George C. Marshall

The "organizer of victory"

George Catlett Marshall (1880-1959) is one of more often overlooked military architects of World War II: he did not lead troops in combat (at least in that war), nor did go on to become a President afterward. And yet, he played a major role in Allied victory as the Army Chief of Staff who overlooked the rapid and massive expansion of the army for the war, and also greatly influenced the Cold War with the Marshall Plan, the economic reconstruction of Europe. He was known to superiors and subordinates as a man of unfailing integrity, authority and outstanding organizational skills, a quality attested by Winston Churchill, who called him "the organizer of victory."

Marshall was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania as the youngest of three siblings, with one brother and one sister. Their father, also called George Catlett Marshall, was in the coal and coke business. Young George developed an early interest in flower and vegetable gardening, a passion he remained devoted to throughout his life, but his real calling was the military. He knew he couldn't get an appointment to West Point due to his average grades. He enrolled at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) instead, with his mother selling off parcels of land she owned to pay for his tuition.

One common theme you might have encountered in our biographies of U.S. generals of this era was the prevalence of rough hazing during their college years. Marshall was once told to squat over an unsheathed bayonet pointing upward; he fainted at fell after 20 minutes, suffering a deep laceration on his backside. He earned the respect of his peer when he refused to tell on the hazers. He graduated at the middle of his class, with average academic marks but always scoring first on military discipline.

He took a competitive examination for a commission in the U.S. Army. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1902, married a few days later, then shipped out to the Philippines, where local forces were fighting for their independence from the United States of America. His marriage caused him to grow estranged from his brother Stuart. Stuart, a fellow VMI alumnus, was previously against George attending, as he thought he would shame the family name. Even more relevantly, Lily Coles, George's wife, had rejected Stuart a few years earlier.

Between 1902 and the outbreak of World War I, Marshall fought guerrilla uprisings in the Philippines, graduated as the first of five Honor Graduates at the Infantry-Cavalry School Course (the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College today), graduated first at the Army Staff College (U.S. Army War College today), served as an instructor, and organized several Citizens' Military Training Camps. In 1917, he helped oversee the mobilization of the 1st Infantry Division, the famous Big Red One, for deployment to France.

During his time in the Philippines, a superior, one Captain Williams, was asked during a performance appraisal whether he would want Marshall to serve under his command again in the future. Williams's reply was that he would be happy to serve under Marshall in the future. In 1916, when Marshall was already a captain, his then-superior, a lieutenant colonel, was asked the same question, and gave the same reply.

Once in Europe, Marshall was assigned as assistant chief of staff for operations in the 1st Division. During the transatlantic voyage, he shared a cabin with then-Major Lesley McNair (Read our earlier article), and the two became good friends. On arrival, Marshall became the first soldier from the first boat transporting the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) to set foot in Europe.

The U.S. doughboys were off to a rough start: they were poorly trained, lacked combat experience, and units struggled with training, staff work and logistical problems. General John Pershing (Read our earlier article), commander-in-chief of the AEF, inspected the 1st Division in late 1917 and was unimpressed. He began berating the division commander in front of the staff, then turned to the division chief of staff. Marshall interjected and angrily pointed out logistical and administrative problems that were outside of the division's control, and which Pershing was unaware of; he also told Pershing that Pershing's own staff was being unhelpful with the problems. The division commander thought that Marshall's outburst might have cost him his career. Instead, Pershing was so impressed that he began to seek Marshall's advice.

Marshall planned the Battle of Cantigny, which became the first notable American victory in the war in late May 1918. He frequently traveled alone at night during the planning to have a personal view of the terrain, and ventured into no man's land. Two days before the battle, his horse stumbled, fell, and gave Marshall a severe sprain in the left foot. A doctor bound his ankle with adhesive tape so he could avoid medical evacuation and stay to oversee the battle. Marshall received the Citation Star for his bravery during the battle, a now-obsolete decoration that was converted to a Silver Star on the latter's introduction in 1932.

Pershing brought Marshall onto the AEF operations staff, where he made key contributions to the planning of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive of late 1918, which was part of the last general offensive on the Western front. He held the temporary rank of colonel at the time and was recommended for promotion to brigadier general, but the war ended, and Marshall reverted to his permanent rank of captain.

Marshall became Pershing's aide-de-camp while Pershing served as Army Chief of Staff. Marshall worked on modernizing military training. He served as the executive officer of the 15th Infantry Regiment in China for three years, learning basic Mandarin. He oversaw the writing of Infantry in Battle, a book which codified the lessons of World War I and which is a part of the Infantry Officer's Course to this day.

Marshall's wife died in 1927 due to complications after thyroid surgery. He made Katherine Boyce Tupper, herself a widow, at a dinner party the next year. The two married in 1930, after Katherine's three children agreed to the marriage, in a ceremony where General of the Armies John Pershing acted as Marshall's best man.

Serving at various stations in the 30s, Marshall became a supporter of President Roosevelt and his New Deal policies. Steadily climbing the ranks, he was promoted to brigadier general in 1936. Posted to the State of Washington, he commanded a brigade (holding a significant troop command was considered an important step in reaching the highest ranks) and was also responsible for 35 Civilian Conservation Corps camps, which were parts of a major work relief program for unmarried and unemployed young men.

