lecture, 1970). 

y '?n 

lb. 
198 

#p-,-% SMITH, Gaddis. Born Newark, 9 Dec. 

1961, Yale. Has taught at Duke and, 

since 1961, at Yale; currently Director of 

Graduate Studies. Books: Britain’s 

Clandestine Submarines, 1914-1915 

(1 964); American Diplomacy during the 

Second World War (1965); Growth of 

Canadian Policies in External Affairs 

(contributor, 1960); Brittan and Gemany in Africa (contributor, 1967). 

d 1932. B.A., 1954, M.A., 1958, Ph. D., 

“4 

7- 

WEIGLEY, Russell Frank. Born Reading, Pa., 2 July 1930. B.A., Albright College, 1952; M.A., 1953, Ph.D., 1956, 

University of Pennsylvania. Has taught 

at Pennsylvania, the Drexel Institute of 

Technology, Dartmouth, and since 1962 

at Temple. Books: Quartemaster General of the Union Amy ( 1959); To wards 

an American Amy (1 962); History of 

the United States Amy (1967), in “The 

Macmillan Wars of the United States”; 

The American MilitNy (ed., 1969); and 

The Partisan Wac The South Carolina 

Campaign of 1780-1 782 ( 1970). 
199 

Ph.D., 1950, Wisconsin. Has taught at 

Wisconsin and, since 1968, at Oregon 

State. U. S. Navy, 1941-47. Books: 

American-Russian Relations 1787-1947 

(1952); Shaping ofAmerican Diplomacy 

(1956, 1970); Contours of American 

History ( 196 1); Tragedy of American 

~ 

,’ - 

WRIGHT, Gordon. Born Lynden, 

Wash., 24Apr. 1912. A.B., 1933, Whitman College; A.M., 1935, Ph.D., 1939, 

Stanford. Has studied at the Universities 

of Paris and Grenoble. Specialist and 

foreign service officer, U. S. Dept. of 

State, 1943-47. Cultural attachC, U. S. 

Embassy, Paris, 1967-69. Has taught at 

George Washington University, University of Oregon, National War College, 

Columbia, and since 1957 at Stanford. 

Books: Raymond Poincare‘ and the 

French Presidency (1 942); The Reshaping of French Democracy (1 948); European Political Systems (co-author, 

1953); A History of World Civilization 

(co-author, 1957); France in Modern 

Times, 1760-1960 (1960); An Age of 

Controversy (co-editor, 1963); Rural 

Revolution in France (1964); Jules 

Michelet’s History of the French Revolution (ed., 1967); and The Ordeal of Total War, 1939-1945(1968), in “The Rise 

of Modern Europe.” 

