Marshall became U.S. Army Chief of Staff on
September 1, 1939–the same day Germany invaded Poland and began World War II–he
held that position until November 26, 1945. His realism, foresight, and
influence were largely responsible for the mobilization and preparation of the
U.S. Army in the months before Pearl Harbor, and his strategic vision helped
achieve ultimate victory. I believe he
is the greatest American of the twentieth century. His selflessness is only matched by Harry
Truman’s. His wisdom is matched by
no-one as was his ability to lead all the allied armies in WWII. It is interesting to note that he vehemently
opposed Truman’s decision to recognize Israel but, once the decision was made,
he did all he could to support it. After
the war, Marshall went on to become secretary of state and, later, secretary of
defense, and then President of the Red Cross.
My Notes:
Pg. 5: The
three American service chiefs—Marshall of the Army; Air Force General Henry
Arnold, and the Navy’s Ernest King were sharply divided in the months after
Pearl Harbor. King favored expanding the
Pacific War, a war of great fleets and small armies. Arnold argued that his bombers alone, could
he but get enough of them, would end the war without the necessity of
invasion. Only Marshall had never
wavered from their prewar estimates: Germany could win the war without Japan,
Japan could not win without Germany.
Thus they must fight in Europe first, Marshall insisted, and the only conclusive
way to victory against Germany was through an invasion.
Pg. 48: On
April 2, 1916 Wilson went before Congress seeking a declaration of war on
Germany. Four days later, the Senate by
a vote of 82 to 6 and the House by a vote of 373 to 50 adopted the
resolution. This declaration was a
reaction to Germany’s unrestricted sinking of ships as well as to the Zimmerman
telegram in which Germany prodded Mexico to invade the southwest U.S.
Pg. 120:
FDR considered Huey Long and Douglas MacArthur as the two most dangerous
men in America. Huey was assassinated in
1935.
Four hours after MacArthur was notified of the
Pearl Harbor attack, his airfields in the Philippines were attacked and
surprised—he had neglected to alert his command.
Pg. 262:
Pearl Harbor represented more emotional than actual losses. The four carriers based at Pearl had been on
sorties when the Japanese struck. Of the
battleships that had been hard hit, only two were a total loss—and one, the
Utah, was a decommissioned target ship.
Despite the dreams of admirals, vulnerable battleships would not figure
importantly in any Pacific engagement; submarines and airpower would carry the
brunt of the sea war.
Pg. 534:
The closer the Americans came to the Japanese home islands, the more
desperate the fighting. Iwo Jima cost
the Marines 6,000 dead. The Japanese
dead were 20,000. Okinawa was even more
costly than Iwo Jima, more than 12,000 Americans died and another 36,631 were
wounded. Ninety percent of the Japanese
garrison, 109,000 died. Marshall’s
planner now predicted 250,000 American casualties during the assault on Japan
proper. That toll would be worse still
if the Soviet Union did not tie down the elite Japanese Army in Manchuria. However,
begun in August 1942, the project to build an atomic bomb by 1945 employed
150,000 people. Few of them knew what they were actually working on. The bomb was expected to be operational by
August 1945. Hiroshima had 130,000 dead;
Nagasaki had 60,000 killed. (On August 8th
Russia declared war on Japan.) On August
10th Japan broadcast its acceptance of the Potsdam terms, so long as
they did not prejudice the prerogatives of the emperor as sovereign.
Pg. 555:
Patrick Hurley on November 26, 1945 resigned as ambassador to China
complaining of Communists in the State Department hampering his efforts to
shore up the government of Chiang Kai-shek.
“A considerable section of our State Department is endeavoring to
support communism generally as well as specifically in China,” Hurley told wire
service reporters. Republican Patrick
Hurley had abruptly ended the wartime era of a bipartisan foreign policy. Truman immediately requested that the now
retired Marshall be his personal representative to China. Then, by January 1947, Marshall was needed as
secretary of state.
Pg. 596:
The Truman doctrine fixed containment of Soviet advances as the
cornerstone of American foreign relations.
It passed Congress in May 1947.
Pg. 610:
The Marshall Plan received its name from Truman who felt if his name was
on it in any fashion, it would not get through congress. Truman left the drafting of the policy to
Marshall. The cost presented to Congress
was between $15.1 and $17.8 billion over the next four years.
Pg. 647:
The first C-47 of the Berlin airlift landed at Templehof Airport on the
morning of June 25, 1948.
Pg. 656:
Official Washington stood sharply divided on the Palestine question.
Sensitive to the Jewish vote in large states like New York, Illinois, and
California, elected officials, including Truman, tended to favor the concept of
a Jewish homeland. The Pentagon and
State Department, including Marshall, were strongly opposed. They felt American strategic interests in the
Near and Middle East would suffer if the U.S. supported partition. “United States influence in the area would be
curtailed to that which could be maintained by military force,” the Joint
Chiefs of Staff paper claimed. Further,
partition would mean conflict between Jew and Arab, and that would permit the
Soviet Union to meddle in the area.
Pg. 673:
On January 21, 1949, the day Dean Acheson was sworn in a secretary of
state, Chiang turned over nominal control of the Nationalist Government and
moved with his gold reserves to Formosa.
Marshall became president of the Red Cross at Truman’s request. In the autumn of 1949 it was confirmed that
the Soviets had detonated an atomic bomb.
There would now be an arms race on a global scale.
Pg. 678: On June 24 1950 North Korea invaded
South Korea. Truman again asked for
Marshall’s assistance: this time as secretary of defense.
Pg. 708:
Historian Joseph Goulden has uncovered another reason for Truman to
relieve MacArthur. Truman read a sheaf
of intercepted messages from Spanish and Portuguese diplomats in Tokyo in which
they notified superiors in their vehemently anti-Communist governments that
General MacArthur had told them he “was confident that he could transform the
Korean War into a major conflict in which he could dispose of the Chinese
Communist question’ once and for all.”
But rather than reveal that the U.S. was eavesdropping on the diplomats
of friendly governments, Truman would wait until MacArthur furnished another
good reason for his relief.
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