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. And now, in 1947, standard of reality. Mter World War one day in 1947, fifty years ago this Marshall had a new assignment, Secre­ II, Churchill, who had worked closely June. Harvard University president tary of State. Marshall mistrusted elo­ with Marshall and often quarreled with James B. Conant presented to George quence; he said that he was bad with him over Allied strategy, said of the Catlett Marshall a doctor of laws words, and in any case thought an offi­ Chief of Staff, "Succeeding generations degree, honoris causa. The honor, cer should express himself through his must not be allowed to forget his Conant told the audience of 8,000 in deeds. Looking out at Harvard Yard, achievements and his example." Harvard Yard, went to "an American he adjusted his reading glasses, and Franklin Roosevelt's Presidential to whom Freedom owes an enduring began: "I need not tell you that the world situation is very serious ..." With that, Marshall set forth the out­ line of the European Recovery Pro­ gram or, as everyone soon began call­ ing it, the Marshall Plan. As the Cold War began, he set in motion the pro­ gram that would save Western Europe hom economic and political chaos, and from the totalitarianism that was over­ taking mainland China and the Eastern Bloc countries. With Marshall pushing it in Congress and elsewhere, the plan was finally adopted despite notable opposition. "I worked on that," he later said, "as if I was running for the Sen­ In 1884, kid brother George already looked ate or the Presidency." serious. Looking more serious still in 1900, He not only testified before Congress, he was a leading cadet at VMI. he traveled the country patiently explaining. It was no giveaway pro­ gram, he told businessmen; countries that wanted financial support had to "It was about time come up with feasible plans for eco­ nomic recovery. The aid had a fixed for somebody else to swim time limit and a fixed cost ceiling; it would be administered by an American for the family." businessman, not a bureaucrat, and there was plenty of accountability. Without a thriving Europe, who would u we buy hom and sell to? Without par­ '"CJ '"o liamentary democracy on me Continent, '"CJ what chance was there for continued Lindbergh enjoyed and that Henry R. peace? Twice in 50 years, he reminded Luce, a missionary's son in China, isolationists, America had gone to war dreamed of from afar, and forever to keep Europe fi-ee of "single-power missed. The soil of such childhoods domination," clear proof of how much nourished the myth ofAmerican boun­ Europe mattered to America. ty, generosity, blamelessness and im­ Beyond that, in a vision of a future munity fi-om evil in the world. Theo­ we understand better now than we did dore Roosevelt fired these assumptions then, he noted that modern communi­ at the world as if they were cannon­ cations, vastly expanded during World balls; Woodrow Wilson would turn War II, had made the difference them into a sort ofmissionary theology. between rich and poor nations more George Marshall was descended glaringly visible than in the past, a from John Marshall, the third Chief recipe for future trouble unless some­ Justice, and from some of the oldest thing could be done about the dispari­ blood-proud families of Virginia­ ty. In the four years between 1948 and Catletts, Picketts, Taliaferros. His A heart-shaped, floral float conveyed Dutch 1952 the Marshall Plan channeled some father, a prosperous Uniontown busi­ gratitude to Marshall in 1948. $13 billion in reconstruction aid and nessman, used to brag about the gene­ technical assistance to 16 European alogy. The son reacted with embar­ countries. For that Marshall received rassment and irritation. "I thought that Young Marshall wanted to go to the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953. the continued harping on the name of West Point, but both Pennsylvania John Marshall was kind of a poor busi­ senators were Republicans and Mar­ A SMALL-TOWN BOY ness," he commented later. "It was shall's father was a Democrat who sup­ AS SOLDIER AND STATESMAN, MARSHALL about time for somebody else to swim ported William Jennings Bryan. Mar­ served eight Presidents in a 5o-year for the family." shall decided upon the Virginia career. He was born on the last day of In a speech he gave years later in Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington, 1880, only 15 years after the Civil War, Uniontown, just before World War II, Virginia, which generations of