1 

I 

201 

Acheson, Dean G., 10, 11, 98- 

99, 149, 155, 169, 170, 171, 

178, 179-180, 181, 188 

Adams, Sherman, 145 

Alanbrooke, Lord Alan Francis, 

Algeria, 22, 24, 26 

Allen, George, 145 

Allies, 94, 101, 115, 126, 133, 

69 

155, 156 

Combined Chiefs of Staff, 127 

Supreme Allied Commander, 

126, 152 

Supreme Headquarters, Allied 

Expeditionary Forces 

(SHAEF), 127 

See UISQ France, England, 

China, and Soviet Union 

Alperohz, Gar, 184 

Alsop, Joseph, 82 

Andre, Louis J., 32 

Andreski, Stanislav, 141 

Argentina, 59 

Arnold, Henry H., 69-85, 107- 

117 

Asia, 85, 90, 99, 147, 150, 153, 

154155, 170, 183, 184 

See also China-Burma-India 

Theater of Operations 

Atomic Test Ban Treaty, 128 

Aurelle, Louis J., 29 

Australia, 189 

Austria, 36, 38, 40, 41, 57 

Army, 4, 43, 61 

Vienna, 40, 126 

Axis powers, 89, 1 13 

and Italy 

See also Germany, Japan, 

Am, Paul, 25n 

INDEX 

Baldwin, Hanson, 99, 123 

Balkan Peninsula, 70, 101, 110, 

Barings of London, 125 

Bartlett, Charles, 174n 

Beaver, Daniel R., 55 

Belgium, 41, 128, 155 

Bennett, John C., 148 

Berchtold, Leopold von, 44 

Berlin Blockade 

Bevin, Ernest, 180 

Bismarck, Prince Otto von, 38- 

40, 55, 57 

Bissell, Richard, 154n 

Bloch, Marc, 3 

Borden, Sir Robert, 20 

Boulanger, George E., 31 

Bourbaki, Charles D., 29-30 

Bowie, Robert, 157, 158, 160, 

Bowles, Chester, 173 

Boyd, William K., 2 

Bradley, Omar, 98, 126 

British Commonwealth, 18-20 

See also England 

Brodie, Bernard, 1, 173 

Bryan, William J., 10, 164 

Bugeaud, Thomas R., 25 

Bulgaria, 40 

Bundy, McGeorge, 1 

Burke, Arleigh, 156, 160 

Burma, 76, 81, 82 

114 

See Germany 

168, 172 

See also China-Burma-fndia 

Theater of Operations 

Burns, James M., 5, 71, 76 

Cabell, Charles, 154n 

Calhoun, John C., 187 
202 

Canada, 18, 19, 20, 188 

War Measures Act, 18 

Quebec, 5, 77, 80 

Canrobert, Francois C., 28 

Cardwell, Edward, 19 

Castellane, Marechal de, 27 

Catton, Bruce, 12511 

Cavaignac, Louis E., 26 

Cavell, .Edith, 135 

Central America, 85 

Challener, Richard D., 8-9, 61- 

62, 141-142, 143-161 

commevtary on, 163-166, 167- 

175, 176-189 

Changarnier, Nicolas A., 26 

Charles I, of England, 18 

Chennault, Claire L., 74, 82, 92, 

Chesney, Charles C., 61 

Chiang Kai-shek, Generalissimo, 

81, 82, 145, 178 

Chief of Staff (U. S. Army) 

See United States Army 

Chief of Staff (USAF) 

See United States Air Force 

Chile, 57 

China, 5, 74, 82, 92, 95, 99, 101, 

101 

128, 131, 132, 155, 173, 176, 

178 

Nationalist forces, 132, 153 

Communist forces, 9, 144, 150 

See also China-Burma-India 

Theater of Operations 

China-Burma-India Theater of 

Operations, 74, 82-83, 92 

See also World War I1 

Chou En-lai, 173 

Christianity, 10, 124, 164, 177 

See also Protestant Church 

Churchill, Winston, 70, 72, 73, 

75,7845, 109, 111, 117, 126, 

127, 167 

Civil War (U.S.) 

