COLLEGE OF AEROSPACE DOCTRINE,

RESEARCH AND EDUCATION

AIR UNIVERSITY

Once in a Blue Moon:

Airmen in Theater Command

Lauris Norstad, Albrecht Kesselring, and

Their Relevance to the Twenty-First

Century Air Force

HOWARD D. BELOTE

Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

CADRE Paper No. 7

Air University Press

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama 36112-6615

July 2000

AIR UNI V ERSITY
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Belote, Howard D., 1963–

Once in a blue moon : airmen in theater command : Lauris Norstad, Albrecht

Kesselring, and their relevance to the twenty-first century Air Force/Howard D. Belote.

p. cm. -- (CADRE paper ; no. 7)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-58566-082-5

1. United States. Air Force--Officers.2. Generals--United States.3.Unified operations

(Military science) 4. Combined operations (Military science) 5. Command of troops. I.

Title. II. CADRE paper ; 7.

UG793 .B45 2000

358.4'133'0973--dc21 00-055881

This CADRE Paper, and others in the series, is available

electronically at the Air University Research web site

http://research.maxwell.af.mil under “Research Papers”

then “Special Collections.”

Disclaimer

Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those of

the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Air University, the United States Air

Force, the Department of Defense, or any other US government agency. Cleared for public

release: distribution unlimited.

ii
CADRE Papers

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iii

Please send inquiries or comments to:

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CADRE

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Contents

Page

DISCLAIMER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii

FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

ABOUT THE AUTHOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

EARLY PERSPECTIVES ON

JOINT/COALITION COMMAND. . . . . . . . . . . . 97

AN AIRMAN COMMANDER

IN CHIEF: LAURIS NORSTAD . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

AN AIRMAN COMMANDER IN

CHIEF AT WAR: ALBRECHT KESSELRING . . . 31

CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES . . . . . . . . . . . 53

CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

IMPLICATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

RECOMMENDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

FINAL THOUGHTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

BIBLIOGRAPHY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Illustrations

Figure

1 Allied Advances in Italy, 1943–44 . . . . . . . . . . . 41

2 Commanders in Chief versus USAF

Generals’ Careers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

v
Photographs

Page

Gen Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gen

Lauris Norstad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Gen Lauris Norstad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

General Norstad before Congress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Gen Charles de Gaulle and Gen

Lauris Norstad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Field Marshal Albrecht Kesselring in 1940 . . . . . . . . . . 36

Field Marshal Kesselring in His

Focke-Wulf 189 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Field Marshals Erwin J. Rommel and

Albrecht Kesselring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

vi
Foreword

In the 53-year history of the United States Air Force (USAF),

only two airmen have risen to serve as regional commanders

in chief (CINC). During the same period, 74 soldiers, sailors,

and Marines were selected for geographic CINC billets. In Once

in a Blue Moon: Airmen in Theater Command, Lt Col Howard D.

Belote examines the reasons for this disparity and suggests

how airmen might improve their prospects for becoming

future regional commanders.

Colonel Belote employs historical analysis to identify the

personal and professional qualities airmen should seek as

prospective war-fighting CINCs. To establish a baseline for

that analysis, he begins by studying the careers of two early

regional CINCs, Gen Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gen Jacob L.

Devers. Relying heavily on primary sources in the Air Force

Historical Research Agency, the author then offers two

detailed biographical case studies. The first is of Gen Lauris

Norstad, until this year the only USAF officer to have served

as a regional CINC.* The second case study considers the

career of German Field Marshal Albrecht Kesselring, one of

only two airmen ever to have commanded a theater in

wartime.**

Belote complements his historical inquiry with findings

based on interviews with senior Department of Defense officials coupled to an analysis of the recent literature on joint

command. These varied sources agree on one very significant

point: to perform effectively as war-fighting CINCs, airmen—

indeed, all officers—must possess comprehensive joint military proficiency, an incisive geostrategic-political-military

vision, and strong—but nuanced and deft—skills in leadership

and interpersonal relations.

One other major finding deserves mention up front. Without

exception, the senior officials interviewed by the author agreed

vii

_____________

*The second USAF officer to achieve this distinction is Gen Joseph W. Ralston. General Ralston assumed

the post of supreme allied commander, Europe, on 3 May 2000.

**The other airman who served as wartime theater commander was Lt Gen Frank M. Andrews, US Army

Air Forces. Andrews served as commanding general, European theater of operations, for barely three months

before he was killed in an aircraft crash in May 1943. 
that as would-be CINCs, airmen are handicapped by a distinctive characteristic of Air Force culture. As members of a

technical service that places a high premium on Air Forcespecific skills, most airmen fail to acquire the wide-ranging

joint and political-military experience expected of potential

regional CINCs. To help remedy that problem, the author

proposes creation of a new and intentionally broad-gauged “joint

warfighter” career track.

Originally written as a master’s thesis for Air University’s

School of Advanced Airpower Studies (SAAS), Once in a Blue

Moon subsequently was selected by the Air Force Historical

Foundation as the best SAAS thesis for academic year

1998–99. The College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and

Education is pleased to make this timely work available to a

wider audience in the Air Force and beyond.

viii

JAMES R. W. TITUS

Dean of Research

Air University
About the Author

Lt Col Howard D. “Dave” Belote (BA, University of Virginia;

MBA, Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University; MAAS, School of

Advanced Airpower Studies), a senior pilot with more than

1,900 flying hours, earned his commission as a distinguished

graduate of Officer Training School in 1985. After completing

undergraduate navigator training in 1986, he served as an F111 weapon systems officer at RAF Lakenheath, United

Kingdom. He attended Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training at

Sheppard Air Force Base (AFB), Texas, in 1991 and was then

assigned to Hill AFB, Utah, as an F-16 pilot. Completing his

tour as an instructor pilot and flight commander, he transferred to Headquarters Air Combat Command (ACC), Langley

AFB, Virginia, in 1995. There he served as a fighter operations

inspector in the Office of the Inspector General and earned

recognition as Headquarters ACC Company Grade Officer of

the Year for 1996. In July 1998 Belote (then major) entered the

School of Advanced Airpower Studies (SAAS) at Maxwell AFB,

Alabama. Following SAAS, he was assigned as chief of theater

air strategy and chief of the joint/combined synchronization

cell for Seventh Air Force and the Air Component Command,

Osan Air Base (AB), Republic of Korea. In June 2000, he will

attend F-16 requalification training en route to an operational

tour at Spangdahlem AB, Germany.

Colonel Belote is a distinguished graduate of both Squadron

Officer School and the Air Command and Staff College,

Maxwell AFB, Alabama. His article, “Paralyze or Pulverize:

Liddell Hart, Clausewitz, and Their Influence on Air Power

Theory,” was published in Strategic Review. Two other articles—“John Warden and the Air Corps Tactical School: What

Goes Around Comes Around” and “The Weaponization of

Space: It Doesn’t Happen in a Vacuum”—appeared in

Aerospace Power Journal. He is married to the former Pamela

Rosenow. They have three sons, Drew, Michael, and Matthew.

ix
Introduction

The first requirement for any commander is leadership . . . . It doesn’t matter if one is air-, land-, sea-, or

space-trained . . . It is important that one understand the

strengths, weaknesses, and doctrines of each and how

to blend them in battle.

—Gen Charles A. “Chuck” Horner

In 1947 the National Defense Act established positions for

regional commanders in chief (CINC). Nine years later, when

Gen Lauris Norstad took command of allied forces in Europe,

he became the first geographic CINC from the young United

States Air Force (USAF). He served as supreme allied commander, Europe (SACEUR), and as the first head of the United

States European Command (USEUCOM) for more than six

years, designing cold war strategies and force structures to

contain the Soviet Union. News accounts from the period suggest General Norstad commanded joint and combined forces

effectively, blending a broad knowledge of service capabilities

with consummate diplomatic skill and understanding of European politics.

In January 1963 Norstad retired, and the Air Force waited

more than 37 years to see another airman rise to the pinnacle

of geographic command. To be sure, 12 Air Force officers

served as commander in chief, Alaskan Air Command, between 1947 and 1974; and Gen Truman H. Landon and Gen

Harry Goodall filled in as CINCs for five weeks and 10 days, respectively—but for all intents and purposes, the USAF filled

only one theater CINC billet between World War II and May

2000, when Gen Joseph Ralston assumed the SACEUR billet

once held by Norstad. In the same period of time, 36 Army officers, 34 Navy officers, and four marines have headed the Atlantic, Pacific, European, Southern, and Central commands.1

Does it matter that the Air Force has produced only two theater CINCs in its 53-year existence? More and more, the answer must be yes. No matter what one believes about the

“decisiveness” or “centrality” of aerospace power, one must

1
concede that over the past 53 years that element of power has

become an increasingly significant component of military

might. Whether used to influence significantly the terms of

land battle as at Khafji, to transport supplies to refugees as in

Kurdistan or Somalia, to enforce international agreements

through surveillance and shows of force as in the Iraqi no-fly

zone, or to punish noncompliance with international agreements such as the Dayton accords, airpower has tended to be

the first arrow pulled from a commander in chief’s quiver. Furthermore, recent history suggests that this trend of airpower

use in a wide variety of political and military circumstances

will continue. America and its allies responded to various

crises in late 1998 and early 1999 with cruise missile attacks

in Afghanistan and the Sudan, the Desert Fox bombing campaign in Iraq, and Operation Allied Force in Kosovo. In other

words, control and exploitation of air and space have become central to both modern war fighting and coercive

diplomacy.

This being the case, how does the Air Force’s failure to produce theater CINCs affect the national defense? Put simply,

while the dearth of Air Force CINCs has not dramatically degraded the nation’s military security, it reflects a potential

misuse of resources. Although it is possible for a CINC who is

not an airman to employ airpower effectively, common sense

argues that when airpower is central to a campaign or operation, an airman would bring greater familiarity with its capabilities and limitations into his command decisions. World War

II Chief of Staff George C. Marshall would have agreed. In 1941

his office accepted the proposition “that the employment of air

power called for more intensive knowledge of air power’s capacities . . . than was possessed by the most enlightened of

ground-trained officers.”2 Currently, such knowledge should

allow the airman to blend aerospace capabilities into a joint

campaign more effectively than a sister-service counterpart.

However, as indicated by the parameters cited above, airmen

have not been afforded the opportunity to demonstrate their

joint war-fighting abilities at the most senior level.

Why? Part of the answer may stem from parochialism and

interservice rivalries. It is only a part of the human condition

2

CADRE PAPER
to identify with one’s experiences and fail to understand and

integrate those of others. By tradition, Army and Navy officers

have owned the geographic “CINCdoms,” see no reason to

change the status quo, and for the most part have convinced

civilian leaders to maintain things as they are. Furthermore,

Graham T. Allison’s bureaucratic politics model illuminates

the natural tendency to protect turf, and thereby suggests why

some leaders could distrust Air Force officers with command

of Army, Navy, and Marine Corps formations. Indeed, at least

one retired Army four-star general reacted sharply to General

Ralston’s nomination, insisting “that position calls for an

Army guy. I think a lot of Joe Ralston, but it’s not an Air Force

billet.”3 Hinting at that kind of distrust, Gen Charles A.

“Chuck” Horner suggested that “you can’t be a regional CINC

unless you’re a gravel cruncher. Why? Because that’s how it

is.”4 Finally, echoing General Horner’s point, three retired

four-star generals—two from the Air Force and one from the

Army—conceded that senior army officers opposed the continuation of an admiral as commander of NATO’s southern region when ground troops were deployed to Bosnia.5 Such

comments suggest that the Air Force can do very little directly to influence the mind-sets of senior officers from

other services.

There is, however, a different perspective on the subject.

Three of the nation’s most senior retired defense officials insist

that personal qualification for the position is the sole consideration in the choice of a CINC. Former Secretary of Defense

Dick Cheney does not “think there’s any conscious effort to

push the Air Force out.”6 Cheney’s selectee as chairman of the

Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), Gen Colin L. Powell, noted that

“during my tenure as Chairman, all, I repeat all, of the CINC

positions were offered to all of the Services. . . . Frankly, I was

not going to recommend an Air Force officer to the SecDef just

to make the Air Force happy. That would be reverse parochialism. It had to make sense.”7 Finally, General Powell’s successor as CJCS, Gen John M. D. Shalikashvili, declared “the system will break unless we pick the number one officer available

[to serve as a CINC]. It should not be ‘it’s our turn.’ The game

starts all over each time.”8

3

BELOTE
Those views—from men responsible for filling the country’s

most important military positions—suggest another possibility

to explain the low number of Air Force geographic CINCs. The

37-year gap between airmen in that role could indicate either

that airmen lack certain necessary qualities to command joint

forces or that they fail to demonstrate those qualities to the

proper audience. Could it be that airmen fail to groom themselves to wield joint power? Indeed, one Air Staff officer noted

that “at a recent meeting with general officers, I was amazed

at how they answered the questions affecting the way the

CINCs used aerospace power. They always answered in terms

of being a JFACC [joint force air component commander], not

a JTF [joint task force] Commander.”9

Gen Charles G. Boyd, former deputy CINC, USEUCOM,

concurred, saying “we’re obsessed by JFACC because of our

precious airplanes and a psychology that says we’re [only]

support forces.”10 Whether or not this phenomenon indicates

a failure on the part of the Air Force, it is the only part of the

regional CINC equation that the Air Force can directly influence. General Boyd continued “make no bones that [parochialism] exists and must be overcome. But don’t waste time on a

cause célèbre. Make political [leaders] understand the logical

arguments [for airman CINCs].”11 Before arguing that an airman can command joint and combined forces, however, one

must investigate what joint commanders do.

Understanding the responsibilities of CINCs is relevant for

two reasons. First, if the Air Force wants to make its greatest

possible contribution to the nation—if it wants its senior officers to ascend to the pinnacle of joint war-fighting competence

as regional CINCs—it has to know what it is after and must

produce an obviously qualified pool of candidates. Second,

and more importantly, the question of CINC qualifications relates directly to the overall national defense, as the nation’s

shrinking forces must be employed in the most effective possible manner. Airpower has simply become too important to

overall military capability to be permanently relegated to a

supporting role. As suggested above, America’s predisposition

toward involvement in humanitarian operations and smallerscale contingencies brings airpower in all its forms ever closer

4

CADRE PAPER
to center stage. This trend could make appointment of Air

Force CINCs a significant national defense issue.

To meet the national need for military readiness, therefore,

the armed forces need CINCs who can employ forces as effectively as possible. For those political and military situations

where airpower is central—and the late 1990s suggest that

could be the majority of international situations—the ultimate

example of an air-minded joint force commander would be an

Air Force general officer who can prove to the nation that airmen understand and can employ all facets of joint power. Before that can happen regularly, however, both the leaders who

appoint CINCs and the sister-service members whose forces

would serve under such CINCs must be convinced that airmen

can effectively command joint and combined forces. To that

end, this paper poses the following question: What are the

qualities necessary for airmen to perform effectively as warfighting CINCs?

Evidence and Methodology

This paper identifies those necessary qualities of knowledge,

insight, and skill through three methods. First, it reviews theoretical and historical literature on command. An examination

of the writings of Allied joint and combined force commanders

from World War II and the military historians who studied

them will lead inductively to a composite picture of a successful CINC and create a baseline for further analysis.

The study then tests this conceptually derived characterization of CINCs against the experience of the only prominent airmen with complete tours as commanders in chief, the aforementioned General Norstad and German Field Marshal

Albrecht Kesselring.* During a period of great international

turbulence, Norstad focused NATO on the Soviet threat in

spite of competing nationalist agendas promoted by the Americans, British, French, and Germans. However, because he

5

BELOTE

_____________

*Norstad was actually the second American airman to rise to theater command. Lt Gen Frank M. Andrews,

one of the seminal figures of early US airpower history, became commander of the European theater of operations in February 1943 but died barely three months into his tenure. Had Andrews left a lengthier performance record as a theater commander, I would have included him in this study.
was successful in deterring war in Europe, Norstad’s case

lacks a significant component of CINC performance: the conduct of active hostilities. To assess an airman’s performance

as a CINC in war, one must turn to the German World War II

experience. Kesselring—who started World War II as the commander of the air fleets that supported the invasion of Poland

and played a central role in the Battle of Britain—assumed

joint command of the Mediterranean theater in September

1942. Through diplomatic skill, political insight, and operational expertise, he covered Field Marshal Erwin J. “Desert

Fox” Rommel’s escape from North Africa and conducted an effective defense in the face of the Allied invasion of Italy. By examining oral histories, postwar interviews, personal memoirs,

and contemporary sources, this paper highlights the qualities

these two commanders in chief used to succeed in coalition

command.

The discussion that follows relates the issue of war-fighting

command to the present through interviews with retired senior leaders. By comparing the historical lessons with the experiences of latter-day CINCs, deputy CINCs, chairmen of the

JCS, and a defense secretary, a composite of requisite qualities for the modern coalition commander should emerge. The

synthesis of historical and recent evidence will answer the

central question in this paper and describe the skills and insights airmen must develop in order to compete effectively for

regional CINC billets.

Of course, developing such abilities is but the first step in

the journey to systematically produce worthy successors to

Generals Norstad and Ralston. To that end, this paper concludes with thoughts to guide future research. Working from

the evidence developed through the interviews, the study suggests possible answers to follow-on questions about the institutional impediments to an airman’s appointment. It describes

the CINC selection process and highlights the attributes necessary to overcome the inertia of tradition and culture. To address the bottom line—what the Air Force can do to produce

potential CINCs—this paper offers suggestions about how to

inculcate those attributes in airmen.

6

CADRE PAPER
Early Perspectives on

Joint/Coalition Command

Generalship is, in short, much more than command of

armies in the field.

—John Keegan

What personal qualities enable an officer to command large,

complex, multinational forces effectively? The pat answer would

probably be “courage and soldiering skills,” and without a

doubt, both are components of successful command. Such an

answer, however, only scratches the surface. Achieving unity

of effort inside a multicultural force requires vision and ability

above and beyond military decision-making skills.

Such skills have been particularly necessary in this century

of world wars fought by coalitions of representative democracies.12 Indeed, coalition command was instituted in desperation at the end of World War I, when the Allied powers turned

to Marshal of France Ferdinand Foch to direct the offensive

that they hoped would end the war. However, Foch was as

much a “first among equals” as he was a commander; and

leaders such as Gen Douglas Haig and Gen John J. Pershing

enjoyed a great deal of autonomy even after Foch’s appointment as commander in chief. Therefore, to examine the roots

of supreme command as it exists today and thereby create a

baseline for further analysis of coalition command, one must

look to the theater commanders of World War II. Through the

writings of both practitioners and observers of joint command

in World War II—the birthplace of the modern joint and coalition command system—a picture of CINCs emerges that includes broad joint professional competence, deep geostrategic

understanding, and several key personal qualities. They include

intelligence, persuasiveness, integrity, and team-building skills.

Participants

One notably successful commander, Gen Jacob L. Devers,

who commanded the North African theater, the European theater, and Sixth Army Group in World War II, described the

foundations for coalition command in his postwar speeches

7

BELOTE
and writings. In a 1947 speech reprinted in Military Review,

General Devers argued that a coalition commander’s problems

“tax his native ability, professional skill, and patience to an

unbelievable degree,” therefore requiring “unquestioned ingenuity, professional skill, tact, good judgment, and patience.”13

The general listed several problems facing top-level joint and

combined commanders, including lack of clarity of higher

headquarters’ directives; conflicting political, economic, and

military problems and objectives of each of the Allied powers;

and “probably the most important of all . . . the personalities

of the senior commanders of each of the armed services of the

allied powers under command.”14 He then provided solutions

to those problems.

In determining his appropriate course of action under a directive received, the Theater Commander must bear in mind that

he has under command professional soldiers and experienced

commanders of several nations other than his own, who owe

their first allegiance to their own governments. . . . It is unreasonable to expect that the military representatives of nations

who are serving under unified command in combined operations will subordinate promptly and freely their own views to

those of a commander of another nationality, unless the commander, through professional skill, good judgment, tact, and

patience, has convinced them that it is to their national interests individually and collectively.

Hence, the Theater Commander must first know the several national problems and aspirations in detail before he can hope to

deal with his commanders.15

In other words, the general suggested themes of comprehensive professional knowledge, political/strategic understanding, and interpersonal skills—themes that recur throughout the writings of World War II observers and participants.

Devers’s superior in Europe—the supreme commander, Allied Expeditionary Forces, General of the Army Dwight D.

Eisenhower—cited the same factors of political insight, personality, and competence. Early in his command, he had but

an inkling of the importance of politics, writing in 1942 to

General Marshall: “The sooner I can get rid of all these ques8

CADRE PAPER
tions that are outside the military scope, the happier I will be.

Sometimes I think I live ten years each week, of which at least

nine are absorbed in political and economic matters.”16 The

future SACEUR and president quickly worked international

insights into his leadership style, however. Writing after World

War II, he noted that “personalities of senior commanders and

staff officers are of special importance. . . . The high commander must . . . be calm, clear, and determined—and in all

commands, especially allied organizations, his success will be

measured more by his ability to lead and persuade than by his

adherence to fixed notions of arbitrary command practices.”17

For Eisenhower, that persuasive ability was rooted in an

ability to see his subordinates’ points of view:

You must work in every way you know to develop the confidence

of your subordinates in the commander, in his common sense,

straight-forward thinking, and absolute refusal to touch a problem on a nationalistic ground. . . .

[Y]ou have to let the people of the opposite nationality see that

in everything you do, in every move you make, you are preserving strict impartiality. Literally you had to refuse in such a position to be wholly a citizen of your own country. You were half one

and half the other. You had to recall that and keep it in the forefront of your conscious mind every single minute of the day. . . .

[Finally], you must be prepared . . . to accept minor inefficiencies as long as that is promoting the great and common purpose. You should not try to change ideas and concepts on the

part of some subordinate of a different nationality because you

disagree with him. If you can achieve the great overall unity of

purpose that inspires loyalty, inspires teamwork, never bother

your heads about seeking perfection.18

Eisenhower also relied on broad professional development,

noting “that in the higher positions of a modern Army, Navy,

and Air Force, rich organizational experience and an orderly,

logical mind are absolutely essential to success,” as was “an

inexhaustible fund of nervous energy. [The commander] is

called upon night and day to absorb the disappointments, the

discouragements and the doubts of his subordinates and to

9

BELOTE
force them on to accomplishments, which they regard as impossible.”19 The supreme allied commander fired that nervous

energy with a driving but not-too-obvious personal ambition

that he subsumed in a deep commitment to the ideals of the

military profession and sense of purpose, and he demanded

the same of those close to him. “Combat commanders,” he insisted, “must be selected from among those who preferred a

battle-line position to any other, regardless of lesser considerations.”20 Eisenhower, like Devers, credited his success to

broad military skills, an understanding of international realities, and the personal ability to communicate them to a diverse audience.

