Talk:General of the army

message: Non-logged in user removed the following text from the description of the 5-star general rank insignia: "Within the pentagon of stars is the United States Emblem of the Eagle and shield, the eagle in gold and the shield enamaled."  I've done some searching, and can't find any of the insignia which actually had an eagle and shield within them.  All seem to merely be a pentagon of 5 stars.  Just noting the removal here in case anyone has questions about it.  --ABQCat 19:06, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Insignia

message: The five-star rank was created... to have American officers with ranks equivalent to the field marshals of Britain, to reduce friction over who was allowed to give orders to whom. Is this the real reason the rank was created?
Why I ask:
* as far as I know, there was only one case of a field marshal serving under an American (4-star) general: Bernard Montgomery under Dwight Eisenhower;
* Montgomery was promoted to field marshal in September 1944, three months before Ike got his fifth star, and so could still have claimed seniority;
* no-one seemed to care when Andrew Cunningham served in the rank of Admiral of the Fleet under Eisenhower for nearly eight months in 1943.
Is Montgomery on record as objecting to taking orders from a lower-ranking officer?
Furthermore: I can see why if you promoted Eisenhower, you'd also have to promote George Marshall (Army Chief of Staff) and William Leahy (effectively Chairman of the Joint Chiefs); but why Douglas MacArthur and Chester Nimitz? Is it because Eisenhower was junior to them (by time in rank), and they'd have been put out?
It seems a lot of trouble to go to, if it was just because Montgomery got his baton as a consolation prize for not being Allied Ground Forces Commander.
Was five-star rank really necessary for the command structure? After all, the Americans were quite happy to have army groups commanded by lieutenant generals. — Franey 16:03, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Not really. These ranks have always been seen more as an honour than a necessity. That's why it was so daft getting rid of them from the British hierarchy in the 1990s. Another sacrifice of tradition for no apparent reason. -- Necrothesp 23:02, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Wasn't it also to cut down the pension bill for retiring service chiefs? — Franey 11:40, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I should have changed that to "no apparent reason except needless penny-pinching by one of the world's richest countries". Ah well. -- Necrothesp 18:05, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reason for the rank 

message: In Russian it is "General of the Army", not "Army General"--Nixer 20:01, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Correct. But it just depends how you do the translation. Russian uses lots of 'of's: the X of Y of Z of the Russian Federation. Free-translating the rank to Army General - which I do all the time - reinforces its equivalency as a four-star rank, not a five-star. Buckshot06 12:28, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Russian 

message: This article says General of the Army "is typically considered the equivalent of Field Marshal" (a five star rank).  That's true of the United States, but I don't think it's true of all the other countries that have the rank General of the Army.  The United States has a General of the Army rank *in addition to* the rank of General, and they use General as the equivalent of the British rank of General (a four star rank).  But I think other countries have General of the Army *instead of* General, and they use General of the Army as the equivalent of the British rank of General.
So first, can someone confirm that my understanding of this is correct for some countries?  Second, can someone specify which countries use which system?  And third, I propose a rewrite of this article to reflect all this.  Or better yet, we could move the equivalent five star ranks to the 5 star rank article and move the rest of the information in this article to the General Officer article, then make General of the Army redirect to the General Officer article. - Shaheenjim 07:11, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The article is very loosely worded and needs a cleanup. For the US, your second sentence statement is true, with the 'six star' General of the Armies above. For others - North Koreans and Cubans and whatnot - it can vary. Buckshot06 12:31, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Equivalent of Field Marshal?

message: hey i was just wondering in the case of america who has power to appoint the general of the army?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.115.231.137 (talk) 06:51, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  who has power 

message: As you may have noticed, I have kicked out the "Marshal of the GDR". While I realize that the rank of "General of the Army" in the US is commonly understood to be a marshal's rank, it technically isn't one. Furthermore, as Soviet general ranks were exactly analogous to East German ones, you can't add the Marshal of the GDR while keeping the Soviet Army General (which, like the East German Armeegeneral, is an OF-9 four-star rank). It has to be consistent. Either this is a page about the rank "General of the Army / Army General", in which case Field Marshals have to stay out,  or it is a page about the US rank with exactly corresponding ranks as per the NATO rank scale, in which case the Soviet equivalent would be the Marshal of the branch, NOT the Army General.--Kurt von Hammerstein (talk) 17:29, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Better keep Field Marshals out of the equation