Clark, Albert P., 2, 15-16, 121, 

Clark, Keith C., 123 

Clark, Mark, 145-146 

Clausewitz, Karl von, 7, 46, 125, 

Clay, Lucius, 151n 

Clemenceau, George, 34, 56, 87, 

Cleveland, Grover, 50, 163 

Cold War, 8, 76, 143, 144, 150, 

155, 160, 164, 183, 184, 189 

Coles, Harry L., 46, 7511, 123, 

128n 

Communism, 144-151, 155, 161, 

Condit, Doris E., 55 

Craig, Gordon A., 37n, 4On, 

43n, 44n, 125n 

Crimean War, 27, 125 

Siege of Sebastopol, 27 

Cromwell, Oliver, 18 

Crowl, Philip A., 9, 10, 142, 

See United States 

178, 189 

130-1 3 1 

174 

164 176-185, 189 

162, 163-164, 176-177, 179, 

181, 184, 188, 189 

Cuba, 170 

Cunliffe, Marcus, 49 

Currie, Sir Arthur W., 20 

Curzon, Lord George N., 19 

Czechoslovakia 

Austerlitz, 25 

Prague, 126, 127 

Dansette, Adrien, 26n 

d'Antioche, Comte, 26n 

Danube River, 101 

Deane, John R., 73 

Debevoise, Thomas, 147n 

De Gaulle, Charles, 9n, 2911, 

132, 135, 136 
Democratic Party, 98, 168, 174, 

Denmark, 38 

Department of Defense 

See United States 

Derrecagaix, Victor, 28 

De Sacy, Jacques S., 3011 

d’Ideville, Henri, 25n 

Dill, Sir John, 73 

Dinerstein, Herbert, 173 

d’Ornano, Roland, 24n 

Dorpalen, Andreas, 3-4, 11, 35- 

177 

47, 4011, 44n, 45n, 141, 182, 

190 

commentary on, 47-53, 54-63 

Dreyfus Affair, 3 1, 33 

Dulles, John F., 8-9, 10, 141- 

142, 143-161, 163-166, 167- 

189 

Dupuy, Trevor N., 60, 187 

Eaker, Ira C., 107, 111 

Earle, Edward M., 42n 

Ebert, Friedrich, 62 

Eden, Anthony, 75, 134, 173, 

180 

See also Middle East 

80, 98, 99,- 110, 126. 127, 129, 

Egypt, 169 

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 8, 10, 

131, 143-145, 150, 159, 167- 

171, 173, 174, 176-177, 183- 

184, 189 

Elbe River, 101, 127 

Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 

Emerson, William, 70, 74 

England, 28, 42, 44, 49-51, 61, 

135 

70-73, 76, 124, 126, 127-136, 

146, 147, 154, 155, 169, 171, 

Army, 3, 19 

179, 180-181, 182, 183 

Cambridge, 122 

Chiefs of Staff, 70-85, 86-96, 

Civil War, 48, 113 

Mediaeval, 124, 137 

Mutiny Act, 18 

Parliament, 133 

Royal Air Force, 1 10-1 1 1 

Royal Military College of 

Science, 121 

Royal Navy, 2, 19, 129 

Transjordan Frontier Force, 

121 

English Channel, 54, 77-81, 93, 

94, 104, 105, 114 

Erzberger, Matthias, 62 

Europe, 5, 83, 128, 135, 146, 

97-102, 103-105, 107-1 17 

147, 153, 154, 155n, 156, 172, 

178, 182 

European Theater of Operations, 

2, 42, 48, 59, 70, 72, 83, 84, 

See also World War I1 

90, 93, 94 106, 107-117 

Falkenhayn, Erich von, 44, 46 

Faymonville, Philip R., 74 

Fechtler, William M., 169 

Federal Council of Churches, 

Fenton, John, 146n 

Fischer, Fritz, 42n, 43n 

Fisher, Lord John Arbuthnot, 

Fleury, Emile F., 26, 27n 