Mar­ in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in a pri­ Marshall explained that he decided on shalls had attended. marily agricultural nation of 38 states. a military career only after 1899, when, His older brother, Stuart, VMI class His career-young lieutenant in the at 18, he watched the triumphant of '94, was against the choice. The Philippines at the turn of the century, return fi-om the Philippines of Compa­ brothers did not get along. Marshall General Pershing's chief of staff in ny C of the Tenth Pennsylvania recalled: "I overheard Stuart talking to World War I, organizer of victory in Infantry Regiment: "No man of Com­ my mother; he was trying to persuade World War II, Secretary ofState as the pany C could make a purchase in this her not to let me go, because he Cold War hardened-personified the community. The town was his. ... It thought I would disgrace the family American transformation from small­ was a grand American small town name. Well, that made more impres­ town insularity to global preeminence. demonstration of pride [that1reflected sion on me than all instructors, The arc of his life was also the nation's the introduction of America into the parental pressure, or anything else. I trajectory. He molded his life and affairs of the world beyond the seas." decided right then that I was going to work to his duty and nation-and That bright moment-America's for­ wipe his face, or wipe his eye." those four things became indistin­ eign adventure celebrated to the sound Marshall had his revenge. He not guishable. of John Philip Sousa-would arrive, only distinguished himself at VMI, Marshall's Pennsylvania origins had several generations later, at the darker emerging in his final year as unani­ the savor of a manageable, self-suffi­ end of the trajectory when the soldiers mous choice for first captain, the high­ cient and essentially innocent universe, arriving back, singly, from Vietnam est ranking cadet officer, he also court­ congenial to boyhood, a sort of pow­ received no welcome home except a ed and, after graduation in the class of erful Emersonian center from which glare, a complicated silence, or the 1901, married a Lexington woman, Lily Tom Sawyer might have gone forth taunt: "Baby killer!" (I have sometimes Coles, six years his senior, whom Stu­ into the greater world. The self-confi­ wondered what George Marshall art had courted when he was a cadet. dence instilled by such a childhood would have done if, born 30 years was one of those crucial (but usually later, his Commander in Chief had OFF TO MINDORO obscure) sources of national energy as asked him to be the Westmoreland or THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR WAS the United States moved out into the the MacNamara of the American war over; Spain had relinquished Cuba, world for the American Century. It in Vietnam. Marshall was, after all, a ceded Puerto Rico and Guam to the was the sort of boyhood that a repre­ soldier impeccable in his loyalty and United States, and sold the Philippines sentative American like Charles A. punctilious about obeying orders.) to us for $20 million. But now the bloody Philippine Insurrection promp­ ted the United States to expand its per­ manent army to 100,000. Marshall, a tall, lean, plain-handsome 20-year-old with sharp blue eyes and an air of crisp reserve, won a commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. Early in 1902, he said goodbye to his bride and set off for Mindoro Island in the Philippines, to begin a military career. It ended 49 years and seven months later at the retirement of Sec­ retary of Defense George Marshall with the permanent rank offive-star general. One of Marshall's attractive qualities as a leader was his refusal to conde­ scend or bully; perhaps his relations During the fighting in Italy in 1945, Marshall finds time to visit the U.S. Fifth Army. with his older brother taught him that. Later an impassive Marshall takes a "backseat" beside an ebullient Eisenhower at a A briskly intelligent reserve was an victory celebration. In 1943, the two discuss plans with Winston Churchill. ingredient in his authority: no non­ sense, but no overbearing power dis­ plays, either. He had a huge temper, es. An army at peace is an animal in made him at last the controlling wiz­ which he eventually learned to con­ hibernation; the seniority system con­ ard ofWorld War II. Marshall biogra­ trol. He understood perfectly the way geals promotions. Garrison duty ritual­ pher Ed Cray assesses the historic cost that, within