Observers

In the intervening years, historical analysis has confirmed

the impressions and recollections of the World War II commanders. In 1986 Col Richard W. Anderschat analyzed theater

command requirements in a monograph for the US Army War

College titled “Factors Affecting Success in Coalition Command.” Colonel Anderschat used studies of General Devers

and his contemporaries, Gen Mark W. Clark and Gen Joseph

W. Stilwell, “to determine those factors which contributed to

their success or failure in combined command in various theaters” of World War II.21 The colonel concluded that a successful coalition commander must “be a consummate professional. He must be experienced and knowledgeable on the art

of war and must understand the capabilities” of all the component forces at his command.22 Anderschat continued that

the commander “has to be able to think on the political and

strategic levels,” understanding his country’s policy, alliance

policy, and the national policies of each coalition member, and

then be sensitive to each.23 He finished with the observation

that “the most important factor” in his study of Devers, Clark,

and Stilwell was “personality.” “Strong interpersonal skills are

absolutely essential to the success of a coalition commander.”24

To frame his analysis of command success, Anderschat relied on an in-depth, sophisticated study by professors Martin

Blumenson and James L. Stokesbury, Masters of the Art of

10

CADRE PAPER
Command. While most of their chapters dealt with individual

military leaders, Blumenson and Stokesbury also assessed the

peculiarities of coalition warfare. They described the broad insights and abilities demanded of theater commanders.

In a coalition effort, the commanders at the top of the scale are

in a never-never land between the political and military realities. Below them military forces are usually organized in separate national armies. Above them are the civilian politicians

who have their own domestic interests and their own interpretations of foreign policy. The military high command is the point

of contact between political and military aspirations and activities; because of this, the coalition commanders must function

as superb artists.

The soldier who can run a coalition is a rare figure. To reach

that stratospheric position and remain there, he must be aggressive, bold, ruthless, and enterprising—in short, he has to

possess all the traditional military virtues. He is then told to do

a job that requires tact, tolerance, forbearance, and patience—

qualities that had little to do with his previous advancement.

The coalition soldier . . . who can do so successfully is one who

has indeed proved his versatility. Defeating one’s enemies while

placating one’s allies calls for the remarkable characteristics of

the soldier-statesman.25

The two historians followed those observations with descriptions of various coalition commanders and situations,

then finished the section with a discussion of Eisenhower—in

their mind, the prototypical supreme commander. “Quick and

bright, Eisenhower had a capacity for learning, an ability for

assessing complicated situations, a facility for striking to the

heart of a problem. . . . Add an ability to get along with people

and you have a rare person—sharp, smart, and persuasive,

one fitted by intelligence and temperament for high command.”26 Eisenhower, they argued, “made the coalition work”

by having “precisely the qualities—of character, selflessness,

and good sense—to knit the staff officers of two nations into

an integrated organization in which national differences and

jealousies were forgotten.”27 Furthermore, Eisenhower had an

11

BELOTE
“intimate knowledge of politico-military problems on the highest level and a breadth of outlook unusual in a regular soldier.

. . . nobody else revealed Eisenhower’s remarkable capacity for

integrating the efforts of different allies and rival services and

for creating harmony between individuals with varied backgrounds and temperaments.”28

Blumenson and Stokesbury praised Eisenhower for the

same qualities the general himself had highlighted: deep professional competence, political-strategic insight, and the intellect and personal skills to lead a disparate team.

Summary

This snapshot of World War II experience highlights certain

qualities that prominent coalition commanders and subsequent analysts found vital to success and, thereby, provides a

framework for further examination of the attributes of effective

CINCs. Devers and Eisenhower alluded to, but did not dwell

on, basic military proficiency. Perhaps they took such proficiency for granted—it was, after all, what got them promoted

in the first place—and the success of the combined campaigns

they led is ample testimony to their broad joint expertise. Instead, they and later observers insisted that two additional capabilities had to join with comprehensive knowledge to ensure

coalition success: understanding of international political-military realities and the personal skills to blend multiple services

and nationalities into a coherent whole. Does the experience of

other CINCs—specifically airmen—lend weight to these assertions about command?

An Airman Commander in Chief:

Lauris Norstad

Everything Norstad does in NATO he equates to the political atmosphere. His job is more diplomatic than anything else. Like a doctor, he is rushing around to fix this

crisis here, iron out that difficulty there. It’s a helluva

job, but the guy’s got what it takes to do it.

—Gen Nathan Twining

12

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The USAF experience provides but one test case for the

qualities of coalition command outlined in the preceding section: General Norstad, supreme allied commander, Europe,

and commander in chief, USEUCOM, from 20 November 1956

to 2 January 1963.29 Praised as the “most brilliant air strategist . . . in any air force” by Newsweek, Norstad rose from a

mediocre finish in the West Point class of 1930 to become a

full general in 1952.30 Along the way, Norstad used his considerable intellect; a foundation of airpower competence; and

an interest in history, economics, and politics to develop a

broad understanding of the role of military power in international relations. A study of General Norstad’s exceptional career and performance as SACEUR reveals the command qualities of comprehensive professional expertise, broad strategic

vision, and personal leadership ability suggested by Norstad’s

mentor, General Eisenhower.

Background

After graduation from West Point and commissioning as a

cavalry officer, Norstad transferred to the fledgling Air Corps in

1931. He spent a decade in a variety of flying, staff, and

schools assignments, and, in the words of historian Phillip S.

Meilinger, “quickly impressed his superiors with his meticulous staff work and incisive intellect.”31 Noticed at the Air

Corps Tactical School (ACTS)—Norstad believed that ACTS

commandant Gen Millard F. “Mif” Harmon Jr., personally told

Gen Henry H. “Hap” Arnold about his performance there32—

Norstad moved through staff jobs at Langley Air Force Base,

Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Shortly after the United States

entered World War II, General Arnold put Norstad (then major)

on his special advisory council, telling him simply “your job is

to do my thinking for me.”33 Arnold put his young protégé in

positions to earn the regard of General Marshall and orchestrated Norstad’s rapid rise through the ranks, at one point directing a personnel officer to “see he’s a full colonel by sundown.”34

Both to take advantage of and to further develop the

colonel’s war-fighting abilities, Arnold sent Norstad to London

as an air planner in early 1942. Norstad worked on cross13

BELOTE
channel invasion plans, then became the lead air planner for

Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa—and

there gained the confidence of General Eisenhower. As assistant chief of staff for operations of Twelfth Air Force, then as

director of operations of the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces

(MAAF), Norstad (then brigadier general) directed air operations over North Africa and Italy and planned the air portion

of Operation Anvil, the Allied landing in southern France.

Norstad returned to Washington in 1944 to oversee strategic

air operations in the Pacific as chief of staff of Twentieth Air

Force, General Arnold’s strategic force controlled from Washington, D.C. 

After the war, Norstad helped organize the new Department

of Defense (DOD) and Air Force, first as the War Department’s

director of plans and operations, then as Air Force deputy

chief of staff for operations and acting vice chief of staff. From

these positions, Norstad helped to write the 1947 National Security Act and the Key West agreement on service roles and

missions, and he developed the force structure for the postwar

Air Force. In October 1950, Norstad (then lieutenant general)

became the commander in chief, United States Air Forces in

Europe (CINCUSAFE), then a specified command billet. He followed his mentor Eisenhower to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) headquarters in April 1951. There, he wore

dual hats as CINCUSAFE and commander, Allied Air Forces

Central Europe, until July 1953, when he took over as air

deputy to SACEUR. After three years as Gen Alfred M. Gruenther’s deputy, Norstad rose to NATO’s top military job—turning down more than one offer to become chief of staff of the Air

Force (CSAF) to do so.35

As SACEUR, Norstad fulfilled his military and political responsibilities with equal adroitness. He created the cold war

strategy of forward defense backed by a US/United Kingdom

nuclear deterrent—a doctrine known as “Shield and Sword”—

and personally negotiated with European leaders for basing

rights and national force structure contributions. He handled

difficult issues of troop reductions, nuclear control, and West

German rearmament as an international spokesman, earning

the respect of figures throughout the NATO alliance. News ac14

CADRE PAPER
counts of the early 1960s credited Norstad with great success.

Gen Thomas D. White, who followed a turn as CSAF with a

stint as a contributing editor for Newsweek, cited European

and American praises such as “shrewd and understanding

friend” to all the Allies and “one of the most remarkable public servants of his time,” and concluded that “Norstad had the

brilliance and intimate grasp of the situation to represent

NATO and America, together with the moral stamina and

nerve to stand up to both.”36 General White’s comment echoes

the requirements for coalition command outlined by Eisenhower and others. Did Norstad rely on a similar foundation of

skills; and, if so, what does that suggest about joint/coalition

commanders in general?

Comprehensive Professional Knowledge

As argued above, Norstad developed a reputation for airpower

knowledge early in his career, and Hap Arnold put that ability to

use in the European theater of operations. In 1942 Norstad 

15

BELOTE

Gen Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gen Lauris Norstad

Source: Newsweek, 1 October 1951. AP photo. Courtesy of the Associated Press.
went to London to be a planner. At that time, of course, both the

British and we were thinking of every possibility of getting into

the action because we were on the receiving end and had not

been able to take the initiative at all. . . . people even then were

thinking in terms of a possible cross-channel landing. Then the

African landing was also actively considered.37

[When] Torch was accepted . . . I was Plans and Operations for

the Twelfth Air Force so I did most of the planning for the air

part—essentially all of the air part of the Torch landing.38

Because he “had written the plans and was in charge of operations anyway,” Norstad was the first American airman

ashore in North Africa.39 He established the first forward air

base at Tafaraoui, set up Twelfth Air Force’s forward headquarters, and caught the eye of the man who would ultimately

appoint him as SACEUR:

When I transferred headquarters from Gibraltar to Algiers on

November 23, I took advantage of the journey to begin inspections of our troops and facilities. At the Oran airfield I came

squarely up against conditions that were to plague us throughout that bitter winter. . . . Tactical operations were at a standstill so I spent the morning inquiring into problems of supply,

housing, and food. It was on that occasion that I first met Lieutenant Colonel Lauris Norstad, a young air officer who so impressed me by his alertness, grasp of problems, and personality that I never thereafter lost sight of him. He was and is one

of those rare men whose capacity knows no limit.40

Over the next two years, Norstad planned and executed

many significant air operations in the Mediterranean; thereafter, he focused his abilities on the Pacific air war. In his own

words, he “really developed and directed the tactical air operations in North Africa and all the way up Italy. Operation

Strangle, for instance [the air interdiction campaign to weaken

German defenders of Rome, Anzio, and the Gustav Line

through Cassino], was my baby.”41 Dr. Eduard Mark of the

Center for Air Force History has supported Norstad’s claims of

responsibility, citing several memos from the MAAF director of

operations to Lt Gen Ira C. Eaker and Air Marshal Sir John

Slessor, the commander and deputy commander, that outline

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Norstad’s influence on targeting decisions in Italy.42 After laying the groundwork for air operations in southern France,

Norstad helped set the stage for airpower success in the Pacific. Perceiving that Arnold had lost faith in Maj Gen Haywood

S. “Possum” Hansell Jr.’s handling of Pacific strategic operations, Norstad personally orchestrated Maj Gen Curtis E.

LeMay’s assumption of command in the theater.43 Norstad

was also part of the small circle of Air Corps leaders involved

with the Manhattan Project.

After the war, Norstad immediately funneled his operational

airpower expertise and wartime experience into a broad understanding of joint matters. After Eisenhower took over as

Army chief of staff in 1946, he made his former air planner the

chief of War Department plans and operations. Air Corps commanding general Carl A. “Tooey” Spaatz called the appointment a breakthrough and marveled that Eisenhower wanted

an airman in the key policy job at the center of the War Department’s General Staff.44 From that position, Norstad

worked the “great reorganization efforts [of] the Defense Act of

’47, which [he] helped draft and negotiated up on [Capitol] Hill,

[with] the President and with the Navy.”45 Norstad developed a

close personal relationship with Adm Forrest P. Sherman and

used those ties to overcome turbulent interservice squabbles;

together, the two officers facilitated the Key West and Newport

agreements and set the course for early DOD budgetary policy.46 While Norstad’s careful tilling of joint middle ground did

not win universal applause—the retired Hap Arnold charged

Norstad with having “sold [the Air Force] down the river” in the

aforementioned agreements—it did garner him widespread respect for his military competence. Deadlocked over Gen Douglas MacArthur’s proposal for the Inchon landing in the summer of 1950, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) dispatched Norstad

(who asked Gen Matthew B. Ridgway and Ambassador W.

Averell Harriman to accompany him) on a fact-finding mission

to Korea. After personally reviewing the ground situation and

interviewing General MacArthur and Gen Walton H. Walker,

commander of the forces holding the Pusan perimeter, Norstad

recommended approval of the Inchon plan.47 Norstad’s endorsement helped convince a skeptical JCS of the feasibility of

17

BELOTE
MacArthur’s audacious plan, notwithstanding the considerable risks it entailed.

Shortly thereafter, General Norstad put his understanding

of American joint roles and missions, as well as his bureaucratic savvy, to work for the new NATO. While Norstad’s titles

suggested an emphasis on air, his wide-ranging efforts encompassed a much broader focus. Norstad had written a

paper for the joint chiefs in 1949 arguing “that there should

be some meat on the bones of NATO,” something tangible for

the Europeans who believed that “a treaty and a statement of

good intentions are fine, but we have been overrun so many

times that words aren’t good enough. We have to have something that we can see and something we can feel.”48 Norstad

delegated the running of United States Air Forces in Europe

(USAFE) to his chief of staff, General Landon, and focused on

“building this Allied organization [from a] grassroots basis” for

his supreme commander, Eisenhower.49 As he built the NATO

organizational structure, he also took over as the alliance’s

premier joint strategist, especially after rising to the air deputy

position. Norstad—never one for false humility—remembered

that “if you asked anybody who was working at SHAPE

[Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, Europe] in my time

who made the NATO strategy for Western Europe, they would

say I did. And they would be right.”50 Air Force general

Richard H. Ellis, a SHAPE planner in the mid-1950s, remembered that “Norstad was the heart of [cold war planning]. Gruenther, the SACEUR, turned all of the strategy and nuclear

planning over to Norstad, . . . [who], in my opinion, was the father of the flexible response.”51

Significantly, Norstad rejected the seemingly “easy” solution

of “let Strategic Air Command [SAC] handle it” and instead

worked for a true combined-arms strategy. In fact, he clashed

with the commander in chief, SAC (CINCSAC) Gen LeMay to

prevent SAC from encroaching on the SACEUR’s turf52 and focused on building effective conventional and nuclear ground

forces to serve as the “shield” in his shield-and-sword strategy.

For Norstad, the ground forces could not simply be a tripwire—they had to prevent accidental incursions and be capable of halting a deliberate attack long enough to force the So18

CADRE PAPER
viets to commit their operational reserve. This would allow the

Allies to discern Soviet intent while affording the enemy a

chance to back off prior to a nuclear exchange. Norstad explained the strategy to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 7 June 1957.

The shield was developed for the purpose of defending NATO

territory for the limited period between the outbreak of hostilities and . . . our retaliatory attack. . . . If this line were lightly

defended, or not defended at all, it would not be impossible for

the Soviets or satellites by accident to cross that line. . . . On

the other hand, if this line were held with some substantial

force, and if there were an incident where someone moved in by

accident through ignorance and error, he would be stopped.

Then there would be at least a momentary pause, and by “momentary” I mean minutes, hours, maybe days. Someone would

have to think about the problem of bringing up more force, and

he would have to weigh the consequences of doing that. I would

like to suggest that, during this time, the persons who have to

make this decision would have to consider the consequences of

the full employment of our retaliatory forces. They would have

to consider the probability of starting their own destruction.53

[The Soviet planner] must always face the decision: “If I deliberately start a war, I will be destroyed.”54

To ensure NATO’s shield capability, the SACEUR concentrated on building international ground forces. Immediately

after assuming command, Norstad publicly opposed a British

plan to withdraw one-third of the Army of the Rhine from the

continent. According to political scientist Robert S. Jordan,

“Norstad took a leading role in the discussions among the Allies. . . . In speeches on both sides of the Atlantic, in press releases, . . . and in his formal report to the Council of the Western European Union, Norstad sought to forestall the British

move.” Norstad emerged from this “thorny policy thicket” with

a compromise that left the “adequate minimum” of 30 divisions on the continent.55 To strengthen that minimum force,

he strongly advocated nuclear-equipped armies. Norstad oversaw the deployment of Thor, Jupiter, Matador, and Nike mis19

BELOTE
siles, favored the army’s atomic cannon, and suggested a landbased, mobile short-range nuclear force 20 years before the

mobile (but long-range) MX missile was developed.56 The general understood the threat, recognized Allied capabilities, and

constructed a broad-based coalition solution to meet NATO’s re20

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Gen Lauris Norstad

USAF Photo
quirements. Clearly, Norstad possessed a deep understanding of

the employment of joint force to achieve political objectives.

Strategic Vision/Political-Military Understanding

Such understanding, while necessary, was not in itself sufficient for the SACEUR to create NATO force structure and operational plans. An intricate concept such as the shield-andsword doctrine also requires geostrategic insight—an

awareness of international political realities, a feel for the cultures of friend and foe alike—to come to fruition. Examination

of Norstad’s career and education shows that he developed

that strategic vision early. He came to understand politicalmilitary interconnections, then honed the ability to manipulate those linkages masterfully—and therein lay much of his

success as a coalition commander.

Norstad cited his interests in the political-military field as

being the “decisive factor” in his career and credited a West

Point professor of economics and history for the foundation of

his success: “Colonel [Beukema] got more young guys thinking than anybody I’ve ever known . . . this was really the first

effort, I think, to teach people to think in terms of real political-military objectives and means. . . . History became more

important to us because of [him] and added a tremendous influence [on my ability as a decision maker].”57

Prevented by circumstances from attending graduate or professional military education (PME)—six years after attending

ACTS as a first lieutenant, he was a major general—Norstad

continued his study of history and politics on his own time.

Evidently, his self-education was broad and effective. As Time

magazine reported, “in a profession not noted for breadth of

reading, Norstad quickly became conspicuous as one airman

who read voraciously, ranging from The Federalist to the memoirs of the Aga Khan. In later Washington days, he liked to

argue law with Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, who

was so impressed that he offered to recommend him for a professorship at Harvard Law School.”58

Norstad’s personal reading program produced an understanding of international politics and culture that guided his

actions as SACEUR—he noted that “grand strategy involves

21

BELOTE
everything political, military, economic, and social. To be a

Supreme Commander . . . has almost the same brea[d]th.”59

This philosophy also guided his instruction of other officers. In

a 1947 speech written for the Air War College, Norstad catalogued many historical instances of “great gaps between foreign policy and military policy” and declared it “imperative . . .

that we should maintain strategic plans reflecting completely

integrated political, economic, and psychological factors along

with our military potentialities.”60 Norstad reached that conclusion because 

in the late war we failed to realize the extent to which chaotic

conditions would be created in Europe and the Far East by the

defeat of our enemies. Soviet Russia recognized and quickly

took advantage of our early demobilization and . . . spread her

influence throughout war-weary Europe, the Balkans, the middle, and Far East. The Anglo-American members of the Allied

team lacked truly integrated political guidance. . . . Without this

political guidance they unquestionably lost hard-earned opportunities to supplant the Nazi-created system by one based on

Western democratic ideas of constitutional government.

Our broad strategy was defective in that it was incomplete. We

entered the war and fought valiantly without establishing our

long-range objectives, political and economic. The military victory was achieved, but today we find that the combined national

aims for which we fought are jeopardized by the very conditions

of victory. We liberated most of Europe from one totalitarian

system only to let it be threatened by another.61

Interestingly, Norstad had been one of the few American officers who spoke out during the war against the Stalinist

threat to eastern Europe. He remembered “catching hell” for

opposing the Anvil plan to invade southern France, preferring

instead (with the British) to “go up the northeast of Italy, up

through the Ljubljana Gap, up to Vienna, and cut off the Russians. . . . so [they] wouldn’t have [eastern Europe] all to themselves.”62 Norstad may have let his geostrategic beliefs override his military judgment, for there were strong logistical

arguments against the eastern plan and in favor of Anvil. Still,

backed by General Clark, he argued his case all the way up to

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presidential advisor Harry Hopkins. However, he declined

Hopkins’s invitation to brief the president after the American

military leaders came out in favor of Anvil, telling Hopkins

“there is some merit in the British thinking here. Other than

that, I do not wish to interject myself between the American

Chiefs of Staff and the President of the United States. That

would be wrong and terribly unproductive.”63 Ever the good

soldier, Norstad wrote the air plan for Anvil—then Arnold

brought him back to Washington and turned his attention to

the Pacific.

Norstad returned to Europe six years later, convinced of the

necessity to shape and strengthen the North Atlantic alliance.