Foch, Ferdinand, 25 

Formosa, 132 

Forrestal, James V., 152 

Fox, Lewis F., 146n 

Fox, William T.R., 58, 61 

France, 3, 4-5, 21-34, 38-39, 42- 

148n 

134 

44, 47, 48, 49, 52-53, 54-58, 

77-81, 84, 98, 128, 134, 136, 

146, 147, 154, 169, 180, 181- 

182, 184 
204 

Army, 61 

Battle of Valmy, 29 

Brittany, 117 

Chamber of Deputies, 24, 31 

High Council of War, 24, 31, 

32 

Invasion on southern coast, 

117 

Paris, 36, 39, 179, 180 

Restoration, 23 

Revolution, 22, 124 

Third Republic, 29, 30, 32 

Versailles, 30 

Vichy French Forces, 134 

Franco-Prussian War, 32 

Franklin, John H., 186 

Freycinet, Charles de, 29, 32 

Galbraith, J. Kenneth, 129-130 

Gambetta, Leon, 29, 32 

Gamelin, Maurice G., 57, 59 

Garfield, James A., 51 

Gates, Thomas, 15 1- 152 

General Motors, 152 

Geneva Conference, 153, 174 

Georgia 

Germany, 3, 4-5, 7, 21-22, 33, 

Warm Springs, 72 

35-46, 47, 53-54, 55-60, 62, 

74, 76, 83, 84, 92, 93, 95, 96, 

169, 173, 182 

Air Force, 110 

Army, 61, 127 

Bavaria, 39n 

Berlin, 7, 36, 40, 43, 126, 127 

Bonn, 173 

Burgerwehr, 36 

Munich, 89 

Pan-German League, 182 

Reichstag, 39, 42 

101, 110-1 15, 125-127, 146, 

Blockade, 179, 180 

Saxony, 39n 

Social Democrats, 43 

Socialist Party, 62 

Weimar Republic, 45 

Wurttemberg, 39n 

Gneisenau, August N., von, 36 

Goldwater, Barry, 146 

Gooch, Brison D., 28n 

Goodpaster, Andrew, 153n 

Goold-Adams, Richard, 173n 

Graff, Henry F., 8, 11 

Grant, Ulysses S., 50, 59 

Greece, 124 

Greenfield, Kent R., 5, 70, 74, 

75, 78, 79, 91, 103, 126 

Guizot, Francois P., 25 

Hackett, Sir John Winthrop, 7-8, 

Hagerty, James, 145 

Haldane, Viscount Richard B., 

Hamerow, Theodore S., 38n 

Hamilton, Alexander, 48 

Hamley, Sir Edward Bruce, 62 

Hammond, Paul Y., 184 

Handy, Thomas T., 80, 81, 105 

Hanreider, Wolfram, 173 

Hansell, Haywood S. Jr., 7, 106, 

Harmon, Hubert R., 121 

Harriman, Averell, 73 

Harrington, Sir John, 135 

Harrison, Benjamin, 50 

Harrison, William H., 50 

Hartley, Lodwick, 125n 

Hartung, Fritz, 37n 

Harvard University 

Godkin Lectures, 1 

Hattaway, Herman, 187 

10, 11, 121-138 

19 

107-1 15 

Memorial Lecture, 121-138 
205 

Hawaii 

Hayes, Rutherford B., 50 

Hegel, Georg W., 134 

Herter, Christian, 144, 170 

Higgins, Benjamin H., 123 

Higham, Robin, 54 

Hindenburg, Paul von, 45-46, 

Hitler, Adolf, 96, 144, 155 

Hobbes, Thomas, 123, 133 

Holland, 128 

Hollweg, von Bethmann, 3, 11, 

Hoover, Herbert, 169 

Hopkins, Harry, 71-76, 79, 80, 

Hotzendorf, Conrad von, 41, 43 

Howard, Michael, 3011, 123 

Hughes, Emmet, 168 

Hull, Cordell, 101 

Humphrey, George, 170, 17 1, 

Humphrey, Hubert H., 156 

Hungary, 181, 184 

Huntington, Samuel P., 1, 5, 6, 

Pearl Harbor, 6, 92, 113 

