CHAPTER V

Between Peace and War

Unification

While the Army, under the rubric of decentralization, rejected General Marshall's principle of firm executive control, Congress similarly opposed his proposal for firm executive control over all the armed services under a single Department of Defense. A month after the War Department had presented the Marshall-Collins plan, President Harry S. Truman sent to Congress on 19 December 1945 a similar plan minus the Directorate of Common Supplies and Services. This omission was understandable since the Army had already accepted the Patch Board's recommendation to abolish the Army Service Forces. The Truman plan also proposed rotating the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces annually among the services. The service chiefs themselves would continue to have direct access to the President, weakening control by the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces still further. The three civilian service secretaries, eliminated in the Marshall-Collins plan, remained as assistant secretaries. So far as naval aviation was concerned the Truman plan referred simply to carrier or water-based operations with no reference to Marine Corps land-based aviation.1

Within the Army the General Staff, the technical service chiefs, and ETO veterans formed a coalition which had successfully opposed continuing the tight executive control over the Army recommended by General Marshall. Opposition to Marshall's proposals for unification of the armed services, on the other hand, came from the Navy and its Congressional supporters, particularly Congressman Carl Vinson (Democrat of Georgia), chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee. He opposed centralized control over the armed services through

'U.S. Congress, National Defense Establishment (Unification of the Armed Services), Hearings Before the Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, 80th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, 1947), pp. 9-10.

any kind of "General Staff" as "Prussian militarism," a false analogy dating back to the days of Josephus Daniels. He was intensely loyal to the Navy which from the beginning had opposed Marshall's unification program. The Navy did not support the Army-AAF's program for a separate air force because it feared it would lose its air arm. The Royal Navy, it repeatedly pointed out, had lost its air arm to the Royal Air Force following World War I with disastrous consequences. More immediately the Navy feared it would lose its land-based naval aviation forces, particularly its Marine Corps aviation. Under the Marshall-Collins plan the Navy was to retain its fleet air arm and the Marine Corps, but the plan assigned responsibility for land-based air forces to the new U.S. Air Force.

Second, the Navy opposed the concept of unification itself. In contrast to General Marshall it preferred to continue the common direction of military and naval forces through cooperation under the JCS committee system.

By the end of the war the Navy had withdrawn its opposition to a separate air force, provided that the Navy continue to retain its own naval and Marine Corps air arms intact. Instead of a unified department of the armed services it proposed three separate but equal departments co-ordinated through the JCS.2

Congress deadlocked over the unification issue, although eventually it adopted an organization similar to that recommended by the Navy. The most bitter Congressional battles were over the future status of naval and Marine Corps aviation. In these battles Army spokesmen played an insignificant role. The principal antagonists were the Army Air Forces and the Marine Corps with victory going to the Marine Corps partly because it had a representative, Lt. Col. J. D. Hittle, temporarily assigned to the staff of the House Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments which drafted the

(1) Woodrum Committee Hearings, pp. 121-241. (2) Thomas Committee Unification Hearings, pp. 6-9. (3) U.S. Congress, Unification of the War and Navy Departments and Post War Organization for National Security-Report to Hon. James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, etc. (known as the Eberstadt Report) (Washington, 1945), Senate Committee Print, 79th Cong., 1st sess., for the use of the Committee on Naval Affairs. (3) Alfred D. Sander, “Truman and the National Security Council, 19451947," Journal of American History, LIX, No. 2 (September 1972), 369-83.

legislation. There he helped guarantee the independence of Marine Corps aviation in law.3

The final compromise, the National Security Act of 26 July 1947, reflected more the Navy's views than the Army's but did provide for a separate air force organization within a National Military Establishment (NME). It provided for a civilian "Secretary of Defense" with only nominal "general direction, authority, and control" over the military services. (Chart 15) Congress permitted him only a small staff of assistants, retaining cabinet rank for the service secretaries along with direct access to the President. The Secretary of Defense was "to take appropriate steps to eliminate unnecessary duplication or overlapping in the fields of procurement, supply, transportation, storage, health, and research." That was all that was left of the Marshall-Somervell plan for a Directorate of Common Supplies and Services.

The principal innovation, following Navy recommendations, was the creation of a National Security Council to aid the President in co-ordinating over-all national security policy. The three armed services and the Department of State were represented on the council which was provided with its own staff or secretariat. A Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), replacing the wartime Office of Strategic Services, reported directly to the council, while a National Security Resources Board, replacing the wartime War Production Board, reported directly to the President.

Within the National Military Establishment a Munitions Board responsible for industrial mobilization and a Research and Development Board reported directly to the Secretary of Defense. An Armed Forces Policy Council was created, composed of the service secretaries and military chiefs, to advise the Secretary. The law also legalized the existence of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but limited its staff to a hundred officers. These agencies, composed of representatives of the three armed services, were co-ordinating committees rather than executive organizations. Congress, following Navy recommendations, deliberately did not provide for effective executive control above the service level. As a consequence, President Dwight

* Caraley, The Politics of Military Unification. On Colonel Hittle's assignment, see Pp. 229-33.

D. Eisenhower commented a decade later: "In the battle over reorganization in 1947 the lessons of World War II were lost. Tradition won. The resulting National Military Establishment was little more than a weak confederacy of sovereign military units a loose aggregation that was unmanageable."

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Congress also did not make any provision for integrating military budgets with military strategy. Supervising the military budgets was the responsibility of the several civilian secretaries, and Congress continued to provide funds according to an increasingly archaic appropriations structure. As a result

'President Eisenhower's message to Congress. 5 Apr 58. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives Document 316, 85th Cong., 2d sess., Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1958.

the gap was to widen between military strategies developed by the JCS and the military budgets appropriated by Congress."

The immediate impact of the National Defense Act on the Army was the final separation and independence of the Army Air Forces. The Chief of Staff of the Army and the Chief of Staff-designate of the Air Force signed an agreement on 15 September 1947, known as the Eisenhower-Spaatz agreement, which provided the framework within which men, money, and resources were to be transferred from the Army to the new Department of the Air Force. Among other things it said "Each Department shall make use of the means and facilities of the other departments in all cases where economy consistent with operational efficiency will result." The last phrase was a deliberately oracular expression allowing the Air Force to justify creating its own supply system despite the fact that it would duplicate and overlap facilities and services provided by the Army in many cases.

The National Security Act made one minor change affecting the Army by redesignating the War Department as the Department of the Army.

Army Ground Forces and Unity of Command

While the Air Forces and the Navy struggled with each other over unification, the Army sought to solve several internal problems created by the Eisenhower reorganization. At a conference with General Eisenhower on 13 November 1946, the Army staff proposed a radical reorganization of both the headquarters and field establishment. General Eisenhower vetoed this plan. "Nothing should be done," he said, "to disrupt

(1) War Department Bulletin No. 11, 31 Jul 47, containing Public Law 253, 80th Cong., The National Security Act of 1947, approved 26 Jul 47. (2) J. C. Goldberg. "A Fourth Military Service." Individual Report on Problem No. 233, ICAF Mobilization Course, 1951-52, 30 Jan 52, pp. 1-7. (3) Warner R. Schilling, "The Politics of National Defense: Fiscal Year 1950" and Paul Y. Hammond, "NCS-68: Prologue to Rearmament," in Warner R. Schilling, Paul Y. Hammond, and Glenn H. Snyder, Strategy, Politics, and Defense Budgets (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), pp. 1-266, passim. (4) Charles J. Hitch, Decision-Making for Defense (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965), pp. 3–18.

See Chapter VII, pages 285-91.