In the interim, the time he spent in Washington prepared him

well for multinational diplomacy. He developed a close relationship with Secretary of State Dean Acheson and spent so

much time in political-military consultation with State Department leaders that Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson—perhaps jealous of Norstad’s influence—ordered him to

stop.64 The time he spent negotiating with the Army and Navy

and shepherding bills and budgets through Congress also

helped prepare the future SACEUR to navigate NATO’s political maze. As he told historian Edgar F. Puryear Jr., “I studied

the countries . . . I knew the governments, but I also knew the

opposition people and I spent almost as much time with the

opposition people as I did with the government. . . . I felt that

was my forte. . . . I’d become an expert in . . . the field of relationships between countries as well and I knew I had their

support.”65

Norstad demonstrated that expertise throughout his tenure

as supreme commander. As previously mentioned, the first

test he faced as SACEUR was in limiting planned British troop

withdrawals; Time magazine marveled that Norstad responded

not with acquiescence, but was able to call “for a buildup of

NATO ground forces in the central sector of Western Europe

alone (‘the most sensitive and critical line in the world’) from

the present 18 divisions to about 30.”66 Most important to

NATO cohesion, however, was Norstad’s deft handling of West

German rearmament and integration into the NATO command

structure. Believing that American interests were best served

23

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by helping create a politically, economically, and militarily stable Western Europe to balance the Soviet Union, Norstad identified West Germany as a geostrategic center of gravity and

worked to facilitate its reentry into the European politico-military structure. He recognized that German chancellor Konrad

Adenauer, a “wise and courageous man” who “understood the

apprehension of all Europe to Germany,” needed to answer

German concerns over having the largest troop contribution to

NATO while being denied any command positions. To satisfy

both Adenauer’s domestic needs and other European countries’ uneasiness, Norstad personally chose the German officer

he thought most acceptable to the whole coalition, Lt Gen

Hans Speidel. He then orchestrated Speidel’s appointment as

commander of Allied ground forces in the central region—a

command held by Germans to this day.67

Norstad’s feel for international politics helped him avoid becoming a mere mouthpiece for American policy in the eyes of

European statesmen, and this favorable perception greatly increased his effectiveness. In fact, he opposed US policy proposals that he thought might weaken NATO. When Sen.

Homer E. Capehart of Indiana suggested withdrawing from

European bases and relying on US-based strategic airpower,

Norstad was adamant: “Such action by the United States

would destroy the confidence of all European countries in the

United States, and it would destroy the NATO alliance. . . . this

would undermine . . . everything that has been built up in 10

years’ time.”68 Over his years at SHAPE, Norstad moved farthest away from American nuclear policy, opposing American

reluctance to give alliance members a voice—not necessarily a

veto, however—in their own nuclear defense. With his predecessor Gruenther, he at first lobbied for a NATO atomic stockpile with US control of warheads but NATO control of delivery

systems. In 1959, fearing that American intransigence might

weaken the alliance and play into Soviet hands, he “proposed

making NATO the ‘fourth nuclear power’ through the creation

of a multinational atomic authority.”69 His development of this

idea, along with the NATO-controlled mobile missile force discussed above, created a rift between himself and Kennedy administration leaders—notably Secretary of Defense Robert S.

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McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk—and ultimately

precipitated Norstad’s retirement.

Although Norstad never toed a strictly American line, neither was he an apologist for European concerns. Always attuned to alliance interrelationships, he recognized clearly

where national policies could fracture the coalition, and opposed a number of national demands, both nuclear and conventional. Early in his tenure, he publicly rejected German defense minister Franz-Josef Strauss’s calls for a German

nuclear role because NATO could not yet accept it; he also prevented a proposed German-Spanish military exchange because it recalled for alliance members the prewar Nazi-Franco

relationship.70 His most serious policy disagreement occurred

when French president Charles de Gaulle vetoed (through the

NATO budget) an American plan to build intermediate-range

missile bases, withdrew French ships from NATO Mediterranean forces, then, in December 1959, demanded control

over American warheads in France. In response Norstad withdrew eight fighter-bomber squadrons from France and repositioned them—with their nuclear capability—in West Germany,

while still maintaining NATO headquarters in France.71 Above

all, Norstad thought of himself as an international commander. Believing that he best served America by serving

NATO, he always sought an evenhanded, international solution to alliance problems.72

Nowhere was Norstad’s international insight more evident

than in his handling of European tensions in a time of continual East-West confrontation. Writing for Newsweek, General

White commented that “in consideration of [conflicting US and

NATO guidance] particularly, . . . the changes in governments,

. . . the revolution in weapon technology, and the recurring

crises affecting NATO such as Hungary, Suez, Algeria, and the

Congo it is high tribute indeed that Norstad survived them

all.”73 To be sure, White soft-pedaled his praise, for he omitted

the most tense confrontations of Norstad’s time: Nikita S.

Khrushchev’s pressure on Berlin and the Cuban missile crisis.

The SACEUR was peripherally involved in the Cuban tension

because of the missiles stationed in Turkey, and Norstad postponed his retirement in October 1962 to avoid fanning those

25

BELOTE
flames; however, the SACEUR’s major concern was Berlin. Soviet demands for the city precipitated Norstad’s redeployment

of fighter-bombers from France, providing NATO a quick nuclear response capability free of French control—because the

NATO council had approved three different resolutions to go to

war for the city. Norstad was clear: “we would have fought over

Berlin. The Russians always knew that.”74

Part of the credit for not going to war over Berlin has to go

to the NATO commander’s comprehension of East/West relations. He knew that even America’s allies were “damn wary,”

telling an Air War College audience that “our best friends feel

we are a little headstrong at times.”75 Therefore, feeling that

“there was one thing that always frightened me a great deal,

the chip-on-the-shoulder attitude that governments had,” and

that “you can’t maintain the peace by having a mad-dog approach,” Norstad chose to “pray three times a day, ‘God give

me the strength to be weak. God, give me strength not to just

jump and be tough.’ Because toughness is a dangerous thing,

every American, and if a commander wants to be applauded by

the American public, all he has to do is be tough, but he’ll

probably get you into war in the meantime.”76

At the same time, he wanted the Russians “to know that I

have patience, that I can outlast them . . . I will never blow up.

If I decide to do something I am going to do it, it will succeed.

I am not just going to huff and puff.”77 Norstad eschewed bluster and saber rattling—anything designed for the American

public that might cloud the issues: “There was periodic pressure from the US government to make those demonstration

trips to Berlin, which I always resisted. But I would move

troops to their battle stations, because battle stations were obvious.”78 Being cautious, Norstad made sure his troops knew

the rules of engagement—“governments think they make great

decisions, but sometimes it’s the private leading a convoy who

makes the decision. So they were well briefed”79—and he was

convinced that his careful handling of relations with the Russians set the stage for success. “I think if you get into the history of the confrontations, we damned well impressed the Soviets because our moves were deliberate and were always to

26

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put ourselves in a better position. We did that, indicating the

pressure was on, that if they pushed, we would fight.”80

The SACEUR used his knowledge of political-military interconnections; his relationships in Congress and the NATO

Council; and his feel for American, European, and Soviet history, economics, culture, and politics to inform his decision

making under pressure. That the cold war never boiled over

into hot conflict in Europe during the tense 1950s and 1960s

is perhaps the best indicator of Norstad’s strategic acumen.

Leadership and Personal Diplomacy

Norstad’s extensive joint competence and broad international vision would have had little impact, however, had they

not been joined with an impressive set of personal attributes.

His performance during crises like Berlin in 1961—holding a

fractious alliance together while facing down a powerful foe—

27

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U.S. Information Agency

General Norstad before Congress
demonstrated self-control and an ability to convince a large,

diverse coalition to follow his lead. Like his mentor, Eisenhower, and a handful of other successful commanders, General Norstad had the blend of disciplined intellect, charm, articulate persuasive ability, and selflessness that inspired trust

in friends and foes alike. Through the words of the popular

press and contemporary international leaders, and in the final

act of Norstad’s military career, a portrait emerges of an exceptional leader.

While the American and European press never hesitated to

disagree with Norstad’s positions—the SACEUR once boasted

that he was the most criticized man in Europe—news clippings of the day are almost uniformly in favor of Norstad, the

man. A Newsweek column from 5 September 1960 reported

British frustrations with Norstad’s 30-division plan—the London Daily Telegraph called his shield-and-sword doctrine “a

collection of unplausible assumptions about the behavior of

an enemy”—but juxtaposed the criticism with praise from

Britain’s Economist: “[Norstad’s] ‘remarkable combination of

military and political talent’ would be difficult to replace and

‘was ever more needful.’ A highly ranked general said, ‘If Lauris Norstad were running for President of the US, the whole

British defense staff would—if they could—vote for him.’”81

Often, Norstad’s press coverage was far less balanced. Time

called him a “philosopher in uniform,” and after describing

NATO’s somewhat convoluted organization, opined that “one

reason it [works] is Norstad himself.”82 Newsweek gushed

even more: “Most associates consider . . . Norstad a highly

complex individual whose main characteristics are brains,

vast curiosity, tremendous will power, uncanny memory, and

brains again. One SHAPE officer said, ‘You seldom meet Air

Force generals who are such experts, and yet so uncompromisingly intellectual.’ One astonished Frenchman said, ‘I didn’t know they made such Americans.’”83

More significant than the impressions of contemporary pundits, however, is the high regard in which political and military

leaders held him; the esteem he enjoyed despite his open opposition to various leaders’ nationalistic fervor clearly demonstrates Norstad’s personal abilities. Geostrategic vision would

28

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count for little were it not joined to a capacity for engendering

trust, and Norstad consistently demonstrated skill in international teambuilding. Despite intra-alliance tensions over the

Suez crisis, Cyprus, and French conflict in Algeria, “Norstad

built up a tremendously loyal following . . . The French respect

his behind-the-scenes efforts to encourage a better understanding of French problems in North Africa. Turks, Britons,

and Greeks, for example, function smoothly at SHAPE. Most of

all, the NATO nations implicitly trust the skill and judgment of

Norstad and his staff.”84 That trust—in Norstad’s intellect,

motivations, and discipline—was probably most important

during crises such as those involving Berlin. Norstad thought

it “important to realize that crises and crisis management take

on the characteristics of the individual who’s doing it. If he has

a tendency to flap and get semihysterical, it is going to be a

wild and hysterical, potentially dangerous situation. If he is

strong, confident, and calm, the crisis will be handled in that

way, and it will remain contained.”85 As described above, the

SACEUR calmly reacted on behalf of the alliance in times of

heightened tension and kept NATO members focused on a

common goal. Additionally, respect for the CINC permeated

the coalition’s everyday operations. German chancellor Adenauer was so close to Norstad that he called to warn the general about Defense Secretary McNamara’s machinations to

oust him.86 Despite Norstad’s displeasure with British defense

policy, Adm Lord Louis Mountbatten, the senior Briton in the

NATO military apparatus, believed that “Norstad did an almost

impossible job with exemplary skill.”87 Finally, de Gaulle,

whose demands for nuclear autonomy and French prestige

may have been Norstad’s heaviest burden, paid the outgoing

SACEUR the following compliment: “The fact remains that, in

six years, you have done everything that could and should be

done on behalf of the Atlantic Alliance. I wish to render you my

very sincere recognition of this.”88

The ultimate example of Norstad’s leadership—his subordination of his personal position to what he believed was right—

happened, paradoxically, when he was unable to persuade political leaders to follow his recommendations. Norstad’s

relations with the key members of the Kennedy administration

29

BELOTE
were strained from the outset; between disagreements over

nuclear policy proposals and the handling of Soviet confrontations described above, Norstad found himself increasingly

alienated from McNamara and Rusk. When the secretaries of

defense and state pressed the general to toe their line, he refused to roll over, saying “I’m quite aware of the role a major

commander, particularly a supreme commander, is given by

history. He can’t just be a mouthpiece . . . he is to follow his

own judgment in the light of what he knows at the time.”89

When McNamara and Rusk questioned his loyalty for not uncritically following their policy lead, he responded that he

served his “country best by serving [the alliance]” and resigned.90 Dedicated to a cohesive North Atlantic alliance to the

end, Norstad’s final act was to convince de Gaulle not to block

his successor’s confirmation; the French president detested

the administration’s arrogant refusal to consult with NATO

leaders prior to the appointment, which “convey[ed] great insensitivity of your government to anything European.”91 By

setting up a last minute courtesy call for Gen Lyman L.

Lemnitzer, Norstad assuaged French irritation and helped

Lemnitzer start his own lengthy tenure as SACEUR on a

positive note.

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SHAPE photo.

Gen Charles de Gaulle and Gen Lauris Norstad
Summary

By no means can one suggest that General Norstad was the

sole architect or executor of Western containment policy. By

the same token, no one can deny that Norstad was an insightful, effective leader who exerted great influence on world

events. In the words of Dutch political scientist Frans A. M.

Alting von Geusau and Robert S. Jordan,

“With respect to the need to maintain allied cohesion, national

governments have failed in at least two areas. They have failed

in many instances in the task to inform their electorates adequately about the reality of the international situation and the

dilemmas of allied security. They have equally failed in their understanding of the psychology of mutual confidence in allied relations.” Without a doubt, Norstad attempted to make up for

these two failures, which made him one of the most influential

as well as one of the most controversial of the distinguished occupants of this vitally important—and unique—position

[SACEUR].92

Clearly, Norstad brought an impressive list of personal qualities to bear on his command tasks. His success in all aspects

of military planning, his understanding of the international

situation, and his ability to influence the leaders of the world

powers—seen in the esteem in which Eisenhower, Adenauer,

de Gaulle, and others held him—highlight the same qualities

his successful predecessors brought to coalition command:

comprehensive professional competence; broad strategic, political-military vision; and genuine personal leadership ability.

Airmen—and all soldiers, sailors, and marines—would do well

to emulate General Norstad’s example. 

An Airman Commander in

Chief at War: Albrecht Kesselring

Results will demonstrate an officer’s fitness to be a

Field-Marshal, and no one will then ask about his origins, whether he came from the army or the Luftwaffe.

But one piece of advice I give to all Air Field-Marshals:

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do not become a one-sided technician, but learn to think

and lead in terms of all three services.

—Field Marshal Albrecht Kesselring

––––––––––––––––––––––––Soldat bis zum letzten Tag [Memoirs]

Despite his cold war success and impressive personal abilities, General Norstad’s experience lacked one aspect vital to

this exploration of airmen as commanders in chief: he never

led joint or combined forces during active conflict. Indeed, it

appears that only one airman has ever commanded a theater

of operations during war—German Field Marshal Kesselring,

who as CINC South (later South-West) directed German and

Italian air, land, and naval forces in the Mediterranean

throughout 1942, 1943, and 1944. Originally tasked only to

protect the supply lines to Rommel’s Afrikakorps, Kesselring

was soon orchestrating the overextended Desert Fox’s retreat.

Thereafter, according to his biographer, “he fought a virtually

incessant delaying action against desperate odds, managed to

impose his will upon strong-minded and sceptical [sic ] subordinates, and yet emerged unscathed by serious rout, leading

his men in fighting to the last gasp.”93 Kesselring’s success led

a prominent German chief of staff to rate him, along with

Rommel and Gen Heinz Guderian, as one of the top three German officers “with a hold on the troops.”94

Before using Kesselring as the lone example of the airman

CINC at war, one must concede the field marshal is a special

case: he was an army officer for 29 years before becoming an

airman as a colonel in 1933 (due to Versailles restrictions, he

was officially a civilian in the Air Ministry). Kesselring was

brave and decisive under fire in World War I, was intimately involved as a staff officer in rebuilding the post-Versailles

Wehrmacht, and understood land warfare well enough to command an artillery regiment. After 1933, however, he immersed

himself completely in air matters; significantly, all his warfighting commands prior to CINC South were air related. It is

probably most accurate to say Kesselring cultivated the joint

middle ground, always placing “the welfare of State and

Wehrmacht above sectional considerations [and] thus receiving more than his share of disapproval from ex-Army and ex32

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Luftwaffe colleagues whenever they felt he had betrayed their

interest.”95 Perhaps the Americans most like Kesselring were

Lt Gen Frank M. Andrews and Rear Adm William A. Moffett—

officers who understood both surface and air warfare well

enough to succeed at either, but who were regarded with some

skepticism by their fellow airmen. In any case, an examination

of Field Marshal Kesselring’s career reveals an airpower expert

who, despite an unfortunate loyalty to the charismatic Adolf

Hitler, clearly demonstrated the command attributes of broad

professional competence, political-strategic insight, and personal leadership ability.

Background

Born to a Bavarian schoolmaster in 1885, Kesselring joined

the 2d Foot Artillery Regiment as a Fahnenjunker, or volunteer

potential officer, and attended the military academy in

1905–6. His earliest performance reports described an energetic, tactful, and skilled officer—the 1909 report concluded

“Kesselring is by far the best of my officers”—and by 1914 recommended the lieutenant for duty as the regimental adjutant.96 Service in the First World War proved his mettle; at

Arras in April 1917, his commander credited him with halting

an Allied breakthrough “with quick comprehension and great

power of decision” and “by his indefatigable industry while

compiling clear and concise orders.”97 In 1918 Kesselring was

appointed to the General Staff despite never having taken the

Generalstab course and saw action on both fronts as a General Staff officer attached to the 1st Bavarian Landwehr Division and to the II and III Bavarian Army Corps.98

After postwar service as a battery commander, Kesselring

helped to guide the reconstruction of the German armed

forces, first as senior staff officer in the Army Training Department (T4) of the Reichswehr Ministry in Berlin. There,

Kesselring “was busily occupied with questions of economy

and administration, national and international law, [and] the

problems of the Interallied Military Control Commission.”99

Kenneth Macksey notes that “across his desk came every mite

of essential information and through him passed the Chief’s

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BELOTE
instructions to the rest of the army as well [about both land

and air warfare].”100 After directing a reorganization of the

Reichswehr staff and releasing “thousands” of soldiers for field

duty, Kesselring ended his army service with command of the

4th Artillery Regiment in Dresden.101

In October 1933 Kesselring became the head of administration in the Luftfahrt Commissariat, the forerunner of the Luftwaffe. Realizing that “a man who is not an airman cannot

build an air force, any more than a man who is not a horseman can form and command a cavalry division,” Kesselring

and contemporaries such as Walther Wever and Ehrhard

Milch took flying lessons, then set to work designing an air

force.102 After Wever’s death in June 1936, Kesselring became

chief of staff of the Luftwaffe, where he made the decisions

that shaped the force with which Germany went to war. Following disagreements with State Secretary Milch, Kesselring

left the staff to command Luftflotte (Air Fleet) I. By then a full

general, Kesselring commanded air fleets in action over

Poland, over the low countries, during the Battle of Britain,

and during the initial attack into Russia in the summer and

fall of 1941.

In November 1941 Kesselring (now field marshal) was ordered to Italy to assume command of the Mediterranean theater. At first he was a CINC in name only because Hitler gave

him command of only German air forces, and the Italians

balked at any explicit subordination to a German.103 In September 1942 because of concerns over an Allied landing somewhere in the Mediterranean, Kesselring “was entrusted with

the command of all German forces (Army, Navy, and Luftwaffe)” in the theater, except for Rommel’s Afrikakorps.104 The

Operation Torch landings two months later “plunged [Kesselring] into a cauldron of political intrigue, strategic dilemma,

and tactical improvisation”; the CINC fought a bitter two-front

war against the Allies and Rommel, who wanted to be CINC in

Kesselring’s place.105 After a year of watching the CINC orchestrate a fighting withdrawal through Tunis, Sicily, and

southern Italy—despite overwhelming odds (and the fact that

Kesselring’s order of battle and plans were known to the Allies

through Ultra intercepts)106—Hitler broke the stalemate and

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moved Rommel to France. With complete authority in his theater, the renamed CINC South-West and commander of Army

Group C forced the Allies to take another year to fight their

way past Rome to the Alps. Kesselring’s final service to the

Reich was to take over from Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt

as CINC West following the Allied capture of the Remagen

bridgehead. Likening himself to “a concert pianist, who is

asked to play a Beethoven sonata before a large audience on

an ancient, rickety, and out-of-tune instrument,”107 Kesselring could do little to stem the Allied advance, but refused to

betray his oath to Führer and Fatherland. After Hitler’s death,

however, Kesselring moved quickly as the German plenipotentiary in the south (Adm Karl Dönitz, Hitler’s legal successor,

filled the same role in Berlin) to surrender all forces in southern and western Europe.108

Friend and foe alike praised Field Marshal Kesselring for his

wartime accomplishments. Gen Heinrich von Vietinghoff,

commander of the Tenth Army under Kesselring and his successor as CINC South-West, called his former superior “highly

gifted, versatile, a great organizer in varied fields, extremely

skillful in dealing with people, [and] a commanding, brilliant

personality.”109 He further noted that under Kesselring’s command, “the fighting men acquired an [sic] unity unachieved on

any other front.”110 General Clark, who faced him in Italy, said

Kesselring was “one of the ablest officers in the Hitler armies

. . . Kesselring was well qualified, both as a commander and

an administrator, and he conducted the Axis operations in

Italy with great skill for two years . . . I was glad to see him

go.”111

Reflecting intelligence assessments of the period, the British

Official History called Kesselring “a formidable commander”

with “a strong mind in assessing tactical facts, a deep understanding of tactical detail, an unfaltering spirit and a stern

hold on his troops.”112 Such words certainly suggest broad

and deep military competence; further analysis will show that

like his fellow airman Norstad, Kesselring relied on that competence plus strategic, political-military vision and personal

leadership.

35

BELOTE
Comprehensive Professional Knowledge

This section cannot begin to recount all the ways in which

Kesselring demonstrated his expansive military competence; a

few significant examples will have to suffice to describe his

well-rounded military genius. He displayed exceptional administrative talents in the Truppenamt—the shadow General

Staff—in Berlin in the 1920s. The simple fact of Kesselring’s

presence—in an elite of about 60 cream-of-the-crop officers

handpicked by Gen Hans von Seeckt to rejuvenate the Ger36

CADRE PAPER

Photo courtesy of Greenhill Books/Lionel Leventhal Limited, London.

Source: Kenneth Macksey, Kesselring: German Master Strategist of the Second World War (London, Batsford, 1978. Reprinted London, Greenhill Books and Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1996).

