Reprinted, with permission, from Followed by bis dog.,F1eet, the· Army SMITHSONIAN Magbine, August 1997 ChiefofstQ,ffbritJIy escapes his military issue. @ 1997, Smithsonian Institution. cares by riding at Fort Myer in 1941. GEORGE C. MARSHALL THE LAST GREAT MERICAN? BY LANCE MORROW be true. But when I put Washington and Marshall side by side, and look at them against the background of the NO SOLDIER SINCE WASHINGTON HAS HAD HIS ROMAN national leadership now in office, it is VIRTUES, AND SO SIGNIFICANTLY SHAPED A PEACE easy to think that I am looking at the first American grown-up-and the last. As much as any man, Marshall saved IN MY MIND, A DIAGRAM OF AMERICAN is unfair, perhaps. Custer's curtain call world democracy at the moment of its military history might begin with a was an act ofself-immolating folly; Pat­ greatest danger. He took up his duties parallelogram of Georges-George ton, by contrast, was a brilliant tacti­ as U.S. Army Chief of Staff on Sep­ Washington and George Marshall; cian and a superb combat leader who tember 1, 1939, the day that Hitler George Armstrong Custer and George redeemed his excesses when he marched into Poland. He began with Patton. A geometry of paired oppo­ brought the Third Army slashing an absurdly ill-equipped army of sites. In some ways, George Marshall is across Europe toward Hitler's throat. 174,000 men, ranking 17th in the world the best of them all. The other two sides of the parallelo­ behind such nations as Bulgaria and Custer and Patton are the Hotspur gram, the Stoic Georges, shaped larger Portugal, and turned it into a global sides-martial peacocks, brave, vain­ American business. Washington and fighting force of more than eight mil­ glorious and, in Custer's case, fatally Marshall were·soldiers ofmaturity and lion, an army without which the Allies heedless. The cavalier Georges favored gravitas: father figures, not sons. In could not have defeated Nazi Germany flamboyant touches: Custer with his both generals duty evolved beyond ego and Japan. Ulysses Grant was the first personal flag and a regimental band, and broke through to a sort of higher master of industrial warfare. Marshall mounted on white horses, playing self-effacement, an identification by was the first genius of bureaucratic "Garryowen" across the Montana which they merged themselves with warfare, a Napoleon riding a desk. Not plains; Patton with ivory-handled pis­ their country's purposes. The Greeks martial flamboyance but logistics saved tols and his warrior-mystic's deja vu­ might have thought Patton and Custer the world in 1939-45, although the he thought that he had fought with embodied hubris; they would have world still may not be mature enough Alexander the Great in another life. assigned Washington and Marshall to to understand that. Well, as George Marshall said, rue­ the realm of arete, or virtue-the self Could anyone else have done the job fully, a democracy's leader, even in fulfilled in noble accomplishment for as well as Marshall? No. Was Marshall war, must keep the people entertained. the state. Washington and Marshall indispensable? The question has no Custer and Patton were performance were not only warriors but, after their answer, except perhaps a quotation artists who filled the stage with strut wars, something more constructive from the Tao Te Ching: "The Master u w U and plumage and flame. They con­ than that. doesn't talk, he acts, when his work is 0: 8 ceived that the battle was essentially a As Emerson said, "Every hero be­ done, the people say, 'Amazing: We u dramatically amplified projection of comes a bore at last." Washington and did it all by ourselves!'" ~ >o themselves. Pairing Patton with Custer Marshall both may seem too good to The recent anniversary of the Mar- u April 1945: triumphant Red Army soldiers wave a flag over the ruins of Berlin; in a 1947 cartoon (right), Europe hauls itself up from a "rubble heap" with help from the Marshall Plan. West Berlin was rebuilt, but the U.S.S.R. and its satellites refused Western aid. shall Plan notwithstanding, as a soldier shall was. That is one of the reasons greater man than Dwight Eisenhower, George Marshall is half-forgotten now, why I want George to have the big yet it was Ike who went to the White or four-fifths forgotten, as he knew he command. He is entitled to establish House for eight years. Marshall was a would be. That was part of his virtue. his place in history as a great general." greater general, and a better man, than There was a moment around Thanks­ Eisenhower listened in silence. He, theatrical and self-promoting Douglas giving of 1943 that might have changed of course, wanted to command the