Raising a Pragmatic Army Officer Education at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1946
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RAISING A PRAGMATIC ARMY OFFICER EDUCATION AT THE U.S. ARMY COMMAND AND GENERAL STAFF COLLEGE, 1946 - 1986 BY C2010 Michael David Stewart Submitted to the graduate degree program in History and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Theodore A. Wilson Chairperson Adrian R. Lewis Jeffrey Moran James H. Willbanks Susan B. Twombly Date Defended 4/22/2010 The Dissertation Committee for Michael David Stewart certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: RAISING A PRAGMATIC ARMY OFFICER EDUCATION AT THE U.S. ARMY COMMAND AND GENERAL STAFF COLLEGE, 1946 - 1986 Committee: Theodore A. Wilson Chairperson Adrian R. Lewis Jeffrey Moran James H. Willbanks Susan B. Twombly Date approved: 4/22/2010 i ABSTRACT RAISING A PRAGMATIC ARMY: Officer Education at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1946 – 1986 By Michael D. Stewart Department of History, University of Kansas Professor Theodore A. Wilson, Advisor This dissertation explains the evolution of the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas from 1946 to 1986. Examination of change at the United States Army’s Command and General Staff College focuses on the curriculum as a system—students, instructors, professional knowledge, and lessons—mixing within a framework to produce an educational outcome of varying quality. Consideration of non- resident courses and allied officer attendance marks two unique aspects of this study. The curriculum of the Command and General Staff College changed drastically over four decades because of the rapid expansion of professional jurisdiction, an inability to define the Army’s unique body of professional knowledge, and shifting social and professional characteristics of the U.S. Army officer corps, reflected in the faculty and students at the College. Combined, these factors diminished the role and significance of the Command and General Staff College. The subjects taught to officers at the resident course shifted perceptibly during this period. The officer corps redefined professional expertise, moving away from ―purely military‖ considerations towards a body of knowledge that was no longer unique. The institution, once the Army’s senior tactical institution, distributed its resources—the most critical being time devoted to learning—across a broad front. Political, technological, and military turbulence of the early Cold War hampered the Army’s efforts to adopt an effective curriculum to address the changed security environment until well past 1960. Constant changes in the Regular Course affected the non-resident studies program, which was never fully resourced. From 1960 to 1973, the curriculum’s form underwent fundamental changes. CGSC’s leaders attempted to balance the competing demands of peacetime and wartime subjects in a ten-month course, finding it difficult to accommodate the demands of both. The College shifted to a model of concentration and distribution, allowing students more choice. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Table of Contents iii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Organizing Officer Education, 1946-1950 12 Chapter 2 A Course Correction, 1950-1955 59 Chapter 3 Forward Progress, Slowly, 1954-1963 101 Chapter 4 Defining Professional Jurisdiction, 1954-1964 160 Chapter 5 Confronting Modern War, 1963-1973 190 Chapter 6 A Great Awakening, 1973-1986 237 Conclusion Teaching a Future Army 304 Appendices 312 Bibliography 326 iii INTRODUCTION Michael Howard once advised scholars and armed forces‟ professionals to study military history in width, depth, and context so that they may fully understand the nature of military operations and “improve the officer‟s competence in his profession.”1 Historian William Skelton has observed, “an intellectual component is central to a professional orientation: a claim to the exclusive control of a body of specialized knowledge essential to the fulfillment of an important social need.”2 At the intersection of Howard‟s admonition and Skelton‟s observation is the military educational institution where officers become students in order to master their profession‟s body of specialized knowledge. Samuel Huntington‟s 1957 classic, The Soldier and the State, may be said to have begun the modern scholarly treatment of Army professionalism and education. Huntington‟s principal concern was describing civil-military relations, the set of obligations that derived from the officer‟s principal responsibility to the nation.3 He outlined the origins of American military professionalism and put forth three characteristics that defined the professional: expertise, responsibility, and corporateness. Of particular interest here is the notion of expertise. Huntington stated that a professional was “an expert with specialized knowledge and skill in a significant field of human endeavor. Expertise was acquired only by prolonged education and experience.” Delving further, he said, “The direction, operation, and control of a human organization whose primary function is the application of violence is the peculiar skill of the officer.”4 His work became the defining view of officer professionalism for the remainder of the twentieth century. Notably, however, Huntington‟s simple theory belies complex relationships between experience, society, and professional knowledge. 1 Michael Howard, “The Use and Abuse of Military History,” Parameters 11 (March 1981): 9-14. 2 William Skelton, An American Profession of Arms: The Army Officer Corps, 1784-1861 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 88. 3 Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations, 14th printing, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2000), 16. 4 Huntington, 8-11. Harry Thie and others, Future Career Management Systems for U.S. Military Officers (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1994), 220. Adding to the complexity of defining officership as a profession, officers are sometimes seen as having four distinct roles: servants of the society, members of a time-honored profession, leaders of character, and last, but not least, war fighters. 1 One of the first books to attempt to define military education and the relation to military professionalism was published alongside Huntington‟s theoretical study in 1957. John Masland and Laurence Radway of Dartmouth College explored the education of officers and how the military services prepared senior leaders for their emerging role in formulating national policy. Of interest here are the mere seven pages allocated to the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, which was an overview of the current curriculum related to national policy. The authors noted that Leavenworth did not devote much time to policy and strategy, although they found that recent changes initiated by the Commandant might lead the College in this direction. Masland and Radway recognized the changing nature of the military professional‟s duties and the broadened scope of military professionalism. Their work anticipated the changes that would come to the College in later years.5 Unfortunately, the historiography of professional military education in general leaves a faint trail, and few scholarly works trace the College‟s evolution. The touchstone work is Timothy K. Nenninger, The Leavenworth Schools and the Old Army.6 Nenninger investigated CGSC‟s role in professionalizing the officer corps from 1881-1918 and argued effectively for a close correlation between the education of the American officer corps and the rise in professionalism in the United States Army. Nenninger traced the humble beginnings of the course and underscored the role Leavenworth graduates played as staff officers throughout the Allied Expeditionary Force. He established the corporate nature of “Leavenworth men” relative to other officers. Nenninger found that commandants exercised a significant influence on the course content and on the professional views of graduates themselves. In his view, the faculty defined the institution during this period. 5 John W. Masland and Laurence I. Radway, Soldiers and Scholars: Military Education and National Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), 280-87. Their broad survey covered military education from the undergraduate experience to the senior service colleges. Unfortunately, they propagate the myth of the demands and rigor of the Leavenworth experience, saying “Stories of nervous breakdowns and even suicides among students are legendary.” Masland and Radway, 283. Two collections of essays about officer education from an international perspective are Gregory C. Kennedy and Keith Neilson, eds. Military Education: Past, Present and Future (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) and Michael D. Stephens, ed. The Educating of Armies (New York: St. Martin‟s Press, 1989). 6 Timothy K. Nenninger, The Leavenworth Schools and the Old Army: Education, Professionalism, and the Officer Corps of the United States Army, 1881-1918 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978). 2 Years passed before scholars examined other aspects of the Leavenworth experience. If, as Nenninger contended, the early Leavenworth school can be understood by study of the faculty, the focus shifted to the students during the interwar years, according to Peter J. Schifferle, who extended the historical perspective starting with Nenninger‟s conclusion. Schifferle‟s dissertation covered the interwar period and the Leavenworth courses during the Second World War, and he demonstrated