Field Marshal Albrecht Kesselring in 1940
man military—argues that the then captain’s military skill was

well known.113 Most importantly, Kesselring blended his military vision and organizational talents to build the German air

force from scratch. As chief of staff, Kesselring created the

“tactical” Luftwaffe that facilitated the blitzkrieg operations

early in the war. After pragmatically comparing German industrial conditions, war game results, and Hitler’s political demands for fast action, Kesselring canceled plans for a heavy

bomber and concentrated the Luftwaffe on smaller aircraft

and combined-arms tactics—although he would later lament

the lack of a heavy bomber.114 In Macksey’s words, “the Luftwaffe reflected Kesselring’s image to a truer extent than those

of his principal collaborators, for although Wever and Milch

were pre-eminent in its initial creation, it was Kesselring,

through the decisions forced on him as Chief of Staff by a rapidly changing political situation of 1936 and 1937, who fixed

upon the actual nature of the instrument that went to war in

1939 and enabled the Wehrmacht to win so many outstanding

victories.”115

Kesselring had much more than a creator’s or force

provider’s share of those early victories, however—having already left the staff, he commanded Luftflotte I over Poland in

1939. Kesselring divided his time between personal flights to

reconnoiter the front lines and visit the troops, and face-toface coordination with Gen Fedor von Bock, the army group

commander. In his memoirs, Kesselring noted that “I understood the needs and worries of the army too well not to reach

complete agreement with [von Bock] in brief talks. I was not

subordinate to von Bock, but . . . even in cases where air considerations had priority I sought ways and means to satisfy

the army. Bock and I both knew we could rely on each

other.”116

After the victory in Poland, Kesselring took over Luftflotte II

from Lt Gen Hellmuth Felmy, who was sacked after a security

breach, and found himself again collaborating with von Bock

for the invasion of Holland. Again adamant about close collaboration, Kesselring orchestrated both Maj Gen Kurt Student’s airborne troop insertions and the air support that

helped capture Rotterdam. The Dutch campaign was, how37

BELOTE
ever, “the last complete victory Kesselring was to win outright,

the high water mark of his success.”117 Misled by false intelligence and his own optimism, Kesselring would concur in shifting the emphasis of the Battle of Britain from Royal Air Force

airfields to London, and thereby lose a battle he might have

won. Subsequently deploying with Luftflotte II to Russia,

Kesselring designed a dawn knockout blow on 22 June 1941

that “within 24 hours, had demolished the Russian Air Force

on almost every airfield within a 185-mile radius of the

front,”118 but ultimately could not overcome the logistical

problems that bedeviled Operation Barbarossa. Then, in light

of Rommel’s difficulties supplying his tank corps in Africa,

Kesselring was sent to the Mediterranean to consolidate and

protect Axis sea lines of communication.119

In Macksey’s words, the man who assumed the mantle of

theater command in the Mediterranean was already “the epitome of the ideal modern commander, who shrewdly and unselfishly balances the demands of co-operation between the

services and forswears service prejudices”;120 over the next

three years, he would prove time and again that he melded

that joint mindset to deep military understanding. Kesselring

started by focusing his air effort on reducing Malta, a British

air and naval bastion just south of Sicily, ordering construction of over 1,000 small barges and ferries, and persuading

“the Duce to employ the carefully preserved Italian battle fleet

for securing convoys. On 17 December [1941] the first convoy

in several months reached the North African coast, and the

vessels were unloaded in Tripoli and Benghasi.”121 Emboldened by his reestablished supply lines, Rommel began to

clamor for another offensive; Kesselring proved for the first of

many times his superior comprehension of the entire theater

by demanding—from Hitler and the German High Command

(OKW)—a takeover of Malta first to ensure logistic success.

When Rommel declared in June 1942 his armies could be in

Cairo in 10 days, Kesselring warned he could furnish neither

logistical nor air support:

I agree, of course, that the beaten enemy should be pursued to

the limits of possibility . . . But if the advance is continued, even

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with a minimum of fighting . . . replacements to the requisite

amount cannot be expected for a long time.

[Speaking for the Luftwaffe], my airmen will land near the Nile

completely exhausted . . . yet with totally inadequate supplies.

. . . As an airman, I consider it madness to attack [the intact

British air forces]. In view of the decisive importance of air cooperation, from this standpoint alone I must reject the proposal

to continue our advance with the objective Cairo.122

Events proved Kesselring right; after Hitler decided in favor

of Rommel’s plan, “only twenty per cent of the supplies required reached North Africa and the British Air Force, virtually

unopposed by an exhausted Luftwaffe, tore the Axis lines of

communication to pieces.”123

Thereafter, Kesselring—now, by Hitler’s decree, a joint force

commander in fact as well as name—turned his attention to

repulsing an expected Allied landing in the western Mediterranean,124 and began to display impressive feats of generalship. Gen Paul Deichmann, then the chief of staff to Kesselring’s air commander, recalled the manner in which the CINC

synthesized early reports of blacked-out ships sailing the

straits of Gibraltar into a picture of Allied landings and directed U-boats to intercept the convoys before receiving confirmation of the Torch operations.125 “Lacking both a plan and

the forces to support strong intervention,” Macksey has argued “the manner in which Kesselring improvised to stabilise

the situation and create a strong German bridgehead in

Tunisia is all the more impressive.”126 According to the biographer, Kesselring discerned British Gen Bernard L. Montgomery’s methodical nature in the east, stiffened German resolve by ordering retreating forces to counterattack when

American tanks threatened Tunis on 25 November, stole the

initiative from Eisenhower in the west, and personally “produced the master plan which was to lead to the infamous

American debacle at Kasserine.”127 Kesselring made mistakes,

such as nearly ordering a disastrous counterattack on 24

March 1942,128 but on the whole performed well under pressure. Unable to convince Hitler to permit a withdrawal, how39

BELOTE
ever, the CINC watched from Sicily as the Allies captured

Tunisia on 12 May.

From that point on, Kesselring proved himself a master of

defensive warfare. In Sicily Kesselring overturned existing

Wehrmacht doctrine by stripping the Luftwaffe of all its flak

guns; ringed the straits of Messina with torpedo boats, submarines, and 500 antiaircraft and coastal artillery pieces; and

ordered the evacuation of the island without waiting for OKW

approval—thereby saving 60,000 Germans, 75,000 Italians,

and nearly all their tanks and guns.129 After containing the Allied landings at Salerno, Kesselring gave up the toe and heel

of Italy, consolidated his forces, and began constructing fallback defensive positions up the Italian boot. As the US Fifth

and British Eighth Armies slowly advanced, Kesselring developed five contingency plans for possible Allied landings in

Italy, and “because a commander without reserves is unable

to exert any influence over the course of a battle” pulled divisions from the Tenth and Fourteenth Armies to create an army

group reserve in Rome.130 On 18 January 1944, Kesselring

committed those reserve divisions to prevent a British breakthrough in central Italy, then had to implement contingency

plan “Richard” (for Rome) without reserves as the US VI Corps

landed at Anzio on 22 January.131 Reacting quickly despite

being caught off guard, Kesselring ignored the Tenth Army’s

request to withdraw in central Italy and shifted forces to contain the Anzio-Nettuno beachhead.132 Kesselring and Gen

Eberhard von Mackensen, the Fourteenth Army commander,

planned a counterattack that failed to eject the Allies due to

lack of supplies and Hitler’s insistence on using a training regiment (the Infantry Lehr, or demonstration, regiment) that

broke and ran under fire.133 Despite the failure, Kesselring’s

forces prevented the British and Americans from linking up

and created “a strategic stalemate which was actually a victory

for the Germans.”134 It would take another four months before

the Allies, who knew the Germans’ weak spots and seams

through Ultra, would threaten Rome—and Clark’s success

was in large part because von Mackensen erred in the deployment of his troops and refused to release the reserves Kesselring directed into western and central Italy.135 Then, even

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after the loss of Rome, Kesselring’s final defensive line—the

Gothic Line in northern Italy—held until spring 1945.

From the foregoing, Kesselring’s comprehensive military

ability should be evident, even though many German generals

denigrated Kesselring’s decisions both during and after the

war. Rommel spent the better part of two years insisting that

Kesselring’s strategy could not work, suggested giving up all of

Italy south of the Alps in early 1943, and nearly convinced

Hitler to transfer the CINC to Norway; the sacked von Mackensen blamed Kesselring for his defeat.136 (See fig. 1) Even von

Vietinghoff, who generally agreed with Kesselring, accused his

CINC of sometimes misunderstanding defensive land warfare.137 In a detailed analysis of Kesselring’s decision making,

however, Capt Teddy D. Bitner, US Army, concluded that the

field marshal’s reactions were swift, logical, and sound.138

Macksey opined that the “massacre” of the 36th American Division in central Italy in January 1944 was due to Kesselring’s

decision to deploy his reserves, and Gen Siegfried Westphal,

41

BELOTE

Source: Thomas E. Griess, ed., Atlas for the Second World War: Europe and the Mediterranean (Wayne,

N.J.: Avery Publishing Group). Adapted by Lt Col Howard D. Belote.

Figure 1. Allied Advances in Italy, 1943–44
who served as first Rommel’s, then Kesselring’s chief of staff,

believed an Allied breakthrough at that time would have been

“irreparable.”139 After the war, General von Vietinghoff provided a worthwhile summary of Kesselring’s military skill:

“Having been called in by our Italian ally to assist them, the

few German divisions in southern and central Italy were confronted with an apparently hopeless situation on the conclusion of the Italian armistice in September 1943. Contrary to all

expectations, the divisions scattered between the Strait of

Messina and northwards of Rome were successfully assembled in time and put up such a resistance to the Allied armies,

which were superior in every respect, that it was only broken

after twenty months of very severe fighting.”140

Strategic Vision/Political-Military Understanding

General von Vietinghoff’s allusion to the Italian armistice

hints at the “situations of exacting political and diplomatic

complexity” in which Kesselring was embroiled.141 More than

perhaps any other German, and in stark contrast to Rommel,

Kesselring understood both the military and geopolitical value

of the Mediterranean theater. For almost two years, he strove

diplomatically to keep the Italians in the war; he spent another

year cajoling the Italians into neutrality so he could focus his

meager forces against the advancing British and Americans.

Armed with insight into the differing cultures, personalities,

and motivations of Axis leaders—most notably Hitler, Mussolini, and the Italian King—Kesselring walked a diplomatic

tightrope not unlike the one Norstad would walk in NATO a

decade later.

As did Norstad, Kesselring appears to have developed his

political insights through self-study. The field marshal

skipped the PME his contemporaries received; he moved

straight from the Western Front’s trenches into service as a

General Staff officer, without the requisite extensive schooling.

While the available sources fail to mention what or how much

Kesselring read, they do suggest he sought and received a

broadbased strategic education through personal contacts. As

a General Staff officer to the II and III Bavarian Army Corps,

Kesselring noted “I came into frequent personal contact with

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the C.-in-C. [sic], Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. We were

invited to his table in turn, where the Crown Prince dominated

the conversation. Whether the topic was politics, art, geography, history or statecraft, he had a mastery of it.”142 At Rupprecht’s table, the lieutenant learned about diplomacy and

“the necessity of a civilising influence” from “a prince and soldier of deep and wide-ranging education whose insight into

statecraft far out-reached that of the Kaiser . . . nothing was

to be wasted in this schooling of his intellect.”143 The future

CINC continued his education during his service in Berlin. According to Macksey, Kesselring gravitated toward the “urbane,

cosmopolitan and artistic” von Seeckt, who

held Kesselring in high esteem among the bright young men he

gathered around him in the inner circle of the Truppenamt. It

was in Kesselring’s rooms that they frequently met for informal

discussions which covered a multitude of subjects outside the

military curriculum, and here that the Hauptmann of “good allround knowledge” and “excellent powers of expression” sharpened his intellect upon the hone of his general’s vast experience. . . . The liberal-minded von Seeckt relished such

sophisticated company as this and here Kesselring put a gloss

upon his techniques of diplomacy and organising. . . . These

were the tricks of a trade which he learnt to perfection in equipping himself for a task which, with trained foresight, he may

even dimly have visualised.144

Whether through foresight or not, Kesselring developed an international awareness generally lacking among World War II

German leaders.

Throughout his memoirs and in nearly all of the postwar interviews he gave and studies he wrote, Kesselring complained

that Hitler’s thoughts and the OKW’s strategies were rooted in

the Continent and that the Mediterranean theater was treated

as an afterthought.145 The German CINC, on the other hand,

saw a great deal of political and military value in the theater.

He told the US Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) that the

Germans should have made “it a main theater of operations,

knowing how important the Mediterranean was for the

British”;146 elsewhere, he and his chief subordinates outlined

why North Africa and Italy were important to the Axis powers.

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General von Vietinghoff, Kesselring’s Tenth Army commander,

summarized his CINC’s reasoning as having “(a) A purely military aspect: To keep the front, and also enemy airfields, as far

away from the southern frontier of Germany as possible; [and]

(b) A political aspect: To maintain the newly formed Italian

Fascist Republic under Mussolini with Rome as capital and

City of the Holy See and thereby give it an important moral

boost in the eyes of the Italian people and of world opinion.”147

To those ends, Kesselring designed all his strategies to keep

Germany and Italy engaged together against the Allies—first in

Libya and Tunisia, then Sicily, and finally during the fighting

withdrawal up the Italian peninsula.

In contrast with Kesselring’s comprehension of the theater’s

military and political nuances, Rommel appears to have seen

only the military side of the theater equation—and he disagreed even then with Kesselring’s judgment. Once his armies

had been repulsed in Egypt, Rommel advocated an immediate

withdrawal, not only from Africa but also from all of Italy. He

wanted to retreat to the Alps, thereby consolidating German

defenses on interior lines and denying the Allies opportunities

to attack along the Italian coastline. General von Vietinghoff

dismissed the Rommel plan, which would have meant the loss

of considerable political prestige; “the very important contribution made by Italian war industries and agriculture to the

Axis potential”; the Po valley, “where the Allied Air Force could

assemble in any strength required”; and would have caused

“the complete reversal of the German overall situation in the

Balkans and in France.”148 Kesselring recalled his appreciation of the situation: “I condemned at the time Rommel’s hurry

to get out of Tripolitania and Tunis as quickly as possible, and

to give up Italy, since it would influence the conduct and outcome of the war. Rommel and Bonin [Rommel’s chief of staff]

think as Army men. I recollect that I strove to keep the war as

long as possible and as far as possible away from the home

area so that effective air warfare could not be carried into Germany. . . . Therefore I fought for my idea by argument and action.”149

Convinced that “the state of public opinion in Italy demanded that Tunisia be held at all costs,” otherwise “sooner or

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later Italy would withdraw from the war,”150 Kesselring worked

to shore up his coalition’s will to fight. He moved his headquarters to Frascati (near Rome) to maintain personal contact

with the Italian High Command, acted as intermediary between the Italians and Vichy French to lay the political

groundwork for the defense of Tunisia, and personally directed

that six-month-long defense.151 After losing that battle, the

CINC “accomplished a quite remarkable feat of solo diplomacy

in overcoming Italian obstruction” and assembled a force of 12

Italian and two mobile German divisions for the defense of

Sicily.152 As Macksey has noted, “it was politics and diplomacy

that governed the flow of military reinforcement,”153 and

Kesselring understood both well enough to acquire the forces

he needed to effect military action.

In keeping the Italians in the war, Kesselring had to rely on

his political-military understanding of both the Italians and

the Germans, for leaders on both sides were often at crosspurposes. Macksey, for one, has highlighted the “environment

of international intrigue and deceit” in which Kesselring had

to re-cement “the alliance upon which the defence of Germany’s southern flank depended.”154 The field marshal had

not only to move carefully among Mussolini, the king, and

General Ambrosio, the anti-German chief of the Comando

Supremo; he had to execute his strategy as Rommel undercut

his position with Hitler. In fact, Hitler concocted a plan (Operation Axis) to disarm the Italians and place Rommel in overall

command.155 Kesselring merely persevered with his plans and

persuaded the Italians to accept four divisions and a panzer

corps that had earlier been declined by Mussolini, frustrated

Hitler’s scheme to kidnap the king, and convinced the German

hierarchy to continue the dialogue with the war-weary Italians. “Crude military intervention,” he argued, “would immediately initiate a confrontation that would cut communications

with the south and also overstretch the German forces.”156 In

his biographer’s words, “It is a tribute to Kesselring’s perception and dominating ability that . . . he could steer a consistent course through a maze of contradictions and emerge at

the centre with his integrity and aims virtually intact. . . .

Eventually, ‘by seduction, not rape,’ as the US Official History

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puts it, the Brenner Pass fell peacefully into German hands.

At once a flood of German troops was poured into Italy.”157 Almost alone among German military men, Kesselring demonstrated a keen understanding of coalition psychology and manipulated that understanding to his benefit.

Events would soon force the theater commander to spend as

much effort keeping the Italians out of the war as he previously had keeping them in it; as before, he would realize considerable diplomatic success. On 8 September 1943, Allied air

forces bombed Rome, and Italian morale collapsed. “Crawling

from beneath the rubble” of his bombed-out headquarters,

Kesselring immediately activated contingency plan “Axis” to

secure Rome and “capitalise on the Italians’ shock to prevent

their collaboration with the approaching Allied invasion.”158

Through bluff and hard bargaining—Kesselring threatened to

bomb Rome and destroy the aqueducts if the Italian negotiators refused his terms—the Germans in southern Italy engineered the surrender of a large number of Italian troops and

their weapons. The terms, however, were not draconian—

Kesselring ignored a telegram from Rommel instructing him to

“send all Italian soldiers to Germany as prisoners of war.”159

Instead, Rome would remain an open city, Italian troops would

be allowed to work for the Germans as long as they laid down

their arms, and Italian troops would maintain order in the

city.160 Although he complained that “the work of disarming

the Italians and storing away arms, munitions, and material

in safety occupied more time and men than I liked in view of

the tactical developments at Salerno,” Kesselring “had won another truly remarkable diplomatic victory with the minimum of

force.”161 He followed that with a similar success, convincing

the Italians to assist in the extensive demolition program that

accompanied the German withdrawal from Sardinia.162

Clearly, Kesselring’s political, diplomatic, and strategic insights facilitated his defensive military successes.

In his memoirs, the imprisoned field marshal summarized

his beliefs about commanders and politics. Emphasizing that

he did not refer to “the special case of the Third Reich,” Kesselring wrote,

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I require of every senior officer in a high position of authority

the political discernment which will help him to obtain a deep

and proper insight into events of political life within and without his own country. This perception should enable such an officer to play his part as responsible adviser to the head of the

state with full knowledge of his responsibility, to foresee military requirements, and at the same time to accommodate them

to political circumstances. This delicate but indispensable collaboration may, of course, lead to serious conflicts of conscience

and to external disputes in which the military leader must take

into consideration the effects of his attitude on foreign policy.

In the above I [want] to emphasise that an officer, above all a

high-ranking officer, stands above parties, but also that every

soldier owes obedience to the legal government and the legal

form of state.

One more point: there is an inner contradiction between politics

and soldiering. Only exceptional persons can combine the two.

. . . A division of power seems to me the sound solution. The

fact, however, remains that troops are as good or as bad as their

commander. The age of enlightenment we live in demands an officer who can grasp the interrelations of politics and explain

them to his men.163

Even if one discounts the middle paragraph as an attempt

by a condemned man to mollify his captors—and Macksey, the

biographer, would not, pointing to Kesselring’s ramrodstraight, unyielding testimony at his court-martial—Kesselring’s own incisive “political discernment” permeates his argument. Certainly, he was one of those “exceptional persons”

who could combine politics and military art.

Leadership and Personal Diplomacy

As did all the successful commanders examined thus far,

Kesselring joined an impressive set of personal leadership

skills to his military competence and strategic vision. In conjunction with his reading of the political situation, Kesselring

had the self-confidence and talent to subordinate himself and

achieve his aims with the Italians through conciliation, not

command. Ever present at the front lines, he used his consid47

BELOTE
erable energy and charisma to buoy often demoralized soldiers

and airmen. Most importantly, Kesselring passed the ultimate

test of leadership. On a number of occasions, the CINC risked

his career by defying Hitler’s explicit instructions. In so doing,

he saved many German and Italian lives and contributed positively to the postwar peace.

Where Kesselring’s political-military insight helped him

understand the Italian reluctance to have a German CINC,

his personal diplomatic skills allowed him to subordinate

whatever selfish desires for command he may have had and

install a liaison system which indirectly achieved his command objectives. Immediately after arriving in theater,

Kesselring

found out the difficulties of a coalition command. . . . Count

Cavallero, the Italian chief of staff, could not swallow the pill of

handing over to me all the Italian military, naval, and air formations. . . . He protested that this arrangement was tantamount to giving up an independent command.

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Photo courtesy of Greenhill Books/Lionel Leventhal Limited, London.

Source: Kenneth Macksey, Kesselring: German Master Strategist of the Second World War (London, Batsford, 1978. Reprinted London, Greenhill Books and Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1996).

Field Marshal Kesselring in His Focke-Wulf 189
Half-measures would get us nowhere; so, ignoring Hitler’s instructions, I waived my claims to an over-all command, but insisted in return on an even closer and more confidential cooperation on the Italian side than had originally been

contemplated. Cavallero gave me his word that no operational

orders should be issued for the Italy-Africa war zone by the Comando Supremo without my oral or written agreement—a

promise that was kept.164

Kesselring safeguarded his concession and ultimately dominated the Italian command by placing a German operations

section within the Comando Supremo and then “staffing it with

so many men that the original Italian establishment was outnumbered.”165 Still, it was the field marshal’s personal diplomacy that kept the coalition operating for nearly two years.

After the war, Kesselring opined “that this concession, affecting the national prestige and highly cultivated pride of the Italians, was the prime factor in the success of our collaboration.