125 

41-42, 44-45, 181, 183 

82 

176, 185 

21, 50, 60, 70, 74, 75, 83-85, 

86-87, 90, 91, 94, 99-100, 103, 

123, 131, 136, 141, 142, 189 

Hurley, Alfred F., 2, 15-17, 141, 

Hyman, Harold, 187 

189- 190 

Iceland, 149 

Indochina, 98-99, 154- 155 

Ireland 

See also Vietnam 

Curragh incident, 132 

Home Rule, 132 

Ulster Unionists, 132 

Ismay, Hastings, L., 73 

Italian Campaign, 28, 114 

fall of Rome, 93 

See also World War I1 

Roman Legion, 124 

Italy, 169 

Jackson, Andrew, 4, 48-50, 187 

Jagow, Gottlieb von, 41 

Janowitz, Morris, 141 

Janssen, Karl H., 44n, 45n 

Japan, 82, 84, 89, 93, 95, 96, 

112, 146, 149, 168, 169 

Hiroshima, 17 1 

Nagasaki, 17 1 

War I1 

Jellicoe, Sir John, 134 

Joffre, Joseph, 33-34 

John (Lackland), King of 

England, 124 

Johnson, Elliott L., 5 

Johnson, Louis, 171 

Johnson, Lyndon B., 176 

Joint Chief of Staff 

See United States 

Jolles, O.J. Matthiss, 131n 

Jordon, Amos, 188 

Jutland, Battle of, 134 

Kehr, Eckhart, 40n, 42n 

Kellogg, Frank B., 169 

Kennan, George, 130, 160, 183 

Kennedy, John F., 151, 159, 

Krushchev, Nikita, 173, 178 

King, Ernest J., 69-85, 112 

King, Jere C., 21 

Kirk, Neyille T., 61 

Kissinger, Henry A., 1 

Kitchener, Lord Horatio H., 19 

Klein, Fritz, 43n, 44n, 45n 

Knowland, William F., 183 

Kolko, Gabriel, 184 

Korean War, 7, 98, 99, 131, 155, 

See also Far East; World 

177, 178 

156, 169, 173, 177, 178, 179, 

182 
206 

North Korean invasion, 9 

Chinese intervention, 9, 150 

Inchon amphibious operation, 

131 

Latin America, 57, 84, 184 

League of Nations, 146 

Leahy, William D., 69-85 

Lebanon, 153, 170 

Legere, Laurence J., 123 

Leighton, Richard M., 5, 7, 77, 

Lend-Lease, 74 

Lenin, Nikolai, 183 

l’Epine, Quatrelles, 27n 

Lincoln, Abraham, 59 

Lincoln, George A., 7, 106, 116- 

hsbrock, John F., 177 

LudendorfT, Erich F., 43n, 4511, 

46, 125, 131 

Luvass, Jay, 58, 61 

Luxemburg, Rosa, 43 

Lyons, Eugene, 149 

MacArthur, Douglas, 7, 9, 19, 

Beirut, 134 

78, 86, 91, 97, 103-105 

117 

92, 99, 125, 129, 131, 135, 

150, 179 

McCarthy, Joe, 174, 183 

McClelland, George B. 50, 51, 

McDermott, Louis M. 57 

MacIsaac, David, 141, 161, 190 

McKinley, William, 4, 50, 51 

MacMahon, Comte Marie E., 31 

McNamara, Robert S., 109, 152, 

McNeil, Hector, 144 

Mahan, Dennis H., 47 

Marshall, George C., 6, 67-68, 

53, 125 

170 

69-85, 86-96, 97-102, 103-105, 

107-117, 152, 169 

Martin, Ben, 163 

Marxism, 128 

Massachusetts, 144 

legislature, 133 

Matloff, Maurice, 5, 6, 75, 78, 

Medeterranean Theater of 

79, 86-96, 103, 107-115, 141 

Operations, 70, 78, 80, 93, 

See also World War I1 

Meinecke, Friedrich, 4011 

Messimy, Adolphe, 3, 33, 56 

Middle East, 169, 170 

Miles, Nelson A., 51 