the context of Army hier­ izes spit and polish, and tedium. of the transition in military thinking archies, discipline could function Marshall was posted for a time at and the resistance of the military Old through a democratic subtext of respect Fort Reno, in Oklahoma, on the north Guard to new ideas earlier in the cen­ given and required. Once when he fork of the Canadian River. The Ar­ tury: "The successive bloodbaths blind­ came upon one of his officers berating my's old rationale for Plains duty had ly ordered by superannuated British an enlisted man (who no doubt de­ by now expired; whites had all but and French generals at the beginning of served it), Marshall called the officer completed their settlement, and the World War I would validate the aside and said, "You must remember suppression of the Indians. From Fort reformers, but the cost would be a gen­ that the man is an American citizen Reno, Marshall set forth by wagon and eration of Europe's young men." just the same as you are." mule train to map 2,000 square miles Ranked first in his class at Leaven­ In the Philippines he soon estab­ of the southwestern-Texas desert, some worth, Marshall was promoted to first lished an ironclad but low-key style of of the harshest landscape in America. lieutenant and went on to Leaven­ command. When he was leading his Because of the seniority system, Mar­ worth's Army Staff College. In the seven-man patrol single file across a shall would not be made a first lieu­ years that followed, up until 1917 when jungle stream one day, one of the men tenant until late winter of 1907 but, in he shipped out for the war in France, yelled "Crocodiles!" The patrol stam­ 1906, was admitted to the Army's In­ he established a pattern of distin­ peded for the bank, trampling Marshall fantry and Cavalry School at Fort guished performance at frustratingly as they went. "It wasn't a time for cus­ Leavenworth, Kansas. Such schools low rank. At the age of34, in 1915, and sing around," he recalled, years later. were to become battlegrounds between still a first lieutenant, he told the com­ Instead, he picked himself up, waded the Army's older conservatives and its mandant of VMI that the "absolute forward, ordered the men to fall in, younger reformers, who saw that, be­ stagnation in promotion in the mfantry then, at the head of the column, cause of new weapons, the internal­ has caused me to make tentative plans marched them back across the stream combustion engine and Marconi's for resigning as soon as business con­ and then back again into the water and wireless, the nature of war had funda­ ditions improve somewhat." He soon so across in proper military fashion. mentally changed. Agility, mobility, thought better of it. Then he held a rifle inspection. communications and firepower were Marshall distinguished himself not­ In November 1903, Marshall was or­ about to alter its metaphysics. ably as a staff officer who, in a series dered back to the United States. Now It was Marshall's eventual mastery of of large-scale military maneuvers-on began his long seasoning years-hard the new realities-the need for rapid the Texas-Mexico border, in Connecti­ work in the obscurity of a peacetime thinking and improvising, for a sure cut, in the Philippines-proved a bril­ army given over mostly to the waiting snapshooter's instinct in the field, sup­ liant improvisationalist capable of mov­ games of police duty, mapmaking and ported by formidably organized pipe­ ing whole armies with remarkable necessarily theoretical military exercis- lines of logistics and manpower-that deftness. Mter the Batangas maneuvers Lorraine. He saw combat briefly as an Marshall married in 1930, three years observer along Gen. Henri-Philippe after his first wife's death-observed his Petain's Verdun front. (Marshall got behavior during the first bleak months caught under fire, then entangled in of 1942, when the Allies were being barbed wire, and left part of his pants thrown back on almost all fronts on the barbs as he scrambled back to around the world. She said, "It was as the trenches.) Made acting chief of staff though he lived outside of himself and of the First Division, he had a memo­ George Marshall was someone he was rable encounter with Pershing. The constantly appraising, advising, and general had exploded at Marshall's training to meet a situation." commander, Gen. William L. Sibert. Neither the Meuse-Argonne cam­ Marshall, in turn, lost his temper on paign nor the logistics of America's behalf of Sibert and blistered Pershing