A brief 1940 profile of the man President Roosevelt preferred over 33 other generals of higher grade: General George C. Marshall (1880 – 1959):
His most spectacular military feat occurred during the [First] World War, when, as operations chief of the First Army, he moved 500,000 men and 2,700 pieces of artillery from one battlefield to another without a hitch and without letting the enemy get wind of what he was doing.
While speaking at the 141st anniversary of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Chief of Staff General George Marshall gave a great big shout out to three American generals. Pointing out that all of them were graduates of West Point (as he was) the general could not help but conclude that the Axis didn’t have a chance.
An excerpt from General Marshall’s introductory essay to his 1945 Biennial Report
Click here if you would like to read an article about 1940s fabric rationing and the home front fashions.
General Marshall listed a number of clear advantages that the American G.I. had over his German and Japanese counterpart: the M-1 Garand semi-automatic rifle, the jeep and the two-and-a-half ton truck (Deuce and a half):
It is interesting to trace the planning and decisions that gave us the Garand rifle and the tremendous small arms fire-power that went with it, noting especially that the War Department was strenuously opposed.
The demobilization of 7,730,000 U.S. military personnel must have been a daunting task, but the policy makers in Washington knew well the dangers of that new world and they had no intention of completely demobilizing as they had done after the First World War. General Marshall remarked in these short paragraphs that many men would be needed for occupation duty.
To read further about the demobilized military, click here
The Chief of Staff’s 1945 report concerning the U.S. Army’s progress and set-backs during the course of the war mentioned one element:
in which the German Army held an advantage almost to the end of the war. The first was the triple-threat 88-mm [field gun] which our troops first encountered in North Africa…
The first two paragraphs from General Marshall’s Biennial Report
The last two paragraphs in the report concern the remarkably low amount of non-battle deaths suffered by the U.S. military during the course of the war. General Marshall attributed this fact to the broad immunization program that was enacted on all fronts by the army medical corps.
Click here to read a news report on the American military casualties that were amassed from 1941 up to November, 1944.
As he looked back on all that the U.S. military was able to accomplish during the last two years of World War Two, General George Marshall was full of praise for the War Department’s General Staff; however, it was management of these three major commands that impressed him time and again:
*the collective efforts of the American Air Forces
*the Army Ground Command and
*the Service Forces.
General Marshall recalled the decisions made concerning how many American men would be drafted and in what branches of service they would be needed. He recalled the number of divisions each Allied nation raised and how many divisions the Germans and Japanese put in the field. The article also remembers that two thirds of the German Army was deployed along the Eastern front and he wondered what might the Americans have done had Germany defeated the Reds.
It is remarkable how exactly the mobilization plan fitted the requirements for victory. When Admiral Doenitz surrendered the German Government, every American division was in operational theaters.
General Marshall’s post-war report remarked on one clear advantage that the German Army was privileged to exploit again and again throughout the war:
The German ammunition was charged with smokeless, flashless powder which in both night and day fighting helped the enemy tremendously in concealing his fire positions.