I have always preferred a voluntary collaboration based on

mutual trust to a constrained submission.”166

To illustrate Kesselring’s broad personal abilities, the contrast with Rommel is again instructive. Not only did the panzer

commander fail to see the strategic value of the theater, he was

unable to overcome his own ego and the German army had to

pay the price. Kesselring noted that “Rommel was unwilling to

budge an inch to avoid treading on the corns of the susceptible Italians”; his intransigence, along with secretive, distrustful behavior added to “the difficulties of the coalition command—Rommel was, after all, subordinate to . . . the Comando

Supremo.”167 Macksey has described the penalty the Germans

paid for the hard line Rommel adopted in northern Italy as the

Italians withdrew from the war:

Forsaking any pretence at negotiation with the Italians, he

ruthlessly took prisoner and transported to Germany those who

would not at once join with the Germans, and thereby incited

an antagonism which was to reverberate into the future. Those

Italians who were not captured cached their arms or fled with

them into the hills. When the partisan war later broke out on a

large scale it was in the north that it was most severe, where

Rommel had failed to collect arms, rather than in the centre

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and south, where Kesselring and Westphal had persuaded the

Italians to hand them in.168

With characteristic understatement, Kesselring remarked

simply “Rommel, too, would have been better advised if he had

demobilised the Italians in the north, instead of letting them

desert en masse to form the nucleus of the partisan guerilla

bands.”169

In addition to a “constructive negotiating ability dextrously

mixed with firmness and humanity,”170 Kesselring possessed

nearly limitless reserves of optimism, and he strove constantly

to spread that optimism to his men. “Hope was about the only

luxury remaining to the Axis and nobody attempted to inject it

more than Kesselring”; the CINC steadied his coalition partners and flew his personal aircraft on frequent frontline visits

until uncontestable Allied air supremacy—Kesselring was shot

down five times—made him stop.171 Much as his opponent

Eisenhower had to absorb his subordinates’ disappointments

and doubts “to force them on to accomplishments, which they

regard as impossible,” Kesselring encouraged “the commanders in the field with acts of undiluted optimism in which he did

not entirely believe [but had to] constantly play [to] do his

duty.”172 Kesselring’s operations chief, Col Dietrich Beelitz, reported that “at least three days a week, and sometimes more,

the Field-Marshal went to visit units at the front . . . at

dawn.”173 Macksey elaborated further: 70 percent of the

CINC’s time was spent visiting division headquarters in turn,

“encouraging the men under training, assessing their fighting

spirit and endeavouring to make his command self-sufficient

by harmonising consumption with the limited resources to be

obtained from Germany.”174 One of Kesselring’s inspection

trips nearly cost him his life. On 25 October 1944, Kesselring’s

car collided with a long-barreled gun; his convalescence for a

severe concussion put him out of action for three months.175

Kesselring consistently placed moral considerations at the

forefront of his decision making and was frequently able to

counter Mussolini’s and Hitler’s immoral excesses—for example, Hitler’s plan to kidnap the Italian king.176 Significantly,

the CINC blocked nearly all of the Führer’s orders for troops to

stand and die. General von Vietinghoff characterized Hitler’s

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“strategic theory” as “wherever the German soldier has set foot

he will remain”;177 Kesselring first opposed one of Hitler’s diein-place orders during Rommel’s retreat from El Alamein.

General Westphal, then Rommel’s chief of staff, recalled that

Kesselring appeared “as the rescuing angel” and assumed full

responsibility for recommencing the retreat before cabling

Hitler for a change of orders, allowing the Afrikakorps to “[escape] destruction in the nick of time.”178 Blaming himself for

waiting too long to evacuate Tunisia (again in the face of a

stand-and-fight order), Kesselring ordered the Sicilian withdrawal without informing Hitler or the OKW.179 In June 1944,

as the Allies advanced on Rome, Kesselring met Hitler personally to press for a free hand in conducting his mobile defense;

after guaranteeing “to delay the Allied advance appreciably, to

halt it at latest in the Apennines” and thereby prolong the war

into 1945, Kesselring earned Hitler’s acquiescence.180 According to Macksey, “to no other commander, not even to

favourites such as Göring, Guderian, or Rommel, did Hitler

make such concessions at this stage of the war.”181 At the

same time, Kesselring issued orders to protect Rome and

Italy’s ancient works of art––forbidding, for example, German

soldiers from entering the Monte Cassino monastery.182 Finally, Kesselring defied the most despicable orders from the

Nazi regime. Because it would have caused widespread starvation, Kesselring refused a Schutzstaffeln (SS) proposal to

evacuate the population of Rome. And despite being told “you

wait until after the war. Then we will deal with the General

Staff,” the commander in chief prevented SS chief Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler’s order to arrest 800 Jews by simple inertia. At his trial, Kesselring remarked “we did not detail

any troops for the order . . . and therefore this order was not

carried out and he could not arrest these people.”183 Kesselring’s leadership example is tainted by his association with the

Nazi regime, for he remained loyal enough to Hitler to call him

a genius in an interview immediately following the German

surrender.184 However, he performed far more admirably than

most of his contemporaries, and “came as near as did anybody

to solving the dilemma of survival in resistance to Hitler without fatally sacrificing integrity.”185

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Summary

In his memoirs, Kesselring declared himself “both an army

and an air-force officer.” Having held both air and army group

commands, he believed himself “in a position to appreciate the

tasks of individual commanders in both services” and demanded of all commanders “a high degree of knowledge and

understanding of the rudiments of all three arms.”186 In a

postwar interrogation on 17 September 1945, Field Marshal

Kesselring recapitulated all the skills required of theater commanders in chief. Alluding to comprehensive military knowledge, Kesselring recommended “General Staff officers who

have if possible had experience in administering and controlling all three branches.” Of strategic acumen, the former CINC

suggested “the Supreme Commander would not have to be an

airman, although airmen in [my] opinion most often have the

global view of strategy which is necessary for modern war.” Of

leadership, he stated simply “more important requisites for the

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Photo courtesy of Greenhill Books/Lionel Leventhal Limited, London.

Source: Kenneth Macksey, Kesselring: German Master Strategist of the Second World War (London, Batsford, 1978. Reprinted London, Greenhill Books and Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1996).

Field Marshals Erwin J. Rommel and Albrecht Kesselring
Supreme Commander would be character, humbleness, and

integrity.”187 Kesselring’s experience suggests that an airman

can excel in theater command and highlights the qualities any

officer—soldier, sailor, airman, or marine—must have to succeed as a CINC. Although he fought on the wrong side in World

War II, Kesselring is, along with his contemporaries Eisenhower, Devers, and Norstad, worthy of further study and emulation by the American military professional.

Contemporary Perspectives

If you constrain yourself to military thinking and military learning, you’re going to be fairly narrow. More and

more, senior officers have to be a blend of diplomat,

statesman, humanitarian.

—Gen Anthony Zinni

The World War II and cold war experiences discussed thus

far are consistent in their definitions of CINC qualities. But are

those qualities relevant to the present? Late twentieth-century

experience provides a number of perspectives on the requirements for theater CINCs; significantly, those perspectives mirror the ones from 40 to 50 years ago. Almost unanimously,

more recent holders of high command, as well as many analysts who have studied CINC performance, underscore the

qualities of competence, strategic insight, and leadership described thus far. If anything, they give greater emphasis to the

understanding of political-military interrelations. According to

one student of the subject,

the nature of the international economic system has undergone

a radical transformation, creating new forms of interdependence and rivalries. . . . International institutions have, as a consequence, undergone both rapid proliferation and diversification in the military and nonmilitary realms alike, and the

distinction between the two, in terms of conceptions of national

security and national interest as such, is diminishing. The

[CINCs], in other words, have had to adapt in their respective

leadership roles to larger political, technological, and economic

circumstances over which they have had, to a greater or lesser

degree, little or no direct control.188

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How, then, have recent leaders and their observers depicted

the attributes they relied on to adapt to modern circumstances?

Command Perspectives

One richly experienced officer, former joint task force commander, SACEUR, and CJCS, General Shalikashvili, used

words that could have been spoken by his predecessors Eisenhower and Norstad to describe the requirements for joint and

coalition command. When asked what a geographic CINC

does, General Shalikashvili responded 

I think we principally select CINCs to be able to function in war

. . . the principal reason [is] his ability to conduct strategic/operational level war in his theater. In reality, he does relatively

little of that. Most of what he does is in the political-military

field. . . . but the first thing that [the CJCS and SecDef] asked

was “if war broke out in [a given theater], who would be the best

guy of those available to conduct combat operations.”

[To be effective], he needs an ability to conduct combat ops, to

understand joint operations. Close on the heels of that, he

needs an ability to swim in political-military waters. He has to

have personality and understand strategic issues.189 

While the general touched on political savvy and personal

skills, he emphasized broad professional expertise, noting that

even though a CINC’s outlook is strategic, he has to be well

grounded operationally. Referring to his NATO experience,

Shalikashvili described a command structure wherein his

major subordinate commands were each joint, and asked “So

where does the CINC get his air, naval, [or ground] component

advice? The staff? He doesn’t call the four-stars in and say

‘what do we do.’ That says the CINC has to be competent on

his own . . . that’s where the benefit of [having held] senior

component command is vital.”190

Finally, Shalikashvili insisted that comprehensive knowledge of one’s own service had to be accompanied by broad

knowledge of sister-service capabilities. He cautioned airmen

to remember the Army’s “cultural perception that you must be

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really grounded in doctrine to lead.”191 To command joint

forces, one must be able to communicate effectively with members of each component. Effective communication requires a

broad understanding of each component’s doctrine and tactical/operational outlook.

It is ironic that Shalikashvili, a former NATO supreme commander, hammered home the theme of joint expertise, for

most commentators see SACEUR as being a primarily political

position. From Norstad’s time on, dual-hatted SACEUR/US

commanders in chief, Europe (CINCEUR) have delegated dayto-day supervision of their American forces to their deputies.

General Powell, for example, argued “that [deputy commander

in chief, Europe] DCINCEUR, a four-star officer, is a CINC for

all practical purposes even though subordinate to

SACEUR.”192 Three former DCINCEURs identified the same

CINC attributes as Shalikashvili, but two of them reversed

their former boss’s order and stressed the political elements of

the position. General Boyd highlighted political-military understanding and personal qualities, saying “most CINCs have

risen through [strategic] vision, great intellect, and understanding of how to meld resources to political-military objectives.”193 Similarly, Gen James L. Jamerson, Boyd’s successor,

believed that “a CINC is mostly a political animal. . . . He

tracks US interests, and works with allies and ambassadors.”194

Boyd’s predecessor, Gen James P. McCarthy, gave a balanced assessment of a commander’s need of strategic insight

and joint competence in an article for the Naval War College

Review, “Commanding Joint and Coalition Operations.” McCarthy, who outlined requirements for both theater-level

coalition commanders and their subordinates, demanded

broad joint knowledge to ensure optimal use of military resources: “the major impediment to a commander using the

best forces available is the absence of knowledge about the capabilities offered by sister-services and special operating

forces. Therefore, it is essential to educate those leaders on the

capabilities offered by the full spectrum of forces to enable

them to . . . combine unique capabilities in a complementary

fashion.”195

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The deputy commander in chief (DCINC) then turned to national and international political understanding. In Clausewitzian fashion, he observed that “there is no military operation of any significance that does not have political

consequences. . . . commanders must be constantly aware of

the political impact of the actions in the United States and

around the world.”196 He also echoed Eisenhower’s ideas on

coalition command. Multinational operations, argued McCarthy, represent both the toughest and most essential military endeavors; therefore, commanders must emphasize “international political support, occasionally at some expense to

operational efficiency.”197 Finally, he focused on American policy and noted that a commander “must be sensitive to the perspectives and concerns of [his superiors] and where the consensus is going in Washington on strategic policy issues.”198

The general suggested constant communication with Pentagon

leaders, from joint staff directors through the secretary of defense, to maintain a feel for “the Pentagon’s perspective,” because “as operations unfold, circumstances change, and political objectives shift, neither the mission nor the tasks are

likely to remain constant.”199 In McCarthy’s view, the CINC

must combine his knowledge of world and Washington politics

to be able to discern his mission.

General Horner, who experienced the national and international interplay of coalition operations firsthand during the

Persian Gulf War, agreed with McCarthy’s take on political insight. The Desert Storm air commander and later CINC, Space

Command (SPACECOM) phrased it thusly:

I think it is vital for a CINC to understand the role of the unified command vis-à-vis his boss, the SecDef, and his component commanders. Here is [a quote] to keep, from General

George Crist: “The role of the unified command is to create the

environment needed for the components to prosecute the war.”

Of course, the war may be nothing more than humanitarian relief, it may be getting other nations to work with the US in security policy matters, or it may be a coalition in wartime.

[To create that environment, the CINC] must trust and promote

harmony among his components, . . . [and] know how to work

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Washington, e.g., the pitfalls in the Joint and Service staffs and

more importantly with the SecDef and Chairman . . . He will [go]

before the President—and you don’t get two chances to screw

that up so he must be deliberate and thoughtful—but at the

end of the day he better have the strength of character to say

“no” when appropriate. Yes-men are of little value to anyone.200

In other words, the CINC has the responsibility not only to

carry out Washington’s policy directives but also to use his

knowledge of the US and theater political situations to help

guide American policy decisions.

Gen Fred F. Woerner, CINC of the US Southern Command

(SOUTHCOM) in the late 1980s, reiterated the foregoing evaluation of high command, observing that “area [strategic] competence, professional competence, and diplomacy in its broadest context—call it leadership, call it personnel skills”201—are

the core requirements for successful CINCs. He considered the

“duality of [his] career central to effectiveness as a CINC,” and

achieved that “by balancing two careers: one pol/mil, one

straight military.”202 Starting as a captain, the general “followed politics, economics, culture, and religion” to develop a

broad-based expertise but stayed “d--n proficient in the core

elements of the military profession. I tried not to be a [regional

politics] scholar who dabbles in the military, but a great soldier who’s also a profound student of [regional politics].”203

General Woerner combined that blend of skills with personal

diplomatic ability, noting the importance and difficulty of communicating with a CINC’s counterparts, both foreign and

American: “When you get down to it, [the CINC must always

ask] ‘how do I advance US foreign policy?’ Diplomacy and tactfulness play [a big role] in dealing with . . . ambassadors, all

of whom are cognizant they’re the senior American in country.

Without a rapport, you cannot implement policy, and you put

all military members of the country team in jeopardy. So, you

talk to the Chairman, to the other CINCs, and the service

chiefs. . . . You’re in constant communication with the State

Department and Congress, and you write a little. [What really

counts] is the personal relations you develop.”204

General Woerner explained in detail the problems of ambiguous top-level guidance at which Generals Devers and Mc57

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Carthy had hinted, noting that “the CINC is not just at the

strategic level of policy—he’s at an ephemeral, philosophical

level . . . He must understand the amorphous nature of policy.

It doesn’t come from the top down, really; it comes from the interaction of the ambassadors, and from requests for direction

. . . No one ever handed me a Presidential paper from which I

got my mission . . . I got direction when I asked [national leaders] ‘please order me to do this.’”205

CINC credibility and effectiveness in the often-hazy world

political arena, then, demand a robust combination of skills in

the three broad categories of military proficiency, strategic vision, and personality.

Observer Perspectives

Scholarly analysis of the problems faced by top-level commanders has, on the whole, concurred with the preceding

viewpoints; if anything, outside analysts have emphasized

even more strongly the political-military aspects of high command. For example, in Beyond the Battlefield, a 1981 study of

both military leadership and civil-military relations, Sam C.

Sarkesian rejected Samuel P. Huntington’s contention that

military leaders should strive to be apolitical. Instead, he

agreed with sociologist Morris Janowitz—and leaders like General Woerner—that the military professional must “develop political-social insights to deal with political-military issues and

the ambiguous nature of the security environment.”206 Sarkesian acknowledged “that battlefield skills and technology remain important ingredients of military professionalism” but

demanded that military leaders “develop the intellectual tools

and insights to appreciate the interdependence between war

and politics.”207 Furthermore, he argued, military leaders

must understand “the nature of the environment in which the

leadership role must be performed,”208 and realize that “to

lead, therefore, means the art of influencing people, both military and civilian, to accomplish a particular goal in a [particular] political-cultural setting. . . . [This requires] political astuteness, imagination, [and] a mind sensitive to and experienced

in the essentials of human behavior and human motivation.”209

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Even though Sarkesian was more concerned with domestic

than international political insights—he wrote as much to describe the military’s role in society as to advise future leaders—he nevertheless described precisely the qualities prescribed by and for multinational commanders.

Analysis of some recent multiservice and multinational operations has focused on joint and combined task forces

(J/CTF)––one level below CINCs––but the lessons found

therein correspond almost directly with the experiences of

theater commanders. US Atlantic Command (USACOM) afteraction report from Operation Uphold Democracy, the effort to

restore the popularly elected government of Jean Bertrand

Aristide to Haiti, sounded once again the themes of jointness

and strategic acumen. It recommended revamped training and

service school education for JTF commanders and staffs, who

“lacked sufficient knowledge of . . . interoperability” and cautioned that “the MNF [multinational force] commander has extensive political military responsibilities.”210 Those responsibilities included maintaining the “fragile” MNF cohesion,

which “varied with changes in the political and economic factors affecting [the participants’] motivations.”211 Maj John

Metz, who studied the humanitarian relief Operations Provide

Comfort and Restore Hope, agreed, saying “consensus is the

most critical element for sustaining multilateral action.”212 “To

better prepare himself and his organization,” Metz declared

“the commander must understand both the military and civilian factors influencing operations within his region of the

world” and must communicate effectively with civilian and

military superiors and a range of governmental and civilian organizations.213 Examining Operation Provide Comfort, State

Department employee Robert E. Sorenson acknowledged the

problem of synchronizing “many agencies’ activities at the

strategic, operational, and tactical levels,” and wrote of the

commander’s need “to shape the ‘political’ area of operations.”214 He stressed that “the skills demanded of the military

commander were uniquely ‘political’ in nature and required

substantial courage . . . [because] field initiatives often superseded Washington instructions as to the best course of action”

and highlighted consensus building, coordination, and flexi59

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bility.215 Navy Capt Terry J. Pudas summed it up simply: “Understanding the complexities of coalitions and successfully executing coalition warfare requires a unique combination of political and military prowess.”216

Lt Gen John H. Cushman, US Army, has provided a succinct yet comprehensive analysis of command at JTF level and

above. Cushman, who retired in 1978 after serving as commandant of the Army Command and General Staff College and

commanding a combined corps group in Korea, explored the

categories of military, interpersonal, and political talent in his

handbook Thoughts for Joint Commanders. Joint commanders,

the general suggested, require “objectivity reflecting broad

multiservice professional competence” to reach correct decisions and develop fingerspitzengefühl, a German term denoting acute awareness of the entire battle space.217 To achieve

that competence, he recommended starting “early in life to

study other-Service forces, their ways of operating, and their

cultures.”218 He also discussed the personal skills necessary

to meld joint and multinational forces into cohesive teams,

calling for “genuine empathy for national sensitivities and

pride, leading by understanding persuasion, sound thinking,

and . . . a steady hand, robust liaison, and adept use of teambuilding techniques.”219 Cushman acknowledged the need for

strategic vision capable of discerning, when necessary, developing, and accomplishing the mission:

Political and strategic direction to the multinational force will

likely be the ambiguous product of negotiation and compromise, augmented for its US commander by guidance from his

US-only chain of command and perhaps by policy input from a

local American ambassador of other US authority. Authorities

at each nation’s seat of government will be giving their own instructions to their national forces, thereby complicating operational and tactical direction by the field commander, who must

work out, probably on his own, ways to weave together the myriad and diverse national contributions in a common effort.

Agreement on the multinational force’s basic objectives is the

bedrock requirement; this may not, however, produce a clear

statement of the desired operational end-conditions. In that

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case, the commander considers his guidance, makes his own

assessment of the situation, and formulates the desired endconditions in the necessary detail. He communicates these to

his superiors and to his colleagues . . . directs operations accordingly, and revises them as the situation and his instructions change. (Emphasis added)220

Summary

Clearly, modern commanders in chief must rely on attributes consistent with those of their predecessors. According to

a variety of military leaders and scholars, CINCs still depend

upon abilities in three major categories: military prowess,

strategic-political-military vision, and leadership skills. Very

little seems to have changed in 50 years: with the exception of

a minor emphasis on interagency coordination, modern leaders describe command problems and solutions almost exactly

as commanders did after World War II. For the last word on the

subject, consider the views of the current CJCS, Gen Henry H.

Shelton. Penned in February 1999, they represent but an upto-date version of Eisenhower’s thoughts from the mid-1940s:

Based on the position under consideration and the individuals

nominated, the selection for each CINC is different; however,

there are some general characteristics that joint force commanders must possess. First, the individual must be capable of

leading complex organizations and be widely recognized as a

good leader. There are different leadership styles and hundreds

of books have been written on the subject, but a short definition of a good leader is an ethically grounded individual who

can empower people and create a team capable of getting the

job done no matter how difficult the circumstances. In addition

to being highly successful leaders, prospective CINCs must be

an expert within their own Service. Airmen, for example, must

thoroughly understand airpower and employ those capabilities

in different environments.

Being an accomplished leader and a Service expert is only part

of the equation. CINCs must be truly “joint” and possess a

working knowledge of the capabilities of all the Services and

how they can be used both individually and in concert to han61

BELOTE
dle any mission, from high intensity combat to peacekeeping

operations. To be effective in applying military force, CINCs

must also understand the challenges our Nation faces in the

current strategic environment and appreciate how all instruments of power—economic, political, and military—can be used

to achieve national objectives. In today’s complex, interconnected world, CINCs must also possess the ability to think at

the strategic, operational, and tactical levels nearly simultaneously. Every CINC must also understand the inter-agency policy process and their role in that process.221

Conclusions

[A young officer should] take General de Gaulle’s advice

. . . the education of a general should be directed to any

subject except the military, because by the time he’s considered for high leadership position it should be assumed he’s professionally qualified—but in this world a

general can’t make a decision unless he’s aware of the

political, economic, and social factors which also influence his decision. So he should broaden the field that

he’s studying.

—Gen Lauris Norstad

In the end, the evidence about the qualities of successful

CINCs appears overwhelming. Throughout the 50-year period

studied herein, commander after commander and observer

after observer have repeated the same conclusions about joint

and multinational command. Eisenhower and Devers discussed problems of coalition cohesion and unclear top-level

guidance and outlined the skills and mindset they used to

cope with those problems; historians have confirmed the generals’ ingredients of command success. Norstad, a savvy airman, used skill, grace, and a sure hand to help build the alliance during six turbulent years of East-West confrontation.

According to the Washington Post, “this required a NATO commander with a sophisticated understanding of European politics and a deft diplomatic hand as well as the military skill to

direct the defense of Western Europe along a 4,000-mile

front.”222 Another remarkable airman, Kesselring, used simi62

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lar insights and skills to conduct a two-year-long fighting

withdrawal from Tunisia to the Alps as his coalition collapsed

around him. In the 30 years between Norstad’s tenure as

SACEUR and that of General Shalikashvili, little of consequence seemed to change. Commanders and their observers in

the 1980s and 1990s described the same problems of supreme

command and called for similar CINC qualities. Every source

consulted in this study concurred: to perform effectively as

war-fighting CINCs, airmen—indeed, all officers—need comprehensive military proficiency, an incisive geostrategic-political-military vision, and strong, but nuanced and deft skills in

leadership and interpersonal relations.

The categories of leadership and military competence

should come as no surprise to any student of military affairs.

