offices of the chiefs of the traditional technical services presented another difficult problem. Large industrial corporations which attempted to combine a functionally organized headquarters with a decentralized product-oriented field structure were experiencing similar difficulties.38

Supervising and co-ordinating the technical services along functional lines which cut across formal channels of command inevitably generated friction. If the offices of the chiefs of the services had been phased out of existence as had been done with the chiefs of the combat arms within AGF, there might have been less friction and ill-feeling. AAF headquarters deliberately created its own integrated supply system from the start and did not have to deal with any technical services with long-established traditions and influence.

ASF might have solved its organizational and management problems by confining its top staff to broad policy planning and co-ordinating functions. The technical services chiefs argued for this alternative, but the experiences of the three major commands led their commanding generals to insist that their headquarters staff must operate in order to exercise effective control over their subordinate agencies and commands.

There were conflicts and jurisdictional disputes between General Somervell's headquarters and OPD over logistical planning responsibilities and with AAF headquarters as a result of the latter's aggressive drive for autonomy.

Although put together in haste, the Marshall reorganization worked as well as it did because General Marshall was the real center of military authority within the department. Both Roosevelt and Secretary Stimson supported him. In turn General Marshall delegated broad responsibility with commensurate authority to Generals McNarney, McNair, Arnold, and Somervell. While the Marshall reorganization lasted only as long as he was Chief of Staff, it was based upon the accepted military principle of unity of command and similar to concepts of administrative management developed by major industrial corporations.

* Chandler, “Management Decentralization,” pp. 211–12.

CHAPTER IV

The Eisenhower Reorganization

After World War II the United States abandoned its prewar isolationism and assumed global responsibilities in international affairs that vastly increased the commitments of its military establishment and required new patterns of defense organization. The World War II Army of over eight million was reduced by mid-1947 to approximately one million (including the Army Air Forces), but was still five times greater than the Army of the 1930s. This force was no longer deployed solely in the United States and its possessions but was widely dispersed in occupation and other duties in Europe and Asia. The Army could no longer be viewed as a virtually independent entity but as one interrelated in complex patterns with the other elements in the defense establishment, including after 1947 a separate Air Force. The pace of technological advance illustrated most dramatically by the appearance of the first atomic bomb at the end of the war introduced further complications into the management of defense and Army affairs. Between 1945 and 1950 Congress and the Executive Branch wrestled with the problems of establishing a new defense organization to fit the new circumstances. Within the Army itself these events produced crosscurrents of opinion that led to a new phase in the long struggle between rationalists and traditionalists over the nature of the organization of the department.

General Marshall's Views on Postwar Military Organization

General of the Army George C. Marshall repeatedly asserted he could not have "run the war" without having radically reorganized the department to provide centralized, unified control through decentralized responsibility for administration. The essential features of his reorganization, he strongly advised, should be retained after the war and the armed services

should be unified or integrated along the same lines. This approach was preferable to continuing the unsatisfactory extemporaneous wartime organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The JCS operated on the traditional committee system, which, Marshall told Congress, made the development of balanced national defense policies and effective control over the armed services impossible. "Committees," he said, “are at best cumbersome agencies." They reached agreement only after interminable delay. Their decisions represented compromises among the competing interests of individual agencies rather than rational calculations based on the interests of the nation as a whole. They wasted time, men, money, and matériel.2

Marshall's basic proposition was to integrate the services into a single department along the same lines as his wartime organization of the Army. A civilian secretary would be responsible for the nonmilitary administration of the services, a role similar to Secretary Stimson's during the war. Under him would be a single Chief of Staff for the Armed Forces directing the military activities of four operating commands: the Army, Navy, Air Forces, and a Common Supply and Hospitalization Service patterned after Army Service Forces. Overseas theater commanders would report directly to the Chief of Staff.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff would continue as a top-level planning and co-ordinating staff, with no administrative responsibilities, under a "Chief of Staff to the President" like Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy. The new Chief of Staff would present the views of the JCS to the President instead of the reverse as Admiral Leahy had done. The JCS would also continue to report directly to the President rather than through the civilian secretary. Its vital function would be to recommend to the President military programs which integrated military strategy and policy with the budgets required to support them.