Miller, Perry, 48, 49n 

Millet, Allan R., 184-185 

Millis, Walter, 131n, 155, 171, 

Mitchell, “Billy”, 133 

Molotov, Vyacheslav M., 76, 173 

Moltke, Count Helmuth von, 4, 

101, 103-105, 110, 117, 121 

186 

31, 33, 39, 41-43, 46, 56, 59, 

182 

Moorman, Thomas S., 15 

Moran, Lord Charles M., 75, 78- 

Morison, Samuel E., 69 

Morocco 

Crisis of 1905, 3, 32 

Morton, Louis, 5, 6, 11, 67-68, 

75, 103, 105, 127, 128n, 178, 

186 

Mountbatten, Lord Louis, 82-83 

Mulder, John, 148n 

Murphy, Charles, 172n 

81, 167, 172 

Napoleon Bonaparte, 22-23, 26, 

Napoleon 111, 23, 25-30, 52 

Nathan, Meyer, 180 

National Council of Churches, 8, 

28-29, 33, 36, 124, 125 

147 
207 

Commission on a Just and 

Durable Peace, 148 

National Federation of 

Churches, 177 

National Security Council 

See United States 

Nazi Germay, 45-46 

See also Germany 

Nelson, Lord Horatio, 134 

Nelson, Don, 190 

Nettl, J. P., 43n 

Newburgh Addresses, 48 

New Look, 153, 155-158, 165, 

189 

New Orleans, battle of, 49 

New York 

Hyde Park, 72, 73, 80 

Niebuhr, Reinhold, 148, 177 

Niel, Adolphe, 27-28 

Nixon, Richard M., 177 

Norstad, Lauris, 152 

North Africa, 25, 75-77, 99, 109- 

North Atlantic Treaty 

110 

Organization (NATO) 9, 135, 

149, 153-155, 173, 180 

North German Confederation, 

Nunn, Frederick, 57 

38 

Pacific, 84 

Pacific Theater of Operations, 

91, 92, 93, 105, 109, 117 

Pan-German League, 42 

Paris Commune, 30 

Parrish, Noel F., 10, 161, 166, 

167-175, 176, 180-181, 183, 

186 

Patton, George S. Jr., 172 

Pelissier, Aimable J., 27-28 

Pershing, John J., 87 

Petain, Henri Philippe, 136 

Philippine Islands, 

Cavite, 67 

Subic Bay, 67 

Pierce, Franklin, 50 

Pierce, Justin B., 62 

Pogue, Forrest C., 5, 6, 68, 69- 

commentary on, 86-96, 97- 

85, 103-105, 123, 126, 141 

102, 107-115, 116 

Poland, 146 

Pomery, Watson, 147n 

Portal, Sir Charles F., 73 

Preston, Richard A., 2, 17, 58, 

Protestant Church, 43, 146, 147, 

Prussia, 3 1, 35-40, 46, 61 

178, 188-189 

176 

Army, 37, 38 

Crisis of 1862, 39 

House of Delegates; 37-38 

Kriegspiel, 29 

See also Germany 

Prussianization, 57-58 

Puerto Rico, 51 

Quemoy, 159 

Quemoy-Matsu Crisis, 146, 153, 

Radford, Arthur, 148, 151, 153, 

154, 156, 158, 168, 171, 172 

Ralston, David B., 33, 56-58, 62, 

123 

Randon, Jacues L., 29 

Republican Party, 148, 150, 154, 

169 

156, 160, 175, 176, 177, 183, 

184, 185 

Rhee, Syngman, 145, 169 

Ridgway, Matthew B., 154, 158 

Ritter, Gerhard, 39n, 40n, 41n, 

Rockefeller, Nelson A., 158 

Rogers, William B., 169 

42n 
208 

Roon, Count Albrecht von, 38 

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 69-85, 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 5 1, 67 