Professional libraries contain countless volumes about the

great military leaders of the past; most of those leaders relied

on exceptional personal skills—charm, intellect, integrity, and

persuasiveness—to reach the pinnacle of success. Additionally, no top commander would have achieved greatness without a well-recognized ability to employ his service’s forces. As

General Woerner remarked, “you only get there as a competent

military man”; General McCarthy argued that airmen “must

understand the JFACC business—it’s the logical prerequisite

for CINCdoms.”223 Furthermore, in the last half-century, few

leaders would have succeeded without a great facility for employing joint forces; and in this day and age, the GoldwaterNichols Act mandates it. Presumably, all recent leaders have

also had the ability to direct large, complex organizations—but

they appear to take this talent for granted. Only General Shelton, backed by a few civilian analysts, explicitly described a

need for organizational expertise.

While leadership and military ability may have been considered as “givens,” military thinkers have occasionally overlooked the CINCs’ demand for extensive political-military acumen. Most likely everyone realizes the requirement is there;

professional military colleges include generous helpings of

Clausewitz and the interrelationships of the national instruments of power in their curricula, and Air Force Basic Doctrine

starts with a discussion of strategy and policy.224 To use Gen63

BELOTE
eral Shalikashvili’s metaphor, however, few seem to realize just

how deep the political waters run. Former CSAF Ronald R.

Fogleman believes a cultural bias exists against service in

Washington, and many military officers seem to identify with

Eisenhower’s early wish to “get rid of all these questions that

are outside the military scope.”225 Unfortunately, such a narrow military focus contradicts the experience of theater commanders. Eisenhower’s postwar speeches reflect clear political

understanding, and senior leaders from Devers to McCarthy

and Woerner imply that CINCs may never fail to include political considerations in their advice. In fact, CINC experience

suggests strongly that theater CINCs are not just executors of

policy but policy makers in their own right. Circumstances

have often forced on-scene CINCs to craft American foreign

policy with ambiguous guidance at best, and observers such

as General Cushman suggest that trend will continue. The responsibility to formulate policy and strategy demands extensive domestic and international political-military understanding.

There are, to be sure, viewpoints that oppose “political” generals. As described above, Harvard political scientist Huntington’s 1957 work The Soldier and the State advocated an apolitical mentality, arguing that an officer corps “immune to

politics and respected for its military character would be a

steadying balance wheel in the conduct of policy.”226 Significantly, some of the politically savvy CINCs described above

have risked overstepping their political bounds. General Woerner conceded that his critics considered him “an apologist

for the area.”227 Furthermore, some of Norstad’s contemporaries viewed the SACEUR as overly political. Indeed,

Norstad’s deputy at USAFE, Landon (then major general)

mixed admiration and disdain:

I am a close personal friend, and I have a great deal of admiration and respect for Larry, but I don’t think much of Larry as an

Air Force officer, I mean as an Air Force general. . . . Larry is too

“global.” . . . He was very fond of saying, “I am not a nuts-andbolts general.” Well, I am a nuts-and-bolts general, and a lot of

the generals in the Air Force are.

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[However], as an Air Force general officer, he did a very beautiful job of at least fronting for USAFE and for running the Allied

Air Forces. He did a good job of setting them up because he had

an appreciation of the other air forces that some of the rest of

us wouldn’t have had at the time. And then as SACEUR, he was

really magnifico.228

Landon’s criticism wisely counsels caution to the officers

who might overplay their political hand—but Huntington’s

must be discounted, given the balance of evidence. As a political scientist, Huntington was concerned with the theory of

civil-military relations; the experiences of the CINCs cited

herein suggest, however, that Huntington’s desire for apolitical generals at best represents wishful thinking and at worst

ignores political realities. Indeed, one general universally

renowned for battlefield prowess lasted only a year as

SACEUR because he lacked a deft political touch. As Gen

Omar Bradley, the CJCS, explained, “[General Matthew] Ridgway was not proving to be the ideal choice for NATO. Matt was

a field commander without peer but not a diplomat. . . . in his

zeal, Ridgway had antagonized many politicians among our allies.”229 Norstad thought simply that Ridgway “just did not

grasp the length and breadth of the problem.”230 General officers who would be CINCs must acknowledge the danger of

being too political, but must also develop considerable international and domestic political expertise to complement their

military competence and leadership skills.

To recapitulate, threads of broad professional knowledge,

political-military insight, and leadership are woven throughout the histories of successful regional CINCs. In World War II,

Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower and his subordinate

Devers, among others, set the stage for their successors by figuring out why and how to put together militarily viable, politically cohesive international forces. Norstad had the military

skill to plan the air portions of the Mediterranean theater joint

campaigns for two years, and to help construct the unified Department of Defense. At the height of the cold war, he melded

that expertise to a deep understanding of international politics

and cultures, developed the combined-arms sword-and-shield

containment strategy, and handled crises and Soviet threats

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with aplomb. Similarly, Kesselring served with valor in World

War I, was instrumental in organizing both the Wehrmacht and

the Luftwaffe, and commanded air forces in all of Germany’s

early World War II victories. He then deftly walked a political

and military tightrope as he cajoled both Italian and German

leaders during a slow, effective withdrawal up the Italian boot.

Finally, recent CINCs and DCINCs all described their jobs as

requiring extensive military, political, and interpersonal skills.

The evidence suggests that success as a geographic CINC

rests on joint competence, geostrategic vision, and leadership

ability—and the cases of Norstad and Kesselring demonstrate

that airmen who possess these qualities can excel in theater

command.

Implications 

The truth of the matter is that it is not as routine for [airmen] to develop broad-gauged military thinkers, but the

ones we develop are as effective as any. The climate just

doesn’t produce many. That absence hurts the whole

country’s military power . . . and affects the Air Force

psyche down to the lowest levels. We must overcome

that or airpower cannot develop in its most grand and

effective form.

—Gen Charles G. Boyd

Even if Norstad and Kesselring have proved that airmen can

be exceptionally effective CINCs, significant questions remain

unanswered. Put most bluntly, the first is, so what? Does the

nation really need airman CINCs? If so, as General Boyd argued previously, airmen must articulate the reasons to the national political leadership—and, to have meaning for a wide

American audience, the reasons must relate to American security, not just Air Force institutional prerogatives. Second, if

the nation would benefit from airmen in theater command,

can the Air Force overcome the cultural and traditional impediments that led to a four-decade gap between Generals

Norstad and Ralston? Third, has the Air Force adequately prepared its officers for major theater command, and has it demon66

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strated that preparation to civilian leaders? Fourth, what can

the USAF do to develop potential regional CINCs?

National Defense Perspective

Ultimately, the arguments for or against airman CINCs turn

on the role of airpower in future conflicts. Describing the bias

that has worked against airmen since Norstad’s day, General

Shalikashvili highlighted a prevalent belief “that someone who

has spent 30 years living ground operations is the right guy for

a theater with a preponderance of ground forces,” although

the general personally discounted that argument. He then

worked “all the way around to the primary issue” and asked

“is the Air Force a primary arm or a supporting arm?” As an

artillery officer, the former CJCS appeared at ease with a view

of airpower as support, as suggested by the following admonition: “Be careful. We have the best Air Force in the world.

When you begin to change your emphasis, understand the

cost of that. Ask first what a change in focus will do—it’s kind

of like surgeons complaining ‘we’re not hospital administrators.’

I wouldn’t turn the Air Force around [just] to grow more

CINCs.” (Emphasis added)231

Recent history seems to counter the general’s inference that

the Air Force will remain a supporting arm, however. Instead,

as a number of analysts have noted, airpower may often assume a central role in military action. Air Vice Marshal R. A.

Mason has described “a new era of optional warfare” in which

“air power is the instrument of least commitment,” able to

“reach into a conflict zone from outside, either for direct air attack independently of ground forces, or in support of them.”232

Highlighting airpower’s versatility, he opined that “air power is

likely to become a favourite instrument in optional warfare,

minimising friendly casualties, providing a wide range of offensive options, capitalising on technological superiority, susceptible to the fine tuning of volume and duration, and able to

be started, interrupted, and halted without concern for ‘incountry’ logistic support or protection.”233

In contrast, Edward N. Luttwak, Senior Fellow at the Center

for Strategic and International Studies, has suggested that

ground forces, although versatile “across the entire spectrum

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of conflict,” face “political restraints [that] greatly restrict their

availability.”234 He argued that “the prospect of high casualties, which can rapidly undermine domestic support for any

military operation,” is the key restraint, and in “a first approximation of what might be called a casualty exposure

index,” ranked Army and Marine ground forces as the “least

usable” components of military policy.235 Indeed, 1999 witnessed an American president explicitly ruling out ground

power at the beginning of a military campaign.

If airpower may be the first or only politically acceptable policy option in a conflict, it stands to reason that an air-minded

theater commander would be the most effective officer to employ it. Along those lines, General Boyd eloquently provided

counterpoints to General Shalikashvili’s concerns, and highlighted reasons why airmen CINCs are, in fact, important to

national security. He dismissed the idea that a wider focus

would reduce Air Force effectiveness, saying “look at the Navy.

They’re the greatest Navy and TACAIR piece the world has ever

seen . . . [and] their aviators can compete well for CINC

slots.”236 He also spoke forcefully about the issue of primary

versus supporting roles for airpower, and that debate’s influence on national power:

The reason it is important for airmen to be routinely considered

for regional CINC positions [is that, if they aren’t], that makes

the Air Force—in people’s subconscious—inferior to those services that do provide leadership to regions. . . . That relegates the

Air Force to slightly diminished status, which works all the way

down to company grade officers. 

If the Air Force never sees its role models as number one in

command, that hurts its self-perception. An Air Force CINC

would alter the self-perception that airpower is just for support.

Airpower [must be seen as] co-equal, and sometimes primary.

The attitude of subordination of air has truncated its development in its fullest horizons as an element of military power. If

you only think of it as support, its flourishing as a form of military power can never be complete.237

By inference, if airpower is to be at its most effective in the

myriad crises and contingencies in which it is employed today,

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airmen must more often be the theater commanders who integrate it into joint, multinational military power.

Few would deny that a bias still exists against calling airpower a coequal component of military power—despite the fact

that the July 1943 version of Army Field Manual (FM) 100-20,

Command and Employment of Air Power, declared that landpower and airpower were independent and coequal. Many

officers—soldiers and airmen alike—accept the superficial argument that “if there are ground troops involved, command

must go to the ground component.” General Boyd demonstrated that the argument does not stand on logic: “I’ve never

known an Army officer who didn’t think he could command a

force including airmen and never met one who thought airmen

could command soldiers. The pure psychology defies logic, but

it’s pervasive.”238 Instead of logic, the argument reflects what

Harvard professor Yuen Foong Khong calls schema theory.

Human beings, according to behavioral and cognitive scientists, truly understand only what they have lived and tend to

discount everything else.239 Therefore, ground-trained officers

identify with their ground experience and generally reject the

notion that any other perspective could be equally valid. More

than simply parochialism, therefore, it is a lack of a common

frame of reference that separates the soldiers and airmen who

must meld the forces of the future.

Unfortunately, that lack of a common framework can have

disastrous consequences—consequences that a joint-minded

airman CINC might avoid. General McCarthy, former

DCINCEUR, argued that lack of appreciation of sister-service

capabilities was the greatest impediment to effective combined

operations.240 General Fogleman, former CSAF and CINC of

US Transportation Command, emphasized the high costs of a

lack of airpower understanding:

The entire nation loses out. As chief of staff and CINCTRANS, I

saw gross misapplications of force—CINCs who briefed contingencies using only what they knew. The deaths in Mogadishu

[on 3 October 1993] were senseless. AC-130s [gunships] were

accessible in theater, but not used because a green-suiter

wanted to use green-suit assets.

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We lose lives because we don’t make full use of airpower—commanders don’t fully understand it. Everybody thinks they’re

great [air] campaign planners, that it’s easy somehow. But if it’s

an airshow, it’s easier for an airman to visualize and explain.241

Certainly, airmen must explain the limitations of airpower

as well; arguably, an airman CINC would understand and express both capabilities and limitations to political leaders better than a surface-trained CINC. In Air Vice Marshal Mason’s

words, “the application of air power is now a profession of considerable complexity, demanding technological mastery, a

sense of command, structure, speed, time, distance and impact in proportions quite different from those applicable on

land or sea. Not greater, nor lesser, but different.”242 In view of

airpower’s likely role in future conflict, and the potential costs

of misuse of airpower, national security would indeed benefit

from the “not greater, nor lesser, but different” abilities and

worldviews of airman CINCs.

Cultural Obstacles

If the Air Force is to produce officers able to contribute to

the national defense as CINCs, it must first understand the

hurdles such officers must face and overcome. Secretary Cheney highlighted the domestic cultural obstacles facing Air

Force regional CINCs by averring “there’s something about the

culture that identifies the Air Force with specific positions

rather than joint command” despite insisting he had worked

with “some very talented [airmen] . . . superb officers who

could have done it.”243 That cultural obstacle stems from the

ground-centric mindset to which General Shalikashvili alluded, and can be seen vividly in the command changeover

that occurred between Generals Jamerson (then major general) and Shalikashvili (then lieutenant general) at the beginning of Operation Provide Comfort. This exercise started as an

aerial operation under Jamerson’s command; but when the

mission grew to include on-ground protection of humanitarian

convoys and refugee camps, the SACEUR, Gen John R.

Galvin, installed Shalikashvili as task force commander. To a

man, Generals Jamerson, Shalikashvili, and McCarthy—actively involved as DCINCEUR—insisted there was nothing

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“sinister” or overtly parochial about the replacement; Jamerson said “don’t read too much into it—General Galvin had to

be comfortable, and ‘Shali’ made him more comfortable.”244 At

the same time, Shalikashvili characterized the command

change as “just one of those knee-jerk reactions,” and admitted that his own contributions to Operation Provide Comfort

success lay not in operational ground expertise. Rather, they

involved political and strategic issues like negotiations with

coalition partners and, most importantly, with Iraqi military

leaders—activities in which an airman, specifically General

Jamerson, could have succeeded if given the chance.245 Because it was a joint task force, the Provide Comfort example

represents the step below theater CINC concerns—but the experience is indicative of the ground-centric bias airman commanders must overcome by demonstrating joint proficiency

and strategic insight.

Would-be airman CINCs face similar—perhaps even larger—

cultural hurdles in the international arena as well. In 1954

then SHAPE air deputy Norstad expressed “the major regret

that d--n few countries have the Air Force as their first service” because such a lack complicated military-to-military relations with US forces,246 and the more recently retired CINCs

characterized the US Air Force’s unique position as a similar

detriment in the present. General McCarthy repeated

Norstad’s lament: “the interface in Europe has always been

between ground force commanders . . . talking the language of

the Army,”247 and General Woerner’s SOUTHCOM experience

provided similar evidence. “Militaries outside of our own,” he

believed, “ have a single-Service orientation that is, by far,

ground-based. . . . There is a greater facility for soldier-to-soldier war stories than [soldier-to-airman]. I don’t talk with my

hands, I do foxholes.”248 

Along those lines, General Shalikashvili provided two telling

examples of international military bias. For the first, he

noted “when we proposed [USMC General John] Sheehan as

CINCUSACOM [commander in chief, US Atlantic Command], I

had to make countless trips to London to placate the British,

who said ‘over our dead bodies will we have a Marine in command of UK naval forces.’”249 For the second, he described his

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attempts to install an airman as commander, US Forces

Korea, and commander, Combined Forces Command, that

failed because the Koreans could not accept the appointment.

“Because the preponderance of forces are Korean—the number of US forces are insignificant—you cannot be cavalier with

how the Koreans feel,” and the large number of Korean full

generals subordinate to the combined commander objected to

serving under an airman.250 Political acceptability derailed the

airman’s chance to command multinational forces.

In spite of these cultural obstacles, however, this study’s

correspondents concluded that the time was nearly ripe for an

Air Force regional CINC—roughly six months before General

Ralston was nominated as SACEUR. General Jamerson cited

“many barriers to break down” but said “it’s not inconceivable.

[Secretary William S.] Cohen could decide [to appoint an airman].”251 General Woerner insisted that “in principle, any

CINCdom could be non-Service specific” and that service

background was “not a disqualifier. Soldier stories [lose value]

after the initial icebreaking and don’t outweigh other skills—

as evidenced by the current CINCSOUTH [Marine General Wilhelm].”252 General Boyd noted that other services “have used

the ‘influential service in the country’ argument to justify defense attaché billets for years. In truth, the host nation deals

with the appointee. Success depends on his skills, not his

service background.”253 General Horner put it perhaps most

colorfully, declaring “an Air Force officer can drink tea with

Arabs as well as a grunt. An airman can brief Congress as well

as a grunt. An airman can do [everything] CINCs do . . . so why

not an airman?”254

Most significantly, the three leaders most closely involved

with CINC selection suggest the obstacles can soon be more

frequently overcome. Regarding interservice misunderstandings, General Shalikashvili noted that the Army’s internal

prejudice against “supporting” arms is fading, citing three artillery officers—himself, Gen J. H. Binford Peay, and Gen Dennis J. Reimer—who had risen to serve as CJCS, CINC, US

Central Command (CENTCOM) and Army chief of staff, and

suggested one could extrapolate that to the Army/Air Force relationship. Since Desert Storm, he argued, “ground com72

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manders understand better how to maximize air’s role, and

that will put future Air Force officers in better position to command.”255 He also pointed out that the situation has changed

in Korea, where, despite the ground forces’ predominance, a

Korean airman has become chairman of Korea’s JCS. General

Powell went through the list of geographic commands one by

one and declared an airman could command any one of them.

Given the prestige and air of impartiality Powell enjoys in this

country, one doubts he could have said anything else, but he

said it bluntly enough to predict accurately that Norstad

would see a successor. An airman, he suggested, could have

SOUTHCOM or USACOM (redesignated US Joint Forces Command, 1 October 1999) “tomorrow,” and

CENTCOM could be air or ground. We’ll be fighting an AirLand

battle. I would accept an airman who has a clear record of

knowing and understanding ground maneuver warfare.

PACOM could be an airman, but PACOM is really a naval theater. . . . For an airman to get this job, he has to have strong

joint qualifications.

[Finally], in the current environment, I would have no reservations about an airman as SACEUR. . . . Norstad returns!256

Secretary Cheney summed everything up simply for his

erstwhile CJCS and the other defense officials, unwittingly

forecasting General Ralston’s nomination: “I don’t think an

airman’s appointment as a CINC would break any china.”257

Air Force Institutional Perspective

A changing domestic and international climate is not sufficient to institutionalize such a radical change as Air Force theater CINCs, however. For airmen to compete on a level playing

field for regional command, their service has to make that an

institutional priority; it is not at all clear that senior Air Force

leaders are so motivated. General Shalikashvili counseled caution to those who might change the Air Force’s focus, and a

few retired Air Force general officers agreed with him. General

McCarthy, for one, professed little concern over the dearth of

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Air Force regional CINCs.258 A senior visitor to Air University

shared McCarthy’s view and explained why: “The fact that

there are no USAF geographic CINCs doesn’t bother me very

much. There is no entitlement here. . . . Four star counts [not

specific billets] are [the] indices of power to the services. . . .

For the most part, we do pretty well.”259 General Woerner seconded that view, noting how any service chief would seek to

maximize his cohorts’ opportunities rather than give up fourstar billets.260 Secretary Cheney stressed that “the number of

four-stars per service is jealously guarded” as he described a

“cumulative, iterative” process of assigning four-star officers

in consultation with the CJCS: “I thought in terms of a whole

universe of four-star billets . . . of a puzzle with multiple

choices and solutions. I might postpone [a promotion] if I

thought a more appropriate slot was opening later. It doesn’t

mean I downgraded [airmen] because I didn’t assign [them] to

geographic CINC positions.”261

For those who accept box scores as indicators of service influence and prestige, the USAF is in good shape and probably

should not change its focus. Indeed, counting all CINC appointments since 1947—including SAC when it was a specified command and a number of now-obscure commands—the

Air Force leads all services.262 

In the end, however, each of the officials cited above rejected

bean counting and provided additional arguments for the Air

Force to seek regional command opportunities. General McCarthy opined that “as a Service, [the Air Force has] more to

gain from improved joint opportunities.”263 The Air University

guest predicted that regional commands “are going to get increasingly important over time. . . . we are eventually going to

grant CINCs resource allocation authority, if not all, at least a

significant fraction. When that happens, we had better be

ready.”264 Finally, General Shalikashvili echoed part of General Boyd’s argument in favor of airman CINCs, noting “the

issue is worthwhile—it’s important for morale.”265

If the institutional Air Force accepts any of the foregoing arguments—about USAF self-perception, about a seat at the resource allocation table, about morale in the officer corps, or

most importantly, about airpower’s fullest development and its

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impact on national security—then it should make gaining geographic CINCdoms a service priority. In that case, Secretary

Cheney’s description of the four-star officer assignment

process suggests the Air Force must give up a valuable general

officer position to gain more opportunities for CINC positions—and that may prove difficult. (It remains to be seen how

General Ralston’s appointment will affect the process.) One

possibility would have been DCINCEUR; another, US Strategic

Command—but admirals currently fill both positions. That

leaves US SPACECOM and US Transportation Command

(TRANSCOM) as possibilities, but many senior leaders believe

those should stay in Air Force hands. General Powell, for example, wrote that “airmen should continue to command

TRANSCOM and SPACECOM because you get a two-fer . . . the

incumbent is also a major service command commander.”266

General Horner, a former CINCSPACECOM, disagreed

strongly, however, calling the Air Force’s hold on those positions “a Pyrrhic victory.”267 By inference, Horner supported

the contention that failure to place airmen in regional command billets hurts airpower and American security and that

geographic CINCdoms should be a service priority.

In any event, if airmen are regularly to take places as coequal integrators of joint force, the Air Force has to argue its

case effectively to the proper leaders—which it apparently has

not done. General Woerner, for example, was quite surprised

to discover that the Air Force had produced only one regional

CINC in its first 50 years—and, significantly, so was Secretary

Cheney. Cheney said bluntly: “If the Air Force ever made an

argument for a regional CINC slot, I didn’t hear it.”268 That

must change if the nation is to find more successors to

Norstad and help airpower achieve its fullest potential as a

source of international security.

