Naval War College Review Volume 54 Article 24 Number 3 Summer

2001 Norstad: Cold War NATO Supreme Commander—Airman, Strategist, Diplomat, Douglas Kinnard

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Recommended Citation Kinnard, Douglas (2001) "Norstad: Cold War NATO Supreme Commander—Airman, Strategist, Diplomat,," Naval War College Review: Vol. 54 : No. 3 , Article 24. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol54/iss3/24

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documents, interviewed hundreds of wit- as a foreign-policy tool, such measure- nesses, visited scores of bombed sites, ment is essential. This poorly reasoned and then concluded that strategic bomb- and highly parochial book will not help ing had indeed been a decisive factor in us find answers to that pressing need, nor the Allied victory, as they reported. will it foster understanding among the Alas, such a conclusion is unacceptable services.

to Gentile. He must find nefarious PHILLIP S. MEILINGER schemes and schemers, and so he repeat- Science Applications International Corporation McLean, Va. edly questions the motives and veracity of the participants. For example, when General Curtis LeMay testified before Congress that he did not believe airpower could “win the war” and that a balanced mix of land, sea, and air forces was neces- Jordan, Robert S. Norstad: Cold War NATO Su- preme Commander—Airman, Strategist, Diplomat. sary for victory, Gentile dismisses his New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. 329pp. $49 statement as a “shrewd and bureaucrati- cally astute” tactic to manipulate his ci- Lauris Norstad was a major Air Force vilian superiors. leader during the defining years of the Cold War, and except for Dwight Eisen- The USSBS has been controversial ever hower, he was the most prominent of all since it was written. Small wonder—at- the Supreme Allied Commanders Europe tempting to measure the effects of strate- (SACEUR) since that position was estab- gic bombing in World War II was a lished in early 1951. Surprisingly, up to massive undertaking, conducted at a time now, nothing definitive had been written when the techniques of systems analysis on his role as SACEUR. Robert Jordan, a were in their infancy. Gentile finds it professor at the University of New Or- troubling that survey members were not leans and an authority on Nato, has filled in total agreement. This should hardly that gap. come as a surprise. If the unfolding of historical events were simple and uncon- Norstad grew up in a small town in Min- tested, our libraries would be far smaller. nesota and graduated from West Point in the class of 1930. Transferring to the Air His concluding chapter, dealing with the Corps in 1931, he was one of that rela- survey that analyzed the air campaign of tively small group of regular-officer avia- the Persian Gulf War, is less tendentious. tors who provided air force leadership Here again, however, the author presents during World War II. When the war be- little that is new, and, more importantly, gan, Major Norstad was serving on an air he does not attempt to address the book’s staff in Washington, D.C. He came to the ostensible focus—the efficacy of strategic attention of General Henry “Hap” Arnold, bombing. who headed what had become in June Measuring the effectiveness of strategic 1941 the Army Air Forces. In 1942 Arnold air attack is one of the greatest challenges established a select group of young offi- facing military planners today. It is an cers, the brightest he could find, to work enormously complex and difficult prob- in his immediate office. Norstad was one lem that defies easy solution. Yet as of them—he was on the way up. airpower becomes increasingly dominant