Root, Elihu, 52 

Roper, Elmo, 174 

Ropp, Theodore, 8, 17, 60, 123, 

86-96, 97-102, 103-105, 131 

141-142, 162, 178, 182, 184, 

185, 188, 189, 190, 

Rostow, Walt W., 1 

Royal Air Force 

See England 

Royal Navy 

See England 

Rusk, Dean, 10, 11, 170, 188 

Russia, 40, 42, 43, 57, 74, 76-77, 

84, 92, 93, 125, 126, 127, 128, 

131 

St. Petersburg, 44 

Sel also Soviet Union 

Russo-Japanese War, 59 

Saint-Arnaud, Armand J., 27 

St. Cyr, Gouvion, 24 

Scharnhorst, Gerhard J., 36 

Scheidemann, Philipp, 62 

Scheler, Max, 40 

Schilling, Warner R., 185 

Schleicher, Kurt von, 45 

Schlieffen, Count Alfred von, 40- 

41, 42, 57, 182 

Schmitt, Carl, 46 

Schofield, John M., 52 

Schuman, Robert, 180 

Schwartz, Urs, 173n 

Scott, Winfield, 60 

Sefton, James, 186 

Sherman, William T., 51, 60 

Sherwood, Robert E., 69, 75, 91 

Schowalter, Dennis, 60 

Sicily, 114 

Sims, William S., 52 

Smith, Gaddis, 6, 7, 97-102, 107- 

115, 141, 155, 179, 181, 187 

Smith, Gerard, 159, 168 

Snow, Charles P., 1 

Snyder, Glenn H., 184 

Social Democrats, 43n 

Soult, Nicolas J., 24, 25 

South America, 84 

Southeast Asia Treaty 

Organization (SEATO), 154- 

155, 164 

Soviet Union, 90, 95, 99, 100, 

101, 103-104, 110, 131, 144- 

145, 151, 155, 159, 171, 173, 

177, 178, 179, 180, 183, 184 

Moscow, 176 

See also Cold War; Russia 

Spaatz, Carl, 149, 171, 172 

Spain, 185 

Spanier, John W. 123 

Spanish-American War, 10, 5 1, 

Speier, Hans, 42n 

Spencer, William, 7 In 

Sputnik, 159, 172, 181 

Stalin, Joseph V., 82, 183, 184 

Stanton, Edwin M., 59 

Stassen, Harold, 158 

State Department 

See United States 

Sterne, Laurence, 124 

Stevenson, Adlai, 173 

Stilwell, Joseph, 5, 74, 82, 83, 

Stimson, Henry L., 77, 79, 80, 

Strategic Arms Limitation Talks 

Suezcrisis, 153, 179, 180, 181 

Symington, Stuart, 149, 172n 

Syria, 

127, 161, 186 

101 

99 

(SALT), 128 

Damascus, 134 
209 

Taft, Robert A., 156, 174 

Taylor, Maxwell, 158 

Taylor, Zachary, 50 

Thayer, Sylvanus, 47, 50 

Thiers, Adolphe, 30 

Tillich, Paul, 177 

Tirpitz, Alfred von, 42n, 44 

Treitschke, Heinrich von, 38n 

Truman, Harry S, 6, 7, 98-99, 

101, 127, 131, 143, 169, 171, 

177, 183 

Turkey, 1 17 

Turner, Frederick J., 105 

Twining, Nathan F., 152, 168, 

171 

United Nations, 92, 98, 128, 

148, 149, 150, 155, 156, 183, 

189 

Charter, 9, 150 

United States, 2, 4, 9, 22, 47, 51- 

53, 55, 60, 85, 127-129, 131- 

137, 141-142, 147, 149, 150, 

155, 158, 159, 175, 177, 182, 

183, 184, 188 

Civil War, 5, 50, 58, 59, 61, 

187 

Constitution, 166 

Department of Defense, 40, 

186 

151-153, 168-171, 174, 177, 

Weapons Systems 

Indian Wars, 127, 131 

Jacksonian era, 48 

Joint Board, 67-68, 90, 111, 

Joint Chiefs of Staff, 5, 6, 9, 

Evaluation Group, 106 

113 

10, 67, 71-85, 86-96, 97-102, 

107-117, 131, 132 149, 151, 

153, 159, 160, 168, 172, 178, 

179, 186, 189, 

Joint Strategic Committee, 107 

National Defense Act, 84 

National Security Council, 19, 

67, 151, 152, 158, 181 