global war succeeded simply because with a furious monologue about the Marshall had character. He possessed condition of the troops, and inadequate an extraordinary intellect, an astound­ supplies and transport. Marshall's fel­ ing memory and what might be called low officers figured Marshall had com­ a kinetic military imagination-a genius mitted professional suicide right before for seeing the dynamic interaction of their eyes. In fact, Pershing decided facts in rapid motion through time. that he had at last found an officer Marshall's focused analytical intelli­ who would tell him the truth. gence would be on display when he in the Philippines in January 1914, an Marshall hoped for a troop com­ testified as Army Chief of Staff before Army legend has it, the commanding mand. Douglas MacArthur, almost the Congressional committees or gave general called his staff together to cite same age, was already a full colonel occasional press conferences. During Marshall as "the greatest military gen­ and chief of staff of the 42nd Division. W orld War II, he would sometimes ius since Stonewall Jackson." At Fort Marshall, however, was considered too invite 40 or 50 correspondents into his Douglas, UtalI, in 1916, the commander, valuable as a staff officer. He was trans­ office, listen to a long series of ques­ Lieut. Col. Johnson Hagood, paid Mar­ ferred to Pershing's headquarters at tions from them, and then, without shall an astonishing compliment on his Chaumont. General Ludendorff's of­ notes, deliver a half-hour monologue in efficiency report: "This officer is well fensive in the spring of 1918, Germany's which he answered each question in qualified to command a division, with last hope ofvictory, had run out ofgas. turn (facing the correspondent directly the rank of major general, in time of Marshall was ordered to plan the Amer­ as he answered that man's question) war, and I would like very much to ican part in an Allied counterattack. and at the same time wove all the serve under his command." Marshall's later story in W orld War answers into a coherent overall picture. Woodrow Wilson, reelected in 1916 II-too valuable for combat, con­ After World War I, America, of on a promise of keeping America out demned against his wishes to function course, demobilized, turning away in ofwar (as Franklin Roosevelt promised as a sort of military desk wizard-was horror and relief from foreign night­ to do in 1940, as Lyndon Johnson prefigured in the St. Mihiel and Meuse­ mares to an isolationism that relied promised in 1964), ended by getting us Argonne campaigns. Rising rapidly and upon the vast Atlantic and Pacific moats. into the war in April 1917 and sending now holding the temporary rank of Marshall returned to America as per­ two million Americans to France under colonel, he organized the transfer of sonal aide to Pershing. With his com­ Gen. John J. Pershing, who was fresh some 600,000 American troops, and mander he sat in on long conversations from chasing Pancho Villa in Mexico. 900,000 tons of supplies and ammuni­ with President Warren G. Harding. tion, trom the St. Mihiel sector to the Marshall stood above partisan politics TOO VALUABLE FOR COMBAT Meuse-Argonne battlefield, all moved but learned how to deal with poli­ BY 1917, NO INTELLIGENT SOLDIER HAD by night, in secret, and without detec­ ticians and national leaders-an appren­ illusions about the trench warfare that tion by the Germans. It was one of the ticeship that paid off later. His years as had been destroying Europe for three largest and most complicated logistical aide to the Army Chief of Staff gave years. In one day, July 1, 1916, at the undertakings of the war. Marshall an education in the political Battle of the Somme, England squan­ The Meuse-Argonne operation in realities of soldiering in a democracy. dered 60,000 men, 2,000 more than the fall of 1918 was a kind of localized THE "BENNING REVOLUTION" America lost in 12 years in Indochina. rehearsal for the global task that Mar­ As the First Division's operations shall accomplished in World War II. It BUT MARSHALL, ALTHOUGH SUFFICIENTLY officer, a job usually assigned to a lieu­ called into play his remarkable gift of horrified by the carnage of the war, tenant colonel, Marshall began training dispassionate concentration upon the again faced a soldier's frustration with and organizing the inexperienced task at hand. His second wife, Kather­ peacetime. The nation heedlessly American troops at Gondrecourt in ine Tupper Marshall-a widow whom downsized its army