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That summer Arnold sent Norstad to of service in Europe, in particular the last England to serve as operations chief of six, when he served as SACEUR. the Twelfth Air Force—Eisenhower’s air The author analyzes in detail three major arm for Operation TORCH, the Novem- issues confronted by Norstad that were ber 1942 invasion of North Africa. In his most significant: the role and employ- war memoir, Eisenhower had this to say ment of nuclear weapons in alliance de- about Norstad: “[Norstad was] a young fense, the Berlin crises of 1958–59 and air officer who so impressed me by his 1961–62, and the problem of balancing alertness, grasp of problems, and person- SACEUR’s roles as both an international ality that I never thereafter lost sight of and an American forces commander. him.” Before long, Brigadier General The nuclear weapons issue was compli- Norstad was operations chief for the cated by the fact that the British had their Allied Air Forces Mediterranean. In the own weapons, the French wanted theirs, fall of 1944, Arnold returned Norstad to and the West Germans, having none, Washington, D.C., as chief of staff of the were not quite certain they would be fully Twentieth Air Force, charged with defended if the alliance had no recourse planning the strategic bombing campaign other than nuclear war. As Jordan dem- against Japan. By war’s end, Major Gen- onstrates, Norstad was an able diplomat eral Lauris Norstad, though not one of who succeeded in developing an alliance the top combat heroes of the Army Air consensus on the role of nuclear weapons Forces, was definitely one of its top in deterring the Soviet Union. comers. Since Berlin was inside the Soviet-occupied From the end of World War II until the zone of Germany, it became an ideal lo- Korean War, the leadership of the re- cation for the Soviets to apply pressure duced American armed forces struggled on the alliance—by denying, or threaten- with new questions. Two of the most im- ing to deny, access to the city. Though portant were the role of nuclear weapons the issues were extremely complex, in a and how the U.S. military should be or- clear and interesting fashion Jordan ex- ganized. With Eisenhower serving as plains Norstad’s role as diplomat and chief of staff of the U.S. Army, and strategist in meeting Nikita Khrushchev’s Norstad his deputy for operations (G-3), challenge. Norstad was involved in both issues, par- ticularly in developing the compromises It is in his examination of SACEUR’s that led to the 1947 legislation resulting conflicting roles as an American and si- in the National Military Establishment, multaneously an international commander and ultimately to a separate Department that Jordan makes his major contribution. of the Air Force. Subsequently, Lieuten- This issue came to a head for Norstad ant General Norstad, operations chief for with the arrival of the Kennedy adminis- the Air Force, played a major role in or- tration in 1961, with its secretary of de- ganizing the Berlin Airlift during the crisis fense, Robert Strange McNamara. The of 1948–49. In the fall of 1950 he became substantive issue was the nature, role, commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe. and control of nuclear weapons as an ele- The main focus of Jordan’s book con- ment of Nato strategy. The process issue cerns Norstad’s subsequent twelve years was that the administration found it hard to accept SACEUR’s dual role, tending to

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view Norstad as an American commander was not doctrinally or materially only. The details cannot be developed prepared for, and that the service had within the confines of a review, but in the neither anticipated nor especially wanted end Norstad was forced to walk the to fight. Crane logically takes the reader plank—though the final jump was de- through the war from the prehostilities layed for a period of two months by the period, which generally set the stage for administration’s need for his assistance the limited character of the war and spe- during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. cifically established the character of the Robert Jordan has produced an impor- Air Force’s contribution; the opening tant work that is thoroughly researched, moves and initial setbacks; the miraculous nicely written, and most insightful. No end-around at Inchon and subsequent doubt it will be the definitive biography march to the Yalu; the bitter winter of of Lauris Norstad—Cold War airman, 1950–51; and finally to the stalemate strategist, and diplomat. The book will along the thirty-eighth parallel. also be of interest to those involved in the Crane analyzes the performance of the Air study of civil-military relations, especially Force in conducting air warfare in a re- in these years of increased commitment gional, limited conflict at a time when the of U.S. military forces in multinational or service was focused on strategic nuclear war international interventions. and restricted by government policy as to the resources that could be allocated to Ko- DOUGLAS KINNARD Brigadier General, U.S. Army, Retired rea. It was a condition that the Air Force Emeritus Professor of Political Science would again confront in Vietnam. The Ko- University of Vermont rean War presented the Air Force with a myriad of challenges, not the least of which was the attempt to meet high expectations for operational effectiveness based on re- sults obtained during World War II. Crane, Conrad C. American Airpower Strategy in However, the very nature of the new con- Korea, 1950–1953. Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 2000. 252pp. $35 flict constrained that effectiveness. A clas- sic example of the limited nature of the Conrad Crane is a research professor for Korean War was the prohibition against military strategy at the Strategic Studies crossing the Yalu River to engage enemy Institute, U.S. Army War College, and forces or interdict lines of communica- formerly a professor of military history at tion. Crane also takes great pains to high- the U.S. Military Academy. Crane previ- light how austere were the resources ously wrote Bombs, Cities, and Civilians: made available to the Korean area of op- American Airpower Strategy in World War erations, because the Air Force was re- II (1993), which is widely respected for quired to maintain the bulk of the active its rich and adroit analysis. American component in a ready status to respond Airpower Strategy in Korea, 1950–1953 is to other worldwide threats. This require- a comprehensive, thoroughly researched ment was the catalyst for many issues treatment of the many issues that the that arose during the conduct of the war, newly constituted U.S. Air Force faced as among them the decision to recall to ac- a result of having to fight its first war as tive duty large numbers of aircrewmen an independent service—a war that it who had served in World War II and

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