The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-12-02
U. $. Army Repeating
 Tragic AEF Mistakes
Lack of Unified, Supreme Command Greatest Weak.
 ness Declares Fortune Magazine

'sThe present ofglcers Of the Hlgh Command, ali Of whom have been in power less than four years, are obviously not Co he wholly blamed for the present state of the army. Nor ia lt the job og reorganization and reconstruction necessarily beyond their talents, even # they have not yet shown the drive 70 accomplish it,
 "Clven the extra prod of public insistence, they may De able t0 push through pressing roferms. But they must oct faster than they have ever acted before,
 "As practlced by the Germans war has come to involve problems Of managerial control and coordination far beyond anything the tactical education of our High Command ever anticipated" Fortune explains, The battle line is no longer a thin ribbon Of fire.
 "The new warfare demands lead- CTS of thorough taetial training, ca- pahle of exercising independent Judgment and initiative, And, par~ adoxically, it oalis for q general com. mand equipped with the proper coan- munloatlons and the managerial training to manipulate countless plunging units, made up of diverse specialist groups flowing over vast areas at different gaits and subject to swiftly changing fortunes on Q scale hitherto unknown.
 Coordination
 "The Germans, in speeding up the pace Of battle, have also brought it under tighter control. They have developed q corps of officers with a flair for action and a profound sense of coordination, who are hund to. gether in a unity of command that Is unique in battle management,
 "1'he conception Of unity extends from the top to the bottom of the German army and 1t works because that army, unlike ours, k not con- structed as . hierarchy ef indepen~ dent branches but as o plant mass that can he shaped and reshaped as the task requires,
 The most exasperating of many circumstances in the U. 8. Army that work against a successful ap. plicatlon of the task-force plan is branch pride'," Fortune declares Each of our branches likes to feel 1t Is the important one, They dls- like being herded together In dif- ferent operations because then credit cannot oe claimed by any one branch.
 "The individuality of the various arms is a revered tradition, and the cooperation of officers Is fre- quently rasped by jealousy, Tn the choice of men for staff and other kay jobs officers are inclined to favor men from their own branch to the neglect Of perhaps better men in other branches,
 Many officers are above this pet. tlness, and Indeed are critical of it, but stern pressure will be required from the top to root 1t out,
 'sThe value of all this is evident" Fortune points out. Tn 6 war of movement battles and campaigns flow one into the other in the space of days or even hours, and the hardest problem facing c conman- der Is to reorganige his forces in the right components with hair-trigger speed,
 Mobile Pool
 'The German solution has been to make an entire force Q mobile pool of men and machines upon which the battle executives can draw by means of approximately the same automatic controls that Detroit man uses in scheduling the flow of parts to his assembly lines.
 "A major reason why the Nazis have been so successful is that they adopted, adapted, or stolen useful Ideas or inventions regardless of source. Germany has built her victories largely on inventions and that her opponents re- iected or employed only superficially.
 ITO beat such an enemy our army must be led by men who are just as anxious to find new weapons and devise new tactics as the Nasi gen- erals are-inen who are free Soi conservatism, who are will Ing to copy what is good in another army but are not content with copy. l Ing"