National military policies should be balanced against the resources available to meet them, Marshall insisted. Otherwise the services would find themselves again unable to carry out their assigned responsibilities. He also sought to prevent the services from bypassing the Chief of Staff and the Secretary as the technical services had done in obtaining their own funds

1

1 Pogue, Ordeal and Hope, p. 298. (2) Marshall, Harrison, and Lutes Interviews. Patch-Simpson Board files.

2 Thomas Committee Unification Hearings, pp. 50-51. Quotation from p. 50.

directly from Congress. Thus General Marshall's plan also involved a radical reorganization of the nation's defense budgets along rational lines.3

The Special Planning Division and the Marshall Program

Even before Pearl Harbor General Marshall realized the importance of planning ahead to avoid the kind of chaotic demobilization which followed World War I. On 13 November 1941 he recalled to active duty Brig. Gen. John McAuley Palmer, with whom he had served under Pershing, as his personal adviser on the postwar organization of the Army. On 24 June 1942 he also appointed a Post-War Planning Board to advise General Palmer on postwar organization matters. Its members, including the G-1 and G-3, were too preoccupied with current operating responsibilities to pay much attention to postwar problems. Eventually they agreed on the need for a special staff agency that would devote its entire time to problems of demobilization and postwar planning.

General Marshall then asked General Somervell on 14 April 1943 to initiate preliminary studies on demobilization planning. Accordingly, General Somervell set up a Project Planning Division within the Office of the Deputy Commanding General for Service Commands to define the problem in the light of American experience in World War I and recommend a proper organization and procedures for dealing with it.

Assisted by General Palmer, the Project Planning Division submitted a Survey of Demobilization Planning to General Marshall on 18 June 1943. Based on these recommendations, Under Secretary Patterson on 22 July 1943 directed creation of a Special Planning Division as a War Department Special Staff agency to develop plans for demobilization, universal military training, a single department of defense, and the postwar organization of the Army.

Taking over the personnel of ASF's Project Planning Division, the Special Planning Division (SPD) was a group of approximately fifty people under Brig. Gen. William F. Tompkins and later Maj. Gen. Ray E. Porter. Col.

(1) Interview, Marshall with Stimson, 24 Apr 44. (2) Stimson Diary, entries of 18, 19, 21, and 24-27 Apr 44. (3) Marshall Interview. Patch-Simpson Board files. (4) Thomas Committee Unification Hearings, pp. 49–65.

Gordon E. Textor became deputy director, and General Palmer continued to serve as adviser. Collectively, they had sufficient rank to command respect from the other War Department agencies and commands with whom they had to work.

The Special Planning Division's internal organization consisted of five functional branches: Organization; Personnel and Administration; Service, Operations, and Transportation; Materiel; and Fiscal. Three other branches, Legislative and Liaison, Administration, and Research, provided administrative support.

The Organization Branch developed the War Department's Basic Plan for the Post-War Military Establishment and the Army's positions on unification and universal military training along the lines outlined by General Marshall. The Personnel and Administration Branch prepared the Army's demobilization program together with the Readjustment Regulations governing its operations. The Service, Operations, and Transportation Branch, the Fiscal Branch, and the Materiel Branch, which were combined in 1945 as the Supply and Materiel Branch, concentrated on planning the Army's postwar supply organization and industrial demobilization. The Research Branch collected and evaluated reports from other staff agencies and prepared the division's periodic progress reports. On military matters the SPD reported to the Chief to Staff and on industrial matters to Under Secretary Patterson."

The Special Planning Division followed traditional Army staff action procedures. It assigned problems for investigation to appropriate staff agencies or commands, reviewed their reports, and then submitted them for comment and concurrence to all interested agencies. After adjusting conflicting views, SPD submitted the final results to the General Staff, General Marshall, Under Secretary Patterson, and Secretary Stimson for

4

(1) Memo, Brig Gen John McAuley Palmer (U.S. Army, retired) for the Committee on Civilian Components, 9 Jan 48, sub: Inter-relations between professional and non-professional personnel in the armed forces of a democratic state, pp. 2-3. Hereafter cited as Palmer Memorandum. (2) John C. Sparrow, History of Personnel Demobilization in the United States Army (Washington, 1952), pp. 32-34. (3) Special Planning Division, War Department General Staff, History of the Special Planning Division, War Department General Staff, c. Mar 46, 4 vols., vol. I, pp. 1-9, and vol. II, Tabs A-K. Manuscript in OCMH.

(1) Sparrow, History of Personnel Demobilization, pp. 35–37. (2) Nelson, National Security and the General Staff, p. 468. (3) Special Planning Division History, vol. I, pp. 1-9, vol. II, Tab L, vol. IV, Tab S.