MacArthur. Yet MacArthur lives on everything and propelled Marshall into invasion but, like everyone else, as­ more vividly in whatever remains of higher historical orbit. Franklin Roo­ sumed the job would go to Marshall. American historical memory. Despite sevelt needed to settle upon the gener­ In Cairo in early December, FDR tried the offer of seven-figure publishers' al who would lead the Allied invasion to get Marshall to state a preference. advances, Marshall refused to write his of France and the reconquest of Eu­ Marshall said only that he would do memoirs after the war; to do so, he rope. Everyone assumed that Army what the President wanted him to do. suggested, would require him to tell Chief of Staff George Marshall would Days later, FDR made his decision. the full story, and such truth-telling get the job he had magnificently earned. He reasoned that no one else could wo~d sometimes wound old colleagues. On his way to meetings in Cairo deal with Congress as effectively as His concern for others was usually and Tehran, Roosevelt discussed the Marshall did-no other soldier would concealed behind an on-duty, crisply z question with Dwight Eisenhower, have Marshall's immense moral author­ serious command manner that rarely o ;:: then the commander ofAllied forces in ity and credibility. No one else knew permitted warmth or familiarity to ~ North Africa and the Mediterranean. the world military situation so well. As show. The jovial Franklin Roosevelt on o u As they flew over Tunisia, the Presi­ the Cairo Conference ended, Roosevelt several occasions called him "George," ::i u dent thought out loud: "Ike, you and I told Marshall: "I feel I could not sleep but Marshall rejected it as not suitable z <: know who was Chief of Staff during at night with you out of the country." from his Commander in Chief. He had '"u Z" the last years of the Civil War but It was done. Marshall accepted the a sense of humor, but one so rarely z <: practically no one else knows, although decision without question or comment. indulged, and so sly and dry that oth­ ....:>i ~ the names of the field generals-Grant, Both Roosevelt and Marshall were cor­ ers could miss the point. At a World "'U> of course, and Lee and Jackson, Sher­ rect in predicting that being kept at his War I armistice celebration, a French ;0 man, Sheridan and the others-every desk in the War Department would attache and a British observer debated '"o ~ deprive Marshall of the honor in his­ the postwar distribution of Germany's ~ schoolboy knows them. I hate to think o > that fifty years from now practically tory that he deserved. colonies. When the Frenchman gener­ o Z nobody will know who George Mar- History is not fair. Marshall was a ously proposed giving Syria to the United States, Marshall declined: career fell into two acts-the Great debt of gratitude, a soldier and states­ "America is opposed to any colony Depression and World War II. Mar­ man whose ability and character brook that has a wet or a dry season, and an shall played his two acts in the oppo­ only one comparison in the history of abnormal number of insects." He site order, from war to peace-first as this nation." Conant understood the allowed, however, that Bermuda the organizer of global battle, then as a symmetry: the comparison was of would be acceptable. The Englishman preeminent statesman of the postwar course to George Washington. was not amused. period. During the 1930S, when Amer­ By June 1947, the relief attending vic­ Colin Powell and Norman Schwarz­ ica was basically isolationist and large­ tory two years earlier had been lost in kopf, heroes of a 42-day video war, ly pacifist, Marshall, along with some new anxieties. Churchill, deposed as made millions for their memoirs. Mar­ others, had the historical imagination prime minister and leading the loyal shall belonged to a pretelevision, to anticipate war on a scale that would opposition, rumbled: "What is Europe almost Plutarchian, order. In some have seemed to most Americans an now? It is a rubble heap, a charnel ways the burden that he bore was apocalyptic fantasy. It took great dar­ house, a breeding ground of pestilence greater than that of Churchill or Roo­ ing and steadiness to prepare for such and hate." The wartime alliance with sevelt, because Marshall was the man an apocalypse. Again, after the war, he the Soviet Union had all but disinte­ who turned policy, mere ideas, into led America out of isolation with the grated; the threat of Communist men and steel, into facts. He was held Marshall Plan. regimes in Europe and the Mediter­ more mercilessly than the others to the Marshall's two great acts intersected ranean was real.