Marshall was serving as Deputy Chief of Staff in July 1938, when he attended a White House conference where Roosevelt announced a plan to build 15,000 warplanes each year in preparation for World War II. Everyone else present voiced his support, but Marshall's integrity forced him to speak up just as he spoke up to Pershing during World War I. He pointed out that the project was out of proportion at a time when the Army didn't have a single division up to full strength, and also that building so many planes would be useless without the corresponding amount of fuel, supplies and trained crews. History repeated itself: the witnesses thought Marshall just killed his career, but Roosevelt was actually impressed by his honesty and soon nominated him as Chief of Staff. He was sworn in on September 1, 1939, a few hours after Nazi Germany crossed the Polish border and started World War II.

The U.S. Army numbered 189,000 men at the time, generally poorly equipped; it fell to Marshall to increase and equip the army in time for America's involvement in the war. One month after being sworn in, he published Field Manual 100-5, a document still in use today after several updates, which serves as the capstone of the U.S. Army's field manuals, describing the relations between various operations. He picked or recommended many of the American commanders who would play vital roles in the war, such as Eisenhower (Read our earlier article), Jacob Devers (Read our earlier article), George Patton (Read our earlier article), Terry de la Mesa Allen, Sr. (Read our earlier article), Lesley McNair (Read our earlier article), Mark Clark (Read our earlier article) and Omar Bradley.

Marshall first planned to expand the army to 265 divisions which would rotate in and out of combat similarly to their British counterparts. By mid-1943, however, both the government and business leaders were pushing back, since an army that large would have dipped very deep into the manpower pool that was needed to run the country back home. Marshall eventually settled for 90 divisions under a system that sent reinforcement to divisions piecemeal whenever they became available. This caused problems as green soldiers lacked the experience and often didn't have the time to learn "on the job" before being killed or captured, leading to poor morale among the battle-hardened survivors. He also pushed, often against British resistance, for unified command, most notable exemplified by the Combined Chiefs of Staff and the short-lived American-British-Dutch-Australian Command in the Pacific.

Marshall wanted to invade Western Europe in the spring of 1943, a plan which fell through when Churchill convinced Roosevelt to concentrate on the liberation of Sicily and Italy first. He also opposed the landings in North Africa, which he thought were about securing old European colonial conquests with little practical importance to the ongoing war.

Once the Normandy landings were decided on, rumors started circulating about Marshall being considered for overall command of the operation. He himself never lobbied for the appointment, and it went to Eisenhower instead as Roosevelt didn't want to lose Marshall in the position of Army Chief of Staff. As he once said to him, "I didn't feel I could sleep at ease if you were out of Washington." 

Marshall was promoted to the new five-star rank of General of the Army, the first of five officers to reach the rank. ("General of the Army" had already been used as a rank after the Civil War, but it was a four-star rank and not identical to the modern one.) The military was originally considering simply adapting the rank of Field Marshal, which was already in use by other nations, but Marshall, who knew he was the first man considered for it, lobbied for a name change as he didn't want to be known as "Marshal Marshall."

Marshall resigned his post as chief of staff in November 1945, after the war ended, but he wasn't done with public service yet. Truman sent him to China, where he already served in the 1920s, to prevent a civil war by brokering a coalition government between the Nationalists of Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists of Mao Zedong. The mission was doomed to failure: Marshall only had leverage over the pro-American Nationalists, but none over Mao, and the situation was too far gone to be salvaged.

Marshall returned to the U.S. in 1947 and was appointed Secretary of State. It was in this position that he oversaw the creation of the Marshall Plan, America's great plan for the economic reconstruction of war-torn Europe, which became one of the fundamental factors that shaped the Cold War. Though the plan was named after him, he didn't actually have much to do with its creation. Already in his late sixties, Marshall was becoming frail, and he was happy to let his deputies take care of most of the work. He did give credit to his under-secretary Robert A. Lovett: "The fact of the matter is that Lovett bears the principal burden as I get away whenever possible."  Nevertheless, Marshall did receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.

During his tenure as Secretary of State, Marshall unsuccessfully advised Truman not to recognize the newly founded state of Israel. He believed that doing so would lead to war in the Middle East (which it did in 1948), and that the decision had less to do with foreign politics and more with courting American Jewish voters before an election where Truman was expected to lose.

Severely exhausted, Marshall resigned from his position in January 1949 for health reasons, but he couldn't rest just yet. The Korean War broke out in the summer of 1950, and the Defense Department proved ill-prepared for the challenge. Truman fired the Secretary of Defense and appointed Marshall as the new one. This required a special congressional waiver. As a General of the Army, Marshall was technically still considered active duty even though he had retired in practice. Uniformed military officers can only serve as Secretary of Defense with a special waiver, and it has only been issued twice since Marshall's case.

During the war, once China entered on the North Korean side, Marshall opposed British proposals to seek a diplomatic solution with the new belligerent nation, believing that concessions to China would undermine the trust of America's Asian allies like Japan and the Philippines. At the same time, he was also against widening the war into a direct conflict with China, arguing that it would weaken the nation's overall strategic goal of containing Soviet Communism.

George C. Marshall finally retired for good in 1951, after 49 years of military and public service. He continued to serve as chairman of the American Battle Monuments Commission  (Read our earlier article). This was supposed to be a largely ceremonial role, but he did fight to continue building cemeteries despite staff and budget cuts caused by the Korean War.

He momentarily returned to the public eye in 1953, when President Eisenhower asked him to lead the American delegation at the coronation of young Queen Elizabeth II. When Marshall entered Westminster Abbey and walked up the aisle to take his seat before the proceedings began, everyone present rose as a sign of respect. He was also invited to the post-ceremony banquet at Buckingham Palace, where he was the only American present, seated two chairs down from the Queen.

George C. Marshall died in 1959 after a series of strokes. He was given a military burial, but, in accordance with his request, with many of the usual elements skipped in favor of simplicity. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

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