National War College, 15 

Navy Department, 113 

Reconstruction, 187-188 

Revolution, 48, 125 

State Department, 8-10, 11, 

Supreme Court, 99 

War Department, 82, 108, 

War Plans Division, 113 

United States Air Force, 155, 

Chief of Staff, 69-85, 86-96, 

Headquarters USAF, 

Directorate of Plans, 106 

ROTC, 15 

Strategic Air Command, 175 

63, 67, 93, 98, 143-188 

113, 149 

158, 169-170 

11 1-1 17 

U-2, 1970 

United States Air Force 

United States Army, 58, 60, 61, 

Chief of Staff, 69-85, 86-96, 

General Staff, 52, 67, 113 

Root reforms, 60 

3d Nebraska Regiment, 51 

U.S. Command in the Far 

East, 169 

War College, 77, 127 

Academy, 15- 16 

69-85, 171, 186 

97-102, 103-105 

United States Army Air Corps, 

162 

AWPD-1, 106, 107 

Office of the Chief, 106 

See also United States Air 

Force; United States Army Air 

Forces 
210 

United States Army Air Forces 

Air Intelligence Section, 1 12 

Eighth Air Force, 107, 110, 

Twelfth Air Force, 110 

111 

See also United States Air 

Force; United States Army Air 

United States Congress, 49, 72, 

89, 149, 152, 155, 170 

United States Military Academy 

(West Point) 4, 47, 49, 50, 

106, 188 

United States Navy, 69-85, 142, 

153, 155, 158, 162, 171 

General Board, 62, 67-68 

Under Secretary, 15 1 

See also United States 

corps 

Upton, Emory, 51 

Vaillant, Jean B., 27, 28 

yandenberg, Hoyt S., 170, 174 

Vietnam, 159, 165, 173, 177, 178 

Dien Bien Phu, 153, 154 

Saigon, 153 

Volan, Denys, 189 

War, John W., 50 

War of 1812, 127 

Warren, Earl, 99 

Washington, D.C. 76, 79, 173, 

178 

White House, 79, 112 

Foggy Bottom, 171 

Washington, George, 125 

Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, 40n, 42n 

Weigley, Russell F., 4, 7, 47-53, 

Weintal, Edward, 174n 

White, Leonard D., 49 

White, Thomas D., 112 

William I, of Germany, 35-37, 

59, 67-68, 98, 141, 187 

45 

Wilhelm 11, of Germany, 3, 41, 

William 111, of England, 18 

William IV, Frederick of 

Williams, William A., 9-11, 17, 

42 

Germany, 37, 46 

161-162, 163-166, 177, 184- 

185, 186, 187 

Wilmot, Chester, 69, 99 

Wilson, Charles E., 9, 152-153, 

Wilson, Charles M., 79 

Wilson, Woodrow, 10, 89, 164 

'Wood, Leonard, 51, 52 

World War I, 20, 41, 44, 52, 56, 

168 

57-60, 62, 67, 72, 84, 87, 94, 

125, 130, 132, 135, 142, 155, 

182 

Treaty of Versailles, 4, 6, 146 

World War 11, 46, 67-117, 121, 

127, 130-132, 141-142, 147, 

161, 163, 169 

Bolero, 104 

Buccaneer, 75, 81 

Conferences 

Cairo, 76, 81, 82, 107 

Casablanca, 72, 92, 110, 111 

Potsdam, 2 

Quebec, 5, 77, 79-81, 104, 

105, 107 

Teheran, 76, 81, 92 

Trident, 5, 77, 78, 104 

Yalta, 127 

Gymnast, 76 

Jupiter, 76 

Overlord, 79, 92 

Rainbow plans, 89 

Roundhammer, 80 

Roundup, 78, 104 

Sledgehammer, 78, 

Torch 5, 75, 79 

104 
211 

Wright, Gordon, 3, 4, 20, 21-34, 

commentary on, 47-53, 54-63 

141, 186 

Yeager, Charles E., 172 

Yugoslavia, 

Sarajevo, 3 

Q U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1975 593-1W931