SPECIAL STUDIES FROM ROOT TO MCNAMARA: by James E. Hewes, Jr. MILITARY INSTRVCTION CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY UNITED STATES ARMY WASHINGTON, D.C., 1975 353.6 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77-183069 First Printing For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Stock Number 0800-00202 Foreword This volume is the first in a new series, SPECIAL STUDIES, which will deal with special topics of interest to the Army. The series is designed to treat selected Army activities on and off the battlefield and to provide accurate and timely accounts of neglected aspects as well as more familiar fields of military history. It will serve as a vehicle for publication of worthy monographs prepared within the Army Historical Program and of such outside scholarly works as may be deemed appropriate for publication and circulation to interested staffs, schools, and other agencies of the Army for ready reference and use. While military history abounds in the dramatic fare of battles and campaigns, definitive analysis of the evolution of the organization and administration of the departmental headquarters in the capitals has been a relatively neglected field. Yet upon the efficiency and effectiveness of the administrative apparatus needed to build, train, equip, and supply armed forces depends much of the success in the test of battle. The present study grew out of a monograph originally designed to provide a simple guide to the principal changes in Army departmental organization since 1942. Expanded later to cover the period beginning with 1900, the era of reform introduced by Secretary of War Elihu Root, and to provide a larger measure of analysis, this study traces changes relating to Army management in the central headquarters down to the early 1960s when new and dramatic reforms in Army organization were carried out during the regime of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. The account focuses on a single but important theme-the management of the Army administrative and logistical structure in the era of America's rise to global power. It fills a gap in the literature and is presented as a contribution to the field of organizational and administrative history. |