While the author's focus is on the Army headquarters staff, he indicates parallel trends in organization in industry and government and relates his theme to historic conflicts over centralization of control. The volume presents a useful survey in a field of continuing importance that should be of interest to administrators and managers both in and out of the Army as well as to students of military history and public administration. Washington, D.C. 15 January 1974 JAMES L. COLLINS, JR. The Author James E. Hewes, Jr., received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Yale University. His principal field of study was international relations. During World War II, after serving as an enlisted man, he became a 2d lieutenant in the Field Artillery. He joined the staff of the Office, Chief of Military History, in August 1962, specializing since that time in administrative history. The manuscript he is now working on, Army Organization and Administration, 1963-1974, continues the analysis undertaken in the present volume. Preface The principal issue in the development of the organization and administration of the War Department/Department of the Army from 1900 to 1963 was executive control over the men, money, and other resources required to raise, train, equip, and supply the United States Army. The question was not whether there should be any centralized management of departmental operations. Tight control had existed throughout most of the nineteenth century within the headquarters of each of a series of autonomous bureaus, which largely governed themselves under the detailed scrutiny of Congress. The question was whether tight authority should be imposed on the bureaus at the level of the Secretary of War. Except during the Mexican and Civil Wars there had been little effective authority over the bureaus before 1900. By 1963 the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Army, and the Chief of Staff were able to rule departmental operations more effectively, while the once powerful chiefs of the bureaus had disappeared, except for the Chief of Engineers and the Surgeon General. The purpose of the present account is to trace the development of this central theme of executive control historically. It does not attempt to treat all aspects of Department of the Army organization. Nor does it deal with the usual substance of military history, military operations in the field. As administrative history it has less in common with operational military history, as such, than with similar historical treatment of American public administration and industrial management. Failure to recognize the distinction between the way in which the Department of the Army operates and the standing operating procedures of military organizations in the field has frustrated generations of field soldiers, who have taken for granted the necessity for tight management at the top, known to them as unity of command. This struggle for executive control within the Army has taken place during a period of increasingly centralized authority over individual and corporate activities throughout American life. This development has been a natural consequence of the increasing industrialization and urbanization of a once predominantly rural society. The bureaus, traditionally the basic administrative units of the federal government, had developed in the context of a rural America which distrusted centralized authority and held that government best which governed least. The War Department bureau chiefs, like their colleagues elsewhere in the federal government, were as zealous as any Americans in defending this tradition. They based their careers upon it. In this account they and their supporters are called traditionalists. Opposed to the traditionalists were those individuals and groups who believed, as a result of their own experiences, that increasing industrialization and urbanization required the abandonment or at least the modification of American rural traditions, values, and institutions. They foresaw only chaos and anarchy without greater centralized authority as urban industry and population expanded. Urban political bosses sought to impose order on a chaotic welter of independent, competing municipal agencies. Industrialists and bankers sought to impose order in major industries where unfettered competition, in their view, was leading to mutual destruction. Industrial technology was changing the character of modern warfare, demanding greater efficiency and control not only over armies in the field but over agencies responsible for their supply and equipment. Centralized control meant the substitution of rational order and regulation from the top down for previously unregulated activities. In industry the process became known in the United States and western Europe as rationalization. Those who sought similarly to rationalize the organization and structure of the War Department are called in this account rationalists. A more common term among American historians generally for such reformers is modernists. Among my colleagues at the Center of Military History, Dr. Robert W. Coakley should be singled out for his advice and detailed knowledge of Army logistics during World War II and after. He also prepared other helpful studies on Army military personnel management during and after World War X |