To make that argument effectively, the USAF must change

the perception—one shared by high-ranking airmen and nonairmen alike—that it has not prepared its officers as well as

possible to be regional CINCs and produce indisputably wellqualified potential CINCs. General Shalikashvili spoke for

most interviewees when he observed that “few [top-notch] Air

Force officers have served on [joint or regional] staffs; the ‘hot75

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shots’ all went to Air Force Headquarters”;269 indeed, Air Force

culture seems to rank air staff experience above similar joint

experience. Shalikashvili continued, “it becomes incumbent

on the Service to have a longer-range view [and ask] ‘What

must I do to create an officer more qualified than anyone?’ . . .

Don’t ask if Air Force officers are qualified to be regional

CINCs—they are. The question should be—on the day the decision is made—is [the airman] . . . the best of the nominees?

The Air Force must make joint war fighters—seek positions for

its frontrunners to grow them as joint war fighters. Later on,

it must start thinking about area-specific expertise.”270

According to those interviewed, it appears that the Air Force

has not given its officers a political-military grounding sufficient to create a pool of qualified CINC candidates. General

Jamerson remarked that “we don’t raise people like the Army,

with a growth pattern of global political-military jobs. We’re a

specialist service—we fly—and don’t get out of our box

enough.”271 General Boyd concurred and credited former

CSAF Gen Michael Dugan with the observation that “the Air

Force attracts technologically oriented young men and women,

gives them the niftiest gadgets in the world, and says ‘go to it.’

Then at a certain point—major or lieutenant colonel—we say

‘put away those gadgets. We want you to be a sophisticated

geostrategic thinker, planner, articulate with Congress.’ . . .

The question is, how do we provide the necessary technical

competence and skill, but at the same time broaden thinking

about the connections of military force and diplomacy? It’s a

challenge for the whole institution.”272

General McCarthy lamented that “the issue, primarily, is we

haven’t prepared. There’s no organized plan, no group of people to put through the [joint preparation] program”; another

retired general said simply, “we don’t even want many of the

preparatory jobs that would prepare someone to compete for

CINC. . . . That is what has to change before we can expect to

merit a better shot at [CINCdoms].”273 General Fogleman

agreed, noting that “world-class guys tend to pick their own

service” and “part of the problem is to convince airmen to go

to D.C. The Air Force must understand there is value in the

people who gain exposure [to the Washington political

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process]. If the goal is regional CINC billets, joint staff or OSD

[Office of the Secretary of Defense] service is more important.

Ultimately the NSC [National Security Council] crowd shapes

the [appointment] decisions.”274 His observation fits neatly

with this study’s conclusion that CINCs need an in-depth understanding of both national and international politics. 

The interviewees were unanimous in their perception that

the Air Force’s best and brightest migrate to Air Force jobs and

tend to avoid the joint staff, unified commands, and service

within civilian agencies. Such anecdotal evidence begs an important question. Do available data support their observations

of how the Air Force may be failing to groom its officers for

high-level joint and international command? A cursory comparison of 10 CINCs’ careers with 10 Air Force generals’ careers helps answer the question. Figure 2 depicts the average

number of years each group spent in these job categories:

PME/education (as student or teacher); service-specific operations; service-specific staff; D.C. civilian agency job (White

House Fellow, aide to civilian secretary, legislative liaison,

OSD, or NSC); command above brigade-, ship-, or wing-level;

unified or combined command staff; or Pentagon joint staff.

The comparison suggests that the interviewees’ impressions

are, in fact, valid. 

Specifically, figure 2 reflects the careers (as of May 1999) of

US Army generals John M. D. Shalikashvili, George A. Joulwan, Wesley K. Clark, H. Norman Schwarzkopf, US Marine

Corps Gen Anthony C. Zinni, and US Navy admirals Dennis C.

Blair, Joseph W. Prueher, Richard C. Macke, Paul D. Miller,

and Harold W. Gehman. The US Air Force generals are Joseph

W. Ashy, Charles G. Boyd, Ralph E. Eberhart, Howell M. Estes

III, Ronald R. Fogleman, Patrick K. Gamble, Eugene E.

Habiger, Richard E. Hawley, James L. Jamerson, and John P.

Jumper. This sample, taken from official biographies available

on-line or through service and command public affairs offices,

indicates that the airmen spent more than twice the amount

of career time in service-specific staff jobs than did their Army,

Navy, and Marine counterparts, whose résumés included significant time on unified/combined command staffs and in government agency jobs in Washington. 

77

BELOTE
Arguably, such breadth helped provide the CINCs with the

joint competence and political/military awareness demanded

by the position. The experience with civilians is most noteworthy; General Fogleman alluded to the need for airmen to overcome their cultural reluctance and gain exposure to government officials—but only one of the Air Force generals served in

such a position (General Jumper was senior military assistant

to two secretaries of defense). Interestingly, General Ralston’s

career followed the same lines as those of his fellow airmen—

his first joint job (commander, Alaskan Command) was 27

years into his career—until he became the vice chairman of

the JCS. Perhaps a combination of political understanding

and networking, derived in part from interagency experience,

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Source: Lt Col Howard D. Belote.

Figure 2. Commanders in Chief versus

USAF Generals’ Careers
gave the CINCs—General Ralston included—the edge when

the defense secretary selected them. 

Quite simply, airmen appear to have a narrower upbringing

and less exposure to the political process than other service

members. Because civilian players in that process appoint the

CINCs, airmen may be cheating themselves out of vital opportunities by spending minimum time in joint or civilian agency

billets.

Recommendations

Make the bias ‘‘who is the best, most qualified officer”—

the uniform ought to be secondary. Still, young Air Force

officers should ask, “how can I maximize my chances

[for joint command]?”

—Gen John M. D. Shalikashvili

How, then, should the Air Force improve its preparation of

potential theater commanders? General Boyd suggested taking the “tool kit” of a commander in chief—in other words, the

geostrategic, military, and leadership related capabilities necessary for CINC success—and figuring out how to develop those

skills; he also recommended “finding out who the really good

CINCs were, and what made them so.”275 General Jamerson

suggested a similar “look at where CINCs came from.”276 An indepth analysis of some (especially post-Goldwater/Nichols) CINC

careers through interviews and comparisons of job progression

could use the data from figure 2 as a starting point and could

provide valuable insights for those who would develop their

joint and international command capabilities. Airmen interested in the CINC issue might conduct or commission such research.

More practically, airmen should focus their development in

two broad areas: professional education and career progression that blend airpower expertise with broad joint competence. Education is vital because CINC billets demand expansive knowledge and understanding of domestic and

international politics, economics, and culture; Norstad and

Kesselring both grew through extensive self-study. General

79

BELOTE
Boyd—formerly the Air University (AU) commander—suggested that major geostrategic issues “must be part of the education process at every level,”277 and AU is currently providing airmen a firm educational foundation. General Powell

commented “the Air Force has an excellent education process.

I attended National War College with Chuck Horner, H. T.

Johnson, and a number of other great airmen, and their

joint/combined education was equivalent to mine.”278 AU

must ensure that Air Force PME retains its quality—but the

current attempt to make PME more egalitarian unwittingly

risks undermining a good resident program and may inhibit

the grooming of future leaders. The 22 March 1999 issue of Air

Force Times reported that AU officials want to “change a culture that equates attendance in residence with career success”

and instill equity for correspondence students.279 Unless

those officials believe that a 10-month resident program where

education is an officer’s sole professional focus is equivalent to

a program that crams compact discs and “dirty purples” in between 12-hour to 14-hour work days, they must continue to

emphasize the educational depth possible only in a resident

program, and continue to reward those officers most likely to

benefit from attendance. If the Air Force wants to make sure

the admission process is fair, it can base attendance on promotion board ranking and an entrance exam—which would

emphasize to every officer the importance of continuing selfstudy.280 In any case, Air University cannot risk “dumbing

down” its product. As General de Gaulle suggested to Norstad,

future generals must demand a broad education in all facets

of national power. Furthermore, the CINCs depicted in figure

2 averaged four years of PME over their careers, highlighting

the beneficial—though not necessarily causal—relationship of

education to success.

In addition to emphasizing education, the Air Force should

create General Shalikashvili’s “joint war fighter” career track

and reward the officers who excel in joint and multinational

planning and command. Joint experience, specifically the type

of experience gained on unified command (and to some extent,

component) staffs, is vital to earn credibility with sister-service members. In General Cushman’s words, if air and land

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commanders “are ever to harmonize and reconcile . . . the airman must adopt the land commander’s way of looking at the

dynamics of the battle—and the land commander must understand how the airman must operate in his own medium,

the air.”281 Because the ground perspective has dominated

military thought for so long, the airmen who would command

theater forces must master that perspective as well as their

own and demonstrate their mastery to sister-service audiences. General McCarthy concurred with the need for a great

deal of joint experience, and cautioned “it takes years to develop that experience. [A prospective CINC] would need to be

joint as a lieutenant colonel and probably come back as a oneor two-star to be able to return as CINC.”282

Would-be CINCs must seek broad international experience

as well. Political scientist and coalition researcher Jordan has

argued that coalition commanders “should have extensive professional exposure to international political conditions, including serving on international staffs and, if possible, commanding multinational military forces. They should also be

proven planners because . . . in peacetime, planning for war

must never cease, and good planners are not easy to find. The

member-states, especially the United States, should make

every effort to reward generously those officers willing to devote a significant portion of their careers outside the normal

national military career channels in order to serve on international planning staffs or commands.”283

In the same vein, General Jamerson noted that “we ought to

broaden our skill base” and highlighted the nascent Foreign

Area Officer program as a worthwhile beginning for company

grade officers; General Woerner credited his personal success

to his involvement in the Army’s similar Foreign Area Specialist program.284 Secretary Cheney underscored the need for

area expertise, noting that the Army and Navy usually have

“people coming along who’ve worked their way up” in a given

theater. Along those lines, General Jamerson contrasted an

Air Force tendency to move around the globe with the biography of his former boss, General Joulwan—who held command

and staff jobs at almost every level in Europe, from company

commander to SACEUR.285 

81

BELOTE
Finally, a CINC must work in Washington to gain both

breadth and exposure. General Shelton wrote of the need to

understand the interagency process. General Fogleman regretted the Air Force’s institutional bias against working in the

OSD or NSC and believed those jobs should carry equal weight

with wing command for promotion consideration, suggesting

“maybe we can break the mold and say being an O-6 (colonel)

on the NSC is as or more important than command of a wing

at promotion time.”286 Similarly, Secretary Cheney called service on the Pentagon joint staff “crucial. That’s clearly what was

intended by Goldwater-Nichols, and I would have been hard

put to hire or appoint anyone without extensive Joint Staff experience. Civilian leaders need officers who understand how

the system works, and the Joint Staff is their major contact

with those officers. That’s also where I got my military assistants—I overlooked the guys nominated by the services and

picked them off the staff.”287

The Air Force’s first CINC, Norstad, used his Washington experience to develop close contacts throughout the Defense and

State Departments; presumably, General Ralston did the

same as VCJCS. Evidently, future airman CINCs must do

the same.

Combining the aforementioned factors, a representative job

progression for an airman might entail early experience as a

numbered air force (NAF) planner, a later J-3 or J-5 assignment on a unified command staff, a tour on the joint staff or

a civilian agency, and experience as a J-3 or J-5 director—all

interspersed with operational (air or space focused) and command tours from squadron level to NAF. To develop area

knowledge, the potential CINC could specialize in a theater

after making O-6 or O-7 (brigadier general). Creating this new

career emphasis could require a significant change in Air

Force culture, which would demand public backing from current Air Force general officers.288 For example, one high-ranking Air Staff officer recruited members of 1999’s School of Advanced Airpower Studies class with the advice “to get ahead,

you’ve got to do your duty at corporate headquarters.” Why

not deemphasize “corporateness,” promote airpower expertise,

jointness, and war-fighting knowledge, and put at least a sig82

CADRE PAPER
nificant fraction of the Air Force’s best and brightest on component and joint command staffs? The necessary inside-thebeltway experience can come later, after the officer has built a

firm foundation of operational war-fighting knowledge. Finally, in the near term, the Air Force should identify those officers who have already achieved a degree of joint and international political-military expertise, and place those officers in

positions that strengthen that expertise while highlighting

their abilities to the joint establishment and the national leadership. If effectively executed airpower is indeed vital to international security, airmen should direct its execution as theater commanders regularly.

Final Thoughts

So, let the best person get the job. The Air Force, as do all

the Services, has to make sure it is raising officers not

just in the model of Douhet, but in the model of Douhet,

Mahan, Clausewitz, Marshall, Arnold, and Eisenhower. If

it produces 10 Air Force CINCs, fine. If it produces none,

so what. The only thing that counts is what’s best for the

nation, the mission, and the troops.

—Gen Colin L. Powell

So the question remains: Can airmen effectively command

joint and multinational forces? An impressive cross section of

retired senior officials thinks so. Will airmen more frequently

command such forces? Only if the Air Force makes such command an institutional priority, argues its case to the nation,

and ensures it produces a corps of candidates with impeccable joint and multinational war-fighting pedigrees. Every senior official consulted for this study—civilian or military, Air

Force or Army—described significant cultural impediments to

the appointment of Air Force regional commanders in chief;

backed by career data, every one of them suggested the Air

Force could do a better job of preparing its general officers for

CINC billets. At the same time, every one insisted that airmen

are up to the task now. The following quote from General Powell encapsulates the lingering cultural barriers airmen face

83

BELOTE
along with the demands CINCs face, but at the same time suggests that airmen can overcome them: “The integration of allied ground forces and the ground battle plan [for Desert

Storm] was, in my view, a more demanding political, diplomatic, and military task than the air war. I’m not shorting the

complexity and demands of the air war. Far from it, I give it the

game ball. But I think it was more appropriate having an Army

CINC organizing the effort with allies in this case than had it

been an airman. But could a Chuck Horner have done it? Sure.”

(Emphasis added)289

In conclusion, the former chairman’s words suggest the

most important reason why airman CINCs may prove vital to

international security in the future. Few observers anywhere

in the world—General Powell included—expect to see the decisive, Clausewitzian, mass-on-mass ground battle. Rather,

many of those who foresee a conventional battle project fastmoving, maneuver-based operations wherein airpower may be

central. Regarding current threats in the Pacific, General Shalikashvili called air “crucial,” and General Powell declared emphatically that airpower “will defeat the North Koreans.”290 Alternatively, airpower may be used as a tool of coercive

diplomacy, either synergistically with other components, or for

political reasons alone, as has been the case in the Balkans.

If, as General Powell indicated, airpower is to have the game

ball, should not someone who has devoted a career to airpower

quarterback some of the games—especially the games wherein

airpower is central? More importantly, should not the Air

Force aggressively and systematically prepare its leaders to

carry the ball?

Notes

1. Roger R. Trask and Alfred Goldberg, The Department of Defense

1947–1997: Organization and Leaders (Washington, D.C.: Historical Office,

Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1997), appendix 2; Truman R. Strobridge,

Strength in the North: The Alaskan Command 1947–1967, Elmendorf Air

Force Base (AFB), Alaska, 1966; and Maj Henry J. Bishop, “A Study in the

Feasibility of Inactivating the Alaskan Command,” Research Report 0245-73

(Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air Command and Staff College [ACSC] 1973). I am indebted to Lt Col Tom Ehrhard for this count. I have ignored the air-defense84

CADRE PAPER
oriented Alaskan Command in this study. Although a unified commander,

the commander in chief, Alaskan Air Command had no operational control

of his components until 1958, and then only over air defense forces as a

deputy to the commander in chief, North American Air Defense Command.

Not until 1965 did a commander in chief, Alaskan Air Command direct an

exercise with all three components.

2. Mark Skinner Watson, Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations

(Washington, D.C.: Army Historical Division, 1950), 282.

3. Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile

Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1971); and William Matthews and

Sean D. Naylor, “Ralston to Replace Clark at NATO Helm,” Air Force Times

60, no. 1 (9 August 1999): 9. Allison describes the interpersonal and organizational interplay that shapes the decision making of senior political and

military leaders. 

4. Charles A. Horner, E-mail to author, 3 February 1999.

5. Remarks given by guest speakers at the School of Advanced Airpower

Studies (SAAS) and ACSC, Maxwell AFB, Ala., during 1998–1999. Senior

leaders speak at Air University under a policy of nonattribution.

6. Dick Cheney, interviewed by author, 23 February 1999.

7. Colin L. Powell, E-mail to author, 20 February 1999.

8. John M. D. Shalikashvili, interviewed by author, 22 February 1999.

9. Jim Callard, Headquarters AF/XPXS, E-mail to author, 24 January

1999.

10. Charles G. Boyd, interviewed by author, 26 February 1999.

11. Ibid.

12. For this study, even the Axis coalition counts as a “democratic” coalition, as military failure led to collapse of the Italian government and withdrawal from the alliance.

13. Jacob L. Devers, “Major Problems Confronting a Theater Commander

in Combined Operations,” Military Review 27, no. 7 (October 1947): 3.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid., 5.

16. Robert S. Jordan, Generals in International Politics: NATO’s Supreme

Allied Commander, Europe (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987),

175; and quoted in William R. Swarm, “Impact of the Proconsular Experience on Civil Affairs Organization and Doctrine,” in Americans and Proconsuls: United States Military Government in Germany and Japan, 1944–1952,

ed. Robert Wolfe (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984),

400.

17. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (1948; reprint, Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 75.

18. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Problems of Combined Command,” address

to the National War College, Washington, D.C., 18 June 1948. Available online from the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kans.,

http://www.eisenhower.utexas.edu; E-mail: Library@eisenhower.nara.gov.

85

BELOTE
19. Dwight D. Eisenhower to Harry Cecil Butcher, letter, 10 December

1942, in The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, vol. 2, The War Years, Alfred D. Chandler, ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970),

824.

20. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, 41.

21. Richard W. Anderschat, “Factors Affecting Success in Coalition Command,” Military Studies Program, Research Report AD-A-170431 (Carlisle

Barracks, Pa.: Army War College, 31 March 1986), ii.

22. Ibid., 34.

23. Ibid., 35.

24. Ibid., 37.

25. Martin Blumenson and James L. Stokesbury, Masters of the Art of

Command (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975), 243–45.

26. Ibid., 294.

27. Ibid., 299; and Arthur Bryant and Alan Alanbrooke, The Turn of the

Tide: A History of the War Years Based on the Diaries of Field-Marshal Lord

Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1957), n.p.

28. Ibid., 302; and Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe (New York:

Harper, 1952).

29. Norstad relinquished command of the European Command to Gen

Lyman L. Lemnitzer on 1 November 1962. At Secretary Robert S. McNamara’s request, he extended his tour as SACEUR two months to lessen international tensions resulting from the Cuban missile crisis. 

30. “General Norstad: Guardian of Western Europe’s Air,” Newsweek 38,

no. 14 (1 October 1951): 26. The article reports that Norstad, who finished

139th in a class of 241, “was a first lieutenant when the Nazis overran

Poland. By the end of the war, he was a major general [and permanent]

brigadier.”

31. Phillip S. Meilinger, “US Air Force Leaders: A Biographical Tour,”

Journal of Military History 62, no. 4 (October 1998): 860.

32. Lauris Norstad, transcript of oral history interview by Dr. Edgar F.

Puryear Jr., 22 August 1977, file K239.0512-1473, tape 2, 5, Air Force Historical Research Agency (hereinafter AFHRA), Maxwell AFB, Ala. According

to Norstad, Harmon knew that “older [officers] would arrange to see me the

night before a test to find out my solution and talk about it”—an early indication of the then first lieutenant’s abilities.

33. Ibid., tape 3, side 2, 7 (hereinafter 3-2, 7).

34. Ibid.; Lauris Norstad, transcript of oral history interview by Hugh N.

Ahmann, 13–16 February and 22–25 October 1979, AFHRA file K239.0512-

1116; Meilinger; and “An Airman Boss for NATO,” Time 67, no. 17 (23 April

1956): 29.

35. Both the Puryear and Ahmann oral histories contain similar accounts. Norstad felt the NATO position was more important to national security and more suited to his own abilities and desires.

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36. Thomas D. White, “New Era in NATO,” Newsweek, 29 October 1962,

27. General White’s draft of the column, found in his personal papers in

AFHRA file168.7004-49, cites the Washington Post, 12 August 1962, E1, and

the Manchester Guardian Weekly, 26 July 1962, 2A, as sources.

37. Norstad/Ahmann, 499.

38. Ibid., 280.

39. Ibid., 500, 506–15. Norstad’s account of his MacArthur-style landing

and battles with the Vichy French forces that opposed the American invasion.

40. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, 118–19.

41. Norstad/Ahmann, 267.

42. Eduard Mark, Aerial Interdiction: Air Power and the Land Battle in

Three American Wars (Washington, D.C.: Center for Air Force History, 1994),

143–78. See especially notes 15, 16, 18, 25, and 39. Mark also cites a “candid” postwar report on Strangle’s deficiencies that was written by Norstad,

192.

43. Norstad/Ahmann, 546.

44. Ibid., 101.

45. Norstad/Puryear, tape 2, 4.

46. Ibid., tape 4-1, 10.

47. Norstad/Ahmann, 383–89.

48. Ibid., 276, 216.

49. Ibid., 263.

50. Ibid., 434.

51. Richard H. Ellis, transcript of oral history interview by Maurice

Maryanow, 17–21 August 1987, AFHRA file K238.0512-1764, Maxwell AFB,

Ala., 78–79. Ellis, chief of Air Plans and Operations at SHAPE during

Norstad’s time, served as vice chief of staff of the Air Force, CINCUSAFE, and

CINCSAC before retiring.

52. Ellis, 80–82. Ellis’s account of his service (while a colonel) as a gobetween for the headstrong four-stars is also noted. Norstad dispatched

Ellis to Omaha to “tell Curt I said . . . ‘knock off this crap about SAC owning the world. We’ve got our responsibilities over here, and we are not going

to delegate them to anybody.’” Face to face with LeMay, Ellis paraphrased:

“[Norstad] just asked that if you’ve got any coordination problems on anything, let him know,” to which LeMay replied, “tell Norstad to keep the h--l

out of my business.”

53. “We Can Destroy Anything Military in Russia,” excerpted congressional testimony in U.S. News & World Report 43, no. 1 (5 July 1957): 58–60.

54. Ibid., 59.

55. Jordan, 74–76.

56. Norstad/Ahmann, 339, 400, and 406. Norstad considered himself

“father of the MX.”