to virtually sym- bolic proportions, and he was stuck with the permanent rank of major. After five years with Pershing, and a promotion to lieutenant colonel, he became assistant commandant of the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Geor­ gia. It was there that he began training young officers in the lessons of fire­ power and maneuverability that formed the basis for the new Army. Tactics could no longer be static. Mar­ shall trained officers with a view to what Cray describes as "that first aggressive thrust by an enemy increas­ ingly motorized, with aircraft rather than cavalry to scout ahead." In one lecture Marshall said, "Picture the opening campaign of a war. It is a Seated in his garden at age 71, after retiring from a distinguished 50-year career as soldier cloud of uncertainties, haste, rapid and statesman, George Marshall at last manages to look relaxed. movements, congestion on the roads, strange terrain, lack of ammunition and supplies at the right place at the right reasserted itself. He confessed to Per­ Spain. In March 1939, Hitler occupied moment, failures of communications, shing, 'Tm fast getting too old to have the remains of Czechoslovakia. In Sep­ terrific tests of endurance, and misun­ any future of importance in the tember, it was Poland's turn. derstandings in direct proportion to Army." Finally, in October of 1936, When Brigadier General Marshall the inexperience of the officers and the Marshall made brigadier. Less than two reported for duty at the War Depart­ aggressive action of the enemy. Add to years later, he went to Washington to ment in Washington, Chief of Staff this ... fast flying planes, fast moving become the Army's Deputy Chief of Craig, an old mend from W orId War tanks, armored cars .. ." He was Staff under Gen. Malin Craig. I, greeted him by saying, "Thank God, describing exactly the blitzkrieg used By now, history was boiling along George, you have come to hold up my by Germany against France in 1940. like one of the dark-cloud montages trembling hands." It was in his five years at Benning, tumbling in time-lapse photography Today, W orId War II and its after­ during what became known in the across a movie screen. From Tokyo to math seem a Jurassic age, a remote Army as the "Benning Revolution," Berlin, from Moscow to Chungking, to time when giants roamed the earth that Marshall began accumulating the London and Washington and New perpetrating primitive deeds (Fascism, roster of names-kept in his own first­ York, the world situation deteriorated. global conquest, genocide and the class memory or else in the fabled Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Roosevelt, nuclear awakening that was the war's "black book" that officers thought he Chiang, Mao and the Japanese all were last act). The cast of characters (Hitler, maintained-from which he later put making their preliminary moves. The Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt, Mussolini, together American military leadership Italian invasion of Ethiopia dramatized Mao) has an earthshaking, mytlllc qual­ in World War II. Lieut. Col. Joseph the weakness of the League of Nations ity. Out of the origin myth, Hitler Stillwell and Maj. Omar Bradley were and was a prelude to larger tragedy. In became the baseline for the discussion among Marshall's instructors at Ben­ the Soviet Union, Stalin had launched ofevil, as Munich became the caution­ ning. It was at Benning, too, that Mar­ the show trials that would result in ary model of appeasement. shall developed the reputation-later a the imprisonment or execution of mil­ George Marshall becomes in my sometimes rueful Army legend-for lions of the U.S.S.R.'s party functionar­ mind the paradigm of a certain kind of ruthlessness in judging officers and ies, bureaucrats, military officers, phy­ American virtue, now all but extinct. sacking even the most experienced sicians and scholars-a social and Marshall lingers in the nation's memo­ men in favor ofjunior officers who, in cultural apocalypse. ry, I think, with a wistful poignance­ his judgment, were up to leading a And in March 1936, Hitler moved a kind of reproach. ! modern army. unopposed into the demilitarized The 1930S were difficult for Marshall. Rhineland. Germany sealed alliances Lance Morrow, author of Heart: A Memoir, He was in his 50S now, still a colonel. with Italy and with Japan, and helped is a Time magazine essayist and university The Army's atherosclerotic system had establish Francisco Franco in power in professor at Boston University.