57. Norstad/Puryear, tape 1, 23. The transcriber could not understand

the professor’s name, giving it as “Colonel Meu-----.” A comparison of The

Howitzer 1930, The Annual of the United States Corps of Cadets, the Official

87

BELOTE
Register of Officers and Cadets for 1930, and General Cullum’s Biographical

Register of Officers and Graduates of the US Military Academy suggests

Norstad spoke of Herman Beukema. During Norstad’s first-class year, then

Major Beukema was an instructor of economics and government; the following year he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and made full professor

of the Department of Economics, Government, and History.

58. “NATO: The View at the Summit,” Time 70, no. 25 (16 December

1957), 19.

59. Norstad/Ahmann, 398.

60. Lauris Norstad, “The Role of the Armed Forces in Implementing National Policy,” text prepared for Air War College, Maxwell AFB, Ala., 19 May

1947, n.p., AFHRA file K239.716247-62. C. E. Combs presented the lecture

for Norstad.

61. Ibid., n.p.

62. Norstad/Ahmann, 533.

63. Ibid., 534. See also “The Partners,” Newsweek 48, no. 25 (17 December 1958): 30. While the incident shows Norstad’s prescient feel for the

postwar world, SAAS professor James Corum argues that the eastern plan

could have been an operational disaster. Because Montgomery failed to clear

the estuaries leading to Antwerp until November 1944, Allied success in

France depended on the port of Marseilles—captured intact during Anvil.

64. Ibid., 138.

65. Norstad/Puryear, tape 3-1, 8 and tape 4, 19.

66. “NATO: The View at the Summit,” 20.

67. Norstad/Ahmann, 270, 441–43. Adenauer wanted to keep Speidel for

a different position and offered a different general but acquiesced to

Norstad’s reading of the situation.

68. “We Can Destroy Anything Military in Russia,” 63.

69. Jordan, 80.

70. Norstad/Ahmann, 341. Norstad describes in detail the sumptuous

lunch he set up to smooth relations with Strauss, a voracious eater who

strongly influenced German defense policy for three decades.

71. Jordan, 87–88; and Norstad/Ahmann, 298–301.

72. Norstad/Ahmann, 309.

73. White, 4.

74. Norstad/Ahmann, 431, 297–99. Note de Gaulle’s use of the crisis as

a nuclear bargaining chip.

75. Lauris Norstad, “Allied Military Tasks,” address to Air War College,

Maxwell AFB, Ala., 2 December 1954, transcript of question and answer period, 4. AFHRA file K239.716254-87.

76. Norstad/Ahmann, 282–83.

77. Ibid., 430.

78. Ibid., 282–83.

79. Ibid., 428.

80. Ibid., 282.

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81. “NATO: Change in the Making,” Newsweek 56, no. 10 (5 September

1960): 30–31. The column’s speculation about Norstad’s impending retirement—and that of a simultaneous column in U.S. News & World Report 49,

no. 10 (5 September 1960): 10—was more than two years premature.

82. “NATO: The View at the Summit,” 18.

83. Norstad/Ahmann, 428; and “The Partners,” 29. Norstad acknowledged that his press clippings were more than generous: “I got great press.

. . . I deserved a good press, but I got better than I deserved.”

84. “The Partners,” 30.

85. Norstad/Ahmann, 430.

86. Ibid., 307, 343.

87. Jordan, 92.

88. Ibid., and Charles de Gaulle, transcript of luncheon address, 20 December 1962, NATO Public Information Division. 

89. Norstad/Ahmann, 323.

90. Ibid., 309.

91. Ibid., 317.

92. Jordan, 92; and Frans A. M. Alting von Geusau, Allies in a Turbulent

World: Challenges to US and Western European Cooperation (Lexington,

Mass.: Lexington Books, 1982), 163.

93. Kenneth Macksey, Kesselring: German Master Strategist of the Second World War (1978; reprint, Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1996),

249.

94. Ibid., 11. Macksey rarely footnotes and does not identify the “prominent chief of staff.”

95. Albrecht Kesselring, The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Kesselring (1953;

reprint, Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1997), 10. In Kesselring,

Macksey notes that certain “‘Old Eagles’ . . . denigrated Kesselring because

. . . he was ignorant of the subtleties of aviation” while later, soldiers from

North Africa and Italy persisted “in vilifying Kesselring’s soldierly talents on

the grounds that he was only an airman,” 250. Chief among the postwar detractors was Gen Eberhard von Mackensen, whom Kesselring relieved as

Fourteenth Army commander in June 1944. See von Mackensen, Air Historical Branch Translation VII/99, “The Campaign in Italy,” chap. 13,

AFHRA, Maxwell AFB, Ala., file no. K512.621 VII/99.

96. Macksey, 19–21.

97. Ibid., 24–25.

98. Kesselring, 17–18.

99. Ibid., 19.

100. Macksey, 35.

101. Kesselring, 23–25.

102. Ibid., 31, 33.

103. Macksey, 107.

104. Ibid., 127; and Lt Gen (General der Flieger) Hellmuth Felmy, “The

German Air Force in the Mediterranean Theater of War” (Air Historical Division, 1955), AFHRA file K113.107-161, Maxwell AFB, Ala., 534. Macksey re89

BELOTE
ports that Kesselring was thus the only German to control all three services

in joint command.

105. Macksey, 130. Macksey weaves the conflict with Rommel throughout the biography—see, for example, 175–86.

106. Norstad/Ahmann, 519–21. For example, Norstad, who faced Kesselring for two years, reported that he “lived on Ultra” and read it several times

a day. 

107. Kesselring, 259.

108. Macksey, 229–30; and Kesselring, 288–90.

109. Heinrich von Vietinghoff, The Campaign in Italy, British Air Ministry

Air Historical Branch Translation VII 97 (December 1947), chap. 6, AFHRA

file 512.621 VII/97, Maxwell AFB, Ala., 4 (hereinafter referred to as von Vietinghoff, chap. 6).

110. Heinrich von Vietinghoff, Campaign in Italy, in “High Level Luftwaffe

Policy in the Mediterranean, May–June 1943” British Air Ministry Air Historical Branch Translation VII/94, preface, AFHRA file 512.621 VII/94,

Maxwell AFB, Ala., n.p.

111. Mark W. Clark, Calculated Risk (New York: Harper and Brothers,

1950), 184. Cited in Capt Teddy D. Bitner, “Kesselring: An Analysis of the

German Commander at Anzio” (Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: Command and

General Staff College, 1983), 29.

112. Cited in Macksey, 194.

113. Macksey, 34. The author includes an impressive list of the personalities surrounding Kesselring at the time, including Joachim von Stülpnagel, Kurt von Schleicher, Walter von Brauchitsch, Heinz Guderian, and

Kurt Student.

114. Ibid., 47, 52; and “US Strategic Bombing Survey [USSBS] Interview

No. 61, 28 June 1945,” AFHRA file 137.315-61, Maxwell AFB, Ala., 4. In this

interview and at his postwar trial, the field marshal regretted canceling the

bomber, the lack of which prevented the Luftwaffe from threatening the Allied landings in North Africa.

115. Macksey, 248.

116. Kesselring, 44.

117. Macksey, 73; see 68–73 for a description of the Dutch campaign.

Macksey notes this campaign “was also the last in which his communications were secure,” for the British were soon to exploit Ultra.

118. Ibid., 94. Some 2,500 aircraft were destroyed against negligible

losses.

119. Felmy, 208. General Felmy cites directive no. 38, whose “most important point was that [Kesselring] obtain air and naval superiority in the

area between southern Italy and North Africa.”

120. Macksey, 89.

121. Felmy, 210. See Kesselring, 109, about Malta, and 112, about his

naval program.

122. Kesselring, 123; the field marshal made the same point in his 1945

USSBS interview but stressed that Rommel “was the best Army com90

CADRE PAPER
mander,” 11. Macksey notes that Gen Walther Nehring, a corps commander

for Rommel, “has confirmed to me Kesselring’s objections—and adds the

opinion that he was right,” 122.

123. Macksey, 123. Macksey points out that every convoy’s sailing was

betrayed by Ultra.

124. Felmy, 539.

125. Cited in Macksey, 133.

126. Ibid., 134.

127. Ibid., 148. Citing a 1943 OKW report, “Der Kampf um Tunisien [The

Struggle for Tunisia],” Felmy also describes Kesselring’s central role in orchestrating the counterattack, 616.

128. Macksey, 155.

129. Walter Fries, “The Battle for Sicily,” in The Invasion of Sicily, 1943,

ed. Albrecht Kesselring, Air Historical Branch translation VII/93 (December

1947), AFHRA file 512.621 VII/93, Maxwell AFB, Ala., 1. See also Macksey

171–72, who notes “it was typical of the man’s ingrained modesty that he

abstained from boasting about this masterpiece . . . the credit largely belongs to him . . . It was Kesselring who had authorised the plan, which Rommel had declared to be impossible, and he who had thoroughly imposed his

will on the planners, above all on von Richtofen [the Luftwaffe commander

who resented losing his organic flak].”

130. Siegfried Westphal, “Army Group’s Comments,” The Campaign in

Italy, chap. 13, AFHRA file 512.621 VII/99, 29–30. By this time, Rommel

had moved to the Western Front and Kesselring was Commander of Army

Group C as well as CINC South-West. About the five contingency plans, see

Headquarters CINC South-West Order to Chief of Staff, Luftflotte II, dated 12

January 1944, in AFHRA file 512.621 VII/82, “High Level Reports and Directives Dealing with the Italian Campaign,” 1–2.

131. Westphal, 31–32; and Bitner, 48–53.

132. Bitner, 52.

133. Ibid., 58–62; Kesselring, Memoirs, 193–96; and Mark, 109–209. Bitner cites artillery expenditure averages (60) that indicate the VI Corps fired

25,000 rounds/day to the Fourteenth Army’s 1,500.

134. Bitner, 63. Bitner emphasizes that Kesselring fulfilled his prediction

to Hitler “that he could hold the Allies south of Rome through the winter.”

135. Macksey, 207–11. In response, Kesselring shifted the inter-Army

boundary to make von Mackensen responsible for the area endangered by

an Allied breakthrough and afterwards fired him.

136. Macksey, 161–63 and 185–86; von Mackensen, supplement to

chap. 12, The Campaign in Italy, AFHRA file 512.621 VII/99, 27–28; von Vietinghoff, chap. 6, 3.

137. von Vietinghoff, chap. 6, 4; Macksey, 210.

138. Bitner, 75–78.

139. Macksey, 196–97; and Westphal, 30.

140. von Vietinghoff, “Preface.”

141. Macksey, 248.

91

BELOTE
142. Kesselring, Memoirs, 18.

143. Macksey, 26.

144. Ibid., 34.

145. See, for example, Kesselring’s Memoirs, 124. Kesselring argued that

the OKW “failed altogether to understand the importance of the Mediterranean and the inherent difficulties of the war in Africa,” and “Hitler’s personal fondness for Mussolini [led to] disastrous results. The slogan was

‘Mussolini in Cairo.’”

146. USSBS interview no. 61, 10.

147. von Vietinghoff, chap. 6, 30.

148. Ibid., 1.

149. Kesselring, The Invasion of Sicily, 1943, 15; and Macksey, 162. Arguing that Kesselring was not a compromiser, as some (e.g., General Westphal) have suggested, but a decisive strategist in his own right, Macksey

notes Kesselring rejected Rommel’s plan out of hand. 

150. Felmy, 608; and Bitner, 18.

151. Felmy, 546, 550–55.

152. Macksey, 163.

153. Ibid.

154. Macksey, 159.

155. von Vietinghoff, chap. 6, 3; Macksey, 164; and Kesselring, The Invasion of Sicily, 1943, 13. After the war, Kesselring realized “with a shock,

how much Adolf Hitler tried, by means of certain parallel organisations and

other dealings, to maintain reciprocal control. It was the same old story of

distrust.”

156. Macksey, 169.

157. Ibid., 168–69.

158. Ibid., 175–76.

159. Kesselring, Memoirs, 185.

160. Macksey, 177. In one of his very few footnotes, Macksey says his account of the negotiations “is largely based on the version printed in the Official US History by A. Garland as amplified by Westphal’s recently published [1975] Memoirs.”

161. Kesselring, Memoirs, 186; and Macksey, 178.

162. Macksey, 179.

163. Kesselring, Memoirs, 292–93.

164. Ibid., 104.

165. Macksey, 144.

166. Kesselring, Memoirs, 104.

167. Ibid., 104, 120.

168. Macksey, 178.

169. Kesselring, Memoirs, 185–86.

170. Macksey, 161.

171. Ibid., 151. About the shoot downs Kesselring mentioned at his

court-martial, see 16, 62, 158, and 197. Although Macksey could only corroborate two of the five through outside sources, the biographer concludes

92

CADRE PAPER
they happened; in support, he cites congratulatory messages from Hitler for

a “fortunate escape” and from Hermann Göring for his “courage in making

100 operational flights over the Mediterranean.”

172. Macksey, 152.

173. Ibid., 190.

174. Ibid.

175. Kesselring, Memoirs, 218–19.

176. Macksey, 168.

177. von Vietinghoff, chap. 6, 2.

178. Cited in Macksey, 130; and Kesselring, Memoirs, 135–36.

179. Walter Fries, 1. Fries wrote that “OKW was not informed of the evacuation plan. When the evacuation began, the Operations Staff asked on

whose order and with whose permission it was executed. The Chief of Staff

C. in C. South answered that Field-Marshal Kesselring had given the order

and accepted all responsibility for it. Thereupon there were no further

queries or interference from OKW.”

180. Kesselring, Memoirs, 207.

181. Macksey, 215.

182. Order dated 4 June 1944, CINC South-West to G.O.C. Luftwaffe in

Central Italy, in “High Level Reports and Directives Dealing with the Italian

Campaign,” AFHRA file 512.621 VII/82, 5–8.

183. Macksey, 189.

184. Interviews by Pierre Huss of the International News Service, 9 May

1945, and Richard Johnston of the New York Times, 10 May 1945, in AFHRA

file 520.056-219, n.p.

185. Macksey, 251.

186. Kesselring, Memoirs, 64.

187. “Notes on the Interrogation of Generalfeldmarschall Kesselring on

USAFE OKW Questionnaire of 17 September 1945, at Military Intelligence

Service Center, USFET, Oberursel, Germany, 24 September 1945,” AFHRA

file 570.619-1, 5–6.

188. Jordan, x. The author wrote specifically of SACEURs; his comments

apply equally to all regional CINCs.

189. Shalikashvili interview.

190. Ibid.

191. Ibid.

192. Powell E-mail.

193. Boyd interview.

194. James L. Jamerson, interviewed by author, 19 February 1999.

195. James P. McCarthy, “Commanding Joint and Coalition Operations,”

Naval War College Review 46, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 15. The general reemphasized this requirement in a telephone interview with the author on 17

February 1999, calling lack of exposure to sister-services his “greatest limitation.”

196. McCarthy, 16.

197. Ibid., 20.

93

BELOTE
198. Ibid., 13.

199. Ibid.

200. Horner E-mail, 2 February 1999.

201. Fred F. Woerner, interviewed by author, 19 February 1999. General

Woerner cautioned the author not to generalize his SOUTHCOM experience

with that of other commands because he discounted the possibility of major

war in his theater—then he described his job in precisely the terms used by

the CINCs from Eisenhower on who did contend with the threat of war.

202. Woerner interview.

203. Ibid.

204. Ibid.

205. Ibid.

206. Sam C. Sarkesian, Beyond the Battlefield: The New Military Professionalism (New York: Pergamon Press, 1981), 43; Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press,

1960); and Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and

Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957). Sarkesian contrasts Janowitz’s book with

Huntington’s. Huntington acknowledges that American military leaders play

a political role but argues that role should not be substantive.

207. Sarkesian, 52, 132.

208. Ibid., 219.

209. Ibid., 228.

210. “Operation Uphold Democracy Joint After Action Report” (Norfolk,

Va.: United States Atlantic Command, 1995), 61, 53.

211. Ibid., 55.

212. John M. Metz, “Humanitarian Assistance Operations: A Command

and Control Dilemma” (Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: Army Command and General Staff College, 2 June 1995), 1.

213. Ibid., 6, 38.

214. Robert E. Sorenson, “Operational Leadership Challenges in Emergency Humanitarian Assistance Operations” (Newport, R. I.: Naval War College, 19 May 1997), 2, 17.

215. Ibid., 16; Donald G. Goff, “Operation Provide Comfort” (Carlisle Barracks, Pa.: Army War College, May 1992), 44–46; and John P. Cavanaugh,

“Operation Provide Comfort: A Model for Future NATO Operations” (Fort

Leavenworth, Kans.: School of Advanced Military Studies, May 1992),

34–40.

216. Terry J. Pudas, “Preparing Future Coalition Commanders,” Joint

Force Quarterly no. 3 (Winter 1993–94): 43.

217. John H. Cushman, Thoughts for Joint Commanders (Annapolis: US

Naval Institute Press, 1993), 52, 10. Literally translated, fingerspitzengefühl

means “fingertip feel.”

218. Ibid., 18.

219. Ibid., 53–54.

220. Ibid., 52–53. 

94

CADRE PAPER
221. Henry H. Shelton, letter to author, 24 February 1999.

222. Bart Barnes, “Obituaries: Gen Lauris Norstad, 81, Military Strategist, Dies,” Washington Post, 14 September 1988, B6.

223. Woerner interview; and McCarthy interview.

224. Air Force Doctrine Document 1, Air Force Basic Doctrine, 4–6.

225. Ronald R. Fogleman, interviewed by author, 22 April 1999. On

Eisenhower, see chap. 2, note 5.

226. Huntington, 464. On the same page, however, Huntington allows

that top American military leaders have been almost uniformly successful:

“The leadership produced by the American officer corps has so far been extraordinary. Only a small handful of the hundreds of general and flag officers have proved incapable in battle, and the top commanders in all three

twentieth-century wars have been men of exceptional ability.”

227. Woerner interview.

228. Truman H. Landon, transcript of oral history interview by Hugh N.

Ahmann, 31 May–3 June 1977, AFHRA file K239.0512-949, Maxwell AFB,

Ala.

229. Omar N. Bradley and Clay Blair, A General’s Life (New York: Simon

and Schuster, 1983), 659–60, cited in Jordan, 51.

230. Norstad/Ahmann, 398.

231. Shalikashvili interview.

232. R. A. Mason, Air Power: A Centennial Appraisal (London: Brassey’s,

1994), 242–43.

233. Ibid., 244.

234. Edward N. Luttwak, “A Post-Heroic Military Policy,” Foreign Affairs

75, no. 4 (July/August 1996): 38.

235. Ibid., 36, 41, 42.

236. Boyd interview.

237. Ibid.

238. Ibid.

239. Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu,

and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University

Press, 1992). He provides an insightful explanation of cognitive processing

theory and how it affects military decision making.

240. Khong, chap. 5, note 8.

241. Fogleman interview; Alan Vick et al., Preparing the US Air Force for

Military Operations Other than War, RAND Report MR-842-AF (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1997), n.p. The authors echoed Gen Fogleman’s contention about AC-130s and Mogadishu: “The endurance, precision, and

shock effect of fixed wing fire support might have suppressed Somali fire

sufficiently so that the Rangers could be extracted by helicopters. At the

least, it would have significantly increased the fire support available to US

soldiers and probably would have saved some lives in the process (61).”

242. Mason, 275.

243. Cheney interview.

244. Jamerson interview.

95

BELOTE
245. Shalikashvili interview.

246. Norstad, “Allied Military Tasks,” 13.

247. McCarthy interview.

248. Woerner interview.

249. Shalikashvili interview. The British objected despite General Powell’s having persuaded his “colleagues on the NATO Military Committee to

accept whatever service we put in as NATO CINCLANT,” Powell E-mail.

250. Shalikashvili interview.

251. Jamerson interview.

252. Woerner interview.

253. Boyd interview.

254. Horner E-mail, 4 February 1999.

255. Shalikashvili interview.

256. Powell E-mail, 20 February 1999.

257. Cheney interview.

258. McCarthy interview.

259. Remarks given under Air University’s nonattribution policy.

260. Woerner interview.

261. Cheney interview.

262. Trask and Goldberg, appendix 2. Since 1947 the Air Force has filled

62 CINC billets; the Army, 60; the Navy, 46; and the Marine Corps, 4.

263. McCarthy interview.

264. Remarks given under Air University’s nonattribution policy.

265. Shalikashvili interview.

266. Powell E-mail, 20 February 1999.

267. Horner E-mail, 3 February 1999.

268. Cheney interview.

269. Shalikashvili interview.

270. Ibid.

271. Jamerson interview.

272. Boyd interview.

273. McCarthy interview. Further remarks given under Air University’s

nonattribution policy.

274. Fogleman interview.

275. Boyd interview.

276. Jamerson interview.

277. Boyd interview.

278. Powell E-mail, 3 March 1999.

279. John Pulley, “Relaunching PME: A Whole New Approach to Educating Airmen,” Air Force Times 59, no. 33 (22 March 1999): 17.

280. When questioned on this issue, General Boyd doubted that such an

exam would pass muster; “it could be too large a cultural shock to an otherwise anti-intellectual institution” and hurt retention.

281. Cushman, 39.

282. McCarthy interview.

283. Jordan, 192–93.

96

CADRE PAPER
284. Jamerson interview; and Woerner interview. Information on the Air

Force’s new Foreign Area Officer program is available at http://www.hq.af.mil/

af/saf/ia/afaao/fao.

285. Cheney interview; and Jamerson interview.

286. Shelton letter (see note 221 above); and Fogleman interview.

287. Cheney interview.

288. Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), 251. “Peacetime

innovation has been possible when senior military officers with traditional

credentials, reacting . . . to a structural change in the security environment,

have acted to create a new promotion pathway for junior officers practicing

a new way of war.” Surely these conditions pertain to the post cold war, postGoldwater-Nichols USAF.

289. Powell E-mail, 3 March 1999.

290. Shalikashvili interview; and Powell E-mail, 20 February 1999.

97

BELOTE
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107
Once in a Blue Moon:

Airmen in Theater Command

Lauris Norstad, Albrecht Kesselring, and Their

Relevance to the Twenty-First Century Air Force

Air University Press Team

Chief Editor

Hattie D. Minter

Copy Editor

Rita B. Mathis

Book Design and Cover Art

Susan Fair

Composition and

Prepress Production

Vivian D. O’Neal